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diff --git a/.gitattributes b/.gitattributes new file mode 100644 index 0000000..6833f05 --- /dev/null +++ b/.gitattributes @@ -0,0 +1,3 @@ +* text=auto +*.txt text +*.md text diff --git a/12244-0.txt b/12244-0.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..eb0cb78 --- /dev/null +++ b/12244-0.txt @@ -0,0 +1,5911 @@ +*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 12244 *** + +IN THE NAME OF THE BODLEIAN +AND OTHER ESSAYS + + +By + +AUGUSTINE BIRRELL + + +HONORARY FELLOW OF TRINITY HALL, CAMBRIDGE + + +_'Peace be with the soul of that charitable and courteous author who +for the common benefit of his fellow-authors introduced the ingenious +way of miscellaneous writing.'_--LORD SHAFTESBURY. + + +LONDON + +1906 + + + + +AUTHOR'S NOTE + +The first paper appeared in the _Outlook_, New York, the one on Mr. +Bradlaugh in the _Nineteenth Century_, and some of the others at +different times in the _Speaker_. + +3, NEW SQUARE, +LINCOLN'S INN. + + + + + CONTENTS + + I. 'IN THE NAME OF THE BODLEIAN' + II. BOOKWORMS + III. CONFIRMED READERS + IV. FIRST EDITIONS + V. GOSSIP IN A LIBRARY + VI. LIBRARIANS AT PLAY + VII. LAWYERS AT PLAY + VIII. THE NON-JURORS + IX. LORD CHESTERFIELD + X. THE JOHNSONIAN LEGEND + XI. BOSWELL AS BIOGRAPHER + XII. OLD PLEASURE GARDENS + XIII. OLD BOOKSELLERS + XIV. A FEW WORDS ABOUT COPYRIGHT IN BOOKS + XV. HANNAH MORE ONCE MORE + XVI. ARTHUR YOUNG + XVII. THOMAS PAINE + XVIII. CHARLES BRADLAUGH + XIX. DISRAELI _EX RELATIONE_ SIR WILLIAM FRASER + XX. A CONNOISSEUR + XXI. OUR GREAT MIDDLE CLASS + XXII. TAR AND WHITEWASH + XXIII. ITINERARIES + XXIV. EPITAPHS + XXV. 'HANSARD' + XXVI. CONTEMPT OF COURT + XXVII. 5 EDWARD VII., CHAPTER 12 + + + + +'IN THE NAME OF THE BODLEIAN' + + +With what feelings, I wonder, ought one to approach in a famous +University an already venerable foundation, devoted by the last will +and indented deed of a pious benefactor to the collection and housing +of books and the promotion of learning? The Bodleian at this moment +harbours within its walls well-nigh half a million of printed volumes, +some scores of precious manuscripts in all the tongues, and has become +a name famous throughout the whole civilized world. What sort of a +poor scholar would he be whose heart did not beat within him when, for +the first time, he found himself, to quote the words of 'Elia,' 'in +the heart of learning, under the shadow of the mighty Bodley'? + +Grave questions these! 'The following episode occurred during one of +Calverley's (then Blayds) appearances at "Collections," the Master +(Dr. Jenkyns) officiating. _Question_: "And with what feelings, Mr. +Blayds, ought we to regard the decalogue?" Calverley who had no very +clear idea of what was meant by the decalogue, but who had a due sense +of the importance both of the occasion and of the question, made the +following reply: "Master, with feelings of devotion, mingled with +awe!" "Quite right, young man; a very proper answer," exclaimed the +Master.'[A] + + [Footnote A: _Literary Remains of C.S. Calverley_, p. 31.] + +'Devotion mingled with awe' might be a very proper answer for me to +make to my own questions, but possessing that acquaintance with the +history of the most picturesque of all libraries which anybody can +have who loves books enough to devote a dozen quiet hours of +rumination to the pages of Mr. Macray's _Annals of the Bodleian +Library_, second edition, Oxford, 'at the Clarendon Press, 1890,' I +cannot honestly profess to entertain in my breast, with regard to it, +the precise emotions which C.S.C. declared took possession of him when +he regarded the decalogue. A great library easily begets affection, +which may deepen into love; but devotion and awe are plants hard to +rear in our harsh climate; besides, can it be well denied that there +is something in a huge collection of the ancient learning, of +mediaeval folios, of controversial pamphlets, and in the thick black +dust these things so woefully collect, provocative of listlessness and +enervation and of a certain Solomonic dissatisfaction? The two writers +of modern times, both pre-eminently sympathetic towards the past, who +have best described this somewhat melancholy and disillusioned frame +of mind are both Americans: Washington Irving, in two essays in _The +Sketch-Book_, 'The Art of Bookmaking' and 'The Mutability of +Literature'; and Nathaniel Hawthorne, in many places, but notably in +that famous chapter on 'The Emptiness of Picture Galleries,' in _The +Marble Faun_. + +It is perhaps best not to make too great demands upon our slender +stock of deep emotions, not to rhapsodize too much, or vainly to +pretend, as some travellers have done, that to them the collections +of the Bodleian, its laden shelves and precious cases, are more +attractive than wealth, fame, or family, and that it was stern Fate +that alone compelled them to leave Oxford by train after a visit +rarely exceeding twenty-four hours in duration. + +Sir Thomas Bodley's Library at Oxford is, all will admit, a great and +glorious institution, one of England's sacred places; and springing, +as it did, out of the mind, heart, and head of one strong, efficient, +and resolute man, it is matter for rejoicing with every honest +gentleman to be able to observe how quickly the idea took root, +how well it has thriven, by how great a tradition it has become +consecrated, and how studiously the wishes of the founder in all their +essentials are still observed and carried out. + +Saith the prophet Isaiah, 'The liberal deviseth liberal things; and by +liberal things he shall stand.' The name of Thomas Bodley still stands +all the world over by the liberal thing he devised. + +A few pages about this 'second Ptolemy' will be grudged me by none but +unlettered churls. + +He was a west countryman, an excellent thing to be in England if you +want backing through thick and thin, and was born in Exeter on March +2nd, 1544--a most troublesome date. It seems our fate in the old home +never to be for long quit of the religious difficulty--which is very +hard upon us, for nobody, I suppose, would call the English a +'religious' people. Little Thomas Bodley opened his eyes in a land +distracted with the religious difficulty. Listen to his own words; +they are full of the times: 'My father, in the time of Queen Mary, +being noted and known to be an enemy to Popery, was so cruelly +threatened and so narrowly observed by those that maliced his +religion, that for the safeguard of himself and my mother, who was +wholly affected as my father, he knew no way so secure as to fly into +Germany, where after a while he found means to call over my mother +with all his children and family, whom he settled for a time in Wesel +in Cleveland. (For there, there were many English which had left their +country for their conscience and with quietness enjoyed their meetings +and preachings.) From thence he removed to the town of Frankfort, +where there was in like sort another English congregation. Howbeit we +made no longer tarriance in either of these two towns, for that my +father had resolved to fix his abode in the city of Geneva.' + +Here the Bodleys remained 'until such time as our Nation was +advertised of the death of Queen Mary and the succession of Elizabeth, +with the change of religion which caused my father to hasten into +England.' + +In Geneva young Bodley and his brothers enjoyed what now would be +called great educational advantages. Small creature though he was, he +yet attended, so he says, the public lectures of Chevalerius in +Hebrew, Bersaldus in Greek, and of Calvin and Beza in Divinity. He +had also 'domestical teachers,' and was taught Homer by Robert +Constantinus, who was the author of a Greek lexicon, a luxury in those +days. + +On returning to England, Bodley proceeded, not to Exeter College, as +by rights he should have done, but to Magdalen, where he became a +'reading man,' and graduated Bachelor of Arts in 1563. The next year +he shifted his quarters to Merton, where he gave public lectures on +Greek. In 1566 he became a Master of Arts, took to the study of +natural philosophy, and three years later was Junior Proctor. He +remained in residence until 1576, thus spending seventeen years in the +University. In the last-mentioned year he obtained leave of absence to +travel on the Continent, and for four years he pursued his studies +abroad, mastering the French, Spanish, and Italian languages. Some +short time after his return home he obtained an introduction to Court +circles and became an Esquire to Queen Elizabeth, who seems to have +entertained varying opinions about him, at one time greatly commending +him and at another time wishing he were hanged--an awkward wish on +Tudor lips. In 1588 Bodley married a wealthy widow, a Mrs. Ball, the +daughter of a Bristol man named Carew. As Bodley survived his wife and +had no children, a good bit of her money remains in the Bodleian to +this day. Blessed be her memory! Nor should the names of Carew and +Ball be wholly forgotten in this connection. From 1588 to 1596 Bodley +was in the diplomatic service, chiefly at The Hague, where he did good +work in troublesome times. On being finally recalled from The Hague, +Bodley had to make up his mind whether to pursue a public life. He +suffered from having too many friends, for not only did Burleigh +patronize him, but Essex must needs do the same. No man can serve two +masters, and though to be the victim of the rival ambitions of greater +men than yourself is no uncommon fate, it is a currish one. Bodley +determined to escape it, and to make for himself after a very +different fashion a name _aere perennius_. + + 'I resolved thereupon to possess my soul in peace all the residue + of my days, to take my full farewell of State employments, to + satisfy my mind with the mediocrity of worldly living that I had of + mine own, and so to retire me from the Court.' + +But what was he to do? + + 'Whereupon, examining exactly for the rest of my life what course I + might take, and having sought all the ways to the wood to select + the most proper, I concluded at the last to set up my staff at the + Library door in Oxford, being thoroughly persuaded that in my + solitude and surcease from the Commonwealth affairs I could not + busy myself to better purpose than by reducing that place (which + then in every part lay ruined waste) to the publick use of + students.' + +It is pleasant to be admitted into the birth-chamber of a great idea +destined to be translated into action. Bodley proceeds to state the +four qualifications he felt himself to possess to do this great bit of +work: first, the necessary knowledge of ancient and modern tongues and +of 'sundry other sorts of scholastical literature'; second, purse +ability; third, a great store of honourable friends; and fourth, +leisure. + +Bodley's description of the state of the old library as lying in every +part ruined and in waste was but too true. + +Richard of Bury, the book-loving Bishop of Durham, seems to have been +the first donor of manuscripts on anything like a large scale to +Oxford, but the library he founded was at Durham College, which stood +where Trinity College now stands, and was in no sense a University +library. The good Bishop, known to all book-hunters as the author of +the _Philobiblon_, died in 1345, but his collection remained intact, +subject to rules he had himself laid down, until the dissolution of +the monasteries, when Durham College, which was attached to a +religious house, was put up for sale, and its library, like so much +else of good learning at this sad period, was dispersed and for the +most part destroyed. + +Bodley's real predecessor, the first begetter of a University library, +was Thomas Cobham, Bishop of Worcester, who in 1320 prepared a chamber +above a vaulted room in the north-east corner of St. Mary's Church for +the reception of the books he intended to bestow upon his University. +When the Bishop of Worcester (as a matter of fact, he had once been +elected Archbishop of Canterbury; but that is another story, as +Laurence Sterne has said) died in 1327, it was discovered that he had +by his will bequeathed his library to Oxford, but he was insolvent! No +rich relict of a defunct Ball was available for a Bishop in those +days. The executors found themselves without sufficient estate to pay +for their testator's funeral expenses, even then the first charge upon +assets. They are not to be blamed for pawning the library. A good +friend redeemed the pledge, and despatched the books--all, of course, +manuscripts--to Oxford. For some reason or another Oriel took them in, +and, having become their bailee, refused to part with them, possibly +and plausibly alleging that the University was not in a position to +give a valid receipt. At Oriel they remained for ten years, when all +of a sudden the scholars of the University, animated by their +notorious affection for sound learning and a good 'row,' took Oriel by +storm, and carried off the books in triumph to Bishop Cobham's room, +where they remained in chests unread for thirty years. In 1367 the +University by statute ratified and confirmed its title to the books, +and published regulations for their use, but the quarrel with Oriel +continued till 1409, when the Cobham Library was for the first time +properly furnished and opened as a place for study and reference. + +The librarian of the old Cobham Library had an advantage over Mr. +Nicholson, the Bodley librarian of to-day. Being a clerk in Holy +Orders before the time when, in Bodley's own phrase, already quoted, +we 'changed' our religion, he was authorized by the University to say +masses for the souls of all dead donors of books, whether by gifts +_inter vivos_ or by bequest. + +The first great benefactor of Cobham's Library was Duke Humphrey of +Gloucester, the youngest son of Henry IV., and perhaps the most +'pushful' youngest son in our royal annals. Though a dissipated and +unprincipled fellow, he lives in history as 'the good Duke Humphrey,' +because he had the sense to patronize learning, collect manuscripts, +and enrich Universities. He began his gifts to Oxford as early, so say +some authorities, as 1411, and continued his donations of manuscripts +with such vivacity that the little room in St. Mary's could no longer +contain its riches. Hence the resolution of the University in 1444 to +build a new library over the Divinity School. This new room, which +was completed in 1480, forms now the central portion of that great +reading-room so affectionately remembered by thousands of still living +students. + +Duke Humphrey's Library, as the new room was popularly called, +continued to flourish and receive valuable accessions of manuscripts +and printed books belonging to divinity, medicine, natural science, +and literature until the ill-omened year 1550. Oxford has never loved +Commissioners revising her statutes and reforming her schools, but +the Commissioners of 1550 were worse than prigs, worse even than +Erastians: they were barbarians and wreckers. They were deputed by +King Edward VI., 'in the spirit of the Reformation,' to make an end of +the Popish superstition. Under their hands the library totally +disappeared, and for a long while the tailors and shoemakers and +bookbinders of Oxford were well supplied with vellum, which they found +useful in their respective callings. It was a hard fate for so +splendid a collection. True it is that for the most part the contents +of the library had been rescued from miserable ill-usage in the +monasteries and chapter-houses where they had their first habitations, +but at last they had found shelter over the Divinity School of a great +University. There at least they might hope to slumber. But our +Reformers thought otherwise. The books and manuscripts being thus +dispersed or destroyed, a prudent if unromantic Convocation exposed +for sale the wooden shelves, desks, and seats of the old library, and +so made a complete end of the whole concern, thus making room for +Thomas Bodley. + +On February 23, 1597/8, Thomas Bodley sat himself down in his London +house and addressed to the Vice-Chancellor of his University a certain +famous letter: + + 'SIR, + 'Altho' you know me not as I suppose, yet for the farthering of an + offer of evident utilitie to your whole University I will not be + too scrupulous in craving your assistance. I have been alwaies of + a mind that if God of his goodness should make me able to do + anything for the benefit of posteritie, I would shew some token of + affiction that I have ever more borne to the studies of good + learning. I know my portion is too slender to perform for the + present any answerable act to my willing disposition, but yet to + notify some part of my desire in that behalf I have resolved thus + to deal. Where there hath been heretofore a public library in + Oxford which you know is apparent by the room itself remaining and + by your statute records, I will take the charge and cost upon me to + reduce it again to its former use and to make it fit and handsome + with seats and shelves and desks and all that may be needful to + stir up other mens benevolence to help to furnish it with books. + And this I purpose to begin as soon as timber can be gotten to the + intent that you may be of some speedy profit of my project. And + where before as I conceive it was to be reputed but a store of + books of divers benefactors because it never had any lasting + allowance for augmentation of the number or supply of books + decayed, whereby it came to pass that when those that were in being + were either wasted or embezzled, the whole foundation came to ruin. + To meet with that inconvenience, I will so provide hereafter (if + God do not hinder my present design) as you shall be still assured + of a standing annual rent to be disbursed every year in buying of + books, or officers stipends and other pertinent occasions, with + which provision and some order for the preservation of the place + and the furniture of it from accustomed abuses, it may perhaps in + time to come prove a notable treasure for the multitude of volumes, + an excellent benefit for the use and ease of students, and a + singular ornament of the University.' + +The letter does not stop here, but my quotation has already probably +wearied most of my readers, though for my own part I am not ashamed to +confess that I seldom tire of retracing with my own hand the +_ipsissima verba_ whereby great and truly notable gifts have been +bestowed upon nations or Universities or even municipalities for the +advancement of learning and the spread of science. Bodley's language +is somewhat involved, but through it glows the plain intention of an +honest man. + +Convocation, we are told, embraced the offer with wonderful alacrity, +and lost no time in accepting it in good Latin. + +From February, 1598, to January, 1613 (when he died), Bodley was happy +with as glorious a hobby-horse as ever man rode astride upon. Though +Bodley, in one of his letters, modestly calls himself a mere +'smatterer,' he was, as indeed he had the sense to recognise, +excellently well fitted to be a collector of books, being both a good +linguist and personally well acquainted with the chief cities of the +Continent and with their booksellers. He was thus able to employ +well-selected agents in different parts of Europe to buy books on his +account, which it was his pleasure to receive, his rapture to unpack, +his pride to despatch in what he calls 'dry-fats'--that is, +weather-tight chests--to Dr. James, the first Bodley librarian. +Despite growing and painful infirmities (stone, ague, dropsy), Bodley +never even for a day dismounted his hobby, but rode it manfully to the +last. Nor had he any mean taint of nature that might have grudged +other men a hand in the great work. The more benefactors there were, +the better pleased was Bodley. He could not, indeed--for had he not +been educated at Geneva and attended the Divinity Lectures of Calvin +and Beza?--direct Dr. James to say masses for the souls of such donors +of money or books as should die, but he did all a poor Protestant can +do to tempt generosity: he opened and kept in a very public place in +the library a great register-book, containing the names and titles of +all benefactors. Bodley was always on the look-out for gifts and +bequests from his store of honourable friends; and in the case of Sir +Henry Savile he even relaxed the rule against lending books from the +library, because, as he frankly admits to Dr. James, he had hopes +(which proved well founded) that Sir Henry would not forget his +obligations to the Bodleian. + +The library was formally opened on November 8, 1602, and then +contained some 2,000 volumes. Two years later its founder was knighted +by King James, who on the following June directed letters patent to be +issued styling the library by the founder's name and licensing the +University to hold land in mortmain for its maintenance. The most +learned and by no means the most foolish of our Kings, this same James +I., visited the Bodleian in May, 1605. Sir Thomas was not present. +There it was that the royal pun was made that the founder's name +should have been Godly and not Bodley. King James handled certain old +manuscripts with the familiarity of a scholar, and is reported to have +said, I doubt not with perfect sincerity, that were he not King James +he would be an University man, and that were it his fate at any time +to be a captive, he would wish to be shut up in the Bodleian and to be +bound with its chains, consuming his days amongst its books as his +fellows in captivity. Indeed, he was so carried away by the atmosphere +of the place as to offer to present to the Bodleian whatever books Sir +Thomas Bodley might think fit to lay hands upon in any of the royal +libraries, and he kept this royal word so far as to confirm the gift +under the Privy Seal. But there it seems to have stopped, for the +Bodleian does not contain any volumes traceable to this source. The +King's librarians probably obstructed any such transfer of books. + +Authors seem at once to have recognised the importance of the library, +and to have made presentation copies of their works, and in 1605 we +find Bacon sending a copy of his _Advancement of Learning_ to Bodley, +with a letter in which he said: 'You, having built an ark to save +learning from deluge, deserve propriety [ownership] in any new +instrument or engine whereby learning should be improved or advanced.' +The most remarkable letter Bodley ever wrote, now extant, is one to +Bacon; but it has no reference to the library, only to the Baconian +philosophy. We do not get many glimpses of Bodley's habits of life or +ways of thinking, but there is no difficulty in discerning a +strenuous, determined, masterful figure, bent during his later years, +perhaps tyrannously bent, on effecting his object. He was not, we +learn from a correspondent, 'hasty to write but when the posts do urge +him, saying there need be no answer to your letters till more leisure +breed him opportunity.' 'Words are women, deeds are men,' is another +saying of his which I reprint without comment. + +By an indenture dated April 20, 1609, Bodley, after reciting how he +had, out of his zealous affection to the advancement of learning, +lately erected upon the ruins of the old decayed library of Oxford +University 'a most ample, commodious, and necessary building, as well +for receipt and conveyance of books as for the use and ease of +students, and had already furnished the same with excellent writers on +all sorts of sciences, arts, and tongues, not only selected out of his +own study and store, but also of others that were freely conferred by +many other men's gifts,' proceeded to grant to trustees lands and +hereditaments in Berkshire and in the city of London for the purpose +of forming a permanent endowment of his library; and so they, or the +proceeds of sale thereof, have remained unto this day. + +Sir Thomas Bodley died on January 20, 1613, his last days being +soothed by a letter he received from the Vice-Chancellor of Oxford +University condoling his sickness and signifying how much the Heads of +Houses, etc., prayed for his recovery. A cynical friend--not much of a +friend, as we shall see--called John Chamberlain, was surprised to +observe what pleasure this assurance gave to the dying man. 'Whereby,' +writes Chamberlain to Sir Ralph Winwood, 'I perceive how much fair +words work, as well upon wise men as upon others, for indeed it did +affect him very much.' + +Bodley was rather put out in his last illness by the refusal of a +Cambridge doctor, Batter, to come to see him, the doctor saying: +'Words cannot cure him, and I can do nothing else for him.' There is +an occasional curtness about Cambridge men that is hard but not +impossible to reconcile with good feeling. + +Bodley's will gave great dissatisfaction to some of his friends, +including this aforesaid John Chamberlain, and yet, on reading it +through, it is not easy to see any cause for just complaint. Bodley's +brother did not grumble, there were no children, Lady Bodley had died +in 1611, and everybody who knew the testator must have known that the +library would be (as it was) the great object of his bounty. What +annoyed Chamberlain seems to be that, whilst he had (so he says, +though I take leave to doubt it) put down Bodley for some trifle in +his will, Bodley forgot to mention Chamberlain in his. There is always +a good deal of human nature exhibited on these occasions. I will +transcribe a bit of one of this gentleman's grumbling letters, +written, one may be sure, with no view to publication, the day after +Bodley's death: + + 'Mr. Gent came to me this morning as it were to bemoan himself of + the little regard hath been had of him and others, and indeed for + ought I hear there is scant anybody pleased, but for the rest it + were no great matter if he had had more consideration or + commiseration where there was most need. But he was so carried away + with the vanity and vain-glory of his library, that he forgot all + other respects and duties, almost of Conscience, Friendship, or + Good-nature, and all he had was too little for that work. To say + the truth I never did rely much upon his conscience, but I thought + he had been more real and ingenuous. I cannot learn that he hath + given anything, no, not a good word nor so much as named any old + friend he had, but Mr. Gent and Thos. Allen, who like a couple of + Almesmen must have his best and second gown, and his best and + second cloak, but to cast a colour or shadow of something upon Mr. + Gent, he says he forgives him all he owed him, which Mr. Gent + protests is never a penny. I must intreat you to pardon me if I + seem somewhat impatient on his [_i.e._, Gent's] behalf, who hath + been so servile to him, and indeed such a perpetual servant, that + he deserved a better reward. Neither can I deny that I have a + little indignation for myself that having been acquainted with him + for almost forty years, and observed and respected him so much, I + should not be remembered with the value of a spoon, or a mourning + garment, whereas if I had gone before him (as poor a man as I am), + he should not have found himself forgotten.'[A] + + [Footnote A: _Winwood's Memorials_, vol. iii., p. 429.] + +Bodley did no more by his will, which is dated January 2, 1613, and is +all in his own handwriting, than he had bound himself to do in his +lifetime, and I feel as certain as I can feel about anything that +happened nearly 300 years ago, that Mr. Gent, of Gloucester Hall, did +owe Bodley money, though, as many another member of the University of +Oxford has done with his debts, he forgot all about it. + +The founder of the Bodleian was buried with proper pomp and +circumstance in the chapel of Merton College on March 29, 1613. Two +Latin orations were delivered over his remains, one, that of John +Hales (the ever-memorable), a Fellow of Merton, being of no +inconsiderable length. After all was over, those who had mourning +weeds or 'blacks' retired, with the Heads of Houses, to the refectory +of Merton and had a funeral dinner bestowed upon them, 'amounting to +the sum of £100,' as directed by the founder's will. + +The great foundation of Sir Thomas Bodley has, happily for all of us, +had better fortune than befell the generous gifts of the Bishops of +Durham and Worcester. The Protestant layman has had the luck, not the +large-minded prelates of the old religion. Even during the Civil War +Bodley's books remained uninjured, at all events by the Parliament +men. 'When Oxford was surrendered [June 24, 1646], the first thing +General Fairfax did was to set a good guard of soldiers to preserve +the Bodleian Library. 'Tis said there was more hurt done by the +Cavaliers [during their garrison] by way of embezzling and cutting of +chains of books than there was since. He was a lover of learning, and +had he not taken this special care that noble library had been utterly +destroyed, for there were ignorant senators enough who would have been +contented to have it so' (see Macray, p. 101). + +Oliver Cromwell, while Lord Protector, presented to the library +twenty-two Greek manuscripts he had purchased, and, what is more, when +Bodley's librarian refused the Lord Protector's request to allow the +Portugal Ambassador to borrow a manuscript, sending instead of the +manuscript a copy of the statutes forbidding loans, Oliver commended +the prudence of the founder, and subsequently made the donation just +mentioned. + +A great wave of generosity towards this foundation was early +noticeable. The Bodleian got hold of men's imaginations. In those days +there were learned men in all walks of life, and many more who, if not +learned, were endlessly curious. The great merchants of the city of +London instructed their agents in far lands to be on the look-out for +rare things, and transmit them home to find a resting-place in +Bodley's buildings. All sorts of curiosities found their way +there--crocodiles, whales, mummies, and black negro-boys in spirits. +The Ashmolean now holds most of them; the negro-boy has been +conveniently lost. + +In 1649 the total of 2,000 printed books had risen to more than +12,000--viz., folios, 5,889; quartos, 2,067; octavos, 4,918; whilst of +manuscripts there were 3,001. One of the first gifts in money came +from Sir Walter Raleigh, who in 1605 gave £50, whilst among the early +benefactors of books and manuscripts it were a sin not to name the +Earl of Pembroke, Archbishop Laud (one of the library's best friends), +Robert Burton (of the _Anatomy of Melancholy_), Sir Kenelm Digby, John +Selden, Lord Fairfax, Colonel Vernon, and Barlow, Bishop of Lincoln. +No nobler library exists in the world than the Bodleian, unless it be +in the Vatican at Rome. The foundation of Sir Thomas Bodley, though of +no antiquity, shines with unrivalled splendour in the galaxy of Oxford + + 'Amidst the stars that own another birth.' + +I must not say, being myself a Cambridge man, that the Bodleian +dominates Oxford, yet to many an English, American, and foreign +traveller to that city, which, despite railway-stations and motor-cars +and the never-ending villas and perambulators of the Banbury Road, +still breathes the charm of an earlier age, the Bodleian is the +pulsing heart of the University. Colleges, like ancient homesteads, +unless they are yours, never quite welcome you, though ready enough to +receive with civility your tendered meed of admiration. You wander +through their gardens, and pace their quadrangles with no sense of +co-ownership; not for you are their clustered memories. In the +Bodleian every lettered heart feels itself at home. + +Bodley drafted with his own hand the first statutes or rules to be +observed in his library. Speaking generally, they are wise rules. One +mistake, indeed, he made--a great mistake, but a natural one. Let him +give his own reasons: + + 'I can see no good reason to alter my rule for excluding such books + as Almanacks, Plays, and an infinite number that are daily printed + of very unworthy matters--handling such books as one thinks both + the Keeper and Under-Keeper should disdain to seek out, to deliver + to any man. Haply some plays may be worthy the keeping--but hardly + one in forty.... This is my opinion, wherein if I err I shall err + with infinite others; and the more I think upon it, the more it + doth distaste me that such kinds of books should be vouchsafed room + in so noble a library.'[A] + + [Footnote A: See correspondence in _Reliquiae Bodleianae_, London, + 1703.] + +'Baggage-books' was the contemptuous expression elsewhere employed to +describe this 'light infantry' of literature--_Belles Lettres_, as it +is now more politely designated. + +One play in forty is liberal measure, but who is to say out of the +forty plays which is the one worthy to be housed in a noble library? +The taste of Vice-Chancellors and Heads of Houses, of keepers and +under-keepers of libraries--can anybody trust it? The Bodleian is +entitled by imperial statutes to receive copies of all books published +within the realm, yet it appears, on the face of a Parliamentary +return made in 1818, that this 'noble library' refused to find room +for Ossian, the favourite poet of Goethe and Napoleon, and labelled +Miss Edgeworth's _Parent's Assistant_ and Miss Hannah More's _Sacred +Dramas_ 'Rubbish.' The sister University, home though she be of nearly +every English poet worth reading, rejected the _Siege of Corinth_, +though the work of a Trinity man; would not take in the _Thanksgiving +Ode_ of Mr. Wordsworth, of St. John's College; declined Leigh Hunt's +_Story of Rimini_; vetoed the _Headlong Hall_ of the inimitable +Peacock, and, most wonderful of all, would have nothing to say to +Scott's _Antiquary_, being probably disgusted to find that a book with +so promising a title was only a novel. + +Now this is altered, and everything is collected in the Bodleian, +including, so I am told, Christmas-cards and bills of fare. + +Bodley's rule has proved an expensive one, for the library has been +forced to buy at latter-day prices 'baggage-books' it could have got +for nothing. + +Another ill-advised regulation got rid of duplicates. Thus, when the +third Shakespeare Folio appeared in 1664, the Bodleian disposed of its +copy of the First Folio. However, this wrong was righted in 1821, +when, under the terms of Edmund Malone's bequest, the library once +again became the possessor of the edition of 1623. Quite lately the +original displaced Folio has been recovered. + +Against lending books Bodley was adamant, and here his rule prevails. +It is pre-eminently a wise one. The stealing of books, as well as the +losing of books, from public libraries is a melancholy and ancient +chapter in the histories of such institutions; indeed, there is too +much reason to believe that not a few books in the Bodleian itself +were stolen to start with. But the long possession by such a +foundation has doubtless purged the original offence. In the National +Library in Paris is at least one precious manuscript which was stolen +from the Escurial. There are volumes in the British Museum on which +the Bodleian looks with suspicion, and _vice versa_. But let sleeping +dogs lie. Bodley would not give the divines who were engaged upon a +bigger bit of work even than his library--the translation of the Bible +into that matchless English which makes King James's version our +greatest literary possession--permission to borrow 'the one or two +books' they wished to see. + +Bodley's Library has sheltered through three centuries many queer +things besides books and strangely-written manuscripts in old tongues; +queerer things even than crocodiles, whales, and mummies--I mean the +librarians and sub-librarians, janitors, and servants. Oddities many +of them have been. Honest old Jacobites, non-jurors, primitive +thinkers, as well as scandalously lazy drunkards and illiterate dogs. +An old foundation can afford to have a varied experience in these +matters. + +One of the most original of these originals was the famous Thomas +Hearne, an 'honest gentleman'--that is, a Jacobite--and one whose +collections and diaries have given pleasure to thousands. He was +appointed janitor in 1701, and sub-librarian in 1712, but in 1716, +when an Act of Parliament came into operation which imposed a fine of +£500 upon anyone who held any public office without taking the oath of +allegiance to the Hanoverians, Hearne's office was taken away from +him; but he shared with his King over the water the satisfaction of +accounting himself still _de jure_, and though he lived till 1735, +he never failed each half-year to enter his salary and fees as +sub-librarian as being still unpaid. He was perhaps a little spiteful +and vindictive, but none the less a fine old fellow. I will write down +as specimens of his humour a prayer of his and an apology, and then +leave him alone. His prayer ran as follows: + + 'O most gracious and merciful Lord God, wonderful in Thy + Providence, I return all possible thanks to Thee for the care Thou + hast always taken of me. I continually meet with most signal + instances of this Thy Providence, and one act yesterday, _when I + unexpectedly met with three old manuscripts_, for which in a + particular manner I return my thanks, beseeching Thee to continue + the same protection to me, a poor helpless sinner, and that for + Jesus Christ his sake' (_Aubrey's Letters_, i. 118). + +His apology, which I do not think was actually published, though kept +in draft, was after this fashion: + + 'I, Thomas Hearne, A.M. of the University of Oxford, having ever + since my matriculation followed my studies with as much application + as I have been capable of, and having published several books for + the honour and credit of learning, and particularly for the + reputation of the foresaid University, am very sorry that by my + declining to say anything but what I knew to be true in any of my + writings, and especially in the last book I published entituled, + &c, I should incur the displeasure of any of the Heads of Houses, + and as a token of my sorrow for their being offended at truth, I + subscribe my name to this paper and permit them to make what use of + it they please.' + +Leaping 140 years, an odd tale is thus lovingly recorded of another +sub-librarian, the Rev. A. Hackman, who died in 1874: + + 'During all the time of his service in the library (thirty-six + years) he had used as a cushion in his plain wooden armchair a + certain vellum-bound folio, which by its indented side, worn down + by continual pressure, bore testimony to the use to which it had + been put. No one had ever the curiosity to examine what the book + might be, but when, after Hackman's departure from the library, it + was removed from its resting-place of years, some amusement was + caused by finding that the chief compiler of the last printed + catalogue had omitted from his catalogue the volume on which he + sat, of which, too, though of no special value, there was no other + copy in the library' (Macray, p. 388A). + +The spectacle in the mind's eye of this devoted sub-librarian and +sound divine sitting on the vellum-bound folio for six-and-thirty +years, so absorbed in his work as to be oblivious of the fact that he +had failed to include in what was his _magnum opus_, the Great +Catalogue, the very book he was sitting upon, tickles the midriff. + +Here I must bring these prolonged but wholly insufficient observations +to a very necessary conclusion. Not a word has been said of the great +collection of bibles, or of the unique copies of the Koran and the +Talmud and the _Arabian Nights_, or of the Dante manuscripts, or of +Bishop Tanner's books (many bought on the dispersion of Archbishop +Sancroft's great library), which in course of removal by water from +Norwich to Oxford fell into the river and remained submerged for +twenty hours, nor of many other splendid benefactions of a later date. + +One thing only remains, not to be said, but to be sent round--I mean +the hat. Ignominious to relate, this glorious foundation stands in +need of money. Shade of Sir Thomas Bodley, I invoke thy aid to loosen +the purse-strings of the wealthy! The age of learned and curious +merchants, of high-spirited and learning-loving nobles, of +book-collecting bishops, of antiquaries, is over. The Bodleian cannot +condescend to beg. It is too majestical. But I, an unauthorized +stranger, have no need to be ashamed. + +Especially rich is this great library in _Americana_, and America +suggests multi-millionaires. The rich men of the United States have +been patriotically alive to the first claims of their own richly +endowed universities, and long may they so continue; but if by any +happy chance any one of them should accidentally stumble across an odd +million or even half a million of dollars hidden away in some casual +investment he had forgotten, what better thing could he do with it +than send it to this, the most famous foundation of his Old Home? It +would be acknowledged by return of post in English and in Latin, and +the donor's name would be inscribed, not indeed (and this is a +regrettable lapse) in that famous old register which Bodley provided +should always be in a prominent place in his library, but in the +Annual Statement of Accounts now regularly issued. To be associated +with the Bodleian is to share its fame and partake of the blessing it +has inherited. 'The liberal deviseth liberal things; and by liberal +things he shall stand.' + + + +BOOKWORMS + + +Great is bookishness and the charm of books. No doubt there are times +and seasons in the lives of most reading men when they rebel against +the dust of libraries and kick against the pricks of these monstrously +accumulated heaps of words. We all know 'the dark hour' when the +vanity of learning and the childishness of merely literary things are +brought home to us in such a way as almost to avail to put the pale +student out of conceit with his books, and to make him turn from his +best-loved authors as from a friend who has outstayed his welcome, +whose carriage we wish were at the door. In these unhappy moments we +are apt to call to mind the shrewd men we have known, who have been +our blithe companions on breezy fells, heathery moor, and by the +stream side, who could neither read nor write, or who, at all events, +but rarely practised those Cadmean arts. Yet they could tell the time +of day by the sun, and steer through the silent night by the stars; +and each of them had--as Emerson, a very bookish person, has said--a +dial in his mind for the whole bright calendar of the year. How racy +was their talk; how wise their judgments on men and things; how well +they did all that at the moment seemed worth doing; how universally +useful was their garnered experience--their acquired learning! How +wily were these illiterates in the pursuit of game--how ready in an +emergency! What a charm there is about out-of-door company! Who would +not sooner have spent a summer's day with Sir Walter's humble friend, +Tom Purday, than with Mr. William Wordsworth of Rydal Mount! It is, we +can only suppose, reflections such as these that make country +gentlemen and farmers the sworn foes they are of education and the +enemies of School Boards. + +I only indicate this line of thought to condemn it. Such temptations +come from below. Great, we repeat, is bookishness and the charm of +books. Even the writings, the ponderous writings, of that portentous +parson, the Rev. T.F. Dibdin, with all their lumbering gaiety and +dust-choked rapture over first editions, are not hastily to be sent +packing to the auction-room. Much red gold did they cost us, these +portly tomes, in bygone days, and on our shelves they shall remain +till the end of our time, unless our creditors intervene--were it only +to remind us of years when our enthusiasms were pure though our tastes +may have been crude. + +Some years ago Mr. Blades, the famous printer and Caxtonist, published +in vellum covers a small volume which he christened _The Enemies of +Books_. It made many friends, and now a revised and enlarged version +in comely form, adorned with pictures, and with a few prefatory words +by Dr. Garnett, has made its appearance. Mr. Blades himself has left +this world for a better one, where--so piety bids us believe--neither +fire nor water nor worm can despoil or destroy the pages of heavenly +wisdom. But the book-collector must not be caught nursing mere +sublunary hopes. There is every reason to believe that in the realms +of the blessed the library, like that of Major Ponto, will be small +though well selected. Mr. Blades had, as his friend Dr. Garnett +observes, a debonair spirit--there was nothing fiery or controversial +about him. His attitude towards the human race and its treatment of +rare books was rather mournful than angry. For example, under the head +of 'Fire,' he has occasion to refer to that great destruction of books +of magic which took place at Ephesus, to which St. Luke has called +attention in his Acts of the Apostles. Mr. Blades describes this +holocaust as righteous, and only permits himself to say in a kind of +undertone that he feels a certain mental disquietude and uneasiness at +the thought of the loss of more than £18,000 worth of books, which +could not but have thrown much light (had they been preserved) on +many curious questions of folk-lore. Personally, I am dead against the +burning of books. A far worse, because a corrupt, proceeding, was the +scandalously horrid fate that befell the monastic libraries at our +disgustingly conducted, even if generally beneficent, Reformation. The +greedy nobles and landed gentry, who grabbed the ancient foundations +of the old religion, cared nothing for the books they found cumbering +the walls, and either devoted them to vile domestic uses or sold them +in shiploads across the seas. It may well be that the monks--fine, +lusty fellows!--cared more for the contents of their fish-ponds than +of their libraries; but, at all events, they left the books alone to +take their chance--they did not rub their boots with them or sell them +at the price of old paper. A man need have a very debonair spirit who +does not lose his temper over our blessed Reformation. Mr. Blades, on +the whole, managed to keep his. + +Passing from fire, Mr. Blades has a good deal to say about water, and +the harm it has been allowed to do in our collegiate and cathedral +libraries. With really creditable composure he writes: 'Few old +libraries in England are now so thoroughly neglected as they were +thirty years ago. The state of many of our collegiate and cathedral +libraries was at that time simply appalling. I could mention many +instances--one especially--where, a window having been left broken for +a long time, the ivy had pushed through and crept over a row of books, +each of which was worth hundreds of pounds. In rainy weather the water +was conducted as by a pipe along the tops of the books, and soaked +through the whole.' Ours is indeed a learned Church. Fancy the mingled +amazement and dismay of the Dean and Chapter when they were informed +that all this mouldering literary trash had 'boodle' in it. 'In +another and a smaller collection the rain came through on to a +bookcase through a sky-light, saturating continually the top shelf, +containing Caxtons and other English books, one of which, although +rotten, was sold soon after by permission of the Charity Commissioners +for £200.' Oh, those scoundrelly Charity Commissioners! How +impertinent has been their interference with the loving care and +guardianship of the Lord's property by His lawfully consecrated +ministers! By the side of these anthropoid apes, the genuine +bookworm, the paper-eating insect, ravenous as he once was, has done +comparatively little mischief. Very little seems known of the +creature, though the purchaser of Mr. Blades's book becomes the owner +of a life-size portrait of the miscreant in one, at all events, of his +many shapes. Mr. Birdsall, of Northampton, sent Mr. Blades, in 1879, +by post, a fat little worm he had found in an old volume. Mr. Blades +did all, and more than all, that could be expected of a humane man to +keep the creature alive, actually feeding him with fragments of +Caxtons and seventeenth-century literature; but it availed not, for in +three weeks the thing died, and as the result of a post-mortem was +declared to be _Aecophera pseudopretella_. Some years later Dr. +Garnett, who has spent a long life obliging men of letters, sent Mr. +Blades two Athenian worms, which had travelled to this country in a +Hebrew Commentary; but, lovely and pleasant in their lives, in their +deaths they were not far divided. Mr. Blades, at least, mourned their +loss. The energy of bookworms, like that of men, greatly varies. Some +go much farther than others. However fair they may start on the same +folio, they end very differently. Once upon a time 212 worms began to +eat their way through a stout folio printed in the year 1477, by Peter +Schoeffer, of Mentz. It was an ungodly race they ran, but let me trace +their progress. By the time the sixty-first page was reached all but +four had given in, either slinking back the way they came, or +perishing _en route_. By the time the eighty-sixth page had been +reached but one was left, and he evidently on his last legs, for he +failed to pierce his way through page 87. At the other end of the same +book another lot of worms began to bore, hoping, I presume, to meet +in the middle, like the makers of submarine tunnels, but the last +survivor of this gang only reached the sixty ninth page from the end. +Mr. Blades was of opinion that all these worms belonged to the +_Anobium pertinax_. Worms have fallen upon evil days, for, whether +modern books are readable or not, they have long since ceased to be +edible. The worm's instinct forbids him to 'eat the china clay, the +bleaches, the plaster of Paris, the sulphate of barytes, the scores of +adulterants now used to mix with the fibre.' Alas, poor worm! Alas, +poor author! Neglected by the _Anobium pertinax_, what chance is +there of anyone, man or beast, a hundred years hence reaching his +eighty-seventh page! + +Time fails me to refer to bookbinders, frontispiece collectors, +servants and children, and other enemies of books; but the volume I +refer to is to be had of the booksellers, and is a pleasant volume, +worthy of all commendation. Its last words set me thinking; they are: + + 'Even a millionaire will ease his toils, lengthen his life, and add + 100 per cent. to his daily pleasures, if he becomes a bibliophile; + while to the man of business with a taste for books, who through + the day has struggled in the battle of life, with all its + irritating rebuffs and anxieties, what a blessed season of + pleasurable repose opens upon him as he enters his sanctum, where + every article wafts him a welcome and every book is a personal + friend!' + +As for the millionaire, I frankly say I have no desire his life should +be lengthened, and care nothing about adding 100 per cent. to his +daily pleasures. He is a nuisance, for he has raised prices nearly 100 +per cent. We curse the day when he was told it was the thing to buy +old books; and, if he must buy old books, why is he not content with +the works of Gibbon, Hume, and Robertson, and Flavius Josephus, that +learned Jew? But it is not the millionaire who set me thinking; it is +the harassed man of business; and what I am wondering is, whether, in +sober truth and earnestness, it is possible for him, as he shuts his +library door and finds himself inside, to forget his rebuffs and +anxieties--his maturing bills and overdue argosies--and to lose +himself over a favourite volume. The 'article' that wafts him welcome +I take to be his pipe. That he will put the 'article' into his mouth +and smoke it I have no manner of doubt; my dread is lest, in ten +minutes' time, the book should have dropt into his lap and the man's +eyes be staring into the fire. But for a' that, and a' that--great is +bookishness and the charm of books. + + + +CONFIRMED READERS + + +Dr. Johnson is perhaps our best example of a confirmed reader. Malone +once found him sitting in his room roasting apples and reading a +history of Birmingham. This staggered even Malone, who was himself a +somewhat far-gone reader. + +'Don't you find it rather dull?' he ventured to inquire. + +'Yes,' replied the Sage, 'it is dull.' + +Malone's eyes then rested on the apples, and he remarked he supposed +they were for medicine. + +'Why, no,' said Johnson; 'I believe they are only there because I +wanted something to do. I have been confined to the house for a week, +and so you find me roasting apples and reading the history of +Birmingham.' + +This anecdote pleasingly illustrates the habits of the confirmed +reader. Nor let the worldling sneer. Happy is the man who, in the +hours of solitude and depression, can read a history of Birmingham. +How terrible is the story Welbore Ellis told of Robert Walpole in his +magnificent library, trying book after book, and at last, with tears +in his eyes, exclaiming: 'It is all in vain: I cannot read!' + +Edmund Malone, the Shakespearian commentator and first editor of +_Boswell's Johnson_, was as confirmed a reader as it is possible for a +book-collector to be. His own life, by Sir James Prior, is full of +good things, and is not so well known as it should be. It smacks of +books and bookishness. + +Malone, who was an Irishman, was once, so he would have us believe, +deeply engaged in politics; but he then fell in love, and the affair, +for some unknown reason, ending unhappily, his interest ceased in +everything, and he was driven as a last resource to books and +writings. Thus are commentators made. They learn in suffering what +they observe in the margin. Malone may have been driven to his +pursuits, but he took to them kindly, and became a vigorous and +skilful book-buyer, operating in the market both on his own behalf and +on that of his Irish friends with great success. + +His good fortune was enormous, and this although he had a severely +restricted notion as to price. He was no reckless bidder, like Mr. +Harris, late of Covent Garden, who, just because David Garrick had a +fine library of old plays, was determined to have one himself at +whatever cost. In Malone's opinion half a guinea was a big price for a +book. As he grew older he became less careful, and in 1805, which was +seven years before his death, he gave Ford, a Manchester bookseller, +£25 for the Editio Princeps of _Venus and Adonis_. He already had the +edition of 1596--a friend had given it him--bound up with +Constable's and Daniel's Sonnets and other rarities, but he very +naturally yearned after the edition of 1593. He fondly imagined +Ford's copy to be unique: there he was wrong, but as he died in that +belief, and only gave £25 for his treasure, who dare pity him? His +copy now reposes in the Bodleian. He secured Shakespeare's Sonnets +(1609) and the first edition of the _Rape of Lucrece_ for two guineas, +and accounted half a crown a fair average price for quarto copies of +Elizabethan plays. + +Malone was a truly amiable man, of private fortune and endearing +habits. He lived on terms of intimacy with his brother +book-collectors, and when they died attended the sale of their +libraries and bid for his favourite lots, grumbling greatly if they +were not knocked down to him. At Topham Beauclerk's sale in 1781, +which lasted nine days, Malone bought for Lord Charlemont 'the +pleasauntest workes of George Gascoigne, Esquire, with the princely +pleasures at Kenilworth Castle, 1587.' He got it cheap (£1 7s.), as it +wanted a few leaves, which Malone thought he had; but to his horror, +when it came to be examined, it was found to want eleven more leaves +than he had supposed. 'Poor Mr. Beauclerk,' he writes, 'seems never to +have had his books examined or collated, otherwise he would have found +out the imperfections.' Malone was far too good a book-collector to +suggest a third method of discovering a book's imperfections--namely, +reading it. Beauclerk's library only realized £5,011, and as the Duke +of Marlborough had a mortgage upon it of £5,000, there must have been +after payment of the auctioneer's charges a considerable deficit. + +But Malone was more than a book-buyer, more even than a commentator: +he was a member of the Literary Club, and the friend of Johnson, +Reynolds, and Burke. On July 28, 1789, he went to Burke's place, the +Gregories, near Beaconsfield, with Sir Joshua, Wyndham, and Mr. +Courtenay, and spent three very agreeable days. The following extract +from the recently published Charlemont papers has interest: + + 'As I walked out before breakfast with Mr. Burke, I proposed to him + to revise and enlarge his admirable book on the _Sublime and + Beautiful_, which the experience, reading, and observation of + thirty years could not but enable him to improve considerably. But + he said the train of his thoughts had gone another way, and the + whole bent of his mind turned from such subjects, and that he was + much fitter for such speculations at the time he published that + book than now.' + +Between the Burke of 1758 and the Burke of 1789 there was a difference +indeed, but the forcible expressions, 'the train of my thoughts' and +'the whole bent of my mind,' serve to create a new impression of the +tremendous energy and fertile vigour of this amazing man. The next day +the party went over to Amersham and admired Mr. Drake's trees, and +listened to Sir Joshua's criticisms of Mr. Drake's pictures. This was +a fortnight after the taking of the Bastille. Burke's hopes were still +high. The Revolution had not yet spoilt his temper. + +Amongst the Charlemont papers is an amusing tale I do not remember +having ever seen before of young Philip Stanhope, the recipient of +Lord Chesterfield's famous letters: + + 'When at Berne, where he passed some of his boyhood in company with + Harte and the excellent Mr., now Lord, Eliott (Heathfield of + Gibraltar), he was one evening invited to a party where, together + with some ladies, there happened to be a considerable number of + Bernese senators, a dignified set of elderly gentlemen, + aristocratically proud, and perfect strangers to fun. These most + potent, grave, and reverend signors were set down to whist, and + were so studiously attentive to the game, that the unlucky brat + found little difficulty in fastening to the backs of their chairs + the flowing tails of their ample periwigs and in cutting, + unobserved by them, the tyes of their breeches. This done, he left + the room, and presently re-entered crying out, "Fire! Fire!" The + affrighted burgomasters suddenly bounced up, and exhibited to the + amazed spectators their senatorial heads and backs totally deprived + of ornament or covering.' + +Young Stanhope was no ordinary child. There is a completeness about +this jest which proclaims it a masterpiece. One or other of its points +might have occurred to anyone, but to accomplish both at once was to +show real distinction. + +Sir William Stanhope, Lord Chesterfield's brother, felt no surprise at +his nephew's failure to acquire the graces. 'What,' said he, 'could +Chesterfield expect? His mother was Dutch, he was educated at Leipsic, +and his tutor was a pedant from Oxford.' + +Papers which contain anecdotes of this kind carry with them their own +recommendation. We hear on all sides complaints--and I hold them to be +just complaints--of the abominable high prices of English books. +Thirty shillings, thirty-six shillings, are common prices. The thing +is too barefaced. His Majesty's Stationery Office set an excellent +example. They sell an octavo volume of 460 closely but well-printed +pages, provided with an excellent index, for one shilling and +elevenpence. There is not much editing, but the quality of it is +good. + +If anyone is confined to his room, even as Johnson was when Malone +found him roasting apples and reading a history of Birmingham, he +cannot do better than surround himself with the publications of the +Historical Manuscripts Commission; they will cost him next to nothing, +tell him something new on every page, revive a host of old memories +and scores of half-forgotten names, and perhaps tempt him to become a +confirmed reader. + + + +FIRST EDITIONS + + +This is an age of great publicity. Not only are our streets well +lighted, but also our lives. The cosy nooks and corners, crannies, and +dark places where, in old-fashioned days, men hugged their private +vices without shamefacedness have been swept away as ruthlessly as +Seven Dials. All the questionable pursuits, fancies, foibles of silly, +childish man are discussed grimly and at length in the newspapers and +magazines. Our poor hobby-horses are dragged out of the stable, and +made to show their shambling paces before the mob of gentlemen who +read with ease. There has been much prate lately of as innocent a +foible as ever served to make men self-forgetful for a few seconds of +time--the collecting of first editions. Somebody hard up for 'copy' +denounced this pastime, and made merry over a _virtuoso's_ whim. +Somebody else--Mr. Slater, I think it was--thought fit to put in a +defence, and thereupon a dispute arose as to why men bought first +editions dear when they could buy last editions cheap. Brutal, +domineering fellows bellowed their complete indifference to +Shakespeare's Quartos till timid _dilettanti_ turned pale and fled. + +The fact, of course, is that in such a dispute as this there is but +one thing to do--namely, to persuade the Attorney-General of the day +to enter up a _nolle prosequi_, and for him who collects first +editions to go on collecting. There is nothing to be serious about in +the matter. It is not literature. Some of the greatest lovers of +letters who have ever lived--Dr. Johnson, for example, and Thomas de +Quincey and Carlyle--have cared no more for first editions than I do +for Brussels sprouts. You may love Moliere with a love surpassing your +love of woman without any desire to beggar yourself in Paris by +purchasing early copies of the plays. You may be perfectly content to +read Walton's _Lives_ in an edition of 1905, if there is one; and as +for _Robinson Crusoe_ and _Gulliver_ and the _Vicar of Wakefield_--are +they not eternal favourites, and just as tickling to the fancy in +their nineteenth-century dress as in their eighteenth? The whole thing +is but a hobby--but a paragraph in one chapter of the vast, but most +agreeable, history of human folly. If John Doe is blankly indifferent +to Richard Roe's Elizabethan dramatists, it is only fair to remember +how sublime is Richard's contempt for John's collection of old musical +instruments. If these gentlemen are wise they will discuss, when they +meet, the weather, or the Death Duties, or some other extraneous +subject, and leave their respective hobbies in the stable. Never mind +what your hobby is--books, prints, drawings, china, scarabaei, +lepidoptera--keep it to yourself and for those like-minded with you. +Sweet indeed is the community of interest, delightful the intercourse +which a common foible begets; but correspondingly bitter and +distressful is the forced union of nervous zeal and pitiless +indifference. Spare us the so-called friends who come and gape and +stare and go! What is more painful than the chatter of the connoisseur +as it falls upon the long ears of the ignoramus! Collecting is a +secret sin--the great pushing public must be kept out. It is sheer +madness to puff and praise your hobby, and to invite Dick, Tom, and +Harry to inspect your stable: such conduct is to invite rebuff, to +expose yourself to just animadversion. Keep the beast in its box. This +is my first advice to the hobby-hunter. + +My second piece of advice is equally important, particularly at the +present time, when the world is too much with us, and it is +this--never convert a taste into a trade. The moment you become a +tradesman you cease to be a hobbyist. When the love of money comes in +at the window the love of books runs out at the door. There has been +of late years a good deal of sham book-collecting. The morals of the +Stock Exchange have corrupted even the library. Sordid souls have been +induced by wily second-hand booksellers to buy books for no other +reason than because the price demanded was a high one. This is the +very worst possible reason for buying a book. Whether it is ever wise +to buy a book, as Aulus Gellius used to do, simply because it is +cheap, and regardless of its condition, is a debatable point, but to +buy one dear at the mere bidding of a bookseller is to debase +yourself. The result of this ungodly traffic has been to enlarge for +the moment the circle of book-buyers by including in it men with +commercial instincts, sham hobbyists. But these impostors have been +lately punished in the only way they could be punished--namely, in +their pockets--by a heavy fall of prices. The stuff they were induced +to buy has not, and could not, maintain its price, and the shops are +now full of the volumes which, seven or ten years ago, fetched fancy +sums. + +If a young book-collector does but bear in mind the two bits of advice +I have proffered him, he may safely be bidden godspeed and +congratulated on his choice of a hobby, for it is, without a shadow of +a doubt, the cheapest he could have chosen. Even without means to +acquire the treasures of a Quaritch or a Pickering, he may yet derive +infinite delight from the perusal of the many hundreds of catalogues +that now weekly issue from the second-hand booksellers in town and +country. He may write an imaginary letter, ordering the books he has +previously selected from the catalogue, and then he has only to forget +to post it to avoid all disagreeable consequences. + +The constant turnover of old books is amazing. There seems no rest in +this world even for folios and quartos. The first edition of old +Burton's _Anatomy_, printed at Oxford in a small quarto in 1621, rises +to the surface as a rule no less than four times a year; so, too, does +Coryat's _Crudities_, hastily gobbled up in five months' travels in +France, Savoy, Italy, Germany, etc., 1611. What a seething, restless +place this world is, to be sure! The constant recurrence of copies of +the same books is almost startling. Hardly a year passes but every +book of first-rate importance and interest is knocked down to the +highest bidder. No doubt there are still old libraries where, buried +in dust and cobwebs, the folios and quartos lie undisturbed; but to +turn the pages or examine the index of _Book Prices Current_ is to +have a vision before your eyes of whole regiments of books passing +and repassing across the stage amidst the loud cries of auctioneers +and the bidding of booksellers. + +In the auction-mart taste is pretty steady. The old favourites hold +their own. Every now and again an immortal joins their ranks. Puffing +and pretension may win the ear of the outside public, and extort +praise from the press, but inside the rooms of a Sotheby, a Puttick, +or a Hodgson, these foolish persons count for nothing, and their names +are seldom heard. Were an author to turn the pages of _Book Prices +Current_, he could hardly fail, as he there read the names of famous +men of old, to breathe the prayer, 'May my books some day be found +forming part of this great tidal wave of literature which is for ever +breaking on Earth's human shores!' But the vanity of authors is +endless, and their prayers are apt to be but empty things. + + + +GOSSIP IN A LIBRARY + + +There were no books in Eden, and there will be none in heaven; but +between times--and it is of those I speak--it is otherwise. Mr. Thomas +Greenwood, in a most meritorious work on Public Libraries, supplies +figures which show that, without counting pamphlets (which are books +gone wrong) or manuscripts (which are books _in terrorem_), there are +at this present moment upwards of 71,000,000 printed books in bindings +in the several public libraries of Europe and America. To estimate +the number and extent of private libraries in those countries is +impossible. In many large houses there are no books at all--which is +to make ignorance visible; whilst in many small houses there are, or +seem to be, nothing else--which is to make knowledge inconvenient; yet +as there are upwards of 280,000,000 of inhabitants of Europe and +America, I cannot greatly err if a passion for round numbers drives me +to the assertion that there are at least 300,000,000 books in these +countries, not counting bibles and prayer-books. It is a poor show! +Russia is greatly to blame, her European population of 88,000,000 +being so badly provided for that it brings down the average. Were +Russia left out in the cold, we might, were our books to be divided +amongst our population _per capita_, rely upon having two volumes +apiece. This would not afford Mr. Gosse (the title of one of whose +books I have stolen) much material for gossip, particularly as his two +books might easily chance to be duplicates. There are no habits of man +more alien to the doctrine of the Communist than those of the +collector, and there is no collector, not even that basest of them +all, the Belial of his tribe, the man who collects money, whose love +of private property is intenser, whose sense of the joys of ownership +is keener than the book-collector's. Mr. William Morris once hinted at +a good time coming, when at almost every street corner there would be +a public library, where beautiful and rare books will be kept for +citizens to examine. The citizen will first wash his hands in a +parochial basin, and then dry them on a parochial towel, after which +ritual he will walk in and stand _en queue_ until it comes to be his +turn to feast his eye upon some triumph of modern or some miracle of +old typography. He will then return to a bookless home proud and +satisfied, tasting of the joy that is in widest commonalty spread. +Alas! he will do nothing of the kind, not, at least, if he is one of +those in whom the old Adam of the bookstalls still breathes. A public +library must always be an abomination. To enjoy a book, you must own +it. 'John Jones his book,' that is the best bookplate. I have never +admired the much-talked-of bookplate of Grolier, which, in addition to +his own name, bore the ridiculous advice _Et Amicorum_. Fudge! There +is no evidence that Grolier ever lent any man a book with his plate +in it. His collection was dispersed after his death, and then +sentimentalists fell a-weeping over his supposed generosity. It would +be as reasonable to commend the hospitality of a dead man because you +found amongst his papers a vast number of unposted invitations to +dinner upon a date he long outlived. Sentiment is seldom in place, but +on a bookplate it is peculiarly odious. To paste in each book an +invitation to steal it, as Grolier seems to have done, is foolish; but +so also is it to invoke, as some book-plates do, curses upon the heads +of all subsequent possessors--as if any man who wanted to add a volume +to his collection would be deterred by such braggadocio. But this is a +digression. Public libraries can never satisfy the longings of +book-collectors any more than can the private libraries of other +people. Whoever really cared a snap of his fingers for the contents of +another man's library, unless he is known to be dying? It is a +humorous spectacle to watch one book-collector exhibiting his stores +to another. If the owner is a gentleman, as he usually is, he affects +indifference--'A poor thing,' he seems to say, 'yet mine own'; whilst +the visitor, if human, as he always is, exhibits disgust. If the +volume proffered for the visitor's examination is a genuine rarity, +not in his own collection, he surlily inquires how it was come by; +whilst if it is no great thing, he testily expresses his astonishment +it should be thought worth keeping, and this although he has the very +same edition at home. + +On the other hand, though actual visits to other men's libraries +rarely seem to give pleasure, the perusal of the catalogues of such +libraries has always been a favourite pastime of collectors; but this +can be accounted for without in any way aspersing the truth of the +general statement that the only books a lover of them takes pleasure +in are his own. + +Mr. Gosse's recent volume, _Gossip in a Library_, is a very pleasing +example of the pleasure taken by a book-hunter in his own books. Just +as some men and more women assume your interest in the contents of +their nurseries, so Mr. Gosse seeks to win our ears as he talks to us +about some of the books on his shelves. He has secured my willing +attention, and is not likely to be disappointed of a considerable +audience. + +We live in vocal times, when small birds make melody on every bough. +The old book-collectors were a taciturn race--the Bindleys, the +Sykeses, the Hebers. They made their vast collections in silence; +their own tastes, fancies, predilections, they concealed. They never +gossiped of their libraries; their names are only preserved to us by +the prices given for their books after their deaths. Bindley's copy +fetched £3 10s., Sykes' £4 15s. Thus is the buyer of to-day tempted to +his doom, forgetful of the fact that these great names are only quoted +when the prices realized at their sales were less than those now +demanded. + +But solacing as is the thought of those grave, silent times, +indisposed as one often is for the chirpy familiarities of this +present, it is, or it ought to be, a pious, and therefore pleasant, +reflection that there never was a time when more people found delight +in book-hunting, or were more willing to pay for and read about their +pastime than now. + +Rich people may, no doubt, still be met with who think it a serious +matter to buy a book if it cost more than 3s. 9d. It was recently +alleged in an affidavit made by a doctor in lunacy that for a +well-to-do bachelor to go into the Strand, and in the course of the +same morning spend £5 in the purchase of 'old books,' was a ground for +belief in his insanity and for locking him up. These, however, are but +vagaries, for it is certain that the number of people who will read a +book like Mr. Gosse's steadily increases. This is its justification, +and it is a complete one. It can never be wrong to give pleasure. To +talk about books is better than to read about them, but, as a matter +of hard fact, the opportunities life affords of talking about books +are very few. The mood and the company seldom coincide; when they do, +it is delightful, but they seldom do. + +Mr. Gosse's book ought not to be read in a fierce, nagging spirit +which demands, What is the good of this? or, Who cares for that? His +talk, it must be admitted, is not of masterpieces. The books he takes +down are--in some instances, at all events--sad trash. Smart's poems, +for example, in an edition of 1752, which does not contain the +'David,' is not a book which, viewed baldly and by itself, can be +honestly described as worth reading. This remark is not prompted by +jealousy, for I have the book myself, and seldom fail to find the list +of subscribers interesting, for, among many other famous names, it +contains those of 'Mr. Gray, Peter's College, Cambridge,' 'Mr. Samuel +Richardson, editor of _Clarissa_, two books,' and 'Mr. Voltaire, +Historiographer of France.' There are various Johnsons among the +subscribers, but not Samuel, who apparently would liefer pray with Kit +Smart than buy his poetry, thereby showing the doctor's usual piety +and good sense.[A] + + [Footnote A: 'He insisted on people praying with him, and I'd as lief + pray with Kit Smart as with anyone else.'] + +Although the nagging spirit before referred to is to be deprecated, it +is sometimes amusing to lose your temper with your own hobby. If a +book-collector ever does this, he longs to silence whole libraries of +bad authors. ''Tis an inglorious acquist,' says Joseph Glanvill in his +famous _Vanity of Dogmatizing_--I quote from the first edition, 1661, +though the second is the rarer--'to have our heads or volumes laden as +were Cardinal Campeius his mules, with old and useless luggage.' +''Twas this vain idolizing of authors,' Glanvill had just before +observed, 'which gave birth to that silly vanity of _impertinent +citations_, and inducing authority in things neither requiring nor +deserving it.' In the same strain he proceeds, 'Methinks 'tis a +pitiful piece of knowledge that can be learnt from an _Index_ and a +poor ambition to be rich in the inventory of another's Treasure. To +boast a _Memory_ (the most that these pedants can aim at) is but an +humble ostentation. 'Tis better to own a Judgment, though but with a +_Curta Supellex_ of coherent notions, than a _Memory_ like a sepulchre +furnished with a load of broken and discarnate bones.' Thus far the +fascinating Glanvill, whose mode of putting things is powerful. + +There are times when the contemplation of huge libraries wearies, and +when even the names of Bindley and Sykes fail to please. Dr. Johnson's +library sold at Christie's for £247 9s. Let those sneer who dare. It +was Johnson, not Bindley, who wrote the _Lives of the Poets_. + +But, of course, no sensible man ever really quarrels with his hobby. A +little petulance every now and again variegates the monotony of +routine. Mr. Gosse tells us in his book that he cannot resist +Restoration comedies. The bulk of them he knows to be as bad as bad +can be. He admits they are not literature--whatever that may +mean--but he intends to go on collecting them all the same till the +inevitable hour when Death collects him. This is the true spirit; +herein lies happiness, which consists in being interested in +something, it does not much matter what. In this spirit let me take up +Mr. Gosse's book again, and read what he has to tell about _Pharamond; +or, the History of France. A Fam'd Romance. In Twelve Parts_, or about +Mr. John Hopkins' collection of poems, printed by Thomas Warren for +Bennet Bunbury at the Blue Anchor, in the Lower Walk of the New +Exchange, 1700. The Romance is dull, and as it occupies more than +1,100 folio pages may be pronounced tedious, and the poetry is bad, +but as I do not seriously intend ever to read a line of either the +Romance or the poetry, this is no great matter. + + + +LIBRARIANS AT PLAY + + +No man of feeling will grudge the librarians of the universe their +annual outing. Their pursuits are not indeed entirely sedentary, since +at times they have to climb tall ladders, but of exercise they must +always stand in need, and as for air, the exclusively bookish +atmosphere is as bad for the lungs as it is for the intellectuals. In +1897 the Second International Library Conference met in London, +attended several concerts, was entertained by the Marchioness of Bute +and Lady Lubbock; visited Lambeth Palace and Stafford and Apsley +Houses; witnessed a special performance of Irving's _Merchant of +Venice_; were elected honorary members of the City Liberal, Junior +Athaeneum, National Liberal, and Savage Clubs; and, generally +speaking, enjoyed themselves after the methods current during that +period. They also read forty-six papers, which now alone remain a +stately record of their proceedings. + +I have lately spent a pleasant afternoon musing over these papers. +Their variety is endless, and the dispositions of mind displayed by +these librarians are wide as the poles asunder. Some of them babble +like babies, others are evidently austere scholars; some are gravely +bent on the best methods of classifying catalogues, economizing space, +and sorting borrowers' cards; others, scorning such mechanical +details, bid us regard libraries, and consequently librarians, as the +primary factors in human evolution. 'Where,' asks Mr. Ernest Cushing +Richardson, the librarian of Princetown University, New Jersey, +U.S.A., 'lies the germ of the library?' He answers his own question +after the following convincing fashion: 'At the point where a +definitely formed concept from another's mind is placed beside one's +own idea for integration, the result being a definite new form, +including the substance of both.' The pointsman who presides over this +junction is the librarian. + +The young woman of whom Mr. Matthews, the well-known librarian of +Bristol, tells us, who, being a candidate for the post of assistant +librarian, boldly pronounced Rider Haggard to be the author of the +_Idylls of the King_, Southey of _The Mill on the Floss_, and Mark +Twain of _Modern Painters_, undoubtedly placed her own ideas at the +service of Bristol alongside the preconceived conceptions of Mr. +Matthews; but she was rejected all the same. + +To speak seriously, who are librarians, and whence come they in such +numbers? Of Bodley's librarian we have heard, and all the lettered +world honours the name of Richard Garnett, late keeper of the printed +books at the British Museum. But beyond these and half a dozen others +a great darkness prevails. This ignorance is well illustrated by a +pleasing anecdote told at the Conference by Mr. MacAlister: + + 'Only the day before yesterday, on the Calais boat, I was + introduced to a world-famed military officer who, when he + understood I had some connection with the Library Association, + exclaimed: "Why, you're just the man I want! I have been anxious of + late about my man, old Atkins. You see the old boy, with a stoop, + sheltering behind the funnel. Poor old beggar! quite past his work, + but as faithful as a dog. It has just occurred to me that if you + could shove him into some snug library in the country, I'd be + awfully grateful to you. His one fault is a fondness for reading, + and so a library would be just the thing."' + +The usual titled lady also turned up at the Conference. This time she +was recommending her late cook for the post of librarian, alleging on +her behalf the same strange trait of character--her fondness for +reading. Here, of course, one recalls Mark Pattison's famous dictum, +'The librarian who reads is lost,' about which there is much to be +said, both _pro_ and _con_; but we must not be put off our inquiry, +which is: Who are these librarians, and whence come they? They are the +custodians of the 70,000,000 printed books (be the numbers a little +more or less) in the public libraries of the Western world, and they +come from guarding their treasures. They deserve our friendliest +consideration. If occasionally their enthusiasm provokes a smile, it +is, or should be, of the kindliest. When you think of 70,000,000 +books, instinctively you wish to wash your hands. Nobody knows what +dust is who has not divided his time between the wine-cellar and the +library. The work of classification, of indexing, of packing away, +must be endless. Great men have arisen who have grappled with these +huge problems. We read respectfully of Cutter's rules, which are to +the librarian even as Kepler's laws to the astronomer. We have also +heard of Poole's index. We bow our heads. Both Cutter and Poole are +Americans. The parish of St. Pancras has just, by an overwhelming +majority, declined to have a free library, and consequently a +librarian. Brutish St. Pancras! + +Libraries are obviously of two kinds: those intended for popular use +and those meant for the scholar. The ordinary free library, in the +sense of Mr. Ewart's Act of Parliament of 1850, is a popular library +where a wearied population turns for distraction. Fiction plays a +large part. In some libraries 80 per cent. of the books in circulation +are novels. Hence Mr. Goldwin Smith's splenetic remark, 'People have +no more right to novels than to theatre-tickets out of the taxes.' +Quite true; no more they have--or to public gardens or to beautiful +pictures or to anything save to peep through the railings and down the +areas of Mr. Gradgrind's fine new house in Park Lane. + +When we are considering popular libraries, it does not do to expect +too much of tired human nature. This popular kind of library was well +represented--perhaps a little over-represented, at the Conference. All +our American cousins are not Cutters and Pooles. There was Mr. +Crunden, who keeps the public library at St. Louis, U.S.A. He is all +against dull text-books. As a boy he derived his inspiration from +Sargent's _Standard Speaker_, and the interesting sketch he gives us +of his education makes us wonder whether amidst his multitudinous +reading he ever encountered Newman's marvellous description and +handling of the young and over-read Mr. Brown, which is to be found +under the heading 'Elementary Studies' in _Lectures and Essays on +University Subjects_. + +I shuddered just a little on reading in Mr. Crunden's paper of the boy +who, before he was nine, had read Bulfinch's _Age of Chivalry_ and +_Age of Charlemagne_, Bryant's _Translation of the 'Iliad'_, a prose +translation of the _Odyssey_, Malory's _King Arthur, and several other +versions of the Arthurian legend_, Prescott's _Peru and Mexico_, +Macaulay's _Lays_, Longfellow's _Hiawatha_ and _Miles Standish_, the +Jungle Books, and other books too numerous to mention. A famous list, +but perilously long. + +Mr. Crunden supports his case for varied reading by quotations from +all quarters--Dr. William T. Harris, President Eliot, Professor +Mackenzie, Charles Dudley Warner, Sir John Lubbock--but their scraps +of wisdom or of folly do not remove my uneasiness about the digestion +of the little boy who, before he was nine years old, had (not content +with Malory) read several versions of the Arthurian legend! + +Ladies make excellent librarians, and have tender hearts for children, +and so we find a paper written by a lady librarian, entitled _Books +that Children Like_. She quotes some interesting letters from +children: 'I like books about ancient history and books about knights, +also stories of adventure, and mostly books with a deep plot and +mystery about them.' 'I do not like _Gulliver's Travels_, because I +think they are silly.' 'I read _Little Men_. I did not like this +book.' 'I like _Ivanhoe_, by Scott, better than any.' 'My favourite +books are _Tom Sawyer_, _Uncle Tom's Cabin_, and _Scudder's American +History_. I like Tom Sawyer because he was so jolly, Uncle Tom because +he was so faithful, and Nathan Hale because he was so brave.' These +are unbought verdicts no wise man will despise. + +All this is popular enough. But the unpopular library must not be +overlooked, for, after all, libraries are for the learned. We must not +let the babes and sucklings, or the weary seamstress or badgered +clerk, or even the working-man, ride rough-shod over Salmasius and +Scaliger. In the papers of Mr. Garnett, Mr. Pollard, Mr. Dziatzko, Mr. +Cutter, and others, the less popular and nobler side of the library is +duly exhibited. + +My anxiety about these librarians, who are beginning to be a +profession by themselves, is how they are to be paid. That librarians +must live is at least as obvious in their case as in that of any other +class. They must also, if they are to be of any use, be educated. In +1878 the late Mr. Robert Harrison, who for many years led a grimy life +in the London Library, advocated £250 as a minimum annual salary for a +competent librarian. But, as Mr. Ogle, of Bootle, pertinently asked at +the Conference, 'Are his views yet accepted?' We fear not. Mr. Ogle +courageously proceeds: + + 'The fear of a charge of trades unionism has long kept librarians + silent, but this matter is one of public importance, and affects + educational progress. A School-Board rate of 6d. or 1s. is + willingly paid to teach our youth to read. Shall an additional 2d. + be grudged to turn that reading talent into right and safe + channels, where it may work for the public welfare and economy?' + +_Festina lente_, good Mr. Ogle, I beseech you. That way fierce +controversy and, it may be, disaster lies. Do not stir the Philistine +within us. The British nation is still savage under the skin. It has +no real love for books, libraries, or librarians. In its hidden heart +it deems them all superfluous. Anger it, and it may in a fit of temper +sweep you all away. The loss of our free librarians would indeed be +grievous. Never again could they meet in conference and read papers +full of quaint things and odd memories. What, for example, can be more +amusing than Mr. Cowell's reminiscences of forty years' library work +in Liverpool, of the primitive days when a youthful Dicky Sam (for so +do the inhabitants of that city call themselves) mistook the _Flora of +Liverpool_ for a book either about a ship or a heroine? He knows +better now. And what shall we say of the Liverpool brushmaker who, at +a meeting of the library committee, recited a poem in praise of woman, +containing the following really magnificent line?-- + + 'The heart that beats fondest is found in the stays.' + +There is nothing in Roscoe or Mrs. Hemans (local bards) one half so +fine. Long may librarians live and flourish! May their salaries +increase, if not by leaps and bounds, yet in steady proportions. Yet +will they do well to remember that books are not everything. + + + +LAWYERS AT PLAY + + +That dreary morass, that Serbonian bog, the Bacon-Shakespeare +controversy, has been lately lit up as by the flickering light of a +will-o'-the-wisp, by the almost simultaneous publication of an +imaginary charge delivered to an equally imaginary jury by a judge of +no less eminence than the late Lord Penzance (that tough Erastian) and +of the still bolder _jeu d'esprit_, _A Report of the Trial of an Issue +in Westminster Hall_, June 20, 1627, which is the work of the +unbridled fancy of His Honour Judge Willis, late Treasurer of the +Inner Temple, and a man most intimately acquainted with the literature +of the seventeenth century. + +Neither production of these playful lawyers, clothed though they be in +the garb of judicial procedure, is in the least likely to impress the +lay mind with that sense of 'impartiality' or 'indifference' which is +supposed to be an attribute of justice, or, indeed, with anything +save the unfitness of the machinery of an action at law for the +determination of any matter which invokes the canons of criticism and +demands the arbitrament of a well-informed and lively taste. + +Lord Penzance, who favours the Baconians, made no pretence of +impartiality, and says outright in his preface that his readers 'must +not expect to find in these pages an equal and impartial leaning of +the judge alternately to the case of both parties, as would, I hope, +be found in any judicial summing-up of the evidence in a real judicial +inquiry.' And, he adds, 'the form of a summing-up is only adopted for +convenience, but it is in truth very little short of an argument for +the plaintiffs, _i.e._, the Baconians.' + +Why any man, judge or no judge, who wished to prepare an argument on +one side of a question should think fit to cast that argument for +convenience' sake in the form of a judicial summing-up of both sides +is, and must remain, a puzzle. + +Judge Willis, who is a Shakespearean, bold and unabashed, is not +content with a mere summing-up, but, with a gravity and wealth of +detail worthy of De Foe, has presented us with what purports to be a +verbatim report of so much of the proceedings in a suit of Hall _v._ +Russell as were concerned with the trial before a jury of the simple +issue--whether William Shakespeare, of Stratford-upon-Avon, 'the +testator in the cause of _Hall v. Russell_,' was the author of the +plays in the Folio of 1623. We are favoured with the names of counsel +employed, who snarl at one another with such startling verisimilitude, +whilst the remarks that fall from the bench do so with such +naturalness, that it is perhaps not surprising, or any very severe +reflection upon his literary _esprit_, that a member of the Bar, +having heard Judge Willis deliver his lecture in the Inner Temple +Hall, repaired next day to the library to study at his leisure the +hitherto unnoted case of _Hall v. Russell_. Ten witnesses are put in +the box to prove the affirmative--that Shakespeare was the author of +the plays. Mr. Blount and M. Jaggard, the publishers of the Folio, +give a most satisfactory account of the somewhat crucial point--how +they came by the manuscripts, with all the amendments and corrections, +and pass lightly over the fact that those manuscripts had disappeared. +'Rare Ben Jonson' in the witness-box is a masterpiece of dramatic +invention; he demolishes Bacon's advocate with magnificent vitality. +John Selden makes a stately witness, and Francis Meres a very useful +one. Generally speaking, the weakest part in these interesting +proceedings is the cross-examination. I have heard the learned judge +do better in old days. No witnesses are called for the Baconians, +though all the writings of the great philosopher were put in for what +they were worth. The Lord Chief Justice, who seems to have been a +friend of Shakespeare's, sums up dead in his favour, and the jury +(with whose names we are not supplied, which is a pity--Bunyan or De +Foe would have given them to us), after a short absence, a quarter of +an hour, return a Shakespearean verdict, which of course ought by +rights to make the whole question _res judicata_. + +But it has done nothing of the kind. Could we really ask Blount and +Jaggard how they came by the manuscripts, and who made the +corrections, and did we believe their replies, why, then a stray +Baconian here and there might reluctantly abandon his strange fancy; +but as _Hall v. Russell_ is Judge Willis's joke, it will convert no +Baconians any more than Dean Sherlock's once celebrated _Trial of the +Witnesses_ compels belief in the Resurrection. + +The question in reality is a compound one. Did Shakespeare write the +plays? If yes, the matter is at rest. If no--who did? If an author can +be found--Bacon or anyone else--well and good. If no author can be +found--Anon. wrote them--a conclusion which need terrify no one, since +the plays would still remain within our reach, and William +Shakespeare, apart from the plays, is very little to anybody who has +not written his life. + +But this is not the form the controversy has assumed. The +anti-Shakespeareans are to a man Baconians, and fondly imagine that if +only Will Shakespeare were put out of the way their man must step into +the vacant throne. Lord Penzance in charging his jury told them that +those of their number 'who had studied the writings of Bacon' and were +'keenly alive to his marvellous mental powers' would probably have 'no +difficulty,' if once satisfied that the author they were seeking after +was _not_ Shakespeare, in finding as a fact that he _was_ Bacon. But +suppose James Spedding had been on that jury, and, rising in his +place, had spoken as follows: + + 'My Lord,--If any man has ever studied the writings of Bacon, I + have. For twenty-five years I have done little else. If any man is + keenly alive to his marvellous mental powers, I am that man. I am + also deeply read in the plays attributed to Shakespeare, and I + think I am in a condition to say that, whoever was the real author, + it was _not_ Bacon.' + +That this is exactly what Spedding would have said we know from the +letter he wrote on the subject to Mr. Holmes, reprinted in _Essays +and Discussions_, and it completely upsets the whole scheme of +arrangement of Lord Penzance's summing-up, which proceeds on the easy +footing that the more difficulties you throw in Shakespeare's path the +smoother becomes Bacon's. + +That there are difficulties in Shakespeare's path, some things very +hard to explain, must be admitted. Lord Penzance makes the most of +these. It is, indeed, a most extraordinary thing that anybody should +have had the mother-wit to write the plays traditionally assigned to +Shakespeare. Where did he get it from? How on earth did the plays get +themselves written? Where, when, and how did the author pick up his +multifarious learnings? Lord Penzance, good, honest man, is simply +staggered by the extent of the play-wright's information. The plays, +so he says, 'teem with erudition,' and can only have been written by +someone who had the classics at his finger-ends, modern languages on +the tip of his tongue--by someone who had travelled far and read +deeply; and, above all, by a man who had spent at least a year in a +conveyancer's chambers! And yet, when this has been said, would Lord +Penzance have added that the style and character of the playwright is +the style and character of a really learned man of his period! Can +anything less like such a style be imagined? Once genius is granted, +heaven-born genius, a mother-wit beyond the dreams of fancy, and then +plain humdrum men, ordinary judicial intelligences, will do well to be +on their guard against it. 'Beware--beware! he is fooling thee.' +Shakespeare's genius has simply befooled Lord Penzance. Seafaring men, +after reading _The Tempest_, are ready to maintain that its author +must have been for at least a year before the mast. As for +Shakespeare's law, which has taken in so many matter-of-fact +practitioners, one can now refer to Ben Jonson's evidence in _Hall v. +Russell_, where that great dramatist has no difficulty in showing that +if none but a lawyer could have written Shakespeare's plays, a lawyer +alone could have preached Thomas Adams's sermons. Judge Willis's +profound knowledge of sound old divinity has served him here in good +stead. The fact is it is simply impossible to exaggerate the +quick-wittedness and light-heartedness of a great literary genius. The +absorbing power, the lightning-like faculty of apprehension, the +instant recognition of the uses to which any fact or fancy can be put, +the infinite number and delicacy of the mental feelers, thrust out in +all directions, which belong to the creative brain and keep it in +tremulous and restless activity, are quite enough so to differentiate +the possessor of these endowments from his fellow mortals as to make +comparison impossible. Shakespeare the actor was by the common consent +of his enemies one of the deftest fellows that ever made use of other +men's materials--'Convey, the wise it call.' I will again quote +Spedding: + + 'If Shakespeare was not trained as a scholar or a man of science, + neither do the works attributed to him show traces of trained + scholarship or scientific education. Given the _faculties_, you + will find that all the acquired knowledge, art, and dexterity which + the Shakespearean plays imply were easily attainable by a man who + was labouring in his vocation and had nothing else to do.' + +I greatly prefer this cool judgment of a scholar deeply read in +Elizabethan lore to Lord Penzance's heated and almost breathless +admiration for the 'teeming erudition' of the plays. + +Lord Penzance likewise displays a very creditable non-acquaintance +with the disposition of authors one to another. He is quite shocked at +the callousness of Shakespeare's contemporaries to Shakespeare if he +were indeed the author of the Quartos which bore his name in his +lifetime. But as it cannot be suggested that in, say, 1600 it was +generally known that Shakespeare was not the author of these plays, it +is hard to see how his contemporaries can be acquitted of indifference +to his prodigious superiority over themselves. Authors, however, never +take this view. Shakespeare's contemporaries thought him a mighty +clever fellow and no more. Why, even Wordsworth was well persuaded he +could write like Shakespeare had he been so minded. Mr. Arnold +remained all his life honestly indifferent to and sceptical about the +fame of both Tennyson and Browning. Great living lawyers and doctors +do not invariably idolize each other, nor do the lawyers and doctors +in a small way of business always speak well of those in a big way. +The poets and learned critics of the seventeenth and eighteenth +centuries--Dryden, Pope, Johnson--looked upon Shakespeare with an +indulgent eye, as a great but irregular genius, after much the same +fashion as did the old sea-dogs of Nelson's day regard the hero of +Trafalgar. 'Do not criticise him too harshly,' said Lord St. Vincent; +'there can only be one Nelson.' + +These are not the real difficulties, though they seem to have pressed +somewhat heavily on Lord Penzance. + +The circumstances attendant upon the publication of the Folio of 1623 +are undoubtedly puzzling. Shakespeare died in 1616, leaving behind +him more than forty plays circulating in London and more or less +associated with his name. His will, a most elaborate document, does +not contain a single reference to his literary life or labours. Seven +years after his death the Folio appears, which contains twenty-six +plays out of the odd forty just referred to, and ten extra plays which +had never before been in print, and about six of which there is a very +scanty Shakespearean tradition. Of the twenty-six old plays, seventeen +had been printed in small Quartos, possibly surreptitiously, in +Shakespeare's lifetime, but the Folio does not reprint from these +Quartos, but from enlarged, amended, and enormously improved copies. +Messrs. Heminge and Condell, the editor of this priceless treasure, +the First Folio, wrote a long-winded dedication to Lords Pembroke and +Montgomery, which contains but one pertinent passage, in which they +ask their readers to believe that it had been the office of the +editors to collect and publish the author's 'mere writings,' he being +dead, and to offer them, not 'maimed and deformed,' in surreptitious +and stolen copies, but 'cured and perfect of their limbs and all the +rest, absolute in their numbers as he conceived them, who as he was a +happie imitator of Nature was a most gentle expresser of it. His mind +and hand went together, and what he thought, he uttered with that +easiness, that we have scarce received from him a blot in his papers.' + +From whose custody did those 'papers' come? Where had they been all +the seven years? Of what did they consist? If in truth unblotted, all +the seventeen Quartos as well as the new plays must have been printed +from fair manuscript copies. From whom were these unblotted copies +received, and what became of them? The silence of these players is +irritating and perplexing,--though, possibly, the explanation of the +mystery, were it forthcoming, would be, as often happens, of the +simplest. It may be that these unblotted copies were in the theatre +library all the time. + +Whether these interrogatories, now unanswerable, raise doubts in the +mind of sufficient potency to destroy the tradition of centuries, and +to prevent us from sharing the conviction of Milton, of Dryden, of +Pope, and Johnson that Shakespeare was the author of Shakespeare's +plays must be left for individual consideration. But, however +destructive these doubts may prove, they do not go a yard of the way +to let in Bacon. + +Once more I will quote Spedding, for he, of all the moderns, by virtue +of his taste and devouring studies, is the best qualified to speak: + + 'Aristotle was an extraordinary man. Plato was an extraordinary + man. That two men each severally so extraordinary should have been + living at the same time in the same place was a very extraordinary + thing. But would it diminish the wonder to suppose the two to be + one? So I say of Bacon and Shakespeare. That a human being + possessed of the faculties necessary to make a Shakespeare should + exist is extraordinary. That a human being possessed of the + necessary faculties to make Bacon should exist is extraordinary. + That two such human beings should have been living in London at the + same time was more extraordinary still. But that one man should + have existed possessing the faculties and opportunities necessary + to make _both_ would have been the most extraordinary thing of + all' (see Spedding's _Essays and Discussions_, 1879, pp. 371, 372). + + 'Great writers, especially being contemporary, have many features + in common, but if they are really great writers they write + naturally, and nature is always individual. I doubt whether there + are five lines together to be found in Bacon which could be + mistaken for Shakespeare, or five lines in Shakespeare which could + be mistaken for Bacon, by one who was familiar with their several + styles and practised in such observations' (_Ibid._, p. 373). + + + +THE NON-JURORS + + +To anyone blessed or cursed with an ironical humour the troublesome +history of the Church of England since the Reformation cannot fail to +be an endless source of delight. It really is exciting. Just a little +more of Calvin and of Beza, half a dozen words here, or Cranmer's +pencil through a single phrase elsewhere; a 'quantum suff.' of the men +'that allowed no Eucharistic sacrifice,' and away must have gone +beyond recall the possibility of the Laudian revival and all that +still appertains thereunto. We must have lost the 'primitive' men, the +Kens, the Wilsons, the Knoxes, the Kebles, the Puseys. On the other +hand, but for the unfaltering language of the Articles, the hearty +tone of the Homilies, and the agreeable readiness of both sides to +curse the Italian impudence of the Bishop of Rome and all his +'detestable enormities,' our Anglican Church history could never have +been enriched with the names or sweetened by the memories of the +Romaines, the Flavels, the Venns, the Simeons, and of many thousand +unnamed saints who finished their course in the fervent faith of +Evangelicalism. But on what a thread it has always hung! An +ill-considered Act of Parliament, an amendment hastily accepted by a +pestered layman at midnight, a decision in a court of law, a Jerusalem +Bishoprick, a passage in an early Father, an ancient heresy restudied, +and off to Rome goes a Newman or a Manning, whilst a Baptist Noel +finds his less romantic refuge in Protestant Dissent. Schism is for +ever in the air. Disruption a lively possibility. It has always been a +ticklish business belonging to the Church of England, unless you can +muster up enough courage to be a frank Erastian, and on the rare +occasions when you attend your parish church handle the Book of Common +Prayer with all the reverence due to a schedule to an Act of +Parliament. + +Among the many noticeable humours of the present situation is the tone +adopted by an average Churchman like Canon Overton to the Non-Jurors. +When the late Mr. Lathbury published his admirable _History of the +Non-Jurors_,[A] he had to prepare himself for a very different public +of Churchmen and Churchwomen than will turn over Canon Overton's +agreeable pages.[B] In 1845 the average Churchman, after he had +conquered the serious initial difficulty of comprehending the +Non-Juror's position, was only too apt to consider him a fool for his +pains. 'It has been the custom,' wrote Mr. Lathbury, 'to speak of the +Non-Jurors as a set of unreasonable men, and should I succeed in any +measure in correcting those erroneous impressions, I shall feel that +my labour has not been in vain.' But in 1902, as Canon Overton is +ready enough to perceive, 'their position is a little better +understood.' The well-nigh 'fools' are all but 'confessors.' + + [Footnote A: _A History of the Non-Jurors_. By Thomas Lathbury. + London: Pickering, 1845.] + + [Footnote B: _The Non-Jurors_. By J.H. Overton, D.D. London: Smith, + Elder and Co., 1902, 16s.] + +The early history of the Non-Jurors is as fascinating and as fruitful +as their later history is dull, melancholy, and disappointing. + +Nobody will deny that the Bishops, clergy, and laity of the Church of +England who refused to take the oaths to William and Mary and George +I., when tendered to them, were amply justified in the Court of +Conscience. They were ridiculed by the politicians of the day for +their supersensitiveness; but what were they to do? If they took the +oaths, they apostalized from the faith they had once professed. + +Before the Revolution it was the faith of all High Churchmen--part of +the _deposition_ they had to guard--that the doctrine of +non-resistance and passive obedience was Gospel truth, primitive +doctrine, and a chief 'characteristic' of the Anglican Church. + +The saintly John Kettlewell, in his tractate, _Christianity: a +Doctrine of the Cross, or Passive Obedience under any Pretended +Invasion of Legal Rights and Liberties_ (1696), makes this perfectly +plain; and when Ken came to compose his famous will, wherein he +declared that he died in the Communion of the Church of England, 'as +it adheres to the doctrine of the Cross,' the good Bishop did not mean +what many a pious soul in later days has been edified by thinking he +did mean, the doctrine of the Atonement, but that of passive +obedience, which was the Non-Juror's cross. + +It is sad to think a doctrine dear to so many saintly men, maintained +with an erudition so vast and exemplified by sacrifices so great, +should have disappeared in the vortex of present-day conflict. It may +some day reappear in Convocation. Kettlewell, who was a precise writer +and accurate thinker, defined sovereignty as supremacy. 'Kings,' he +said, 'can be no longer sovereigns, but subjects, if they have any +superiors'; and he points out with much acumen that the best security +under a sovereign 'which sovereignty allows' is that the Kings and +Ministers are accountable and liable for breach of law as well as +others. Kettlewell, had he lived long enough, might have come to +transfer his idea of sovereignty to Kings, Lords, and Commons speaking +through an Act of Parliament, and if so, he would have urged _active +obedience_ to its enactments, when not contrary to conscience, and +_passive obedience_ if they were so contrary. Therefore, were he alive +to-day, and did he think it contrary to conscience (as he easily +might) to pay a school-rate for an 'undenominational' school, he would +not draw a cheque for the amount, but neither would he punch the +bailiff's head who came to seize his furniture. Kettlewell's treatise +is well worth reading. Its last paragraph is most spirited. + +There could be no doubt about it. The High Church party were bound +hand and foot to the doctrine of the Cross--_i.e._, passive obedience +to the Lord's Anointed. Whoever else might actively resist or forsake +the King, they could not without apostasy. But the Revolution of 1688 +was not content to pierce the High Churchmen through one hand. Not +only did the Revolution require the Church to forswear its King, but +also to see its spiritual fathers deprived and intruders set in their +places without even the semblance of any spiritual authority. If it +was hard to have James II. a fugitive in foreign lands and Dutch +William in Whitehall, it was perhaps even harder to see Sancroft +expelled from Lambeth, and the Erastian and latitudinarian Tillotson, +who was prepared to sacrifice even episcopacy for peace, usurping the +title of Archbishop of Canterbury. After all, no man, not even a +Churchman, can serve two masters. The loyalty of a High Churchman to +the throne is always subject to his loyalty to the Church, and at the +Revolution he was wounded in both houses. + +When Queen Elizabeth ascended the throne, and established what was +then unblushingly called 'the new religion,' the whole Anglican +Hierarchy, with the paltry exception of the Bishop of Llandaff, +refused the oaths of supremacy, and were superseded. In a little +more than 100 years the Protestant Bench was bombarded with a +heart-searching oath--this time of allegiance. Opinion was divided; +the point was not so clear as in 1559. The Archbishop of York and his +brethren of London, Lincoln, Bristol, Winchester, Rochester, Llandaff +and St. Asaph, Carlisle and St. David's, swore to bear true allegiance +to Their Majesties King William and Queen Mary. The Archbishop of +Canterbury and the Bishops of Bath and Wells, Ely, Gloucester, +Norwich, Peterborough, Worcester, Chichester, and Chester refused to +swear anything of the kind, and were consequently, in pursuance of the +terms of an Act of Parliament, and of an Act of Parliament only, +deprived of their ecclesiastical preferments. They thus became the +first Non-Jurors, and were long, except two who died before actual +sentence of exclusion, affectionately known and piously venerated in +all High Church homes as 'the Deprived Fathers.' + +Who can doubt that they were right, holding the faith they did? Yet +Englishmen do not take kindly to martyrdom, and some of the Bishops +were strangely puzzled. The excellent Ken, who, like Keble, was an +Englishman first and a Catholic afterwards (in other words, no true +Catholic at all), when told that James was ready to give Ireland to +France, as nearly as possible conformed, so angry was he with the +Lord's Anointed; and even the fiery Leslie, one of our most agreeable +writers, was always ready to forgive those pious, peaceful souls who +thought it no sin, though great sorrow, to comply with the demands of +Caesar, but still managed to retain their old Church and King +principles. Leslie reserved his wrath for the Tillotsons and the +Tenisons and the Burnets, who first, to use his own words, swallowed +'the morsels of usurpation' and then dressed them up 'with all the +gaudy and ridiculous flourishes that an Apostate eloquence can put +upon them.' + +The early Non-Jurors included among their number a very large +proportion of holy, learned, and primitive-minded men. At least 400 of +the general body of the clergy refused the oaths and accepted for +themselves and those dependent on them lives of poverty and seclusion. +They were from the beginning an unpopular body. They were not +Puritans, they were not Deists, they were not Presbyterians, they +would not go to their parish churches; and yet they vehemently +objected to being called Papists. What troublesome people! Five of the +deprived fathers, including the Primate, had known what it was, when +they defied their Sovereign, to be the idols of the mob; but when +they adhered to his fallen cause they were deprived of their sees, and +sent packing from their palaces without a single growl of popular +discontent. Oblivion was their portion, even as it was of their Roman +Catholic predecessors at the time of the Reformation. + +The Archbishop of Canterbury, when turned out of Lambeth by a judgment +of the Court of King's Bench to make way for Tillotson, retired to his +native village in Fressingfield, where he did not attend the parish +church, nor would allow any but non-juring clergy to perform Divine +service in his presence. Dr. Sancroft (who was a book-lover, and had +designed a binding of his own) died on November 24, 1693, and the +epitaph, of his own composition, on his tombstone may still be read +with profit by time-servers of all degrees and denominations, cleric +and lay, in Parliament and out of it. All the deprived Bishops, so Mr. +Lathbury assures us, were in very narrow circumstances, and of Turner, +of Ely, Mr. Lathbury very properly writes: 'This man who, by adhering +to the new Sovereign, and taking the oath, might have ended his day +amidst an abundance of earthly blessings, was actually sustained in +his declining years by the bounty of those who sympathized with him in +his distresses.' Bishop Turner died in 1700. + +Despite this distressing and most genuine poverty, the reader of old +books will not infrequently come across traces of many happy and +well-spent hours during which these poor Non-Jurors managed 'to fleet +the time' in their own society, for they were, many of them, men of +the most varied tastes and endowed with Christian tempers; whilst +their writings exhibit, as no other writings of the period do, the +saintliness and devotion which are supposed to be among the 'notes' +of the Catholic Church. Two better men than Kettlewell and Dodwell +are nowhere to be found, and as for vigorous writing, where is Charles +Leslie to be matched? + +So long as the deprived fathers continued to live, the schism--for +complete schism it was between 'the faithful remnant of the Church of +England' and the Established Church--was on firm ground. But what was +to happen when the last Bishop died? Dodwell, who, next to Hickes, +seems to have dominated the Non-Juring mind, did not wish the schism +to continue after the death of the deprived Bishops; for though he +admitted that the prayers for the Revolution Sovereigns would be +'unlawful prayers,' to which assent could not properly be given, he +still thought that communion with the Church of England was possible. +Hickes thought otherwise, and Hickes, it must not be forgotten, though +only known to the world and even to Non-Jurors generally, as the +deprived Dean of Worcester, was in sober truth and reality Bishop of +Thetford, having been consecrated a Suffragan Bishop under that title +by the deprived Bishops of Norwich, Peterborough, and Ely, at +Southgate, in Middlesex, on February 24, 1693, in the Bishop of +Peterborough's lodgings. At the same time the accomplished Thomas +Wagstaffe was consecrated Suffragan Bishop of Ipswich, though he +continued to earn his living as a physician all the rest of his days. + +These were clandestine consecrations, for even so well-tried and +whole-hearted a Non-Juror as Thomas Hearne, of Oxford, knew nothing +about them, though a great friend of both the new Bishops, until long +years had sped. It would be idle at this distance of time, and having +regard to the events which have happened since February, 1693, to +consider the nice questions how far the Act of Henry VIII. relating to +the appointment of suffragans could have any applicability to such +consecrations, or what degree of Episcopal authority was thereby +conferred, or for how long. + +As things turned out, Ken proved the longest liver of the deprived +fathers. The good Bishop died at Longleat, one of the few great houses +which sheltered Non-Jurors, on March 19, 1711. But before his death he +had made cession of his rights to his friend Hooper, who on the +violent death of Kidder, the intruding revolution Bishop, had been +appointed by Queen Anne, who had wished to reinstate Ken, to Bath and +Wells. It was the wish of Ken that the schism should come to an end on +his death. + +It did nothing of the kind, though some very leading Non-Jurors, +including the learned Dodwell and Nelson, rejoined the main body of +the Church, saving all just exceptions to the 'unlawful prayers.' + +Bishop Wagstaffe died in 1712, leaving Bishop Hickes alone in his +glory, who in 1713, assisted by two Scottish Bishops, consecrated +Jeremy Collier, Samuel Hawes, and Nathaniel Spinckes, Bishops of 'the +faithful remnant.' Hickes died in 1715, and the following year the +great and hugely learned Thomas Brett became a Bishop, as also did +Henry Gawdy. + +Then, alas! arose a schism which rent the faithful remnant in twain. +It was about a great subject, the Communion Service. Collier and Brett +were in favour of altering the Book of Common Prayer so as to restore +it to the First Book of King Edward VI., which provided for (1) The +mixed chalice; (2) prayers for the faithful departed; (3) prayer for +the descent of the Holy Ghost on the consecrated elements; (4) the +Oblatory Prayer, offering the elements to the Father as symbols of His +Son's body and blood. This side of the controversy became known as +'The Usagers,' whilst those Non-Jurors, headed by Bishop Spinckes, who +held by King Charles's Prayer-Book, were called 'the Non-Usagers.' The +discussion lasted long, and was distinguished by immense learning and +acumen. + +The Usagers may be said to have carried the day, for after the +controversy had lasted fourteen years, in 1731 Timothy Mawman was +consecrated a Bishop by three Bishops, two of whom were 'Usagers' and +one a 'Non-Usager.' But in the meantime what had become of the +congregations committed to their charge? Never large, they had +dwindled almost entirely away. + +The last regular Bishop was Robert Gordon, who was consecrated in 1741 +by Brett, Smith, and Mawman. Gordon, who was an out-and-out Jacobite, +died in 1779. + +I have not even mentioned the name of perhaps the greatest of the +Non-Jurors, William Law, nor that of Carte, an historian, the fruits +of whose labour may still be seen in other men's orchards. + +The whole story, were it properly told, would prove how hard it is in +a country like England, where nobody really cares about such things, +to run a schism. But who knows what may happen to-morrow? + + + +LORD CHESTERFIELD + + +'Buy good books and read them; the best books are the commonest, and +the last editions are always the best, if the editors are not +blockheads.' So wrote Lord Chesterfield to his son, that +highly-favoured and much bewritten youth, on March 19, 1750, and his +words have been chosen with great cunning by Mr. Charles Strachey as a +motto for his new edition of these famous letters.[A] + + [Footnote A: Published by Methuen and Co. in 2 vols.] + +The quotation is full of the practical wisdom, but is at the same +time--so much, at least, an old book-collector may be allowed to +say--a little suggestive of the too-well-defined limitations of their +writer's genius and character. Lord Chesterfield is always clear and +frequently convincing, yet his wisdom is that of Mr. Worldly Wiseman, +and not only never points in the direction of the Celestial City, but +seldom displays sympathy with any generous emotion or liberal taste. +Yet as we have nobody like him in the whole body of our literature, we +can welcome even another edition--portable, complete, and cheap--of +his letters to his son with as much enthusiasm as is compatible with +the graces, and with the maxim, so dear to his lordship's heart, _Nil +admirari!_ + +What, I have often wondered, induced Lord Chesterfield to write this +enormously long and troublesome series of letters to a son who was not +even his heir? Their sincerity cannot be called in question. William +Wilberforce did not more fervently desire the conversion to God of his +infant Samuel than apparently did Lord Chesterfield the transformation +of his lumpish offspring into 'the all-accomplished man' he wished to +have him. + +'All this,' so the father writes in tones of fervent pleading--'all +this you may compass if you please. You have the means, you have the +opportunities; employ them, for God's sake, while you may, and make +yourself the all-accomplished man I wish to have you. It entirely +depends upon the next two years; they are the decisive ones' (Letter +CLXXVII.). + +It is the very language of an evangelical piety applied to the +manufacture of a worldling. But what promoted the anxiety? Was it +natural affection--a father's love? If it was, never before or since +has that world-wide and homely emotion been so concealed. There is a +detestable, a forbidding, an all-pervading harshness of tone +throughout this correspondence that seems to banish affection, to +murder love. Read Letter CLXXVIII., and judge for yourselves. I will +quote a passage: + + 'The more I love you now from the good opinion I have of you, the + greater will be my indignation if I should have reason to change + it. Hitherto you have had every possible proof of my affection, + because you have deserved it, but when you cease to deserve it you + may expect every possible mark of my resentment. To leave nothing + doubtful upon this important point, I will tell you fairly + beforehand by what rule I shall judge of your conduct: by Mr. + Harte's account.... If he complains you must be guilty, and I shall + not have the least regard for anything you may allege in your own + defence.' + +Ugh! what a father! Lord Chesterfield despised the Gospels, and made +little of St. Paul; yet the New Testament could have taught him +something concerning the nature of a father's love. His language is +repulsive, repugnant, and yet how few fathers have taken the trouble +to write 400 educational letters of great length to their sons! All +one can say is that Chesterfield's letters are without natural +affection: + + 'If this be error and upon me proved, + I never writ, and no man ever loved.' + +If affection did not dictate these letters, what did? Could it be +ambition? So astute a man as Chesterfield, who was kept well informed +as to the impression made by his son, could hardly suppose it likely +that the boy would make a name for himself, and thereby confer +distinction upon the family of which he was an irregular offshoot. A +respectable diplomatic career, with an interval in the House of +Commons, was the most that so clear-sighted a man could anticipate for +the young Stanhope. Was it literary fame for himself? This, of course, +assumes that subsequent publication was contemplated by the writer. +The dodges and devices of authors are well-nigh infinite and quite +beyond conjecture, and it is, of course, possible that Lord +Chesterfield kept copies of these letters, which bear upon their +faces evidence of care and elaboration. It is not to be supposed for a +moment that he ever forgot he had written them. It is hard to believe +he never inquired after them and their whereabouts. Great men have +been known to write letters which, though they bore other addresses, +were really intended for their biographers. It would not have been +surprising if Lord Chesterfield wrote these letters intending some day +to publish them, but not only is there no warrant for such an opinion, +but the opposite is clearly established. It is, no doubt, odd that the +son should have carefully preserved more than 400 letters written to +him during a period beginning with his tenderest years and continuing +whilst he was travelling on the Continent. It seems almost a miracle. +What made the son treasure them so carefully? Did he look forward to +being his father's biographer? Hardly so at the age of ten, or even +twenty. Biographies were not then what they have since become. No +doubt in the middle of the eighteenth century letters were more +treasured than they are to-day, and young Stanhope's friends may also +have thought it wise to encourage him to preserve documentary evidence +of the great interest taken in him by his father. None the less, I +think the preservation of this correspondence is in the circumstances +a most extraordinary though well-established fact. + +The son died in 1768 of a dropsy at Avignon, and the news was +communicated to the Earl by his daughter-in-law, Mrs. Eugenia +Stanhope, of whose existence he was previously unaware. Two grandsons +accompanied her. It was a shock; but 'les manières nobles et aisées, +la tournure d'un homme de condition, le ton de la bonne compagnie, +les grâces le je ne scais quoi qui plaît,' came to Lord Chesterfield's +assistance, and he received his son's widow, who was not a pleasing +person, and her two boys with kindness and good feeling, and provided +for them quite handsomely by his will. The Earl died in 1773, in his +seventy-ninth year, and thereupon Mrs. Stanhope, who was in possession +of all the original letters addressed to her late husband, carried +her wares to market, and made a bargain with Mr. Dodsley for their +publication, she to receive £1,575. Mr. Dodsley advertised the +forthcoming work, and on that the Earl's executors, relying upon the +well-known case of Pope _v._ Curl, decided by Lord Hardwicke in 1741, +filed their bill against Mrs. Stanhope, seeking an injunction to +restrain publication. The widow put in her sworn Answer, in which she +averred that she had, on more occasions than one, mentioned +publication to the Earl, and that he, though recovering from her +certain written characters of eminent contemporaries, had seemed quite +content to let her do what she liked with the letters, only remarking +that there was too much Latin in them. The executors seem to have +moved for what is called an interim injunction--that is, an injunction +until trial of the cause, and, from the report in _Ambler_, it appears +that Lord Apsley (a feeble creature) granted such an injunction, but +recommended the executors to permit the publication if, on seeing a +copy of the correspondence, they saw no objection to it. In the result +the executors gave their consent, and the publication became an +authorized one, so much so that Dodsley was able to obtain an +interdict in the Scotch Court preventing a certain Scotch bookseller, +caller McFarquhar, from reprinting the letters in Edinburgh. Whether +the executors believed Mrs. Stanhope's story, or saw no reason to +object to the publication of the letters, I do not know, but it is +clear that the opposition was a half-hearted one. + +It would be hasty to assume that Lord Chesterfield wrote these letters +with any intention of publication, and I am therefore left without +being able to suggest any strong reason for their existence. A +restless, itching pen, perhaps, accounts for them. Some men find a +pleasure in writing, even at great length; others, of whom Carlyle was +one, though they hate the labour, are yet compelled by some fierce +necessity to blacken paper. + +At all events, we have Lord Chesterfield's letters, and, having them, +they will always have readers, for they are readable. + +That the letters are full of wit and wisdom and sound advice is +certain. Mr. Strachey, in his preface, seems to be under the +impression that in the popular estimate Chesterfield is reckoned an +elegant trifler, a man of no serious account. What the popular or +vulgar estimate of Chesterfield may be it would be hard to determine, +nor is it of the least importance, for no one who knows about Lord +Chesterfield can possibly entertain any such opinion. How it came +about that so able and ambitious a man made so poor a thing out of +life, and failed so completely, is puzzling at first, though a little +study would, I think, make the reasons of Chesterfield's failure plain +enough. + +To prove by extracts from the Letters how wise a man Chesterfield was +would be easy, but tiresome; to exhibit him in a repulsive character +would be equally easy, but spiteful. I prefer to leave him alone, and +to content myself with but one quotation, which has a touch of both +wisdom and repulsiveness: + + 'Consult your reason betimes. I do not say it will always prove an + unerring guide, for human reason is not infallible, but it will + prove the least erring guide that you can follow. Books and + conversation may assist it, but adopt neither blindly and + implicitly; try both by that best rule God has given to direct + us--reason. Of all the truths do not decline that of thinking. The + host of mankind can hardly be said to think; their prejudices are + almost all adoptive; and in general I believe it is better that it + should be so, as such common prejudices contribute more to order + and quiet than their own separate reasonings would do, uncultivated + as they are. We have many of these useful prejudices in this + country which I should be very sorry to see removed. The good + Protestant conviction that the Pope is both Antichrist and the + Whore of Babylon is a more effectual preservative against Popery + than all the solid and unanswerable arguments of Chillingworth.' + + + +THE JOHNSONIAN LEGEND + + +The ten handsome volumes which the indefatigable and unresting zeal of +Dr. Birkbeck Hill, and the high spirit of the Clarendon Press, have +edited, arranged, printed, and published for the benefit of the world +and the propagation of the Gospel according to Dr. Johnson are +pleasant things to look upon. I hope the enterprise has proved +remunerative to those concerned, but I doubt it. The parsimony of the +public in the matter of books is pitiful. The ordinary purse-carrying +Englishman holds in his head a ready-reckoner or scale of charges by +which he tests his purchases--so much for a dinner, so much for a +bottle of champagne, so much for a trip to Paris, so much for a pair +of gloves, and so much for a book. These ten volumes would cost him £4 +9s. 3d. 'Whew! What a price for a book, and where are they to be put, +and who is to dust them?' Idle questions! As for room, a bicycle takes +more room than 1,000 books; and as for dust, it is a delusion. You +should never dust books. There let it lie until the rare hour arrives +when you want to read a particular volume; then warily approach it +with a snow-white napkin, take it down from its shelf, and, +withdrawing to some back apartment, proceed to cleanse the tome. Dr. +Johnson adopted other methods. Every now and again he drew on huge +gloves, such as those once worn by hedgers and ditchers, and then, +clutching his folios and octavos, he banged and buffeted them together +until he was enveloped in a cloud of dust. This violent exercise over, +the good doctor restored the volumes, all battered and bruised, to +their places, where, of course, the dust resettled itself as speedily +as possible. + +Dr. Johnson could make books better than anybody, but his notions of +dusting them were primitive and erroneous. But the room and the dust +are mere subterfuges. The truth is, there is a disinclination to pay +£4 9s. 3d. for the ten volumes containing the complete Johnsonian +legend. To quarrel with the public is idiotic and most un-Johnsonian. +'Depend upon it, sir,' said the Sage, 'every state of society is as +luxurious as it can be.' We all, a handful of misers excepted, spend +more money than we can afford upon luxuries, but what those luxuries +are to be is largely determined for us by the fashions of our time. If +we do not buy these ten volumes, it is not because we would not like +to have them, but because we want the money they cost for something we +want more. As for dictating to men how they are to spend their money, +it were both a folly and an impertinence. + +These ten volumes ended Dr. Hill's labours as an editor of _Johnson's +Life and Personalia_, but did not leave him free. He had set his mind +on an edition of the _Lives of the Poets_. This, to the regret of all +who knew him either personally or as a Johnsonian, he did not live to +see through the press. But it is soon to appear, and will be a +storehouse of anecdote and a miracle of cross-references. A poet who +has been dead a century or two is amazing good company--at least, he +never fails to be so when Johnson tells us as much of his story as he +can remember without undue research, with that irony of his, that vast +composure, that humorous perception of the greatness and the +littleness of human life, that make the brief records of a Spratt, a +Walsh, and a Fenton so divinely entertaining. It is an immense +testimony to the healthiness of the Johnsonian atmosphere that Dr. +Hill, who breathed it almost exclusively for a quarter of a century +and upwards, showed no symptoms either of moral deterioration or +physical exhaustion. His appetite to the end was as keen as ever, nor +was his temper obviously the worse. The task never became a toil, not +even a tease. 'You have but two subjects,' said Johnson to Boswell: +'yourself and myself. I am sick of both.' Johnson hated to be talked +about, or to have it noticed what he ate or what he had on. For a +hundred years now last past he has been more talked about and noticed +than anybody else. But Dr. Hill never grew sick of Dr. Johnson. + +The _Johnsonian Miscellanies_[A] open with the _Prayers and +Meditations_, first published by the Rev. Dr. Strahan in 1785. Strahan +was the Vicar of Islington, and into his hands at an early hour one +morning Dr. Johnson, then approaching his last days, put the papers, +'with instructions for committing them to the press and with a promise +to prepare a sketch of his own life to accompany them.' This promise +the doctor was not able to keep, and shortly after his death his +reverend friend published the papers just as they were put into his +hands. One wonders he had the heart to do it, but the clerical mind is +sometimes strangely insensitive to the privacy of thought. But, as in +the case of most indelicate acts, you cannot but be glad the thing was +done. The original manuscript is at Pembroke College, Oxford. In these +_Prayers and Meditations_ we see an awful figure. The _solitary_ +Johnson, perturbed, tortured, oppressed, in distress of body and of +mind, full of alarms for the future both in this world and the next, +teased by importunate and perplexing thoughts, harassed by morbid +infirmities, vexed by idle yet constantly recurring scruples, with an +inherited melancholy and a threatened sanity, is a gloomy and even a +terrible picture, and forms a striking contrast to the social hero, +the triumphant dialectician of Boswell, Mrs. Thrale, and Madame +D'Arblay. Yet it is relieved by its inherent humanity, its fellowship +and feeling. Dr. Johnson's piety is delightfully full of human +nature--far too full to please the poet Cowper, who wrote of the +_Prayers and Meditations_ as follows: + + 'If it be fair to judge of a book by an extract, I do not wonder + that you were so little edified by Johnson's Journal. It is even + more ridiculous than was poor Rutty's of flatulent memory. The + portion of it given us in this day's paper contains not one + sentiment worth one farthing, except the last, in which he resolves + to bind himself with no more unbidden obligations. Poor man! one + would think that to pray for his dead wife and to pinch himself + with Church fasts had been almost the whole of his religion.' + + [Footnote A: Two volumes. Oxford Clarendon Press, 1897.] + +It were hateful to pit one man's religion against another's, but it +is only fair to Dr. Johnson's religion to remember that, odd compound +as it was, it saw him through the long struggle of life, and enabled +him to meet the death he so honestly feared like a man and a +Christian. The _Prayers and Meditations_ may not be an edifying book +in Cowper's sense of the word; there is nothing triumphant about it; +it is full of infirmities and even absurdities; but, for all that, it +contains more piety than 10,000 religious biographies. Nor must the +evidence it contains of weakness be exaggerated. Beset with +infirmities, a lazy dog, as he often declared himself to be, he yet +managed to do a thing or two. Here, for example, is an entry: + + '29, EASTER EVE (1777). + + 'I rose and again prayed with reference to my departed wife. I + neither read nor went to church, yet can scarcely tell how I have + been hindered. I treated with booksellers on a bargain, but the + time was not long.' + +Too long, perhaps, for Johnson's piety, but short enough to enable the +booksellers to make an uncommon good bargain for the _Lives of the +Poets_. 'As to the terms,' writes Mr. Dilly, 'it was left entirely to +the doctor to name his own; he mentioned 200 guineas; it was +immediately agreed to.' The business-like Malone makes the following +observation on the transaction: 'Had he asked 1,000, or even 1,500, +guineas the booksellers, who knew the value of his name, would +doubtless have readily given it.' Dr. Johnson, though the son of a +bookseller, was the least tradesman-like of authors. The bargain was +bad, but the book was good. + +A year later we find this record: + + 'MONDAY, _April_ 20 (1778). + + 'After a good night, as I am forced to reckon, I rose seasonably + and prayed, using the collect for yesterday. In reviewing my time + from Easter, 1777, I find a very melancholy and shameful blank. So + little has been done that days and months are without any trace. My + health has, indeed, been very much interrupted. My nights have been + commonly not only restless but painful and fatiguing.... I have + written a little of the _Lives of the Poets_, I think, with all my + usual vigour. I have made sermons, perhaps, as readily as formerly. + My memory is less faithful in retaining names, and, I am afraid, in + retaining occurrences. Of this vacillation and vagrancy of mind I + impute a great part to a fortuitous and unsettled life, and + therefore purpose to spend my life with more method. + + 'This year the 28th of March passed away without memorial. Poor + Tetty, whatever were our faults and failings, we loved each other. + I did not forget thee yesterday. Couldst thou have lived! I am now, + with the help of God, to begin a new life.' + +Dr. Hill prints an interesting letter of Mr. Jowett's, in which occur +the following observations: + + 'It is a curious question whether Boswell has unconsciously + misrepresented Johnson in any respect. I think, judging from the + materials, which are supplied chiefly by himself, that in one + respect he has. He has represented him more as a sage and + philosopher in his conduct as well as his conversation than he + really was, and less as a rollicking "King of Society." The gravity + of Johnson's own writings tends to confirm this, as I suspect, + erroneous impression. His religion was fitful and intermittent; and + when once the ice was broken he enjoyed Jack Wilkes, though he + refused to shake hands with Hume. I was much struck with a remark + of Sir John Hawkins (excuse me if I have mentioned this to you + before): "He was the most humorous man I ever knew."' + +Mr. Jowett's letter raises some nice points--the Wilkes and Hume +point, for example. Dr. Johnson hated both blasphemy and bawd, but he +hated blasphemy most. Mr. Jowett shared the doctor's antipathies, but +very likely hated bawd more than he did blasphemy. But, as I have +already said, the point is a nice one. To crack jokes with Wilkes at +the expense of Boswell and the Scotch seems to me a very different +thing from shaking hands with Hume. But, indeed, it is absurd to +overlook either Johnson's melancholy piety or his abounding humour and +love of fun and nonsense. His _Prayers and Meditations_ are full of +the one, Boswell and Mrs. Thrale and Madame D'Arblay are full of the +other. Boswell's _Johnson_ has superseded the 'authorized biography' +by Sir John Hawkins, and Dr. Hill did well to include in these +_Miscellanies_ Hawkins' inimitable description of the memorable +banquet given at the Devil Tavern, near Temple Bar, in the spring of +1751, to celebrate the publication of Mrs. Charlotte Lennox's first +novel. What delightful revelry! what innocent mirth! prolonged though +it was till long after dawn. Poor Mrs. Lennox died in distress in +1804, at the age of eighty-three. Could Johnson but have lived he +would have lent her his helping hand. He was no fair-weather friend, +but shares with Charles Lamb the honour of being able to unite narrow +means and splendid munificence. + +I must end with an anecdote: + + 'Henderson asked the doctor's opinion of _Dido_ and its author. + "Sir," said Dr. Johnson, "I never did the man an injury. Yet he + would read his tragedy to me."' + + + + +BOSWELL AS BIOGRAPHER + + +Boswell's position in English literature cannot be disputed, nor can +he ever be displaced from it. He has written our greatest biography. +That is all. Theorize about it as much as you like, account for it how +you may, the fact remains. 'Alone I did it.' There has been plenty of +theorizing. Lord Macaulay took the subject in hand and tossed it up +and down for half a dozen pages with a gusto that drove home to many +minds the conviction, the strange conviction, that our greatest +biography was written by one of the very smallest men that ever lived, +'a man of the meanest and feeblest intellect'--by a dunce, a parasite, +and a coxcomb; by one 'who, if he had not been a great fool, would +never have been a great writer.' So far Macaulay, _anno Domini_ 1831, +in the vigorous pages of the _Edinburgh Review_. A year later appears +in _Fraser's Magazine_ another theory by another hand, not then +famous, Mr. Thomas Carlyle. I own to an inordinate affection for Mr. +Carlyle as 'literary critic' As philosopher and sage, he has served +our turn. We have had the fortune, good or bad, to outlive him; and +our sad experience is that death makes a mighty difference to all but +the very greatest. The sight of the author of _Sartor Resartus_ in a +Chelsea omnibus, the sound of Dr. Newman's voice preaching to a small +congregation in Birmingham, kept alive in our minds the vision of +their greatness--it seemed then as if that greatness could know no +limit; but no sooner had they gone away, than somehow or another +one became conscious of some deficiency in their intellectual +positions--the tide of human thought rushed visibly by them, and it +became plain that to no other generation would either of these men be +what they had been to their own. But Mr. Carlyle as literary critic +has a tenacious grasp, and Boswell was a subject made for his hand. +'Your Scottish laird, says an English naturalist of those days, may be +defined as the hungriest and vainest of all bipeds yet known.' Carlyle +knew the type well enough. His general description of Boswell is +savage: + + 'Boswell was a person whose mean or bad qualities lay open to the + general eye, visible, palpable to the dullest. His good qualities, + again, belonged not to the time he lived in; were far from common + then; indeed, in such a degree were almost unexampled; not + recognisable, therefore, by everyone; nay, apt even, so strange + had they grown, to be confounded with the very vices they lay + contiguous to and had sprung out of. That he was a wine-bibber and + good liver, gluttonously fond of whatever would yield him a little + solacement, were it only of a stomachic character, is undeniable + enough. That he was vain, heedless, a babbler, had much of the + sycophant, alternating with the braggadocio, curiously spiced, too, + with an all-pervading dash of the coxcomb; that he gloried much + when the tailor by a court suit had made a new man of him; that he + appeared at the Shakespeare Jubilee with a riband imprinted + "Corsica Boswell" round his hat, and, in short, if you will, lived + no day of his life without saying and doing more than one + pretentious ineptitude, all this unhappily is evident as the sun at + noon. The very look of Boswell seems to have signified so much. In + that cocked nose, cocked partly in triumph over his weaker + fellow-creatures, partly to snuff up the smell of coming pleasure + and scent it from afar, in those big cheeks, hanging like + half-filled wine-skins, still able to contain more, in that + coarsely-protruded shelf mouth, that fat dew-lapped chin; in all + this who sees not sensuality, pretension, boisterous imbecility + enough? The underpart of Boswell's face is of a low, almost brutish + character.' + +This is character-painting with a vengeance. Portrait of a Scotch +laird by the son of a Scotch peasant. Carlyle's Boswell is to me the +very man. If so, Carlyle's paradox seems as great as Macaulay's, for +though Carlyle does not call Boswell a great fool in plain set terms, +he goes very near it. But he keeps open a door through which he +effects his escape. Carlyle sees in Bozzy 'the old reverent feeling of +discipleship, in a word, hero-worship.' + + 'How the babbling Bozzy, inspired only by love and the recognition + and vision which love can lend, epitomizes nightly the words of + Wisdom, the deeds and aspects of Wisdom, and so, little by little, + unconsciously works together for us a whole "Johnsoniad"--a more + free, perfect, sunlit and spirit-speaking likeness than for many + centuries has been drawn by man of man.' + +This I think is a little overdrawn. That Boswell loved Johnson, God +forbid I should deny. But that he was inspired only by love to write +his life, I gravely question. Boswell was, as Carlyle has said, a +greedy man--and especially was he greedy of fame--and he saw in his +revered friend a splendid subject for artistic biographic treatment. +Here is where both Macaulay and Carlyle are, as I suggest, wrong. +Boswell was a fool, but only in the sense in which hundreds of great +artists have been fools; on his own lines, and across his own bit of +country, he was no fool. He did not accidentally stumble across +success, but he deliberately aimed at what he hit. Read his preface +and you will discover his method. He was as much an artist as either +of his two famous critics. Where Carlyle goes astray is in attributing +to discipleship what was mainly due to a dramatic sense. However, +theories are no great matter. + +Our means of knowledge of James Boswell are derived mainly from +himself; he is his own incriminator. In addition to the life there is +the Corsican tour, the Hebrides tour, the letters to Erskine and to +Temple, and a few insignificant occasional publications in the shape +of letters to the people of Scotland, etc. With these before him it is +impossible for any biographer to approach Bozzy in a devotional +attitude; he was all Carlyle calls him. Our sympathies are with his +father, who despised him, and with his son, who was ashamed of him. It +is indeed strange to think of him staggering, like the drunkard he +was, between these two respectable and even stately figures--the +Senator of the Court of Justice and the courtly scholar and antiquary. +And yet it is to the drunkard humanity is debtor. Respectability is +not everything. + +Boswell had many literary projects and ambitions, and never intended +to be known merely as the biographer of Johnson. He proposed to write +a life of Lord Kames and to compose memoirs of Hume. It seems he did +write a life of Sir Robert Sibbald. He had other plans in his head, +but dissipation and a steadily increasing drunkenness destroyed them +all. As inveterate book-hunter, I confess to a great fancy to lay +hands on his _Dorando: A Spanish Tale_, a shilling book published in +Edinburgh during the progress of the once famous Douglas case, and +ordered to be suppressed as contempt of court after it had been +through three editions. It is said, probably hastily, that no copy is +known to exist--a dreary fate which, according to Lord Macaulay, might +have attended upon the _Life of Johnson_ had the copyright of that +work become the property of Boswell's son, who hated to hear it +mentioned. It is not, however, very easy to get rid of any book once +it is published, and I do not despair of reading _Dorando_ before I +die. + + + + +OLD PLEASURE GARDENS[A] + + + [Footnote A: _Pleasure Gardens of the Eighteenth Century_, by Warwick + Wroth, F.S.A., assisted by Arthur Edgar Wroth. London: Macmillan and + Co.] + +This is an honest book, disfigured by no fine writing or woeful +attempts to make us dance round may-poles with our ancestors. Terribly +is our good language abused by the swell-mob of stylists, for whom it +is certainly not enough that Chatham's language is their mother's +tongue. May the Devil fly away with these artists; though no sooner +had he done so than we should be 'wae' for auld Nicky-ben. Mr. Wroth, +of the British Museum, and his brother, Mr. Arthur Wroth, are above +such vulgar pranks, and never strain after the picturesque, but in the +plain garb of honest men carry us about to the sixty-four gardens +where the eighteenth-century Londoner, his wife and family--the John +Gilpins of the day--might take their pleasure either sadly, as indeed +best befits our pilgrim state, or uproariously to deaden the ear to +the still small voice of conscience--the pangs of slighted love, the +law's delay, the sluggish step of Fortune, the stealthy strides of +approaching poverty, or any other of the familiar incidents of our +mortal life. The sixty-two illustrations which adorn the book are as +honest as the letterpress. There is a most delightful Morland +depicting a very stout family indeed regaling itself _sub tegmine +fagi_. It is called a 'Tea Party.' A voluminous mother holds in her +roomy lap a very fat baby, whose back and neck are full upon you as +you stare into the picture. And what a jolly back and innocent neck it +is! Enough to make every right-minded woman cry out with pleasure. +Then there is the highly respectable father stirring his cup and +watching with placid content a gentleman in lace and ruffles attending +to the wife, whilst the two elder children play with a wheezy dog. + +In these pages we can see for ourselves the British public--God rest +its soul!--enjoying itself. This honest book is full of _la +bourgeoisie_. The rips and the painted ladies occasionally, it is +true, make their appearance, but they are reduced to their proper +proportions. The Adam and Eve Tea Gardens, St. Pancras, have a +somewhat rakish sound, calculated to arrest the jaded attention of the +debauchee, but what has Mr. Wroth to tell us about them? + + 'About the beginning of the present century it could still be + described as an agreeable retreat, "with enchanting prospects"; and + the gardens were laid out with arbours, flowers, and shrubs. Cows + were kept for making syllabubs, and on summer afternoons a regular + company met to play bowls and trap-ball in an adjacent field. One + proprietor fitted out a mimic squadron of frigates in the garden, + and the long-room was used a good deal for beanfeasts and + tea-drinking parties' (p. 127). + +What a pleasant place! Syllabubs! How sweet they sound! Nobody +worried then about diphtheria; they only died of it. Mimic frigates, +too! What patriotism! These gardens are as much lost as those of the +Hesperides. A cemetery swallowed them up--the cemetery which adjoins +the old St. Pancras Churchyard. The Tavern, shorn of its amenities, a +mere drink-shop, survived as far down the century as 1874, soon after +which date it also disappeared. Hornsey Wood House has a name not +unknown in the simple annals of tea-drinking. It is now part of +Finsbury Park, but in the middle of the last century its long-room 'on +popular holydays, such as Whit Sunday, might be seen crowded as early +as nine or ten in the morning with a motley assemblage eating rolls +and butter and drinking tea at an extravagant price.' 'Hone remembered +the old Hornsey Wood House as it stood embowered, and seeming a part +of the wood. It was at that time kept by two sisters--Mrs. Lloyd and +Mrs. Collier--and these aged dames were usually to be found before +their door on a seat between two venerable oaks, wherein swarms of +bees hived themselves.' + +What a picture is this of these vanished dames! Somewhere, I trust, +they are at peace. + + 'And there, they say, two bright and aged snakes, + Who once were Cadmus and Harmonia, + Bask in the glens or on the warm sea-shore.' + +A more raffish place was the Dog and Duck in St. George's Fields, +which boasted mineral springs, good for gout, stone, king's evil, sore +eyes, and inveterate cancers. Considering its virtue, the water was a +cheap liquor, for a dozen bottles could be had at the spa for a +shilling. The Dog and Duck, though at last it exhibited depraved +tastes, was at one time well conducted. Miss Talbot writes about it to +Mrs. Carter, and Dr. Johnson advised his Thralia to try the waters. It +was no mean place, but boasted a breakfast-room, a bowling-green, and +a swimming-bath 200 feet long and 100 feet (nearly) broad. Mr. Wroth +narrates the history of its fall with philosophical composure. In the +hands of one Hedger the decencies were disregarded, and thieves made +merry where once Miss Talbot sipped bohea. One of its frequenters, +Charlotte Shaftoe, is said to have betrayed seven of her intimates to +the gallows. Few visitors' lists could stand such a strain as Miss +Shaftoe put upon hers. In 1799 the Dog and Duck was suppressed, and +Bethlehem Hospital now reigns in its stead. 'The Peerless Pool' has a +Stevensonian sound. It was a dangerous pond behind Old Street, long +known as 'The Parlous or Perilous Pond' 'because divers youth by +swimming therein have been drowned.' In 1743 a London jeweller called +Kemp took it in hand, turned it into a pleasure bath, and renamed it, +happily enough, 'The Peerless Pool.' It was a fine open-air bath, 170 +feet long, more than 100 feet broad, and from 3 to 5 feet deep. 'It +was nearly surrounded by trees, and the descent was by marble steps to +a fine gravel bottom, through which the springs that supplied the pool +came bubbling up.' Mr. Kemp likewise constructed a fish-pond. The +enterprise met with success, and anglers, bathers, and at due seasons +skaters, flocked to 'The Peerless Pool.' Hone describes how every +Thursday and Saturday the boys from the Bluecoat School were wont to +plunge into its depths. You ask its fate. It has been built over. +Peerless Street, the second main turning on the left of the City Road +just beyond Old Street in coming from the City, is all that is left to +remind anyone of the once Parlous Pool, unless, indeed, it still +occasionally creeps into a cellar and drowns cockroaches instead of +divers youths. The Three Hats, Highbury Barn, Hampstead Wells, are not +places to be lightly passed over. In Mr. Wroth's book you may read +about them and trace their fortunes--their fallen fortunes. After all, +they have only shared the fate of empires. + +Of the most famous London gardens--Marylebone, Ranelagh, and, greatest +of them all, Vauxhall--Mr. Wroth writes at, of course, a becoming +length. Marylebone Gardens, when at their largest, comprised about 8 +acres. Beaumont Street, part of Devonshire Street and of Devonshire +Place and Upper Wimpole Street, now occupy their site. Music was the +main feature of Marylebone. A band played in the evening. Vocalists at +different times drew crowds. Masquerades and fireworks appeared later +in the history of the gardens, which usually were open three nights of +the week. Dr. Johnson's turbulent behaviour, on the occasion of one of +his frequent visits, will easily be remembered. Marylebone, at no +period, says Mr. Wroth, attained the vogue of Ranelagh or the +universal popularity of Vauxhall. In 1776 the gardens were closed, and +two years later the builders began to lay out streets. Ranelagh is, +perhaps, the greatest achievement of the eighteenth century. Its +Rotunda, built in 1741, is compared by Mr. Wroth to the reading-room +of the British Museum. No need to give its dimensions; only look at +the print, and you will understand what Johnson meant when he declared +that the _coup d'oeil_ of Ranelagh was the finest thing he had ever +seen. The ordinary charge for admission was half a crown, which +secured you tea or coffee and bread-and-butter. The gardens were +usually open Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays, and the amusements were +music, tea-drinking, walking, and talking. Mr. Wroth quotes a +Frenchman, who, after visiting Ranelagh in 1800, calls it 'le plus +insipide lieu d'amusement que l'on ait pu imaginer,' and even hints at +Dante's Purgatory. An earlier victim from Gaul thus records his +experience of Ranelagh: 'On s'ennui avec de la mauvaise musique, du +thé et du beurre.' So true is it that the cheerfulness you find +anywhere is the cheerfulness you have brought with you. However, +despite the Frenchman, good music and singing were at times to be +heard at Ranelagh. The nineteenth century would have nothing to do +with Ranelagh, and in 1805 it was pulled down. The site now belongs to +Chelsea Hospital. Cuper's Gardens lacked the respectability of +Marylebone and the style of Ranelagh, but they had their vogue during +the same century. They were finely situated on the south side of the +Thames opposite Somerset House. Cuper easily got altered into Cupid; +and when on the death of Ephraim Evans in 1740 the business came to be +carried on by his widow, a comely dame who knew a thing or two, it +proved to be indeed a going concern. But the new Licensing Bill of +1752 destroyed Cupid's Garden, and Mrs. Evans was left lamenting and +wholly uncompensated. Of Vauxhall Mr. Wroth treats at much length, and +this part of his book is especially rich in illustrations. Every lover +of Old London and old times and old prints should add Mr. Wroth's book +to his library. + + + + +OLD BOOKSELLERS + + +There has just been a small flutter amongst those who used to be +called stationers or text-writers in the good old days, before +printing was, and when even Peers of the Realm (now so highly +educated) could not sign their names, or, at all events, preferred not +to do so--booksellers they are now styled--and the question which +agitates them is discount. Having mentioned this, one naturally passes +on. + +No great trade has an obscurer history than the book trade. It seems +to lie choked in mountains of dust which it would be suicidal to +disturb. Men have lived from time to time of literary skill--Dr. +Johnson was one of them--who had knowledge, extensive and peculiar, of +the traditions and practices of 'the trade,' as it is proudly styled +by its votaries; but nobody has ever thought it worth his while to +make record of his knowledge, which accordingly perished with him, and +is now irrecoverably lost. + +In old days booksellers were also publishers, frequently printers, and +sometimes paper-makers. Jacob Tonson not only owned Milton's _Paradise +Lost_--for all time, as he fondly thought, for little did he dream of +the fierce construction the House of Lords was to put upon the +Copyright Act of Queen Anne--not only was Dryden's publisher, but also +kept shop in Chancery Lane, and sold books across the counter. He +allowed no discount, but, so we are told, 'spoke his mind upon all +occasions, and flattered no one,' not even glorious John. + +For a long time past the trades of bookselling and book-publishing +have been carried on apart. This has doubtless rid booksellers of all +the unpopularity which formerly belonged to them in their other +capacity. This unpopularity is now heaped as a whole upon the +publishers, who certainly need not dread the doom awaiting those of +whom the world speaks well. + +A tendency of the two trades to grow together again is perhaps +noticeable. For my part, I wish they would. Some publishers are +already booksellers, but the books they sell are usually only new +books. Now it is obvious that the true bookseller sells books both old +and new. Some booksellers are occasional publishers. May each +usurp--or, rather, reassume--the business of the other, whilst +retaining his own! + +The world, it must be admitted, owes a great deal of whatever +information it possesses about the professions, trades, and +occupations practised and carried on in its midst to those who have +failed in them. Prosperous men talk 'shop,' but seldom write it. The +book that tells us most about booksellers and bookselling in bygone +days is the work of a crack-brained fellow who published and sold in +the reigns of Queen Anne and George I., and died in 1733 in great +poverty and obscurity. I refer to John Dunton, whose _Life and +Errors_ in the edition in two volumes edited by J.B. Nichols, and +published in 1818, is a common book enough in the second-hand shops, +and one which may be safely recommended to everyone, except, indeed, +to the unfortunate man or woman who is not an adept in the art, craft, +or mystery of skipping. + +The book will strangely remind the reader of Amory's _Life of John +Buncle_--those queer volumes to which many a reader has been sent by +Hazlitt's intoxicating description of them in his _Round Table_, and +a few perhaps by a shy allusion contained in one of the essays of +Elia. The real John Dunton has not the boundless spirits of the +fictitious John Buncle; but in their religious fervour, their +passion for flirtation, their tireless egotism, and their love of +character-sketching, they greatly resemble one another. + +It is this last characteristic that imparts real value to Dunton's +book, and makes it, despite its verbiage and tortuosity, throb with +human interest. For example, he gives us a short sketch of no less +than 135 then living London booksellers in this style: 'Mr. Newton is +full of kindness and good-nature. He is affable and courteous in +trade, and is none of those men of forty whose religion is yet to +chuse, for his mind (like his looks) is serious and grave; and his +neighbours tell me his understanding does not improve too fast for his +practice, for he is not religious by start or sally, but is well fixed +in the faith and practice of a Church of England man--and has a +handsome wife into the bargain.' + +Most of the 135 booksellers were good men, according to Dunton, but +not all. 'Mr. Lee in Lombard Street. Such a pirate, such a cormorant +was never before. Copies, books, men, shops, all was one. He held no +propriety right or wrong, good or bad, till at last he began to be +known; and the booksellers, not enduring so ill a man among them, +spewed him out, and off he marched to Ireland, where he acted as +_felonious Lee_ as he did in London. And as Lee lived a thief, so he +died a hypocrite; for being asked on his death-bed if he would forgive +Mr. C. (that had formerly wronged him), "Yes," said Lee, "if I die, I +forgive him; but if I happen to live, I am resolved to be revenged on +him."' + +The Act of Union destroyed the trade of these pirates, but their +felonious editions of eighteenth-century authors still abound. Mr. +Gladstone, I need scarcely say, was careful in his Home Rule Bill +(which was denounced by thousands who never read a line of it) to +withdraw copyright from the scope of action of his proposed Dublin +Parliament. + +There are nearly eleven hundred brief character-sketches in Dunton's +book, of all sorts and kinds, but with a preference for bookish +people, divines, both of the Establishment and out of it, printers and +authors. Sometimes, indeed, the description is short enough, and tells +one very little. To many readers, references so curt to people of whom +they never heard, and whose names are recorded nowhere else, save on +their mouldering grave-stones, may seem tedious and trivial, but for +others they will have a strange fascination. Here are a few examples: + + 'Affable _Wiggins_. His conversation is general but never + impertinent. + + 'The kind and golden _Venables_. He is so good a man, and so truly + charitable, he that will write of him, must still write more. + + 'Mr. _Bury_--my old neighbour in Redcross Street. He is a plain + honest man, sells the best coffee in all the neighbourhood, and + lives in this world like a spiritual stranger and pilgrim in a + foreign country. + + 'Anabaptist (alias _Elephant_) _Smith_. He was a man of great + sincerity and happy contentment in all circumstances of life.' + +If an affection for passages of this kind be condemned as trivial, and +akin to the sentimentalism of the man in Calverley's poem who wept +over a box labelled 'This side up,' I will shelter myself behind +Carlyle, who was evidently deeply moved, as his review of Boswell's +Johnson proves, by the life-history of Mr. F. Lewis, 'of whose birth, +death, and whole terrestrial _res gestae_ this only, and, strange +enough, this actually, survives--"Sir, he lived in London, and hung +loose upon society. _Stat_ PARVI _hominis umbra_."' On that peg +Carlyle's imagination hung a whole biography. + +Dunton, who was the son of the Rector of Aston Clinton, was +apprenticed, about 1675, to a London bookseller. He had from the +beginning a great turn both for religion and love. He, to use his own +phrase, 'sat under the powerful ministry of Mr. Doolittle.' 'One +Lord's day, and I remember it with sorrow, I was to hear the Rev. Mr. +Doolittle, and it was then and there the beautiful Rachel Seaton gave +me that fatal wound.' + +The first book Dunton ever printed was by the Rev. Mr. Doolittle, and +was of an eminently religious character. + +'One Lord's Day (and I am very sensible of the sin) I was strolling +about just as my fancy led me, and, stepping into Dr. Annesley's +meeting-place--where, instead of engaging my attention to what the +Doctor said, I suffered both my mind and eyes to run at random--I soon +singled out a young lady that almost charmed me dead; but, having made +my inquiries, I found to my sorrow she was pre-engaged.' However, +Dunton was content with the elder sister, one of the three daughters +of Dr. Annesley. The one he first saw became the wife of the Reverend +Samuel Wesley, and the mother of John and Charles. The third daughter +is said to have been married to Daniel De Foe. + +As soon as he was out of his apprenticeship, Dunton set up business as +a publisher and bookseller. He says grimly enough: + + 'A man should be well furnished with an honest policy if he intends + to set out to the world nowadays. And this is no less necessary in + a bookseller than in any other tradesman, for in that way there are + plots and counter-plots, and a whole army of hackney authors that + keep their grinders moving by the travail of their pens. These + gormandizers will eat you the very life out of a _copy_ so soon as + ever it appears, for as the times go, _Original_ and _Abridgement_ + are almost reckoned as necessary as man and wife.' + +The mischief to which Dunton refers was permitted by the stupidity of +the judges, who refused to consider an abridgment of a book any +interference with its copyright. Some learned judges have, indeed, +held that an abridger is a benefactor, but as his benefactions are not +his own, but another's, a shorter name might be found for him. The law +on the subject is still uncertain. + +Dunton proceeds: 'Printing was now the uppermost in my thoughts, and +hackney authors began to ply me with _specimens_ as earnestly and +with as much passion and concern as the watermen do passengers with +_Oars_ and _Scullers_. I had some acquaintance with this generation in +my apprenticeship, and had never any warm affection for them, in +regard I always thought their great concern lay more in _how much a +sheet_, than in any generous respect they bore to the _Commonwealth of +Learning_; and indeed the learning itself of these gentlemen lies very +often in as little room as their honesty, though they will pretend to +have studied for six or seven years in the Bodleian Library, to have +turned over the Fathers, and to have read and digested the whole +compass both of human and ecclesiastic history, when, alas! they have +never been able to understand a single page of St. Cyprian, and cannot +tell you whether the Fathers lived before or after Christ.' + +Yet of one of this hateful tribe Dunton is able to speak well. He +declares Mr. Bradshaw to have been the best accomplished hackney +author he ever met with. He pronounces his style incomparably fine. He +had quarrelled with him, but none the less he writes: 'If Mr. Bradshaw +is yet alive, I here declare to the world and to him that I freely +forgive him what he owes, both in money and books, if he will only be +so kind as to make me a visit. But I am afraid the worthy gentleman is +dead, for he was wretchedly overrun with melancholy, and the very +blackness of it reigned in his countenance. He had certainly performed +wonders with his pen, had not his poverty pursued him and almost laid +the necessity upon him to be unjust.' + +All hackney authors were not poor. Some of the compilers and +abridgers made what even now would be considered by popular novelists +large sums. Scotsmen were very good at it. Gordon and Campbell became +wealthy men. If authors had a turn for politics, Sir Robert Walpole +was an excellent paymaster. Arnall, who was bred an attorney, is +stated to have been paid £11,000 in four years by the Government for +his pamphlets. + + 'Come, then, I'll comply. + Spirit of Arnall, aid me while I lie!' + +It cannot have been pleasant to read this, but then Pope belonged to +the opposition, and was a friend of Lord Bolingbroke, and would +consequently say anything. + +There is not a more interesting and artless autobiography to be read +than William Hutton's, the famous bookseller and historian of +Birmingham. Hutton has been somewhat absurdly called the English +Franklin. He is not in the least like Franklin. He has none of +Franklin's supreme literary skill, and he was a loving, generous, and +tender-hearted man, which Franklin certainly was not. Hutton's first +visit to London was paid in 1749. He walked up from Nottingham, spent +three days in London, and then walked back to Nottingham. The jaunt, +if such an expression is applicable, cost him eleven shillings less +fourpence. Yet he paid his way. The only money he spent to gain +admission to public places was a penny to see Bedlam. + +Interesting, however, as is Hutton's book, it tells us next to nothing +about book-selling, except that in his hands it was a prosperous +undertaking. + + + + +A FEW WORDS ABOUT COPYRIGHT IN BOOKS + + +Copyright, which is the exclusive liberty reserved to an author and +his assigns of printing or otherwise multiplying copies of his book +during certain fixed periods of time, is a right of modern origin. + +There is nothing about copyright in Justinian's compilations. + +It is a mistake to suppose that books did not circulate freely in the +era of manuscripts. St. Augustine was one of the most popular authors +that ever lived. His _City of God_ ran over Europe after a fashion +impossible to-day. Thousands of busy hands were employed, year out and +year in, making copies for sale of this famous treatise. Yet Augustine +had never heard of copyright, and never received a royalty on sales in +his life. + +The word 'copyright' is of purely English origin, and came into +existence as follows: + +The Stationers' Company was founded by royal charter in 1556, and from +the beginning has kept register-books, wherein, first, by decrees of +the Star Chamber, afterwards by orders of the Houses of Parliament, +and finally by Act of Parliament, the titles of all publications and +reprints have had to be entered prior to publication. + +None but booksellers, as publishers were then content to be called, +were members of the Stationers' Company, and by the usage of the +Company no entries could be made in their register-books except in the +names of members, and thereupon the book referred to in the entry +became the 'copy' of the member or members who had caused it to be +registered. + +By virtue of this registration the book became, in the opinion of the +Stationers' Company, the property _in perpetuity_ of the member or +members who had effected the registration. This was the 'right' of the +stationer to his 'copy.' + +Copyright at first is therefore not an author's, but a bookseller's +copyright. The author had no part or lot in it unless he chanced to be +both an author and a bookseller, an unusual combination in early days. +The author took his manuscript to a member of the Stationers' Company, +and made the best bargain he could for himself. The stationer, if +terms were arrived at, carried off the manuscript to his Company and +registered the title in the books, and thereupon became, in his +opinion, and in that of his Company, the owner, at common law, in +perpetuity of his 'copy.' + +The stationers, having complete control over their register-books, +made what entries they chose, and all kinds of books, even Homer and +the Classics, became the 'property' of its members. The booksellers, +nearly all Londoners, respected each other's 'copies,' and jealously +guarded access to their registers. From time to time there were sales +by auction of a bookseller's 'copies,' but the public--that is, the +country booksellers, for there were no other likely buyers--were +excluded from the sale-room. A great monopoly was thus created and +maintained by the trade. There was never any examination of title to a +bookseller's copy. Every book of repute was supposed to have a +bookseller for its owner. Bunyan's _Pilgrim's Progress_ was Mr. +Ponder's copy, Milton's _Paradise Lost_ Mr. Tonson's copy, _The Whole +Duty of Man_ Mr. Eyre's copy, and so on. The thing was a corrupt and +illegal trade combination. + +The expiration of the Licensing Act, and the consequent cessation of +the penalties it inflicted upon unlicensed printing, exposed the +proprietors of 'copies' to an invasion of their rights, real or +supposed, and in 1703, and again in 1706 and 1709, they applied to +Parliament for a Bill to protect them against the 'ruin' with which +they alleged themselves to be threatened.[A] + + [Footnote A: What the booksellers wanted was not to be left to their + common law remedy--_i.e._, an action of trespass on the case--but to + be supplied with penalties for infringement, and especially with the + right to seize and burn unauthorized editions.] + +In 1710 they got what they asked for in the shape of the famous +Statute of Queen Anne, the first copyright law in the world. A truly +English measure, ill considered and ill drawn, which did the very last +thing it was meant to do--viz., destroy the property it was intended +to protect. + +By this Act, in which the 'author' first makes his appearance actually +in front of the 'proprietor,' it was provided that, _in case of new +books_, the author and his assigns should have the sole right of +printing them for fourteen years, and if at the end of that time the +author was still alive, a second term of fourteen years was conceded. +In the case of _existing books_, there was to be but one term--viz., +twenty-one years, from August 10, 1710. + +Registration at the Stationers' Company was still required, but +nothing was said as to who might make the entries, or into whose names +they were to be made. + +Then followed the desired penalties for infringement. The booksellers +thought the terms of years meant no more than that the penalties were +to be limited by way of experiment to those periods. + +Many years flew by before the Stationers' Company discovered the +mischief wrought by the statute they had themselves promoted. To cut a +long matter short, it was not until 1774 that the House of Lords +decided that, whether there ever had been a perpetuity in literary +property at common law or not, it was destroyed by the Act of Queen +Anne, and that from and after the passing of that law neither author, +assignee, nor proprietor of 'copy' had any exclusive right of +multiplication, save for and during the periods of time the statute +created. + +It was a splendid fight--a Thirty Years' War. Great lawyers were fee'd +in it; luminous and lengthy judgments were delivered. Mansfield was a +booksellers' man; Thurlow ridiculed the pretensions of the Trade. It +can be read about in _Boswell's Johnson_ and in Campbell's _Lives of +the Lord Chancellors_. The authors stood supinely by, not contributing +a farthing towards the expenses. It was a booksellers' battle, and the +booksellers were beaten, as they deserved to be. + +All this is past history, in which the modern money-loving, motoring +author takes scant pleasure. Things are on a different footing now. +The Act of 1842 has extended the statutory periods of protection. The +perpetuity craze is over. A right in perpetuity to reprint Frank +Fustian's novel or Tom Tatter's poem would not add a penny to the +present value of the copyright of either of those productions. In +business short views must prevail. An author cannot expect to raise +money on his hope of immortality. Milton's publisher, good Mr. +Symonds, probably thought, if he thought about it at all, that he was +buying _Paradise Lost_ for ever when he registered it as his 'copy' in +the books of his Company; but into the calculations he made to +discover how much he could afford to give the author posterity did not +and could not enter. How was Symonds to know that Milton's fame was to +outlive Cleveland's or Flatman's? + +How many of the books published in 1905 would have any copyright cash +value in A.D. 2000? I do not pause for a reply. + +The modern author need have no quarrel with the statutory periods +fixed by the Act of 1842,[A] though common-sense has long since +suggested that a single term, the author's life and thirty or forty +years after, should be substituted for the alternative periods named +in the Act. + + [Footnote A: Author's life _plus_ seven years, or forty-two years + from date of publication, whichever term is the longer. The great + objection to the second term is that an author's books go out of + copyright at different dates, and the earlier editions go out + first.] + +What the modern author alone desiderates is a big, immediate, and +protected market. + +The United States of America have been a great disappointment to many +an honest British author. In the wicked old days when the States took +British books without paying for them they used to take them in large +numbers, but now that they have turned honest and passed a law +allowing the British author copyright on certain terms, they have in +great measure ceased to take; for, by the strangest of coincidences, +no sooner were British novels, histories, essays, and the like, +protected in America, than there sprang up in the States themselves, +novelists, historians, and essayists, not only numerous enough to +supply their own home markets, but talented enough to cross the +Atlantic in large numbers and challenge us in our own. Such a reward +for honesty was not contemplated. + +International copyright and the Convention of Berne are things to be +proud of and rejoice over. As the first chapter in a Code of Public +European Law, they may mark the beginning of a time of settled peace, +order, and disarmament, but they have not yet enriched a single +author, though hereafter possibly an occasional novelist or +play-wright may prosper greatly under their provisions. + +The copyright question is now at last really a settled question, save +in a single aspect of it. What, if anything, should be done in the +case of those authors, few in number, whose literary lives prove +longer than the period of statutory protection? Should any distinction +in law be struck between a Tennyson and a Tupper? between--But why +multiply examples? There is no need to be unnecessarily offensive. + +The law and practice of to-day give the meat that remains on the bones +of the dead author after the expiration of the statutory period of +protection to the Trade. Any publisher who likes to bring out an +edition can do so, though by doing so he does not gain any exclusive +rights. A brother publisher may compete with him. As a result +the public is usually well served with cheap editions of those +non-copyright authors whose works are worth reprinting the moment the +copyright expires. + +Some lovers of justice, however, think that it is unnecessary all at +once to endow the Trade with these windfalls, and that if an author's +family, or his or their assignees, were prepared to publish cheap +editions immediately after the expiration of the usual period of +protection, they ought to be allowed to do so for a further period of, +say, forty years. If they failed within a reasonable time either to do +so themselves or to arrange for others to do so, this extended period +should lapse. + +Were this to be the law nobody could say that it was unfair; but it is +never likely to be the law. It would take time for discussion, and now +there is no time left in which to discuss anything in Parliament. A +much-needed Copyright Bill has been in draft for years, has been +mentioned in Queen's and King's speeches, but it has never been read +even a first time. If it ever is read a first time, its only chance of +becoming law will be if it is taken in a lump, as it stands, without +consideration or amendment. To such a pass has legislation been +reduced in this country! + +This draft Bill does not contain any provision for specially +protecting the families of authors whose works long outlive their +mortal lives. It makes no invidious distinctions. It leaves all the +authors to hang together, the quick and the dead. Perhaps this is the +better way. + + + + +HANNAH MORE ONCE MORE + + +I have been told by more than one correspondent, and not always in +words of urbanity, that I owe an apology to the manes of Miss Hannah +More, whose works I once purchased in nineteen volumes for 8s. 6d., +and about whom in consequence I wrote a page some ten years ago.[A] + + [Footnote A: See _Collected Essays_, ii. 255.] + +To be accused of rudeness to a lady who exchanged witticisms with Dr. +Johnson, soothed the widowed heart of Mrs. Garrick, directed the early +studies of Macaulay, and in the spring of 1815 presented a small copy +of her _Sacred Dramas_ to Mr. Gladstone, is no light matter. To libel +the dead is, I know, not actionable--indeed, it is impossible; but +evil-speaking, lying, and slandering are canonical offences from which +the obligation to refrain knows no limits of time or place. + +I have often felt uneasy on this score, and never had the courage, +until this very evening, to read over again what in the irritation of +the moment I had been tempted to say about Miss Hannah More, after the +outlay upon her writings already mentioned. Eight shillings and +sixpence is, indeed, no great sum, but nineteen octavo volumes are a +good many books. Yet Richardson is in nineteen volumes in Mangin's +edition, and Swift is in nineteen volumes in Scott's edition, and +glorious John Dryden lacks but a volume to make a third example. True +enough; yet it will, I think, be granted me that you must be very fond +of an author, male or female, if nineteen octavo volumes, all his or +hers, are not a little irritating and provocative of temper. Think of +the room they take! As for selling them, it is not so easy to sell +nineteen volumes of a stone-dead author, particularly if you live +three miles from a railway-station and do not keep a trap. Elia, the +gentle Elia, as it is the idiotic fashion to call a writer who could +handle his 'maulies' in a fray as well as Hazlitt himself, has told us +how he could never see well-bound books he did not care about, but he +longed to strip them so that he might warm his ragged veterans in +their spoils. My copy of _Hannah More_ was in full calf, but never +once did it occur to me--though I, too, have many a poor author with +hardly a shirt to his back shivering in the dark corners of the +library--to strip her of her warm clothing. And yet I had to do +something, and quickly too, for sorely needed was Miss More's shelf. +So I buried the nineteen volumes in the garden. 'Out of sight, out of +mind,' said I cheerfully, stamping them down. + +This has hardly proved to be the case, for though Hannah More is +incapable of a literary resurrection, and no one of her nineteen +volumes has ever haunted my pillow, exclaiming, + + 'Think how thou stab'dst me in my prime of youth,' + +nevertheless, I have not been able to get quite rid of an uneasy +feeling that I was rude to her ten years ago in print--not, indeed, so +rude as was her revered friend Dr. Johnson 126 years ago to her face; +but then, I have not the courage to creep under the gabardine of our +great Moralist. + +When, accordingly, I saw on the counters of the trade the daintiest of +volumes, hailing, too, from the United States, entitled _Hannah +More_,[A] and perceived that it was a short biography and appreciation +of the lady on my mind, I recognised that my penitential hour had at +last come. I took the little book home with me, and sat down to read, +determined to do justice and more than justice to the once celebrated +mistress of Cowslip Green and Barley Wood. + + [Footnote A: _Hannah More_, by Marian Harland. New York and London: + G.P. Putnam.] + +Miss Harland's preface is most engaging. She reminds a married sister +how in the far-off days of their childhood in a Southern State their +Sunday reading, usually confined or sought to be confined, to 'bound +sermons and semi-detached tracts,' was enlivened by the _Works of +Hannah More_. She proceeds as follows: + + 'At my last visit to you I took from your bookshelves one of a set + of volumes in uniform binding of full calf, coloured mellowly by + the touch and the breath of fifty odd years. They belonged to the + dear old home library.... The leaves of the book I held fell apart + at _The Shepherd of Salisbury Plain_.' + +I leave my readers to judge how uncomfortable these innocent words +made me: + + 'The usher took six hasty strides + As smit with sudden pain.' + +I knew that set of volumes, their distressing uniformity of binding, +their full calf. Their very fellows lie mouldering in an East Anglian +garden, mellow enough by this time and strangely coloured. + +Circumstances alter cases. Miss Harland thinks that if the life of +Charlotte Brontë's mother had been mercifully spared, the authoress of +_Jane Eyre_ and _Villette_ might have grown up more like Hannah More +than she actually did. Perhaps so. As I say, circumstances alter +cases, and if the works of Hannah More had been in my old home +library, I might have read _The Shepherd of Salisbury Plain_ and +_The Search after Happiness_ of a Sunday, and found solace therein. +But they were not there, and I had to get along as best I could with +the _Pilgrim's Progress_, stories by A.L.O.E., the crime-stained +page of Mrs. Sherwood's _Tales from the Church Catechism_, and, +'more curious sport than that,' the _Bible in Spain_ of the +never-sufficiently-bepraised George Borrow. + +What, however, is a little odd about Miss Harland's enthusiasm for +Hannah More's writings is that it expires with the preface. _There_, +indeed, it glows with a beautiful light: + + 'And _The Search after Happiness!_ You cannot have forgotten all of + the many lines we learned by heart on Sunday afternoons in the + joyful spring-time when we were obliged to clear the pages every + few minutes of yellow jessamine bells and purple Wistaria petals + flung down by the warm wind.' + +This passage lets us into the secret. I suspect in sober truth both +Miss Harland and her sister have long since forgotten all the lines in +_The Search after Happiness_, but what they have never forgotten, what +they never can forget, are the jessamine bells and the Wistaria +petals, yellow and purple, blown about in the warm winds that visited +their now desolate and forsaken Southern home. Less beautiful things +than jessamine and Wistaria, if only they clustered round the house +where you were born, are remembered when the lines of far better +authors than Miss Hannah More have gone clean out of your head: + + 'As life wanes, all its cares and strife and toil + Seem strangely valueless, while the old trees + Which grew by our youth's home, the waving mass + Of climbing plants heavy with bloom and dew, + The morning swallows with their songs like words-- + All these seem dear, and only worth our thoughts.' + + +Thus the youthful Browning in his marvellous _Pauline_. The same note +is struck after a humbler and perhaps more moving fashion in the +following simple strain of William Allingham: + + 'Four ducks on a pond, + A grass-bank beyond; + A blue sky of spring, + White clouds on the wing; + How little a thing + To remember for years-- + To remember with tears!' + +If this be so--and who, looking into his own heart, but must own that +so it is?--it explains how it comes about that as soon as Miss Harland +finished her preface, got away from her childhood and began her +biography, she has so little to tell us about Miss More's books, and +from that little the personal note of enjoyment is entirely wanting. +Indeed, though a pious soul, she occasionally cannot restrain her +surprise how such ponderous commonplaces ever found a publisher, to +say nothing of a reader. + +'Such books as Miss More's,' she says, 'would to-day in America fall +from the press like a stone into the depths of the sea of oblivion, +creating no more sensation upon the surface than the bursting of a +bubble in mid-Atlantic.' + +And again: + +'That Hannah More was a power for righteousness in her long +generation we must take upon the testimony of her best and wisest +contemporaries.' + +However good may be your intentions, it seems hard to avoid being rude +to this excellent lady. + +I confess I never liked her love story. Anything more cold-blooded I +never read. I am not going to repeat it. Why should I? It is told at +length in Miss More's authorized biography in four volumes by William +Roberts, Esq. I saw a copy yesterday exposed for sale in New Oxford +Street, price 1s. Miss Harland also tells the tale, not without +chuckling. I refer the curious to her pages. + +Then there are those who can never get rid of the impression that +Hannah More 'fagged' her four sisters mercilessly; but who can tell? +Some people like being fagged. + +Precisely _when_ Miss More bade farewell to what in later life she was +fond of calling her gay days, when she wrote dull plays and went to +stupid Sunday parties, one finds it hard to discover, but at no time +did it ever come home to her that she needed repentance herself. She +seems always thinking of the sins and shortcomings of her neighbours, +rich and poor. Sometimes, indeed, when deluged with flattery, she +would intimate that she was a miserable sinner, but that is not what I +mean. She concerned herself greatly with the manners of the great, +and deplored their cards and fashionable falsehoods. John Newton, +captain as he had been of a slaver, saw the futility of such +pin-pricks: + +'The fashionable world,' so he wrote to Miss More, 'by their numbers +form a phalanx not easily impressible, and their habits of life are as +armour of proof which renders them not easily vulnerable. Neither the +rude club of a boisterous Reformer nor the pointed, delicate weapons +of the authoress before me can overthrow or rout them.' + +But Miss More never forgot to lecture the rich or to patronize the +poor. + +_Coelebs in Search of a Wife_ is an impossible book, and I do not +believe Miss Harland has read it; but as for the famous _Shepherd_, we +are never allowed to forget how Mr. Wilberforce declared a few years +before his death, to the admiration of the religious world, that he +would rather present himself in heaven with _The Shepherd of Salisbury +Plain_ in his hand than with--what think you?--_Peveril of the Peak_! +The bare notion of such a proceeding on anybody's part is enough to +strike one dumb with what would be horror, did not amazement swallow +up every other feeling. What rank Arminianism! I am sure the last +notion that ever would have entered the head of Sir Walter was to take +_Peveril_ to heaven. + +But whatever may be thought of the respective merits of Miss More's +nineteen volumes and Sir Walter's ninety-eight, there is no doubt that +Barley Wood was as much infested with visitors as ever was Abbotsford. +Eighty a week! + +'From twelve o'clock until three each day a constant stream of +carriages and pedestrians filled the evergreen bordered avenue +leading from the Wrington village road.' + +Among them came Lady Gladstone and W.E.G., aged six, the latter +carrying away with him the _Sacred Dramas_, to be preserved during a +long life. + +Miss More was a vivacious and agreeable talker, who certainly failed +to do herself justice with her pen. Her health was never good, yet, as +she survived thirty-five of her prescribing physicians, her vitality +must have been great. Her face in Opie's portrait is very pleasant. If +I was rude to her ten years ago, I apologize and withdraw; but as for +her books, I shall leave them where they are--buried in a cliff facing +due north, with nothing between them and the Pole but leagues upon +leagues of a wind-swept ocean. + + + + +ARTHUR YOUNG + + +The name of Arthur Young is a familiar one to all readers of that +history which begins with the forebodings of the French Revolution. +Thousands of us learnt to be interested in him as the 'good Arthur,' +'the excellent Arthur,' of Thomas Carlyle, a writer who had the art of +making not only his own narrative, but the sources of it, attractive. +Even 'Carrion-Heath,' in the famous introductory chapter to the +_Cromwell_, is invested with a kind of charm, whilst in the stormy +firmament of the _French Revolution_ the star of Arthur Young twinkles +with a mild effulgency. The autobiography of such a man could hardly +fail to be interesting.[A] The 'good Arthur' was born in 1741, the +younger son of a small 'squarson' who inherited from his father the +manor of Bradfield Combust, in Suffolk, but held the living of Thames +Ditton. Here he made the acquaintance of the Onslow family, and +Speaker Onslow was one of Arthur's godfathers. The Rev. Dr. Young died +in 1759, much in debt. The Bradfield property had been settled for +life on his wife, who had brought her husband some fortune, and to +the manor-house she retired to economize. + + [Footnote A: _The Autobiography of Arthur Young_. Edited by M. Betham + Edwards. Smith, Elder and Co.] + +Arthur's education had been muddled; and an attempt to make a merchant +of him having fallen through, he found himself, on his father's death, +aged eighteen, 'without education, profession, or employment,' and his +whole fortune, during his mother's life, consisting of a copyhold farm +of 20 acres, producing as many pounds. In these circumstances, to +think of literature was well-nigh inevitable, and, in 1762, the +autobiography tells us: + + 'I set on foot a periodical publication, entitled the _Universal + Museum_, which came out monthly, printed with glorious imprudence + on my own account. I waited on Dr. Johnson, who was sitting by the + fire so half-dressed and slovenly a figure as to make me stare at + him. I stated my plan, and begged that he would favour me with a + paper once a month, offering at the same time any remuneration that + he might name.' + +Here we see dimly prefigured a modern editor prematurely soliciting +the support of Great Names. But the Cham of literature, himself the +son of a bookseller, would have none of it. + + '"No, sir," he replied; "such a work would be sure to fail if the + booksellers have not the property, and you will lose a great deal + of money by it." + + '"Certainly, sir," I said, "if I am not fortunate enough to induce + authors of real talent to contribute." + + '"No, sir, you are mistaken; such authors will not support such a + work, nor will you persuade them to write in it. You will purchase + disappointment by the loss of your money, and I advise you by all + means to give up the plan." + + 'Somebody was introduced, and I took my leave.' + +The _Universal Museum_, none the less, appeared, but after five +numbers Young 'procured a meeting of ten or a dozen booksellers, and +had the luck and address to persuade them to take the whole scheme +upon themselves.' He then calmly adds, 'I believe no success ever +attended it.' It was, indeed, 100 years before its time. Literature +abandoned, Young took one of his mother's farms. 'I had no more idea +of farming than of physic or divinity,' nor did he, man of European +reputation as a farmer though he soon became, ever make farming pay. +He had an itching pen, and after four years' farming (1763-1766) he +published the result of his experience. Never, surely, before has an +author spoken of his first-born as in the autobiography Young speaks +of this publication: + + 'And the circumstance which perhaps of all others in my life I + most deeply regretted and considered as a sin of the blackest dye + was the publishing of my experience during these four years, + which, speaking as a farmer, was nothing but ignorance, folly, + presumption, and rascality.' + +None the less, it was writing this rascally book that seems to have +given him the idea of those agricultural tours which were to make his +name famous throughout the world. His Southern tour was in 1767, his +Northern in 1768, and his Eastern in 1770. The subject he specially +illuminated in these epoch-making books was the rotation of crops, +though he occasionally diverged upon deep-ploughing and kindred +themes. The tours excited, for the first time, the agricultural spirit +of Great Britain, and their author almost at once became a celebrated +man. + +In 1765 Young married the wrong woman, and started upon a career of +profound matrimonial discomfort, and even misery; a blunt, truthful +writer, he makes no bones about it. It was an unhappy marriage from +its beginning in 1765 to its end in 1815. Young himself, though by no +means vivacious in this autobiography, where he frankly complains of +himself as having no more wit than a fig, was a very popular person +with all classes and both sexes. He was an enormous diner-out, and his +authority as an agriculturist, united to his undeniable charm as a +companion, threw open to him all the great places in the country. But +his finances were a perpetual trouble. On carrot seeds and cabbages he +was an authority, but from 1766-1775 his income never exceeded £300 a +year. He had an excellent mother, whom he dearly loved, and who with +the characteristic bluntness of the family bade him think less about +carrots and more about his Creator. 'You may call all this rubbish if +you please, but a time will come when you will be convinced whose +notions are rubbish, yours or mine.' And the old lady was quite right, +as mothers so frequently turn out to be. In 1778 Young went over to +Ireland as agent to Lord Kingsborough. He got £500 down, and was to +have an annual salary of £500 and a house. Young soon got to work, and +became anxious to persuade his employer to let his lands direct to the +occupying cottar, and so get rid of the middlemen. This did not suit a +certain Major Thornhill, a relative and leaseholder, and thereupon a +pretty plot was hatched. Lady K. had a Catholic governess, a Miss +Crosby, upon whom it was thought my lord occasionally cast the eye of +partiality, whilst Arthur himself got on very well with her ladyship, +who was heard to pronounce him to be, as he was, 'one of the most +lively, agreeable fellows.' Out of these materials the Major and his +helpmeet concocted a double plot--namely, to make the lord jealous of +the steward, and the lady jealous of the governess, and to cause both +lord and lady respectively to believe that the steward was deeply +engaged both in abetting the amour of the lord and the governess, and +in prosecuting his own amour with the lady. The result was that both +governess and steward got notice to quit; but--and this is very +Irish--both went off with life annuities, the governess with one of +£50 per annum, and the steward with one of £72, and, what is still +more odd, we find Young at the end of his life in receipt of his +annuity. They were an expensive couple, these two. + +In 1780 Young published his _Irish Tour_, which was immediately +successful and popular in both kingdoms. In it he attacked the bounty +paid on the land-carriage of corn to Dublin. The bounty was, in the +session of Parliament next after the publication of Young's book, +reduced by one-half, and soon given up entirely. Young maintains that +this saved Ireland £80,000 a year. Nobody seems to have said 'Thank +you.' + +In May, 1783, was born the child 'Bobbin,' whose death, fourteen years +later, was to change the current of Young's life. The following year +Arthur Young paid his first visit to France, confining himself, +however, to Calais and its neighbourhood, and in the same year his +mother died, and, by an arrangement with his eldest brother, 'this +patch of landed property,' as Young calls Bradfield, descended upon +him. His first famous journey in France was made between May and +November, 1787, and cost the marvellously small sum of £118 15s. 2d. +His second and third French journeys were made in July, 1788, and in +June, 1789. The third was the longest, and extended into 1790. Three +years later Young was appointed, by Pitt, Secretary of the then Board +of Agriculture. A melancholy account is given by Young of a visit he +paid Burke at Gregory's in 1796. Young drove there in the chariot of +his fussy chief, Sir John Sinclair, to discover what Burke's +intentions might be as to an intended publication of his relating to +the price of labour. The account, which occupies four pages, is too +long for quotation. It concludes thus: + + 'I am glad once more to have seen and conversed with the man who I + hold to possess the greatest and most brilliant gifts of any penman + of the age in which he lived. Whose conversation has often + fascinated me, whose eloquence has charmed; whose writings have + delighted and instructed the world; whose name will without + question descend to the latest posterity. But to behold so great a + genius, so deepened with melancholy, stooping with infirmity of + body, feeling the anguish of a lacerated mind, and sinking to the + grave under accumulated misery--to see all this in a character I + venerate, and apparently without resource or comfort, wounded + every feeling of my soul, and I left him the next day almost as + low-spirited as himself.' + +But Young himself was soon to pass into the same Valley of the Shadow, +not so much of Death as of Joyless Life. His beloved and idolized +Bobbin died on July 14, 1797. She seems to have been a wise little +maiden, to whom her father wrote most affectionate letters, full of +rather unsuitable details, political and financial and otherwise, and +not scrupling to speak of the child's mother in a disagreeable manner. +Bobbin replies with delightful composure to these worrying letters: + + 'I have just got six of the most beautiful little rabbits you ever + saw; they skip about so prettily you can't think, and I shall have + some more in a few weeks. Having had so much physic, I am right + down tired of it. I take it still twice a day--my appetite is + better. What can you mind politics so for? I don't think about + them.--Well, good-bye, and believe me, dear papa, your dutiful + Daughter.' + +After poor little Bobbin's death, it happened to Arthur Young even as +his mother foretold. Carrots and crops and farming tours hastily +retreat, and we find the eminent agriculturist busying himself, with +the same seriousness and good faith he had devoted to the rotation of +the crops, with the sermons and treatises of Clarke and Jortin and +Secker and Tillotson, etc., and all to discover what had become of his +dear little Bobbin. His outlook upon the world was changed--the great +parties at Petworth, at Euston, at Woburn struck him differently; the +huge irreligion of the world filled him as for the first time with +amazement and horror: + + 'How few years are passed since I should have pushed on eagerly to + Woburn! This time twelve months I dined with the Duke on + Sunday--the party not very numerous, but chiefly of rank--the + entertainment more splendid than usual there. He expects me to-day, + but I have more pleasure in resting, going twice to church, and + eating a morsel of cold lamb at a very humble inn, than partaking + of gaiety and dissipation at a great table which might as well be + spread for a company of heathens as English lords and men of + fashion.' + +It is all mighty fine calling this religious hypochondria and +depression of spirits. It is one of the facts of life. Young stuck to +his post, and did his work, and quarrelled with his wife to the end, +or nearly so. He cannot have been so lively and agreeable a companion +as of old, for we find him in November, 1806, at Euston, endeavouring +to impress on the Duke of Grafton that by his tenets he had placed +himself entirely under the covenant of works, and that he must be +tried for them, and that 'I would not be in such a situation for ten +thousand worlds. He was mild and more patient than I expected.' +Perhaps, after all, Carlyle was not so far wrong when he praised our +aristocracy for their 'politeness.' In 1808 Young became blind. In +1815 his wife died. In 1820 he died himself, leaving behind him seven +packets of manuscript and twelve folio volumes of correspondence. + +Young's great work, _Travels during the Years 1787, 1788, and 1789, +undertaken more particularly with a View of Ascertaining the +Cultivation, Wealth, Resources, and National Prosperity of the Kingdom +of France_, published in 1792, is one of those books which will always +be a great favourite with somebody. It will outlive eloquence and +outstay philosophy. It contains some famous passages. + + + + +THOMAS PAINE + + +Proverbs are said to be but half-truths, but 'give a dog a bad name +and hang him' is a saying almost as veracious as it is felicitous; and +to no one can it possibly be applied with greater force than to Thomas +Paine, the rebellious staymaker, the bankrupt tobacconist, the amazing +author of _Common-sense_, _The Rights of Man_, and _The Age of Reason_. + +Until quite recently Tom Paine lay without the pale of toleration. No +circle of liberality was constructed wide enough to include him. Even +the scouted Unitarian scouted Thomas. He was 'the infamous Paine,' +'the vulgar atheist.' Whenever mentioned in pious discourse it was but +to be waved on one side as thus: 'No one of my hearers is likely to be +led astray by the scurrilous blasphemies of Paine.' + +I can well remember when an asserted intimacy with the writings of +Paine marked a man from his fellows and invested him in children's +minds with a horrid fascination. The writings themselves were only to +be seen in bookshops of evil reputation, and, when hastily turned over +with furtive glances, proved to be printed in small type and on +villainous paper. For a boy to have bought them and taken them inside +a decent home would have been to run the risk of fierce wrath in this +life and the threat of it in the next. If ever there was a hung dog, +his name was Tom Paine. + +But History is, as we know, for ever revising her records. None of her +judgments are final. A life of Thomas Paine, in two portly and +well-printed volumes, with gilt tops, wide margins, spare leaves at +the end, and all the other signs and tokens of literary +respectability, has lately appeared. No President, no Prime +Minister--nay, no Bishop or Moderator--need hope to have his memoirs +printed in better style than are these of Thomas Paine, by Mr. Moncure +D. Conway. Were any additional proof required of the complete +resuscitation of Paine's reputation, it might be found in the fact +that his life _is_ in two volumes, though it would have been far +better told in one. + +Mr. Conway believes implicitly in Paine--not merely in his virtue and +intelligence, but that he was a truly great man, who played a great +part in human affairs. He will no more admit that Paine was a +busybody, inflated with conceit and with a strong dash of insolence, +than he will that Thomas was a drunkard. That Paine's speech was +undoubtedly plain and his nose undeniably red is as far as Mr. Conway +will go. If we are to follow the biographer the whole way, we must not +only unhang the dog, but give him sepulture amongst the sceptred +Sovereigns who rule us from their urns. + +Thomas Paine was born at Thetford, in Norfolk, in January, 1737, and +sailed for America in 1774, then being thirty-seven years of age. Up +to this date he was a rank failure. His trade was staymaking, but he +had tried his hand at many things. He was twice an Excise officer, but +was twice dismissed the service, the first time for falsely +pretending to have made certain inspections which, in fact, he had not +made, and the second time for carrying on business in an excisable +article--tobacco, to wit--without the leave of the Board. Paine had +married the tobacconist's business, but neither the marriage nor the +business prospered; the second was sold by auction, and the first +terminated by mutual consent. + +Mr. Conway labours over these early days of his hero very much, but he +can make nothing of them. Paine was an Excise officer at Lewes, where, +so Mr. Conway reminds us, 'seven centuries before Paine opened his +office in Lewes, came Harold's son, possibly to take charge of the +Excise as established by Edward the Confessor, just deceased.' This +device of biographers is a little stale. The Confessor was guiltless +of the Excise. + +Paine's going to America was due to Benjamin Franklin, who made +Paine's acquaintance in London, and, having the wit to see his +ability, recommended him 'as a clerk or assistant-tutor in a school or +assistant-surveyor.' Thus armed, Paine made his appearance in +Philadelphia, where he at once obtained employment as editor of an +intended periodical called the _Pennsylvanian Magazine or American +Museum_, the first number of which appeared in January, 1775. Never +was anything luckier. Paine was, without knowing it, a born +journalist. His capacity for writing on the spur of the moment was +endless, and his delight in doing so boundless. He had no difficulty +for 'copy', though in those days contributors were few. He needed no +contributors. He was 'Atlanticus'; he was 'Vox Populi'; he was +'Aesop.' The unsigned articles were also mostly his. Having at last, +after many adventures and false starts, found his vocation, Paine +stuck to it. He spent the rest of his days with a pen in his hand, +scribbling his advice and obtruding his counsel on men and nations. +Both were usually of excellent quality. + +Paine was also happy in the moment of his arrival in America. The War +of Independence was imminent, and in April, 1775, occurred 'the +massacre of Lexington.' The Colonists were angry, but puzzled. They +hardly knew what they wanted. They lacked a definite opinion to +entertain and a cry to asseverate. Paine had no doubts. He hated +British institutions with all the hatred of a civil servant who has +had 'the sack.' + +In January, 1776, he published his pamphlet _Common-sense_, which must +be ranked with the most famous pamphlets ever written. It is difficult +to wade through now, but even _The Conduct of the Allies_ is not easy +reading, and yet between Paine and Swift there is a great gulf fixed. +The keynote of _Common-sense_ was separation once and for ever, and +the establishment of a great Republic of the West. It hit between wind +and water, had a great sale, and made its author a personage and, in +his own opinion, a divinity. + +Paine now became the penman of the rebels. His series of manifestoes, +entitled _The Crisis_, were widely read and carried healing on their +wings, and in 1777 he was elected Secretary to the Committee of +Foreign Affairs. Charles Lamb once declared that Rousseau was a good +enough Jesus Christ for the French, and he was capable of declaring +Tom Paine a good enough Milton for the Yankees. However that may be, +Paine was an indefatigable and useful public servant. He was a bad +gauger for King George, but he was an admirable scribe for a +revolution conducted on constitutional principles. + +To follow his history through the war would be tedious. What +Washington and Jefferson really thought of him we shall never know. +He was never mercenary, but his pride was wounded that so little +recognition of his astounding services was forthcoming. The +ingratitude of Kings was a commonplace; the ingratitude of peoples an +unpleasing novelty. But Washington bestirred himself at last, and +Paine was voted an estate of 277 acres, more or less, and a sum of +money. This was in 1784. + +Three years afterwards Thomas visited England, where he kept good +company and was very usefully employed engineering, for which +excellent pursuit he would appear to have had great natural aptitude. +Blackfriars Bridge had just tumbled down, and it was Paine's laudable +ambition to build its successor in iron. But the Bastille fell down as +well as Blackfriars Bridge, and was too much for Paine. As Mr. Conway +beautifully puts it: 'But again the Cause arose before him; he must +part from all--patent interests, literary leisure, fine society--and +take the hand of Liberty undowered, but as yet unstained. He must beat +his bridge-iron into a key that shall unlock the British Bastille, +whose walls he sees steadily closing around the people.' 'Miching +mallecho--this means mischief;' and so it proved. + +Burke is responsible for the _Rights of Man_. This splendid +sentimentalist published his _Reflections on the Revolution in France_ +in November, 1790. Paine immediately sat down in the Angel, Islington, +and began his reply. He was not unqualified to answer Burke; he had +fought a good fight between the years 1775 and 1784. Mr. Conway has +some ground for his epigram, 'where Burke had dabbled, Paine had +dived.' There is nothing in the _Rights of Man_ which would now +frighten, though some of its expressions might still shock, a +lady-in-waiting; but to profess Republicanism in 1791 was no joke, and +the book was proclaimed and Paine prosecuted. Acting upon the advice +of William Blake (the truly sublime), Paine escaped to France, where +he was elected by three departments to a seat in the Convention, and +in that Convention he sat from September, 1792, to December, 1793, +when he was found quarters in the Luxembourg Prison. + +This invitation to foreigners to take part in the conduct of the +French Revolution was surely one of the oddest things that ever +happened, but Paine thought it natural enough so far, at least, as he +was concerned. He could not speak a word of French, and all his +harangues had to be translated and read to the Convention by a +secretary, whilst Thomas stood smirking in the Tribune. His behaviour +throughout was most creditable to him. He acted with the Girondists, +and strongly opposed and voted against the murder of the King. His +notion of a revolution was one by pamphlet, and he shrank from deeds +of blood. His whole position was false and ridiculous. He really +counted for nothing. The members of the Convention grew tired of his +doctrinaire harangues, which, in fact, bored them not a little; but +they respected his enthusiasm and the part he had played in America, +whither they would gladly he had returned. Who put him in prison is a +mystery. Mr. Conway thinks it was the American Minister in Paris, +Gouverneur Morris. He escaped the guillotine, and was set free after +ten months' confinement. + +All this time Washington had not moved a finger in behalf of the +author of _Common-sense_ and _The Crisis_. Amongst Paine's papers this +epigram was found: + + 'ADVICE TO THE STATUARY WHO IS TO EXECUTE THE + STATUE OF WASHINGTON. + + Take from the mine the coldest, hardest stone; + It needs no fashion--it is Washington. + But if you chisel, let the stroke be rude, + And on his heart engrave--"Ingratitude."' + +This is hard hitting. + +So far we have only had the Republican Paine, the outlaw Paine; the +atheist Paine has not appeared. He did so in the _Age of Reason_, +first published in 1794-1795. The object of this book was religious. +Paine was a vehement believer in God and in the Divine government of +the world, but he was not, to put it mildly, a Bible Christian. Nobody +now is ever likely to read the _Age of Reason_ for instruction or +amusement. Who now reads even Mr. Greg's _Creed of Christendom_, which +is in effect, though not in substance, the same kind of book? Paine +was a coarse writer, without refinement of nature, and he used brutal +expressions and hurled his vulgar words about in a manner certain to +displease. Still, despite it all, the _Age of Reason_ is a religious +book, though a singularly unattractive one. + +Paine remained in France advocating all kinds of things, including a +descent on England, the abduction of the Royal Family, and a Free +Constitution. Napoleon sought him out, and assured him that he +(Napoleon) slept with the _Rights of Man_ under his pillow. Paine +believed him. + +In 1802 Paine returned to America, after fifteen years' absence. + +'Thou stricken friend of man,' exclaims Mr. Conway in a fine passage, +'who hast appealed from the God of Wrath to the God of Humanity, see +in the distance that Maryland coast which early voyagers called +Avalon, and sing again your song when first stepping on that shore +twenty-seven years ago.' + +The rest of Paine's life was spent in America without distinction or +much happiness. He continued writing to the last, and died bravely on +the morning of June 8, 1809. + +The Americans did not appreciate Paine's theology, and in 1819 allowed +Cobbett to carry the bones of the author of _Common-sense_ to England, +where--'as rare things will,' so, at least, Mr. Browning sings--they +vanished. Nobody knows what has become of them. + +As a writer Paine has no merits of a lasting character, but he had a +marvellous journalistic knack for inventing names and headings. He is +believed to have concocted the two phrases 'The United States of +America' and 'The Religion of Humanity.' Considering how little he had +read, his discourses on the theory of government are wonderful, and +his views generally were almost invariably liberal, sensible, and +humane. What ruined him was an intolerable self-conceit, which led him +to believe that his own productions superseded those of other men. He +knew off by heart, and was fond of repeating, his own _Common-sense_ +and the _Rights of Man_. He was destitute of the spirit of research, +and was wholly without one shred of humility. He was an oddity, a +character, but he never took the first step towards becoming a great +man. + + + + +CHARLES BRADLAUGH[A] + + + [Footnote A: _Charles Bradlaugh: A Record of His Life and Work_. By + his daughter, Hypatia Bradlaugh Bonner. Two vols. London: T. Fisher + Unwin, 1894.] + +Mr. Bradlaugh was a noticeable man, and his life, even though it +appears in the unwelcome but familiar shape of two octavo volumes, is +a noticeable book. It is useless to argue with biographers; they, at +all events, are neither utilitarians nor opportunists, but idealists +pure and simple. What is the good of reminding them, being so +majestical, of Guizot's pertinent remark, 'that if a book is +unreadable it will not be read,' or of the older saying, 'A great book +is a great evil'? for all such observations they simply put on one +side as being, perhaps, true for others, but not for them. Had _Mr. +Bradlaugh's Life_ been just half the size it would have had, at least, +twice as many readers. + +The pity is all the greater because Mrs. Bonner has really performed a +difficult task after a noble fashion and in a truly pious spirit. Her +father's life was a melancholy one, and it became her duty as his +biographer to break a silence on painful subjects about which he had +preferred to say nothing. His reticence was a manly reticence; though +a highly sensitive mortal, he preferred to put up with calumny rather +than lay bare family sorrows and shame. His daughter, though compelled +to break this silence, has done so in a manner full of dignity and +feeling. The ruffians who in times past slandered the moral character +of Bradlaugh will not probably read his life, nor, if they did, would +they repent of their baseness. The willingness to believe everything +evil of an adversary is incurable, springing as it does from a habit +of mind. It was well said by Mr. Mill: 'I have learned from experience +that many false opinions may be exchanged for true ones, without in +the least altering the habits of mind of which false opinions are the +result.' Now that Mr. Bradlaugh is dead, no purpose is served by +repeating false accusations as to his treatment of his wife, or of his +pious brother, or as to his disregard of family ties; but the next +atheist who crops up must not expect any more generous treatment than +Bradlaugh received from that particularly odious class of persons of +whom it has been wittily said that so great is their zeal for +religion, they have never time to say their prayers. + +Mr. Bradlaugh will, I suppose, be hereafter described in the +dictionaries of biography as 'Freethinker and Politician.' Of the +politician there is here no need to speak. He was a Radical of the +old-fashioned type. When he first stood for Northampton in 1868, his +election address was made up of tempting dishes, which afterwards +composed Mr. Chamberlain's famous but unauthorized programme of 1885, +with minority representation thrown in. Unpopular thinkers who have +been pelted with stones by Christians, slightly the worse for liquor, +are apt to think well of minorities. Mr. Bradlaugh's Radicalism had +an individualistic flavour. He thought well of thrift, thereby +incurring censure. Mr. Bradlaugh's politics are familiar enough. What +about his freethinking? English freethinkers may be divided into two +classes--those who have been educated and those who have had to +educate themselves. The former class might apply to their own case the +language once employed by Dr. Newman to describe himself and his +brethren of the Oratory: + + 'We have been nourished for the greater part of our lives in the + bosom of the great schools and universities of Protestant England; + we have been the foster foster-sons of the Edwards and Henries, the + Wykehams and Wolseys, of whom Englishmen are wont to make so much; + we have grown up amid hundreds of contemporaries, scattered at + present all over the country in those special ranks of society + which are the very walk of a member of the legislature.' + +These first-class free-thinkers have an excellent time of it, and, to +use a fashionable phrase, 'do themselves very well indeed.' They move +freely in society; their books lie on every table; they hob-a-nob with +Bishops; and when they come to die, their orthodox relations gather +round them, and lay them in the earth 'in the sure and certain +hope'--so, at least, priestly lips are found willing to assert--'of +the resurrection to eternal life through our Lord Jesus Christ.' And +yet there was not a dogma of the Christian faith in which they were in +a position to profess their belief. + +The free-thinkers of the second class, poor fellows! have hitherto led +very different lives. Their foster-parents have been poverty and +hardship; their school education has usually terminated at eleven; all +their lives they have been desperately poor; alone, unaided, they +have been left to fight the battle of a Free Press. + +Richard Carlile, as honourable a man as most, and between whose +religious opinions and (let us say) Lord Palmerston's there was +probably no difference worth mentioning, spent nine out of the +fifty-two years of his life in prison. Attorney-Generals, and, indeed, +every degree of prosecuting counsel have abused this kind of +free-thinker, not merely with professional impunity, but amidst +popular applause. Judges, speaking with emotion, have exhibited the +utmost horror of atheistical opinions, and have railed in good set +terms at the wretch who has been dragged before them, and have then, +at the rising of the court, proceeded to their club and played cards +till dinner-time with a first-class free-thinker for partner. + +This is natural and easily accounted for, but we need not be surprised +if, in the biographies of second-class freethinkers, bitterness is +occasionally exhibited towards the well-to-do brethren who decline +what Dr. Bentley, in his Boyle Lectures, called 'the public odium and +resentment of the magistrate.' + +Mr. Bradlaugh was a freethinker of the second class. His father was a +solicitor's clerk on a salary which never exceeded £2 2s. a week; his +mother had been a nursery-maid; and he himself was born in 1833 in +Bacchus Walk, Hoxton. At seven he went to a national school, but at +eleven his school education ended, and he became an office-boy. At +fourteen he was a wharf-clerk and cashier to a coal-merchant. His +parents were not much addicted to church-going, but Charles was from +the first a serious boy, and became at a somewhat early age a +Sunday-school teacher at St. Peter's, Hackney Road. The incumbent, in +order to prepare him for Confirmation, set him to work to extract the +Thirty-nine Articles out of the four Gospels. Unhappy task, worthy to +be described by the pen of the biographer of John Sterling. The +youthful wharfinger could not find the Articles in the Gospels, and +informed the Rev. J.G. Packer of the fact. His letter conveying this +intelligence is not forthcoming, and probably enough contained +offensive matter, for Mr. Packer seems at once to have denounced young +Bradlaugh as one engaged in atheistical inquiries, to have suspended +him from the Sunday-school, to have made it very disagreeable for him +at home and with his employer, and to have wound up by giving him +three days to change his views or to lose his place. + +Mr. Packer has been well abused, but it has never been the fashion to +treat youthful atheists with much respect. When Coleridge confided to +the Rev. James Boyer that he (S.T. Coleridge) was inclined to atheism, +the reverend gentleman had him stripped and flogged. Mr. Packer, +however, does seem to have been too hasty, for Bradlaugh did not +formally abandon his beliefs until some months after his suspension. +He retired for a short season, and studied Hebrew under Mr. James +Savage, of Circus Street, Marylebone. He emerged an unbeliever, aged +sixteen. Expelled from his wharf, he sold coal on commission, but his +principal, if not his only customer, the wife of a baker, discovering +that he was an infidel, gave him no more orders, being afraid, so she +said, that her bread would smell of brimstone. + +In 1850 Bradlaugh published his first pamphlet, _A Few Words on the +Christian Creed_, and dedicated it to the unhappy Mr. Packer. But +starvation stared him in the face, and in the same year he enlisted in +the 7th Dragoon Guards, and spent the next three years in Ireland, +where he earned a good character, and on more occasions than one +showed that adroitness for which he was afterwards remarkable. + +In October, 1853, his mother and sister with great difficulty raised +the £30 necessary to buy his discharge, and Bradlaugh returned to +London, not only full grown, but well fed. Had he not taken the +Queen's shilling he never would have lived to fight the battle he did. + +He became a solicitor's clerk on a miserably small pay, and took to +lecturing as 'Iconoclast.' In 1855 he was married at St. Philip's +Church, Stepney. His lectures and discussions began to assume great +proportions, and covered more than twenty years of his life. Terribly +hard work they were. Profits there were none, or next to none. Few men +have endured greater hardships. + +In 1860 the _National Reformer_ was started, and his warfare in the +courts began. In 1868 he first stood for Northampton, which he +unsuccessfully contested three times. In April, 1880, he was returned +to Parliament, and then began the famous struggle with which the +constitutional historian will have to deal. After this date the facts +are well known. Bradlaugh died on January 30, 1891. + +His life was a hard one from beginning to end. He had no advantages. +Nobody really helped him or influenced him or mollified him. He had +never either money or repose; he had no time to travel, except as a +propagandist, no time to acquire knowledge for its own sake; he was +often abused but seldom criticised. In a single sentence, he was never +taught the extent of his own ignorance. + +His attitude towards the Christian religion and the Bible was a +perfectly fair one, and ought not to have brought down upon him any +abuse whatever. There are more ways than one of dealing with religion. +It may be approached as a mystery or as a series of events supported +by testimony. If the evidence is trustworthy, if the witnesses are +irreproachable, if they submit successfully to examination and +cross-examination, then, however remarkable or out of the way may be +the facts to which they depose, they are entitled to be believed. This +is a mode of treatment with which we are all familiar, whether as +applied to the Bible or to the authority of the Church. Nobody is +expected to believe in the authority of the Church until satisfied +by the exercise of his reason that the Church in question possesses +'the notes' of a true Church. This was the aspect of the question +which engaged Bradlaugh's attention. He was critical, legal. He +took objections, insisted on discrepancies, cross-examined as to +credibility, and came to the conclusion that the case for the +supernatural was not made out. And this he did not after the +first-class fashion in the study or in octavo volumes, but in the +street. His audiences were not Mr. Mudie's subscribers, but men and +women earning weekly wages. The coarseness of his language, the +offensiveness of his imagery, have been greatly exaggerated. It is now +a good many years since I heard him lecture in a northern town on the +Bible to an audience almost wholly composed of artisans. He was bitter +and aggressive, but the treatment he was then experiencing accounted +for this. As an avowed atheist he received no quarter, and he might +fairly say with Wilfred Osbaldistone, 'It's hard I should get raps +over the costard, and only pay you back in make-believes.' + +It was not what Bradlaugh said, but the people he said it to, that +drew down upon him the censure of the magistrate, and (unkindest cut +of all) the condemnation of the House of Commons. + +Of all the evils from which the lovers of religion do well to pray +that their faith may be delivered, the worst is that it should ever +come to be discussed across the floor of the House of Commons. The +self-elected champions of the Christian faith who then ride into the +lists are of a kind well calculated to make Piety hide her head for +very shame. Rowdy noblemen, intemperate country gentlemen, sterile +lawyers, cynical but wealthy sceptics who maintain religion as another +fence round their property, hereditary Nonconformists whose God is +respectability and whose goal a baronetcy, contrive, with a score or +two of bigots thrown in, to make a carnival of folly, a veritable +devil's dance of blasphemy. The debates on Bradlaugh's oath-taking +extended over four years, and will make melancholy reading for +posterity. Two figures, and two figures only, stand out in solitary +grandeur, those of a Quaker and an Anglican--Bright and Gladstone. + +The conclusion which an attentive reading of Mr. Bradlaugh's biography +forces upon me is that in all probability he was the last freethinker +who will be exposed, for many a long day (it would be more than +usually rash to write 'ever'), to pains and penalties for uttering his +unbelief. It is true the Blasphemy Laws are not yet repealed; it may +be true for all I know that Christianity is still part and parcel +of the common law; it is possibly an indictable offence to lend +_Literature and Dogma_ and _God and the Bible_ to a friend; but, +however these things may be, Mr. Bradlaugh's stock-in-trade is now +free of the market-place, where just at present, at all events, its +price is low. It has become pretty plain that neither the Fortress of +Holy Scripture nor the Rock of Church Authority is likely to be taken +by storm. The Mystery of Creation, the unsolvable problem of matter, +continue to press upon us more heavily than ever. Neither by Paleys +nor by Bradlaughs will religion be either bolstered up or pulled down. +Sceptics and Sacramentarians must be content to put up with one +another's vagaries for some time to come. Indeed, the new socialists, +though at present but poor theologians (one hasty reading of _Lux +Mundi_ does not make a theologian), are casting favourable eyes +upon Sacramentarianism, deeming it to have a distinct flavour of +Collectivism. Calvinism, on the other hand, is considered repulsively +individualistic, being based upon the notion that it is the duty of +each man to secure his own salvation. + +But whether Bradlaugh was the last of his race or not, he was a +brave man whose life well deserves an honourable place amongst the +biographies of those Radicals who have suffered in the cause of +Free-thought, and into the fruits of whose labours others have +entered. + + + + +DISRAELI _EX RELATIONE_ SIR WILLIAM FRASER + + +The late Sir William Fraser was not, I have been told, a popular +person in that society about which he thought so much, and his book, +_Disraeli and His Day_, did not succeed in attracting much of the +notice of the general reader, and failed, so I, at least, have been +made to understand, to win a verdict of approval from the really well +informed. + +I consider the book a very good one, in the sense of being valuable. +Whatever your mood may be, that of the moralist, cynic, satirist, +humourist, whether you love, pity, or despise your fellow-man, here is +grist for your mill. It feeds the mind. + +Although in form the book is but a stringing together of stories, +incidents, and aphorisms, still the whole produces a distinct effect. +To state what that effect is would be, I suppose, the higher +criticism. It is not altogether disagreeable; it is decidedly amusing; +it is clever and somewhat contemptible. Sir William Fraser was a +baronet who thought well of his order. He desiderated a tribunal to +determine the right to the title, and he opined that the courtesy +prefix of 'Honourable,' which once, it appears, belonged to baronets, +should be restored to them. Apart from these opinions, ridiculous and +peculiar, Sir William Fraser stands revealed in this volume as cast in +a familiar mould. The words 'gentleman,' 'White's,' 'Society,' often +flow from his pen, and we may be sure were engraven on his heart. He +had seen a world wrecked. When he was young, so he tells his readers, +the world consisted of at least three, and certainly not more than +five, hundred persons who were accustomed night after night during the +season to make their appearance at a certain number of houses, which +are affectionately enumerated. A new face at any one of these +gatherings immediately attracted attention, as, indeed, it is easy to +believe it would. 'Anything for a change,' as somebody observes in +_Pickwick_. + +This is the atmosphere of the book, and Sir William breathes in it +very pleasantly. Endowed by Nature with a retentive memory and a +literary taste, active if singular, he may be discovered in his own +pages moving up and down, in and out of society, supplying and +correcting quotations, and gratifying the vanity of distinguished +authors by remembering their own writings better than they did +themselves. The book makes one clearly comprehend what a monstrous +clever fellow the rank and file of the Tory party must have felt Sir +William Fraser to be. This, however, is only background. In the front +of the picture we have the mysterious outlines, the strange +personality, struggling between the bizarre and the romantic, of 'the +Jew,' as big George Bentinck was ever accustomed to denominate his +leader. Sir William Fraser's Disraeli is a very different figure from +Sir Stafford Northcote's. The myth about the pocket Sophocles is +rudely exploded. Sir William is certain that Disraeli could not have +construed a chapter of the Greek Testament. He found such mythology +as he required where many an honest fellow has found it before him--in +Lemprière's Dictionary. His French accent, as Sir William records it, +was most satisfactory, and a conclusive proof of his _bonâ-fides_. +Disraeli, it is clear, cared as little for literature as he did for +art. He admired Gray, as every man with a sense for epithet must; he +studied Junius, whose style, so Sir William Fraser believes, he +surpassed in his 'Runnymede' letters. Sir William Fraser kindly +explains the etymology of this strange word 'Runnymede,' as he also +does that of 'Parliament,' which he says is '_Parliamo mente_' (Let us +speak our minds). Sir William clearly possessed the learning denied to +his chief. + +Beyond apparently imposing upon Sir Stafford Northcote, Disraeli +himself never made any vain pretensions to be devoted to pursuits for +which he did not care a rap. He once dreamt of an epic poem, and his +early ambition urged him a step or two in that direction, but his +critical faculty, which, despite all his monstrosities of taste, was +vital, restrained him from making a fool of himself, and he forswore +the muse, puffed the prostitute away, and carried his very saleable +wares to another market, where his efforts were crowned with +prodigious success. Sir William Fraser introduces his great man to us +as observing, in reply to a question, that revenge was the passion +which gives pleasure the latest. A man, he continued, will enjoy that +when even avarice has ceased to please. As a matter of fact, Disraeli +himself was neither avaricious nor revengeful, and, as far as one can +judge, was never tempted to be either. This is the fatal defect of +almost all Disraeli's aphorisms: they are dead words, whilst the +words of a true aphorism have veins filled with the life of their +utterer. Nothing of this sort ever escaped the lips of our modern +Sphinx. If he had any faiths, any deep convictions, any rooted +principles, he held his tongue about them. He was, Sir William tells +us, an indolent man. It is doubtful whether he ever did, apart from +the preparation and delivery of his speeches, what would be called by +a professional man a hard day's work in his life. He had courage, wit, +insight, instinct, prevision, and a thorough persuasion that he +perfectly understood the materials he had to work upon and the tools +within his reach. Perhaps no man ever gauged more accurately or more +profoundly despised that 'world' Sir William Fraser so pathetically +laments. For folly, egotism, vanity, conceit, and stupidity, he had an +amazing eye. He could not, owing to his short sight, read men's faces +across the floor of the House, but he did not require the aid of any +optic nerve to see the petty secrets of their souls. His best sayings +have men's weaknesses for their text. Sir William's book gives many +excellent examples. One laughs throughout. + +Sir William would have us believe that in later life Disraeli clung +affectionately to dulness--to gentle dulness. He did not want to be +surrounded by wits. He had been one himself in his youth, and he +questioned their sincerity. It would almost appear from passages in +the book that Disraeli found even Sir William Fraser too pungent for +him. Once, we are told, the impenetrable Prime Minister quailed before +Sir William's reproachful oratory. The story is not of a cock and a +bull, but of a question put in the House of Commons by Sir William, +who was snubbed by the Home Secretary, who was cheered by Disraeli. +This was intolerable, and accordingly next day, being, as good luck +would have it, a Friday, when, as all men and members know, 'it is in +the power of any member to bring forward any topic he may choose,' Sir +William naturally chose the topic nearest to his heart, and 'said a +few words on my wrongs.' + + 'During my performance I watched Disraeli narrowly. I could not see + his face, but I noticed that whenever I became in any way + disagreeable--in short, whenever my words really bit--they were + invariably followed by one movement. Sitting as he always did with + his right knee over his left, whenever the words touched him he + moved the pendant leg twice or three times, then curved his foot + upwards. I could observe no other sign of emotion, but this was + distinct. Some years afterwards, on a somewhat more important + occasion at the Conference at Berlin, a great German philosopher, + Herr ----, went to Berlin on purpose to study Disraeli's character. + He said afterwards that he was most struck by the more than Indian + stoicism which Disraeli showed. To this there was one exception. + "Like all men of his race, he has one sign of emotion which never + fails to show itself--the movement of the leg that is crossed over + the other, and of the foot!" The person who told me this had never + heard me hint, nor had anyone, that I had observed this peculiar + symptom on the earlier occasion to which I have referred.' + +Statesmen of Jewish descent, with a reputation for stoicism to +preserve, would do well to learn from this story not to swing their +crossed leg when tired. The great want about Mr. Disraeli is something +to hang the countless anecdotes about him upon. Most remarkable men +have some predominant feature of character round which you can build +your general conception of them, or, at all events, there has been +some great incident in their lives for ever connected with their +names, and your imagination mixes the man and the event together. Who +can think of Peel without remembering the Corn Laws and the +reverberating sentence: 'I shall leave a name execrated by every +monopolist who, for less honourable motives, clamours for Protection +because it conduces to his own individual benefit; but it may be that +I shall leave a name sometimes remembered with expressions of +good-will in the abode of those whose lot it is to labour and to earn +their daily bread with the sweat of their brow, when they shall +recruit their exhausted strength with abundant and untaxed food, the +sweeter because it is no longer leavened with a sense of injustice.' +But round what are our memories of Disraeli to cluster? Sir William +Fraser speaks rapturously of his wondrous mind and of his intellect, +but where is posterity to look for evidences of either? Certainly not +in Sir William's book, which shows us a wearied wit and nothing more. +Carlyle once asked, 'How long will John Bull permit this absurd +monkey'--meaning Mr. Disraeli--'to dance upon his stomach?' The +question was coarsely put, but there is nothing in Sir William's book +to make one wonder it should have been asked. Mr. Disraeli lived to +offer Carlyle the Grand Cross of the Order of the Bath, and that, in +Sir William's opinion, is enough to dispose of Carlyle's vituperation; +but, after all, the Grand Cross is no answer to anything except an +application for it. + +A great many other people are made to cross Sir William Fraser's +stage. His comments upon them are lively, independent, and original. +He liked Cobden and hated Bright. The reason for this he makes quite +plain. He thinks he detected in Cobden a deprecatory manner--a +recognition of the sublime truth that he, Richard Cobden, had not been +half so well educated as the mob of Tories he was addressing. Bright, +on the other band, was fat and rude, and thought that most country +gentlemen and town-bred wits were either fools or fribbles. This was +intolerable. Here was a man who not only could not have belonged to +the 'world,' but honestly did not wish to, and was persuaded--the +gross fellow--that he and his world were better in every respect than +the exclusive circles which listened to Sir William Fraser's _bon +mots_ and tags from the poets. Certainly there was nothing deprecatory +about John Bright. He could be quite as insolent in his way as any +aristocrat in his. He had a habit, we are told, of slowly getting up +and walking out of the House in the middle of Mr. Disraeli's speeches, +and just when that ingenious orator was leading up to a carefully +prepared point, and then immediately returning behind the Speaker's +chair. If this is true, it was perhaps rude, but nobody can deny that +it is a Tory dodge of indicating disdain. What was really irritating +about Mr. Bright was that his disdain was genuine. He did think very +little of the Tory party, and he did not care one straw for the +opinion of society. He positively would not have cared to have been +made a baronet. Sir William Fraser seems to have been really fond of +Disraeli, and the very last time he met his great man in the Carlton +Club he told him a story too broad to be printed. The great man +pronounced it admirable, and passed on his weary way. + + + + +A CONNOISSEUR + + +It must always be rash to speak positively about human nature, whose +various types of character are singularly tough, and endure, if not +for ever, for a very long time; yet some types do seem to show signs +of wearing out. The connoisseur, for example, here in England is +hardly what he was. He has specialized, and behind him there is now +the bottomless purse of the multi-millionaire, who buys as he is +bidden, and has no sense of prices. If the multi-millionaire wants a +thing, why should he not have it? The gaping mob, penniless but +appreciative, looks on and cheers his pluck. + +Mr. Frederick Locker, about whom I wish to write a few lines, was an +old-world connoisseur, the shy recesses of whose soul Addison might +have penetrated in the page of a _Spectator_--and a delicate operation +it would have been. + +My father-in-law was only once in the witness-box. I had the felicity +to see him there. It was a dispute about the price of a picture, and +in the course of his very short evidence he hazarded the opinion that +the grouping of the figures (they were portraits) was in bad taste. +The Judge, the late Mr. Justice Cave, an excellent lawyer of the old +school, snarled out, 'Do you think you could explain to _me_ what is +taste?' Mr. Locker surveyed the Judge through the eye-glass which +seemed almost part of his being, with a glance modest, deferential, +deprecatory, as if suggesting 'Who am _I_ to explain anything to +_you_?' but at the same time critical, ironical, and humorous. It was +but for one brief moment; the eyeglass dropped, and there came the +mournful answer, as from a man baffled at all points: 'No, my lord; I +should find it impossible!' The Judge grunted a ready, almost a +cheerful, assent. + +Properly to describe Mr. Locker, you ought to be able to explain both +to judge and jury what you mean by taste. He sometimes seemed to me to +be _all_ taste. Whatever subject he approached--was it the mystery of +religion, or the moralities of life, a poem or a print, a bit of old +china or a human being--whatever it might be, it was along the avenue +of taste that he gently made his way up to it. His favourite word of +commendation was _pleasing_, and if he ever brought himself to say +(and he was not a man who scattered his judgments, rather was he +extremely reticent of them) of a man, and still more of a woman, that +he or she was _unpleasing_, you almost shuddered at the fierceness of +the condemnation, knowing, as all Locker's intimate friends could not +help doing, what the word meant to him. 'Attractive' was another of +his critical instruments. He meets Lord Palmerston, and does not find +him 'attractive' (_My Confidences_, p. 155). + +This is a temperament which when cultivated, as it was in Mr. Locker's +case, by a life-long familiarity with beautiful things in all the arts +and crafts, is apt to make its owner very susceptible to what some +stirring folk may not unjustly consider the trifles of life. Sometimes +Locker might seem to overlook the dominant features, the main object +of the existence, either of a man or of some piece of man's work, in +his sensitively keen perception of the beauty, or the lapse from +beauty, of some trait of character or bit of workmanship. This may +have been so. Mr. Locker was more at home, more entirely his own +delightful self, when he was calling your attention to some humorous +touch in one of Bewick's tail-pieces, or to some plump figure in a +group by his favourite Stothard than when handling a Michael Angelo +drawing or an amazing Blake. Yet, had it been his humour, he could +have played the showman to Michael Angelo and Blake at least as well +as to Bewick, Stothard, or Chodowiecki. But a modesty, marvellously +mingled with irony, was of the very essence of his nature. No man +expatiated less. He never expounded anything in his born days; he very +soon wearied of those he called 'strong' talkers. His critical method +was in a conversational manner to direct your attention to something +in a poem or a picture, to make a brief suggestion or two, perhaps to +apply an epithet, and it was all over, but your eyes were opened. +Rapture he never professed, his tones were never loud enough to +express enthusiasm, but his enjoyment of what he considered good, +wherever he found it--and he was regardless of the set judgments of +the critics--was most intense and intimate. His feeling for anything +he liked was fibrous: he clung to it. For all his rare books and +prints, if he liked a thing he was very tolerant of its _format_. He +would cut a drawing out of a newspaper, frame it, hang it up, and be +just as tender towards it as if it were an impression with the unique +_remarque_. + +Mr. Locker had probably inherited his virtuoso's whim from his +ancestors. His great-grandfather was certified by Johnson in his life +of Addison to be a gentleman 'eminent for curiosity and literature,' +and though his grandfather, the Commodore, who lives for ever in our +history as the man who taught Nelson the lesson that saved an +Empire--'Lay a Frenchman close, and you will beat him'--was no +collector, his father, Edward Hawke Locker, though also a naval man, +was not only the friend of Sir Walter Scott, but a most judicious +buyer of pictures, prints, and old furniture. + +Frederick Locker was born in 1821, in Greenwich Hospital, where Edward +Hawke Locker was Civil Commissioner. His mother was the daughter of +one of the greatest book-buyers of his time, a man whose library it +took nine days to disperse--the Rev. Jonathan Boucher, the friend and +opponent of George Washington, an ecclesiastic who might have been +first Bishop of Edinburgh, but who died a better thing, the Vicar of +Epsom. + +Frederick Locker grew up among pretty things in the famous hospital. +Water-colours by Lawrence, Prout, Girtin, Turner, Chinnery, Paul +Sandby, Cipriani, and other masters; casts after Canova; mezzotints +after Sir Joshua; Hogarth's famous picture of David Garrick and his +wife, now well hung in Windsor Castle, were about him, and early +attracted his observant eye. Yet the same things were about his elder +brother Arthur, an exceedingly clever fellow, who remained quite +curiously impervious to the impressiveness of pretty things all his +days. + +Locker began collecting on his own account after his marriage, in +1850, to a daughter of Lord Byron's enemy, the Lord Elgin, who brought +the marbles from Athens to Bloomsbury. His first object, at least so +he thought, was to make his rooms pretty. From the beginning of his +life as a connoisseur he spared himself no pains, often trudging +miles, when not wanted at the Admiralty Office, in search of his prey. +If any mercantile-minded friend ever inquired what anything had cost, +he would be answered with a rueful smile, 'Much shoe leather.' He +began with old furniture, china, and bric-à -brac, which ere long +somewhat inconveniently filled his small rooms. Prices rose, and means +in those days were as small as the rooms. No more purchases of Louis +Seize and blue majolica and Palissy ware could be made. Drawings by +the old masters and small pictures were the next objects of the chase. +Here again the long purses were soon on his track, and the pursuit had +to be abandoned, but not till many treasures had been garnered. Last +of all he became a book-hunter, beginning with little volumes of +poetry and the drama from 1590 to 1610; and as time went on the +boundaries expanded, but never so as to include black letter. + +I dare not say Mr. Locker had all the characteristics of a great +collector, or that he was entirely free from the whimsicalities of the +tribe of connoisseurs, but he was certainly endowed with the chief +qualifications for the pursuit of rarities, and remained clear of the +unpleasant vices that so often mar men's most innocent avocations. Mr. +Locker always knew what he wanted and what he did not want, and never +could be persuaded to take the one for the other; he did not grow +excited in the presence of the quarry; he had patience to wait, and +to go on waiting, and he seldom lacked courage to buy. + +He rode his own hobby-horse, never employing experts as buyers. For +quantity he had no stomach. He shrank from numbers. He was not a +Bodleian man; he had not the sinews to grapple with libraries. He was +the connoisseur throughout. Of the huge acquisitiveness of a Heber or +a Huth he had not a trace. He hated a crowd, of whatsoever it was +composed. He was apt to apologize for his possessions, and to +depreciate his tastes. As for boasting of a treasure, he could as +easily have eaten beef at breakfast. + +So delicate a spirit, armed as it was for purposes of defence with a +rare gift of irony and a very shrewd insight into the weaknesses and +noisy falsettos of life, was sure to be misunderstood. The dull and +coarse witted found Locker hard to make out. He struck them as +artificial and elaborate, perhaps as frivolous, and yet they felt +uneasy in his company lest there should be a lurking ridicule behind +his quiet, humble demeanour. There was, indeed, always an element of +mockery in Locker's humility. + +An exceedingly spiteful account of him, in which it is asserted that +'most of his rarest books are miserable copies' (how book-collectors +can hate one another!), ends with the reluctant admission: 'He was +eminently a gentleman, however, and his manners were even courtly, yet +virile.' Such extorted praise is valuable. + +I can see him now before me, with a nicely graduated foot-rule in his +delicate hand, measuring with grave precision the height to a hair of +his copy of _Robinson Crusoe_ (1719), for the purpose of ascertaining +whether it was taller or shorter than one being vaunted for sale in a +bookseller's catalogue just to hand. His face, one of much refinement, +was a study, exhibiting alike a fixed determination to discover the +exact truth about the copy and a humorous realization of the inherent +triviality of the whole business. Locker was a philosopher as well as +a connoisseur. + +The Rowfant Library has disappeared. Great possessions are great +cares. 'But ships are but boards, sailors but men; there be land-rats, +water-thieves, and land-thieves--I mean pirates; and then there is the +peril of waters, winds and rocks.' To this list the nervous owner of +rare books must add fire, that dread enemy of all the arts. It is +often difficult to provide stabling for dead men's hobby-horses. It +were perhaps absurd in a world like this to grow sentimental over a +parcel of old books. Death, the great unbinder, must always make a +difference. + +Mr. Locker's poetry now forms a volume of the _Golden Treasury +Series_. The _London Lyrics_ are what they are. They have been well +praised by good critics, and have themselves been made the subject of +good verse. + + 'Apollo made one April day + A new thing in the rhyming way; + Its turn was neat, its wit was clear, + It wavered 'twixt a smile and tear. + Then Momus gave a touch satiric, + And it became a _London Lyric_.' + AUSTIN DOBSON. + +In another copy of verses Mr. Dobson adds: + + 'Or where discern a verse so neat, + So well-bred and so witty-- + So finished in its least conceit, + So mixed of mirth and pity?' + + 'Pope taught him rhythm, Prior ease, + Praed buoyancy and banter; + What modern bard would learn from these? + Ah, _tempora mutantur_!' + +Nothing can usefully be added to criticism so just, so searching, and +so happily expressed. + +Some of the _London Lyrics_ have, I think, achieved what we poor +mortals call immortality--a strange word to apply to the piping of so +slender a reed, to so slight a strain--yet + + 'In small proportions we just beauties see.' + +It is the simplest strain that lodges longest in the heart. Mr. +Locker's strains are never precisely _simple_. The gay enchantment of +the world and the sense of its bitter disappointments murmur through +all of them, and are fatal to their being simple, but the +unpretentiousness of a _London Lyric_ is akin to simplicity. + +His relation to his own poetry was somewhat peculiar. A critic in +every fibre, he judged his own verses with a severity he would have +shrunk from applying to those of any other rhyming man. He was deeply +dissatisfied, almost on bad terms, with himself, yet for all that he +was convinced that he had written some very good verses indeed. His +poetry meant a great deal to him, and he stood in need of sympathy and +of allies against his own despondency. He did not get much sympathy, +being a man hard to praise, for unless he agreed with your praise it +gave him more pain than pleasure. + +I am not sure that Mr. Dobson agrees with me, but I am very fond of +Locker's paraphrase of one of Clément Marot's _Epigrammes_; and as the +lines are redolent of his delicate connoisseurship, I will quote both +the original (dated 1544) and the paraphrase: + + 'DU RYS DE MADAME D'ALLEBRET + + 'Elle a très bien ceste gorge d'albastre, + Ce doulx parler, ce cler tainct, ces beaux yeulx: + Mais en effect, ce petit rys follastre, + C'est à mon gré ce qui lui sied le mieulx; + Elle en pourroit les chemins et les lieux + Où elle passé à plaisir inciter; + Et si ennuy me venoit contrister + Tant que par mort fust ma vie abbatue, + Il me fauldroit pour me resusciter + Que ce rys la duguel elle me tue.' + + 'How fair those locks which now the light wind stirs! + What eyes she has, and what a perfect arm! + And yet methinks that little laugh of hers-- + That little laugh--is still her crowning charm. + Where'er she passes, countryside or town, + The streets make festa and the fields rejoice. + Should sorrow come, as 'twill, to cast me down, + Or Death, as come he must, to hush my voice, + Her laugh would wake me just as now it thrills me-- + That little, giddy laugh wherewith she kills me.' + +'Tis the very laugh of Millamant in _The Way of the World_! 'I would +rather,' cried Hazlitt, 'have seen Mrs. Abington's Millamant than any +Rosalind that ever appeared on the stage.' Such wishes are idle. +Hazlitt never saw Mrs. Abington's Millamant. I have seen Miss Ethel +Irving's Millamant, _dulce ridentem_, and it was that little giddy +laugh of hers that reminded me of Marot's Epigram and of Frederick +Locker's paraphrase. So do womanly charms endure from generation to +generation, and it is one of the duties of poets to record them. + +In 1867 Mr. Locker published his _Lyra Elegantiarun. A Collection of +Some of the Best Specimens of Vers de Société and Vers d'Occasion in +the English Languages by Deceased Authors_. In his preface Locker gave +what may now be fairly called the 'classical' definition of the verses +he was collecting. '_Vers de société_ and _vers d'occasion_ should' +(so he wrote) 'be short, elegant, refined and fanciful, not seldom +distinguished by heightened sentiment, and often playful. The tone +should not be pitched high; it should be idiomatic and rather in the +conversational key; the rhythm should be crisp and sparkling, and the +rhyme frequent and never forced, while the entire poem should be +marked by tasteful moderation, high finish and completeness; for +however trivial the subject-matter may be--indeed, rather in +proportion to its triviality, subordination to the rules of +composition and perfection of execution should be strictly enforced. +The definition may be further illustrated by a few examples of pieces, +which, from the absence of some of the foregoing qualities, or from +the excess of others, cannot be properly regarded as _vers de +société_, though they may bear a certain generic resemblance to that +species of poetry. The ballad of "John Gilpin," for example, is too +broadly and simply ludicrous; Swift's "Lines on the Death of +Marlborough," and Byron's "Windsor Poetics," are too savage and +truculent; Cowper's "My Mary" is far too pathetic; Herrick's lyrics to +"Blossoms" and "Daffodils" are too elevated; "Sally in our Alley" is +too homely and too entirely simple and natural; while the "Rape of the +Lock," which would otherwise be one of the finest specimens of _vers +de société_ in any language, must be excluded on account of its +length, which renders it much too important.' + +I have made this long quotation because it is an excellent example of +Mr. Locker's way of talking about poets and poetry, and of his +intimate, searching, and unaffected criticism. + +_Lyra Elegantiarum_ is a real, not a bookseller's collection. Mr. +Locker was a great student of verse. There was hardly a stanza of any +English poet, unless it was Spenser, for whom he had no great +affection, which he had not pondered over and clearly considered as +does a lawyer his cases. He delighted in a complete success, and +grieved over any lapse from the fold of metrical virtue, over any +ill-sounding rhyme or unhappy expression. The circulation of _Lyra +Elegantiarum_ was somewhat interfered with by a 'copyright' question. +Mr. Locker had a great admiration for Landor's short poems, and +included no less than forty-one of them, which he chose with the +utmost care. Publishers are slow to perceive that the best chance of +getting rid of their poetical wares (and Landor was not popular) is to +have attention called to the artificer who produced them. The +Landorian publisher objected, and the _Lyra_ had to be 'suppressed'--a +fine word full of hidden meanings. The second-hand booksellers, a wily +race, were quick to perceive the significance of this, and have for +more than thirty years obtained inflated prices for their early +copies, being able to vend them as possessing the _Suppressed Verses_. +There is a great deal of Locker in this collection. To turn its pages +is to renew intercourse with its editor. + +In 1879 another little volume instinct with his personality came into +existence and made friends for itself. He called it _Patchwork_, and +to have given it any other name would have severely taxed his +inventiveness. It is a collection of stories, of _ana_, of quotations +in verse and prose, of original matter, of character-sketches, of +small adventures, of table-talk, and of other things besides, if other +things, indeed, there be. If you know _Patchwork_ by heart you are +well equipped. It is intensely original throughout, and never more +original than when its matter is borrowed. Readers of _Patchwork_ had +heard of Mr. Creevey long before Sir Herbert Maxwell once again let +that politician loose upon an unlettered society. + +The book had no great sale, but copies evidently fell into the hands +of the more judicious of the pressmen, who kept it by their sides, and +every now and again + + 'Waled a portion with judicious care' + +for quotation in their columns. The _Patchwork_ stories thus got into +circulation one by one. Kind friends of Mr. Locker's, who had been +told, or had discovered for themselves, that he was somewhat of a wag, +would frequently regale him with bits of his own _Patchwork_, +introducing them to his notice as something they had just heard, which +they thought he would like--murdering his own stories to give him +pleasure. His countenance on such occasions was a _rendezvous_ of +contending emotions, a battlefield of rival forces. Politeness ever +prevailed, but it took all his irony and sad philosophy to hide his +pain. _Patchwork_ is such a good collection of the kind of story he +liked best that it was really difficult to avoid telling him a story +that was _not_ in it. I made the blunder once myself with a Voltairean +anecdote. Here it is as told in _Patchwork_: 'Voltaire was one day +listening to a dramatic author reading his comedy, and who said, "Ici +le chevalier rit!" He exclaimed: "Le chevalier est _bien_ heureux!"' I +hope I told it fairly well. He smiled sadly, and said nothing, not +even _Et tu, Brute_! + +In 1886 Mr. Locker printed for presentation a catalogue of his printed +books, manuscripts, autograph letters, drawings, and pictures. Nothing +of his own figures in this catalogue, and yet in a very real sense the +whole is his. Most of the books are dispersed, but the catalogue +remains, not merely as a record of rareties and bibliographical +details dear to the collector's heart, but as a token of taste. Just +as there is, so Wordsworth reminds us, 'a spirit in the woods,' so is +there still, brooding over and haunting the pages of the 'Rowfant +Catalogue,' the spirit of true connoisseurship. In the slender lists +of Locker's 'Works' this book must always have a place. + +Frederick Locker died at Rowfant on May 30, 1895, leaving behind him, +carefully prepared for the press, a volume he had christened _My +Confidences: An Autographical Sketch addressed to My Descendants_. + +In due course the book appeared, and was misunderstood at first by +many. It cut a strange, outlandish figure among the crowd of casual +reminiscences it externally resembled. Glancing over the pages of _My +Confidences_, the careless library subscriber encountered the usual +number of names of well-known personages, whose appearance is supposed +by publishers to add sufficient zest to reminiscences to secure +for them a sale large enough, at any rate, to recoup the cost of +publication. Yet, despite these names, Mr. Locker's book is completely +unlike the modern memoir. Beneath a carefully-constructed, and +perhaps slightly artificially maintained, frivolity of tone, the book +is written in deadly earnest. Not for nothing did its author choose as +one of the mottoes for its title-page, 'Ce ne sont mes gestes que +j'écrie; c'est moy.' It may be said of this book, as of Senancour's +_Oberman_: + + 'A fever in these pages burns; + Beneath the calm they feign, + A wounded human spirit turns + Here on its bed of pain.' + +The still small voice of its author whispers through _My Confidences_. +Like Montaigne's _Essays_, the book is one of entire good faith, and +strangely uncovers a personality. + +As a tiny child Locker was thought by his parents to be very like Sir +Joshua Reynolds' picture of Puck, an engraving of which was in the +home at Greenwich Hospital, and certainly Locker carried to his +grave more than a suspicion of what is called Puckishness. In _My +Confidences_ there are traces of this quality. + +Clearly enough the author of _London Lyrics_, the editor of _Lyra +Elegantiarum_, of _Patchwork_, and the whimsical but sincere compiler +of _My Confidences_ was more than a mere connoisseur, however much +connoisseurship entered into a character in which taste played so +dominant a part. + +Stronger even than taste was his almost laborious love of kindness. +He really took too much pains about it, exposing himself to rebuffs +and misunderstandings; but he was not without his rewards. All +down-hearted folk, sorrowful, disappointed people, the unlucky, the +ill-considered, the _mésestimés_--those who found themselves condemned +to discharge uncongenial duties in unsympathetic society, turned +instinctively to Mr. Locker for a consolation, so softly administered +that it was hard to say it was intended. He had friends everywhere, in +all ranks of life, who found in him an infinity of solace, and for his +friends there was nothing he would not do. It seemed as if he could +not spare himself. I remember his calling at my chambers one hot day +in July, when he happened to have with him some presents he was in +course of delivering. Among them I noticed a bust of Voltaire and an +unusually lively tortoise, generally half-way out of a paper bag. +Wherever he went he found occasion for kindness, and his whimsical +adventures would fill a volume. I sometimes thought it would really be +worth while to leave off the struggle for existence, and gently to +subside into one of Lord Rowton's homes in order to have the pleasure +of receiving in my new quarters a first visit from Mr. Locker. How +pleasantly would he have mounted the stair, laden with who knows what +small gifts?--a box of mignonette for the window-sill, an old book or +two, as likely as not a live kitten, for indeed there was never an end +to the variety or ingenuity of his offerings! How felicitous would +have been his greeting! How cordial his compliments! How abiding the +sense of his unpatronizing friendliness! But it was not to be. One can +seldom choose one's pleasures. + +In his _Patchwork_ Mr. Locker quotes Gibbon's encomium on Charles +James Fox. Anyone less like Fox than Frederick Locker it might be hard +to discover, but fine qualities are alike wherever they are found +lodged; and if Fox was as much entitled as Locker to the full benefit +of Gibbon's praise, he was indeed a good fellow. + +'In his tour to Switzerland Mr. Fox gave me two days of free and +private society. He seemed to feel and even to envy the happiness of +my situation, while I admired the powers of a superior man as they are +blended in his character with the softness and simplicity of a child. +_Perhaps no human being was ever more perfectly exempted from the +taint of malevolence, vanity, and falsehood._' + + + + +OUR GREAT MIDDLE CLASS + + +The republication of Mr. Arnold's _Friendship's Garland_ after an +interval of twenty-seven years may well set us all a-thinking. Here it +is, in startling facsimile--the white covers, destined too soon to +become black, the gilt device, the familiar motto. As we gazed upon +it, we found ourselves exclaiming, so vividly did it recall the past: + + 'It is we, it is we, who have changed.' + +_Friendship's Garland_ was a very good joke seven-and-twenty years +ago, and though some of its once luminous paint has been rubbed off, +and a few of its jests have ceased to effervesce, it is a good joke +still. Mr. Bottle's mind, qua mind; the rowdy Philistine Adolescens +Leo, Esq.; Dr. Russell, of the _Times_, mounting his war-horse; the +tale of how Lord Lumpington and the Rev. Esau Hittall got their +degrees at Oxford; and many another ironic thrust which made the +reader laugh 'while the hair was yet brown on his head,' may well make +him laugh still, 'though his scalp is almost hairless, and his +figure's grown convex.' Since 1871 we have learnt the answer to the +sombre lesson, 'What is it to grow old?' But, thank God! we can laugh +even yet. + +The humour and high spirits of _Friendship's Garland_ were, however, +but the gilding of a pill, the artificial sweetening of a nauseous +draught. In reality, and joking apart, the book is an indictment at +the bar of _Geist_ of the English people as represented by its middle +class and by its full-voiced organ, the daily press. Mr. Arnold +invented Arminius to be the mouthpiece of this indictment, the +traducer of our 'imperial race,' because such blasphemies could not +artistically have been attributed to one of the number. He made +Arminius a Prussian because in those far-off days Prussia stood for +Von Humboldt and education and culture, and all the things Sir Thomas +Bazley and Mr. Miall were supposed to be without. Around the central +figure of Arminius the essentially playful fancy of Mr. Arnold grouped +other figures, including his own. What an old equity draughtsman would +call 'the charging parts' of the book consist in the allegations that +the Government of England had been taken out of the hands of an +aristocracy grown barren of ideas and stupid beyond words, and +entrusted to a middle class without noble traditions, wretchedly +educated, full of _Ungeist_, with a passion for clap-trap, only +wanting to be left alone to push trade and make money; so ignorant as +to believe that feudalism can be abated without any heroic Stein, by +providing that in one insignificant case out of a hundred thousand, +land shall not follow the feudal law of descent; without a single +vital idea or sentiment or feeling for beauty or appropriateness; well +persuaded that if more trade is done in England than anywhere else, if +personal independence is without a check, and newspaper publicity +unbounded, that is, by the nature of things, to be great; misled every +morning by the magnificent _Times_ or the 'rowdy' _Telegraph_; +desperately prone to preaching to other nations, proud of being able +to say what it likes, whilst wholly indifferent to the fact that it +has nothing whatever to say. + +Such, in brief, is the substance of this most agreeable volume. Its +message was lightly treated by the grave and reverend seigniors of the +State. The magnificent _Times_, the rowdy _Telegraph_, continued to +preach their gospels as before; but for all that Mr. Arnold found an +audience fit, though few, and, of course, he found it among the people +he abused. The barbarians, as he called the aristocracy, were not +likely to pay heed to a professor of poetry. Our working classes +were not readers of the _Pall Mall Gazette_ or purchasers of +four-and-sixpenny tracts bound in white cloth. No; it was the middle +class, to whom Mr. Arnold himself belonged, who took him to honest +hearts, stuck his photograph upon their writing-tables, and sounded +his praises so loudly that his fame even reached the United States of +America, where he was promptly invited to lecture, an invitation he +accepted. But for the middle classes Mr. Arnold would have had but a +poor time of it. They did not mind being insulted; they overlooked +exaggeration; they pardoned ignorance--in a word, they proved +teachable. Yet, though meek in spirit, they have not yet inherited the +earth; indeed, there are those who assert that their chances are gone, +their sceptre for ever buried. It is all over with the middle-class. +Tuck up its muddled head! Tie up its chin! + +A rabble of bad writers may now be noticed pushing their vulgar way +along, who, though born and bred in the middle classes, and disfigured +by many of the very faults Mr. Arnold deplored, yet make it a test of +their membership, an 'open sesame' to their dull orgies, that all +decent, sober-minded folk, who love virtue, and, on the whole, prefer +delicate humour to sickly lubricity, should be labelled 'middle +class.' + +Politically, it cannot but be noticed that, for good or for ill, the +old middle-class audience no longer exists in its integrity. The +crowds that flocked to hear Cobden and Bright, that abhorred slavery, +that cheered Kossuth, that hated the income-tax, are now watered down +by a huge population who do not know, and do not want to know, what +the income-tax is, but who do want to know what the Government is +going to do for them in the matter of shorter hours, better wages, and +constant employment. Will the rabble, we wonder, prove as teachable as +the middle class? Will they consent to be told their faults as meekly? +Will they buy the photograph of their physician, or heave half a brick +at him? It remains to be seen. In the meantime it would be a mistake +to assume that the middle class counts for nothing, even at an +election. As to ideas, have we got any new ones since 1871? 'To be +consequent and powerful,' says Arminius, 'men must be bottomed on some +vital idea or sentiment which lends strength and certainty to their +action.' There are those who tell us that we have at last found this +vital idea in those conceptions of the British Empire which Mr. +Chamberlain so vigorously trumpets. To trumpet a conception is hardly +a happy phrase, but, as Mr. Chamberlain plays no other instrument, it +is forced upon me. Would that we could revive Arminius, to tell us +what he thinks of our new Ariel girdling the earth with twenty Prime +Ministers, each the choicest product of a self-governing and +deeply-involved colony. Is it a vital or a vulgar idea? Is it merely a +big theory or really a great one? Is it the ornate beginning of a +Time, or but the tawdry ending of a period? At all events, it is an +idea unknown to Arminius von Thunder-Ten-Tronckh, and we ought to be, +and many are, thankful for it. + + + + +TAR AND WHITEWASH + + +I am, I confess it, hard to please. If a round dozen of Bad Women, all +made in England too, does not satisfy me, what will? What ails the +fellow at them? Yet was I at first dissatisfied, and am, therefore, +glad to notice that whilst I was demurring and splitting hairs the +great, generous public was buying the _Lives of Twelve Bad Women_, by +Arthur Vincent, and putting it into a second edition. This is as it +should be. When the excellent Dean Burgon dubbed his dozen biographies +_Twelve Good Men_, it probably never occurred to him that the title +suggested three companion volumes; but so it did, and two of them, +_Twelve Bad Men_ and _Twelve Bad Women_, have made their appearance. I +still await, with great patience, _Twelve Good Women_. Twelve was the +number of the Apostles. Had it not been, one might be tempted to ask, +Why twelve? But as there must be some limit to bookmaking, there is no +need to quarrel with an arithmetical limit. + +My criticism upon the Dean's dozen was that they were not by any +means, all of them, conspicuously good men; for, to name one only, who +would call old Dr. Routh, the President of Magdalen, a particularly +good man? In a sense, all Presidents, Provosts, Principals, and +Masters of Colleges are good men--in fact, they must be so by the +statutes--but to few of them are given the special notes of goodness. +Dr. Routh was a remarkable man, a learned man, perhaps a pious +man--undeniably, when he came to die, an old man--but he was no better +than his colleagues. This weakness of classification has run all +through the series, and it is my real quarrel with it. I do not +understand the principle of selection. I did not understand the Dean's +test of goodness, nor do I understand Mr. Seccombe's or Mr. Vincent's +test of badness. What do we mean by a good man or a bad one, a good +woman or a bad one? Most people, like the young man in the song, are +'not very good, nor yet very bad.' We move about the pastures of life +in huge herds, and all do the same things, at the same times, and for +the same reasons. 'Forty feeding like one.' Are we mean? Well, we have +done some mean things in our time. Are we generous? Occasionally we +are. Were we good sons or dutiful daughters? We have both honoured and +dishonoured our parents, who, in their turn, had done the same by +theirs. Do we melt at the sight of misery? Indeed we do. Do we forget +all about it when we have turned the corner? Frequently that is so. Do +we expect to be put to open shame at the Great Day of Judgment? We +should be terribly frightened of this did we not cling to the hope +that amidst the shocking revelations then for the first time made +public our little affairs may fail to attract much notice. Judged by +the standards of humanity, few people are either good or bad. 'I have +not been a great sinner,' said the dying Nelson; nor had he--he had +only been made a great fool of by a woman. Mankind is all tarred with +the same brush, though some who chance to be operated upon when the +brush is fresh from the barrel get more than their share of the tar. +The biography of a celebrated man usually reminds me of the outside of +a coastguardsman's cottage--all tar and whitewash. These are the two +condiments of human life--tar and whitewash--the faults and the +excuses for the faults, the passions and pettinesses that make us +occasionally drop on all fours, and the generous aspirations that at +times enable us, if not to stand upright, at least to adopt the +attitude of the kangaroo. It is rather tiresome, this perpetual game +of French and English going on inside one. True goodness and real +badness escape it altogether. A good man does not spend his life +wrestling with the Powers of Darkness. He is victor in the fray, and +the most he is called upon to do is every now and again to hit his +prostrate foe a blow over the costard just to keep him in his place. +Thus rid of a perpetual anxiety, the good man has time to grow in +goodness, to expand pleasantly, to take his ease on Zion. You can see +in his face that he is at peace with himself--that he is no longer at +war with his elements. His society, if you are fond of goodness, is +both agreeable and medicinal; but if you are a bad man it is hateful, +and you cry out with Mr. Love-lust in Bunyan's Vanity Fair: 'Away with +him. I cannot endure him; he is for ever condemning my way.' + +Not many of Dean Burgon's biographies reached this standard. The +explanation, perhaps, is that the Dean chiefly moved in clerical +circles where excellence is more frequently to be met with than +goodness. + +In the same way a really bad man is one who has frankly said, 'Evil, +be thou my good.' Like the good man, though for a very different +reason, the bad one has ceased to make war with the devil. Finding a +conspiracy against goodness going on, the bad man joins it, and thus, +like the good man, is at peace with himself. The bad man is bent upon +his own way, to get what he wants, no matter at what cost. Human +lives! What do they matter? A woman's honour! What does that matter? +Truth and fidelity! What are they? To know what you want, and not to +mind what you pay for it, is the straight path to fame, fortune, and +hell-fire. Careers, of course, vary; to dominate a continent or to +open a corner shop as a pork-butcher's, plenty of devilry may go to +either ambition. Also, genius is a rare gift. It by no means follows +that because you are a bad man you will become a great one; but to be +bad, and at the same time unsuccessful, is a hard fate. It casts a +little doubt upon a man's badness if he does not, at least, make a +little money. It is a poor business accompanying badness on to a +common scaffold, or to see it die in a wretched garret. That was one +of my complaints with Mr. Seccombe's Twelve Bad Men. Most of them came +to violent ends. They were all failures. + +But I have kept these twelve ladies waiting a most unconscionable +time. Who are they? There are amongst them four courtesans: Alice +Perrers, one of King Edward III.'s misses; Barbara Villiers, one of +King Charles II.'s; Mrs. Mary Anne Clarke, who had to be content with +a royal Duke; and Mrs. Con Phillips. Six members of the criminal +class: Alice Arden, Moll Cutpurse, Jenny Diver, Elizabeth Brownrigg, +Elizabeth Canning, and Mary Bateman; and only two ladies of title, +Frances Howard, Countess of Somerset, and Elizabeth Chudleigh, Duchess +of Kingston. Of these twelve bad women one-third were executed, Alice +Arden being burnt at Canterbury, Jenny Diver and Elizabeth Brownrigg +being hung at Tyburn, and Mary Bateman suffering the same fate at +Leeds. Elizabeth Canning was sentenced to seven years' transportation, +and, indeed, if their biographers are to be believed, all the other +ladies made miserable ends. There is nothing triumphant about their +badness. Even from the point of view of this world they had better +have been good. In fact, squalor is the badge of the whole tribe. Some +of them, probably--Elizabeth Brownrigg, for example--were mad. This +last-named poor creature bore sixteen children to a house-painter and +plasterer, and then became a parish mid-wife, and only finally a +baby-farmer. Her cruelty to her apprentices had madness in every +detail. To include her in this volume was wholly unnecessary. She +lives but in George Canning's famous parody on Southey's sonnet to the +regicide Marten. + +With those sentimentalists who maintain that all bad people are mad I +will have no dealings. It is sheer nonsense; lives of great men all +remind us it is sheer nonsense. Some of our greatest men have been +infernal scoundrels--pre-eminently bad men--with nothing mad about +them, unless it be mad to get on in the world and knock people about +in it. + +_Twelve Bad Women_ contains much interesting matter, but, on the +whole, it is depressing. It seems very dull to be bad. Perhaps the +editor desired to create this impression; if so, he has succeeded. +Hannah More had fifty times more fun in her life than all these +courtesans and criminals put together. The note of jollity is +entirely absent. It was no primrose path these unhappy women +traversed, though that it led to the everlasting bonfire it were +unchristian to doubt. The dissatisfaction I confessed to at the +beginning returns upon me as a cloud at the end; but, for all that, I +rejoice the book is in a second edition, and I hope soon to hear it is +in a third, for it has a moral tendency. + + + + +ITINERARIES + + +Anyone who is teased by the notion that it would be pleasant to be +remembered, in the sense of being read, after death, cannot do better +to secure that end than compose an Itinerary and leave it behind him +in manuscript, with his name legibly inscribed thereon. If an honest +bit of work, noting distances, detailing expenses, naming landmarks, +moors, mountains, harbours, docks, buildings--indeed, anything which, +as lawyers say, savours of realty--and but scantily interspersed with +reflections, and with no quotations, why, then, such a piece of work, +however long publication may be delayed--and a century or two will not +matter in the least--cannot fail, whenever it is printed, to attract +attention, to excite general interest and secure a permanent hold in +every decent library in the kingdom. + +Time cannot stale an Itinerary. _Iter, Via, Actus_ are words of pith +and moment. Stage-coaches, express trains, motor-cars, have written, +or are now writing, their eventful histories over the face of these +islands; but, whatever changes they have made or are destined to make, +they have left untouched the mystery of the road, although for the +moment the latest comer may seem injuriously to have affected its +majesty. + +The Itinerist alone among authors is always sure of an audience. No +matter where, no matter when, he has but to tell us how he footed it +and what he saw by the wayside, and we must listen. How can we help +it? Two hundred years ago, it may be, this Itinerist came through our +village, passed by the wall of our homestead, climbed our familiar +hill, and went on his way; it is perhaps but two lines and a half he +can afford to give us, but what lines they are! How different with +sermons, poems, and novels! On each of these is the stamp of the +author's age; sentiments, fashions, thoughts, faiths, phraseology, all +worn out--cold, dirty grate, where once there was a blazing fire. +Cheerlessness personified! Leland's anti-Papal treatise in forty-five +chapters remains in learned custody--a manuscript; a publisher it will +never find. We still have Papists and anti-Papists; in this case the +fire still blazes, but the grates are of an entirely different +construction. Leland's treatise is out of date. But his _Itinerary_ in +nine volumes, a favourite book throughout the eighteenth century, +which has graced many a bookseller's catalogue for the last hundred +years, and seldom without eliciting a purchaser--Leland's _Itinerary_ +is to-day being reprinted under the most able editorship. The charm of +the road is irresistible. The _Vicar of Wakefield_ is a delightful +book, with a great tradition behind it and a future still before it; +but it has not escaped the ravages of time, and I would, now, at all +events, gladly exchange it for Oliver Goldsmith's _Itinerary through +Germany with a Flute_! + +Vain authors, publisher's men, may write as they like about +_Shakespeare's_ country, or _Scott's_ country, or _Carlyle's_ country, +or _Crockett's_ country, but-- + + 'Oh, good gigantic smile of the brown old earth!' + +the land laughs at the delusions of the men who hurriedly cross its +surface. + + 'Rydal and Fairfield are there,-- + In the shadow Wordsworth lies dead. + So it is, so it will be for aye, + Nature is fresh as of old, + Is lovely, a mortal is dead.' + +These reflections, which by themselves would be enough to sink even an +Itinerary, seemed forced upon me by the publication of _A Journey to +Edenborough in Scotland by Joseph Taylor, Late of the Inner Temple, +Esquire_. This journey was made two hundred years ago in the Long +Vacation of 1705, but has just been printed from the original +manuscript, under the editorship of Mr. William Cowan, by the +well-known Edinburgh bookseller, Mr. Brown, of Princes Street, to whom +all lovers of things Scottish already owe much. + +Nobody can hope to be less known than this our latest Itinerist, for +not only is he not in the _Dictionary of National Biography_, but it +is at present impossible to say which of two Joseph Taylors he was. +The House of the Winged Horse has ever had Taylors on its roll, the +sign of the Middle Temple, a very fleecy sheep, being perhaps +unattractive to the clan, and in 1705 it so happened that not only +were there two Taylors, but two Joseph Taylors, entitled to write +themselves 'of the Inner Temple, Esquire.' Which was the Itinerist? +Mr. Cowan, going by age, thinks that the Itinerist can hardly have +been the Joseph Taylor who was admitted to the Inn in 1663, as in that +case he must have been at least fifty-eight when he travelled to +Edinburgh. For my part, I see nothing in the _Itinerary_ to preclude +the possibility of its author having attained that age at the date of +its composition. I observe in the _Itinerary_ references which point +to the Itinerist being a Kentish man, and he mentions more than once +his 'Cousin D'aeth.' Research among the papers of the D'aeths of +Knowlton Court, near Dover, might result in the discovery which of +these two Taylors really was the Itinerist. As nothing else is at +present known about either, the investigation could probably be made +without passion or party or even religious bias. It might be +best begun by Mr. Cowan telling us in whose custody he found the +manuscript, and how it came there. These statements should always +be made when old manuscripts are first printed. + +The journey began on August 2, 1705. The party consisted of Mr. Taylor +and his two friends, Mr. Harrison and Mr. Sloman. They travelled on +horseback, and often had difficulties with the poor beast that carried +their luggage. They reached Edinburgh in the evening of August 31, and +left it on their return journey on September 8, and got home on the +25th of the same month. The _Itinerary_ concludes as follows: + + 'Thus we spent almost 2 months in a Journy of many 100 miles, + sometimes thro' very charming Countryes, and at other times over + desolate and Barren Mountaines, and yet met with no particular + misfortune in all the Time.' + +I may say at once of these three Itinerists--Mr. Taylor, Mr. Harrison, +and Mr. Sloman--that they appear to have been thoroughly +commonplace, well behaved, occasionally hilarious Englishmen, ready to +endure whatever befell them, if unavoidable; accustomed to take their +ease in their inn and to turn round and look at any pretty woman they +might chance to meet on their travels. Their first experience of what +the Itinerist calls 'the prodigies of Nature,' 'at once an occasion +both of Horrour and Admiration,' was in the Peak Country 'described in +poetry by the ingenious Mr. Cotton.' This part of the world they 'did' +with something of the earnestness of the modern tourist. But I hardly +think they enjoyed themselves. The 'prodigious' caverns and strange +petrifactions shocked them; 'nothing can be more terrible or shocking +to Nature.' Mam Tor, with its 1,710 feet, proved very impressive, 'a +vast high mountain reaching to the very clouds.' This gloom of the +Derbyshire hills and stony valleys was partially dispelled for our +travellers by a certain 'fair Gloriana' they met at Buxton, with whom +they had great fun, 'so much the greater, because we never expected +such heavenly enjoyments in so desolate a country.' If it be on +susceptibilities of this nature that Mr. Cowan rests his case for +thinking that the Itinerist can hardly have attained 'the blasted +antiquity' of fifty-eight, we must think Mr. Cowan a trifle hasty, or +a very young man, perhaps under forty, which is young for an editor. + +After describing, somewhat too much like an auctioneer, the splendours +of Chatsworth, 'a Paradise in the deserts of Arabia,' the Itinerist +proceeds on his way north through Nottingham to Belvoir Castle, where +'my Lord Rosses Gentleman (to whom Mr. Harrison was recommended) +entertained us by his Lordship's command with good wine and the best +of malt liquors which the cellar abounds with'; the pictures in the +Long Gallery were shown them by 'my Lord himself.' At Doncaster, 'a +neat market-town which consists only in one long street,' they had +some superlative salmon just taken out of the river. By Knaresborough +Spaw, where they drank the waters and had icy cold baths, and dined at +the ordinary with a parson whose conversation startled the propriety +of the Templar, the travellers made their way to York, and for the +first and last time a few pages of _Guide Book_ are improperly +introduced. Then on to Scarborough. + + 'The next morning early we left Scarborough and travelled through a + dismall road, particularly near Robins Hood Bay; we were obliged to + lead our horses, and had much ado to get down a vast craggy + mountain which lyes within a quarter of a mile of it. The Bay is + about a mile broad, and inhabited by poor fishermen. We stopt to + taste some of their liquor and discourse with them. They told us + the French privateers came into the Very Bay and took 2 of their + Vessels but the day before, which were ransom'd for £25 a piece. We + saw a great many vessels lying upon the Shore, the masters not + daring to venture out to sea for fear of undergoing the same fate.' + +We boast too readily of our inviolate shores. + +A curious description is given of the Duke of Buckingham's alum works +near Whitby. The travellers then procured a guide, and traversed 'the +vast moors which lye between Whitby and Gisborough.' The civic +magnificence of Newcastle greatly struck our travellers, who, happier +than their modern successors, were able to see the town miles off. The +Itinerist quotes with gusto the civic proverb that the men of +Newcastle pay nothing for the Way, the Word, or the Water, 'for the +Ministers of Religion are maintained, the streets paved, and the +Conduits kept up at the publick charge.' A disagreeable account is +given of the brutishness of the people employed in the salt works at +Tynemouth. At Berwick the travellers got into trouble with the sentry, +but the mistake was rectified with the captain of the guard over '2 +bowles of punch, there being no wine in the town.' + +Scotland was now in sight, and the travellers became grave, as +befitted the occasion. They were told that the journey that lay before +them was extremely dangerous, that 'twould be difficult to escape with +their lives, much less (ominous words) without 'the distemper of the +country.' But Mr. Taylor, Mr. Harrison, and Mr. Sloman were as brave +as Mr. Pickwick, and they would on. 'Yet notwithstanding all these sad +representations, we resolv'd to proceed and stand by one another to +the last.' + +What the Itinerists thought of Scotland when they got there is not for +me to say. I was once a Scottish member. + +They arrived in Edinburgh at a great crisis in Scottish history. They +saw the Duke of Argyll, as Queen Anne's Lord High Commissioner, go to +the Parliament House in this manner: + + 'First a coach and six Horses for his Gentlemen, then a Trumpet, + then his own coach with six white horses, which were very fine, + being those presented by King William to the Duke of Queensbury, + and by him sold to the Duke of Argyle for £300; next goes a troop + of Horse Guards, cloathed like my Lord of Oxford's Regiment, but + the horses are of several colours; and the Lord Chancellor and the + Secretary of State, and the Lord Chief Justice Clerk, and other + officers of State close the cavalcade in coaches and six horses. + Thus the Commissioner goes and returns every day.' + +The Itinerists followed the Duke and his procession into the +Parliament House, and heard debated the great question--the greatest +of all possible questions for Scotland--whether this magnificence +should cease, whether there should be an end of an auld sang--in +short, whether the proposed Act of Union should be proceeded with. By +special favour, our Itinerists had leave to stand upon the steps of +the throne, and witnessed a famous fiery and prolonged debate, the +Duke once turning to them and saying, _sotto voce_, 'It is now +deciding whether England and Scotland shall go together by the ears.' +How it was decided we all know, and that it was wisely decided no one +doubts; yet, when we read our Itinerist's account of the Duke's coach +and horses, and the cavalcade that followed him, and remember that +this was what happened every day during the sitting of the Parliament, +and must not be confounded with the greater glories of the first day +of a Parliament, when every member, be he peer, knight of the shire, +or burgh member, had to ride on horseback in the procession, it is +impossible not to feel the force of Miss Grisel Dalmahoy's appeal in +the _Heart of Midlothian_, she being an ancient sempstress, to Mr. +Saddletree, the harness-maker: + + 'And as for the Lords of States ye suld mind the riding o' the + Parliament in the gude auld time before the Union. A year's rent o' + mony a gude estate gaed for horse-graith and harnessing, forby + broidered robes and foot-mantles that wad hae stude by their lane + with gold and brocade, and that were muckle in my ain line.' + +The graphic account of a famous debate given by, Taylor is worth +comparing with the _Lockhart Papers_ and Hill Burton. The date is a +little troublesome. According to our Itinerist, he heard the +discussion as to whether the Queen or the Scottish Parliament should +nominate the Commissioners. Now, according to the histories, this +all-important discussion began and ended on September 1, but our +Itinerist had only arrived in Edinburgh the night before the first, +and gives us to understand that he owed his invitation to be present +to the fact that whilst in Edinburgh he and his friends had had the +honour to have several lords and members of Parliament to dine, and +that these guests informed him 'of the grand day when the Act was to +be passed or rejected.' The Itinerist's account is too particular--for +he gives the result of the voting--to admit of any possibility of a +mistake, and he describes how several of the members came afterwards +to his lodgings, and, so he writes, 'embraced us with all the outward +marks of love and kindness, and seemed mightily pleased at what was +done, and told us we should now be no more English and Scotch, but +Brittons.' In the matter of nomenclature, at all events, the promises +of the Union have not been carried out. + +After September 1 the Parliament did not meet till the 4th, when an +Address was passed to the Queen, but apparently without any repetition +of debate. So it really is a little difficult to reconcile the dates. +Perhaps Itinerists are best advised to keep off public events. + +How our travellers escaped the 'national distemper' and journeyed +home by Ecclefechan, Carlisle, Shap Fell, Liverpool, Chester, +Coventry, and Warwick must be read in the _Journey_ itself, which, +though it only occupies 182 small pages, is full of matter and even +merriment; in fact, it is an excellent itinerary. + + + + +EPITAPHS + + +Epitaphs, if in rhyme, are the real literature of the masses. They +need no commendation and are beyond all criticism. A Cambridge don, a +London bus-driver, will own their charm in equal measure. Strange +indeed is the fascination of rhyme. A commonplace hitched into verse +instantly takes rank with Holy Scripture. This passion for poetry, as +it is sometimes called, is manifested on every side; even tradesmen +share it, and as the advertisements in our newspapers show, are +willing to pay small sums to poets who commend their wares in verse. +The widow bereft of her life's companion, the mother bending over an +empty cradle, find solace in thinking what doleful little scrag of +verse shall be graven on the tombstone of the dead. From the earliest +times men have sought to squeeze their loves and joys, their sorrows +and hatreds, into distichs and quatrains, and to inscribe them +somewhere, on walls or windows, on sepulchral urns and gravestones, as +memorials of their pleasure or their pain. + + 'Hark! how chimes the passing bell-- + There's no music to a knell; + All the other sounds we hear + Flatter and but cheat our ear.' + +So wrote Shirley the dramatist, and so does he truthfully explain the +popularity of the epitaph as distinguished from the epigram. Who ever +wearies of Martial's 'Erotion'?-- + + 'Hic festinata requiescit Erotion umbra, + Crimine quam fati sexta peremit hiems. + Quisquis eris nostri post me regnator agelli + Manibus exiguis annua justa dato. + Sic lare perpetuo, sic turba sospite, solus + Flebilis in terra sit lapis iste tua'-- + +so prettily Englished by Leigh Hunt: + + 'Underneath this greedy stone + Lies little sweet Erotion, + Whom the Fates with hearts as cold + Nipped away at six years old. + Those, whoever thou may'st be, + That hast this small field after me, + Let the yearly rites be paid + To her little slender shade; + So shall no disease or jar + Hurt thy house or chill thy Lar, + But this tomb be here alone + The only melancholy stone.' + +Our English epitaphs are to be found scattered up and down our country +churchyards--'uncouth rhymes,' as Gray calls them, yet full of the +sombre philosophy of life. They are fast becoming illegible, worn out +by the rain that raineth every day, and our prim, present-day parsons +do not look with favour upon them, besides which--to use a clumsy +phrase--besides which most of our churchyards are now closed against +burials, and without texts there can be no sermons: + + 'I'll stay and read my sermon here, + And skulls and bones shall be my text. + + * * * * + + Here learn that glory and disgrace, + Wisdom and Folly, pass away, + That mirth hath its appointed space, + That sorrow is but for a day; + That all we love and all we hate, + That all we hope and all we fear, + Each mood of mind, each turn of fate, + Must end in dust and silence here.' + +The best epitaphs are the grim ones. Designed, as epitaphs are, to +arrest and hold in their momentary grasp the wandering attention and +languid interest of the passer-by, they must hit him hard and at once, +and this they can only do by striking some very responsive chord, and +no chords are so immediately responsive as those which relate to death +and, it may be, judgment to come. + +Mr. Aubrey Stewart, in his interesting _Selection of English Epigrams +and Epitaphs_, published by Chapman and Hall, quotes an epitaph from a +Norfolk churchyard which I have seen in other parts of the country. +The last time I saw it was in the Forest of Dean. It is admirably +suited for the gravestone of any child of very tender years, say four: + + 'When the Archangel's trump shall blow + And souls to bodies join, + Many will wish their lives below + Had been as short as mine.' + +It is uncouth, but it is warranted to grip. + +Frequently, too, have I noticed how constantly the attention is +arrested by Pope's well-known lines from his magnificent 'Verses to +the Memory of an Unfortunate Lady,' which are often to be found on +tombstones: + + 'So peaceful rests without a stone and name + What once had beauty, titles, wealth, and fame. + How loved, how honoured once avails thee not, + To whom related or by whom begot. + A heap of dust alone remains of thee; + 'Tis all thou art and all the proud shall be.' + +I wish our modern poetasters who deny Pope's claim to be a poet no +worse fate than to lie under stones which have engraved upon them the +lines just quoted, for they will then secure in death what in life was +denied them--the ear of the public. + +Next to the grim epitaph, I should be disposed to rank those which +remind the passer-by of his transitory estate. In different parts of +the country--in Cumberland and Cornwall, in Croyland Abbey, in +Llangollen Churchyard, in Melton Mowbray--are to be found lines more +or less resembling the following: + + 'Man's life is like unto a winter's day, + Some break their fast and so depart away, + Others stay dinner then depart full fed, + The longest age but sups and goes to bed. + O reader, there behold and see + As we are now, so thou must be.' + +The complimentary epitaph seldom pleases. To lie like a tombstone has +become a proverb. Pope's famous epitaph on Newton: + + 'Nature and Nature's laws lay hid in night, + God said, Let Newton be! and all was light.' + +is hyperbolical and out of character with the great man it seeks to +honour. It was intended for Westminster Abbey. I rejoice at the +preference given to prose Latinity. + +The tender and emotional epitaphs have a tendency to become either +insipid or silly. But Herrick has shown us how to rival Martial: + + 'UPON A CHILD THAT DIED. + + Here she lies a pretty bud + Lately made of flesh and blood; + Who as soon fell fast asleep + As her little eyes did peep. + Give her strewings, but not stir + The earth that lightly covers her.' + +Mr. Dodd, the editor of the admirable volume called _The +Epigrammatists_, published in Bohn's Standard Library, calls these +lines a model of simplicity and elegance. So they are, but they are +very vague. But then the child was very young. Erotion, one must +remember, was six years old. Ben Jonson's beautiful epitaph on S.P., a +child of Queen Elizabeth's Chapel, beginning, + + 'Weep with me all you that read + This little story; + And know for whom the tear you shed + Death's self is sorry,' + +is fine poetry, but it is not life or death as plain people know those +sober realities. The flippant epitaph is always abominable. Gay's, for +example: + + 'Life is a jest, and all things show it. + I thought so once, but now I know it.' + +But _does_ he know it? Ay, there's the rub! The note of Christianity +is seldom struck in epitaphs. There is a deep-rooted paganism in the +English people which is for ever bubbling up and asserting itself in +the oddest of ways. Coleridge's epitaph for himself is a striking +exception: + + 'Stop, Christian passer-by! stop, child of God, + And read with gentle breast, Beneath this sod + A poet lies, or that which once seemed he. + O lift one thought in prayer for S.T.C, + That he who many a year with toil of breath + Found death in life, may here find life in death! + Mercy for praise--to be forgiven for fame, + He ask'd and hoped through Christ. Do thou the same.' + + + + +'HANSARD' + + +'Men are we, and must mourn when e'en the shade of that which once was +great has passed away.' This quotation--which, in obedience to the +prevailing taste, I print as prose--was forced upon me by reading in +the papers an account of some proceedings in a sale-room in Chancery +Lane last Tuesday,[A] when the entire stock and copyright of +_Hansard's Parliamentary History and Debates_ were exposed for sale, +and, it must be added, to ridicule. Yet 'Hansard' was once a name to +conjure with. To be in it was an ambition--costly, troublesome, but +animating; to know it was, if not a liberal education, at all events +almost certain promotion; whilst to possess it for your very own was +the outward and visible sign of serious statesmanship. No wonder that +unimaginative men still believed that _Hansard_ was a property with +money in it. Is it not the counterpart of Parliament, its dark and +majestic shadow thrown across the page of history? As the pious +Catholic studies his _Acta Sanctorum_, so should the constitutionalist +love to pore over the _ipsissima verba_ of Parliamentary gladiators, +and read their resolutions and their motions. Where else save in the +pages of _Hansard_ can we make ourselves fully acquainted with the +history of the Mother of Free Institutions? It is, no doubt, dull, but +with the soberminded a large and spacious dulness like that of +_Hansard's Debates_ is better than the incongruous chirpings of the +new 'humourists.' Besides, its dulness is exaggerated. If a reader +cannot extract amusement from it the fault is his, not _Hansard's_. +But, indeed, this perpetual talk of dulness and amusement ought not to +pass unchallenged. Since when has it become a crime to be dull? Our +fathers were not ashamed to be dull in a good cause. We are ashamed, +but without ceasing to be dull. + + [Footnote A: March 8, 1902.] + +But it is idle to argue with the higgle of the market. 'Things are +what they are,' said Bishop Butler in a passage which has lost its +freshness; that is to say, they are worth what they will fetch. 'Why, +then, should we desire to be deceived?' The test of truth remains +undiscovered, but the test of present value is the auction mart. Tried +by this test, it is plain that _Hansard_ has fallen upon evil days. +The bottled dreariness of Parliament is falling, falling, falling. An +Elizabethan song-book, the original edition of Gray's _Elegy_, or +_Peregrine Pickle_, is worth more than, or nearly as much as, the 458 +volumes of _Hansard's Parliamentary Debates_. Three complete sets were +sold last Tuesday; one brought £110, the other two but £70 each. And +yet it is not long ago since a _Hansard_ was worth three times as +much. Where were our young politicians? There are serious men on both +sides of the House. Men of their stamp twenty years ago would not have +been happy without a _Hansard_ to clothe their shelves with dignity +and their minds with quotations. But these young men were not bidders. + +As the sale proceeded, the discredit of _Hansard_ became plainer and +plainer. For the copyright, including, of course, the goodwill of the +name--the right to call yourself 'Hansard' for years to come--not a +penny was offered, and yet, as the auctioneer feelingly observed, only +eighteen months ago it was valued at £60,000. The cold douche of the +auction mart may brace the mind, but is apt to lower the price of +commodities of this kind. Then came incomplete and unbound sets, with +doleful results. For forty copies of the 'Indian Debates' for 1889 +only a penny a copy was offered. It was rumoured that the bidder +intended, had he been successful, to circulate the copies amongst the +supporters of a National Council for India; but his purpose was +frustrated by the auctioneer, who, mindful of the honour of the +Empire, sorrowfully but firmly withdrew the lot, and proceeded to the +next, amidst the jeers of a thoroughly demoralized audience. But this +subject why pursue? It is, for the reason already cited at the +beginning, a painful one. The glory of _Hansard_ has departed for +ever. Like a new-fangled and sham religion, it began in pride and +ended in a police-court, instead of beginning in a police-court and +ending in pride, which is the now well-defined course of true +religion. + +The fact that nobody wants _Hansard_ is not necessarily a rebuff to +Parliamentary eloquence, yet these low prices jump with the times and +undoubtedly indicate an impatience of oratory. We talk more than our +ancestors, but we prove our good faith by doing it very badly. We have +no Erskines at the Bar, but trials last longer than ever. There are +not half a dozen men in the House of Commons who can make a speech, +properly so called, but the session is none the shorter on that +account. _Hansard's Debates_ are said to be dull to read, but there is +a sterner fate than reading a dull debate: you may be called upon to +listen to one. The statesmen of the time must be impervious to +dulness; they must crush the artist within them to a powder. The new +people who have come bounding into politics and are now claiming their +share of the national inheritance are not orators by nature, and will +never become so by culture; but they mean business, and that is well. +Caleb Garth and not George Canning should be the model of the virtuous +politician of the future. + + + + +CONTEMPT OF COURT + + +The late Mr. Carlyle has somewhere in his voluminous but well-indexed +writings a highly humorous and characteristic passage in which he, +with all his delightful gusto, dilates upon the oddity of the scene +where a withered old sinner perched on a bench, quaintly attired in +red turned up with ermine, addresses another sinner in a wooden pew, +and bids him be taken away and hung by the neck until he is dead; and +how the sinner in the pew, instead of indignantly remonstrating with +the sinner on the bench, 'Why, you cantankerous old absurdity, what +are you about taking my life like that?' usually exhibits signs of +great depression, and meekly allows himself to be conducted to his +cell, from whence in due course he is taken and throttled according to +law. + +This situation described by Carlyle is doubtless mighty full of +humour; but, none the less, were any prisoner at the bar to adopt +Craigenputtock's suggestion, he would only add to the peccadillo of +murder the grave offence of contempt of court, which has been defined +'as a disobedience to the court, an opposing or despising the +authority, justice, and dignity thereof.' + +The whole subject of Contempt is an interesting and picturesque one, +and has been treated after an interesting and picturesque yet accurate +and learned fashion by a well-known lawyer, in a treatise[A] which +well deserves to be read not merely by the legal practitioner, but by +the student of constitutional law and the nice observer of our manners +and customs. + + [Footnote A: _Contempt of Court, etc._ By J.F. Oswald, Q.C. London: + William Clowes and Sons, Limited.] + +An ill-disposed person may exhibit contempt of court in divers +ways--for example, he may scandalize the the court itself, which may +be done not merely by the extreme measure of hurling missiles at the +presiding judge, or loudly contemning his learning or authority, but +by ostentatiously reading a newspaper in his presence, or laughing +uproariously at a joke made by somebody else. Such contempts, +committed as they are _in facie curiae_, are criminal offences, and +may be punished summarily by immediate imprisonment without the right +of appeal. It speaks well both for the great good sense of the judges +and for the deep-rooted legal instincts of our people that such +offences are seldom heard of. It would be impossible nicely to define +what measure of freedom of manners should be allowed in a court of +justice, which, as we know, is neither a church nor a theatre, but, as +a matter of practice, the happy mean between an awe-struck and unmanly +silence and free-and-easy conversation is well preserved. The +practising advocate, to avoid contempt and obtain, if instructed so to +do, a hearing, must obey certain sumptuary laws, for not only must he +don the horsehair wig, the gown, and bands of his profession, but his +upper clothing must be black, nor should his nether garment be +otherwise than of sober hue. Mr. Oswald reports Mr. Justice Byles as +having once observed to the late Lord Coleridge whilst at the Bar: 'I +always listen with little pleasure to the arguments of counsel whose +legs are encased in light gray trousers.' The junior Bar is growing +somewhat lax in these matters. Dark gray coats are not unknown, and it +was only the other day I observed a barrister duly robed sitting in +court in a white waistcoat, apparently oblivious of the fact that +whilst thus attired no judge could possibly have heard a word he said. +However, as he had nothing to say, the question did not arise. It is +doubtless the increasing Chamber practice of the judges which has +occasioned this regrettable laxity. In Chambers a judge cannot +summarily commit for contempt, nor is it necessary or customary for +counsel to appear before him in robes. Some judges object to fancy +waistcoats in Chambers, but others do not. The late Sir James Bacon, +who was a great stickler for forensic propriety, and who, sitting in +court, would not have allowed a counsel in a white waistcoat to say a +word, habitually wore one himself when sitting as vacation judge in +the summer. + +It must not be supposed that there can be no contempt out of court. +There can. To use bad language on being served with legal process is +to treat the court from whence such process issued with contempt. None +the less, considerable latitude of language on such occasions is +allowed. How necessary it is to protect the humble officers of the law +who serve writs and subpoenas is proved by the case of one Johns, who +was very rightly committed to the Fleet in 1772, it appearing by +affidavit that he had compelled the poor wretch who sought to serve +him with a subpoena to devour both the parchment and the wax seal of +the court, and had then, after kicking him so savagely as to make him +insensible, ordered his body to be cast into the river. No amount of +irritation could justify such conduct. It is no contempt to tear up +the writ or subpoena in the presence of the officer of the court, +because, the service once lawfully effected, the court is indifferent +to the treatment of its stationery; but such behaviour, though lawful, +is childish. To obstruct a witness on his way to give evidence, or to +threaten him if he does give evidence, or to tamper with the jury, are +all serious contempts. In short, there is a divinity which hedges a +court of justice, and anybody who, by action or inaction, renders the +course of justice more difficult or dilatory than it otherwise would +be, incurs the penalty of contempt. Consider, for example, the case of +documents and letters. Prior to the issue of a writ, the owner of +documents and letters may destroy them, if he pleases--the fact of his +having done so, if litigation should ensue on the subject to which the +destroyed documents related, being only matter for comment--but the +moment a writ is issued the destruction by a defendant of any document +in his possession relating to the action is a grave contempt, for +which a duchess was lately sent to prison. There is something majestic +about this. No sooner is the aid of a court of law invoked than it +assumes a seizin of every scrap of writing which will assist it in its +investigation of the matter at issue between the parties, and to +destroy any such paper is to obstruct the court in its holy task, and +therefore a contempt. + +To disobey a specific order of the court is, of course, contempt. The +old Court of Chancery had a great experience in this aspect of the +question. It was accustomed to issue many peremptory commands; it +forbade manufacturers to foul rivers, builders so to build as to +obstruct ancient lights, suitors to seek the hand in matrimony of its +female wards, Dissenting ministers from attempting to occupy the +pulpits from which their congregations had by vote ejected them, and +so on through almost all the business of this mortal life. It was more +ready to forbid than to command; but it would do either if justice +required it. And if you persisted in doing what the Court of Chancery +told you not to do, you were committed; whilst if you refused to do +what it had ordered you to do, you were attached; and the difference +between committal and attachment need not concern the lay mind. + +To pursue the subject further would be to plunge into the morasses of +the law where there is no footing for the plain man; but just a word +or two may be added on the subject of punishment for contempt. In old +days persons who were guilty of contempt _in facie curiae_ had their +right hands cut off, and Mr. Oswald prints as an appendix to his book +certain clauses of an Act of Parliament of Henry VIII. which provide +for the execution of this barbarous sentence, and also (it must be +admitted) for the kindly after-treatment of the victim, who was to +have a surgeon at hand to sear the stump, a sergeant of the poultry +with a cock ready for the surgeon to wrap about the stump, a sergeant +of the pantry with bread to eat, and a sergeant of the cellar with a +pot of red wine to drink. + +Nowadays the penalty for most contempts is costs. The guilty party in +order to purge his contempt has to pay all the costs of a motion to +commit and attach. The amount is not always inconsiderable, and when +it is paid it would be idle to apply to the other side for a pot of +red wine. They would only laugh at you. Our ancestors had a way of +mitigating their atrocities which robs the latter of more than half +their barbarity. Costs are an unmitigable atrocity. + + + + +5 EDWARD VII., CHAPTER 12 + + +The appearance of this undebated Act of Parliament in the attenuated +volume of the Statutes of 1905 almost forces upon sensitive minds an +unwelcome inquiry as to what is the attitude proper to be assumed by +an emancipated but trained intelligence towards a decision of the +House of Lords, sitting judicially as the highest (because the last) +Court of Appeal. + +So far as the _parties_ to the litigation are concerned, the decision, +if of a final character, puts an end to the _lis_. Litigation must, so +at least it has always been assumed, end somewhere, and in these +realms it ends with the House of Lords. Higher you cannot go, however +litigiously minded. + +In the vast majority of appeal cases a final appeal not only ends the +_lis_, but determines once for all the rights of the parties to the +subject-matter. The successful litigant leaves the House of Lords +quieted in his possession or restored to what he now knows to be his +own, conscious of a victory, final and complete; whilst the +unsuccessful litigant goes away exceeding sorrowful, knowing that his +only possible revenge is to file his petition in bankruptcy. + +This, however, is not always so. + +In August, 1904, the House of Lords decided in a properly constituted +_lis_ that a particular ecclesiastical body in Scotland, somewhat +reduced in numbers, but existent and militant, was entitled to certain +property held in trust for the use and behoof of the Free Church of +Scotland. There is no other way of holding property than by a legal +title. Sometimes that title has been created by an Act of Parliament, +and sometimes it is a title recognised by the general laws and customs +of the realm, but a legal title it has got to be. Titles are never +matters of rhetoric, nor are they _jure divino_, or conferred in +answer to prayer; they are strictly legal matters, and it is the very +particular business of courts of law, when properly invoked, to +recognise and enforce them. + +In the case I have in mind there were two claimants to the +subject-matter--the Free Church and the United Free Church--and the +House of Lords, after a great argle-bargle, decided that the property +in question belonged to the Free Church. + +Thereupon the expected happened. A hubbub arose in Scotland and +elsewhere, and in consequence of the hubbub an Act of Parliament has +somewhat coyly made its appearance in the Statute Book (5 Edward VII., +chapter 12) appointing and authorizing Commissioners to take away from +the successful litigant a certain portion of the property just +declared to be his, and to give it to the unsuccessful litigant. + +The reasons alleged for taking away by statute from the Free Church +some of the property that belongs to it are that the Free Church is +not big enough to administer satisfactorily all the property it +possesses; and that the State may reasonably refuse to allow a +religious body to have more property than it can in the opinion of +State-appointed Commissioners usefully employ in the propagation of +its religion. Let the reasons be well noted. They have made their +appearance before in history. These were the reasons alleged by Henry +VIII. for the suppression of the smaller monasteries. The State, +having made up its mind to take away from the Free Church so much of +its property as the Commissioners may think it cannot usefully +administer, then proceeds, by this undebated Act of Parliament, to +give the overplus to the unsuccessful litigant, the United Free +Church. Why to them? It will never do to answer this question by +saying because it is always desirable to return lost property to its +true owner, since so to reply would be to give the lie direct to a +decision of the Final Court of Appeal on a question of property. + +In the eye--I must not write the blind eye--of the law, this +parliamentary gift to the United Free Church is not a _giving back_ +but an _original free gift_ from the State by way of endowment to a +particular denomination of Presbyterian dissenters. In theory the +State could have done what it liked with so much of the property of +the Free Church as that body is not big enough to spend upon itself. +It might, for example, have divided it between Presbyterians +generally, or it might have left it to the Free Church to say who was +to be the disponee of its property. + +As a matter of hard fact, the State had no choice in the matter. It +could not select, or let the Free Church select, the object of its +bounty. The public sense (a vague term) demanded that the United Free +Church should not be required to abide by the decision of the House of +Lords, but should have given to it whatever property could, under any +decent pretext of public policy and by Act of Parliament, be taken +away from the Free Church. If the pretext of the inability of the +Free Church to administer its own estate had not been forthcoming, +some other pretext must and would have been discovered. + +Having regard, then, to 5 Edward VII., chapter 12, how ought one to +feel towards the decision of the House of Lords in the Scottish +Churches case? In public life you can usually huddle up anything, if +only all parties, for reasons, however diverse, of their own, are +agreed upon what is to be done. Like many another Act of Parliament, 5 +Edward VII., chapter 12, was bought with a sum of money. Nobody, not +even Lord Robertson, really wanted to debate or discuss it, least of +all to discover the philosophy of it. But in an essay you can huddle +up nothing. At all hazards, you must go on. This is why so many +essayists have been burnt alive. + +_First_.--Was the decision wrong? 'Yes' or 'No.' If it was right-- + +_Second_.--Was the law, in pursuance of which the decision was given, +so manifestly unjust as to demand, not the alteration of the law for +the future, but the passage through Parliament, _ex post facto_, of an +Act to prevent the decision from taking effect between the parties +according to its tenour? + +_Third_.--Supposing the decision to be right, and the law it expounded +just and reasonable in general, was there anything in the peculiar +circumstances of the successful litigant, and in the sources from +which a considerable portion of the property was derived, to justify +Parliamentary interference and the provisions of 5 Edward VII., +chapter 12? + +_Number Three_, being the easiest way out of the difficulty, has been +adopted. The _decision_ remains untouched, the _law_ it expounds +remains unaltered--nothing has gone, except the _order_ of the Final +Court giving effect to the untouched decision and to the unaltered +law. _That_ has been tampered with for the reasons suggested in +_Number Three_. + +John Locke was fond of referring questions to something he called 'the +bulk of mankind'--an undefinable, undignified, unsalaried body, of +small account at the beginning of controversies, but all-powerful at +their close. + +My own belief is that eventually 'the bulk of mankind' will say +bluntly that the House of Lords went wrong in these cases, and that +the Act of Parliament was hastily patched up to avert wrong, and to +do substantial justice between the parties. + +If asked, What can 'the bulk of mankind' know about law? I reply, with +great cheerfulness, 'Very little indeed.' But suppose that the +application of law to a particular _lis_ requires precise and full +knowledge of all that happened during an ecclesiastical contest, and, +in addition, demands a grasp of the philosophy of religion, and the +ascertainment of true views as to the innate authority of a church and +the development of doctrine, would there be anything very surprising +if half a dozen eminent authorities in our Courts of Law and Equity +were to go wrong? + +Between a frank admission of an incomplete consideration of a +complicated and badly presented case and such blunt _ex post facto_ +legislation as 5 Edward VII., chapter 12, I should have preferred the +former. The Act is what would once have been called a dangerous +precedent. To-day precedents, good or bad, are not much considered. If +we want to do a thing, we do it, precedent or no precedent. So far we +have done so very little that the question has hardly arisen. If our +Legislature ever reassumes activity under new conditions, and in +obedience to new impulses, it may be discovered whether bad precedents +are dangerous or not. + + +THE END + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + +End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of In the Name of the Bodleian and Other +Essays, by Augustine Birrell + +*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 12244 *** diff --git a/12244-h/12244-h.htm b/12244-h/12244-h.htm new file mode 100644 index 0000000..a45ae33 --- /dev/null +++ b/12244-h/12244-h.htm @@ -0,0 +1,6725 @@ +<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01 Transitional//EN"> +<html> +<head> +<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" + content="text/html; charset=UTF-8"> +<meta content="pg2html (binary version 0.12a)" + name="generator"> +<title>The Project Gutenberg eBook of + In the Name of the Bodleian, + by Augustine Birrell. +</title> +<style type="text/css"> + <!-- + body { font-family: serif} + + P { text-indent: 1.5em; + margin-top: .75em; + font-size: 1.2em; + text-align: justify; + margin-bottom: .75em; + margin-left: 15%; + margin-right: 15%; } + + p.ar {text-align: right } + p.toc { margin-left: 30%; font-size: 1em; margin-bottom: 0em; } + p.note { margin-left: 25%; + margin-right: 25%;} + p.fnote {text-indent: -1em; margin-left: 18%; margin-right: 30%; + font-size: 1em; } + p.noindent { text-indent: 0em } + H1,H2,H3,H4,H5,H6 { text-align: center } + HR { width: 50% } + BLOCKQUOTE { font-size: 1.2em; margin-left: 20%; margin-right: 15%; + text-align: justify; } + PRE { margin-left: 25%; font-family: serif; font-size: 1.2em; } + + // --> +</style> +</head> +<body> +<div>*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 12244 ***</div> + +<p> </p> +<p> </p> +<p> </p> +<p> </p> +<p> </p> +<p> </p> +<p> </p> +<hr> +<p> </p> +<h1>IN THE NAME OF THE BODLEIAN </h1> +<h2>AND OTHER ESSAYS</H2> +<p> </p> + + <h3>BY</h3> + <h2>AUGUSTINE BIRRELL</h2> + + <center>HONORARY FELLOW OF TRINITY HALL, CAMBRIDGE</center> + <p> </p> + +<p class="note"> + <i>'Peace be with the soul of that charitable and courteous author who + for the common benefit of his fellow-authors introduced the ingenious + way of miscellaneous writing.'</i>—<small>LORD SHAFTESBURY</small>. +</p> +<p> </p> + +<H3> + LONDON +</h3> +<h3> + 1906 +</h3> +<p> </p> + +<hr> +<H3> + AUTHOR'S NOTE +</H3> +<p class="note"> + The first paper appeared in the <i>Outlook</i>, New York, the one on Mr. + Bradlaugh in the <i>Nineteenth Century</i>, and some of the others at + different times in the <i>Speaker</i>.<br><br> + <small>3, NEW SQUARE, <br> + LINCOLN'S INN.</small> +</p> +<hr> + +<p> </p> + + +<h2>CONTENTS</h2> +<p> </p> + + + <p class="toc"><a href="#2H_4_2">I. +'IN THE NAME OF THE BODLEIAN' +</a></p> +<p class="toc"><a href="#2H_4_3">II. +BOOKWORMS +</a></p> +<p class="toc"><a href="#2H_4_4">III. +CONFIRMED READERS +</a></p> +<p class="toc"><a href="#2H_4_5">IV. +FIRST EDITIONS +</a></p> +<p class="toc"><a href="#2H_4_6">V. +GOSSIP IN A LIBRARY +</a></p> +<p class="toc"><a href="#2H_4_7">VI. +LIBRARIANS AT PLAY +</a></p> +<p class="toc"><a href="#2H_4_8">VII. +LAWYERS AT PLAY +</a></p> +<p class="toc"><a href="#2H_4_9">VIII. +THE NON-JURORS +</a></p> +<p class="toc"><a href="#2H_4_10">IX. +LORD CHESTERFIELD +</a></p> +<p class="toc"><a href="#2H_4_11">X. +THE JOHNSONIAN LEGEND +</a></p> +<p class="toc"><a href="#2H_4_12">XI. +BOSWELL AS BIOGRAPHER +</a></p> +<p class="toc"><a href="#2H_4_13">XII. +OLD PLEASURE GARDENS +</a></p> +<p class="toc"><a href="#2H_4_14">XIII. +OLD BOOKSELLERS +</a></p> +<p class="toc"><a href="#2H_4_15">XIV. +A FEW WORDS ABOUT COPYRIGHT IN BOOKS +</a></p> +<p class="toc"><a href="#2H_4_16">XV. +HANNAH MORE ONCE MORE +</a></p> +<p class="toc"><a href="#2H_4_17">XVI. +ARTHUR YOUNG +</a></p> +<p class="toc"><a href="#2H_4_18">XVII. +THOMAS PAINE +</a></p> +<p class="toc"><a href="#2H_4_19">XVIII. +CHARLES BRADLAUGH +</a></p> +<p class="toc"><a href="#2H_4_20">XIX. +DISRAELI <i>EX RELATIONE</i> SIR WILLIAM FRASER +</a></p> +<p class="toc"><a href="#2H_4_21">XX. +A CONNOISSEUR +</a></p> +<p class="toc"><a href="#2H_4_22">XXI. +OUR GREAT MIDDLE CLASS +</a></p> +<p class="toc"><a href="#2H_4_23">XXII. +TAR AND WHITEWASH +</a></p> +<p class="toc"><a href="#2H_4_24">XXIII. +ITINERARIES +</a></p> +<p class="toc"><a href="#2H_4_25">XXIV. +EPITAPHS +</a></p> +<p class="toc"><a href="#2H_4_26">XXV. +'HANSARD' +</a></p> +<p class="toc"><a href="#2H_4_27">XXVI. +CONTEMPT OF COURT +</a></p> +<p class="toc"><a href="#2H_4_28">XXVII. +5 EDWARD VII., CHAPTER 12 +</a></p> +<p> </p> + + +<hr> + + + + + +<a name="2H_4_2"><!-- H2 anchor --></a> +<p> </p> +<p> </p> +<p> </p> +<p> </p> +<h2> + 'IN THE NAME OF THE BODLEIAN' +</h2> +<p> </p> + +<p> + With what feelings, I wonder, ought one to approach in a famous + University an already venerable foundation, devoted by the last will + and indented deed of a pious benefactor to the collection and housing + of books and the promotion of learning? The Bodleian at this moment + harbours within its walls well-nigh half a million of printed volumes, + some scores of precious manuscripts in all the tongues, and has become + a name famous throughout the whole civilized world. What sort of a + poor scholar would he be whose heart did not beat within him when, for + the first time, he found himself, to quote the words of 'Elia,' 'in + the heart of learning, under the shadow of the mighty Bodley'? +</p> +<p> + Grave questions these! 'The following episode occurred during one of + Calverley's (then Blayds) appearances at "Collections," the Master + (Dr. Jenkyns) officiating. <i>Question</i>: "And with what feelings, Mr. + Blayds, ought we to regard the decalogue?" Calverley who had no very + clear idea of what was meant by the decalogue, but who had a due sense + of the importance both of the occasion and of the question, made the + following reply: "Master, with feelings of devotion, mingled with + awe!" "Quite right, young man; a very proper answer," exclaimed the + Master.' <a name="1"></a> <a href="#note-1"><small><sup>1</sup></small></a> +</p> +<p> + 'Devotion mingled with awe' might be a very proper answer for me to + make to my own questions, but possessing that acquaintance with the + history of the most picturesque of all libraries which anybody can + have who loves books enough to devote a dozen quiet hours of + rumination to the pages of Mr. Macray's <i>Annals of the Bodleian + Library</i>, second edition, Oxford, 'at the Clarendon Press, 1890,' I + cannot honestly profess to entertain in my breast, with regard to it, + the precise emotions which C.S.C. declared took possession of him when + he regarded the decalogue. A great library easily begets affection, + which may deepen into love; but devotion and awe are plants hard to + rear in our harsh climate; besides, can it be well denied that there + is something in a huge collection of the ancient learning, of + mediaeval folios, of controversial pamphlets, and in the thick black + dust these things so woefully collect, provocative of listlessness and + enervation and of a certain Solomonic dissatisfaction? The two writers + of modern times, both pre-eminently sympathetic towards the past, who + have best described this somewhat melancholy and disillusioned frame + of mind are both Americans: Washington Irving, in two essays in <i>The + Sketch-Book</i>, 'The Art of Bookmaking' and 'The Mutability of + Literature'; and Nathaniel Hawthorne, in many places, but notably in + that famous chapter on 'The Emptiness of Picture Galleries,' in <i>The + Marble Faun</i>. +</p> +<p> + It is perhaps best not to make too great demands upon our slender + stock of deep emotions, not to rhapsodize too much, or vainly to + pretend, as some travellers have done, that to them the collections + of the Bodleian, its laden shelves and precious cases, are more + attractive than wealth, fame, or family, and that it was stern Fate + that alone compelled them to leave Oxford by train after a visit + rarely exceeding twenty-four hours in duration. +</p> +<p> + Sir Thomas Bodley's Library at Oxford is, all will admit, a great and + glorious institution, one of England's sacred places; and springing, + as it did, out of the mind, heart, and head of one strong, efficient, + and resolute man, it is matter for rejoicing with every honest + gentleman to be able to observe how quickly the idea took root, + how well it has thriven, by how great a tradition it has become + consecrated, and how studiously the wishes of the founder in all their + essentials are still observed and carried out. +</p> +<p> + Saith the prophet Isaiah, 'The liberal deviseth liberal things; and by + liberal things he shall stand.' The name of Thomas Bodley still stands + all the world over by the liberal thing he devised. +</p> +<p> + A few pages about this 'second Ptolemy' will be grudged me by none but + unlettered churls. +</p> +<p> + He was a west countryman, an excellent thing to be in England if you + want backing through thick and thin, and was born in Exeter on March + 2nd, 1544—a most troublesome date. It seems our fate in the old home + never to be for long quit of the religious difficulty—which is very + hard upon us, for nobody, I suppose, would call the English a + 'religious' people. Little Thomas Bodley opened his eyes in a land + distracted with the religious difficulty. Listen to his own words; + they are full of the times: 'My father, in the time of Queen Mary, + being noted and known to be an enemy to Popery, was so cruelly + threatened and so narrowly observed by those that maliced his + religion, that for the safeguard of himself and my mother, who was + wholly affected as my father, he knew no way so secure as to fly into + Germany, where after a while he found means to call over my mother + with all his children and family, whom he settled for a time in Wesel + in Cleveland. (For there, there were many English which had left their + country for their conscience and with quietness enjoyed their meetings + and preachings.) From thence he removed to the town of Frankfort, + where there was in like sort another English congregation. Howbeit we + made no longer tarriance in either of these two towns, for that my + father had resolved to fix his abode in the city of Geneva.' +</p> +<p> + Here the Bodleys remained 'until such time as our Nation was + advertised of the death of Queen Mary and the succession of Elizabeth, + with the change of religion which caused my father to hasten into + England.' +</p> +<p> + In Geneva young Bodley and his brothers enjoyed what now would be + called great educational advantages. Small creature though he was, he + yet attended, so he says, the public lectures of Chevalerius in + Hebrew, Bersaldus in Greek, and of Calvin and Beza in Divinity. He + had also 'domestical teachers,' and was taught Homer by Robert + Constantinus, who was the author of a Greek lexicon, a luxury in those + days. +</p> +<p> + On returning to England, Bodley proceeded, not to Exeter College, as + by rights he should have done, but to Magdalen, where he became a + 'reading man,' and graduated Bachelor of Arts in 1563. The next year + he shifted his quarters to Merton, where he gave public lectures on + Greek. In 1566 he became a Master of Arts, took to the study of + natural philosophy, and three years later was Junior Proctor. He + remained in residence until 1576, thus spending seventeen years in the + University. In the last-mentioned year he obtained leave of absence to + travel on the Continent, and for four years he pursued his studies + abroad, mastering the French, Spanish, and Italian languages. Some + short time after his return home he obtained an introduction to Court + circles and became an Esquire to Queen Elizabeth, who seems to have + entertained varying opinions about him, at one time greatly commending + him and at another time wishing he were hanged—an awkward wish on + Tudor lips. In 1588 Bodley married a wealthy widow, a Mrs. Ball, the + daughter of a Bristol man named Carew. As Bodley survived his wife and + had no children, a good bit of her money remains in the Bodleian to + this day. Blessed be her memory! Nor should the names of Carew and + Ball be wholly forgotten in this connection. From 1588 to 1596 Bodley + was in the diplomatic service, chiefly at The Hague, where he did good + work in troublesome times. On being finally recalled from The Hague, + Bodley had to make up his mind whether to pursue a public life. He + suffered from having too many friends, for not only did Burleigh + patronize him, but Essex must needs do the same. No man can serve two + masters, and though to be the victim of the rival ambitions of greater + men than yourself is no uncommon fate, it is a currish one. Bodley + determined to escape it, and to make for himself after a very + different fashion a name <i>aere perennius</i>. +</p> +<blockquote> + 'I resolved thereupon to possess my soul in peace all the residue + of my days, to take my full farewell of State employments, to + satisfy my mind with the mediocrity of worldly living that I had of + mine own, and so to retire me from the Court.' +</blockquote> +<p> + But what was he to do? +</p> +<blockquote> + 'Whereupon, examining exactly for the rest of my life what course I + might take, and having sought all the ways to the wood to select + the most proper, I concluded at the last to set up my staff at the + Library door in Oxford, being thoroughly persuaded that in my + solitude and surcease from the Commonwealth affairs I could not + busy myself to better purpose than by reducing that place (which + then in every part lay ruined waste) to the publick use of + students.' +</blockquote> +<p> + It is pleasant to be admitted into the birth-chamber of a great idea + destined to be translated into action. Bodley proceeds to state the + four qualifications he felt himself to possess to do this great bit of + work: first, the necessary knowledge of ancient and modern tongues and + of 'sundry other sorts of scholastical literature'; second, purse + ability; third, a great store of honourable friends; and fourth, + leisure. +</p> +<p> + Bodley's description of the state of the old library as lying in every + part ruined and in waste was but too true. +</p> +<p> + Richard of Bury, the book-loving Bishop of Durham, seems to have been + the first donor of manuscripts on anything like a large scale to + Oxford, but the library he founded was at Durham College, which stood + where Trinity College now stands, and was in no sense a University + library. The good Bishop, known to all book-hunters as the author of + the <i>Philobiblon</i>, died in 1345, but his collection remained intact, + subject to rules he had himself laid down, until the dissolution of + the monasteries, when Durham College, which was attached to a + religious house, was put up for sale, and its library, like so much + else of good learning at this sad period, was dispersed and for the + most part destroyed. +</p> +<p> + Bodley's real predecessor, the first begetter of a University library, + was Thomas Cobham, Bishop of Worcester, who in 1320 prepared a chamber + above a vaulted room in the north-east corner of St. Mary's Church for + the reception of the books he intended to bestow upon his University. + When the Bishop of Worcester (as a matter of fact, he had once been + elected Archbishop of Canterbury; but that is another story, as + Laurence Sterne has said) died in 1327, it was discovered that he had + by his will bequeathed his library to Oxford, but he was insolvent! No + rich relict of a defunct Ball was available for a Bishop in those + days. The executors found themselves without sufficient estate to pay + for their testator's funeral expenses, even then the first charge upon + assets. They are not to be blamed for pawning the library. A good + friend redeemed the pledge, and despatched the books—all, of course, + manuscripts—to Oxford. For some reason or another Oriel took them in, + and, having become their bailee, refused to part with them, possibly + and plausibly alleging that the University was not in a position to + give a valid receipt. At Oriel they remained for ten years, when all + of a sudden the scholars of the University, animated by their + notorious affection for sound learning and a good 'row,' took Oriel by + storm, and carried off the books in triumph to Bishop Cobham's room, + where they remained in chests unread for thirty years. In 1367 the + University by statute ratified and confirmed its title to the books, + and published regulations for their use, but the quarrel with Oriel + continued till 1409, when the Cobham Library was for the first time + properly furnished and opened as a place for study and reference. +</p> +<p> + The librarian of the old Cobham Library had an advantage over Mr. + Nicholson, the Bodley librarian of to-day. Being a clerk in Holy + Orders before the time when, in Bodley's own phrase, already quoted, + we 'changed' our religion, he was authorized by the University to say + masses for the souls of all dead donors of books, whether by gifts + <i>inter vivos</i> or by bequest. +</p> +<p> + The first great benefactor of Cobham's Library was Duke Humphrey of + Gloucester, the youngest son of Henry IV., and perhaps the most + 'pushful' youngest son in our royal annals. Though a dissipated and + unprincipled fellow, he lives in history as 'the good Duke Humphrey,' + because he had the sense to patronize learning, collect manuscripts, + and enrich Universities. He began his gifts to Oxford as early, so say + some authorities, as 1411, and continued his donations of manuscripts + with such vivacity that the little room in St. Mary's could no longer + contain its riches. Hence the resolution of the University in 1444 to + build a new library over the Divinity School. This new room, which + was completed in 1480, forms now the central portion of that great + reading-room so affectionately remembered by thousands of still living + students. +</p> +<p> + Duke Humphrey's Library, as the new room was popularly called, + continued to flourish and receive valuable accessions of manuscripts + and printed books belonging to divinity, medicine, natural science, + and literature until the ill-omened year 1550. Oxford has never loved + Commissioners revising her statutes and reforming her schools, but + the Commissioners of 1550 were worse than prigs, worse even than + Erastians: they were barbarians and wreckers. They were deputed by + King Edward VI., 'in the spirit of the Reformation,' to make an end of + the Popish superstition. Under their hands the library totally + disappeared, and for a long while the tailors and shoemakers and + bookbinders of Oxford were well supplied with vellum, which they found + useful in their respective callings. It was a hard fate for so + splendid a collection. True it is that for the most part the contents + of the library had been rescued from miserable ill-usage in the + monasteries and chapter-houses where they had their first habitations, + but at last they had found shelter over the Divinity School of a great + University. There at least they might hope to slumber. But our + Reformers thought otherwise. The books and manuscripts being thus + dispersed or destroyed, a prudent if unromantic Convocation exposed + for sale the wooden shelves, desks, and seats of the old library, and + so made a complete end of the whole concern, thus making room for + Thomas Bodley. +</p> +<p> + On February 23, 1597/8, Thomas Bodley sat himself down in his London + house and addressed to the Vice-Chancellor of his University a certain + famous letter: +</p> +<blockquote> + 'SIR,<br> + + 'Altho' you know me not as I suppose, yet for the farthering of an + offer of evident utilitie to your whole University I will not be + too scrupulous in craving your assistance. I have been alwaies of + a mind that if God of his goodness should make me able to do + anything for the benefit of posteritie, I would shew some token of + affiction that I have ever more borne to the studies of good + learning. I know my portion is too slender to perform for the + present any answerable act to my willing disposition, but yet to + notify some part of my desire in that behalf I have resolved thus + to deal. Where there hath been heretofore a public library in + Oxford which you know is apparent by the room itself remaining and + by your statute records, I will take the charge and cost upon me to + reduce it again to its former use and to make it fit and handsome + with seats and shelves and desks and all that may be needful to + stir up other mens benevolence to help to furnish it with books. + And this I purpose to begin as soon as timber can be gotten to the + intent that you may be of some speedy profit of my project. And + where before as I conceive it was to be reputed but a store of + books of divers benefactors because it never had any lasting + allowance for augmentation of the number or supply of books + decayed, whereby it came to pass that when those that were in being + were either wasted or embezzled, the whole foundation came to ruin. + To meet with that inconvenience, I will so provide hereafter (if + God do not hinder my present design) as you shall be still assured + of a standing annual rent to be disbursed every year in buying of + books, or officers stipends and other pertinent occasions, with + which provision and some order for the preservation of the place + and the furniture of it from accustomed abuses, it may perhaps in + time to come prove a notable treasure for the multitude of volumes, + an excellent benefit for the use and ease of students, and a + singular ornament of the University.' +</blockquote> +<p> + The letter does not stop here, but my quotation has already probably + wearied most of my readers, though for my own part I am not ashamed to + confess that I seldom tire of retracing with my own hand the + <i>ipsissima verba</i> whereby great and truly notable gifts have been + bestowed upon nations or Universities or even municipalities for the + advancement of learning and the spread of science. Bodley's language + is somewhat involved, but through it glows the plain intention of an + honest man. +</p> +<p> + Convocation, we are told, embraced the offer with wonderful alacrity, + and lost no time in accepting it in good Latin. +</p> +<p> + From February, 1598, to January, 1613 (when he died), Bodley was happy + with as glorious a hobby-horse as ever man rode astride upon. Though + Bodley, in one of his letters, modestly calls himself a mere + 'smatterer,' he was, as indeed he had the sense to recognise, + excellently well fitted to be a collector of books, being both a good + linguist and personally well acquainted with the chief cities of the + Continent and with their booksellers. He was thus able to employ + well-selected agents in different parts of Europe to buy books on his + account, which it was his pleasure to receive, his rapture to unpack, + his pride to despatch in what he calls 'dry-fats'—that is, + weather-tight chests—to Dr. James, the first Bodley librarian. + Despite growing and painful infirmities (stone, ague, dropsy), Bodley + never even for a day dismounted his hobby, but rode it manfully to the + last. Nor had he any mean taint of nature that might have grudged + other men a hand in the great work. The more benefactors there were, + the better pleased was Bodley. He could not, indeed—for had he not + been educated at Geneva and attended the Divinity Lectures of Calvin + and Beza?—direct Dr. James to say masses for the souls of such donors + of money or books as should die, but he did all a poor Protestant can + do to tempt generosity: he opened and kept in a very public place in + the library a great register-book, containing the names and titles of + all benefactors. Bodley was always on the look-out for gifts and + bequests from his store of honourable friends; and in the case of Sir + Henry Savile he even relaxed the rule against lending books from the + library, because, as he frankly admits to Dr. James, he had hopes + (which proved well founded) that Sir Henry would not forget his + obligations to the Bodleian. +</p> +<p> + The library was formally opened on November 8, 1602, and then + contained some 2,000 volumes. Two years later its founder was knighted + by King James, who on the following June directed letters patent to be + issued styling the library by the founder's name and licensing the + University to hold land in mortmain for its maintenance. The most + learned and by no means the most foolish of our Kings, this same James + I., visited the Bodleian in May, 1605. Sir Thomas was not present. + There it was that the royal pun was made that the founder's name + should have been Godly and not Bodley. King James handled certain old + manuscripts with the familiarity of a scholar, and is reported to have + said, I doubt not with perfect sincerity, that were he not King James + he would be an University man, and that were it his fate at any time + to be a captive, he would wish to be shut up in the Bodleian and to be + bound with its chains, consuming his days amongst its books as his + fellows in captivity. Indeed, he was so carried away by the atmosphere + of the place as to offer to present to the Bodleian whatever books Sir + Thomas Bodley might think fit to lay hands upon in any of the royal + libraries, and he kept this royal word so far as to confirm the gift + under the Privy Seal. But there it seems to have stopped, for the + Bodleian does not contain any volumes traceable to this source. The + King's librarians probably obstructed any such transfer of books. +</p> +<p> + Authors seem at once to have recognised the importance of the library, + and to have made presentation copies of their works, and in 1605 we + find Bacon sending a copy of his <i>Advancement of Learning</i> to Bodley, + with a letter in which he said: 'You, having built an ark to save + learning from deluge, deserve propriety [ownership] in any new + instrument or engine whereby learning should be improved or advanced.' + The most remarkable letter Bodley ever wrote, now extant, is one to + Bacon; but it has no reference to the library, only to the Baconian + philosophy. We do not get many glimpses of Bodley's habits of life or + ways of thinking, but there is no difficulty in discerning a + strenuous, determined, masterful figure, bent during his later years, + perhaps tyrannously bent, on effecting his object. He was not, we + learn from a correspondent, 'hasty to write but when the posts do urge + him, saying there need be no answer to your letters till more leisure + breed him opportunity.' 'Words are women, deeds are men,' is another + saying of his which I reprint without comment. +</p> +<p> + By an indenture dated April 20, 1609, Bodley, after reciting how he + had, out of his zealous affection to the advancement of learning, + lately erected upon the ruins of the old decayed library of Oxford + University 'a most ample, commodious, and necessary building, as well + for receipt and conveyance of books as for the use and ease of + students, and had already furnished the same with excellent writers on + all sorts of sciences, arts, and tongues, not only selected out of his + own study and store, but also of others that were freely conferred by + many other men's gifts,' proceeded to grant to trustees lands and + hereditaments in Berkshire and in the city of London for the purpose + of forming a permanent endowment of his library; and so they, or the + proceeds of sale thereof, have remained unto this day. +</p> +<p> + Sir Thomas Bodley died on January 20, 1613, his last days being + soothed by a letter he received from the Vice-Chancellor of Oxford + University condoling his sickness and signifying how much the Heads of + Houses, etc., prayed for his recovery. A cynical friend—not much of a + friend, as we shall see—called John Chamberlain, was surprised to + observe what pleasure this assurance gave to the dying man. 'Whereby,' + writes Chamberlain to Sir Ralph Winwood, 'I perceive how much fair + words work, as well upon wise men as upon others, for indeed it did + affect him very much.' +</p> +<p> + Bodley was rather put out in his last illness by the refusal of a + Cambridge doctor, Batter, to come to see him, the doctor saying: + 'Words cannot cure him, and I can do nothing else for him.' There is + an occasional curtness about Cambridge men that is hard but not + impossible to reconcile with good feeling. +</p> +<p> + Bodley's will gave great dissatisfaction to some of his friends, + including this aforesaid John Chamberlain, and yet, on reading it + through, it is not easy to see any cause for just complaint. Bodley's + brother did not grumble, there were no children, Lady Bodley had died + in 1611, and everybody who knew the testator must have known that the + library would be (as it was) the great object of his bounty. What + annoyed Chamberlain seems to be that, whilst he had (so he says, + though I take leave to doubt it) put down Bodley for some trifle in + his will, Bodley forgot to mention Chamberlain in his. There is always + a good deal of human nature exhibited on these occasions. I will + transcribe a bit of one of this gentleman's grumbling letters, + written, one may be sure, with no view to publication, the day after + Bodley's death: +</p> +<blockquote> + 'Mr. Gent came to me this morning as it were to bemoan himself of + the little regard hath been had of him and others, and indeed for + ought I hear there is scant anybody pleased, but for the rest it + were no great matter if he had had more consideration or + commiseration where there was most need. But he was so carried away + with the vanity and vain-glory of his library, that he forgot all + other respects and duties, almost of Conscience, Friendship, or + Good-nature, and all he had was too little for that work. To say + the truth I never did rely much upon his conscience, but I thought + he had been more real and ingenuous. I cannot learn that he hath + given anything, no, not a good word nor so much as named any old + friend he had, but Mr. Gent and Thos. Allen, who like a couple of + Almesmen must have his best and second gown, and his best and + second cloak, but to cast a colour or shadow of something upon Mr. + Gent, he says he forgives him all he owed him, which Mr. Gent + protests is never a penny. I must intreat you to pardon me if I + seem somewhat impatient on his [<i>i.e.</i>, Gent's] behalf, who hath + been so servile to him, and indeed such a perpetual servant, that + he deserved a better reward. Neither can I deny that I have a + little indignation for myself that having been acquainted with him + for almost forty years, and observed and respected him so much, I + should not be remembered with the value of a spoon, or a mourning + garment, whereas if I had gone before him (as poor a man as I am), + he should not have found himself forgotten.'<a name="2"></a><a href="#note-2"><small><sup>2</sup></small></a> +</blockquote> + + <p> + Bodley did no more by his will, which is dated January 2, 1613, and is + all in his own handwriting, than he had bound himself to do in his + lifetime, and I feel as certain as I can feel about anything that + happened nearly 300 years ago, that Mr. Gent, of Gloucester Hall, did + owe Bodley money, though, as many another member of the University of + Oxford has done with his debts, he forgot all about it. +</p> +<p> + The founder of the Bodleian was buried with proper pomp and + circumstance in the chapel of Merton College on March 29, 1613. Two + Latin orations were delivered over his remains, one, that of John + Hales (the ever-memorable), a Fellow of Merton, being of no + inconsiderable length. After all was over, those who had mourning + weeds or 'blacks' retired, with the Heads of Houses, to the refectory + of Merton and had a funeral dinner bestowed upon them, 'amounting to + the sum of £100,' as directed by the founder's will. +</p> +<p> + The great foundation of Sir Thomas Bodley has, happily for all of us, + had better fortune than befell the generous gifts of the Bishops of + Durham and Worcester. The Protestant layman has had the luck, not the + large-minded prelates of the old religion. Even during the Civil War + Bodley's books remained uninjured, at all events by the Parliament + men. 'When Oxford was surrendered [June 24, 1646], the first thing + General Fairfax did was to set a good guard of soldiers to preserve + the Bodleian Library. 'Tis said there was more hurt done by the + Cavaliers [during their garrison] by way of embezzling and cutting of + chains of books than there was since. He was a lover of learning, and + had he not taken this special care that noble library had been utterly + destroyed, for there were ignorant senators enough who would have been + contented to have it so' (see Macray, p. 101). +</p> +<p> + Oliver Cromwell, while Lord Protector, presented to the library + twenty-two Greek manuscripts he had purchased, and, what is more, when + Bodley's librarian refused the Lord Protector's request to allow the + Portugal Ambassador to borrow a manuscript, sending instead of the + manuscript a copy of the statutes forbidding loans, Oliver commended + the prudence of the founder, and subsequently made the donation just + mentioned. +</p> +<p> + A great wave of generosity towards this foundation was early + noticeable. The Bodleian got hold of men's imaginations. In those days + there were learned men in all walks of life, and many more who, if not + learned, were endlessly curious. The great merchants of the city of + London instructed their agents in far lands to be on the look-out for + rare things, and transmit them home to find a resting-place in + Bodley's buildings. All sorts of curiosities found their way + there—crocodiles, whales, mummies, and black negro-boys in spirits. + The Ashmolean now holds most of them; the negro-boy has been + conveniently lost. +</p> +<p> + In 1649 the total of 2,000 printed books had risen to more than + 12,000—viz., folios, 5,889; quartos, 2,067; octavos, 4,918; whilst of + manuscripts there were 3,001. One of the first gifts in money came + from Sir Walter Raleigh, who in 1605 gave £50, whilst among the early + benefactors of books and manuscripts it were a sin not to name the + Earl of Pembroke, Archbishop Laud (one of the library's best friends), + Robert Burton (of the <i>Anatomy of Melancholy</i>), Sir Kenelm Digby, John + Selden, Lord Fairfax, Colonel Vernon, and Barlow, Bishop of Lincoln. + No nobler library exists in the world than the Bodleian, unless it be + in the Vatican at Rome. The foundation of Sir Thomas Bodley, though of + no antiquity, shines with unrivalled splendour in the galaxy of Oxford +</p> +<pre> + 'Amidst the stars that own another birth.' +</pre> +<p> + I must not say, being myself a Cambridge man, that the Bodleian + dominates Oxford, yet to many an English, American, and foreign + traveller to that city, which, despite railway-stations and motor-cars + and the never-ending villas and perambulators of the Banbury Road, + still breathes the charm of an earlier age, the Bodleian is the + pulsing heart of the University. Colleges, like ancient homesteads, + unless they are yours, never quite welcome you, though ready enough to + receive with civility your tendered meed of admiration. You wander + through their gardens, and pace their quadrangles with no sense of + co-ownership; not for you are their clustered memories. In the + Bodleian every lettered heart feels itself at home. +</p> +<p> + Bodley drafted with his own hand the first statutes or rules to be + observed in his library. Speaking generally, they are wise rules. One + mistake, indeed, he made—a great mistake, but a natural one. Let him + give his own reasons: +</p> +<blockquote> + 'I can see no good reason to alter my rule for excluding such books + as Almanacks, Plays, and an infinite number that are daily printed + of very unworthy matters—handling such books as one thinks both + the Keeper and Under-Keeper should disdain to seek out, to deliver + to any man. Haply some plays may be worthy the keeping—but hardly + one in forty.... This is my opinion, wherein if I err I shall err + with infinite others; and the more I think upon it, the more it + doth distaste me that such kinds of books should be vouchsafed room + in so noble a library.' <a name="3"></a> <a href="#note-3"><small><sup>3</sup></small></a> +</blockquote> + + +<p> + 'Baggage-books' was the contemptuous expression elsewhere employed to + describe this 'light infantry' of literature—<i>Belles Lettres</i>, as it + is now more politely designated. +</p> +<p> + One play in forty is liberal measure, but who is to say out of the + forty plays which is the one worthy to be housed in a noble library? + The taste of Vice-Chancellors and Heads of Houses, of keepers and + under-keepers of libraries—can anybody trust it? The Bodleian is + entitled by imperial statutes to receive copies of all books published + within the realm, yet it appears, on the face of a Parliamentary + return made in 1818, that this 'noble library' refused to find room + for Ossian, the favourite poet of Goethe and Napoleon, and labelled + Miss Edgeworth's <i>Parent's Assistant</i> and Miss Hannah More's <i>Sacred + Dramas</i> 'Rubbish.' The sister University, home though she be of nearly + every English poet worth reading, rejected the <i>Siege of Corinth</i>, + though the work of a Trinity man; would not take in the <i>Thanksgiving + Ode</i> of Mr. Wordsworth, of St. John's College; declined Leigh Hunt's + <i>Story of Rimini</i>; vetoed the <i>Headlong Hall</i> of the inimitable + Peacock, and, most wonderful of all, would have nothing to say to + Scott's <i>Antiquary</i>, being probably disgusted to find that a book with + so promising a title was only a novel. +</p> +<p> + Now this is altered, and everything is collected in the Bodleian, + including, so I am told, Christmas-cards and bills of fare. +</p> +<p> + Bodley's rule has proved an expensive one, for the library has been + forced to buy at latter-day prices 'baggage-books' it could have got + for nothing. +</p> +<p> + Another ill-advised regulation got rid of duplicates. Thus, when the + third Shakespeare Folio appeared in 1664, the Bodleian disposed of its + copy of the First Folio. However, this wrong was righted in 1821, + when, under the terms of Edmund Malone's bequest, the library once + again became the possessor of the edition of 1623. Quite lately the + original displaced Folio has been recovered. +</p> +<p> + Against lending books Bodley was adamant, and here his rule prevails. + It is pre-eminently a wise one. The stealing of books, as well as the + losing of books, from public libraries is a melancholy and ancient + chapter in the histories of such institutions; indeed, there is too + much reason to believe that not a few books in the Bodleian itself + were stolen to start with. But the long possession by such a + foundation has doubtless purged the original offence. In the National + Library in Paris is at least one precious manuscript which was stolen + from the Escurial. There are volumes in the British Museum on which + the Bodleian looks with suspicion, and <i>vice versa</i>. But let sleeping + dogs lie. Bodley would not give the divines who were engaged upon a + bigger bit of work even than his library—the translation of the Bible + into that matchless English which makes King James's version our + greatest literary possession—permission to borrow 'the one or two + books' they wished to see. +</p> +<p> + Bodley's Library has sheltered through three centuries many queer + things besides books and strangely-written manuscripts in old tongues; + queerer things even than crocodiles, whales, and mummies—I mean the + librarians and sub-librarians, janitors, and servants. Oddities many + of them have been. Honest old Jacobites, non-jurors, primitive + thinkers, as well as scandalously lazy drunkards and illiterate dogs. + An old foundation can afford to have a varied experience in these + matters. +</p> +<p> + One of the most original of these originals was the famous Thomas + Hearne, an 'honest gentleman'—that is, a Jacobite—and one whose + collections and diaries have given pleasure to thousands. He was + appointed janitor in 1701, and sub-librarian in 1712, but in 1716, + when an Act of Parliament came into operation which imposed a fine of + £500 upon anyone who held any public office without taking the oath of + allegiance to the Hanoverians, Hearne's office was taken away from + him; but he shared with his King over the water the satisfaction of + accounting himself still <i>de jure</i>, and though he lived till 1735, + he never failed each half-year to enter his salary and fees as + sub-librarian as being still unpaid. He was perhaps a little spiteful + and vindictive, but none the less a fine old fellow. I will write down + as specimens of his humour a prayer of his and an apology, and then + leave him alone. His prayer ran as follows: +</p> +<blockquote> + 'O most gracious and merciful Lord God, wonderful in Thy + Providence, I return all possible thanks to Thee for the care Thou + hast always taken of me. I continually meet with most signal + instances of this Thy Providence, and one act yesterday, <i>when I + unexpectedly met with three old manuscripts</i>, for which in a + particular manner I return my thanks, beseeching Thee to continue + the same protection to me, a poor helpless sinner, and that for + Jesus Christ his sake' (<i>Aubrey's Letters</i>, i. 118). +</blockquote> +<p> + His apology, which I do not think was actually published, though kept + in draft, was after this fashion: +</p> +<blockquote> + 'I, Thomas Hearne, A.M. of the University of Oxford, having ever + since my matriculation followed my studies with as much application + as I have been capable of, and having published several books for + the honour and credit of learning, and particularly for the + reputation of the foresaid University, am very sorry that by my + declining to say anything but what I knew to be true in any of my + writings, and especially in the last book I published entituled, + &c, I should incur the displeasure of any of the Heads of Houses, + and as a token of my sorrow for their being offended at truth, I + subscribe my name to this paper and permit them to make what use of + it they please.' +</blockquote> +<p> + Leaping 140 years, an odd tale is thus lovingly recorded of another + sub-librarian, the Rev. A. Hackman, who died in 1874: +</p> +<blockquote> + 'During all the time of his service in the library (thirty-six + years) he had used as a cushion in his plain wooden armchair a + certain vellum-bound folio, which by its indented side, worn down + by continual pressure, bore testimony to the use to which it had + been put. No one had ever the curiosity to examine what the book + might be, but when, after Hackman's departure from the library, it + was removed from its resting-place of years, some amusement was + caused by finding that the chief compiler of the last printed + catalogue had omitted from his catalogue the volume on which he + sat, of which, too, though of no special value, there was no other + copy in the library' (Macray, p. 388A). +</blockquote> +<p> + The spectacle in the mind's eye of this devoted sub-librarian and + sound divine sitting on the vellum-bound folio for six-and-thirty + years, so absorbed in his work as to be oblivious of the fact that he + had failed to include in what was his <i>magnum opus</i>, the Great + Catalogue, the very book he was sitting upon, tickles the midriff. +</p> +<p> + Here I must bring these prolonged but wholly insufficient observations + to a very necessary conclusion. Not a word has been said of the great + collection of bibles, or of the unique copies of the Koran and the + Talmud and the <i>Arabian Nights</i>, or of the Dante manuscripts, or of + Bishop Tanner's books (many bought on the dispersion of Archbishop + Sancroft's great library), which in course of removal by water from + Norwich to Oxford fell into the river and remained submerged for + twenty hours, nor of many other splendid benefactions of a later date. +</p> +<p> + One thing only remains, not to be said, but to be sent round—I mean + the hat. Ignominious to relate, this glorious foundation stands in + need of money. Shade of Sir Thomas Bodley, I invoke thy aid to loosen + the purse-strings of the wealthy! The age of learned and curious + merchants, of high-spirited and learning-loving nobles, of + book-collecting bishops, of antiquaries, is over. The Bodleian cannot + condescend to beg. It is too majestical. But I, an unauthorized + stranger, have no need to be ashamed. +</p> +<p> + Especially rich is this great library in <i>Americana</i>, and America + suggests multi-millionaires. The rich men of the United States have + been patriotically alive to the first claims of their own richly + endowed universities, and long may they so continue; but if by any + happy chance any one of them should accidentally stumble across an odd + million or even half a million of dollars hidden away in some casual + investment he had forgotten, what better thing could he do with it + than send it to this, the most famous foundation of his Old Home? It + would be acknowledged by return of post in English and in Latin, and + the donor's name would be inscribed, not indeed (and this is a + regrettable lapse) in that famous old register which Bodley provided + should always be in a prominent place in his library, but in the + Annual Statement of Accounts now regularly issued. To be associated + with the Bodleian is to share its fame and partake of the blessing it + has inherited. 'The liberal deviseth liberal things; and by liberal + things he shall stand.' +</p> + + <p> </p> + +<a name="note-1"><!--Note--></a> +<p class="fnote"> +<a href="#1"><sup><u>1</u></sup></a> <i>Literary Remains of C.S. Calverley</i>, p. 31. +</p> + + +<a name="note-2"><!--Note--></a> +<p class="fnote"><a href="#2"> +<sup><u>2</u></sup></a> <i>Winwood's Memorials</i>, vol. iii., p. 429. + +<a name="note-3"><!--Note--></a> +<p class="fnote"><a href="#3"> +<sup><u>3</u></sup></a> See correspondence in <i>Reliquiae Bodleianae</i>, London, + 1703. + +<a name="2H_4_3"><!-- H2 anchor --></a> +<p> </p> +<p> </p> +<p> </p> +<p> </p> +<h2> + BOOKWORMS +</h2> +<p> </p> + +<p> + Great is bookishness and the charm of books. No doubt there are times + and seasons in the lives of most reading men when they rebel against + the dust of libraries and kick against the pricks of these monstrously + accumulated heaps of words. We all know 'the dark hour' when the + vanity of learning and the childishness of merely literary things are + brought home to us in such a way as almost to avail to put the pale + student out of conceit with his books, and to make him turn from his + best-loved authors as from a friend who has outstayed his welcome, + whose carriage we wish were at the door. In these unhappy moments we + are apt to call to mind the shrewd men we have known, who have been + our blithe companions on breezy fells, heathery moor, and by the + stream side, who could neither read nor write, or who, at all events, + but rarely practised those Cadmean arts. Yet they could tell the time + of day by the sun, and steer through the silent night by the stars; + and each of them had—as Emerson, a very bookish person, has said—a + dial in his mind for the whole bright calendar of the year. How racy + was their talk; how wise their judgments on men and things; how well + they did all that at the moment seemed worth doing; how universally + useful was their garnered experience—their acquired learning! How + wily were these illiterates in the pursuit of game—how ready in an + emergency! What a charm there is about out-of-door company! Who would + not sooner have spent a summer's day with Sir Walter's humble friend, + Tom Purday, than with Mr. William Wordsworth of Rydal Mount! It is, we + can only suppose, reflections such as these that make country + gentlemen and farmers the sworn foes they are of education and the + enemies of School Boards. +</p> +<p> + I only indicate this line of thought to condemn it. Such temptations + come from below. Great, we repeat, is bookishness and the charm of + books. Even the writings, the ponderous writings, of that portentous + parson, the Rev. T.F. Dibdin, with all their lumbering gaiety and + dust-choked rapture over first editions, are not hastily to be sent + packing to the auction-room. Much red gold did they cost us, these + portly tomes, in bygone days, and on our shelves they shall remain + till the end of our time, unless our creditors intervene—were it only + to remind us of years when our enthusiasms were pure though our tastes + may have been crude. +</p> +<p> + Some years ago Mr. Blades, the famous printer and Caxtonist, published + in vellum covers a small volume which he christened <i>The Enemies of + Books</i>. It made many friends, and now a revised and enlarged version + in comely form, adorned with pictures, and with a few prefatory words + by Dr. Garnett, has made its appearance. Mr. Blades himself has left + this world for a better one, where—so piety bids us believe—neither + fire nor water nor worm can despoil or destroy the pages of heavenly + wisdom. But the book-collector must not be caught nursing mere + sublunary hopes. There is every reason to believe that in the realms + of the blessed the library, like that of Major Ponto, will be small + though well selected. Mr. Blades had, as his friend Dr. Garnett + observes, a debonair spirit—there was nothing fiery or controversial + about him. His attitude towards the human race and its treatment of + rare books was rather mournful than angry. For example, under the head + of 'Fire,' he has occasion to refer to that great destruction of books + of magic which took place at Ephesus, to which St. Luke has called + attention in his Acts of the Apostles. Mr. Blades describes this + holocaust as righteous, and only permits himself to say in a kind of + undertone that he feels a certain mental disquietude and uneasiness at + the thought of the loss of more than £18,000 worth of books, which + could not but have thrown much light (had they been preserved) on + many curious questions of folk-lore. Personally, I am dead against the + burning of books. A far worse, because a corrupt, proceeding, was the + scandalously horrid fate that befell the monastic libraries at our + disgustingly conducted, even if generally beneficent, Reformation. The + greedy nobles and landed gentry, who grabbed the ancient foundations + of the old religion, cared nothing for the books they found cumbering + the walls, and either devoted them to vile domestic uses or sold them + in shiploads across the seas. It may well be that the monks—fine, + lusty fellows!—cared more for the contents of their fish-ponds than + of their libraries; but, at all events, they left the books alone to + take their chance—they did not rub their boots with them or sell them + at the price of old paper. A man need have a very debonair spirit who + does not lose his temper over our blessed Reformation. Mr. Blades, on + the whole, managed to keep his. +</p> +<p> + Passing from fire, Mr. Blades has a good deal to say about water, and + the harm it has been allowed to do in our collegiate and cathedral + libraries. With really creditable composure he writes: 'Few old + libraries in England are now so thoroughly neglected as they were + thirty years ago. The state of many of our collegiate and cathedral + libraries was at that time simply appalling. I could mention many + instances—one especially—where, a window having been left broken for + a long time, the ivy had pushed through and crept over a row of books, + each of which was worth hundreds of pounds. In rainy weather the water + was conducted as by a pipe along the tops of the books, and soaked + through the whole.' Ours is indeed a learned Church. Fancy the mingled + amazement and dismay of the Dean and Chapter when they were informed + that all this mouldering literary trash had 'boodle' in it. 'In + another and a smaller collection the rain came through on to a + bookcase through a sky-light, saturating continually the top shelf, + containing Caxtons and other English books, one of which, although + rotten, was sold soon after by permission of the Charity Commissioners + for £200.' Oh, those scoundrelly Charity Commissioners! How + impertinent has been their interference with the loving care and + guardianship of the Lord's property by His lawfully consecrated + ministers! By the side of these anthropoid apes, the genuine + bookworm, the paper-eating insect, ravenous as he once was, has done + comparatively little mischief. Very little seems known of the + creature, though the purchaser of Mr. Blades's book becomes the owner + of a life-size portrait of the miscreant in one, at all events, of his + many shapes. Mr. Birdsall, of Northampton, sent Mr. Blades, in 1879, + by post, a fat little worm he had found in an old volume. Mr. Blades + did all, and more than all, that could be expected of a humane man to + keep the creature alive, actually feeding him with fragments of + Caxtons and seventeenth-century literature; but it availed not, for in + three weeks the thing died, and as the result of a post-mortem was + declared to be <i>Aecophera pseudopretella</i>. Some years later Dr. + Garnett, who has spent a long life obliging men of letters, sent Mr. + Blades two Athenian worms, which had travelled to this country in a + Hebrew Commentary; but, lovely and pleasant in their lives, in their + deaths they were not far divided. Mr. Blades, at least, mourned their + loss. The energy of bookworms, like that of men, greatly varies. Some + go much farther than others. However fair they may start on the same + folio, they end very differently. Once upon a time 212 worms began to + eat their way through a stout folio printed in the year 1477, by Peter + Schoeffer, of Mentz. It was an ungodly race they ran, but let me trace + their progress. By the time the sixty-first page was reached all but + four had given in, either slinking back the way they came, or + perishing <i>en route</i>. By the time the eighty-sixth page had been + reached but one was left, and he evidently on his last legs, for he + failed to pierce his way through page 87. At the other end of the same + book another lot of worms began to bore, hoping, I presume, to meet + in the middle, like the makers of submarine tunnels, but the last + survivor of this gang only reached the sixty ninth page from the end. + Mr. Blades was of opinion that all these worms belonged to the + <i>Anobium pertinax</i>. Worms have fallen upon evil days, for, whether + modern books are readable or not, they have long since ceased to be + edible. The worm's instinct forbids him to 'eat the china clay, the + bleaches, the plaster of Paris, the sulphate of barytes, the scores of + adulterants now used to mix with the fibre.' Alas, poor worm! Alas, + poor author! Neglected by the <i>Anobium pertinax</i>, what chance is + there of anyone, man or beast, a hundred years hence reaching his + eighty-seventh page! +</p> +<p> + Time fails me to refer to bookbinders, frontispiece collectors, + servants and children, and other enemies of books; but the volume I + refer to is to be had of the booksellers, and is a pleasant volume, + worthy of all commendation. Its last words set me thinking; they are: +</p> +<blockquote> + 'Even a millionaire will ease his toils, lengthen his life, and add + 100 per cent. to his daily pleasures, if he becomes a bibliophile; + while to the man of business with a taste for books, who through + the day has struggled in the battle of life, with all its + irritating rebuffs and anxieties, what a blessed season of + pleasurable repose opens upon him as he enters his sanctum, where + every article wafts him a welcome and every book is a personal + friend!' +</blockquote> +<p> + As for the millionaire, I frankly say I have no desire his life should + be lengthened, and care nothing about adding 100 per cent. to his + daily pleasures. He is a nuisance, for he has raised prices nearly 100 + per cent. We curse the day when he was told it was the thing to buy + old books; and, if he must buy old books, why is he not content with + the works of Gibbon, Hume, and Robertson, and Flavius Josephus, that + learned Jew? But it is not the millionaire who set me thinking; it is + the harassed man of business; and what I am wondering is, whether, in + sober truth and earnestness, it is possible for him, as he shuts his + library door and finds himself inside, to forget his rebuffs and + anxieties—his maturing bills and overdue argosies—and to lose + himself over a favourite volume. The 'article' that wafts him welcome + I take to be his pipe. That he will put the 'article' into his mouth + and smoke it I have no manner of doubt; my dread is lest, in ten + minutes' time, the book should have dropt into his lap and the man's + eyes be staring into the fire. But for a' that, and a' that—great is + bookishness and the charm of books. +</p> +<a name="2H_4_4"><!-- H2 anchor --></a> +<p> </p> +<p> </p> +<p> </p> +<p> </p> +<h2> + CONFIRMED READERS +</h2> +<p> </p> + +<p> + Dr. Johnson is perhaps our best example of a confirmed reader. Malone + once found him sitting in his room roasting apples and reading a + history of Birmingham. This staggered even Malone, who was himself a + somewhat far-gone reader. +</p> +<p> + 'Don't you find it rather dull?' he ventured to inquire. +</p> +<p> + 'Yes,' replied the Sage, 'it is dull.' +</p> +<p> + Malone's eyes then rested on the apples, and he remarked he supposed + they were for medicine. +</p> +<p> + 'Why, no,' said Johnson; 'I believe they are only there because I + wanted something to do. I have been confined to the house for a week, + and so you find me roasting apples and reading the history of + Birmingham.' +</p> +<p> + This anecdote pleasingly illustrates the habits of the confirmed + reader. Nor let the worldling sneer. Happy is the man who, in the + hours of solitude and depression, can read a history of Birmingham. + How terrible is the story Welbore Ellis told of Robert Walpole in his + magnificent library, trying book after book, and at last, with tears + in his eyes, exclaiming: 'It is all in vain: I cannot read!' +</p> +<p> + Edmund Malone, the Shakespearian commentator and first editor of + <i>Boswell's Johnson</i>, was as confirmed a reader as it is possible for a + book-collector to be. His own life, by Sir James Prior, is full of + good things, and is not so well known as it should be. It smacks of + books and bookishness. +</p> +<p> + Malone, who was an Irishman, was once, so he would have us believe, + deeply engaged in politics; but he then fell in love, and the affair, + for some unknown reason, ending unhappily, his interest ceased in + everything, and he was driven as a last resource to books and + writings. Thus are commentators made. They learn in suffering what + they observe in the margin. Malone may have been driven to his + pursuits, but he took to them kindly, and became a vigorous and + skilful book-buyer, operating in the market both on his own behalf and + on that of his Irish friends with great success. +</p> +<p> + His good fortune was enormous, and this although he had a severely + restricted notion as to price. He was no reckless bidder, like Mr. + Harris, late of Covent Garden, who, just because David Garrick had a + fine library of old plays, was determined to have one himself at + whatever cost. In Malone's opinion half a guinea was a big price for a + book. As he grew older he became less careful, and in 1805, which was + seven years before his death, he gave Ford, a Manchester bookseller, + £25 for the Editio Princeps of <i>Venus and Adonis</i>. He already had the + edition of 1596—a friend had given it him—bound up with + Constable's and Daniel's Sonnets and other rarities, but he very + naturally yearned after the edition of 1593. He fondly imagined + Ford's copy to be unique: there he was wrong, but as he died in that + belief, and only gave £25 for his treasure, who dare pity him? His + copy now reposes in the Bodleian. He secured Shakespeare's Sonnets + (1609) and the first edition of the <i>Rape of Lucrece</i> for two guineas, + and accounted half a crown a fair average price for quarto copies of + Elizabethan plays. +</p> +<p> + Malone was a truly amiable man, of private fortune and endearing + habits. He lived on terms of intimacy with his brother + book-collectors, and when they died attended the sale of their + libraries and bid for his favourite lots, grumbling greatly if they + were not knocked down to him. At Topham Beauclerk's sale in 1781, + which lasted nine days, Malone bought for Lord Charlemont 'the + pleasauntest workes of George Gascoigne, Esquire, with the princely + pleasures at Kenilworth Castle, 1587.' He got it cheap (£1 7s.), as it + wanted a few leaves, which Malone thought he had; but to his horror, + when it came to be examined, it was found to want eleven more leaves + than he had supposed. 'Poor Mr. Beauclerk,' he writes, 'seems never to + have had his books examined or collated, otherwise he would have found + out the imperfections.' Malone was far too good a book-collector to + suggest a third method of discovering a book's imperfections—namely, + reading it. Beauclerk's library only realized £5,011, and as the Duke + of Marlborough had a mortgage upon it of £5,000, there must have been + after payment of the auctioneer's charges a considerable deficit. +</p> +<p> + But Malone was more than a book-buyer, more even than a commentator: + he was a member of the Literary Club, and the friend of Johnson, + Reynolds, and Burke. On July 28, 1789, he went to Burke's place, the + Gregories, near Beaconsfield, with Sir Joshua, Wyndham, and Mr. + Courtenay, and spent three very agreeable days. The following extract + from the recently published Charlemont papers has interest: +</p> +<blockquote> + 'As I walked out before breakfast with Mr. Burke, I proposed to him + to revise and enlarge his admirable book on the <i>Sublime and + Beautiful</i>, which the experience, reading, and observation of + thirty years could not but enable him to improve considerably. But + he said the train of his thoughts had gone another way, and the + whole bent of his mind turned from such subjects, and that he was + much fitter for such speculations at the time he published that + book than now.' +</blockquote> +<p> + Between the Burke of 1758 and the Burke of 1789 there was a difference + indeed, but the forcible expressions, 'the train of my thoughts' and + 'the whole bent of my mind,' serve to create a new impression of the + tremendous energy and fertile vigour of this amazing man. The next day + the party went over to Amersham and admired Mr. Drake's trees, and + listened to Sir Joshua's criticisms of Mr. Drake's pictures. This was + a fortnight after the taking of the Bastille. Burke's hopes were still + high. The Revolution had not yet spoilt his temper. +</p> +<p> + Amongst the Charlemont papers is an amusing tale I do not remember + having ever seen before of young Philip Stanhope, the recipient of + Lord Chesterfield's famous letters: +</p> +<blockquote> + 'When at Berne, where he passed some of his boyhood in company with + Harte and the excellent Mr., now Lord, Eliott (Heathfield of + Gibraltar), he was one evening invited to a party where, together + with some ladies, there happened to be a considerable number of + Bernese senators, a dignified set of elderly gentlemen, + aristocratically proud, and perfect strangers to fun. These most + potent, grave, and reverend signors were set down to whist, and + were so studiously attentive to the game, that the unlucky brat + found little difficulty in fastening to the backs of their chairs + the flowing tails of their ample periwigs and in cutting, + unobserved by them, the tyes of their breeches. This done, he left + the room, and presently re-entered crying out, "Fire! Fire!" The + affrighted burgomasters suddenly bounced up, and exhibited to the + amazed spectators their senatorial heads and backs totally deprived + of ornament or covering.' +</blockquote> +<p> + Young Stanhope was no ordinary child. There is a completeness about + this jest which proclaims it a masterpiece. One or other of its points + might have occurred to anyone, but to accomplish both at once was to + show real distinction. +</p> +<p> + Sir William Stanhope, Lord Chesterfield's brother, felt no surprise at + his nephew's failure to acquire the graces. 'What,' said he, 'could + Chesterfield expect? His mother was Dutch, he was educated at Leipsic, + and his tutor was a pedant from Oxford.' +</p> +<p> + Papers which contain anecdotes of this kind carry with them their own + recommendation. We hear on all sides complaints—and I hold them to be + just complaints—of the abominable high prices of English books. + Thirty shillings, thirty-six shillings, are common prices. The thing + is too barefaced. His Majesty's Stationery Office set an excellent + example. They sell an octavo volume of 460 closely but well-printed + pages, provided with an excellent index, for one shilling and + elevenpence. There is not much editing, but the quality of it is + good. +</p> +<p> + If anyone is confined to his room, even as Johnson was when Malone + found him roasting apples and reading a history of Birmingham, he + cannot do better than surround himself with the publications of the + Historical Manuscripts Commission; they will cost him next to nothing, + tell him something new on every page, revive a host of old memories + and scores of half-forgotten names, and perhaps tempt him to become a + confirmed reader. +</p> +<a name="2H_4_5"><!-- H2 anchor --></a> +<p> </p> +<p> </p> +<p> </p> +<p> </p> +<h2> + FIRST EDITIONS +</h2> +<p> </p> + +<p> + This is an age of great publicity. Not only are our streets well + lighted, but also our lives. The cosy nooks and corners, crannies, and + dark places where, in old-fashioned days, men hugged their private + vices without shamefacedness have been swept away as ruthlessly as + Seven Dials. All the questionable pursuits, fancies, foibles of silly, + childish man are discussed grimly and at length in the newspapers and + magazines. Our poor hobby-horses are dragged out of the stable, and + made to show their shambling paces before the mob of gentlemen who + read with ease. There has been much prate lately of as innocent a + foible as ever served to make men self-forgetful for a few seconds of + time—the collecting of first editions. Somebody hard up for 'copy' + denounced this pastime, and made merry over a <i>virtuoso's</i> whim. + Somebody else—Mr. Slater, I think it was—thought fit to put in a + defence, and thereupon a dispute arose as to why men bought first + editions dear when they could buy last editions cheap. Brutal, + domineering fellows bellowed their complete indifference to + Shakespeare's Quartos till timid <i>dilettanti</i> turned pale and fled. +</p> +<p> + The fact, of course, is that in such a dispute as this there is but + one thing to do—namely, to persuade the Attorney-General of the day + to enter up a <i>nolle prosequi</i>, and for him who collects first + editions to go on collecting. There is nothing to be serious about in + the matter. It is not literature. Some of the greatest lovers of + letters who have ever lived—Dr. Johnson, for example, and Thomas de + Quincey and Carlyle—have cared no more for first editions than I do + for Brussels sprouts. You may love Moliere with a love surpassing your + love of woman without any desire to beggar yourself in Paris by + purchasing early copies of the plays. You may be perfectly content to + read Walton's <i>Lives</i> in an edition of 1905, if there is one; and as + for <i>Robinson Crusoe</i> and <i>Gulliver</i> and the <i>Vicar of Wakefield</i>—are + they not eternal favourites, and just as tickling to the fancy in + their nineteenth-century dress as in their eighteenth? The whole thing + is but a hobby—but a paragraph in one chapter of the vast, but most + agreeable, history of human folly. If John Doe is blankly indifferent + to Richard Roe's Elizabethan dramatists, it is only fair to remember + how sublime is Richard's contempt for John's collection of old musical + instruments. If these gentlemen are wise they will discuss, when they + meet, the weather, or the Death Duties, or some other extraneous + subject, and leave their respective hobbies in the stable. Never mind + what your hobby is—books, prints, drawings, china, scarabaei, + lepidoptera—keep it to yourself and for those like-minded with you. + Sweet indeed is the community of interest, delightful the intercourse + which a common foible begets; but correspondingly bitter and + distressful is the forced union of nervous zeal and pitiless + indifference. Spare us the so-called friends who come and gape and + stare and go! What is more painful than the chatter of the connoisseur + as it falls upon the long ears of the ignoramus! Collecting is a + secret sin—the great pushing public must be kept out. It is sheer + madness to puff and praise your hobby, and to invite Dick, Tom, and + Harry to inspect your stable: such conduct is to invite rebuff, to + expose yourself to just animadversion. Keep the beast in its box. This + is my first advice to the hobby-hunter. +</p> +<p> + My second piece of advice is equally important, particularly at the + present time, when the world is too much with us, and it is + this—never convert a taste into a trade. The moment you become a + tradesman you cease to be a hobbyist. When the love of money comes in + at the window the love of books runs out at the door. There has been + of late years a good deal of sham book-collecting. The morals of the + Stock Exchange have corrupted even the library. Sordid souls have been + induced by wily second-hand booksellers to buy books for no other + reason than because the price demanded was a high one. This is the + very worst possible reason for buying a book. Whether it is ever wise + to buy a book, as Aulus Gellius used to do, simply because it is + cheap, and regardless of its condition, is a debatable point, but to + buy one dear at the mere bidding of a bookseller is to debase + yourself. The result of this ungodly traffic has been to enlarge for + the moment the circle of book-buyers by including in it men with + commercial instincts, sham hobbyists. But these impostors have been + lately punished in the only way they could be punished—namely, in + their pockets—by a heavy fall of prices. The stuff they were induced + to buy has not, and could not, maintain its price, and the shops are + now full of the volumes which, seven or ten years ago, fetched fancy + sums. +</p> +<p> + If a young book-collector does but bear in mind the two bits of advice + I have proffered him, he may safely be bidden godspeed and + congratulated on his choice of a hobby, for it is, without a shadow of + a doubt, the cheapest he could have chosen. Even without means to + acquire the treasures of a Quaritch or a Pickering, he may yet derive + infinite delight from the perusal of the many hundreds of catalogues + that now weekly issue from the second-hand booksellers in town and + country. He may write an imaginary letter, ordering the books he has + previously selected from the catalogue, and then he has only to forget + to post it to avoid all disagreeable consequences. +</p> +<p> + The constant turnover of old books is amazing. There seems no rest in + this world even for folios and quartos. The first edition of old + Burton's <i>Anatomy</i>, printed at Oxford in a small quarto in 1621, rises + to the surface as a rule no less than four times a year; so, too, does + Coryat's <i>Crudities</i>, hastily gobbled up in five months' travels in + France, Savoy, Italy, Germany, etc., 1611. What a seething, restless + place this world is, to be sure! The constant recurrence of copies of + the same books is almost startling. Hardly a year passes but every + book of first-rate importance and interest is knocked down to the + highest bidder. No doubt there are still old libraries where, buried + in dust and cobwebs, the folios and quartos lie undisturbed; but to + turn the pages or examine the index of <i>Book Prices Current</i> is to + have a vision before your eyes of whole regiments of books passing + and repassing across the stage amidst the loud cries of auctioneers + and the bidding of booksellers. +</p> +<p> + In the auction-mart taste is pretty steady. The old favourites hold + their own. Every now and again an immortal joins their ranks. Puffing + and pretension may win the ear of the outside public, and extort + praise from the press, but inside the rooms of a Sotheby, a Puttick, + or a Hodgson, these foolish persons count for nothing, and their names + are seldom heard. Were an author to turn the pages of <i>Book Prices + Current</i>, he could hardly fail, as he there read the names of famous + men of old, to breathe the prayer, 'May my books some day be found + forming part of this great tidal wave of literature which is for ever + breaking on Earth's human shores!' But the vanity of authors is + endless, and their prayers are apt to be but empty things. +</p> +<a name="2H_4_6"><!-- H2 anchor --></a> +<p> </p> +<p> </p> +<p> </p> +<p> </p> +<h2> + GOSSIP IN A LIBRARY +</h2> +<p> </p> + +<p> + There were no books in Eden, and there will be none in heaven; but + between times—and it is of those I speak—it is otherwise. Mr. Thomas + Greenwood, in a most meritorious work on Public Libraries, supplies + figures which show that, without counting pamphlets (which are books + gone wrong) or manuscripts (which are books <i>in terrorem</i>), there are + at this present moment upwards of 71,000,000 printed books in bindings + in the several public libraries of Europe and America. To estimate + the number and extent of private libraries in those countries is + impossible. In many large houses there are no books at all—which is + to make ignorance visible; whilst in many small houses there are, or + seem to be, nothing else—which is to make knowledge inconvenient; yet + as there are upwards of 280,000,000 of inhabitants of Europe and + America, I cannot greatly err if a passion for round numbers drives me + to the assertion that there are at least 300,000,000 books in these + countries, not counting bibles and prayer-books. It is a poor show! + Russia is greatly to blame, her European population of 88,000,000 + being so badly provided for that it brings down the average. Were + Russia left out in the cold, we might, were our books to be divided + amongst our population <i>per capita</i>, rely upon having two volumes + apiece. This would not afford Mr. Gosse (the title of one of whose + books I have stolen) much material for gossip, particularly as his two + books might easily chance to be duplicates. There are no habits of man + more alien to the doctrine of the Communist than those of the + collector, and there is no collector, not even that basest of them + all, the Belial of his tribe, the man who collects money, whose love + of private property is intenser, whose sense of the joys of ownership + is keener than the book-collector's. Mr. William Morris once hinted at + a good time coming, when at almost every street corner there would be + a public library, where beautiful and rare books will be kept for + citizens to examine. The citizen will first wash his hands in a + parochial basin, and then dry them on a parochial towel, after which + ritual he will walk in and stand <i>en queue</i> until it comes to be his + turn to feast his eye upon some triumph of modern or some miracle of + old typography. He will then return to a bookless home proud and + satisfied, tasting of the joy that is in widest commonalty spread. + Alas! he will do nothing of the kind, not, at least, if he is one of + those in whom the old Adam of the bookstalls still breathes. A public + library must always be an abomination. To enjoy a book, you must own + it. 'John Jones his book,' that is the best bookplate. I have never + admired the much-talked-of bookplate of Grolier, which, in addition to + his own name, bore the ridiculous advice <i>Et Amicorum</i>. Fudge! There + is no evidence that Grolier ever lent any man a book with his plate + in it. His collection was dispersed after his death, and then + sentimentalists fell a-weeping over his supposed generosity. It would + be as reasonable to commend the hospitality of a dead man because you + found amongst his papers a vast number of unposted invitations to + dinner upon a date he long outlived. Sentiment is seldom in place, but + on a bookplate it is peculiarly odious. To paste in each book an + invitation to steal it, as Grolier seems to have done, is foolish; but + so also is it to invoke, as some book-plates do, curses upon the heads + of all subsequent possessors—as if any man who wanted to add a volume + to his collection would be deterred by such braggadocio. But this is a + digression. Public libraries can never satisfy the longings of + book-collectors any more than can the private libraries of other + people. Whoever really cared a snap of his fingers for the contents of + another man's library, unless he is known to be dying? It is a + humorous spectacle to watch one book-collector exhibiting his stores + to another. If the owner is a gentleman, as he usually is, he affects + indifference—'A poor thing,' he seems to say, 'yet mine own'; whilst + the visitor, if human, as he always is, exhibits disgust. If the + volume proffered for the visitor's examination is a genuine rarity, + not in his own collection, he surlily inquires how it was come by; + whilst if it is no great thing, he testily expresses his astonishment + it should be thought worth keeping, and this although he has the very + same edition at home. +</p> +<p> + On the other hand, though actual visits to other men's libraries + rarely seem to give pleasure, the perusal of the catalogues of such + libraries has always been a favourite pastime of collectors; but this + can be accounted for without in any way aspersing the truth of the + general statement that the only books a lover of them takes pleasure + in are his own. +</p> +<p> + Mr. Gosse's recent volume, <i>Gossip in a Library</i>, is a very pleasing + example of the pleasure taken by a book-hunter in his own books. Just + as some men and more women assume your interest in the contents of + their nurseries, so Mr. Gosse seeks to win our ears as he talks to us + about some of the books on his shelves. He has secured my willing + attention, and is not likely to be disappointed of a considerable + audience. +</p> +<p> + We live in vocal times, when small birds make melody on every bough. + The old book-collectors were a taciturn race—the Bindleys, the + Sykeses, the Hebers. They made their vast collections in silence; + their own tastes, fancies, predilections, they concealed. They never + gossiped of their libraries; their names are only preserved to us by + the prices given for their books after their deaths. Bindley's copy + fetched £3 10s., Sykes' £4 15s. Thus is the buyer of to-day tempted to + his doom, forgetful of the fact that these great names are only quoted + when the prices realized at their sales were less than those now + demanded. +</p> +<p> + But solacing as is the thought of those grave, silent times, + indisposed as one often is for the chirpy familiarities of this + present, it is, or it ought to be, a pious, and therefore pleasant, + reflection that there never was a time when more people found delight + in book-hunting, or were more willing to pay for and read about their + pastime than now. +</p> +<p> + Rich people may, no doubt, still be met with who think it a serious + matter to buy a book if it cost more than 3s. 9d. It was recently + alleged in an affidavit made by a doctor in lunacy that for a + well-to-do bachelor to go into the Strand, and in the course of the + same morning spend £5 in the purchase of 'old books,' was a ground for + belief in his insanity and for locking him up. These, however, are but + vagaries, for it is certain that the number of people who will read a + book like Mr. Gosse's steadily increases. This is its justification, + and it is a complete one. It can never be wrong to give pleasure. To + talk about books is better than to read about them, but, as a matter + of hard fact, the opportunities life affords of talking about books + are very few. The mood and the company seldom coincide; when they do, + it is delightful, but they seldom do. +</p> +<p> + Mr. Gosse's book ought not to be read in a fierce, nagging spirit + which demands, What is the good of this? or, Who cares for that? His + talk, it must be admitted, is not of masterpieces. The books he takes + down are—in some instances, at all events—sad trash. Smart's poems, + for example, in an edition of 1752, which does not contain the + 'David,' is not a book which, viewed baldly and by itself, can be + honestly described as worth reading. This remark is not prompted by + jealousy, for I have the book myself, and seldom fail to find the list + of subscribers interesting, for, among many other famous names, it + contains those of 'Mr. Gray, Peter's College, Cambridge,' 'Mr. Samuel + Richardson, editor of <i>Clarissa</i>, two books,' and 'Mr. Voltaire, + Historiographer of France.' There are various Johnsons among the + subscribers, but not Samuel, who apparently would liefer pray with Kit + Smart than buy his poetry, thereby showing the doctor's usual piety + and good sense. <a name="4"></a><a href="#note-4"><small><sup>1</sup></small></a> +</p> + + <p> + Although the nagging spirit before referred to is to be deprecated, it + is sometimes amusing to lose your temper with your own hobby. If a + book-collector ever does this, he longs to silence whole libraries of + bad authors. ''Tis an inglorious acquist,' says Joseph Glanvill in his + famous <i>Vanity of Dogmatizing</i>—I quote from the first edition, 1661, + though the second is the rarer—'to have our heads or volumes laden as + were Cardinal Campeius his mules, with old and useless luggage.' + ''Twas this vain idolizing of authors,' Glanvill had just before + observed, 'which gave birth to that silly vanity of <i>impertinent + citations</i>, and inducing authority in things neither requiring nor + deserving it.' In the same strain he proceeds, 'Methinks 'tis a + pitiful piece of knowledge that can be learnt from an <i>Index</i> and a + poor ambition to be rich in the inventory of another's Treasure. To + boast a <i>Memory</i> (the most that these pedants can aim at) is but an + humble ostentation. 'Tis better to own a Judgment, though but with a + <i>Curta Supellex</i> of coherent notions, than a <i>Memory</i> like a sepulchre + furnished with a load of broken and discarnate bones.' Thus far the + fascinating Glanvill, whose mode of putting things is powerful. +</p> +<p> + There are times when the contemplation of huge libraries wearies, and + when even the names of Bindley and Sykes fail to please. Dr. Johnson's + library sold at Christie's for £247 9s. Let those sneer who dare. It + was Johnson, not Bindley, who wrote the <i>Lives of the Poets</i>. +</p> +<p> + But, of course, no sensible man ever really quarrels with his hobby. A + little petulance every now and again variegates the monotony of + routine. Mr. Gosse tells us in his book that he cannot resist + Restoration comedies. The bulk of them he knows to be as bad as bad + can be. He admits they are not literature—whatever that may + mean—but he intends to go on collecting them all the same till the + inevitable hour when Death collects him. This is the true spirit; + herein lies happiness, which consists in being interested in + something, it does not much matter what. In this spirit let me take up + Mr. Gosse's book again, and read what he has to tell about <i>Pharamond; + or, the History of France. A Fam'd Romance. In Twelve Parts</i>, or about + Mr. John Hopkins' collection of poems, printed by Thomas Warren for + Bennet Bunbury at the Blue Anchor, in the Lower Walk of the New + Exchange, 1700. The Romance is dull, and as it occupies more than + 1,100 folio pages may be pronounced tedious, and the poetry is bad, + but as I do not seriously intend ever to read a line of either the + Romance or the poetry, this is no great matter. +</p> +<p> </p> + + +<a name="note-4"><!--Note--></a> +<p class="fnote"> +<a href="#4"><sup><u>1</u></sup></a> 'He insisted on people praying with him, and I'd as lief + pray with Kit Smart as with anyone else.' +</p> + +<a name="2H_4_7"><!-- H2 anchor --></a> +<p> </p> +<p> </p> +<p> </p> +<p> </p> +<h2> + LIBRARIANS AT PLAY +</h2> +<p> </p> + +<p> + No man of feeling will grudge the librarians of the universe their + annual outing. Their pursuits are not indeed entirely sedentary, since + at times they have to climb tall ladders, but of exercise they must + always stand in need, and as for air, the exclusively bookish + atmosphere is as bad for the lungs as it is for the intellectuals. In + 1897 the Second International Library Conference met in London, + attended several concerts, was entertained by the Marchioness of Bute + and Lady Lubbock; visited Lambeth Palace and Stafford and Apsley + Houses; witnessed a special performance of Irving's <i>Merchant of + Venice</i>; were elected honorary members of the City Liberal, Junior + Athaeneum, National Liberal, and Savage Clubs; and, generally + speaking, enjoyed themselves after the methods current during that + period. They also read forty-six papers, which now alone remain a + stately record of their proceedings. +</p> +<p> + I have lately spent a pleasant afternoon musing over these papers. + Their variety is endless, and the dispositions of mind displayed by + these librarians are wide as the poles asunder. Some of them babble + like babies, others are evidently austere scholars; some are gravely + bent on the best methods of classifying catalogues, economizing space, + and sorting borrowers' cards; others, scorning such mechanical + details, bid us regard libraries, and consequently librarians, as the + primary factors in human evolution. 'Where,' asks Mr. Ernest Cushing + Richardson, the librarian of Princetown University, New Jersey, + U.S.A., 'lies the germ of the library?' He answers his own question + after the following convincing fashion: 'At the point where a + definitely formed concept from another's mind is placed beside one's + own idea for integration, the result being a definite new form, + including the substance of both.' The pointsman who presides over this + junction is the librarian. +</p> +<p> + The young woman of whom Mr. Matthews, the well-known librarian of + Bristol, tells us, who, being a candidate for the post of assistant + librarian, boldly pronounced Rider Haggard to be the author of the + <i>Idylls of the King</i>, Southey of <i>The Mill on the Floss</i>, and Mark + Twain of <i>Modern Painters</i>, undoubtedly placed her own ideas at the + service of Bristol alongside the preconceived conceptions of Mr. + Matthews; but she was rejected all the same. +</p> +<p> + To speak seriously, who are librarians, and whence come they in such + numbers? Of Bodley's librarian we have heard, and all the lettered + world honours the name of Richard Garnett, late keeper of the printed + books at the British Museum. But beyond these and half a dozen others + a great darkness prevails. This ignorance is well illustrated by a + pleasing anecdote told at the Conference by Mr. MacAlister: +</p> +<blockquote> + 'Only the day before yesterday, on the Calais boat, I was + introduced to a world-famed military officer who, when he + understood I had some connection with the Library Association, + exclaimed: "Why, you're just the man I want! I have been anxious of + late about my man, old Atkins. You see the old boy, with a stoop, + sheltering behind the funnel. Poor old beggar! quite past his work, + but as faithful as a dog. It has just occurred to me that if you + could shove him into some snug library in the country, I'd be + awfully grateful to you. His one fault is a fondness for reading, + and so a library would be just the thing."' +</blockquote> +<p> + The usual titled lady also turned up at the Conference. This time she + was recommending her late cook for the post of librarian, alleging on + her behalf the same strange trait of character—her fondness for + reading. Here, of course, one recalls Mark Pattison's famous dictum, + 'The librarian who reads is lost,' about which there is much to be + said, both <i>pro</i> and <i>con</i>; but we must not be put off our inquiry, + which is: Who are these librarians, and whence come they? They are the + custodians of the 70,000,000 printed books (be the numbers a little + more or less) in the public libraries of the Western world, and they + come from guarding their treasures. They deserve our friendliest + consideration. If occasionally their enthusiasm provokes a smile, it + is, or should be, of the kindliest. When you think of 70,000,000 + books, instinctively you wish to wash your hands. Nobody knows what + dust is who has not divided his time between the wine-cellar and the + library. The work of classification, of indexing, of packing away, + must be endless. Great men have arisen who have grappled with these + huge problems. We read respectfully of Cutter's rules, which are to + the librarian even as Kepler's laws to the astronomer. We have also + heard of Poole's index. We bow our heads. Both Cutter and Poole are + Americans. The parish of St. Pancras has just, by an overwhelming + majority, declined to have a free library, and consequently a + librarian. Brutish St. Pancras! +</p> +<p> + Libraries are obviously of two kinds: those intended for popular use + and those meant for the scholar. The ordinary free library, in the + sense of Mr. Ewart's Act of Parliament of 1850, is a popular library + where a wearied population turns for distraction. Fiction plays a + large part. In some libraries 80 per cent. of the books in circulation + are novels. Hence Mr. Goldwin Smith's splenetic remark, 'People have + no more right to novels than to theatre-tickets out of the taxes.' + Quite true; no more they have—or to public gardens or to beautiful + pictures or to anything save to peep through the railings and down the + areas of Mr. Gradgrind's fine new house in Park Lane. +</p> +<p> + When we are considering popular libraries, it does not do to expect + too much of tired human nature. This popular kind of library was well + represented—perhaps a little over-represented, at the Conference. All + our American cousins are not Cutters and Pooles. There was Mr. + Crunden, who keeps the public library at St. Louis, U.S.A. He is all + against dull text-books. As a boy he derived his inspiration from + Sargent's <i>Standard Speaker</i>, and the interesting sketch he gives us + of his education makes us wonder whether amidst his multitudinous + reading he ever encountered Newman's marvellous description and + handling of the young and over-read Mr. Brown, which is to be found + under the heading 'Elementary Studies' in <i>Lectures and Essays on + University Subjects</i>. +</p> +<p> + I shuddered just a little on reading in Mr. Crunden's paper of the boy + who, before he was nine, had read Bulfinch's <i>Age of Chivalry</i> and + <i>Age of Charlemagne</i>, Bryant's <i>Translation of the 'Iliad'</i>, a prose + translation of the <i>Odyssey</i>, Malory's <i>King Arthur, and several other + versions of the Arthurian legend</i>, Prescott's <i>Peru and Mexico</i>, + Macaulay's <i>Lays</i>, Longfellow's <i>Hiawatha</i> and <i>Miles Standish</i>, the + Jungle Books, and other books too numerous to mention. A famous list, + but perilously long. +</p> +<p> + Mr. Crunden supports his case for varied reading by quotations from + all quarters—Dr. William T. Harris, President Eliot, Professor + Mackenzie, Charles Dudley Warner, Sir John Lubbock—but their scraps + of wisdom or of folly do not remove my uneasiness about the digestion + of the little boy who, before he was nine years old, had (not content + with Malory) read several versions of the Arthurian legend! +</p> +<p> + Ladies make excellent librarians, and have tender hearts for children, + and so we find a paper written by a lady librarian, entitled <i>Books + that Children Like</i>. She quotes some interesting letters from + children: 'I like books about ancient history and books about knights, + also stories of adventure, and mostly books with a deep plot and + mystery about them.' 'I do not like <i>Gulliver's Travels</i>, because I + think they are silly.' 'I read <i>Little Men</i>. I did not like this + book.' 'I like <i>Ivanhoe</i>, by Scott, better than any.' 'My favourite + books are <i>Tom Sawyer</i>, <i>Uncle Tom's Cabin</i>, and <i>Scudder's American + History</i>. I like Tom Sawyer because he was so jolly, Uncle Tom because + he was so faithful, and Nathan Hale because he was so brave.' These + are unbought verdicts no wise man will despise. +</p> +<p> + All this is popular enough. But the unpopular library must not be + overlooked, for, after all, libraries are for the learned. We must not + let the babes and sucklings, or the weary seamstress or badgered + clerk, or even the working-man, ride rough-shod over Salmasius and + Scaliger. In the papers of Mr. Garnett, Mr. Pollard, Mr. Dziatzko, Mr. + Cutter, and others, the less popular and nobler side of the library is + duly exhibited. +</p> +<p> + My anxiety about these librarians, who are beginning to be a + profession by themselves, is how they are to be paid. That librarians + must live is at least as obvious in their case as in that of any other + class. They must also, if they are to be of any use, be educated. In + 1878 the late Mr. Robert Harrison, who for many years led a grimy life + in the London Library, advocated £250 as a minimum annual salary for a + competent librarian. But, as Mr. Ogle, of Bootle, pertinently asked at + the Conference, 'Are his views yet accepted?' We fear not. Mr. Ogle + courageously proceeds: +</p> +<blockquote> + 'The fear of a charge of trades unionism has long kept librarians + silent, but this matter is one of public importance, and affects + educational progress. A School-Board rate of 6d. or 1s. is + willingly paid to teach our youth to read. Shall an additional 2d. + be grudged to turn that reading talent into right and safe + channels, where it may work for the public welfare and economy?' +</blockquote> +<p> + <i>Festina lente</i>, good Mr. Ogle, I beseech you. That way fierce + controversy and, it may be, disaster lies. Do not stir the Philistine + within us. The British nation is still savage under the skin. It has + no real love for books, libraries, or librarians. In its hidden heart + it deems them all superfluous. Anger it, and it may in a fit of temper + sweep you all away. The loss of our free librarians would indeed be + grievous. Never again could they meet in conference and read papers + full of quaint things and odd memories. What, for example, can be more + amusing than Mr. Cowell's reminiscences of forty years' library work + in Liverpool, of the primitive days when a youthful Dicky Sam (for so + do the inhabitants of that city call themselves) mistook the <i>Flora of + Liverpool</i> for a book either about a ship or a heroine? He knows + better now. And what shall we say of the Liverpool brushmaker who, at + a meeting of the library committee, recited a poem in praise of woman, + containing the following really magnificent line?— +</p> +<pre> + 'The heart that beats fondest is found in the stays.' +</pre> +<p class="noindent"> + There is nothing in Roscoe or Mrs. Hemans (local bards) one half so + fine. Long may librarians live and flourish! May their salaries + increase, if not by leaps and bounds, yet in steady proportions. Yet + will they do well to remember that books are not everything. +</p> +<a name="2H_4_8"><!-- H2 anchor --></a> +<p> </p> +<p> </p> +<p> </p> +<p> </p> +<h2> + LAWYERS AT PLAY +</h2> +<p> </p> + +<p> + That dreary morass, that Serbonian bog, the Bacon-Shakespeare + controversy, has been lately lit up as by the flickering light of a + will-o'-the-wisp, by the almost simultaneous publication of an + imaginary charge delivered to an equally imaginary jury by a judge of + no less eminence than the late Lord Penzance (that tough Erastian) and + of the still bolder <i>jeu d'esprit</i>, <i>A Report of the Trial of an Issue + in Westminster Hall</i>, June 20, 1627, which is the work of the + unbridled fancy of His Honour Judge Willis, late Treasurer of the + Inner Temple, and a man most intimately acquainted with the literature + of the seventeenth century. +</p> +<p> + Neither production of these playful lawyers, clothed though they be in + the garb of judicial procedure, is in the least likely to impress the + lay mind with that sense of 'impartiality' or 'indifference' which is + supposed to be an attribute of justice, or, indeed, with anything + save the unfitness of the machinery of an action at law for the + determination of any matter which invokes the canons of criticism and + demands the arbitrament of a well-informed and lively taste. +</p> +<p> + Lord Penzance, who favours the Baconians, made no pretence of + impartiality, and says outright in his preface that his readers 'must + not expect to find in these pages an equal and impartial leaning of + the judge alternately to the case of both parties, as would, I hope, + be found in any judicial summing-up of the evidence in a real judicial + inquiry.' And, he adds, 'the form of a summing-up is only adopted for + convenience, but it is in truth very little short of an argument for + the plaintiffs, <i>i.e.</i>, the Baconians.' +</p> +<p> + Why any man, judge or no judge, who wished to prepare an argument on + one side of a question should think fit to cast that argument for + convenience' sake in the form of a judicial summing-up of both sides + is, and must remain, a puzzle. +</p> +<p> + Judge Willis, who is a Shakespearean, bold and unabashed, is not + content with a mere summing-up, but, with a gravity and wealth of + detail worthy of De Foe, has presented us with what purports to be a + verbatim report of so much of the proceedings in a suit of Hall <i>v.</i> + Russell as were concerned with the trial before a jury of the simple + issue—whether William Shakespeare, of Stratford-upon-Avon, 'the + testator in the cause of <i>Hall v. Russell</i>,' was the author of the + plays in the Folio of 1623. We are favoured with the names of counsel + employed, who snarl at one another with such startling verisimilitude, + whilst the remarks that fall from the bench do so with such + naturalness, that it is perhaps not surprising, or any very severe + reflection upon his literary <i>esprit</i>, that a member of the Bar, + having heard Judge Willis deliver his lecture in the Inner Temple + Hall, repaired next day to the library to study at his leisure the + hitherto unnoted case of <i>Hall v. Russell</i>. Ten witnesses are put in + the box to prove the affirmative—that Shakespeare was the author of + the plays. Mr. Blount and M. Jaggard, the publishers of the Folio, + give a most satisfactory account of the somewhat crucial point—how + they came by the manuscripts, with all the amendments and corrections, + and pass lightly over the fact that those manuscripts had disappeared. + 'Rare Ben Jonson' in the witness-box is a masterpiece of dramatic + invention; he demolishes Bacon's advocate with magnificent vitality. + John Selden makes a stately witness, and Francis Meres a very useful + one. Generally speaking, the weakest part in these interesting + proceedings is the cross-examination. I have heard the learned judge + do better in old days. No witnesses are called for the Baconians, + though all the writings of the great philosopher were put in for what + they were worth. The Lord Chief Justice, who seems to have been a + friend of Shakespeare's, sums up dead in his favour, and the jury + (with whose names we are not supplied, which is a pity—Bunyan or De + Foe would have given them to us), after a short absence, a quarter of + an hour, return a Shakespearean verdict, which of course ought by + rights to make the whole question <i>res judicata</i>. +</p> +<p> + But it has done nothing of the kind. Could we really ask Blount and + Jaggard how they came by the manuscripts, and who made the + corrections, and did we believe their replies, why, then a stray + Baconian here and there might reluctantly abandon his strange fancy; + but as <i>Hall v. Russell</i> is Judge Willis's joke, it will convert no + Baconians any more than Dean Sherlock's once celebrated <i>Trial of the + Witnesses</i> compels belief in the Resurrection. +</p> +<p> + The question in reality is a compound one. Did Shakespeare write the + plays? If yes, the matter is at rest. If no—who did? If an author can + be found—Bacon or anyone else—well and good. If no author can be + found—Anon. wrote them—a conclusion which need terrify no one, since + the plays would still remain within our reach, and William + Shakespeare, apart from the plays, is very little to anybody who has + not written his life. +</p> +<p> + But this is not the form the controversy has assumed. The + anti-Shakespeareans are to a man Baconians, and fondly imagine that if + only Will Shakespeare were put out of the way their man must step into + the vacant throne. Lord Penzance in charging his jury told them that + those of their number 'who had studied the writings of Bacon' and were + 'keenly alive to his marvellous mental powers' would probably have 'no + difficulty,' if once satisfied that the author they were seeking after + was <i>not</i> Shakespeare, in finding as a fact that he <i>was</i> Bacon. But + suppose James Spedding had been on that jury, and, rising in his + place, had spoken as follows: +</p> +<blockquote> + 'My Lord,—If any man has ever studied the writings of Bacon, I + have. For twenty-five years I have done little else. If any man is + keenly alive to his marvellous mental powers, I am that man. I am + also deeply read in the plays attributed to Shakespeare, and I + think I am in a condition to say that, whoever was the real author, + it was <i>not</i> Bacon.' +</blockquote> +<p> + That this is exactly what Spedding would have said we know from the + letter he wrote on the subject to Mr. Holmes, reprinted in <i>Essays + and Discussions</i>, and it completely upsets the whole scheme of + arrangement of Lord Penzance's summing-up, which proceeds on the easy + footing that the more difficulties you throw in Shakespeare's path the + smoother becomes Bacon's. +</p> +<p> + That there are difficulties in Shakespeare's path, some things very + hard to explain, must be admitted. Lord Penzance makes the most of + these. It is, indeed, a most extraordinary thing that anybody should + have had the mother-wit to write the plays traditionally assigned to + Shakespeare. Where did he get it from? How on earth did the plays get + themselves written? Where, when, and how did the author pick up his + multifarious learnings? Lord Penzance, good, honest man, is simply + staggered by the extent of the play-wright's information. The plays, + so he says, 'teem with erudition,' and can only have been written by + someone who had the classics at his finger-ends, modern languages on + the tip of his tongue—by someone who had travelled far and read + deeply; and, above all, by a man who had spent at least a year in a + conveyancer's chambers! And yet, when this has been said, would Lord + Penzance have added that the style and character of the playwright is + the style and character of a really learned man of his period! Can + anything less like such a style be imagined? Once genius is granted, + heaven-born genius, a mother-wit beyond the dreams of fancy, and then + plain humdrum men, ordinary judicial intelligences, will do well to be + on their guard against it. 'Beware—beware! he is fooling thee.' + Shakespeare's genius has simply befooled Lord Penzance. Seafaring men, + after reading <i>The Tempest</i>, are ready to maintain that its author + must have been for at least a year before the mast. As for + Shakespeare's law, which has taken in so many matter-of-fact + practitioners, one can now refer to Ben Jonson's evidence in <i>Hall v. + Russell</i>, where that great dramatist has no difficulty in showing that + if none but a lawyer could have written Shakespeare's plays, a lawyer + alone could have preached Thomas Adams's sermons. Judge Willis's + profound knowledge of sound old divinity has served him here in good + stead. The fact is it is simply impossible to exaggerate the + quick-wittedness and light-heartedness of a great literary genius. The + absorbing power, the lightning-like faculty of apprehension, the + instant recognition of the uses to which any fact or fancy can be put, + the infinite number and delicacy of the mental feelers, thrust out in + all directions, which belong to the creative brain and keep it in + tremulous and restless activity, are quite enough so to differentiate + the possessor of these endowments from his fellow mortals as to make + comparison impossible. Shakespeare the actor was by the common consent + of his enemies one of the deftest fellows that ever made use of other + men's materials—'Convey, the wise it call.' I will again quote + Spedding: +</p> +<blockquote> + 'If Shakespeare was not trained as a scholar or a man of science, + neither do the works attributed to him show traces of trained + scholarship or scientific education. Given the <i>faculties</i>, you + will find that all the acquired knowledge, art, and dexterity which + the Shakespearean plays imply were easily attainable by a man who + was labouring in his vocation and had nothing else to do.' +</blockquote> +<p> + I greatly prefer this cool judgment of a scholar deeply read in + Elizabethan lore to Lord Penzance's heated and almost breathless + admiration for the 'teeming erudition' of the plays. +</p> +<p> + Lord Penzance likewise displays a very creditable non-acquaintance + with the disposition of authors one to another. He is quite shocked at + the callousness of Shakespeare's contemporaries to Shakespeare if he + were indeed the author of the Quartos which bore his name in his + lifetime. But as it cannot be suggested that in, say, 1600 it was + generally known that Shakespeare was not the author of these plays, it + is hard to see how his contemporaries can be acquitted of indifference + to his prodigious superiority over themselves. Authors, however, never + take this view. Shakespeare's contemporaries thought him a mighty + clever fellow and no more. Why, even Wordsworth was well persuaded he + could write like Shakespeare had he been so minded. Mr. Arnold + remained all his life honestly indifferent to and sceptical about the + fame of both Tennyson and Browning. Great living lawyers and doctors + do not invariably idolize each other, nor do the lawyers and doctors + in a small way of business always speak well of those in a big way. + The poets and learned critics of the seventeenth and eighteenth + centuries—Dryden, Pope, Johnson—looked upon Shakespeare with an + indulgent eye, as a great but irregular genius, after much the same + fashion as did the old sea-dogs of Nelson's day regard the hero of + Trafalgar. 'Do not criticise him too harshly,' said Lord St. Vincent; + 'there can only be one Nelson.' +</p> +<p> + These are not the real difficulties, though they seem to have pressed + somewhat heavily on Lord Penzance. +</p> +<p> + The circumstances attendant upon the publication of the Folio of 1623 + are undoubtedly puzzling. Shakespeare died in 1616, leaving behind + him more than forty plays circulating in London and more or less + associated with his name. His will, a most elaborate document, does + not contain a single reference to his literary life or labours. Seven + years after his death the Folio appears, which contains twenty-six + plays out of the odd forty just referred to, and ten extra plays which + had never before been in print, and about six of which there is a very + scanty Shakespearean tradition. Of the twenty-six old plays, seventeen + had been printed in small Quartos, possibly surreptitiously, in + Shakespeare's lifetime, but the Folio does not reprint from these + Quartos, but from enlarged, amended, and enormously improved copies. + Messrs. Heminge and Condell, the editor of this priceless treasure, + the First Folio, wrote a long-winded dedication to Lords Pembroke and + Montgomery, which contains but one pertinent passage, in which they + ask their readers to believe that it had been the office of the + editors to collect and publish the author's 'mere writings,' he being + dead, and to offer them, not 'maimed and deformed,' in surreptitious + and stolen copies, but 'cured and perfect of their limbs and all the + rest, absolute in their numbers as he conceived them, who as he was a + happie imitator of Nature was a most gentle expresser of it. His mind + and hand went together, and what he thought, he uttered with that + easiness, that we have scarce received from him a blot in his papers.' +</p> +<p> + From whose custody did those 'papers' come? Where had they been all + the seven years? Of what did they consist? If in truth unblotted, all + the seventeen Quartos as well as the new plays must have been printed + from fair manuscript copies. From whom were these unblotted copies + received, and what became of them? The silence of these players is + irritating and perplexing,—though, possibly, the explanation of the + mystery, were it forthcoming, would be, as often happens, of the + simplest. It may be that these unblotted copies were in the theatre + library all the time. +</p> +<p> + Whether these interrogatories, now unanswerable, raise doubts in the + mind of sufficient potency to destroy the tradition of centuries, and + to prevent us from sharing the conviction of Milton, of Dryden, of + Pope, and Johnson that Shakespeare was the author of Shakespeare's + plays must be left for individual consideration. But, however + destructive these doubts may prove, they do not go a yard of the way + to let in Bacon. +</p> +<p> + Once more I will quote Spedding, for he, of all the moderns, by virtue + of his taste and devouring studies, is the best qualified to speak: +</p> +<blockquote> + 'Aristotle was an extraordinary man. Plato was an extraordinary + man. That two men each severally so extraordinary should have been + living at the same time in the same place was a very extraordinary + thing. But would it diminish the wonder to suppose the two to be + one? So I say of Bacon and Shakespeare. That a human being + possessed of the faculties necessary to make a Shakespeare should + exist is extraordinary. That a human being possessed of the + necessary faculties to make Bacon should exist is extraordinary. + That two such human beings should have been living in London at the + same time was more extraordinary still. But that one man should + have existed possessing the faculties and opportunities necessary + to make <i>both</i> would have been the most extraordinary thing of + all' (see Spedding's <i>Essays and Discussions</i>, 1879, pp. 371, 372).<br><br> + + 'Great writers, especially being contemporary, have many features + in common, but if they are really great writers they write + naturally, and nature is always individual. I doubt whether there + are five lines together to be found in Bacon which could be + mistaken for Shakespeare, or five lines in Shakespeare which could + be mistaken for Bacon, by one who was familiar with their several + styles and practised in such observations' (<i>Ibid.</i>, p. 373). +</blockquote> +<a name="2H_4_9"><!-- H2 anchor --></a> +<p> </p> +<p> </p> +<p> </p> +<p> </p> +<h2> + THE NON-JURORS +</h2> +<p> </p> + +<p> + To anyone blessed or cursed with an ironical humour the troublesome + history of the Church of England since the Reformation cannot fail to + be an endless source of delight. It really is exciting. Just a little + more of Calvin and of Beza, half a dozen words here, or Cranmer's + pencil through a single phrase elsewhere; a 'quantum suff.' of the men + 'that allowed no Eucharistic sacrifice,' and away must have gone + beyond recall the possibility of the Laudian revival and all that + still appertains thereunto. We must have lost the 'primitive' men, the + Kens, the Wilsons, the Knoxes, the Kebles, the Puseys. On the other + hand, but for the unfaltering language of the Articles, the hearty + tone of the Homilies, and the agreeable readiness of both sides to + curse the Italian impudence of the Bishop of Rome and all his + 'detestable enormities,' our Anglican Church history could never have + been enriched with the names or sweetened by the memories of the + Romaines, the Flavels, the Venns, the Simeons, and of many thousand + unnamed saints who finished their course in the fervent faith of + Evangelicalism. But on what a thread it has always hung! An + ill-considered Act of Parliament, an amendment hastily accepted by a + pestered layman at midnight, a decision in a court of law, a Jerusalem + Bishoprick, a passage in an early Father, an ancient heresy restudied, + and off to Rome goes a Newman or a Manning, whilst a Baptist Noel + finds his less romantic refuge in Protestant Dissent. Schism is for + ever in the air. Disruption a lively possibility. It has always been a + ticklish business belonging to the Church of England, unless you can + muster up enough courage to be a frank Erastian, and on the rare + occasions when you attend your parish church handle the Book of Common + Prayer with all the reverence due to a schedule to an Act of + Parliament. +</p> +<p> + Among the many noticeable humours of the present situation is the tone + adopted by an average Churchman like Canon Overton to the Non-Jurors. + When the late Mr. Lathbury published his admirable <i>History of the + Non-Jurors</i>,<a name="5"></a> <a href="#note-5"><small><sup>1</sup></small></a> he had to prepare himself for a very different public + of Churchmen and Churchwomen than will turn over Canon Overton's + agreeable pages. <a name="6"></a> <a href="#note-6"><small><sup>2</sup></small></a> In 1845 the average Churchman, after he had + conquered the serious initial difficulty of comprehending the + Non-Juror's position, was only too apt to consider him a fool for his + pains. 'It has been the custom,' wrote Mr. Lathbury, 'to speak of the + Non-Jurors as a set of unreasonable men, and should I succeed in any + measure in correcting those erroneous impressions, I shall feel that + my labour has not been in vain.' But in 1902, as Canon Overton is + ready enough to perceive, 'their position is a little better + understood.' The well-nigh 'fools' are all but 'confessors.' +</p> + + +<p> + The early history of the Non-Jurors is as fascinating and as fruitful + as their later history is dull, melancholy, and disappointing. +</p> +<p> + Nobody will deny that the Bishops, clergy, and laity of the Church of + England who refused to take the oaths to William and Mary and George + I., when tendered to them, were amply justified in the Court of + Conscience. They were ridiculed by the politicians of the day for + their supersensitiveness; but what were they to do? If they took the + oaths, they apostalized from the faith they had once professed. +</p> +<p> + Before the Revolution it was the faith of all High Churchmen—part of + the <i>deposition</i> they had to guard—that the doctrine of + non-resistance and passive obedience was Gospel truth, primitive + doctrine, and a chief 'characteristic' of the Anglican Church. +</p> +<p> + The saintly John Kettlewell, in his tractate, <i>Christianity: a + Doctrine of the Cross, or Passive Obedience under any Pretended + Invasion of Legal Rights and Liberties</i> (1696), makes this perfectly + plain; and when Ken came to compose his famous will, wherein he + declared that he died in the Communion of the Church of England, 'as + it adheres to the doctrine of the Cross,' the good Bishop did not mean + what many a pious soul in later days has been edified by thinking he + did mean, the doctrine of the Atonement, but that of passive + obedience, which was the Non-Juror's cross. +</p> +<p> + It is sad to think a doctrine dear to so many saintly men, maintained + with an erudition so vast and exemplified by sacrifices so great, + should have disappeared in the vortex of present-day conflict. It may + some day reappear in Convocation. Kettlewell, who was a precise writer + and accurate thinker, defined sovereignty as supremacy. 'Kings,' he + said, 'can be no longer sovereigns, but subjects, if they have any + superiors'; and he points out with much acumen that the best security + under a sovereign 'which sovereignty allows' is that the Kings and + Ministers are accountable and liable for breach of law as well as + others. Kettlewell, had he lived long enough, might have come to + transfer his idea of sovereignty to Kings, Lords, and Commons speaking + through an Act of Parliament, and if so, he would have urged <i>active + obedience</i> to its enactments, when not contrary to conscience, and + <i>passive obedience</i> if they were so contrary. Therefore, were he alive + to-day, and did he think it contrary to conscience (as he easily + might) to pay a school-rate for an 'undenominational' school, he would + not draw a cheque for the amount, but neither would he punch the + bailiff's head who came to seize his furniture. Kettlewell's treatise + is well worth reading. Its last paragraph is most spirited. +</p> +<p> + There could be no doubt about it. The High Church party were bound + hand and foot to the doctrine of the Cross—<i>i.e.</i>, passive obedience + to the Lord's Anointed. Whoever else might actively resist or forsake + the King, they could not without apostasy. But the Revolution of 1688 + was not content to pierce the High Churchmen through one hand. Not + only did the Revolution require the Church to forswear its King, but + also to see its spiritual fathers deprived and intruders set in their + places without even the semblance of any spiritual authority. If it + was hard to have James II. a fugitive in foreign lands and Dutch + William in Whitehall, it was perhaps even harder to see Sancroft + expelled from Lambeth, and the Erastian and latitudinarian Tillotson, + who was prepared to sacrifice even episcopacy for peace, usurping the + title of Archbishop of Canterbury. After all, no man, not even a + Churchman, can serve two masters. The loyalty of a High Churchman to + the throne is always subject to his loyalty to the Church, and at the + Revolution he was wounded in both houses. +</p> +<p> + When Queen Elizabeth ascended the throne, and established what was + then unblushingly called 'the new religion,' the whole Anglican + Hierarchy, with the paltry exception of the Bishop of Llandaff, + refused the oaths of supremacy, and were superseded. In a little + more than 100 years the Protestant Bench was bombarded with a + heart-searching oath—this time of allegiance. Opinion was divided; + the point was not so clear as in 1559. The Archbishop of York and his + brethren of London, Lincoln, Bristol, Winchester, Rochester, Llandaff + and St. Asaph, Carlisle and St. David's, swore to bear true allegiance + to Their Majesties King William and Queen Mary. The Archbishop of + Canterbury and the Bishops of Bath and Wells, Ely, Gloucester, + Norwich, Peterborough, Worcester, Chichester, and Chester refused to + swear anything of the kind, and were consequently, in pursuance of the + terms of an Act of Parliament, and of an Act of Parliament only, + deprived of their ecclesiastical preferments. They thus became the + first Non-Jurors, and were long, except two who died before actual + sentence of exclusion, affectionately known and piously venerated in + all High Church homes as 'the Deprived Fathers.' +</p> +<p> + Who can doubt that they were right, holding the faith they did? Yet + Englishmen do not take kindly to martyrdom, and some of the Bishops + were strangely puzzled. The excellent Ken, who, like Keble, was an + Englishman first and a Catholic afterwards (in other words, no true + Catholic at all), when told that James was ready to give Ireland to + France, as nearly as possible conformed, so angry was he with the + Lord's Anointed; and even the fiery Leslie, one of our most agreeable + writers, was always ready to forgive those pious, peaceful souls who + thought it no sin, though great sorrow, to comply with the demands of + Caesar, but still managed to retain their old Church and King + principles. Leslie reserved his wrath for the Tillotsons and the + Tenisons and the Burnets, who first, to use his own words, swallowed + 'the morsels of usurpation' and then dressed them up 'with all the + gaudy and ridiculous flourishes that an Apostate eloquence can put + upon them.' +</p> +<p> + The early Non-Jurors included among their number a very large + proportion of holy, learned, and primitive-minded men. At least 400 of + the general body of the clergy refused the oaths and accepted for + themselves and those dependent on them lives of poverty and seclusion. + They were from the beginning an unpopular body. They were not + Puritans, they were not Deists, they were not Presbyterians, they + would not go to their parish churches; and yet they vehemently + objected to being called Papists. What troublesome people! Five of the + deprived fathers, including the Primate, had known what it was, when + they defied their Sovereign, to be the idols of the mob; but when + they adhered to his fallen cause they were deprived of their sees, and + sent packing from their palaces without a single growl of popular + discontent. Oblivion was their portion, even as it was of their Roman + Catholic predecessors at the time of the Reformation. +</p> +<p> + The Archbishop of Canterbury, when turned out of Lambeth by a judgment + of the Court of King's Bench to make way for Tillotson, retired to his + native village in Fressingfield, where he did not attend the parish + church, nor would allow any but non-juring clergy to perform Divine + service in his presence. Dr. Sancroft (who was a book-lover, and had + designed a binding of his own) died on November 24, 1693, and the + epitaph, of his own composition, on his tombstone may still be read + with profit by time-servers of all degrees and denominations, cleric + and lay, in Parliament and out of it. All the deprived Bishops, so Mr. + Lathbury assures us, were in very narrow circumstances, and of Turner, + of Ely, Mr. Lathbury very properly writes: 'This man who, by adhering + to the new Sovereign, and taking the oath, might have ended his day + amidst an abundance of earthly blessings, was actually sustained in + his declining years by the bounty of those who sympathized with him in + his distresses.' Bishop Turner died in 1700. +</p> +<p> + Despite this distressing and most genuine poverty, the reader of old + books will not infrequently come across traces of many happy and + well-spent hours during which these poor Non-Jurors managed 'to fleet + the time' in their own society, for they were, many of them, men of + the most varied tastes and endowed with Christian tempers; whilst + their writings exhibit, as no other writings of the period do, the + saintliness and devotion which are supposed to be among the 'notes' + of the Catholic Church. Two better men than Kettlewell and Dodwell + are nowhere to be found, and as for vigorous writing, where is Charles + Leslie to be matched? +</p> +<p> + So long as the deprived fathers continued to live, the schism—for + complete schism it was between 'the faithful remnant of the Church of + England' and the Established Church—was on firm ground. But what was + to happen when the last Bishop died? Dodwell, who, next to Hickes, + seems to have dominated the Non-Juring mind, did not wish the schism + to continue after the death of the deprived Bishops; for though he + admitted that the prayers for the Revolution Sovereigns would be + 'unlawful prayers,' to which assent could not properly be given, he + still thought that communion with the Church of England was possible. + Hickes thought otherwise, and Hickes, it must not be forgotten, though + only known to the world and even to Non-Jurors generally, as the + deprived Dean of Worcester, was in sober truth and reality Bishop of + Thetford, having been consecrated a Suffragan Bishop under that title + by the deprived Bishops of Norwich, Peterborough, and Ely, at + Southgate, in Middlesex, on February 24, 1693, in the Bishop of + Peterborough's lodgings. At the same time the accomplished Thomas + Wagstaffe was consecrated Suffragan Bishop of Ipswich, though he + continued to earn his living as a physician all the rest of his days. +</p> +<p> + These were clandestine consecrations, for even so well-tried and + whole-hearted a Non-Juror as Thomas Hearne, of Oxford, knew nothing + about them, though a great friend of both the new Bishops, until long + years had sped. It would be idle at this distance of time, and having + regard to the events which have happened since February, 1693, to + consider the nice questions how far the Act of Henry VIII. relating to + the appointment of suffragans could have any applicability to such + consecrations, or what degree of Episcopal authority was thereby + conferred, or for how long. +</p> +<p> + As things turned out, Ken proved the longest liver of the deprived + fathers. The good Bishop died at Longleat, one of the few great houses + which sheltered Non-Jurors, on March 19, 1711. But before his death he + had made cession of his rights to his friend Hooper, who on the + violent death of Kidder, the intruding revolution Bishop, had been + appointed by Queen Anne, who had wished to reinstate Ken, to Bath and + Wells. It was the wish of Ken that the schism should come to an end on + his death. +</p> +<p> + It did nothing of the kind, though some very leading Non-Jurors, + including the learned Dodwell and Nelson, rejoined the main body of + the Church, saving all just exceptions to the 'unlawful prayers.' +</p> +<p> + Bishop Wagstaffe died in 1712, leaving Bishop Hickes alone in his + glory, who in 1713, assisted by two Scottish Bishops, consecrated + Jeremy Collier, Samuel Hawes, and Nathaniel Spinckes, Bishops of 'the + faithful remnant.' Hickes died in 1715, and the following year the + great and hugely learned Thomas Brett became a Bishop, as also did + Henry Gawdy. +</p> +<p> + Then, alas! arose a schism which rent the faithful remnant in twain. + It was about a great subject, the Communion Service. Collier and Brett + were in favour of altering the Book of Common Prayer so as to restore + it to the First Book of King Edward VI., which provided for (1) The + mixed chalice; (2) prayers for the faithful departed; (3) prayer for + the descent of the Holy Ghost on the consecrated elements; (4) the + Oblatory Prayer, offering the elements to the Father as symbols of His + Son's body and blood. This side of the controversy became known as + 'The Usagers,' whilst those Non-Jurors, headed by Bishop Spinckes, who + held by King Charles's Prayer-Book, were called 'the Non-Usagers.' The + discussion lasted long, and was distinguished by immense learning and + acumen. +</p> +<p> + The Usagers may be said to have carried the day, for after the + controversy had lasted fourteen years, in 1731 Timothy Mawman was + consecrated a Bishop by three Bishops, two of whom were 'Usagers' and + one a 'Non-Usager.' But in the meantime what had become of the + congregations committed to their charge? Never large, they had + dwindled almost entirely away. +</p> +<p> + The last regular Bishop was Robert Gordon, who was consecrated in 1741 + by Brett, Smith, and Mawman. Gordon, who was an out-and-out Jacobite, + died in 1779. +</p> +<p> + I have not even mentioned the name of perhaps the greatest of the + Non-Jurors, William Law, nor that of Carte, an historian, the fruits + of whose labour may still be seen in other men's orchards. +</p> +<p> + The whole story, were it properly told, would prove how hard it is in + a country like England, where nobody really cares about such things, + to run a schism. But who knows what may happen to-morrow? +</p> +<p> </p> + + +<a name="note-5"><!--Note--></a> +<p class="fnote"><a href="#5"> +<sup><u>1</u></sup></a> <i>A History of the Non-Jurors</i>. By Thomas Lathbury. + London: Pickering, 1845. + +</p> +<a name="note-6"><!--Note--></a> +<p class="fnote"><a href="#6"> +<sup><u>2</u></sup></a> <i>The Non-Jurors</i>. By J.H. Overton, D.D. London: Smith, + Elder and Co., 1902, 16s. +</p> + + +<a name="2H_4_10"><!-- H2 anchor --></a> +<p> </p> +<p> </p> +<p> </p> +<p> </p> +<h2> + LORD CHESTERFIELD +</h2> +<p> </p> + +<p> + 'Buy good books and read them; the best books are the commonest, and + the last editions are always the best, if the editors are not + blockheads.' So wrote Lord Chesterfield to his son, that + highly-favoured and much bewritten youth, on March 19, 1750, and his + words have been chosen with great cunning by Mr. Charles Strachey as a + motto for his new edition of these famous letters. <a name="7"></a> <a href="#note-7"><small><sup>1</sup></small></a> +</p> +<p> + The quotation is full of the practical wisdom, but is at the same + time—so much, at least, an old book-collector may be allowed to + say—a little suggestive of the too-well-defined limitations of their + writer's genius and character. Lord Chesterfield is always clear and + frequently convincing, yet his wisdom is that of Mr. Worldly Wiseman, + and not only never points in the direction of the Celestial City, but + seldom displays sympathy with any generous emotion or liberal taste. + Yet as we have nobody like him in the whole body of our literature, we + can welcome even another edition—portable, complete, and cheap—of + his letters to his son with as much enthusiasm as is compatible with + the graces, and with the maxim, so dear to his lordship's heart, <i>Nil + admirari!</i> +</p> +<p> + What, I have often wondered, induced Lord Chesterfield to write this + enormously long and troublesome series of letters to a son who was not + even his heir? Their sincerity cannot be called in question. William + Wilberforce did not more fervently desire the conversion to God of his + infant Samuel than apparently did Lord Chesterfield the transformation + of his lumpish offspring into 'the all-accomplished man' he wished to + have him. +</p> +<p> + 'All this,' so the father writes in tones of fervent pleading—'all + this you may compass if you please. You have the means, you have the + opportunities; employ them, for God's sake, while you may, and make + yourself the all-accomplished man I wish to have you. It entirely + depends upon the next two years; they are the decisive ones' (Letter + CLXXVII.). +</p> +<p> + It is the very language of an evangelical piety applied to the + manufacture of a worldling. But what promoted the anxiety? Was it + natural affection—a father's love? If it was, never before or since + has that world-wide and homely emotion been so concealed. There is a + detestable, a forbidding, an all-pervading harshness of tone + throughout this correspondence that seems to banish affection, to + murder love. Read Letter CLXXVIII., and judge for yourselves. I will + quote a passage: +</p> +<blockquote> + 'The more I love you now from the good opinion I have of you, the + greater will be my indignation if I should have reason to change + it. Hitherto you have had every possible proof of my affection, + because you have deserved it, but when you cease to deserve it you + may expect every possible mark of my resentment. To leave nothing + doubtful upon this important point, I will tell you fairly + beforehand by what rule I shall judge of your conduct: by Mr. + Harte's account.... If he complains you must be guilty, and I shall + not have the least regard for anything you may allege in your own + defence.' +</blockquote> +<p> + Ugh! what a father! Lord Chesterfield despised the Gospels, and made + little of St. Paul; yet the New Testament could have taught him + something concerning the nature of a father's love. His language is + repulsive, repugnant, and yet how few fathers have taken the trouble + to write 400 educational letters of great length to their sons! All + one can say is that Chesterfield's letters are without natural + affection: +</p> +<pre> + 'If this be error and upon me proved, + I never writ, and no man ever loved.' +</pre> +<p> + If affection did not dictate these letters, what did? Could it be + ambition? So astute a man as Chesterfield, who was kept well informed + as to the impression made by his son, could hardly suppose it likely + that the boy would make a name for himself, and thereby confer + distinction upon the family of which he was an irregular offshoot. A + respectable diplomatic career, with an interval in the House of + Commons, was the most that so clear-sighted a man could anticipate for + the young Stanhope. Was it literary fame for himself? This, of course, + assumes that subsequent publication was contemplated by the writer. + The dodges and devices of authors are well-nigh infinite and quite + beyond conjecture, and it is, of course, possible that Lord + Chesterfield kept copies of these letters, which bear upon their + faces evidence of care and elaboration. It is not to be supposed for a + moment that he ever forgot he had written them. It is hard to believe + he never inquired after them and their whereabouts. Great men have + been known to write letters which, though they bore other addresses, + were really intended for their biographers. It would not have been + surprising if Lord Chesterfield wrote these letters intending some day + to publish them, but not only is there no warrant for such an opinion, + but the opposite is clearly established. It is, no doubt, odd that the + son should have carefully preserved more than 400 letters written to + him during a period beginning with his tenderest years and continuing + whilst he was travelling on the Continent. It seems almost a miracle. + What made the son treasure them so carefully? Did he look forward to + being his father's biographer? Hardly so at the age of ten, or even + twenty. Biographies were not then what they have since become. No + doubt in the middle of the eighteenth century letters were more + treasured than they are to-day, and young Stanhope's friends may also + have thought it wise to encourage him to preserve documentary evidence + of the great interest taken in him by his father. None the less, I + think the preservation of this correspondence is in the circumstances + a most extraordinary though well-established fact. +</p> +<p> + The son died in 1768 of a dropsy at Avignon, and the news was + communicated to the Earl by his daughter-in-law, Mrs. Eugenia + Stanhope, of whose existence he was previously unaware. Two grandsons + accompanied her. It was a shock; but 'les manières nobles et aisées, + la tournure d'un homme de condition, le ton de la bonne compagnie, + les grâces le je ne scais quoi qui plaît,' came to Lord Chesterfield's + assistance, and he received his son's widow, who was not a pleasing + person, and her two boys with kindness and good feeling, and provided + for them quite handsomely by his will. The Earl died in 1773, in his + seventy-ninth year, and thereupon Mrs. Stanhope, who was in possession + of all the original letters addressed to her late husband, carried + her wares to market, and made a bargain with Mr. Dodsley for their + publication, she to receive £1,575. Mr. Dodsley advertised the + forthcoming work, and on that the Earl's executors, relying upon the + well-known case of Pope <i>v.</i> Curl, decided by Lord Hardwicke in 1741, + filed their bill against Mrs. Stanhope, seeking an injunction to + restrain publication. The widow put in her sworn Answer, in which she + averred that she had, on more occasions than one, mentioned + publication to the Earl, and that he, though recovering from her + certain written characters of eminent contemporaries, had seemed quite + content to let her do what she liked with the letters, only remarking + that there was too much Latin in them. The executors seem to have + moved for what is called an interim injunction—that is, an injunction + until trial of the cause, and, from the report in <i>Ambler</i>, it appears + that Lord Apsley (a feeble creature) granted such an injunction, but + recommended the executors to permit the publication if, on seeing a + copy of the correspondence, they saw no objection to it. In the result + the executors gave their consent, and the publication became an + authorized one, so much so that Dodsley was able to obtain an + interdict in the Scotch Court preventing a certain Scotch bookseller, + caller McFarquhar, from reprinting the letters in Edinburgh. Whether + the executors believed Mrs. Stanhope's story, or saw no reason to + object to the publication of the letters, I do not know, but it is + clear that the opposition was a half-hearted one. +</p> +<p> + It would be hasty to assume that Lord Chesterfield wrote these letters + with any intention of publication, and I am therefore left without + being able to suggest any strong reason for their existence. A + restless, itching pen, perhaps, accounts for them. Some men find a + pleasure in writing, even at great length; others, of whom Carlyle was + one, though they hate the labour, are yet compelled by some fierce + necessity to blacken paper. +</p> +<p> + At all events, we have Lord Chesterfield's letters, and, having them, + they will always have readers, for they are readable. +</p> +<p> + That the letters are full of wit and wisdom and sound advice is + certain. Mr. Strachey, in his preface, seems to be under the + impression that in the popular estimate Chesterfield is reckoned an + elegant trifler, a man of no serious account. What the popular or + vulgar estimate of Chesterfield may be it would be hard to determine, + nor is it of the least importance, for no one who knows about Lord + Chesterfield can possibly entertain any such opinion. How it came + about that so able and ambitious a man made so poor a thing out of + life, and failed so completely, is puzzling at first, though a little + study would, I think, make the reasons of Chesterfield's failure plain + enough. +</p> +<p> + To prove by extracts from the Letters how wise a man Chesterfield was + would be easy, but tiresome; to exhibit him in a repulsive character + would be equally easy, but spiteful. I prefer to leave him alone, and + to content myself with but one quotation, which has a touch of both + wisdom and repulsiveness: +</p> +<blockquote> + 'Consult your reason betimes. I do not say it will always prove an + unerring guide, for human reason is not infallible, but it will + prove the least erring guide that you can follow. Books and + conversation may assist it, but adopt neither blindly and + implicitly; try both by that best rule God has given to direct + us—reason. Of all the truths do not decline that of thinking. The + host of mankind can hardly be said to think; their prejudices are + almost all adoptive; and in general I believe it is better that it + should be so, as such common prejudices contribute more to order + and quiet than their own separate reasonings would do, uncultivated + as they are. We have many of these useful prejudices in this + country which I should be very sorry to see removed. The good + Protestant conviction that the Pope is both Antichrist and the + Whore of Babylon is a more effectual preservative against Popery + than all the solid and unanswerable arguments of Chillingworth.' +</blockquote> +<p> </p> + + +<a name="note-7"><!--Note--></a> +<p class="fnote"><a href="#7"> +<sup><u>1</u></sup></a> Published by Methuen and Co. in 2 vols. +</p> + +<a name="2H_4_11"><!-- H2 anchor --></a> +<p> </p> +<p> </p> +<p> </p> +<p> </p> +<h2> + THE JOHNSONIAN LEGEND +</h2> +<p> </p> + +<p> + The ten handsome volumes which the indefatigable and unresting zeal of + Dr. Birkbeck Hill, and the high spirit of the Clarendon Press, have + edited, arranged, printed, and published for the benefit of the world + and the propagation of the Gospel according to Dr. Johnson are + pleasant things to look upon. I hope the enterprise has proved + remunerative to those concerned, but I doubt it. The parsimony of the + public in the matter of books is pitiful. The ordinary purse-carrying + Englishman holds in his head a ready-reckoner or scale of charges by + which he tests his purchases—so much for a dinner, so much for a + bottle of champagne, so much for a trip to Paris, so much for a pair + of gloves, and so much for a book. These ten volumes would cost him £4 + 9s. 3d. 'Whew! What a price for a book, and where are they to be put, + and who is to dust them?' Idle questions! As for room, a bicycle takes + more room than 1,000 books; and as for dust, it is a delusion. You + should never dust books. There let it lie until the rare hour arrives + when you want to read a particular volume; then warily approach it + with a snow-white napkin, take it down from its shelf, and, + withdrawing to some back apartment, proceed to cleanse the tome. Dr. + Johnson adopted other methods. Every now and again he drew on huge + gloves, such as those once worn by hedgers and ditchers, and then, + clutching his folios and octavos, he banged and buffeted them together + until he was enveloped in a cloud of dust. This violent exercise over, + the good doctor restored the volumes, all battered and bruised, to + their places, where, of course, the dust resettled itself as speedily + as possible. +</p> +<p> + Dr. Johnson could make books better than anybody, but his notions of + dusting them were primitive and erroneous. But the room and the dust + are mere subterfuges. The truth is, there is a disinclination to pay + £4 9s. 3d. for the ten volumes containing the complete Johnsonian + legend. To quarrel with the public is idiotic and most un-Johnsonian. + 'Depend upon it, sir,' said the Sage, 'every state of society is as + luxurious as it can be.' We all, a handful of misers excepted, spend + more money than we can afford upon luxuries, but what those luxuries + are to be is largely determined for us by the fashions of our time. If + we do not buy these ten volumes, it is not because we would not like + to have them, but because we want the money they cost for something we + want more. As for dictating to men how they are to spend their money, + it were both a folly and an impertinence. +</p> +<p> + These ten volumes ended Dr. Hill's labours as an editor of <i>Johnson's + Life and Personalia</i>, but did not leave him free. He had set his mind + on an edition of the <i>Lives of the Poets</i>. This, to the regret of all + who knew him either personally or as a Johnsonian, he did not live to + see through the press. But it is soon to appear, and will be a + storehouse of anecdote and a miracle of cross-references. A poet who + has been dead a century or two is amazing good company—at least, he + never fails to be so when Johnson tells us as much of his story as he + can remember without undue research, with that irony of his, that vast + composure, that humorous perception of the greatness and the + littleness of human life, that make the brief records of a Spratt, a + Walsh, and a Fenton so divinely entertaining. It is an immense + testimony to the healthiness of the Johnsonian atmosphere that Dr. + Hill, who breathed it almost exclusively for a quarter of a century + and upwards, showed no symptoms either of moral deterioration or + physical exhaustion. His appetite to the end was as keen as ever, nor + was his temper obviously the worse. The task never became a toil, not + even a tease. 'You have but two subjects,' said Johnson to Boswell: + 'yourself and myself. I am sick of both.' Johnson hated to be talked + about, or to have it noticed what he ate or what he had on. For a + hundred years now last past he has been more talked about and noticed + than anybody else. But Dr. Hill never grew sick of Dr. Johnson. +</p> +<p> + The <i>Johnsonian Miscellanies</i><a name="8"></a><a href="#note-8"><small><sup>1</sup></small></a> open with the <i>Prayers and Meditations</i>, + first published by the Rev. Dr. Strahan in 1785. Strahan was the Vicar of + Islington, and into his hands at an early hour one morning Dr. + Johnson, then approaching his last days, put the papers, 'with + instructions for committing them to the press and with a promise to + prepare a sketch of his own life to accompany them.' This promise the + doctor was not able to keep, and shortly after his death his reverend + friend published the papers just as they were put into his hands. One + wonders he had the heart to do it, but the clerical mind is sometimes + strangely insensitive to the privacy of thought. But, as in the case + of most indelicate acts, you cannot but be glad the thing was done. + The original manuscript is at Pembroke College, Oxford. In these + <i>Prayers and Meditations</i> we see an awful figure. The <i>solitary</i> + Johnson, perturbed, tortured, oppressed, in distress of body and of + mind, full of alarms for the future both in this world and the next, + teased by importunate and perplexing thoughts, harassed by morbid + infirmities, vexed by idle yet constantly recurring scruples, with an + inherited melancholy and a threatened sanity, is a gloomy and even a + terrible picture, and forms a striking contrast to the social hero, + the triumphant dialectician of Boswell, Mrs. Thrale, and Madame + D'Arblay. Yet it is relieved by its inherent humanity, its fellowship + and feeling. Dr. Johnson's piety is delightfully full of human + nature—far too full to please the poet Cowper, who wrote of the + <i>Prayers and Meditations</i> as follows: +</p> +<blockquote> + 'If it be fair to judge of a book by an extract, I do not wonder + that you were so little edified by Johnson's Journal. It is even + more ridiculous than was poor Rutty's of flatulent memory. The + portion of it given us in this day's paper contains not one + sentiment worth one farthing, except the last, in which he resolves + to bind himself with no more unbidden obligations. Poor man! one + would think that to pray for his dead wife and to pinch himself + with Church fasts had been almost the whole of his religion.' +</blockquote> + +<p> + It were hateful to pit one man's religion against another's, but it + is only fair to Dr. Johnson's religion to remember that, odd compound + as it was, it saw him through the long struggle of life, and enabled + him to meet the death he so honestly feared like a man and a + Christian. The <i>Prayers and Meditations</i> may not be an edifying book + in Cowper's sense of the word; there is nothing triumphant about it; + it is full of infirmities and even absurdities; but, for all that, it + contains more piety than 10,000 religious biographies. Nor must the + evidence it contains of weakness be exaggerated. Beset with + infirmities, a lazy dog, as he often declared himself to be, he yet + managed to do a thing or two. Here, for example, is an entry: +</p> + <p class="ar"> <small> '29, EASTER EVE (1777).</small></p> +<blockquote> + 'I rose and again prayed with reference to my departed wife. I + neither read nor went to church, yet can scarcely tell how I have + been hindered. I treated with booksellers on a bargain, but the + time was not long.' +</blockquote> +<p> + Too long, perhaps, for Johnson's piety, but short enough to enable the + booksellers to make an uncommon good bargain for the <i>Lives of the + Poets</i>. 'As to the terms,' writes Mr. Dilly, 'it was left entirely to + the doctor to name his own; he mentioned 200 guineas; it was + immediately agreed to.' The business-like Malone makes the following + observation on the transaction: 'Had he asked 1,000, or even 1,500, + guineas the booksellers, who knew the value of his name, would + doubtless have readily given it.' Dr. Johnson, though the son of a + bookseller, was the least tradesman-like of authors. The bargain was + bad, but the book was good. +</p> +<p> + A year later we find this record: +</p> + <p class="ar"> <small> 'MONDAY, <i>April</i> 20 (1778).</small></p> + +<blockquote> + 'After a good night, as I am forced to reckon, I rose seasonably + and prayed, using the collect for yesterday. In reviewing my time + from Easter, 1777, I find a very melancholy and shameful blank. So + little has been done that days and months are without any trace. My + health has, indeed, been very much interrupted. My nights have been + commonly not only restless but painful and fatiguing.... I have + written a little of the <i>Lives of the Poets</i>, I think, with all my + usual vigour. I have made sermons, perhaps, as readily as formerly. + My memory is less faithful in retaining names, and, I am afraid, in + retaining occurrences. Of this vacillation and vagrancy of mind I + impute a great part to a fortuitous and unsettled life, and + therefore purpose to spend my life with more method.<br><br> + + 'This year the 28th of March passed away without memorial. Poor + Tetty, whatever were our faults and failings, we loved each other. + I did not forget thee yesterday. Couldst thou have lived! I am now, + with the help of God, to begin a new life.' +</blockquote> +<p> + Dr. Hill prints an interesting letter of Mr. Jowett's, in which occur + the following observations: +</p> +<blockquote> + 'It is a curious question whether Boswell has unconsciously + misrepresented Johnson in any respect. I think, judging from the + materials, which are supplied chiefly by himself, that in one + respect he has. He has represented him more as a sage and + philosopher in his conduct as well as his conversation than he + really was, and less as a rollicking "King of Society." The gravity + of Johnson's own writings tends to confirm this, as I suspect, + erroneous impression. His religion was fitful and intermittent; and + when once the ice was broken he enjoyed Jack Wilkes, though he + refused to shake hands with Hume. I was much struck with a remark + of Sir John Hawkins (excuse me if I have mentioned this to you + before): "He was the most humorous man I ever knew."' +</blockquote> +<p> + Mr. Jowett's letter raises some nice points—the Wilkes and Hume + point, for example. Dr. Johnson hated both blasphemy and bawd, but he + hated blasphemy most. Mr. Jowett shared the doctor's antipathies, but + very likely hated bawd more than he did blasphemy. But, as I have + already said, the point is a nice one. To crack jokes with Wilkes at + the expense of Boswell and the Scotch seems to me a very different + thing from shaking hands with Hume. But, indeed, it is absurd to + overlook either Johnson's melancholy piety or his abounding humour and + love of fun and nonsense. His <i>Prayers and Meditations</i> are full of + the one, Boswell and Mrs. Thrale and Madame D'Arblay are full of the + other. Boswell's <i>Johnson</i> has superseded the 'authorized biography' + by Sir John Hawkins, and Dr. Hill did well to include in these + <i>Miscellanies</i> Hawkins' inimitable description of the memorable + banquet given at the Devil Tavern, near Temple Bar, in the spring of + 1751, to celebrate the publication of Mrs. Charlotte Lennox's first + novel. What delightful revelry! what innocent mirth! prolonged though + it was till long after dawn. Poor Mrs. Lennox died in distress in + 1804, at the age of eighty-three. Could Johnson but have lived he + would have lent her his helping hand. He was no fair-weather friend, + but shares with Charles Lamb the honour of being able to unite narrow + means and splendid munificence. +</p> +<p> + I must end with an anecdote: +</p> +<blockquote> + 'Henderson asked the doctor's opinion of <i>Dido</i> and its author. + "Sir," said Dr. Johnson, "I never did the man an injury. Yet he + would read his tragedy to me."' +</blockquote> +<p> </p> + +<a name="note-8"><!--Note--></a> +<p class="fnote"><a href="#8"> +<sup><u>1</u></sup></a> Two volumes. Oxford Clarendon Press, 1897. +</p> + + +<a name="2H_4_12"><!-- H2 anchor --></a> +<p> </p> +<p> </p> +<p> </p> +<p> </p> +<h2> + BOSWELL AS BIOGRAPHER +</h2> +<p> </p> + +<p> + Boswell's position in English literature cannot be disputed, nor can + he ever be displaced from it. He has written our greatest biography. + That is all. Theorize about it as much as you like, account for it how + you may, the fact remains. 'Alone I did it.' There has been plenty of + theorizing. Lord Macaulay took the subject in hand and tossed it up + and down for half a dozen pages with a gusto that drove home to many + minds the conviction, the strange conviction, that our greatest + biography was written by one of the very smallest men that ever lived, + 'a man of the meanest and feeblest intellect'—by a dunce, a parasite, + and a coxcomb; by one 'who, if he had not been a great fool, would + never have been a great writer.' So far Macaulay, <i>anno Domini</i> 1831, + in the vigorous pages of the <i>Edinburgh Review</i>. A year later appears + in <i>Fraser's Magazine</i> another theory by another hand, not then + famous, Mr. Thomas Carlyle. I own to an inordinate affection for Mr. + Carlyle as 'literary critic' As philosopher and sage, he has served + our turn. We have had the fortune, good or bad, to outlive him; and + our sad experience is that death makes a mighty difference to all but + the very greatest. The sight of the author of <i>Sartor Resartus</i> in a + Chelsea omnibus, the sound of Dr. Newman's voice preaching to a small + congregation in Birmingham, kept alive in our minds the vision of + their greatness—it seemed then as if that greatness could know no + limit; but no sooner had they gone away, than somehow or another + one became conscious of some deficiency in their intellectual + positions—the tide of human thought rushed visibly by them, and it + became plain that to no other generation would either of these men be + what they had been to their own. But Mr. Carlyle as literary critic + has a tenacious grasp, and Boswell was a subject made for his hand. + 'Your Scottish laird, says an English naturalist of those days, may be + defined as the hungriest and vainest of all bipeds yet known.' Carlyle + knew the type well enough. His general description of Boswell is + savage: +</p> +<blockquote> + 'Boswell was a person whose mean or bad qualities lay open to the + general eye, visible, palpable to the dullest. His good qualities, + again, belonged not to the time he lived in; were far from common + then; indeed, in such a degree were almost unexampled; not + recognisable, therefore, by everyone; nay, apt even, so strange + had they grown, to be confounded with the very vices they lay + contiguous to and had sprung out of. That he was a wine-bibber and + good liver, gluttonously fond of whatever would yield him a little + solacement, were it only of a stomachic character, is undeniable + enough. That he was vain, heedless, a babbler, had much of the + sycophant, alternating with the braggadocio, curiously spiced, too, + with an all-pervading dash of the coxcomb; that he gloried much + when the tailor by a court suit had made a new man of him; that he + appeared at the Shakespeare Jubilee with a riband imprinted + "Corsica Boswell" round his hat, and, in short, if you will, lived + no day of his life without saying and doing more than one + pretentious ineptitude, all this unhappily is evident as the sun at + noon. The very look of Boswell seems to have signified so much. In + that cocked nose, cocked partly in triumph over his weaker + fellow-creatures, partly to snuff up the smell of coming pleasure + and scent it from afar, in those big cheeks, hanging like + half-filled wine-skins, still able to contain more, in that + coarsely-protruded shelf mouth, that fat dew-lapped chin; in all + this who sees not sensuality, pretension, boisterous imbecility + enough? The underpart of Boswell's face is of a low, almost brutish + character.' +</blockquote> +<p> + This is character-painting with a vengeance. Portrait of a Scotch + laird by the son of a Scotch peasant. Carlyle's Boswell is to me the + very man. If so, Carlyle's paradox seems as great as Macaulay's, for + though Carlyle does not call Boswell a great fool in plain set terms, + he goes very near it. But he keeps open a door through which he + effects his escape. Carlyle sees in Bozzy 'the old reverent feeling of + discipleship, in a word, hero-worship.' +</p> +<blockquote> + 'How the babbling Bozzy, inspired only by love and the recognition + and vision which love can lend, epitomizes nightly the words of + Wisdom, the deeds and aspects of Wisdom, and so, little by little, + unconsciously works together for us a whole "Johnsoniad"—a more + free, perfect, sunlit and spirit-speaking likeness than for many + centuries has been drawn by man of man.' +</blockquote> +<p> + This I think is a little overdrawn. That Boswell loved Johnson, God + forbid I should deny. But that he was inspired only by love to write + his life, I gravely question. Boswell was, as Carlyle has said, a + greedy man—and especially was he greedy of fame—and he saw in his + revered friend a splendid subject for artistic biographic treatment. + Here is where both Macaulay and Carlyle are, as I suggest, wrong. + Boswell was a fool, but only in the sense in which hundreds of great + artists have been fools; on his own lines, and across his own bit of + country, he was no fool. He did not accidentally stumble across + success, but he deliberately aimed at what he hit. Read his preface + and you will discover his method. He was as much an artist as either + of his two famous critics. Where Carlyle goes astray is in attributing + to discipleship what was mainly due to a dramatic sense. However, + theories are no great matter. +</p> +<p> + Our means of knowledge of James Boswell are derived mainly from + himself; he is his own incriminator. In addition to the life there is + the Corsican tour, the Hebrides tour, the letters to Erskine and to + Temple, and a few insignificant occasional publications in the shape + of letters to the people of Scotland, etc. With these before him it is + impossible for any biographer to approach Bozzy in a devotional + attitude; he was all Carlyle calls him. Our sympathies are with his + father, who despised him, and with his son, who was ashamed of him. It + is indeed strange to think of him staggering, like the drunkard he + was, between these two respectable and even stately figures—the + Senator of the Court of Justice and the courtly scholar and antiquary. + And yet it is to the drunkard humanity is debtor. Respectability is + not everything. +</p> +<p> + Boswell had many literary projects and ambitions, and never intended + to be known merely as the biographer of Johnson. He proposed to write + a life of Lord Kames and to compose memoirs of Hume. It seems he did + write a life of Sir Robert Sibbald. He had other plans in his head, + but dissipation and a steadily increasing drunkenness destroyed them + all. As inveterate book-hunter, I confess to a great fancy to lay + hands on his <i>Dorando: A Spanish Tale</i>, a shilling book published in + Edinburgh during the progress of the once famous Douglas case, and + ordered to be suppressed as contempt of court after it had been + through three editions. It is said, probably hastily, that no copy is + known to exist—a dreary fate which, according to Lord Macaulay, might + have attended upon the <i>Life of Johnson</i> had the copyright of that + work become the property of Boswell's son, who hated to hear it + mentioned. It is not, however, very easy to get rid of any book once + it is published, and I do not despair of reading <i>Dorando</i> before I + die. +</p> +<a name="2H_4_13"><!-- H2 anchor --></a> +<p> </p> +<p> </p> +<p> </p> +<p> </p> +<h2> + OLD PLEASURE GARDENS <a name="9"></a> <a href="#note-9"><small><sup>1</sup></small></a> +</h2> +<p> </p> + + <p> + This is an honest book, disfigured by no fine writing or woeful + attempts to make us dance round may-poles with our ancestors. Terribly + is our good language abused by the swell-mob of stylists, for whom it + is certainly not enough that Chatham's language is their mother's + tongue. May the Devil fly away with these artists; though no sooner + had he done so than we should be 'wae' for auld Nicky-ben. Mr. Wroth, + of the British Museum, and his brother, Mr. Arthur Wroth, are above + such vulgar pranks, and never strain after the picturesque, but in the + plain garb of honest men carry us about to the sixty-four gardens + where the eighteenth-century Londoner, his wife and family—the John + Gilpins of the day—might take their pleasure either sadly, as indeed + best befits our pilgrim state, or uproariously to deaden the ear to + the still small voice of conscience—the pangs of slighted love, the + law's delay, the sluggish step of Fortune, the stealthy strides of + approaching poverty, or any other of the familiar incidents of our + mortal life. The sixty-two illustrations which adorn the book are as + honest as the letterpress. There is a most delightful Morland + depicting a very stout family indeed regaling itself <i>sub tegmine + fagi</i>. It is called a 'Tea Party.' A voluminous mother holds in her + roomy lap a very fat baby, whose back and neck are full upon you as + you stare into the picture. And what a jolly back and innocent neck it + is! Enough to make every right-minded woman cry out with pleasure. + Then there is the highly respectable father stirring his cup and + watching with placid content a gentleman in lace and ruffles attending + to the wife, whilst the two elder children play with a wheezy dog. +</p> +<p> + In these pages we can see for ourselves the British public—God rest + its soul!—enjoying itself. This honest book is full of <i>la + bourgeoisie</i>. The rips and the painted ladies occasionally, it is + true, make their appearance, but they are reduced to their proper + proportions. The Adam and Eve Tea Gardens, St. Pancras, have a + somewhat rakish sound, calculated to arrest the jaded attention of the + debauchee, but what has Mr. Wroth to tell us about them? +</p> +<blockquote> + 'About the beginning of the present century it could still be + described as an agreeable retreat, "with enchanting prospects"; and + the gardens were laid out with arbours, flowers, and shrubs. Cows + were kept for making syllabubs, and on summer afternoons a regular + company met to play bowls and trap-ball in an adjacent field. One + proprietor fitted out a mimic squadron of frigates in the garden, + and the long-room was used a good deal for beanfeasts and + tea-drinking parties' (p. 127). +</blockquote> +<p> + What a pleasant place! Syllabubs! How sweet they sound! Nobody + worried then about diphtheria; they only died of it. Mimic frigates, + too! What patriotism! These gardens are as much lost as those of the + Hesperides. A cemetery swallowed them up—the cemetery which adjoins + the old St. Pancras Churchyard. The Tavern, shorn of its amenities, a + mere drink-shop, survived as far down the century as 1874, soon after + which date it also disappeared. Hornsey Wood House has a name not + unknown in the simple annals of tea-drinking. It is now part of + Finsbury Park, but in the middle of the last century its long-room 'on + popular holydays, such as Whit Sunday, might be seen crowded as early + as nine or ten in the morning with a motley assemblage eating rolls + and butter and drinking tea at an extravagant price.' 'Hone remembered + the old Hornsey Wood House as it stood embowered, and seeming a part + of the wood. It was at that time kept by two sisters—Mrs. Lloyd and + Mrs. Collier—and these aged dames were usually to be found before + their door on a seat between two venerable oaks, wherein swarms of + bees hived themselves.' +</p> +<p> + What a picture is this of these vanished dames! Somewhere, I trust, + they are at peace. +</p> +<pre> + 'And there, they say, two bright and aged snakes, + Who once were Cadmus and Harmonia, + Bask in the glens or on the warm sea-shore.' +</pre> +<p> + A more raffish place was the Dog and Duck in St. George's Fields, + which boasted mineral springs, good for gout, stone, king's evil, sore + eyes, and inveterate cancers. Considering its virtue, the water was a + cheap liquor, for a dozen bottles could be had at the spa for a + shilling. The Dog and Duck, though at last it exhibited depraved + tastes, was at one time well conducted. Miss Talbot writes about it to + Mrs. Carter, and Dr. Johnson advised his Thralia to try the waters. It + was no mean place, but boasted a breakfast-room, a bowling-green, and + a swimming-bath 200 feet long and 100 feet (nearly) broad. Mr. Wroth + narrates the history of its fall with philosophical composure. In the + hands of one Hedger the decencies were disregarded, and thieves made + merry where once Miss Talbot sipped bohea. One of its frequenters, + Charlotte Shaftoe, is said to have betrayed seven of her intimates to + the gallows. Few visitors' lists could stand such a strain as Miss + Shaftoe put upon hers. In 1799 the Dog and Duck was suppressed, and + Bethlehem Hospital now reigns in its stead. 'The Peerless Pool' has a + Stevensonian sound. It was a dangerous pond behind Old Street, long + known as 'The Parlous or Perilous Pond' 'because divers youth by + swimming therein have been drowned.' In 1743 a London jeweller called + Kemp took it in hand, turned it into a pleasure bath, and renamed it, + happily enough, 'The Peerless Pool.' It was a fine open-air bath, 170 + feet long, more than 100 feet broad, and from 3 to 5 feet deep. 'It + was nearly surrounded by trees, and the descent was by marble steps to + a fine gravel bottom, through which the springs that supplied the pool + came bubbling up.' Mr. Kemp likewise constructed a fish-pond. The + enterprise met with success, and anglers, bathers, and at due seasons + skaters, flocked to 'The Peerless Pool.' Hone describes how every + Thursday and Saturday the boys from the Bluecoat School were wont to + plunge into its depths. You ask its fate. It has been built over. + Peerless Street, the second main turning on the left of the City Road + just beyond Old Street in coming from the City, is all that is left to + remind anyone of the once Parlous Pool, unless, indeed, it still + occasionally creeps into a cellar and drowns cockroaches instead of + divers youths. The Three Hats, Highbury Barn, Hampstead Wells, are not + places to be lightly passed over. In Mr. Wroth's book you may read + about them and trace their fortunes—their fallen fortunes. After all, + they have only shared the fate of empires. +</p> +<p> + Of the most famous London gardens—Marylebone, Ranelagh, and, greatest + of them all, Vauxhall—Mr. Wroth writes at, of course, a becoming + length. Marylebone Gardens, when at their largest, comprised about 8 + acres. Beaumont Street, part of Devonshire Street and of Devonshire + Place and Upper Wimpole Street, now occupy their site. Music was the + main feature of Marylebone. A band played in the evening. Vocalists at + different times drew crowds. Masquerades and fireworks appeared later + in the history of the gardens, which usually were open three nights of + the week. Dr. Johnson's turbulent behaviour, on the occasion of one of + his frequent visits, will easily be remembered. Marylebone, at no + period, says Mr. Wroth, attained the vogue of Ranelagh or the + universal popularity of Vauxhall. In 1776 the gardens were closed, and + two years later the builders began to lay out streets. Ranelagh is, + perhaps, the greatest achievement of the eighteenth century. Its + Rotunda, built in 1741, is compared by Mr. Wroth to the reading-room + of the British Museum. No need to give its dimensions; only look at + the print, and you will understand what Johnson meant when he declared + that the <i>coup d'oeil</i> of Ranelagh was the finest thing he had ever + seen. The ordinary charge for admission was half a crown, which + secured you tea or coffee and bread-and-butter. The gardens were + usually open Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays, and the amusements were + music, tea-drinking, walking, and talking. Mr. Wroth quotes a + Frenchman, who, after visiting Ranelagh in 1800, calls it 'le plus + insipide lieu d'amusement que l'on ait pu imaginer,' and even hints at + Dante's Purgatory. An earlier victim from Gaul thus records his + experience of Ranelagh: 'On s'ennui avec de la mauvaise musique, du + thé et du beurre.' So true is it that the cheerfulness you find + anywhere is the cheerfulness you have brought with you. However, + despite the Frenchman, good music and singing were at times to be + heard at Ranelagh. The nineteenth century would have nothing to do + with Ranelagh, and in 1805 it was pulled down. The site now belongs to + Chelsea Hospital. Cuper's Gardens lacked the respectability of + Marylebone and the style of Ranelagh, but they had their vogue during + the same century. They were finely situated on the south side of the + Thames opposite Somerset House. Cuper easily got altered into Cupid; + and when on the death of Ephraim Evans in 1740 the business came to be + carried on by his widow, a comely dame who knew a thing or two, it + proved to be indeed a going concern. But the new Licensing Bill of + 1752 destroyed Cupid's Garden, and Mrs. Evans was left lamenting and + wholly uncompensated. Of Vauxhall Mr. Wroth treats at much length, and + this part of his book is especially rich in illustrations. Every lover + of Old London and old times and old prints should add Mr. Wroth's book + to his library. +</p> +<p> </p> + +<a name="note-9"><!--Note--></a> +<p class="fnote"> <a href="#9"> +<sup><u>1</u></sup></a> <i>Pleasure Gardens of the Eighteenth Century</i>, by Warwick + Wroth, F.S.A., assisted by Arthur Edgar Wroth. London: Macmillan and + Co. +</p> + +<a name="2H_4_14"><!-- H2 anchor --></a> +<p> </p> +<p> </p> +<p> </p> +<p> </p> +<h2> + OLD BOOKSELLERS +</h2> +<p> </p> + +<p> + There has just been a small flutter amongst those who used to be + called stationers or text-writers in the good old days, before + printing was, and when even Peers of the Realm (now so highly + educated) could not sign their names, or, at all events, preferred not + to do so—booksellers they are now styled—and the question which + agitates them is discount. Having mentioned this, one naturally passes + on. +</p> +<p> + No great trade has an obscurer history than the book trade. It seems + to lie choked in mountains of dust which it would be suicidal to + disturb. Men have lived from time to time of literary skill—Dr. + Johnson was one of them—who had knowledge, extensive and peculiar, of + the traditions and practices of 'the trade,' as it is proudly styled + by its votaries; but nobody has ever thought it worth his while to + make record of his knowledge, which accordingly perished with him, and + is now irrecoverably lost. +</p> +<p> + In old days booksellers were also publishers, frequently printers, and + sometimes paper-makers. Jacob Tonson not only owned Milton's <i>Paradise + Lost</i>—for all time, as he fondly thought, for little did he dream of + the fierce construction the House of Lords was to put upon the + Copyright Act of Queen Anne—not only was Dryden's publisher, but also + kept shop in Chancery Lane, and sold books across the counter. He + allowed no discount, but, so we are told, 'spoke his mind upon all + occasions, and flattered no one,' not even glorious John. +</p> +<p> + For a long time past the trades of bookselling and book-publishing + have been carried on apart. This has doubtless rid booksellers of all + the unpopularity which formerly belonged to them in their other + capacity. This unpopularity is now heaped as a whole upon the + publishers, who certainly need not dread the doom awaiting those of + whom the world speaks well. +</p> +<p> + A tendency of the two trades to grow together again is perhaps + noticeable. For my part, I wish they would. Some publishers are + already booksellers, but the books they sell are usually only new + books. Now it is obvious that the true bookseller sells books both old + and new. Some booksellers are occasional publishers. May each + usurp—or, rather, reassume—the business of the other, whilst + retaining his own! +</p> +<p> + The world, it must be admitted, owes a great deal of whatever + information it possesses about the professions, trades, and + occupations practised and carried on in its midst to those who have + failed in them. Prosperous men talk 'shop,' but seldom write it. The + book that tells us most about booksellers and bookselling in bygone + days is the work of a crack-brained fellow who published and sold in + the reigns of Queen Anne and George I., and died in 1733 in great + poverty and obscurity. I refer to John Dunton, whose <i>Life and + Errors</i> in the edition in two volumes edited by J.B. Nichols, and + published in 1818, is a common book enough in the second-hand shops, + and one which may be safely recommended to everyone, except, indeed, + to the unfortunate man or woman who is not an adept in the art, craft, + or mystery of skipping. +</p> +<p> + The book will strangely remind the reader of Amory's <i>Life of John + Buncle</i>—those queer volumes to which many a reader has been sent by + Hazlitt's intoxicating description of them in his <i>Round Table</i>, and + a few perhaps by a shy allusion contained in one of the essays of + Elia. The real John Dunton has not the boundless spirits of the + fictitious John Buncle; but in their religious fervour, their + passion for flirtation, their tireless egotism, and their love of + character-sketching, they greatly resemble one another. +</p> +<p> + It is this last characteristic that imparts real value to Dunton's + book, and makes it, despite its verbiage and tortuosity, throb with + human interest. For example, he gives us a short sketch of no less + than 135 then living London booksellers in this style: 'Mr. Newton is + full of kindness and good-nature. He is affable and courteous in + trade, and is none of those men of forty whose religion is yet to + chuse, for his mind (like his looks) is serious and grave; and his + neighbours tell me his understanding does not improve too fast for his + practice, for he is not religious by start or sally, but is well fixed + in the faith and practice of a Church of England man—and has a + handsome wife into the bargain.' +</p> +<p> + Most of the 135 booksellers were good men, according to Dunton, but + not all. 'Mr. Lee in Lombard Street. Such a pirate, such a cormorant + was never before. Copies, books, men, shops, all was one. He held no + propriety right or wrong, good or bad, till at last he began to be + known; and the booksellers, not enduring so ill a man among them, + spewed him out, and off he marched to Ireland, where he acted as + <i>felonious Lee</i> as he did in London. And as Lee lived a thief, so he + died a hypocrite; for being asked on his death-bed if he would forgive + Mr. C. (that had formerly wronged him), "Yes," said Lee, "if I die, I + forgive him; but if I happen to live, I am resolved to be revenged on + him."' +</p> +<p> + The Act of Union destroyed the trade of these pirates, but their + felonious editions of eighteenth-century authors still abound. Mr. + Gladstone, I need scarcely say, was careful in his Home Rule Bill + (which was denounced by thousands who never read a line of it) to + withdraw copyright from the scope of action of his proposed Dublin + Parliament. +</p> +<p> + There are nearly eleven hundred brief character-sketches in Dunton's + book, of all sorts and kinds, but with a preference for bookish + people, divines, both of the Establishment and out of it, printers and + authors. Sometimes, indeed, the description is short enough, and tells + one very little. To many readers, references so curt to people of whom + they never heard, and whose names are recorded nowhere else, save on + their mouldering grave-stones, may seem tedious and trivial, but for + others they will have a strange fascination. Here are a few examples: +</p> +<blockquote> + 'Affable <i>Wiggins</i>. His conversation is general but never + impertinent.<br><br> + + 'The kind and golden <i>Venables</i>. He is so good a man, and so truly + charitable, he that will write of him, must still write more.<br><br> + + 'Mr. <i>Bury</i>—my old neighbour in Redcross Street. He is a plain + honest man, sells the best coffee in all the neighbourhood, and + lives in this world like a spiritual stranger and pilgrim in a + foreign country.<br><br> + + 'Anabaptist (alias <i>Elephant</i>) <i>Smith</i>. He was a man of great + sincerity and happy contentment in all circumstances of life.' +</blockquote> +<p> + If an affection for passages of this kind be condemned as trivial, and + akin to the sentimentalism of the man in Calverley's poem who wept + over a box labelled 'This side up,' I will shelter myself behind + Carlyle, who was evidently deeply moved, as his review of Boswell's + Johnson proves, by the life-history of Mr. F. Lewis, 'of whose birth, + death, and whole terrestrial <i>res gestae</i> this only, and, strange + enough, this actually, survives—"Sir, he lived in London, and hung + loose upon society. <i>Stat</i> PARVI <i>hominis umbra</i>."' On that peg + Carlyle's imagination hung a whole biography. +</p> +<p> + Dunton, who was the son of the Rector of Aston Clinton, was + apprenticed, about 1675, to a London bookseller. He had from the + beginning a great turn both for religion and love. He, to use his own + phrase, 'sat under the powerful ministry of Mr. Doolittle.' 'One + Lord's day, and I remember it with sorrow, I was to hear the Rev. Mr. + Doolittle, and it was then and there the beautiful Rachel Seaton gave + me that fatal wound.' +</p> +<p> + The first book Dunton ever printed was by the Rev. Mr. Doolittle, and + was of an eminently religious character. +</p> +<p> + 'One Lord's Day (and I am very sensible of the sin) I was strolling + about just as my fancy led me, and, stepping into Dr. Annesley's + meeting-place—where, instead of engaging my attention to what the + Doctor said, I suffered both my mind and eyes to run at random—I soon + singled out a young lady that almost charmed me dead; but, having made + my inquiries, I found to my sorrow she was pre-engaged.' However, + Dunton was content with the elder sister, one of the three daughters + of Dr. Annesley. The one he first saw became the wife of the Reverend + Samuel Wesley, and the mother of John and Charles. The third daughter + is said to have been married to Daniel De Foe. +</p> +<p> + As soon as he was out of his apprenticeship, Dunton set up business as + a publisher and bookseller. He says grimly enough: +</p> +<blockquote> + 'A man should be well furnished with an honest policy if he intends + to set out to the world nowadays. And this is no less necessary in + a bookseller than in any other tradesman, for in that way there are + plots and counter-plots, and a whole army of hackney authors that + keep their grinders moving by the travail of their pens. These + gormandizers will eat you the very life out of a <i>copy</i> so soon as + ever it appears, for as the times go, <i>Original</i> and <i>Abridgement</i> + are almost reckoned as necessary as man and wife.' +</blockquote> +<p> + The mischief to which Dunton refers was permitted by the stupidity of + the judges, who refused to consider an abridgment of a book any + interference with its copyright. Some learned judges have, indeed, + held that an abridger is a benefactor, but as his benefactions are not + his own, but another's, a shorter name might be found for him. The law + on the subject is still uncertain. +</p> +<p> + Dunton proceeds: 'Printing was now the uppermost in my thoughts, and + hackney authors began to ply me with <i>specimens</i> as earnestly and + with as much passion and concern as the watermen do passengers with + <i>Oars</i> and <i>Scullers</i>. I had some acquaintance with this generation in + my apprenticeship, and had never any warm affection for them, in + regard I always thought their great concern lay more in <i>how much a + sheet</i>, than in any generous respect they bore to the <i>Commonwealth of + Learning</i>; and indeed the learning itself of these gentlemen lies very + often in as little room as their honesty, though they will pretend to + have studied for six or seven years in the Bodleian Library, to have + turned over the Fathers, and to have read and digested the whole + compass both of human and ecclesiastic history, when, alas! they have + never been able to understand a single page of St. Cyprian, and cannot + tell you whether the Fathers lived before or after Christ.' +</p> +<p> + Yet of one of this hateful tribe Dunton is able to speak well. He + declares Mr. Bradshaw to have been the best accomplished hackney + author he ever met with. He pronounces his style incomparably fine. He + had quarrelled with him, but none the less he writes: 'If Mr. Bradshaw + is yet alive, I here declare to the world and to him that I freely + forgive him what he owes, both in money and books, if he will only be + so kind as to make me a visit. But I am afraid the worthy gentleman is + dead, for he was wretchedly overrun with melancholy, and the very + blackness of it reigned in his countenance. He had certainly performed + wonders with his pen, had not his poverty pursued him and almost laid + the necessity upon him to be unjust.' +</p> +<p> + All hackney authors were not poor. Some of the compilers and + abridgers made what even now would be considered by popular novelists + large sums. Scotsmen were very good at it. Gordon and Campbell became + wealthy men. If authors had a turn for politics, Sir Robert Walpole + was an excellent paymaster. Arnall, who was bred an attorney, is + stated to have been paid £11,000 in four years by the Government for + his pamphlets. +</p> +<pre> + 'Come, then, I'll comply. + Spirit of Arnall, aid me while I lie!' +</pre> +<p> + It cannot have been pleasant to read this, but then Pope belonged to + the opposition, and was a friend of Lord Bolingbroke, and would + consequently say anything. +</p> +<p> + There is not a more interesting and artless autobiography to be read + than William Hutton's, the famous bookseller and historian of + Birmingham. Hutton has been somewhat absurdly called the English + Franklin. He is not in the least like Franklin. He has none of + Franklin's supreme literary skill, and he was a loving, generous, and + tender-hearted man, which Franklin certainly was not. Hutton's first + visit to London was paid in 1749. He walked up from Nottingham, spent + three days in London, and then walked back to Nottingham. The jaunt, + if such an expression is applicable, cost him eleven shillings less + fourpence. Yet he paid his way. The only money he spent to gain + admission to public places was a penny to see Bedlam. +</p> +<p> + Interesting, however, as is Hutton's book, it tells us next to nothing + about book-selling, except that in his hands it was a prosperous + undertaking. +</p> +<a name="2H_4_15"><!-- H2 anchor --></a> +<p> </p> +<p> </p> +<p> </p> +<p> </p> +<h2> + A FEW WORDS ABOUT COPYRIGHT IN BOOKS +</h2> +<p> </p> + +<p> + Copyright, which is the exclusive liberty reserved to an author and + his assigns of printing or otherwise multiplying copies of his book + during certain fixed periods of time, is a right of modern origin. +</p> +<p> + There is nothing about copyright in Justinian's compilations. +</p> +<p> + It is a mistake to suppose that books did not circulate freely in the + era of manuscripts. St. Augustine was one of the most popular authors + that ever lived. His <i>City of God</i> ran over Europe after a fashion + impossible to-day. Thousands of busy hands were employed, year out and + year in, making copies for sale of this famous treatise. Yet Augustine + had never heard of copyright, and never received a royalty on sales in + his life. +</p> +<p> + The word 'copyright' is of purely English origin, and came into + existence as follows: +</p> +<p> + The Stationers' Company was founded by royal charter in 1556, and from + the beginning has kept register-books, wherein, first, by decrees of + the Star Chamber, afterwards by orders of the Houses of Parliament, + and finally by Act of Parliament, the titles of all publications and + reprints have had to be entered prior to publication. +</p> +<p> + None but booksellers, as publishers were then content to be called, + were members of the Stationers' Company, and by the usage of the + Company no entries could be made in their register-books except in the + names of members, and thereupon the book referred to in the entry + became the 'copy' of the member or members who had caused it to be + registered. +</p> +<p> + By virtue of this registration the book became, in the opinion of the + Stationers' Company, the property <i>in perpetuity</i> of the member or + members who had effected the registration. This was the 'right' of the + stationer to his 'copy.' +</p> +<p> + Copyright at first is therefore not an author's, but a bookseller's + copyright. The author had no part or lot in it unless he chanced to be + both an author and a bookseller, an unusual combination in early days. + The author took his manuscript to a member of the Stationers' Company, + and made the best bargain he could for himself. The stationer, if + terms were arrived at, carried off the manuscript to his Company and + registered the title in the books, and thereupon became, in his + opinion, and in that of his Company, the owner, at common law, in + perpetuity of his 'copy.' +</p> +<p> + The stationers, having complete control over their register-books, + made what entries they chose, and all kinds of books, even Homer and + the Classics, became the 'property' of its members. The booksellers, + nearly all Londoners, respected each other's 'copies,' and jealously + guarded access to their registers. From time to time there were sales + by auction of a bookseller's 'copies,' but the public—that is, the + country booksellers, for there were no other likely buyers—were + excluded from the sale-room. A great monopoly was thus created and + maintained by the trade. There was never any examination of title to a + bookseller's copy. Every book of repute was supposed to have a + bookseller for its owner. Bunyan's <i>Pilgrim's Progress</i> was Mr. + Ponder's copy, Milton's <i>Paradise Lost</i> Mr. Tonson's copy, <i>The Whole + Duty of Man</i> Mr. Eyre's copy, and so on. The thing was a corrupt and + illegal trade combination. +</p> +<p> + The expiration of the Licensing Act, and the consequent cessation of + the penalties it inflicted upon unlicensed printing, exposed the + proprietors of 'copies' to an invasion of their rights, real or + supposed, and in 1703, and again in 1706 and 1709, they applied to + Parliament for a Bill to protect them against the 'ruin' with which + they alleged themselves to be threatened. <a name="10"></a><a href="#note-10"><small><sup>1</sup></small></a> +</p> + +<p> + In 1710 they got what they asked for in the shape of the famous + Statute of Queen Anne, the first copyright law in the world. A truly + English measure, ill considered and ill drawn, which did the very last + thing it was meant to do—viz., destroy the property it was intended + to protect. +</p> +<p> + By this Act, in which the 'author' first makes his appearance actually + in front of the 'proprietor,' it was provided that, <i>in case of new + books</i>, the author and his assigns should have the sole right of + printing them for fourteen years, and if at the end of that time the + author was still alive, a second term of fourteen years was conceded. + In the case of <i>existing books</i>, there was to be but one term—viz., + twenty-one years, from August 10, 1710. +</p> +<p> + Registration at the Stationers' Company was still required, but + nothing was said as to who might make the entries, or into whose names + they were to be made. +</p> +<p> + Then followed the desired penalties for infringement. The booksellers + thought the terms of years meant no more than that the penalties were + to be limited by way of experiment to those periods. +</p> +<p> + Many years flew by before the Stationers' Company discovered the + mischief wrought by the statute they had themselves promoted. To cut a + long matter short, it was not until 1774 that the House of Lords + decided that, whether there ever had been a perpetuity in literary + property at common law or not, it was destroyed by the Act of Queen + Anne, and that from and after the passing of that law neither author, + assignee, nor proprietor of 'copy' had any exclusive right of + multiplication, save for and during the periods of time the statute + created. +</p> +<p> + It was a splendid fight—a Thirty Years' War. Great lawyers were fee'd + in it; luminous and lengthy judgments were delivered. Mansfield was a + booksellers' man; Thurlow ridiculed the pretensions of the Trade. It + can be read about in <i>Boswell's Johnson</i> and in Campbell's <i>Lives of + the Lord Chancellors</i>. The authors stood supinely by, not contributing + a farthing towards the expenses. It was a booksellers' battle, and the + booksellers were beaten, as they deserved to be. +</p> +<p> + All this is past history, in which the modern money-loving, motoring + author takes scant pleasure. Things are on a different footing now. + The Act of 1842 has extended the statutory periods of protection. The + perpetuity craze is over. A right in perpetuity to reprint Frank + Fustian's novel or Tom Tatter's poem would not add a penny to the + present value of the copyright of either of those productions. In + business short views must prevail. An author cannot expect to raise + money on his hope of immortality. Milton's publisher, good Mr. + Symonds, probably thought, if he thought about it at all, that he was + buying <i>Paradise Lost</i> for ever when he registered it as his 'copy' in + the books of his Company; but into the calculations he made to + discover how much he could afford to give the author posterity did not + and could not enter. How was Symonds to know that Milton's fame was to + outlive Cleveland's or Flatman's? +</p> +<p> + How many of the books published in 1905 would have any copyright cash + value in A.D. 2000? I do not pause for a reply. +</p> +<p> + The modern author need have no quarrel with the statutory periods + fixed by the Act of 1842, <a name="11"></a><a href="#note-11"><small><sup>2</sup></small></a> though common-sense has long since + suggested that a single term, the author's life and thirty or forty + years after, should be substituted for the alternative periods named + in the Act. +</p> + +<p> + What the modern author alone desiderates is a big, immediate, and + protected market. +</p> +<p> + The United States of America have been a great disappointment to many + an honest British author. In the wicked old days when the States took + British books without paying for them they used to take them in large + numbers, but now that they have turned honest and passed a law + allowing the British author copyright on certain terms, they have in + great measure ceased to take; for, by the strangest of coincidences, + no sooner were British novels, histories, essays, and the like, + protected in America, than there sprang up in the States themselves, + novelists, historians, and essayists, not only numerous enough to + supply their own home markets, but talented enough to cross the + Atlantic in large numbers and challenge us in our own. Such a reward + for honesty was not contemplated. +</p> +<p> + International copyright and the Convention of Berne are things to be + proud of and rejoice over. As the first chapter in a Code of Public + European Law, they may mark the beginning of a time of settled peace, + order, and disarmament, but they have not yet enriched a single + author, though hereafter possibly an occasional novelist or + play-wright may prosper greatly under their provisions. +</p> +<p> + The copyright question is now at last really a settled question, save + in a single aspect of it. What, if anything, should be done in the + case of those authors, few in number, whose literary lives prove + longer than the period of statutory protection? Should any distinction + in law be struck between a Tennyson and a Tupper? between—But why + multiply examples? There is no need to be unnecessarily offensive. +</p> +<p> + The law and practice of to-day give the meat that remains on the bones + of the dead author after the expiration of the statutory period of + protection to the Trade. Any publisher who likes to bring out an + edition can do so, though by doing so he does not gain any exclusive + rights. A brother publisher may compete with him. As a result + the public is usually well served with cheap editions of those + non-copyright authors whose works are worth reprinting the moment the + copyright expires. +</p> +<p> + Some lovers of justice, however, think that it is unnecessary all at + once to endow the Trade with these windfalls, and that if an author's + family, or his or their assignees, were prepared to publish cheap + editions immediately after the expiration of the usual period of + protection, they ought to be allowed to do so for a further period of, + say, forty years. If they failed within a reasonable time either to do + so themselves or to arrange for others to do so, this extended period + should lapse. +</p> +<p> + Were this to be the law nobody could say that it was unfair; but it is + never likely to be the law. It would take time for discussion, and now + there is no time left in which to discuss anything in Parliament. A + much-needed Copyright Bill has been in draft for years, has been + mentioned in Queen's and King's speeches, but it has never been read + even a first time. If it ever is read a first time, its only chance of + becoming law will be if it is taken in a lump, as it stands, without + consideration or amendment. To such a pass has legislation been + reduced in this country! +</p> +<p> + This draft Bill does not contain any provision for specially + protecting the families of authors whose works long outlive their + mortal lives. It makes no invidious distinctions. It leaves all the + authors to hang together, the quick and the dead. Perhaps this is the + better way. +</p> +<p> </p> + + +<a name="note-10"><!--Note--></a> +<p class="fnote"><a href="#10"> +<sup><u>1</u></sup></a> What the booksellers wanted was not to be left to their + common law remedy—<i>i.e.</i>, an action of trespass on the case—but to + be supplied with penalties for infringement, and especially with the + right to seize and burn unauthorized editions. +</p> + +<a name="note-11"><!--Note--></a> +<p class="fnote"><a href="#11"> +<sup><u>2</u></sup></a> Author's life <i>plus</i> seven years, or forty-two years from + date of publication, whichever term is the longer. The great objection + to the second term is that an author's books go out of copyright at + different dates, and the earlier editions go out first. +</p> + +<a name="2H_4_16"><!-- H2 anchor --></a> +<p> </p> +<p> </p> +<p> </p> +<p> </p> +<h2> + HANNAH MORE ONCE MORE +</h2> +<p> </p> + +<p> + I have been told by more than one correspondent, and not always in + words of urbanity, that I owe an apology to the manes of Miss Hannah + More, whose works I once purchased in nineteen volumes for 8s. 6d., + and about whom in consequence I wrote a page some ten years ago. <a name="12"></a> <a href="#note-12"><small><sup>1</sup></small></a> +</p> + +<p> + To be accused of rudeness to a lady who exchanged witticisms with Dr. + Johnson, soothed the widowed heart of Mrs. Garrick, directed the early + studies of Macaulay, and in the spring of 1815 presented a small copy + of her <i>Sacred Dramas</i> to Mr. Gladstone, is no light matter. To libel + the dead is, I know, not actionable—indeed, it is impossible; but + evil-speaking, lying, and slandering are canonical offences from which + the obligation to refrain knows no limits of time or place. +</p> +<p> + I have often felt uneasy on this score, and never had the courage, + until this very evening, to read over again what in the irritation of + the moment I had been tempted to say about Miss Hannah More, after the + outlay upon her writings already mentioned. Eight shillings and + sixpence is, indeed, no great sum, but nineteen octavo volumes are a + good many books. Yet Richardson is in nineteen volumes in Mangin's + edition, and Swift is in nineteen volumes in Scott's edition, and + glorious John Dryden lacks but a volume to make a third example. True + enough; yet it will, I think, be granted me that you must be very fond + of an author, male or female, if nineteen octavo volumes, all his or + hers, are not a little irritating and provocative of temper. Think of + the room they take! As for selling them, it is not so easy to sell + nineteen volumes of a stone-dead author, particularly if you live + three miles from a railway-station and do not keep a trap. Elia, the + gentle Elia, as it is the idiotic fashion to call a writer who could + handle his 'maulies' in a fray as well as Hazlitt himself, has told us + how he could never see well-bound books he did not care about, but he + longed to strip them so that he might warm his ragged veterans in + their spoils. My copy of <i>Hannah More</i> was in full calf, but never + once did it occur to me—though I, too, have many a poor author with + hardly a shirt to his back shivering in the dark corners of the + library—to strip her of her warm clothing. And yet I had to do + something, and quickly too, for sorely needed was Miss More's shelf. + So I buried the nineteen volumes in the garden. 'Out of sight, out of + mind,' said I cheerfully, stamping them down. +</p> +<p> + This has hardly proved to be the case, for though Hannah More is + incapable of a literary resurrection, and no one of her nineteen + volumes has ever haunted my pillow, exclaiming, +</p> +<pre> + 'Think how thou stab'dst me in my prime of youth,' +</pre> +<p class="noindent"> + nevertheless, I have not been able to get quite rid of an uneasy + feeling that I was rude to her ten years ago in print—not, indeed, so + rude as was her revered friend Dr. Johnson 126 years ago to her face; + but then, I have not the courage to creep under the gabardine of our + great Moralist. +</p> +<p> + When, accordingly, I saw on the counters of the trade the daintiest of + volumes, hailing, too, from the United States, entitled <i>Hannah + More</i>, <a name="13"></a> <a href="#note-13"><small><sup>2</sup></small></a> and perceived that it was a short biography and appreciation + of the lady on my mind, I recognised that my penitential hour had at + last come. I took the little book home with me, and sat down to read, + determined to do justice and more than justice to the once celebrated + mistress of Cowslip Green and Barley Wood. +</p> + +<p> + Miss Harland's preface is most engaging. She reminds a married sister + how in the far-off days of their childhood in a Southern State their + Sunday reading, usually confined or sought to be confined, to 'bound + sermons and semi-detached tracts,' was enlivened by the <i>Works of + Hannah More</i>. She proceeds as follows: +</p> +<blockquote> + 'At my last visit to you I took from your bookshelves one of a set + of volumes in uniform binding of full calf, coloured mellowly by + the touch and the breath of fifty odd years. They belonged to the + dear old home library.... The leaves of the book I held fell apart + at <i>The Shepherd of Salisbury Plain</i>.' +</blockquote> +<p> + I leave my readers to judge how uncomfortable these innocent words + made me: +</p> +<pre> + 'The usher took six hasty strides + As smit with sudden pain.' +</pre> +<p class="noindent"> + I knew that set of volumes, their distressing uniformity of binding, + their full calf. Their very fellows lie mouldering in an East Anglian + garden, mellow enough by this time and strangely coloured. +</p> +<p> + Circumstances alter cases. Miss Harland thinks that if the life of + Charlotte Brontë's mother had been mercifully spared, the authoress of + <i>Jane Eyre</i> and <i>Villette</i> might have grown up more like Hannah More + than she actually did. Perhaps so. As I say, circumstances alter + cases, and if the works of Hannah More had been in my old home + library, I might have read <i>The Shepherd of Salisbury Plain</i> and + <i>The Search after Happiness</i> of a Sunday, and found solace therein. + But they were not there, and I had to get along as best I could with + the <i>Pilgrim's Progress</i>, stories by A.L.O.E., the crime-stained + page of Mrs. Sherwood's <i>Tales from the Church Catechism</i>, and, + 'more curious sport than that,' the <i>Bible in Spain</i> of the + never-sufficiently-bepraised George Borrow. +</p> +<p> + What, however, is a little odd about Miss Harland's enthusiasm for + Hannah More's writings is that it expires with the preface. <i>There</i>, + indeed, it glows with a beautiful light: +</p> +<blockquote> + 'And <i>The Search after Happiness!</i> You cannot have forgotten all of + the many lines we learned by heart on Sunday afternoons in the + joyful spring-time when we were obliged to clear the pages every + few minutes of yellow jessamine bells and purple Wistaria petals + flung down by the warm wind.' +</blockquote> +<p> + This passage lets us into the secret. I suspect in sober truth both + Miss Harland and her sister have long since forgotten all the lines in + <i>The Search after Happiness</i>, but what they have never forgotten, what + they never can forget, are the jessamine bells and the Wistaria + petals, yellow and purple, blown about in the warm winds that visited + their now desolate and forsaken Southern home. Less beautiful things + than jessamine and Wistaria, if only they clustered round the house + where you were born, are remembered when the lines of far better + authors than Miss Hannah More have gone clean out of your head: +</p> +<pre> + 'As life wanes, all its cares and strife and toil + Seem strangely valueless, while the old trees + Which grew by our youth's home, the waving mass + Of climbing plants heavy with bloom and dew, + The morning swallows with their songs like words— + All these seem dear, and only worth our thoughts.' +</pre> +<p> + Thus the youthful Browning in his marvellous <i>Pauline</i>. The same note + is struck after a humbler and perhaps more moving fashion in the + following simple strain of William Allingham: +</p> +<pre> + 'Four ducks on a pond, + A grass-bank beyond; + A blue sky of spring, + White clouds on the wing; + How little a thing + To remember for years— + To remember with tears!' +</pre> +<p> + If this be so—and who, looking into his own heart, but must own that + so it is?—it explains how it comes about that as soon as Miss Harland + finished her preface, got away from her childhood and began her + biography, she has so little to tell us about Miss More's books, and + from that little the personal note of enjoyment is entirely wanting. + Indeed, though a pious soul, she occasionally cannot restrain her + surprise how such ponderous commonplaces ever found a publisher, to + say nothing of a reader. +</p> +<p> + 'Such books as Miss More's,' she says, 'would to-day in America fall + from the press like a stone into the depths of the sea of oblivion, + creating no more sensation upon the surface than the bursting of a + bubble in mid-Atlantic.' +</p> +<p> + And again: +</p> +<p> + 'That Hannah More was a power for righteousness in her long + generation we must take upon the testimony of her best and wisest + contemporaries.' +</p> +<p> + However good may be your intentions, it seems hard to avoid being rude + to this excellent lady. +</p> +<p> + I confess I never liked her love story. Anything more cold-blooded I + never read. I am not going to repeat it. Why should I? It is told at + length in Miss More's authorized biography in four volumes by William + Roberts, Esq. I saw a copy yesterday exposed for sale in New Oxford + Street, price 1s. Miss Harland also tells the tale, not without + chuckling. I refer the curious to her pages. +</p> +<p> + Then there are those who can never get rid of the impression that + Hannah More 'fagged' her four sisters mercilessly; but who can tell? + Some people like being fagged. +</p> +<p> + Precisely <i>when</i> Miss More bade farewell to what in later life she was + fond of calling her gay days, when she wrote dull plays and went to + stupid Sunday parties, one finds it hard to discover, but at no time + did it ever come home to her that she needed repentance herself. She + seems always thinking of the sins and shortcomings of her neighbours, + rich and poor. Sometimes, indeed, when deluged with flattery, she + would intimate that she was a miserable sinner, but that is not what I + mean. She concerned herself greatly with the manners of the great, + and deplored their cards and fashionable falsehoods. John Newton, + captain as he had been of a slaver, saw the futility of such + pin-pricks: +</p> +<p> + 'The fashionable world,' so he wrote to Miss More, 'by their numbers + form a phalanx not easily impressible, and their habits of life are as + armour of proof which renders them not easily vulnerable. Neither the + rude club of a boisterous Reformer nor the pointed, delicate weapons + of the authoress before me can overthrow or rout them.' +</p> +<p> + But Miss More never forgot to lecture the rich or to patronize the + poor. +</p> +<p> + <i>Coelebs in Search of a Wife</i> is an impossible book, and I do not + believe Miss Harland has read it; but as for the famous <i>Shepherd</i>, we + are never allowed to forget how Mr. Wilberforce declared a few years + before his death, to the admiration of the religious world, that he + would rather present himself in heaven with <i>The Shepherd of Salisbury + Plain</i> in his hand than with—what think you?—<i>Peveril of the Peak</i>! + The bare notion of such a proceeding on anybody's part is enough to + strike one dumb with what would be horror, did not amazement swallow + up every other feeling. What rank Arminianism! I am sure the last + notion that ever would have entered the head of Sir Walter was to take + <i>Peveril</i> to heaven. +</p> +<p> + But whatever may be thought of the respective merits of Miss More's + nineteen volumes and Sir Walter's ninety-eight, there is no doubt that + Barley Wood was as much infested with visitors as ever was Abbotsford. + Eighty a week! +</p> +<p> + 'From twelve o'clock until three each day a constant stream of + carriages and pedestrians filled the evergreen bordered avenue + leading from the Wrington village road.' +</p> +<p> + Among them came Lady Gladstone and W.E.G., aged six, the latter + carrying away with him the <i>Sacred Dramas</i>, to be preserved during a + long life. +</p> +<p> + Miss More was a vivacious and agreeable talker, who certainly failed + to do herself justice with her pen. Her health was never good, yet, as + she survived thirty-five of her prescribing physicians, her vitality + must have been great. Her face in Opie's portrait is very pleasant. If + I was rude to her ten years ago, I apologize and withdraw; but as for + her books, I shall leave them where they are—buried in a cliff facing + due north, with nothing between them and the Pole but leagues upon + leagues of a wind-swept ocean. +</p> +<p> </p> + + +<a name="note-12"><!--Note--></a> +<p class="fnote"> <a href="#12"> +<sup><u>1</u></sup></a> See <i>Collected Essays</i>, ii. 255. +</p> + +<a name="note-13"><!--Note--></a> +<p class="fnote"><a href="#13"> +<sup><u>2</u></sup></a> <i>Hannah More</i>, by Marian Harland. New York and London: G.P. Putnam. +</p> + + +<a name="2H_4_17"><!-- H2 anchor --></a> +<p> </p> +<p> </p> +<p> </p> +<p> </p> +<h2> + ARTHUR YOUNG +</h2> +<p> </p> + +<p> + The name of Arthur Young is a familiar one to all readers of that + history which begins with the forebodings of the French Revolution. + Thousands of us learnt to be interested in him as the 'good Arthur,' + 'the excellent Arthur,' of Thomas Carlyle, a writer who had the art of + making not only his own narrative, but the sources of it, attractive. + Even 'Carrion-Heath,' in the famous introductory chapter to the + <i>Cromwell</i>, is invested with a kind of charm, whilst in the stormy + firmament of the <i>French Revolution</i> the star of Arthur Young twinkles + with a mild effulgency. The autobiography of such a man could hardly + fail to be interesting. <a name="14"></a> <a href="#note-14"><small><sup>1</sup></small></a> The 'good Arthur' was born in 1741, the + younger son of a small 'squarson' who inherited from his father the + manor of Bradfield Combust, in Suffolk, but held the living of Thames + Ditton. Here he made the acquaintance of the Onslow family, and + Speaker Onslow was one of Arthur's godfathers. The Rev. Dr. Young died + in 1759, much in debt. The Bradfield property had been settled for + life on his wife, who had brought her husband some fortune, and to + the manor-house she retired to economize. +</p> + +<p> + Arthur's education had been muddled; and an attempt to make a merchant + of him having fallen through, he found himself, on his father's death, + aged eighteen, 'without education, profession, or employment,' and his + whole fortune, during his mother's life, consisting of a copyhold farm + of 20 acres, producing as many pounds. In these circumstances, to + think of literature was well-nigh inevitable, and, in 1762, the + autobiography tells us: +</p> +<blockquote> + 'I set on foot a periodical publication, entitled the <i>Universal + Museum</i>, which came out monthly, printed with glorious imprudence + on my own account. I waited on Dr. Johnson, who was sitting by the + fire so half-dressed and slovenly a figure as to make me stare at + him. I stated my plan, and begged that he would favour me with a + paper once a month, offering at the same time any remuneration that + he might name.' +</blockquote> +<p> + Here we see dimly prefigured a modern editor prematurely soliciting + the support of Great Names. But the Cham of literature, himself the + son of a bookseller, would have none of it. +</p> +<blockquote> + '"No, sir," he replied; "such a work would be sure to fail if the + booksellers have not the property, and you will lose a great deal + of money by it."<br><br> + + '"Certainly, sir," I said, "if I am not fortunate enough to induce + authors of real talent to contribute."<br><br> + + '"No, sir, you are mistaken; such authors will not support such a + work, nor will you persuade them to write in it. You will purchase + disappointment by the loss of your money, and I advise you by all + means to give up the plan."<br><br> + + 'Somebody was introduced, and I took my leave.' +</blockquote> +<p> + The <i>Universal Museum</i>, none the less, appeared, but after five + numbers Young 'procured a meeting of ten or a dozen booksellers, and + had the luck and address to persuade them to take the whole scheme + upon themselves.' He then calmly adds, 'I believe no success ever + attended it.' It was, indeed, 100 years before its time. Literature + abandoned, Young took one of his mother's farms. 'I had no more idea + of farming than of physic or divinity,' nor did he, man of European + reputation as a farmer though he soon became, ever make farming pay. + He had an itching pen, and after four years' farming (1763-1766) he + published the result of his experience. Never, surely, before has an + author spoken of his first-born as in the autobiography Young speaks + of this publication: +</p> +<blockquote> + 'And the circumstance which perhaps of all others in my life I + most deeply regretted and considered as a sin of the blackest dye + was the publishing of my experience during these four years, + which, speaking as a farmer, was nothing but ignorance, folly, + presumption, and rascality.' +</blockquote> +<p> + None the less, it was writing this rascally book that seems to have + given him the idea of those agricultural tours which were to make his + name famous throughout the world. His Southern tour was in 1767, his + Northern in 1768, and his Eastern in 1770. The subject he specially + illuminated in these epoch-making books was the rotation of crops, + though he occasionally diverged upon deep-ploughing and kindred + themes. The tours excited, for the first time, the agricultural spirit + of Great Britain, and their author almost at once became a celebrated + man. +</p> +<p> + In 1765 Young married the wrong woman, and started upon a career of + profound matrimonial discomfort, and even misery; a blunt, truthful + writer, he makes no bones about it. It was an unhappy marriage from + its beginning in 1765 to its end in 1815. Young himself, though by no + means vivacious in this autobiography, where he frankly complains of + himself as having no more wit than a fig, was a very popular person + with all classes and both sexes. He was an enormous diner-out, and his + authority as an agriculturist, united to his undeniable charm as a + companion, threw open to him all the great places in the country. But + his finances were a perpetual trouble. On carrot seeds and cabbages he + was an authority, but from 1766-1775 his income never exceeded £300 a + year. He had an excellent mother, whom he dearly loved, and who with + the characteristic bluntness of the family bade him think less about + carrots and more about his Creator. 'You may call all this rubbish if + you please, but a time will come when you will be convinced whose + notions are rubbish, yours or mine.' And the old lady was quite right, + as mothers so frequently turn out to be. In 1778 Young went over to + Ireland as agent to Lord Kingsborough. He got £500 down, and was to + have an annual salary of £500 and a house. Young soon got to work, and + became anxious to persuade his employer to let his lands direct to the + occupying cottar, and so get rid of the middlemen. This did not suit a + certain Major Thornhill, a relative and leaseholder, and thereupon a + pretty plot was hatched. Lady K. had a Catholic governess, a Miss + Crosby, upon whom it was thought my lord occasionally cast the eye of + partiality, whilst Arthur himself got on very well with her ladyship, + who was heard to pronounce him to be, as he was, 'one of the most + lively, agreeable fellows.' Out of these materials the Major and his + helpmeet concocted a double plot—namely, to make the lord jealous of + the steward, and the lady jealous of the governess, and to cause both + lord and lady respectively to believe that the steward was deeply + engaged both in abetting the amour of the lord and the governess, and + in prosecuting his own amour with the lady. The result was that both + governess and steward got notice to quit; but—and this is very + Irish—both went off with life annuities, the governess with one of + £50 per annum, and the steward with one of £72, and, what is still + more odd, we find Young at the end of his life in receipt of his + annuity. They were an expensive couple, these two. +</p> +<p> + In 1780 Young published his <i>Irish Tour</i>, which was immediately + successful and popular in both kingdoms. In it he attacked the bounty + paid on the land-carriage of corn to Dublin. The bounty was, in the + session of Parliament next after the publication of Young's book, + reduced by one-half, and soon given up entirely. Young maintains that + this saved Ireland £80,000 a year. Nobody seems to have said 'Thank + you.' +</p> +<p> + In May, 1783, was born the child 'Bobbin,' whose death, fourteen years + later, was to change the current of Young's life. The following year + Arthur Young paid his first visit to France, confining himself, + however, to Calais and its neighbourhood, and in the same year his + mother died, and, by an arrangement with his eldest brother, 'this + patch of landed property,' as Young calls Bradfield, descended upon + him. His first famous journey in France was made between May and + November, 1787, and cost the marvellously small sum of £118 15s. 2d. + His second and third French journeys were made in July, 1788, and in + June, 1789. The third was the longest, and extended into 1790. Three + years later Young was appointed, by Pitt, Secretary of the then Board + of Agriculture. A melancholy account is given by Young of a visit he + paid Burke at Gregory's in 1796. Young drove there in the chariot of + his fussy chief, Sir John Sinclair, to discover what Burke's + intentions might be as to an intended publication of his relating to + the price of labour. The account, which occupies four pages, is too + long for quotation. It concludes thus: +</p> +<blockquote> + 'I am glad once more to have seen and conversed with the man who I + hold to possess the greatest and most brilliant gifts of any penman + of the age in which he lived. Whose conversation has often + fascinated me, whose eloquence has charmed; whose writings have + delighted and instructed the world; whose name will without + question descend to the latest posterity. But to behold so great a + genius, so deepened with melancholy, stooping with infirmity of + body, feeling the anguish of a lacerated mind, and sinking to the + grave under accumulated misery—to see all this in a character I + venerate, and apparently without resource or comfort, wounded + every feeling of my soul, and I left him the next day almost as + low-spirited as himself.' +</blockquote> +<p> + But Young himself was soon to pass into the same Valley of the Shadow, + not so much of Death as of Joyless Life. His beloved and idolized + Bobbin died on July 14, 1797. She seems to have been a wise little + maiden, to whom her father wrote most affectionate letters, full of + rather unsuitable details, political and financial and otherwise, and + not scrupling to speak of the child's mother in a disagreeable manner. + Bobbin replies with delightful composure to these worrying letters: +</p> +<blockquote> + 'I have just got six of the most beautiful little rabbits you ever + saw; they skip about so prettily you can't think, and I shall have + some more in a few weeks. Having had so much physic, I am right + down tired of it. I take it still twice a day—my appetite is + better. What can you mind politics so for? I don't think about + them.—Well, good-bye, and believe me, dear papa, your dutiful + Daughter.' +</blockquote> +<p> + After poor little Bobbin's death, it happened to Arthur Young even as + his mother foretold. Carrots and crops and farming tours hastily + retreat, and we find the eminent agriculturist busying himself, with + the same seriousness and good faith he had devoted to the rotation of + the crops, with the sermons and treatises of Clarke and Jortin and + Secker and Tillotson, etc., and all to discover what had become of his + dear little Bobbin. His outlook upon the world was changed—the great + parties at Petworth, at Euston, at Woburn struck him differently; the + huge irreligion of the world filled him as for the first time with + amazement and horror: +</p> +<blockquote> + 'How few years are passed since I should have pushed on eagerly to + Woburn! This time twelve months I dined with the Duke on + Sunday—the party not very numerous, but chiefly of rank—the + entertainment more splendid than usual there. He expects me to-day, + but I have more pleasure in resting, going twice to church, and + eating a morsel of cold lamb at a very humble inn, than partaking + of gaiety and dissipation at a great table which might as well be + spread for a company of heathens as English lords and men of + fashion.' +</blockquote> +<p> + It is all mighty fine calling this religious hypochondria and + depression of spirits. It is one of the facts of life. Young stuck to + his post, and did his work, and quarrelled with his wife to the end, + or nearly so. He cannot have been so lively and agreeable a companion + as of old, for we find him in November, 1806, at Euston, endeavouring + to impress on the Duke of Grafton that by his tenets he had placed + himself entirely under the covenant of works, and that he must be + tried for them, and that 'I would not be in such a situation for ten + thousand worlds. He was mild and more patient than I expected.' + Perhaps, after all, Carlyle was not so far wrong when he praised our + aristocracy for their 'politeness.' In 1808 Young became blind. In + 1815 his wife died. In 1820 he died himself, leaving behind him seven + packets of manuscript and twelve folio volumes of correspondence. +</p> +<p> + Young's great work, <i>Travels during the Years 1787, 1788, and 1789, + undertaken more particularly with a View of Ascertaining the + Cultivation, Wealth, Resources, and National Prosperity of the Kingdom + of France</i>, published in 1792, is one of those books which will always + be a great favourite with somebody. It will outlive eloquence and + outstay philosophy. It contains some famous passages. +</p> +<p> </p> + +<a name="note-14"><!--Note--></a> +<p class="fnote"><a href="#14"> +<sup><u>1</u></sup></a> <i>The Autobiography of Arthur Young</i>. Edited by M. Betham + Edwards. Smith, Elder and Co. +</p> + +<a name="2H_4_18"><!-- H2 anchor --></a> +<p> </p> +<p> </p> +<p> </p> +<p> </p> +<h2> + THOMAS PAINE +</h2> +<p> </p> + +<p> + Proverbs are said to be but half-truths, but 'give a dog a bad name + and hang him' is a saying almost as veracious as it is felicitous; and + to no one can it possibly be applied with greater force than to Thomas + Paine, the rebellious staymaker, the bankrupt tobacconist, the amazing + author of <i>Common-sense</i>, <i>The Rights of Man</i>, and <i>The Age of Reason</i>. +</p> +<p> + Until quite recently Tom Paine lay without the pale of toleration. No + circle of liberality was constructed wide enough to include him. Even + the scouted Unitarian scouted Thomas. He was 'the infamous Paine,' + 'the vulgar atheist.' Whenever mentioned in pious discourse it was but + to be waved on one side as thus: 'No one of my hearers is likely to be + led astray by the scurrilous blasphemies of Paine.' +</p> +<p> + I can well remember when an asserted intimacy with the writings of + Paine marked a man from his fellows and invested him in children's + minds with a horrid fascination. The writings themselves were only to + be seen in bookshops of evil reputation, and, when hastily turned over + with furtive glances, proved to be printed in small type and on + villainous paper. For a boy to have bought them and taken them inside + a decent home would have been to run the risk of fierce wrath in this + life and the threat of it in the next. If ever there was a hung dog, + his name was Tom Paine. +</p> +<p> + But History is, as we know, for ever revising her records. None of her + judgments are final. A life of Thomas Paine, in two portly and + well-printed volumes, with gilt tops, wide margins, spare leaves at + the end, and all the other signs and tokens of literary + respectability, has lately appeared. No President, no Prime + Minister—nay, no Bishop or Moderator—need hope to have his memoirs + printed in better style than are these of Thomas Paine, by Mr. Moncure + D. Conway. Were any additional proof required of the complete + resuscitation of Paine's reputation, it might be found in the fact + that his life <i>is</i> in two volumes, though it would have been far + better told in one. +</p> +<p> + Mr. Conway believes implicitly in Paine—not merely in his virtue and + intelligence, but that he was a truly great man, who played a great + part in human affairs. He will no more admit that Paine was a + busybody, inflated with conceit and with a strong dash of insolence, + than he will that Thomas was a drunkard. That Paine's speech was + undoubtedly plain and his nose undeniably red is as far as Mr. Conway + will go. If we are to follow the biographer the whole way, we must not + only unhang the dog, but give him sepulture amongst the sceptred + Sovereigns who rule us from their urns. +</p> +<p> + Thomas Paine was born at Thetford, in Norfolk, in January, 1737, and + sailed for America in 1774, then being thirty-seven years of age. Up + to this date he was a rank failure. His trade was staymaking, but he + had tried his hand at many things. He was twice an Excise officer, but + was twice dismissed the service, the first time for falsely + pretending to have made certain inspections which, in fact, he had not + made, and the second time for carrying on business in an excisable + article—tobacco, to wit—without the leave of the Board. Paine had + married the tobacconist's business, but neither the marriage nor the + business prospered; the second was sold by auction, and the first + terminated by mutual consent. +</p> +<p> + Mr. Conway labours over these early days of his hero very much, but he + can make nothing of them. Paine was an Excise officer at Lewes, where, + so Mr. Conway reminds us, 'seven centuries before Paine opened his + office in Lewes, came Harold's son, possibly to take charge of the + Excise as established by Edward the Confessor, just deceased.' This + device of biographers is a little stale. The Confessor was guiltless + of the Excise. +</p> +<p> + Paine's going to America was due to Benjamin Franklin, who made + Paine's acquaintance in London, and, having the wit to see his + ability, recommended him 'as a clerk or assistant-tutor in a school or + assistant-surveyor.' Thus armed, Paine made his appearance in + Philadelphia, where he at once obtained employment as editor of an + intended periodical called the <i>Pennsylvanian Magazine or American + Museum</i>, the first number of which appeared in January, 1775. Never + was anything luckier. Paine was, without knowing it, a born + journalist. His capacity for writing on the spur of the moment was + endless, and his delight in doing so boundless. He had no difficulty + for 'copy', though in those days contributors were few. He needed no + contributors. He was 'Atlanticus'; he was 'Vox Populi'; he was + 'Aesop.' The unsigned articles were also mostly his. Having at last, + after many adventures and false starts, found his vocation, Paine + stuck to it. He spent the rest of his days with a pen in his hand, + scribbling his advice and obtruding his counsel on men and nations. + Both were usually of excellent quality. +</p> +<p> + Paine was also happy in the moment of his arrival in America. The War + of Independence was imminent, and in April, 1775, occurred 'the + massacre of Lexington.' The Colonists were angry, but puzzled. They + hardly knew what they wanted. They lacked a definite opinion to + entertain and a cry to asseverate. Paine had no doubts. He hated + British institutions with all the hatred of a civil servant who has + had 'the sack.' +</p> +<p> + In January, 1776, he published his pamphlet <i>Common-sense</i>, which must + be ranked with the most famous pamphlets ever written. It is difficult + to wade through now, but even <i>The Conduct of the Allies</i> is not easy + reading, and yet between Paine and Swift there is a great gulf fixed. + The keynote of <i>Common-sense</i> was separation once and for ever, and + the establishment of a great Republic of the West. It hit between wind + and water, had a great sale, and made its author a personage and, in + his own opinion, a divinity. +</p> +<p> + Paine now became the penman of the rebels. His series of manifestoes, + entitled <i>The Crisis</i>, were widely read and carried healing on their + wings, and in 1777 he was elected Secretary to the Committee of + Foreign Affairs. Charles Lamb once declared that Rousseau was a good + enough Jesus Christ for the French, and he was capable of declaring + Tom Paine a good enough Milton for the Yankees. However that may be, + Paine was an indefatigable and useful public servant. He was a bad + gauger for King George, but he was an admirable scribe for a + revolution conducted on constitutional principles. +</p> +<p> + To follow his history through the war would be tedious. What + Washington and Jefferson really thought of him we shall never know. + He was never mercenary, but his pride was wounded that so little + recognition of his astounding services was forthcoming. The + ingratitude of Kings was a commonplace; the ingratitude of peoples an + unpleasing novelty. But Washington bestirred himself at last, and + Paine was voted an estate of 277 acres, more or less, and a sum of + money. This was in 1784. +</p> +<p> + Three years afterwards Thomas visited England, where he kept good + company and was very usefully employed engineering, for which + excellent pursuit he would appear to have had great natural aptitude. + Blackfriars Bridge had just tumbled down, and it was Paine's laudable + ambition to build its successor in iron. But the Bastille fell down as + well as Blackfriars Bridge, and was too much for Paine. As Mr. Conway + beautifully puts it: 'But again the Cause arose before him; he must + part from all—patent interests, literary leisure, fine society—and + take the hand of Liberty undowered, but as yet unstained. He must beat + his bridge-iron into a key that shall unlock the British Bastille, + whose walls he sees steadily closing around the people.' 'Miching + mallecho—this means mischief;' and so it proved. +</p> +<p> + Burke is responsible for the <i>Rights of Man</i>. This splendid + sentimentalist published his <i>Reflections on the Revolution in France</i> + in November, 1790. Paine immediately sat down in the Angel, Islington, + and began his reply. He was not unqualified to answer Burke; he had + fought a good fight between the years 1775 and 1784. Mr. Conway has + some ground for his epigram, 'where Burke had dabbled, Paine had + dived.' There is nothing in the <i>Rights of Man</i> which would now + frighten, though some of its expressions might still shock, a + lady-in-waiting; but to profess Republicanism in 1791 was no joke, and + the book was proclaimed and Paine prosecuted. Acting upon the advice + of William Blake (the truly sublime), Paine escaped to France, where + he was elected by three departments to a seat in the Convention, and + in that Convention he sat from September, 1792, to December, 1793, + when he was found quarters in the Luxembourg Prison. +</p> +<p> + This invitation to foreigners to take part in the conduct of the + French Revolution was surely one of the oddest things that ever + happened, but Paine thought it natural enough so far, at least, as he + was concerned. He could not speak a word of French, and all his + harangues had to be translated and read to the Convention by a + secretary, whilst Thomas stood smirking in the Tribune. His behaviour + throughout was most creditable to him. He acted with the Girondists, + and strongly opposed and voted against the murder of the King. His + notion of a revolution was one by pamphlet, and he shrank from deeds + of blood. His whole position was false and ridiculous. He really + counted for nothing. The members of the Convention grew tired of his + doctrinaire harangues, which, in fact, bored them not a little; but + they respected his enthusiasm and the part he had played in America, + whither they would gladly he had returned. Who put him in prison is a + mystery. Mr. Conway thinks it was the American Minister in Paris, + Gouverneur Morris. He escaped the guillotine, and was set free after + ten months' confinement. +</p> +<p> + All this time Washington had not moved a finger in behalf of the + author of <i>Common-sense</i> and <i>The Crisis</i>. Amongst Paine's papers this + epigram was found: +</p> +<pre> + 'ADVICE TO THE STATUARY WHO IS TO + EXECUTE THE STATUE OF WASHINGTON. + + Take from the mine the coldest, hardest stone; + It needs no fashion—it is Washington. + But if you chisel, let the stroke be rude, + And on his heart engrave—"Ingratitude."' +</pre> +<p class="noindent"> + This is hard hitting. +</p> +<p> + So far we have only had the Republican Paine, the outlaw Paine; the + atheist Paine has not appeared. He did so in the <i>Age of Reason</i>, + first published in 1794-1795. The object of this book was religious. + Paine was a vehement believer in God and in the Divine government of + the world, but he was not, to put it mildly, a Bible Christian. Nobody + now is ever likely to read the <i>Age of Reason</i> for instruction or + amusement. Who now reads even Mr. Greg's <i>Creed of Christendom</i>, which + is in effect, though not in substance, the same kind of book? Paine + was a coarse writer, without refinement of nature, and he used brutal + expressions and hurled his vulgar words about in a manner certain to + displease. Still, despite it all, the <i>Age of Reason</i> is a religious + book, though a singularly unattractive one. +</p> +<p> + Paine remained in France advocating all kinds of things, including a + descent on England, the abduction of the Royal Family, and a Free + Constitution. Napoleon sought him out, and assured him that he + (Napoleon) slept with the <i>Rights of Man</i> under his pillow. Paine + believed him. +</p> +<p> + In 1802 Paine returned to America, after fifteen years' absence. +</p> +<p> + 'Thou stricken friend of man,' exclaims Mr. Conway in a fine passage, + 'who hast appealed from the God of Wrath to the God of Humanity, see + in the distance that Maryland coast which early voyagers called + Avalon, and sing again your song when first stepping on that shore + twenty-seven years ago.' +</p> +<p> + The rest of Paine's life was spent in America without distinction or + much happiness. He continued writing to the last, and died bravely on + the morning of June 8, 1809. +</p> +<p> + The Americans did not appreciate Paine's theology, and in 1819 allowed + Cobbett to carry the bones of the author of <i>Common-sense</i> to England, + where—'as rare things will,' so, at least, Mr. Browning sings—they + vanished. Nobody knows what has become of them. +</p> +<p> + As a writer Paine has no merits of a lasting character, but he had a + marvellous journalistic knack for inventing names and headings. He is + believed to have concocted the two phrases 'The United States of + America' and 'The Religion of Humanity.' Considering how little he had + read, his discourses on the theory of government are wonderful, and + his views generally were almost invariably liberal, sensible, and + humane. What ruined him was an intolerable self-conceit, which led him + to believe that his own productions superseded those of other men. He + knew off by heart, and was fond of repeating, his own <i>Common-sense</i> + and the <i>Rights of Man</i>. He was destitute of the spirit of research, + and was wholly without one shred of humility. He was an oddity, a + character, but he never took the first step towards becoming a great + man. +</p> +<a name="2H_4_19"><!-- H2 anchor --></a> +<p> </p> +<p> </p> +<p> </p> +<p> </p> +<h2> + CHARLES BRADLAUGH <a name="15"></a> <a href="#note-15"><small><sup>1</sup></small></a> +</h2> +<p> </p> + +<p> + Mr. Bradlaugh was a noticeable man, and his life, even though it + appears in the unwelcome but familiar shape of two octavo volumes, is + a noticeable book. It is useless to argue with biographers; they, at + all events, are neither utilitarians nor opportunists, but idealists + pure and simple. What is the good of reminding them, being so + majestical, of Guizot's pertinent remark, 'that if a book is + unreadable it will not be read,' or of the older saying, 'A great book + is a great evil'? for all such observations they simply put on one + side as being, perhaps, true for others, but not for them. Had <i>Mr. + Bradlaugh's Life</i> been just half the size it would have had, at least, + twice as many readers. +</p> +<p> + The pity is all the greater because Mrs. Bonner has really performed a + difficult task after a noble fashion and in a truly pious spirit. Her + father's life was a melancholy one, and it became her duty as his + biographer to break a silence on painful subjects about which he had + preferred to say nothing. His reticence was a manly reticence; though + a highly sensitive mortal, he preferred to put up with calumny rather + than lay bare family sorrows and shame. His daughter, though compelled + to break this silence, has done so in a manner full of dignity and + feeling. The ruffians who in times past slandered the moral character + of Bradlaugh will not probably read his life, nor, if they did, would + they repent of their baseness. The willingness to believe everything + evil of an adversary is incurable, springing as it does from a habit + of mind. It was well said by Mr. Mill: 'I have learned from experience + that many false opinions may be exchanged for true ones, without in + the least altering the habits of mind of which false opinions are the + result.' Now that Mr. Bradlaugh is dead, no purpose is served by + repeating false accusations as to his treatment of his wife, or of his + pious brother, or as to his disregard of family ties; but the next + atheist who crops up must not expect any more generous treatment than + Bradlaugh received from that particularly odious class of persons of + whom it has been wittily said that so great is their zeal for + religion, they have never time to say their prayers. +</p> +<p> + Mr. Bradlaugh will, I suppose, be hereafter described in the + dictionaries of biography as 'Freethinker and Politician.' Of the + politician there is here no need to speak. He was a Radical of the + old-fashioned type. When he first stood for Northampton in 1868, his + election address was made up of tempting dishes, which afterwards + composed Mr. Chamberlain's famous but unauthorized programme of 1885, + with minority representation thrown in. Unpopular thinkers who have + been pelted with stones by Christians, slightly the worse for liquor, + are apt to think well of minorities. Mr. Bradlaugh's Radicalism had + an individualistic flavour. He thought well of thrift, thereby + incurring censure. Mr. Bradlaugh's politics are familiar enough. What + about his freethinking? English freethinkers may be divided into two + classes—those who have been educated and those who have had to + educate themselves. The former class might apply to their own case the + language once employed by Dr. Newman to describe himself and his + brethren of the Oratory: +</p> +<blockquote> + 'We have been nourished for the greater part of our lives in the + bosom of the great schools and universities of Protestant England; + we have been the foster foster-sons of the Edwards and Henries, the + Wykehams and Wolseys, of whom Englishmen are wont to make so much; + we have grown up amid hundreds of contemporaries, scattered at + present all over the country in those special ranks of society + which are the very walk of a member of the legislature.' +</blockquote> +<p> + These first-class free-thinkers have an excellent time of it, and, to + use a fashionable phrase, 'do themselves very well indeed.' They move + freely in society; their books lie on every table; they hob-a-nob with + Bishops; and when they come to die, their orthodox relations gather + round them, and lay them in the earth 'in the sure and certain + hope'—so, at least, priestly lips are found willing to assert—'of + the resurrection to eternal life through our Lord Jesus Christ.' And + yet there was not a dogma of the Christian faith in which they were in + a position to profess their belief. +</p> +<p> + The free-thinkers of the second class, poor fellows! have hitherto led + very different lives. Their foster-parents have been poverty and + hardship; their school education has usually terminated at eleven; all + their lives they have been desperately poor; alone, unaided, they + have been left to fight the battle of a Free Press. +</p> +<p> + Richard Carlile, as honourable a man as most, and between whose + religious opinions and (let us say) Lord Palmerston's there was + probably no difference worth mentioning, spent nine out of the + fifty-two years of his life in prison. Attorney-Generals, and, indeed, + every degree of prosecuting counsel have abused this kind of + free-thinker, not merely with professional impunity, but amidst + popular applause. Judges, speaking with emotion, have exhibited the + utmost horror of atheistical opinions, and have railed in good set + terms at the wretch who has been dragged before them, and have then, + at the rising of the court, proceeded to their club and played cards + till dinner-time with a first-class free-thinker for partner. +</p> +<p> + This is natural and easily accounted for, but we need not be surprised + if, in the biographies of second-class freethinkers, bitterness is + occasionally exhibited towards the well-to-do brethren who decline + what Dr. Bentley, in his Boyle Lectures, called 'the public odium and + resentment of the magistrate.' +</p> +<p> + Mr. Bradlaugh was a freethinker of the second class. His father was a + solicitor's clerk on a salary which never exceeded £2 2s. a week; his + mother had been a nursery-maid; and he himself was born in 1833 in + Bacchus Walk, Hoxton. At seven he went to a national school, but at + eleven his school education ended, and he became an office-boy. At + fourteen he was a wharf-clerk and cashier to a coal-merchant. His + parents were not much addicted to church-going, but Charles was from + the first a serious boy, and became at a somewhat early age a + Sunday-school teacher at St. Peter's, Hackney Road. The incumbent, in + order to prepare him for Confirmation, set him to work to extract the + Thirty-nine Articles out of the four Gospels. Unhappy task, worthy to + be described by the pen of the biographer of John Sterling. The + youthful wharfinger could not find the Articles in the Gospels, and + informed the Rev. J.G. Packer of the fact. His letter conveying this + intelligence is not forthcoming, and probably enough contained + offensive matter, for Mr. Packer seems at once to have denounced young + Bradlaugh as one engaged in atheistical inquiries, to have suspended + him from the Sunday-school, to have made it very disagreeable for him + at home and with his employer, and to have wound up by giving him + three days to change his views or to lose his place. +</p> +<p> + Mr. Packer has been well abused, but it has never been the fashion to + treat youthful atheists with much respect. When Coleridge confided to + the Rev. James Boyer that he (S.T. Coleridge) was inclined to atheism, + the reverend gentleman had him stripped and flogged. Mr. Packer, + however, does seem to have been too hasty, for Bradlaugh did not + formally abandon his beliefs until some months after his suspension. + He retired for a short season, and studied Hebrew under Mr. James + Savage, of Circus Street, Marylebone. He emerged an unbeliever, aged + sixteen. Expelled from his wharf, he sold coal on commission, but his + principal, if not his only customer, the wife of a baker, discovering + that he was an infidel, gave him no more orders, being afraid, so she + said, that her bread would smell of brimstone. +</p> +<p> + In 1850 Bradlaugh published his first pamphlet, <i>A Few Words on the + Christian Creed</i>, and dedicated it to the unhappy Mr. Packer. But + starvation stared him in the face, and in the same year he enlisted in + the 7th Dragoon Guards, and spent the next three years in Ireland, + where he earned a good character, and on more occasions than one + showed that adroitness for which he was afterwards remarkable. +</p> +<p> + In October, 1853, his mother and sister with great difficulty raised + the £30 necessary to buy his discharge, and Bradlaugh returned to + London, not only full grown, but well fed. Had he not taken the + Queen's shilling he never would have lived to fight the battle he did. +</p> +<p> + He became a solicitor's clerk on a miserably small pay, and took to + lecturing as 'Iconoclast.' In 1855 he was married at St. Philip's + Church, Stepney. His lectures and discussions began to assume great + proportions, and covered more than twenty years of his life. Terribly + hard work they were. Profits there were none, or next to none. Few men + have endured greater hardships. +</p> +<p> + In 1860 the <i>National Reformer</i> was started, and his warfare in the + courts began. In 1868 he first stood for Northampton, which he + unsuccessfully contested three times. In April, 1880, he was returned + to Parliament, and then began the famous struggle with which the + constitutional historian will have to deal. After this date the facts + are well known. Bradlaugh died on January 30, 1891. +</p> +<p> + His life was a hard one from beginning to end. He had no advantages. + Nobody really helped him or influenced him or mollified him. He had + never either money or repose; he had no time to travel, except as a + propagandist, no time to acquire knowledge for its own sake; he was + often abused but seldom criticised. In a single sentence, he was never + taught the extent of his own ignorance. +</p> +<p> + His attitude towards the Christian religion and the Bible was a + perfectly fair one, and ought not to have brought down upon him any + abuse whatever. There are more ways than one of dealing with religion. + It may be approached as a mystery or as a series of events supported + by testimony. If the evidence is trustworthy, if the witnesses are + irreproachable, if they submit successfully to examination and + cross-examination, then, however remarkable or out of the way may be + the facts to which they depose, they are entitled to be believed. This + is a mode of treatment with which we are all familiar, whether as + applied to the Bible or to the authority of the Church. Nobody is + expected to believe in the authority of the Church until satisfied + by the exercise of his reason that the Church in question possesses + 'the notes' of a true Church. This was the aspect of the question + which engaged Bradlaugh's attention. He was critical, legal. He + took objections, insisted on discrepancies, cross-examined as to + credibility, and came to the conclusion that the case for the + supernatural was not made out. And this he did not after the + first-class fashion in the study or in octavo volumes, but in the + street. His audiences were not Mr. Mudie's subscribers, but men and + women earning weekly wages. The coarseness of his language, the + offensiveness of his imagery, have been greatly exaggerated. It is now + a good many years since I heard him lecture in a northern town on the + Bible to an audience almost wholly composed of artisans. He was bitter + and aggressive, but the treatment he was then experiencing accounted + for this. As an avowed atheist he received no quarter, and he might + fairly say with Wilfred Osbaldistone, 'It's hard I should get raps + over the costard, and only pay you back in make-believes.' +</p> +<p> + It was not what Bradlaugh said, but the people he said it to, that + drew down upon him the censure of the magistrate, and (unkindest cut + of all) the condemnation of the House of Commons. +</p> +<p> + Of all the evils from which the lovers of religion do well to pray + that their faith may be delivered, the worst is that it should ever + come to be discussed across the floor of the House of Commons. The + self-elected champions of the Christian faith who then ride into the + lists are of a kind well calculated to make Piety hide her head for + very shame. Rowdy noblemen, intemperate country gentlemen, sterile + lawyers, cynical but wealthy sceptics who maintain religion as another + fence round their property, hereditary Nonconformists whose God is + respectability and whose goal a baronetcy, contrive, with a score or + two of bigots thrown in, to make a carnival of folly, a veritable + devil's dance of blasphemy. The debates on Bradlaugh's oath-taking + extended over four years, and will make melancholy reading for + posterity. Two figures, and two figures only, stand out in solitary + grandeur, those of a Quaker and an Anglican—Bright and Gladstone. +</p> +<p> + The conclusion which an attentive reading of Mr. Bradlaugh's biography + forces upon me is that in all probability he was the last freethinker + who will be exposed, for many a long day (it would be more than + usually rash to write 'ever'), to pains and penalties for uttering his + unbelief. It is true the Blasphemy Laws are not yet repealed; it may + be true for all I know that Christianity is still part and parcel + of the common law; it is possibly an indictable offence to lend + <i>Literature and Dogma</i> and <i>God and the Bible</i> to a friend; but, + however these things may be, Mr. Bradlaugh's stock-in-trade is now + free of the market-place, where just at present, at all events, its + price is low. It has become pretty plain that neither the Fortress of + Holy Scripture nor the Rock of Church Authority is likely to be taken + by storm. The Mystery of Creation, the unsolvable problem of matter, + continue to press upon us more heavily than ever. Neither by Paleys + nor by Bradlaughs will religion be either bolstered up or pulled down. + Sceptics and Sacramentarians must be content to put up with one + another's vagaries for some time to come. Indeed, the new socialists, + though at present but poor theologians (one hasty reading of <i>Lux + Mundi</i> does not make a theologian), are casting favourable eyes + upon Sacramentarianism, deeming it to have a distinct flavour of + Collectivism. Calvinism, on the other hand, is considered repulsively + individualistic, being based upon the notion that it is the duty of + each man to secure his own salvation. +</p> +<p> + But whether Bradlaugh was the last of his race or not, he was a + brave man whose life well deserves an honourable place amongst the + biographies of those Radicals who have suffered in the cause of + Free-thought, and into the fruits of whose labours others have + entered. +</p> +<p> </p> + +<a name="note-15"><!--Note--></a> +<p class="fnote"> <a href="#15"> +<sup><u>1</u></sup></a> <i>Charles Bradlaugh: A Record of His Life and Work</i>. By his daughter, Hypatia Bradlaugh Bonner. Two vols. London: T. Fisher + Unwin, 1894. +</p> + +<a name="2H_4_20"><!-- H2 anchor --></a> +<p> </p> +<p> </p> +<p> </p> +<p> </p> +<h2> + DISRAELI <i>EX RELATIONE</i> SIR WILLIAM FRASER +</h2> +<p> </p> + +<p> + The late Sir William Fraser was not, I have been told, a popular + person in that society about which he thought so much, and his book, + <i>Disraeli and His Day</i>, did not succeed in attracting much of the + notice of the general reader, and failed, so I, at least, have been + made to understand, to win a verdict of approval from the really well + informed. +</p> +<p> + I consider the book a very good one, in the sense of being valuable. + Whatever your mood may be, that of the moralist, cynic, satirist, + humourist, whether you love, pity, or despise your fellow-man, here is + grist for your mill. It feeds the mind. +</p> +<p> + Although in form the book is but a stringing together of stories, + incidents, and aphorisms, still the whole produces a distinct effect. + To state what that effect is would be, I suppose, the higher + criticism. It is not altogether disagreeable; it is decidedly amusing; + it is clever and somewhat contemptible. Sir William Fraser was a + baronet who thought well of his order. He desiderated a tribunal to + determine the right to the title, and he opined that the courtesy + prefix of 'Honourable,' which once, it appears, belonged to baronets, + should be restored to them. Apart from these opinions, ridiculous and + peculiar, Sir William Fraser stands revealed in this volume as cast in + a familiar mould. The words 'gentleman,' 'White's,' 'Society,' often + flow from his pen, and we may be sure were engraven on his heart. He + had seen a world wrecked. When he was young, so he tells his readers, + the world consisted of at least three, and certainly not more than + five, hundred persons who were accustomed night after night during the + season to make their appearance at a certain number of houses, which + are affectionately enumerated. A new face at any one of these + gatherings immediately attracted attention, as, indeed, it is easy to + believe it would. 'Anything for a change,' as somebody observes in + <i>Pickwick</i>. +</p> +<p> + This is the atmosphere of the book, and Sir William breathes in it + very pleasantly. Endowed by Nature with a retentive memory and a + literary taste, active if singular, he may be discovered in his own + pages moving up and down, in and out of society, supplying and + correcting quotations, and gratifying the vanity of distinguished + authors by remembering their own writings better than they did + themselves. The book makes one clearly comprehend what a monstrous + clever fellow the rank and file of the Tory party must have felt Sir + William Fraser to be. This, however, is only background. In the front + of the picture we have the mysterious outlines, the strange + personality, struggling between the bizarre and the romantic, of 'the + Jew,' as big George Bentinck was ever accustomed to denominate his + leader. Sir William Fraser's Disraeli is a very different figure from + Sir Stafford Northcote's. The myth about the pocket Sophocles is + rudely exploded. Sir William is certain that Disraeli could not have + construed a chapter of the Greek Testament. He found such mythology + as he required where many an honest fellow has found it before him—in + Lemprière's Dictionary. His French accent, as Sir William records it, + was most satisfactory, and a conclusive proof of his <i>bonâ-fides</i>. + Disraeli, it is clear, cared as little for literature as he did for + art. He admired Gray, as every man with a sense for epithet must; he + studied Junius, whose style, so Sir William Fraser believes, he + surpassed in his 'Runnymede' letters. Sir William Fraser kindly + explains the etymology of this strange word 'Runnymede,' as he also + does that of 'Parliament,' which he says is '<i>Parliamo mente</i>' (Let us + speak our minds). Sir William clearly possessed the learning denied to + his chief. +</p> +<p> + Beyond apparently imposing upon Sir Stafford Northcote, Disraeli + himself never made any vain pretensions to be devoted to pursuits for + which he did not care a rap. He once dreamt of an epic poem, and his + early ambition urged him a step or two in that direction, but his + critical faculty, which, despite all his monstrosities of taste, was + vital, restrained him from making a fool of himself, and he forswore + the muse, puffed the prostitute away, and carried his very saleable + wares to another market, where his efforts were crowned with + prodigious success. Sir William Fraser introduces his great man to us + as observing, in reply to a question, that revenge was the passion + which gives pleasure the latest. A man, he continued, will enjoy that + when even avarice has ceased to please. As a matter of fact, Disraeli + himself was neither avaricious nor revengeful, and, as far as one can + judge, was never tempted to be either. This is the fatal defect of + almost all Disraeli's aphorisms: they are dead words, whilst the + words of a true aphorism have veins filled with the life of their + utterer. Nothing of this sort ever escaped the lips of our modern + Sphinx. If he had any faiths, any deep convictions, any rooted + principles, he held his tongue about them. He was, Sir William tells + us, an indolent man. It is doubtful whether he ever did, apart from + the preparation and delivery of his speeches, what would be called by + a professional man a hard day's work in his life. He had courage, wit, + insight, instinct, prevision, and a thorough persuasion that he + perfectly understood the materials he had to work upon and the tools + within his reach. Perhaps no man ever gauged more accurately or more + profoundly despised that 'world' Sir William Fraser so pathetically + laments. For folly, egotism, vanity, conceit, and stupidity, he had an + amazing eye. He could not, owing to his short sight, read men's faces + across the floor of the House, but he did not require the aid of any + optic nerve to see the petty secrets of their souls. His best sayings + have men's weaknesses for their text. Sir William's book gives many + excellent examples. One laughs throughout. +</p> +<p> + Sir William would have us believe that in later life Disraeli clung + affectionately to dulness—to gentle dulness. He did not want to be + surrounded by wits. He had been one himself in his youth, and he + questioned their sincerity. It would almost appear from passages in + the book that Disraeli found even Sir William Fraser too pungent for + him. Once, we are told, the impenetrable Prime Minister quailed before + Sir William's reproachful oratory. The story is not of a cock and a + bull, but of a question put in the House of Commons by Sir William, + who was snubbed by the Home Secretary, who was cheered by Disraeli. + This was intolerable, and accordingly next day, being, as good luck + would have it, a Friday, when, as all men and members know, 'it is in + the power of any member to bring forward any topic he may choose,' Sir + William naturally chose the topic nearest to his heart, and 'said a + few words on my wrongs.' +</p> +<blockquote> + 'During my performance I watched Disraeli narrowly. I could not see + his face, but I noticed that whenever I became in any way + disagreeable—in short, whenever my words really bit—they were + invariably followed by one movement. Sitting as he always did with + his right knee over his left, whenever the words touched him he + moved the pendant leg twice or three times, then curved his foot + upwards. I could observe no other sign of emotion, but this was + distinct. Some years afterwards, on a somewhat more important + occasion at the Conference at Berlin, a great German philosopher, + Herr ——, went to Berlin on purpose to study Disraeli's character. + He said afterwards that he was most struck by the more than Indian + stoicism which Disraeli showed. To this there was one exception. + "Like all men of his race, he has one sign of emotion which never + fails to show itself—the movement of the leg that is crossed over + the other, and of the foot!" The person who told me this had never + heard me hint, nor had anyone, that I had observed this peculiar + symptom on the earlier occasion to which I have referred.' +</blockquote> +<p> + Statesmen of Jewish descent, with a reputation for stoicism to + preserve, would do well to learn from this story not to swing their + crossed leg when tired. The great want about Mr. Disraeli is something + to hang the countless anecdotes about him upon. Most remarkable men + have some predominant feature of character round which you can build + your general conception of them, or, at all events, there has been + some great incident in their lives for ever connected with their + names, and your imagination mixes the man and the event together. Who + can think of Peel without remembering the Corn Laws and the + reverberating sentence: 'I shall leave a name execrated by every + monopolist who, for less honourable motives, clamours for Protection + because it conduces to his own individual benefit; but it may be that + I shall leave a name sometimes remembered with expressions of + good-will in the abode of those whose lot it is to labour and to earn + their daily bread with the sweat of their brow, when they shall + recruit their exhausted strength with abundant and untaxed food, the + sweeter because it is no longer leavened with a sense of injustice.' + But round what are our memories of Disraeli to cluster? Sir William + Fraser speaks rapturously of his wondrous mind and of his intellect, + but where is posterity to look for evidences of either? Certainly not + in Sir William's book, which shows us a wearied wit and nothing more. + Carlyle once asked, 'How long will John Bull permit this absurd + monkey'—meaning Mr. Disraeli—'to dance upon his stomach?' The + question was coarsely put, but there is nothing in Sir William's book + to make one wonder it should have been asked. Mr. Disraeli lived to + offer Carlyle the Grand Cross of the Order of the Bath, and that, in + Sir William's opinion, is enough to dispose of Carlyle's vituperation; + but, after all, the Grand Cross is no answer to anything except an + application for it. +</p> +<p> + A great many other people are made to cross Sir William Fraser's + stage. His comments upon them are lively, independent, and original. + He liked Cobden and hated Bright. The reason for this he makes quite + plain. He thinks he detected in Cobden a deprecatory manner—a + recognition of the sublime truth that he, Richard Cobden, had not been + half so well educated as the mob of Tories he was addressing. Bright, + on the other band, was fat and rude, and thought that most country + gentlemen and town-bred wits were either fools or fribbles. This was + intolerable. Here was a man who not only could not have belonged to + the 'world,' but honestly did not wish to, and was persuaded—the + gross fellow—that he and his world were better in every respect than + the exclusive circles which listened to Sir William Fraser's <i>bon + mots</i> and tags from the poets. Certainly there was nothing deprecatory + about John Bright. He could be quite as insolent in his way as any + aristocrat in his. He had a habit, we are told, of slowly getting up + and walking out of the House in the middle of Mr. Disraeli's speeches, + and just when that ingenious orator was leading up to a carefully + prepared point, and then immediately returning behind the Speaker's + chair. If this is true, it was perhaps rude, but nobody can deny that + it is a Tory dodge of indicating disdain. What was really irritating + about Mr. Bright was that his disdain was genuine. He did think very + little of the Tory party, and he did not care one straw for the + opinion of society. He positively would not have cared to have been + made a baronet. Sir William Fraser seems to have been really fond of + Disraeli, and the very last time he met his great man in the Carlton + Club he told him a story too broad to be printed. The great man + pronounced it admirable, and passed on his weary way. +</p> +<a name="2H_4_21"><!-- H2 anchor --></a> +<p> </p> +<p> </p> +<p> </p> +<p> </p> +<h2> + A CONNOISSEUR +</h2> +<p> </p> + +<p> + It must always be rash to speak positively about human nature, whose + various types of character are singularly tough, and endure, if not + for ever, for a very long time; yet some types do seem to show signs + of wearing out. The connoisseur, for example, here in England is + hardly what he was. He has specialized, and behind him there is now + the bottomless purse of the multi-millionaire, who buys as he is + bidden, and has no sense of prices. If the multi-millionaire wants a + thing, why should he not have it? The gaping mob, penniless but + appreciative, looks on and cheers his pluck. +</p> +<p> + Mr. Frederick Locker, about whom I wish to write a few lines, was an + old-world connoisseur, the shy recesses of whose soul Addison might + have penetrated in the page of a <i>Spectator</i>—and a delicate operation + it would have been. +</p> +<p> + My father-in-law was only once in the witness-box. I had the felicity + to see him there. It was a dispute about the price of a picture, and + in the course of his very short evidence he hazarded the opinion that + the grouping of the figures (they were portraits) was in bad taste. + The Judge, the late Mr. Justice Cave, an excellent lawyer of the old + school, snarled out, 'Do you think you could explain to <i>me</i> what is + taste?' Mr. Locker surveyed the Judge through the eye-glass which + seemed almost part of his being, with a glance modest, deferential, + deprecatory, as if suggesting 'Who am <i>I</i> to explain anything to + <i>you</i>?' but at the same time critical, ironical, and humorous. It was + but for one brief moment; the eyeglass dropped, and there came the + mournful answer, as from a man baffled at all points: 'No, my lord; I + should find it impossible!' The Judge grunted a ready, almost a + cheerful, assent. +</p> +<p> + Properly to describe Mr. Locker, you ought to be able to explain both + to judge and jury what you mean by taste. He sometimes seemed to me to + be <i>all</i> taste. Whatever subject he approached—was it the mystery of + religion, or the moralities of life, a poem or a print, a bit of old + china or a human being—whatever it might be, it was along the avenue + of taste that he gently made his way up to it. His favourite word of + commendation was <i>pleasing</i>, and if he ever brought himself to say + (and he was not a man who scattered his judgments, rather was he + extremely reticent of them) of a man, and still more of a woman, that + he or she was <i>unpleasing</i>, you almost shuddered at the fierceness of + the condemnation, knowing, as all Locker's intimate friends could not + help doing, what the word meant to him. 'Attractive' was another of + his critical instruments. He meets Lord Palmerston, and does not find + him 'attractive' (<i>My Confidences</i>, p. 155). +</p> +<p> + This is a temperament which when cultivated, as it was in Mr. Locker's + case, by a life-long familiarity with beautiful things in all the arts + and crafts, is apt to make its owner very susceptible to what some + stirring folk may not unjustly consider the trifles of life. Sometimes + Locker might seem to overlook the dominant features, the main object + of the existence, either of a man or of some piece of man's work, in + his sensitively keen perception of the beauty, or the lapse from + beauty, of some trait of character or bit of workmanship. This may + have been so. Mr. Locker was more at home, more entirely his own + delightful self, when he was calling your attention to some humorous + touch in one of Bewick's tail-pieces, or to some plump figure in a + group by his favourite Stothard than when handling a Michael Angelo + drawing or an amazing Blake. Yet, had it been his humour, he could + have played the showman to Michael Angelo and Blake at least as well + as to Bewick, Stothard, or Chodowiecki. But a modesty, marvellously + mingled with irony, was of the very essence of his nature. No man + expatiated less. He never expounded anything in his born days; he very + soon wearied of those he called 'strong' talkers. His critical method + was in a conversational manner to direct your attention to something + in a poem or a picture, to make a brief suggestion or two, perhaps to + apply an epithet, and it was all over, but your eyes were opened. + Rapture he never professed, his tones were never loud enough to + express enthusiasm, but his enjoyment of what he considered good, + wherever he found it—and he was regardless of the set judgments of + the critics—was most intense and intimate. His feeling for anything + he liked was fibrous: he clung to it. For all his rare books and + prints, if he liked a thing he was very tolerant of its <i>format</i>. He + would cut a drawing out of a newspaper, frame it, hang it up, and be + just as tender towards it as if it were an impression with the unique + <i>remarque</i>. +</p> +<p> + Mr. Locker had probably inherited his virtuoso's whim from his + ancestors. His great-grandfather was certified by Johnson in his life + of Addison to be a gentleman 'eminent for curiosity and literature,' + and though his grandfather, the Commodore, who lives for ever in our + history as the man who taught Nelson the lesson that saved an + Empire—'Lay a Frenchman close, and you will beat him'—was no + collector, his father, Edward Hawke Locker, though also a naval man, + was not only the friend of Sir Walter Scott, but a most judicious + buyer of pictures, prints, and old furniture. +</p> +<p> + Frederick Locker was born in 1821, in Greenwich Hospital, where Edward + Hawke Locker was Civil Commissioner. His mother was the daughter of + one of the greatest book-buyers of his time, a man whose library it + took nine days to disperse—the Rev. Jonathan Boucher, the friend and + opponent of George Washington, an ecclesiastic who might have been + first Bishop of Edinburgh, but who died a better thing, the Vicar of + Epsom. +</p> +<p> + Frederick Locker grew up among pretty things in the famous hospital. + Water-colours by Lawrence, Prout, Girtin, Turner, Chinnery, Paul + Sandby, Cipriani, and other masters; casts after Canova; mezzotints + after Sir Joshua; Hogarth's famous picture of David Garrick and his + wife, now well hung in Windsor Castle, were about him, and early + attracted his observant eye. Yet the same things were about his elder + brother Arthur, an exceedingly clever fellow, who remained quite + curiously impervious to the impressiveness of pretty things all his + days. +</p> +<p> + Locker began collecting on his own account after his marriage, in + 1850, to a daughter of Lord Byron's enemy, the Lord Elgin, who brought + the marbles from Athens to Bloomsbury. His first object, at least so + he thought, was to make his rooms pretty. From the beginning of his + life as a connoisseur he spared himself no pains, often trudging + miles, when not wanted at the Admiralty Office, in search of his prey. + If any mercantile-minded friend ever inquired what anything had cost, + he would be answered with a rueful smile, 'Much shoe leather.' He + began with old furniture, china, and bric-à -brac, which ere long + somewhat inconveniently filled his small rooms. Prices rose, and means + in those days were as small as the rooms. No more purchases of Louis + Seize and blue majolica and Palissy ware could be made. Drawings by + the old masters and small pictures were the next objects of the chase. + Here again the long purses were soon on his track, and the pursuit had + to be abandoned, but not till many treasures had been garnered. Last + of all he became a book-hunter, beginning with little volumes of + poetry and the drama from 1590 to 1610; and as time went on the + boundaries expanded, but never so as to include black letter. +</p> +<p> + I dare not say Mr. Locker had all the characteristics of a great + collector, or that he was entirely free from the whimsicalities of the + tribe of connoisseurs, but he was certainly endowed with the chief + qualifications for the pursuit of rarities, and remained clear of the + unpleasant vices that so often mar men's most innocent avocations. Mr. + Locker always knew what he wanted and what he did not want, and never + could be persuaded to take the one for the other; he did not grow + excited in the presence of the quarry; he had patience to wait, and + to go on waiting, and he seldom lacked courage to buy. +</p> +<p> + He rode his own hobby-horse, never employing experts as buyers. For + quantity he had no stomach. He shrank from numbers. He was not a + Bodleian man; he had not the sinews to grapple with libraries. He was + the connoisseur throughout. Of the huge acquisitiveness of a Heber or + a Huth he had not a trace. He hated a crowd, of whatsoever it was + composed. He was apt to apologize for his possessions, and to + depreciate his tastes. As for boasting of a treasure, he could as + easily have eaten beef at breakfast. +</p> +<p> + So delicate a spirit, armed as it was for purposes of defence with a + rare gift of irony and a very shrewd insight into the weaknesses and + noisy falsettos of life, was sure to be misunderstood. The dull and + coarse witted found Locker hard to make out. He struck them as + artificial and elaborate, perhaps as frivolous, and yet they felt + uneasy in his company lest there should be a lurking ridicule behind + his quiet, humble demeanour. There was, indeed, always an element of + mockery in Locker's humility. +</p> +<p> + An exceedingly spiteful account of him, in which it is asserted that + 'most of his rarest books are miserable copies' (how book-collectors + can hate one another!), ends with the reluctant admission: 'He was + eminently a gentleman, however, and his manners were even courtly, yet + virile.' Such extorted praise is valuable. +</p> +<p> + I can see him now before me, with a nicely graduated foot-rule in his + delicate hand, measuring with grave precision the height to a hair of + his copy of <i>Robinson Crusoe</i> (1719), for the purpose of ascertaining + whether it was taller or shorter than one being vaunted for sale in a + bookseller's catalogue just to hand. His face, one of much refinement, + was a study, exhibiting alike a fixed determination to discover the + exact truth about the copy and a humorous realization of the inherent + triviality of the whole business. Locker was a philosopher as well as + a connoisseur. +</p> +<p> + The Rowfant Library has disappeared. Great possessions are great + cares. 'But ships are but boards, sailors but men; there be land-rats, + water-thieves, and land-thieves—I mean pirates; and then there is the + peril of waters, winds and rocks.' To this list the nervous owner of + rare books must add fire, that dread enemy of all the arts. It is + often difficult to provide stabling for dead men's hobby-horses. It + were perhaps absurd in a world like this to grow sentimental over a + parcel of old books. Death, the great unbinder, must always make a + difference. +</p> +<p> + Mr. Locker's poetry now forms a volume of the <i>Golden Treasury + Series</i>. The <i>London Lyrics</i> are what they are. They have been well + praised by good critics, and have themselves been made the subject of + good verse. +</p> +<pre> + 'Apollo made one April day + A new thing in the rhyming way; + Its turn was neat, its wit was clear, + It wavered 'twixt a smile and tear. + Then Momus gave a touch satiric, + And it became a <i>London Lyric</i>.' + AUSTIN DOBSON. +</pre> +<p> + In another copy of verses Mr. Dobson adds: +</p> +<pre> + 'Or where discern a verse so neat, + So well-bred and so witty— + So finished in its least conceit, + So mixed of mirth and pity?' + + 'Pope taught him rhythm, Prior ease, + Praed buoyancy and banter; + What modern bard would learn from these? + Ah, <i>tempora mutantur</i>!' +</pre> +<p> + Nothing can usefully be added to criticism so just, so searching, and + so happily expressed. +</p> +<p> + Some of the <i>London Lyrics</i> have, I think, achieved what we poor + mortals call immortality—a strange word to apply to the piping of so + slender a reed, to so slight a strain—yet +</p> +<pre> + 'In small proportions we just beauties see.' +</pre> +<p class="noindent"> + It is the simplest strain that lodges longest in the heart. Mr. + Locker's strains are never precisely <i>simple</i>. The gay enchantment of + the world and the sense of its bitter disappointments murmur through + all of them, and are fatal to their being simple, but the + unpretentiousness of a <i>London Lyric</i> is akin to simplicity. +</p> +<p> + His relation to his own poetry was somewhat peculiar. A critic in + every fibre, he judged his own verses with a severity he would have + shrunk from applying to those of any other rhyming man. He was deeply + dissatisfied, almost on bad terms, with himself, yet for all that he + was convinced that he had written some very good verses indeed. His + poetry meant a great deal to him, and he stood in need of sympathy and + of allies against his own despondency. He did not get much sympathy, + being a man hard to praise, for unless he agreed with your praise it + gave him more pain than pleasure. +</p> +<p> + I am not sure that Mr. Dobson agrees with me, but I am very fond of + Locker's paraphrase of one of Clément Marot's <i>Epigrammes</i>; and as the + lines are redolent of his delicate connoisseurship, I will quote both + the original (dated 1544) and the paraphrase: +</p> +<pre> + 'DU RYS DE MADAME D'ALLEBRET + + 'Elle a très bien ceste gorge d'albastre, + Ce doulx parler, ce cler tainct, ces beaux yeulx: + Mais en effect, ce petit rys follastre, + C'est à mon gré ce qui lui sied le mieulx; + Elle en pourroit les chemins et les lieux + Où elle passé à plaisir inciter; + Et si ennuy me venoit contrister + Tant que par mort fust ma vie abbatue, + Il me fauldroit pour me resusciter + Que ce rys la duguel elle me tue.' + + 'How fair those locks which now the light wind stirs! + What eyes she has, and what a perfect arm! + And yet methinks that little laugh of hers— + That little laugh—is still her crowning charm. + Where'er she passes, countryside or town, + The streets make festa and the fields rejoice. + Should sorrow come, as 'twill, to cast me down, + Or Death, as come he must, to hush my voice, + Her laugh would wake me just as now it thrills me— + That little, giddy laugh wherewith she kills me.' +</pre> +<p> + 'Tis the very laugh of Millamant in <i>The Way of the World</i>! 'I would + rather,' cried Hazlitt, 'have seen Mrs. Abington's Millamant than any + Rosalind that ever appeared on the stage.' Such wishes are idle. + Hazlitt never saw Mrs. Abington's Millamant. I have seen Miss Ethel + Irving's Millamant, <i>dulce ridentem</i>, and it was that little giddy + laugh of hers that reminded me of Marot's Epigram and of Frederick + Locker's paraphrase. So do womanly charms endure from generation to + generation, and it is one of the duties of poets to record them. +</p> +<p> + In 1867 Mr. Locker published his <i>Lyra Elegantiarun. A Collection of + Some of the Best Specimens of Vers de Société and Vers d'Occasion in + the English Languages by Deceased Authors</i>. In his preface Locker gave + what may now be fairly called the 'classical' definition of the verses + he was collecting. '<i>Vers de société</i> and <i>vers d'occasion</i> should' + (so he wrote) 'be short, elegant, refined and fanciful, not seldom + distinguished by heightened sentiment, and often playful. The tone + should not be pitched high; it should be idiomatic and rather in the + conversational key; the rhythm should be crisp and sparkling, and the + rhyme frequent and never forced, while the entire poem should be + marked by tasteful moderation, high finish and completeness; for + however trivial the subject-matter may be—indeed, rather in + proportion to its triviality, subordination to the rules of + composition and perfection of execution should be strictly enforced. + The definition may be further illustrated by a few examples of pieces, + which, from the absence of some of the foregoing qualities, or from + the excess of others, cannot be properly regarded as <i>vers de + société</i>, though they may bear a certain generic resemblance to that + species of poetry. The ballad of "John Gilpin," for example, is too + broadly and simply ludicrous; Swift's "Lines on the Death of + Marlborough," and Byron's "Windsor Poetics," are too savage and + truculent; Cowper's "My Mary" is far too pathetic; Herrick's lyrics to + "Blossoms" and "Daffodils" are too elevated; "Sally in our Alley" is + too homely and too entirely simple and natural; while the "Rape of the + Lock," which would otherwise be one of the finest specimens of <i>vers + de société</i> in any language, must be excluded on account of its + length, which renders it much too important.' +</p> +<p> + I have made this long quotation because it is an excellent example of + Mr. Locker's way of talking about poets and poetry, and of his + intimate, searching, and unaffected criticism. +</p> +<p> + <i>Lyra Elegantiarum</i> is a real, not a bookseller's collection. Mr. + Locker was a great student of verse. There was hardly a stanza of any + English poet, unless it was Spenser, for whom he had no great + affection, which he had not pondered over and clearly considered as + does a lawyer his cases. He delighted in a complete success, and + grieved over any lapse from the fold of metrical virtue, over any + ill-sounding rhyme or unhappy expression. The circulation of <i>Lyra + Elegantiarum</i> was somewhat interfered with by a 'copyright' question. + Mr. Locker had a great admiration for Landor's short poems, and + included no less than forty-one of them, which he chose with the + utmost care. Publishers are slow to perceive that the best chance of + getting rid of their poetical wares (and Landor was not popular) is to + have attention called to the artificer who produced them. The + Landorian publisher objected, and the <i>Lyra</i> had to be 'suppressed'—a + fine word full of hidden meanings. The second-hand booksellers, a wily + race, were quick to perceive the significance of this, and have for + more than thirty years obtained inflated prices for their early + copies, being able to vend them as possessing the <i>Suppressed Verses</i>. + There is a great deal of Locker in this collection. To turn its pages + is to renew intercourse with its editor. +</p> +<p> + In 1879 another little volume instinct with his personality came into + existence and made friends for itself. He called it <i>Patchwork</i>, and + to have given it any other name would have severely taxed his + inventiveness. It is a collection of stories, of <i>ana</i>, of quotations + in verse and prose, of original matter, of character-sketches, of + small adventures, of table-talk, and of other things besides, if other + things, indeed, there be. If you know <i>Patchwork</i> by heart you are + well equipped. It is intensely original throughout, and never more + original than when its matter is borrowed. Readers of <i>Patchwork</i> had + heard of Mr. Creevey long before Sir Herbert Maxwell once again let + that politician loose upon an unlettered society. +</p> +<p> + The book had no great sale, but copies evidently fell into the hands + of the more judicious of the pressmen, who kept it by their sides, and + every now and again +</p> +<pre> + 'Waled a portion with judicious care' +</pre> +<p class="noindent"> + for quotation in their columns. The <i>Patchwork</i> stories thus got into + circulation one by one. Kind friends of Mr. Locker's, who had been + told, or had discovered for themselves, that he was somewhat of a wag, + would frequently regale him with bits of his own <i>Patchwork</i>, + introducing them to his notice as something they had just heard, which + they thought he would like—murdering his own stories to give him + pleasure. His countenance on such occasions was a <i>rendezvous</i> of + contending emotions, a battlefield of rival forces. Politeness ever + prevailed, but it took all his irony and sad philosophy to hide his + pain. <i>Patchwork</i> is such a good collection of the kind of story he + liked best that it was really difficult to avoid telling him a story + that was <i>not</i> in it. I made the blunder once myself with a Voltairean + anecdote. Here it is as told in <i>Patchwork</i>: 'Voltaire was one day + listening to a dramatic author reading his comedy, and who said, "Ici + le chevalier rit!" He exclaimed: "Le chevalier est <i>bien</i> heureux!"' I + hope I told it fairly well. He smiled sadly, and said nothing, not + even <i>Et tu, Brute</i>! +</p> +<p> + In 1886 Mr. Locker printed for presentation a catalogue of his printed + books, manuscripts, autograph letters, drawings, and pictures. Nothing + of his own figures in this catalogue, and yet in a very real sense the + whole is his. Most of the books are dispersed, but the catalogue + remains, not merely as a record of rareties and bibliographical + details dear to the collector's heart, but as a token of taste. Just + as there is, so Wordsworth reminds us, 'a spirit in the woods,' so is + there still, brooding over and haunting the pages of the 'Rowfant + Catalogue,' the spirit of true connoisseurship. In the slender lists + of Locker's 'Works' this book must always have a place. +</p> +<p> + Frederick Locker died at Rowfant on May 30, 1895, leaving behind him, + carefully prepared for the press, a volume he had christened <i>My + Confidences: An Autographical Sketch addressed to My Descendants</i>. +</p> +<p> + In due course the book appeared, and was misunderstood at first by + many. It cut a strange, outlandish figure among the crowd of casual + reminiscences it externally resembled. Glancing over the pages of <i>My + Confidences</i>, the careless library subscriber encountered the usual + number of names of well-known personages, whose appearance is supposed + by publishers to add sufficient zest to reminiscences to secure + for them a sale large enough, at any rate, to recoup the cost of + publication. Yet, despite these names, Mr. Locker's book is completely + unlike the modern memoir. Beneath a carefully-constructed, and + perhaps slightly artificially maintained, frivolity of tone, the book + is written in deadly earnest. Not for nothing did its author choose as + one of the mottoes for its title-page, 'Ce ne sont mes gestes que + j'écrie; c'est moy.' It may be said of this book, as of Senancour's + <i>Oberman</i>: +</p> +<pre> + 'A fever in these pages burns; + Beneath the calm they feign, + A wounded human spirit turns + Here on its bed of pain.' +</pre> +<p> + The still small voice of its author whispers through <i>My Confidences</i>. + Like Montaigne's <i>Essays</i>, the book is one of entire good faith, and + strangely uncovers a personality. +</p> +<p> + As a tiny child Locker was thought by his parents to be very like Sir + Joshua Reynolds' picture of Puck, an engraving of which was in the + home at Greenwich Hospital, and certainly Locker carried to his + grave more than a suspicion of what is called Puckishness. In <i>My + Confidences</i> there are traces of this quality. +</p> +<p> + Clearly enough the author of <i>London Lyrics</i>, the editor of <i>Lyra + Elegantiarum</i>, of <i>Patchwork</i>, and the whimsical but sincere compiler + of <i>My Confidences</i> was more than a mere connoisseur, however much + connoisseurship entered into a character in which taste played so + dominant a part. +</p> +<p> + Stronger even than taste was his almost laborious love of kindness. + He really took too much pains about it, exposing himself to rebuffs + and misunderstandings; but he was not without his rewards. All + down-hearted folk, sorrowful, disappointed people, the unlucky, the + ill-considered, the <i>mésestimés</i>—those who found themselves condemned + to discharge uncongenial duties in unsympathetic society, turned + instinctively to Mr. Locker for a consolation, so softly administered + that it was hard to say it was intended. He had friends everywhere, in + all ranks of life, who found in him an infinity of solace, and for his + friends there was nothing he would not do. It seemed as if he could + not spare himself. I remember his calling at my chambers one hot day + in July, when he happened to have with him some presents he was in + course of delivering. Among them I noticed a bust of Voltaire and an + unusually lively tortoise, generally half-way out of a paper bag. + Wherever he went he found occasion for kindness, and his whimsical + adventures would fill a volume. I sometimes thought it would really be + worth while to leave off the struggle for existence, and gently to + subside into one of Lord Rowton's homes in order to have the pleasure + of receiving in my new quarters a first visit from Mr. Locker. How + pleasantly would he have mounted the stair, laden with who knows what + small gifts?—a box of mignonette for the window-sill, an old book or + two, as likely as not a live kitten, for indeed there was never an end + to the variety or ingenuity of his offerings! How felicitous would + have been his greeting! How cordial his compliments! How abiding the + sense of his unpatronizing friendliness! But it was not to be. One can + seldom choose one's pleasures. +</p> +<p> + In his <i>Patchwork</i> Mr. Locker quotes Gibbon's encomium on Charles + James Fox. Anyone less like Fox than Frederick Locker it might be hard + to discover, but fine qualities are alike wherever they are found + lodged; and if Fox was as much entitled as Locker to the full benefit + of Gibbon's praise, he was indeed a good fellow. +</p> +<p> + 'In his tour to Switzerland Mr. Fox gave me two days of free and + private society. He seemed to feel and even to envy the happiness of + my situation, while I admired the powers of a superior man as they are + blended in his character with the softness and simplicity of a child. + <i>Perhaps no human being was ever more perfectly exempted from the + taint of malevolence, vanity, and falsehood.</i>' +</p> +<a name="2H_4_22"><!-- H2 anchor --></a> +<p> </p> +<p> </p> +<p> </p> +<p> </p> +<h2> + OUR GREAT MIDDLE CLASS +</h2> +<p> </p> + +<p> + The republication of Mr. Arnold's <i>Friendship's Garland</i> after an + interval of twenty-seven years may well set us all a-thinking. Here it + is, in startling facsimile—the white covers, destined too soon to + become black, the gilt device, the familiar motto. As we gazed upon + it, we found ourselves exclaiming, so vividly did it recall the past: +</p> +<pre> + 'It is we, it is we, who have changed.' +</pre> +<p> + <i>Friendship's Garland</i> was a very good joke seven-and-twenty years + ago, and though some of its once luminous paint has been rubbed off, + and a few of its jests have ceased to effervesce, it is a good joke + still. Mr. Bottle's mind, qua mind; the rowdy Philistine Adolescens + Leo, Esq.; Dr. Russell, of the <i>Times</i>, mounting his war-horse; the + tale of how Lord Lumpington and the Rev. Esau Hittall got their + degrees at Oxford; and many another ironic thrust which made the + reader laugh 'while the hair was yet brown on his head,' may well make + him laugh still, 'though his scalp is almost hairless, and his + figure's grown convex.' Since 1871 we have learnt the answer to the + sombre lesson, 'What is it to grow old?' But, thank God! we can laugh + even yet. +</p> +<p> + The humour and high spirits of <i>Friendship's Garland</i> were, however, + but the gilding of a pill, the artificial sweetening of a nauseous + draught. In reality, and joking apart, the book is an indictment at + the bar of <i>Geist</i> of the English people as represented by its middle + class and by its full-voiced organ, the daily press. Mr. Arnold + invented Arminius to be the mouthpiece of this indictment, the + traducer of our 'imperial race,' because such blasphemies could not + artistically have been attributed to one of the number. He made + Arminius a Prussian because in those far-off days Prussia stood for + Von Humboldt and education and culture, and all the things Sir Thomas + Bazley and Mr. Miall were supposed to be without. Around the central + figure of Arminius the essentially playful fancy of Mr. Arnold grouped + other figures, including his own. What an old equity draughtsman would + call 'the charging parts' of the book consist in the allegations that + the Government of England had been taken out of the hands of an + aristocracy grown barren of ideas and stupid beyond words, and + entrusted to a middle class without noble traditions, wretchedly + educated, full of <i>Ungeist</i>, with a passion for clap-trap, only + wanting to be left alone to push trade and make money; so ignorant as + to believe that feudalism can be abated without any heroic Stein, by + providing that in one insignificant case out of a hundred thousand, + land shall not follow the feudal law of descent; without a single + vital idea or sentiment or feeling for beauty or appropriateness; well + persuaded that if more trade is done in England than anywhere else, if + personal independence is without a check, and newspaper publicity + unbounded, that is, by the nature of things, to be great; misled every + morning by the magnificent <i>Times</i> or the 'rowdy' <i>Telegraph</i>; + desperately prone to preaching to other nations, proud of being able + to say what it likes, whilst wholly indifferent to the fact that it + has nothing whatever to say. +</p> +<p> + Such, in brief, is the substance of this most agreeable volume. Its + message was lightly treated by the grave and reverend seigniors of the + State. The magnificent <i>Times</i>, the rowdy <i>Telegraph</i>, continued to + preach their gospels as before; but for all that Mr. Arnold found an + audience fit, though few, and, of course, he found it among the people + he abused. The barbarians, as he called the aristocracy, were not + likely to pay heed to a professor of poetry. Our working classes + were not readers of the <i>Pall Mall Gazette</i> or purchasers of + four-and-sixpenny tracts bound in white cloth. No; it was the middle + class, to whom Mr. Arnold himself belonged, who took him to honest + hearts, stuck his photograph upon their writing-tables, and sounded + his praises so loudly that his fame even reached the United States of + America, where he was promptly invited to lecture, an invitation he + accepted. But for the middle classes Mr. Arnold would have had but a + poor time of it. They did not mind being insulted; they overlooked + exaggeration; they pardoned ignorance—in a word, they proved + teachable. Yet, though meek in spirit, they have not yet inherited the + earth; indeed, there are those who assert that their chances are gone, + their sceptre for ever buried. It is all over with the middle-class. + Tuck up its muddled head! Tie up its chin! +</p> +<p> + A rabble of bad writers may now be noticed pushing their vulgar way + along, who, though born and bred in the middle classes, and disfigured + by many of the very faults Mr. Arnold deplored, yet make it a test of + their membership, an 'open sesame' to their dull orgies, that all + decent, sober-minded folk, who love virtue, and, on the whole, prefer + delicate humour to sickly lubricity, should be labelled 'middle + class.' +</p> +<p> + Politically, it cannot but be noticed that, for good or for ill, the + old middle-class audience no longer exists in its integrity. The + crowds that flocked to hear Cobden and Bright, that abhorred slavery, + that cheered Kossuth, that hated the income-tax, are now watered down + by a huge population who do not know, and do not want to know, what + the income-tax is, but who do want to know what the Government is + going to do for them in the matter of shorter hours, better wages, and + constant employment. Will the rabble, we wonder, prove as teachable as + the middle class? Will they consent to be told their faults as meekly? + Will they buy the photograph of their physician, or heave half a brick + at him? It remains to be seen. In the meantime it would be a mistake + to assume that the middle class counts for nothing, even at an + election. As to ideas, have we got any new ones since 1871? 'To be + consequent and powerful,' says Arminius, 'men must be bottomed on some + vital idea or sentiment which lends strength and certainty to their + action.' There are those who tell us that we have at last found this + vital idea in those conceptions of the British Empire which Mr. + Chamberlain so vigorously trumpets. To trumpet a conception is hardly + a happy phrase, but, as Mr. Chamberlain plays no other instrument, it + is forced upon me. Would that we could revive Arminius, to tell us + what he thinks of our new Ariel girdling the earth with twenty Prime + Ministers, each the choicest product of a self-governing and + deeply-involved colony. Is it a vital or a vulgar idea? Is it merely a + big theory or really a great one? Is it the ornate beginning of a + Time, or but the tawdry ending of a period? At all events, it is an + idea unknown to Arminius von Thunder-Ten-Tronckh, and we ought to be, + and many are, thankful for it. +</p> +<a name="2H_4_23"><!-- H2 anchor --></a> +<p> </p> +<p> </p> +<p> </p> +<p> </p> +<h2> + TAR AND WHITEWASH +</h2> +<p> </p> + +<p> + I am, I confess it, hard to please. If a round dozen of Bad Women, all + made in England too, does not satisfy me, what will? What ails the + fellow at them? Yet was I at first dissatisfied, and am, therefore, + glad to notice that whilst I was demurring and splitting hairs the + great, generous public was buying the <i>Lives of Twelve Bad Women</i>, by + Arthur Vincent, and putting it into a second edition. This is as it + should be. When the excellent Dean Burgon dubbed his dozen biographies + <i>Twelve Good Men</i>, it probably never occurred to him that the title + suggested three companion volumes; but so it did, and two of them, + <i>Twelve Bad Men</i> and <i>Twelve Bad Women</i>, have made their appearance. I + still await, with great patience, <i>Twelve Good Women</i>. Twelve was the + number of the Apostles. Had it not been, one might be tempted to ask, + Why twelve? But as there must be some limit to bookmaking, there is no + need to quarrel with an arithmetical limit. +</p> +<p> + My criticism upon the Dean's dozen was that they were not by any + means, all of them, conspicuously good men; for, to name one only, who + would call old Dr. Routh, the President of Magdalen, a particularly + good man? In a sense, all Presidents, Provosts, Principals, and + Masters of Colleges are good men—in fact, they must be so by the + statutes—but to few of them are given the special notes of goodness. + Dr. Routh was a remarkable man, a learned man, perhaps a pious + man—undeniably, when he came to die, an old man—but he was no better + than his colleagues. This weakness of classification has run all + through the series, and it is my real quarrel with it. I do not + understand the principle of selection. I did not understand the Dean's + test of goodness, nor do I understand Mr. Seccombe's or Mr. Vincent's + test of badness. What do we mean by a good man or a bad one, a good + woman or a bad one? Most people, like the young man in the song, are + 'not very good, nor yet very bad.' We move about the pastures of life + in huge herds, and all do the same things, at the same times, and for + the same reasons. 'Forty feeding like one.' Are we mean? Well, we have + done some mean things in our time. Are we generous? Occasionally we + are. Were we good sons or dutiful daughters? We have both honoured and + dishonoured our parents, who, in their turn, had done the same by + theirs. Do we melt at the sight of misery? Indeed we do. Do we forget + all about it when we have turned the corner? Frequently that is so. Do + we expect to be put to open shame at the Great Day of Judgment? We + should be terribly frightened of this did we not cling to the hope + that amidst the shocking revelations then for the first time made + public our little affairs may fail to attract much notice. Judged by + the standards of humanity, few people are either good or bad. 'I have + not been a great sinner,' said the dying Nelson; nor had he—he had + only been made a great fool of by a woman. Mankind is all tarred with + the same brush, though some who chance to be operated upon when the + brush is fresh from the barrel get more than their share of the tar. + The biography of a celebrated man usually reminds me of the outside of + a coastguardsman's cottage—all tar and whitewash. These are the two + condiments of human life—tar and whitewash—the faults and the + excuses for the faults, the passions and pettinesses that make us + occasionally drop on all fours, and the generous aspirations that at + times enable us, if not to stand upright, at least to adopt the + attitude of the kangaroo. It is rather tiresome, this perpetual game + of French and English going on inside one. True goodness and real + badness escape it altogether. A good man does not spend his life + wrestling with the Powers of Darkness. He is victor in the fray, and + the most he is called upon to do is every now and again to hit his + prostrate foe a blow over the costard just to keep him in his place. + Thus rid of a perpetual anxiety, the good man has time to grow in + goodness, to expand pleasantly, to take his ease on Zion. You can see + in his face that he is at peace with himself—that he is no longer at + war with his elements. His society, if you are fond of goodness, is + both agreeable and medicinal; but if you are a bad man it is hateful, + and you cry out with Mr. Love-lust in Bunyan's Vanity Fair: 'Away with + him. I cannot endure him; he is for ever condemning my way.' +</p> +<p> + Not many of Dean Burgon's biographies reached this standard. The + explanation, perhaps, is that the Dean chiefly moved in clerical + circles where excellence is more frequently to be met with than + goodness. +</p> +<p> + In the same way a really bad man is one who has frankly said, 'Evil, + be thou my good.' Like the good man, though for a very different + reason, the bad one has ceased to make war with the devil. Finding a + conspiracy against goodness going on, the bad man joins it, and thus, + like the good man, is at peace with himself. The bad man is bent upon + his own way, to get what he wants, no matter at what cost. Human + lives! What do they matter? A woman's honour! What does that matter? + Truth and fidelity! What are they? To know what you want, and not to + mind what you pay for it, is the straight path to fame, fortune, and + hell-fire. Careers, of course, vary; to dominate a continent or to + open a corner shop as a pork-butcher's, plenty of devilry may go to + either ambition. Also, genius is a rare gift. It by no means follows + that because you are a bad man you will become a great one; but to be + bad, and at the same time unsuccessful, is a hard fate. It casts a + little doubt upon a man's badness if he does not, at least, make a + little money. It is a poor business accompanying badness on to a + common scaffold, or to see it die in a wretched garret. That was one + of my complaints with Mr. Seccombe's Twelve Bad Men. Most of them came + to violent ends. They were all failures. +</p> +<p> + But I have kept these twelve ladies waiting a most unconscionable + time. Who are they? There are amongst them four courtesans: Alice + Perrers, one of King Edward III.'s misses; Barbara Villiers, one of + King Charles II.'s; Mrs. Mary Anne Clarke, who had to be content with + a royal Duke; and Mrs. Con Phillips. Six members of the criminal + class: Alice Arden, Moll Cutpurse, Jenny Diver, Elizabeth Brownrigg, + Elizabeth Canning, and Mary Bateman; and only two ladies of title, + Frances Howard, Countess of Somerset, and Elizabeth Chudleigh, Duchess + of Kingston. Of these twelve bad women one-third were executed, Alice + Arden being burnt at Canterbury, Jenny Diver and Elizabeth Brownrigg + being hung at Tyburn, and Mary Bateman suffering the same fate at + Leeds. Elizabeth Canning was sentenced to seven years' transportation, + and, indeed, if their biographers are to be believed, all the other + ladies made miserable ends. There is nothing triumphant about their + badness. Even from the point of view of this world they had better + have been good. In fact, squalor is the badge of the whole tribe. Some + of them, probably—Elizabeth Brownrigg, for example—were mad. This + last-named poor creature bore sixteen children to a house-painter and + plasterer, and then became a parish mid-wife, and only finally a + baby-farmer. Her cruelty to her apprentices had madness in every + detail. To include her in this volume was wholly unnecessary. She + lives but in George Canning's famous parody on Southey's sonnet to the + regicide Marten. +</p> +<p> + With those sentimentalists who maintain that all bad people are mad I + will have no dealings. It is sheer nonsense; lives of great men all + remind us it is sheer nonsense. Some of our greatest men have been + infernal scoundrels—pre-eminently bad men—with nothing mad about + them, unless it be mad to get on in the world and knock people about + in it. +</p> +<p> + <i>Twelve Bad Women</i> contains much interesting matter, but, on the + whole, it is depressing. It seems very dull to be bad. Perhaps the + editor desired to create this impression; if so, he has succeeded. + Hannah More had fifty times more fun in her life than all these + courtesans and criminals put together. The note of jollity is + entirely absent. It was no primrose path these unhappy women + traversed, though that it led to the everlasting bonfire it were + unchristian to doubt. The dissatisfaction I confessed to at the + beginning returns upon me as a cloud at the end; but, for all that, I + rejoice the book is in a second edition, and I hope soon to hear it is + in a third, for it has a moral tendency. +</p> +<a name="2H_4_24"><!-- H2 anchor --></a> +<p> </p> +<p> </p> +<p> </p> +<p> </p> +<h2> + ITINERARIES +</h2> +<p> </p> + +<p> + Anyone who is teased by the notion that it would be pleasant to be + remembered, in the sense of being read, after death, cannot do better + to secure that end than compose an Itinerary and leave it behind him + in manuscript, with his name legibly inscribed thereon. If an honest + bit of work, noting distances, detailing expenses, naming landmarks, + moors, mountains, harbours, docks, buildings—indeed, anything which, + as lawyers say, savours of realty—and but scantily interspersed with + reflections, and with no quotations, why, then, such a piece of work, + however long publication may be delayed—and a century or two will not + matter in the least—cannot fail, whenever it is printed, to attract + attention, to excite general interest and secure a permanent hold in + every decent library in the kingdom. +</p> +<p> + Time cannot stale an Itinerary. <i>Iter, Via, Actus</i> are words of pith + and moment. Stage-coaches, express trains, motor-cars, have written, + or are now writing, their eventful histories over the face of these + islands; but, whatever changes they have made or are destined to make, + they have left untouched the mystery of the road, although for the + moment the latest comer may seem injuriously to have affected its + majesty. +</p> +<p> + The Itinerist alone among authors is always sure of an audience. No + matter where, no matter when, he has but to tell us how he footed it + and what he saw by the wayside, and we must listen. How can we help + it? Two hundred years ago, it may be, this Itinerist came through our + village, passed by the wall of our homestead, climbed our familiar + hill, and went on his way; it is perhaps but two lines and a half he + can afford to give us, but what lines they are! How different with + sermons, poems, and novels! On each of these is the stamp of the + author's age; sentiments, fashions, thoughts, faiths, phraseology, all + worn out—cold, dirty grate, where once there was a blazing fire. + Cheerlessness personified! Leland's anti-Papal treatise in forty-five + chapters remains in learned custody—a manuscript; a publisher it will + never find. We still have Papists and anti-Papists; in this case the + fire still blazes, but the grates are of an entirely different + construction. Leland's treatise is out of date. But his <i>Itinerary</i> in + nine volumes, a favourite book throughout the eighteenth century, + which has graced many a bookseller's catalogue for the last hundred + years, and seldom without eliciting a purchaser—Leland's <i>Itinerary</i> + is to-day being reprinted under the most able editorship. The charm of + the road is irresistible. The <i>Vicar of Wakefield</i> is a delightful + book, with a great tradition behind it and a future still before it; + but it has not escaped the ravages of time, and I would, now, at all + events, gladly exchange it for Oliver Goldsmith's <i>Itinerary through + Germany with a Flute</i>! +</p> +<p> + Vain authors, publisher's men, may write as they like about + <i>Shakespeare's</i> country, or <i>Scott's</i> country, or <i>Carlyle's</i> country, + or <i>Crockett's</i> country, but— +</p> +<pre> + 'Oh, good gigantic smile of the brown old earth!' +</pre> +<p class="noindent"> + the land laughs at the delusions of the men who hurriedly cross its + surface. +</p> +<pre> + 'Rydal and Fairfield are there,— + In the shadow Wordsworth lies dead. + So it is, so it will be for aye, + Nature is fresh as of old, + Is lovely, a mortal is dead.' +</pre> +<p> + These reflections, which by themselves would be enough to sink even an + Itinerary, seemed forced upon me by the publication of <i>A Journey to + Edenborough in Scotland by Joseph Taylor, Late of the Inner Temple, + Esquire</i>. This journey was made two hundred years ago in the Long + Vacation of 1705, but has just been printed from the original + manuscript, under the editorship of Mr. William Cowan, by the + well-known Edinburgh bookseller, Mr. Brown, of Princes Street, to whom + all lovers of things Scottish already owe much. +</p> +<p> + Nobody can hope to be less known than this our latest Itinerist, for + not only is he not in the <i>Dictionary of National Biography</i>, but it + is at present impossible to say which of two Joseph Taylors he was. + The House of the Winged Horse has ever had Taylors on its roll, the + sign of the Middle Temple, a very fleecy sheep, being perhaps + unattractive to the clan, and in 1705 it so happened that not only + were there two Taylors, but two Joseph Taylors, entitled to write + themselves 'of the Inner Temple, Esquire.' Which was the Itinerist? + Mr. Cowan, going by age, thinks that the Itinerist can hardly have + been the Joseph Taylor who was admitted to the Inn in 1663, as in that + case he must have been at least fifty-eight when he travelled to + Edinburgh. For my part, I see nothing in the <i>Itinerary</i> to preclude + the possibility of its author having attained that age at the date of + its composition. I observe in the <i>Itinerary</i> references which point + to the Itinerist being a Kentish man, and he mentions more than once + his 'Cousin D'aeth.' Research among the papers of the D'aeths of + Knowlton Court, near Dover, might result in the discovery which of + these two Taylors really was the Itinerist. As nothing else is at + present known about either, the investigation could probably be made + without passion or party or even religious bias. It might be + best begun by Mr. Cowan telling us in whose custody he found the + manuscript, and how it came there. These statements should always + be made when old manuscripts are first printed. +</p> +<p> + The journey began on August 2, 1705. The party consisted of Mr. Taylor + and his two friends, Mr. Harrison and Mr. Sloman. They travelled on + horseback, and often had difficulties with the poor beast that carried + their luggage. They reached Edinburgh in the evening of August 31, and + left it on their return journey on September 8, and got home on the + 25th of the same month. The <i>Itinerary</i> concludes as follows: +</p> +<blockquote> + 'Thus we spent almost 2 months in a Journy of many 100 miles, + sometimes thro' very charming Countryes, and at other times over + desolate and Barren Mountaines, and yet met with no particular + misfortune in all the Time.' +</blockquote> +<p> + I may say at once of these three Itinerists—Mr. Taylor, Mr. Harrison, + and Mr. Sloman—that they appear to have been thoroughly + commonplace, well behaved, occasionally hilarious Englishmen, ready to + endure whatever befell them, if unavoidable; accustomed to take their + ease in their inn and to turn round and look at any pretty woman they + might chance to meet on their travels. Their first experience of what + the Itinerist calls 'the prodigies of Nature,' 'at once an occasion + both of Horrour and Admiration,' was in the Peak Country 'described in + poetry by the ingenious Mr. Cotton.' This part of the world they 'did' + with something of the earnestness of the modern tourist. But I hardly + think they enjoyed themselves. The 'prodigious' caverns and strange + petrifactions shocked them; 'nothing can be more terrible or shocking + to Nature.' Mam Tor, with its 1,710 feet, proved very impressive, 'a + vast high mountain reaching to the very clouds.' This gloom of the + Derbyshire hills and stony valleys was partially dispelled for our + travellers by a certain 'fair Gloriana' they met at Buxton, with whom + they had great fun, 'so much the greater, because we never expected + such heavenly enjoyments in so desolate a country.' If it be on + susceptibilities of this nature that Mr. Cowan rests his case for + thinking that the Itinerist can hardly have attained 'the blasted + antiquity' of fifty-eight, we must think Mr. Cowan a trifle hasty, or + a very young man, perhaps under forty, which is young for an editor. +</p> +<p> + After describing, somewhat too much like an auctioneer, the splendours + of Chatsworth, 'a Paradise in the deserts of Arabia,' the Itinerist + proceeds on his way north through Nottingham to Belvoir Castle, where + 'my Lord Rosses Gentleman (to whom Mr. Harrison was recommended) + entertained us by his Lordship's command with good wine and the best + of malt liquors which the cellar abounds with'; the pictures in the + Long Gallery were shown them by 'my Lord himself.' At Doncaster, 'a + neat market-town which consists only in one long street,' they had + some superlative salmon just taken out of the river. By Knaresborough + Spaw, where they drank the waters and had icy cold baths, and dined at + the ordinary with a parson whose conversation startled the propriety + of the Templar, the travellers made their way to York, and for the + first and last time a few pages of <i>Guide Book</i> are improperly + introduced. Then on to Scarborough. +</p> +<blockquote> + 'The next morning early we left Scarborough and travelled through a + dismall road, particularly near Robins Hood Bay; we were obliged to + lead our horses, and had much ado to get down a vast craggy + mountain which lyes within a quarter of a mile of it. The Bay is + about a mile broad, and inhabited by poor fishermen. We stopt to + taste some of their liquor and discourse with them. They told us + the French privateers came into the Very Bay and took 2 of their + Vessels but the day before, which were ransom'd for £25 a piece. We + saw a great many vessels lying upon the Shore, the masters not + daring to venture out to sea for fear of undergoing the same fate.' +</blockquote> +<p> + We boast too readily of our inviolate shores. +</p> +<p> + A curious description is given of the Duke of Buckingham's alum works + near Whitby. The travellers then procured a guide, and traversed 'the + vast moors which lye between Whitby and Gisborough.' The civic + magnificence of Newcastle greatly struck our travellers, who, happier + than their modern successors, were able to see the town miles off. The + Itinerist quotes with gusto the civic proverb that the men of + Newcastle pay nothing for the Way, the Word, or the Water, 'for the + Ministers of Religion are maintained, the streets paved, and the + Conduits kept up at the publick charge.' A disagreeable account is + given of the brutishness of the people employed in the salt works at + Tynemouth. At Berwick the travellers got into trouble with the sentry, + but the mistake was rectified with the captain of the guard over '2 + bowles of punch, there being no wine in the town.' +</p> +<p> + Scotland was now in sight, and the travellers became grave, as + befitted the occasion. They were told that the journey that lay before + them was extremely dangerous, that 'twould be difficult to escape with + their lives, much less (ominous words) without 'the distemper of the + country.' But Mr. Taylor, Mr. Harrison, and Mr. Sloman were as brave + as Mr. Pickwick, and they would on. 'Yet notwithstanding all these sad + representations, we resolv'd to proceed and stand by one another to + the last.' +</p> +<p> + What the Itinerists thought of Scotland when they got there is not for + me to say. I was once a Scottish member. +</p> +<p> + They arrived in Edinburgh at a great crisis in Scottish history. They + saw the Duke of Argyll, as Queen Anne's Lord High Commissioner, go to + the Parliament House in this manner: +</p> +<blockquote> + 'First a coach and six Horses for his Gentlemen, then a Trumpet, + then his own coach with six white horses, which were very fine, + being those presented by King William to the Duke of Queensbury, + and by him sold to the Duke of Argyle for £300; next goes a troop + of Horse Guards, cloathed like my Lord of Oxford's Regiment, but + the horses are of several colours; and the Lord Chancellor and the + Secretary of State, and the Lord Chief Justice Clerk, and other + officers of State close the cavalcade in coaches and six horses. + Thus the Commissioner goes and returns every day.' +</blockquote> +<p> + The Itinerists followed the Duke and his procession into the + Parliament House, and heard debated the great question—the greatest + of all possible questions for Scotland—whether this magnificence + should cease, whether there should be an end of an auld sang—in + short, whether the proposed Act of Union should be proceeded with. By + special favour, our Itinerists had leave to stand upon the steps of + the throne, and witnessed a famous fiery and prolonged debate, the + Duke once turning to them and saying, <i>sotto voce</i>, 'It is now + deciding whether England and Scotland shall go together by the ears.' + How it was decided we all know, and that it was wisely decided no one + doubts; yet, when we read our Itinerist's account of the Duke's coach + and horses, and the cavalcade that followed him, and remember that + this was what happened every day during the sitting of the Parliament, + and must not be confounded with the greater glories of the first day + of a Parliament, when every member, be he peer, knight of the shire, + or burgh member, had to ride on horseback in the procession, it is + impossible not to feel the force of Miss Grisel Dalmahoy's appeal in + the <i>Heart of Midlothian</i>, she being an ancient sempstress, to Mr. + Saddletree, the harness-maker: +</p> +<blockquote> + 'And as for the Lords of States ye suld mind the riding o' the + Parliament in the gude auld time before the Union. A year's rent o' + mony a gude estate gaed for horse-graith and harnessing, forby + broidered robes and foot-mantles that wad hae stude by their lane + with gold and brocade, and that were muckle in my ain line.' +</blockquote> +<p> + The graphic account of a famous debate given by, Taylor is worth + comparing with the <i>Lockhart Papers</i> and Hill Burton. The date is a + little troublesome. According to our Itinerist, he heard the + discussion as to whether the Queen or the Scottish Parliament should + nominate the Commissioners. Now, according to the histories, this + all-important discussion began and ended on September 1, but our + Itinerist had only arrived in Edinburgh the night before the first, + and gives us to understand that he owed his invitation to be present + to the fact that whilst in Edinburgh he and his friends had had the + honour to have several lords and members of Parliament to dine, and + that these guests informed him 'of the grand day when the Act was to + be passed or rejected.' The Itinerist's account is too particular—for + he gives the result of the voting—to admit of any possibility of a + mistake, and he describes how several of the members came afterwards + to his lodgings, and, so he writes, 'embraced us with all the outward + marks of love and kindness, and seemed mightily pleased at what was + done, and told us we should now be no more English and Scotch, but + Brittons.' In the matter of nomenclature, at all events, the promises + of the Union have not been carried out. +</p> +<p> + After September 1 the Parliament did not meet till the 4th, when an + Address was passed to the Queen, but apparently without any repetition + of debate. So it really is a little difficult to reconcile the dates. + Perhaps Itinerists are best advised to keep off public events. +</p> +<p> + How our travellers escaped the 'national distemper' and journeyed + home by Ecclefechan, Carlisle, Shap Fell, Liverpool, Chester, + Coventry, and Warwick must be read in the <i>Journey</i> itself, which, + though it only occupies 182 small pages, is full of matter and even + merriment; in fact, it is an excellent itinerary. +</p> +<a name="2H_4_25"><!-- H2 anchor --></a> +<p> </p> +<p> </p> +<p> </p> +<p> </p> +<h2> + EPITAPHS +</h2> +<p> </p> + +<p> + Epitaphs, if in rhyme, are the real literature of the masses. They + need no commendation and are beyond all criticism. A Cambridge don, a + London bus-driver, will own their charm in equal measure. Strange + indeed is the fascination of rhyme. A commonplace hitched into verse + instantly takes rank with Holy Scripture. This passion for poetry, as + it is sometimes called, is manifested on every side; even tradesmen + share it, and as the advertisements in our newspapers show, are + willing to pay small sums to poets who commend their wares in verse. + The widow bereft of her life's companion, the mother bending over an + empty cradle, find solace in thinking what doleful little scrag of + verse shall be graven on the tombstone of the dead. From the earliest + times men have sought to squeeze their loves and joys, their sorrows + and hatreds, into distichs and quatrains, and to inscribe them + somewhere, on walls or windows, on sepulchral urns and gravestones, as + memorials of their pleasure or their pain. +</p> +<pre> + 'Hark! how chimes the passing bell— + There's no music to a knell; + All the other sounds we hear + Flatter and but cheat our ear.' +</pre> +<p> + So wrote Shirley the dramatist, and so does he truthfully explain the + popularity of the epitaph as distinguished from the epigram. Who ever + wearies of Martial's 'Erotion'?— +</p> +<pre> + 'Hic festinata requiescit Erotion umbra, + Crimine quam fati sexta peremit hiems. + Quisquis eris nostri post me regnator agelli + Manibus exiguis annua justa dato. + Sic lare perpetuo, sic turba sospite, solus + Flebilis in terra sit lapis iste tua'— +</pre> +<p class="noindent"> + so prettily Englished by Leigh Hunt: +</p> +<pre> + 'Underneath this greedy stone + Lies little sweet Erotion, + Whom the Fates with hearts as cold + Nipped away at six years old. + Those, whoever thou may'st be, + That hast this small field after me, + Let the yearly rites be paid + To her little slender shade; + So shall no disease or jar + Hurt thy house or chill thy Lar, + But this tomb be here alone + The only melancholy stone.' +</pre> +<p> + Our English epitaphs are to be found scattered up and down our country + churchyards—'uncouth rhymes,' as Gray calls them, yet full of the + sombre philosophy of life. They are fast becoming illegible, worn out + by the rain that raineth every day, and our prim, present-day parsons + do not look with favour upon them, besides which—to use a clumsy + phrase—besides which most of our churchyards are now closed against + burials, and without texts there can be no sermons: +</p> +<pre> + 'I'll stay and read my sermon here, + And skulls and bones shall be my text. + * * * * + Here learn that glory and disgrace, + Wisdom and Folly, pass away, + That mirth hath its appointed space, + That sorrow is but for a day; + That all we love and all we hate, + That all we hope and all we fear, + Each mood of mind, each turn of fate, + Must end in dust and silence here.' +</pre> +<p> + The best epitaphs are the grim ones. Designed, as epitaphs are, to + arrest and hold in their momentary grasp the wandering attention and + languid interest of the passer-by, they must hit him hard and at once, + and this they can only do by striking some very responsive chord, and + no chords are so immediately responsive as those which relate to death + and, it may be, judgment to come. +</p> +<p> + Mr. Aubrey Stewart, in his interesting <i>Selection of English Epigrams + and Epitaphs</i>, published by Chapman and Hall, quotes an epitaph from a + Norfolk churchyard which I have seen in other parts of the country. + The last time I saw it was in the Forest of Dean. It is admirably + suited for the gravestone of any child of very tender years, say four: +</p> +<pre> + 'When the Archangel's trump shall blow + And souls to bodies join, + Many will wish their lives below + Had been as short as mine.' +</pre> +<p class="noindent"> + It is uncouth, but it is warranted to grip. +</p> +<p> + Frequently, too, have I noticed how constantly the attention is + arrested by Pope's well-known lines from his magnificent 'Verses to + the Memory of an Unfortunate Lady,' which are often to be found on + tombstones: +</p> +<pre> + 'So peaceful rests without a stone and name + What once had beauty, titles, wealth, and fame. + How loved, how honoured once avails thee not, + To whom related or by whom begot. + A heap of dust alone remains of thee; + 'Tis all thou art and all the proud shall be.' +</pre> +<p> + I wish our modern poetasters who deny Pope's claim to be a poet no + worse fate than to lie under stones which have engraved upon them the + lines just quoted, for they will then secure in death what in life was + denied them—the ear of the public. +</p> +<p> + Next to the grim epitaph, I should be disposed to rank those which + remind the passer-by of his transitory estate. In different parts of + the country—in Cumberland and Cornwall, in Croyland Abbey, in + Llangollen Churchyard, in Melton Mowbray—are to be found lines more + or less resembling the following: +</p> +<pre> + 'Man's life is like unto a winter's day, + Some break their fast and so depart away, + Others stay dinner then depart full fed, + The longest age but sups and goes to bed. + O reader, there behold and see + As we are now, so thou must be.' +</pre> +<p> + The complimentary epitaph seldom pleases. To lie like a tombstone has + become a proverb. Pope's famous epitaph on Newton: +</p> +<pre> + 'Nature and Nature's laws lay hid in night, + God said, Let Newton be! and all was light.' +</pre> +<p class="noindent"> + is hyperbolical and out of character with the great man it seeks to + honour. It was intended for Westminster Abbey. I rejoice at the + preference given to prose Latinity. +</p> +<p> + The tender and emotional epitaphs have a tendency to become either + insipid or silly. But Herrick has shown us how to rival Martial: +</p> +<pre> + 'UPON A CHILD THAT DIED. + + Here she lies a pretty bud + Lately made of flesh and blood; + Who as soon fell fast asleep + As her little eyes did peep. + Give her strewings, but not stir + The earth that lightly covers her.' +</pre> +<p> + Mr. Dodd, the editor of the admirable volume called <i>The + Epigrammatists</i>, published in Bohn's Standard Library, calls these + lines a model of simplicity and elegance. So they are, but they are + very vague. But then the child was very young. Erotion, one must + remember, was six years old. Ben Jonson's beautiful epitaph on S.P., a + child of Queen Elizabeth's Chapel, beginning, +</p> +<pre> + 'Weep with me all you that read + This little story; + And know for whom the tear you shed + Death's self is sorry,' +</pre> +<p class="noindent"> + is fine poetry, but it is not life or death as plain people know those + sober realities. The flippant epitaph is always abominable. Gay's, for + example: +</p> +<pre> + 'Life is a jest, and all things show it. + I thought so once, but now I know it.' +</pre> +<p class="noindent"> + But <i>does</i> he know it? Ay, there's the rub! The note of Christianity + is seldom struck in epitaphs. There is a deep-rooted paganism in the + English people which is for ever bubbling up and asserting itself in + the oddest of ways. Coleridge's epitaph for himself is a striking + exception: +</p> +<pre> + 'Stop, Christian passer-by! stop, child of God, + And read with gentle breast, Beneath this sod + A poet lies, or that which once seemed he. + O lift one thought in prayer for S.T.C, + That he who many a year with toil of breath + Found death in life, may here find life in death! + Mercy for praise—to be forgiven for fame, + He ask'd and hoped through Christ. Do thou the same.' +</pre> +<a name="2H_4_26"><!-- H2 anchor --></a> +<p> </p> +<p> </p> +<p> </p> +<p> </p> +<h2> + 'HANSARD' +</h2> +<p> </p> + +<p> + 'Men are we, and must mourn when e'en the shade of that which once was + great has passed away.' This quotation—which, in obedience to the + prevailing taste, I print as prose—was forced upon me by reading in + the papers an account of some proceedings in a sale-room in Chancery + Lane last Tuesday, <a name="16"></a> <a href="#note-16"><small><sup>1</sup></small></a> when the entire stock and copyright of + <i>Hansard's Parliamentary History and Debates</i> were exposed for sale, + and, it must be added, to ridicule. Yet 'Hansard' was once a name to + conjure with. To be in it was an ambition—costly, troublesome, but + animating; to know it was, if not a liberal education, at all events + almost certain promotion; whilst to possess it for your very own was + the outward and visible sign of serious statesmanship. No wonder that + unimaginative men still believed that <i>Hansard</i> was a property with + money in it. Is it not the counterpart of Parliament, its dark and + majestic shadow thrown across the page of history? As the pious + Catholic studies his <i>Acta Sanctorum</i>, so should the constitutionalist + love to pore over the <i>ipsissima verba</i> of Parliamentary gladiators, + and read their resolutions and their motions. Where else save in the + pages of <i>Hansard</i> can we make ourselves fully acquainted with the + history of the Mother of Free Institutions? It is, no doubt, dull, but + with the soberminded a large and spacious dulness like that of + <i>Hansard's Debates</i> is better than the incongruous chirpings of the + new 'humourists.' Besides, its dulness is exaggerated. If a reader + cannot extract amusement from it the fault is his, not <i>Hansard's</i>. + But, indeed, this perpetual talk of dulness and amusement ought not to + pass unchallenged. Since when has it become a crime to be dull? Our + fathers were not ashamed to be dull in a good cause. We are ashamed, + but without ceasing to be dull. +</p> + +<p> + But it is idle to argue with the higgle of the market. 'Things are + what they are,' said Bishop Butler in a passage which has lost its + freshness; that is to say, they are worth what they will fetch. 'Why, + then, should we desire to be deceived?' The test of truth remains + undiscovered, but the test of present value is the auction mart. Tried + by this test, it is plain that <i>Hansard</i> has fallen upon evil days. + The bottled dreariness of Parliament is falling, falling, falling. An + Elizabethan song-book, the original edition of Gray's <i>Elegy</i>, or + <i>Peregrine Pickle</i>, is worth more than, or nearly as much as, the 458 + volumes of <i>Hansard's Parliamentary Debates</i>. Three complete sets were + sold last Tuesday; one brought £110, the other two but £70 each. And + yet it is not long ago since a <i>Hansard</i> was worth three times as + much. Where were our young politicians? There are serious men on both + sides of the House. Men of their stamp twenty years ago would not have + been happy without a <i>Hansard</i> to clothe their shelves with dignity + and their minds with quotations. But these young men were not bidders. +</p> +<p> + As the sale proceeded, the discredit of <i>Hansard</i> became plainer and + plainer. For the copyright, including, of course, the goodwill of the + name—the right to call yourself 'Hansard' for years to come—not a + penny was offered, and yet, as the auctioneer feelingly observed, only + eighteen months ago it was valued at £60,000. The cold douche of the + auction mart may brace the mind, but is apt to lower the price of + commodities of this kind. Then came incomplete and unbound sets, with + doleful results. For forty copies of the 'Indian Debates' for 1889 + only a penny a copy was offered. It was rumoured that the bidder + intended, had he been successful, to circulate the copies amongst the + supporters of a National Council for India; but his purpose was + frustrated by the auctioneer, who, mindful of the honour of the + Empire, sorrowfully but firmly withdrew the lot, and proceeded to the + next, amidst the jeers of a thoroughly demoralized audience. But this + subject why pursue? It is, for the reason already cited at the + beginning, a painful one. The glory of <i>Hansard</i> has departed for + ever. Like a new-fangled and sham religion, it began in pride and + ended in a police-court, instead of beginning in a police-court and + ending in pride, which is the now well-defined course of true + religion. +</p> +<p> + The fact that nobody wants <i>Hansard</i> is not necessarily a rebuff to + Parliamentary eloquence, yet these low prices jump with the times and + undoubtedly indicate an impatience of oratory. We talk more than our + ancestors, but we prove our good faith by doing it very badly. We have + no Erskines at the Bar, but trials last longer than ever. There are + not half a dozen men in the House of Commons who can make a speech, + properly so called, but the session is none the shorter on that + account. <i>Hansard's Debates</i> are said to be dull to read, but there is + a sterner fate than reading a dull debate: you may be called upon to + listen to one. The statesmen of the time must be impervious to + dulness; they must crush the artist within them to a powder. The new + people who have come bounding into politics and are now claiming their + share of the national inheritance are not orators by nature, and will + never become so by culture; but they mean business, and that is well. + Caleb Garth and not George Canning should be the model of the virtuous + politician of the future. +</p> +<p> </p> + +<a name="note-16"><!--Note--></a> +<p class="fnote"><a href="#16"> +<sup><u>1</u></sup></a> March 8, 1902. +</p> + +<a name="2H_4_27"><!-- H2 anchor --></a> +<p> </p> +<p> </p> +<p> </p> +<p> </p> +<h2> + CONTEMPT OF COURT +</h2> +<p> </p> + +<p> + The late Mr. Carlyle has somewhere in his voluminous but well-indexed + writings a highly humorous and characteristic passage in which he, + with all his delightful gusto, dilates upon the oddity of the scene + where a withered old sinner perched on a bench, quaintly attired in + red turned up with ermine, addresses another sinner in a wooden pew, + and bids him be taken away and hung by the neck until he is dead; and + how the sinner in the pew, instead of indignantly remonstrating with + the sinner on the bench, 'Why, you cantankerous old absurdity, what + are you about taking my life like that?' usually exhibits signs of + great depression, and meekly allows himself to be conducted to his + cell, from whence in due course he is taken and throttled according to + law. +</p> +<p> + This situation described by Carlyle is doubtless mighty full of + humour; but, none the less, were any prisoner at the bar to adopt + Craigenputtock's suggestion, he would only add to the peccadillo of + murder the grave offence of contempt of court, which has been defined + 'as a disobedience to the court, an opposing or despising the + authority, justice, and dignity thereof.' +</p> +<p> + The whole subject of Contempt is an interesting and picturesque one, + and has been treated after an interesting and picturesque yet accurate + and learned fashion by a well-known lawyer, in a treatise <a name="17"></a> <a href="#note-17"><small><sup>1</sup></small></a> which + well deserves to be read not merely by the legal practitioner, but by + the student of constitutional law and the nice observer of our manners + and customs. +</p> + +<p> + An ill-disposed person may exhibit contempt of court in divers + ways—for example, he may scandalize the the court itself, which may + be done not merely by the extreme measure of hurling missiles at the + presiding judge, or loudly contemning his learning or authority, but + by ostentatiously reading a newspaper in his presence, or laughing + uproariously at a joke made by somebody else. Such contempts, + committed as they are <i>in facie curiae</i>, are criminal offences, and + may be punished summarily by immediate imprisonment without the right + of appeal. It speaks well both for the great good sense of the judges + and for the deep-rooted legal instincts of our people that such + offences are seldom heard of. It would be impossible nicely to define + what measure of freedom of manners should be allowed in a court of + justice, which, as we know, is neither a church nor a theatre, but, as + a matter of practice, the happy mean between an awe-struck and unmanly + silence and free-and-easy conversation is well preserved. The + practising advocate, to avoid contempt and obtain, if instructed so to + do, a hearing, must obey certain sumptuary laws, for not only must he + don the horsehair wig, the gown, and bands of his profession, but his + upper clothing must be black, nor should his nether garment be + otherwise than of sober hue. Mr. Oswald reports Mr. Justice Byles as + having once observed to the late Lord Coleridge whilst at the Bar: 'I + always listen with little pleasure to the arguments of counsel whose + legs are encased in light gray trousers.' The junior Bar is growing + somewhat lax in these matters. Dark gray coats are not unknown, and it + was only the other day I observed a barrister duly robed sitting in + court in a white waistcoat, apparently oblivious of the fact that + whilst thus attired no judge could possibly have heard a word he said. + However, as he had nothing to say, the question did not arise. It is + doubtless the increasing Chamber practice of the judges which has + occasioned this regrettable laxity. In Chambers a judge cannot + summarily commit for contempt, nor is it necessary or customary for + counsel to appear before him in robes. Some judges object to fancy + waistcoats in Chambers, but others do not. The late Sir James Bacon, + who was a great stickler for forensic propriety, and who, sitting in + court, would not have allowed a counsel in a white waistcoat to say a + word, habitually wore one himself when sitting as vacation judge in + the summer. +</p> +<p> + It must not be supposed that there can be no contempt out of court. + There can. To use bad language on being served with legal process is + to treat the court from whence such process issued with contempt. None + the less, considerable latitude of language on such occasions is + allowed. How necessary it is to protect the humble officers of the law + who serve writs and subpoenas is proved by the case of one Johns, who + was very rightly committed to the Fleet in 1772, it appearing by + affidavit that he had compelled the poor wretch who sought to serve + him with a subpoena to devour both the parchment and the wax seal of + the court, and had then, after kicking him so savagely as to make him + insensible, ordered his body to be cast into the river. No amount of + irritation could justify such conduct. It is no contempt to tear up + the writ or subpoena in the presence of the officer of the court, + because, the service once lawfully effected, the court is indifferent + to the treatment of its stationery; but such behaviour, though lawful, + is childish. To obstruct a witness on his way to give evidence, or to + threaten him if he does give evidence, or to tamper with the jury, are + all serious contempts. In short, there is a divinity which hedges a + court of justice, and anybody who, by action or inaction, renders the + course of justice more difficult or dilatory than it otherwise would + be, incurs the penalty of contempt. Consider, for example, the case of + documents and letters. Prior to the issue of a writ, the owner of + documents and letters may destroy them, if he pleases—the fact of his + having done so, if litigation should ensue on the subject to which the + destroyed documents related, being only matter for comment—but the + moment a writ is issued the destruction by a defendant of any document + in his possession relating to the action is a grave contempt, for + which a duchess was lately sent to prison. There is something majestic + about this. No sooner is the aid of a court of law invoked than it + assumes a seizin of every scrap of writing which will assist it in its + investigation of the matter at issue between the parties, and to + destroy any such paper is to obstruct the court in its holy task, and + therefore a contempt. +</p> +<p> + To disobey a specific order of the court is, of course, contempt. The + old Court of Chancery had a great experience in this aspect of the + question. It was accustomed to issue many peremptory commands; it + forbade manufacturers to foul rivers, builders so to build as to + obstruct ancient lights, suitors to seek the hand in matrimony of its + female wards, Dissenting ministers from attempting to occupy the + pulpits from which their congregations had by vote ejected them, and + so on through almost all the business of this mortal life. It was more + ready to forbid than to command; but it would do either if justice + required it. And if you persisted in doing what the Court of Chancery + told you not to do, you were committed; whilst if you refused to do + what it had ordered you to do, you were attached; and the difference + between committal and attachment need not concern the lay mind. +</p> +<p> + To pursue the subject further would be to plunge into the morasses of + the law where there is no footing for the plain man; but just a word + or two may be added on the subject of punishment for contempt. In old + days persons who were guilty of contempt <i>in facie curiae</i> had their + right hands cut off, and Mr. Oswald prints as an appendix to his book + certain clauses of an Act of Parliament of Henry VIII. which provide + for the execution of this barbarous sentence, and also (it must be + admitted) for the kindly after-treatment of the victim, who was to + have a surgeon at hand to sear the stump, a sergeant of the poultry + with a cock ready for the surgeon to wrap about the stump, a sergeant + of the pantry with bread to eat, and a sergeant of the cellar with a + pot of red wine to drink. +</p> +<p> + Nowadays the penalty for most contempts is costs. The guilty party in + order to purge his contempt has to pay all the costs of a motion to + commit and attach. The amount is not always inconsiderable, and when + it is paid it would be idle to apply to the other side for a pot of + red wine. They would only laugh at you. Our ancestors had a way of + mitigating their atrocities which robs the latter of more than half + their barbarity. Costs are an unmitigable atrocity. +</p> +<p> </p> + + +<a name="note-17"><!--Note--></a> +<p class="fnote"><a href="#17"> +<sup><u>1</u></sup></a> <i>Contempt of Court, etc.</i> By J.F. Oswald, Q.C. London: + William Clowes and Sons, Limited. +</p> + +<a name="2H_4_28"><!-- H2 anchor --></a> +<p> </p> +<p> </p> +<p> </p> +<p> </p> +<h2> + 5 EDWARD VII., CHAPTER 12 +</h2> +<p> </p> + +<p> + The appearance of this undebated Act of Parliament in the attenuated + volume of the Statutes of 1905 almost forces upon sensitive minds an + unwelcome inquiry as to what is the attitude proper to be assumed by + an emancipated but trained intelligence towards a decision of the + House of Lords, sitting judicially as the highest (because the last) + Court of Appeal. +</p> +<p> + So far as the <i>parties</i> to the litigation are concerned, the decision, + if of a final character, puts an end to the <i>lis</i>. Litigation must, so + at least it has always been assumed, end somewhere, and in these + realms it ends with the House of Lords. Higher you cannot go, however + litigiously minded. +</p> +<p> + In the vast majority of appeal cases a final appeal not only ends the + <i>lis</i>, but determines once for all the rights of the parties to the + subject-matter. The successful litigant leaves the House of Lords + quieted in his possession or restored to what he now knows to be his + own, conscious of a victory, final and complete; whilst the + unsuccessful litigant goes away exceeding sorrowful, knowing that his + only possible revenge is to file his petition in bankruptcy. +</p> +<p> + This, however, is not always so. +</p> +<p> + In August, 1904, the House of Lords decided in a properly constituted + <i>lis</i> that a particular ecclesiastical body in Scotland, somewhat + reduced in numbers, but existent and militant, was entitled to certain + property held in trust for the use and behoof of the Free Church of + Scotland. There is no other way of holding property than by a legal + title. Sometimes that title has been created by an Act of Parliament, + and sometimes it is a title recognised by the general laws and customs + of the realm, but a legal title it has got to be. Titles are never + matters of rhetoric, nor are they <i>jure divino</i>, or conferred in + answer to prayer; they are strictly legal matters, and it is the very + particular business of courts of law, when properly invoked, to + recognise and enforce them. +</p> +<p> + In the case I have in mind there were two claimants to the + subject-matter—the Free Church and the United Free Church—and the + House of Lords, after a great argle-bargle, decided that the property + in question belonged to the Free Church. +</p> +<p> + Thereupon the expected happened. A hubbub arose in Scotland and + elsewhere, and in consequence of the hubbub an Act of Parliament has + somewhat coyly made its appearance in the Statute Book (5 Edward VII., + chapter 12) appointing and authorizing Commissioners to take away from + the successful litigant a certain portion of the property just + declared to be his, and to give it to the unsuccessful litigant. +</p> +<p> + The reasons alleged for taking away by statute from the Free Church + some of the property that belongs to it are that the Free Church is + not big enough to administer satisfactorily all the property it + possesses; and that the State may reasonably refuse to allow a + religious body to have more property than it can in the opinion of + State-appointed Commissioners usefully employ in the propagation of + its religion. Let the reasons be well noted. They have made their + appearance before in history. These were the reasons alleged by Henry + VIII. for the suppression of the smaller monasteries. The State, + having made up its mind to take away from the Free Church so much of + its property as the Commissioners may think it cannot usefully + administer, then proceeds, by this undebated Act of Parliament, to + give the overplus to the unsuccessful litigant, the United Free + Church. Why to them? It will never do to answer this question by + saying because it is always desirable to return lost property to its + true owner, since so to reply would be to give the lie direct to a + decision of the Final Court of Appeal on a question of property. +</p> +<p> + In the eye—I must not write the blind eye—of the law, this + parliamentary gift to the United Free Church is not a <i>giving back</i> + but an <i>original free gift</i> from the State by way of endowment to a + particular denomination of Presbyterian dissenters. In theory the + State could have done what it liked with so much of the property of + the Free Church as that body is not big enough to spend upon itself. + It might, for example, have divided it between Presbyterians + generally, or it might have left it to the Free Church to say who was + to be the disponee of its property. +</p> +<p> + As a matter of hard fact, the State had no choice in the matter. It + could not select, or let the Free Church select, the object of its + bounty. The public sense (a vague term) demanded that the United Free + Church should not be required to abide by the decision of the House of + Lords, but should have given to it whatever property could, under any + decent pretext of public policy and by Act of Parliament, be taken + away from the Free Church. If the pretext of the inability of the + Free Church to administer its own estate had not been forthcoming, + some other pretext must and would have been discovered. +</p> +<p> + Having regard, then, to 5 Edward VII., chapter 12, how ought one to + feel towards the decision of the House of Lords in the Scottish + Churches case? In public life you can usually huddle up anything, if + only all parties, for reasons, however diverse, of their own, are + agreed upon what is to be done. Like many another Act of Parliament, 5 + Edward VII., chapter 12, was bought with a sum of money. Nobody, not + even Lord Robertson, really wanted to debate or discuss it, least of + all to discover the philosophy of it. But in an essay you can huddle + up nothing. At all hazards, you must go on. This is why so many + essayists have been burnt alive. +</p> +<p> + <i>First</i>.—Was the decision wrong? 'Yes' or 'No.' If it was right— +</p> +<p> + <i>Second</i>.—Was the law, in pursuance of which the decision was given, + so manifestly unjust as to demand, not the alteration of the law for + the future, but the passage through Parliament, <i>ex post facto</i>, of an + Act to prevent the decision from taking effect between the parties + according to its tenour? +</p> +<p> + <i>Third</i>.—Supposing the decision to be right, and the law it expounded + just and reasonable in general, was there anything in the peculiar + circumstances of the successful litigant, and in the sources from + which a considerable portion of the property was derived, to justify + Parliamentary interference and the provisions of 5 Edward VII., + chapter 12? +</p> +<p> + <i>Number Three</i>, being the easiest way out of the difficulty, has been + adopted. The <i>decision</i> remains untouched, the <i>law</i> it expounds + remains unaltered—nothing has gone, except the <i>order</i> of the Final + Court giving effect to the untouched decision and to the unaltered + law. <i>That</i> has been tampered with for the reasons suggested in + <i>Number Three</i>. +</p> +<p> + John Locke was fond of referring questions to something he called 'the + bulk of mankind'—an undefinable, undignified, unsalaried body, of + small account at the beginning of controversies, but all-powerful at + their close. +</p> +<p> + My own belief is that eventually 'the bulk of mankind' will say + bluntly that the House of Lords went wrong in these cases, and that + the Act of Parliament was hastily patched up to avert wrong, and to + do substantial justice between the parties. +</p> +<p> + If asked, What can 'the bulk of mankind' know about law? I reply, with + great cheerfulness, 'Very little indeed.' But suppose that the + application of law to a particular <i>lis</i> requires precise and full + knowledge of all that happened during an ecclesiastical contest, and, + in addition, demands a grasp of the philosophy of religion, and the + ascertainment of true views as to the innate authority of a church and + the development of doctrine, would there be anything very surprising + if half a dozen eminent authorities in our Courts of Law and Equity + were to go wrong? +</p> +<p> + Between a frank admission of an incomplete consideration of a + complicated and badly presented case and such blunt <i>ex post facto</i> + legislation as 5 Edward VII., chapter 12, I should have preferred the + former. The Act is what would once have been called a dangerous + precedent. To-day precedents, good or bad, are not much considered. If + we want to do a thing, we do it, precedent or no precedent. So far we + have done so very little that the question has hardly arisen. If our + Legislature ever reassumes activity under new conditions, and in + obedience to new impulses, it may be discovered whether bad precedents + are dangerous or not. +</p> +<p> </p> + +<h3> + THE END +</h3> +<p> </p> +<p> </p> +<p> </p> + +<div>*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 12244 ***</div> +</body> +</html> diff --git a/LICENSE.txt b/LICENSE.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..6312041 --- /dev/null +++ b/LICENSE.txt @@ -0,0 +1,11 @@ +This eBook, including all associated images, markup, improvements, +metadata, and any other content or labor, has been confirmed to be +in the PUBLIC DOMAIN IN THE UNITED STATES. + +Procedures for determining public domain status are described in +the "Copyright How-To" at https://www.gutenberg.org. + +No investigation has been made concerning possible copyrights in +jurisdictions other than the United States. 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You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + + +Title: In the Name of the Bodleian and Other Essays + +Author: Augustine Birrell + +Release Date: May 3, 2004 [EBook #12244] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1 + +*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE BODLEIAN AND OTHERS *** + + + + +Produced by Janet Kegg and PG Distributed Proofreaders + + + + + + + + + +IN THE NAME OF THE BODLEIAN +AND OTHER ESSAYS + + +By + +AUGUSTINE BIRRELL + + +HONORARY FELLOW OF TRINITY HALL, CAMBRIDGE + + +_'Peace be with the soul of that charitable and courteous author who +for the common benefit of his fellow-authors introduced the ingenious +way of miscellaneous writing.'_--LORD SHAFTESBURY. + + +LONDON + +1906 + + + + +AUTHOR'S NOTE + +The first paper appeared in the _Outlook_, New York, the one on Mr. +Bradlaugh in the _Nineteenth Century_, and some of the others at +different times in the _Speaker_. + +3, NEW SQUARE, +LINCOLN'S INN. + + + + + CONTENTS + + I. 'IN THE NAME OF THE BODLEIAN' + II. BOOKWORMS + III. CONFIRMED READERS + IV. FIRST EDITIONS + V. GOSSIP IN A LIBRARY + VI. LIBRARIANS AT PLAY + VII. LAWYERS AT PLAY + VIII. THE NON-JURORS + IX. LORD CHESTERFIELD + X. THE JOHNSONIAN LEGEND + XI. BOSWELL AS BIOGRAPHER + XII. OLD PLEASURE GARDENS + XIII. OLD BOOKSELLERS + XIV. A FEW WORDS ABOUT COPYRIGHT IN BOOKS + XV. HANNAH MORE ONCE MORE + XVI. ARTHUR YOUNG + XVII. THOMAS PAINE + XVIII. CHARLES BRADLAUGH + XIX. DISRAELI _EX RELATIONE_ SIR WILLIAM FRASER + XX. A CONNOISSEUR + XXI. OUR GREAT MIDDLE CLASS + XXII. TAR AND WHITEWASH + XXIII. ITINERARIES + XXIV. EPITAPHS + XXV. 'HANSARD' + XXVI. CONTEMPT OF COURT + XXVII. 5 EDWARD VII., CHAPTER 12 + + + + +'IN THE NAME OF THE BODLEIAN' + + +With what feelings, I wonder, ought one to approach in a famous +University an already venerable foundation, devoted by the last will +and indented deed of a pious benefactor to the collection and housing +of books and the promotion of learning? The Bodleian at this moment +harbours within its walls well-nigh half a million of printed volumes, +some scores of precious manuscripts in all the tongues, and has become +a name famous throughout the whole civilized world. What sort of a +poor scholar would he be whose heart did not beat within him when, for +the first time, he found himself, to quote the words of 'Elia,' 'in +the heart of learning, under the shadow of the mighty Bodley'? + +Grave questions these! 'The following episode occurred during one of +Calverley's (then Blayds) appearances at "Collections," the Master +(Dr. Jenkyns) officiating. _Question_: "And with what feelings, Mr. +Blayds, ought we to regard the decalogue?" Calverley who had no very +clear idea of what was meant by the decalogue, but who had a due sense +of the importance both of the occasion and of the question, made the +following reply: "Master, with feelings of devotion, mingled with +awe!" "Quite right, young man; a very proper answer," exclaimed the +Master.'[A] + + [Footnote A: _Literary Remains of C.S. Calverley_, p. 31.] + +'Devotion mingled with awe' might be a very proper answer for me to +make to my own questions, but possessing that acquaintance with the +history of the most picturesque of all libraries which anybody can +have who loves books enough to devote a dozen quiet hours of +rumination to the pages of Mr. Macray's _Annals of the Bodleian +Library_, second edition, Oxford, 'at the Clarendon Press, 1890,' I +cannot honestly profess to entertain in my breast, with regard to it, +the precise emotions which C.S.C. declared took possession of him when +he regarded the decalogue. A great library easily begets affection, +which may deepen into love; but devotion and awe are plants hard to +rear in our harsh climate; besides, can it be well denied that there +is something in a huge collection of the ancient learning, of +mediaeval folios, of controversial pamphlets, and in the thick black +dust these things so woefully collect, provocative of listlessness and +enervation and of a certain Solomonic dissatisfaction? The two writers +of modern times, both pre-eminently sympathetic towards the past, who +have best described this somewhat melancholy and disillusioned frame +of mind are both Americans: Washington Irving, in two essays in _The +Sketch-Book_, 'The Art of Bookmaking' and 'The Mutability of +Literature'; and Nathaniel Hawthorne, in many places, but notably in +that famous chapter on 'The Emptiness of Picture Galleries,' in _The +Marble Faun_. + +It is perhaps best not to make too great demands upon our slender +stock of deep emotions, not to rhapsodize too much, or vainly to +pretend, as some travellers have done, that to them the collections +of the Bodleian, its laden shelves and precious cases, are more +attractive than wealth, fame, or family, and that it was stern Fate +that alone compelled them to leave Oxford by train after a visit +rarely exceeding twenty-four hours in duration. + +Sir Thomas Bodley's Library at Oxford is, all will admit, a great and +glorious institution, one of England's sacred places; and springing, +as it did, out of the mind, heart, and head of one strong, efficient, +and resolute man, it is matter for rejoicing with every honest +gentleman to be able to observe how quickly the idea took root, +how well it has thriven, by how great a tradition it has become +consecrated, and how studiously the wishes of the founder in all their +essentials are still observed and carried out. + +Saith the prophet Isaiah, 'The liberal deviseth liberal things; and by +liberal things he shall stand.' The name of Thomas Bodley still stands +all the world over by the liberal thing he devised. + +A few pages about this 'second Ptolemy' will be grudged me by none but +unlettered churls. + +He was a west countryman, an excellent thing to be in England if you +want backing through thick and thin, and was born in Exeter on March +2nd, 1544--a most troublesome date. It seems our fate in the old home +never to be for long quit of the religious difficulty--which is very +hard upon us, for nobody, I suppose, would call the English a +'religious' people. Little Thomas Bodley opened his eyes in a land +distracted with the religious difficulty. Listen to his own words; +they are full of the times: 'My father, in the time of Queen Mary, +being noted and known to be an enemy to Popery, was so cruelly +threatened and so narrowly observed by those that maliced his +religion, that for the safeguard of himself and my mother, who was +wholly affected as my father, he knew no way so secure as to fly into +Germany, where after a while he found means to call over my mother +with all his children and family, whom he settled for a time in Wesel +in Cleveland. (For there, there were many English which had left their +country for their conscience and with quietness enjoyed their meetings +and preachings.) From thence he removed to the town of Frankfort, +where there was in like sort another English congregation. Howbeit we +made no longer tarriance in either of these two towns, for that my +father had resolved to fix his abode in the city of Geneva.' + +Here the Bodleys remained 'until such time as our Nation was +advertised of the death of Queen Mary and the succession of Elizabeth, +with the change of religion which caused my father to hasten into +England.' + +In Geneva young Bodley and his brothers enjoyed what now would be +called great educational advantages. Small creature though he was, he +yet attended, so he says, the public lectures of Chevalerius in +Hebrew, Bersaldus in Greek, and of Calvin and Beza in Divinity. He +had also 'domestical teachers,' and was taught Homer by Robert +Constantinus, who was the author of a Greek lexicon, a luxury in those +days. + +On returning to England, Bodley proceeded, not to Exeter College, as +by rights he should have done, but to Magdalen, where he became a +'reading man,' and graduated Bachelor of Arts in 1563. The next year +he shifted his quarters to Merton, where he gave public lectures on +Greek. In 1566 he became a Master of Arts, took to the study of +natural philosophy, and three years later was Junior Proctor. He +remained in residence until 1576, thus spending seventeen years in the +University. In the last-mentioned year he obtained leave of absence to +travel on the Continent, and for four years he pursued his studies +abroad, mastering the French, Spanish, and Italian languages. Some +short time after his return home he obtained an introduction to Court +circles and became an Esquire to Queen Elizabeth, who seems to have +entertained varying opinions about him, at one time greatly commending +him and at another time wishing he were hanged--an awkward wish on +Tudor lips. In 1588 Bodley married a wealthy widow, a Mrs. Ball, the +daughter of a Bristol man named Carew. As Bodley survived his wife and +had no children, a good bit of her money remains in the Bodleian to +this day. Blessed be her memory! Nor should the names of Carew and +Ball be wholly forgotten in this connection. From 1588 to 1596 Bodley +was in the diplomatic service, chiefly at The Hague, where he did good +work in troublesome times. On being finally recalled from The Hague, +Bodley had to make up his mind whether to pursue a public life. He +suffered from having too many friends, for not only did Burleigh +patronize him, but Essex must needs do the same. No man can serve two +masters, and though to be the victim of the rival ambitions of greater +men than yourself is no uncommon fate, it is a currish one. Bodley +determined to escape it, and to make for himself after a very +different fashion a name _aere perennius_. + + 'I resolved thereupon to possess my soul in peace all the residue + of my days, to take my full farewell of State employments, to + satisfy my mind with the mediocrity of worldly living that I had of + mine own, and so to retire me from the Court.' + +But what was he to do? + + 'Whereupon, examining exactly for the rest of my life what course I + might take, and having sought all the ways to the wood to select + the most proper, I concluded at the last to set up my staff at the + Library door in Oxford, being thoroughly persuaded that in my + solitude and surcease from the Commonwealth affairs I could not + busy myself to better purpose than by reducing that place (which + then in every part lay ruined waste) to the publick use of + students.' + +It is pleasant to be admitted into the birth-chamber of a great idea +destined to be translated into action. Bodley proceeds to state the +four qualifications he felt himself to possess to do this great bit of +work: first, the necessary knowledge of ancient and modern tongues and +of 'sundry other sorts of scholastical literature'; second, purse +ability; third, a great store of honourable friends; and fourth, +leisure. + +Bodley's description of the state of the old library as lying in every +part ruined and in waste was but too true. + +Richard of Bury, the book-loving Bishop of Durham, seems to have been +the first donor of manuscripts on anything like a large scale to +Oxford, but the library he founded was at Durham College, which stood +where Trinity College now stands, and was in no sense a University +library. The good Bishop, known to all book-hunters as the author of +the _Philobiblon_, died in 1345, but his collection remained intact, +subject to rules he had himself laid down, until the dissolution of +the monasteries, when Durham College, which was attached to a +religious house, was put up for sale, and its library, like so much +else of good learning at this sad period, was dispersed and for the +most part destroyed. + +Bodley's real predecessor, the first begetter of a University library, +was Thomas Cobham, Bishop of Worcester, who in 1320 prepared a chamber +above a vaulted room in the north-east corner of St. Mary's Church for +the reception of the books he intended to bestow upon his University. +When the Bishop of Worcester (as a matter of fact, he had once been +elected Archbishop of Canterbury; but that is another story, as +Laurence Sterne has said) died in 1327, it was discovered that he had +by his will bequeathed his library to Oxford, but he was insolvent! No +rich relict of a defunct Ball was available for a Bishop in those +days. The executors found themselves without sufficient estate to pay +for their testator's funeral expenses, even then the first charge upon +assets. They are not to be blamed for pawning the library. A good +friend redeemed the pledge, and despatched the books--all, of course, +manuscripts--to Oxford. For some reason or another Oriel took them in, +and, having become their bailee, refused to part with them, possibly +and plausibly alleging that the University was not in a position to +give a valid receipt. At Oriel they remained for ten years, when all +of a sudden the scholars of the University, animated by their +notorious affection for sound learning and a good 'row,' took Oriel by +storm, and carried off the books in triumph to Bishop Cobham's room, +where they remained in chests unread for thirty years. In 1367 the +University by statute ratified and confirmed its title to the books, +and published regulations for their use, but the quarrel with Oriel +continued till 1409, when the Cobham Library was for the first time +properly furnished and opened as a place for study and reference. + +The librarian of the old Cobham Library had an advantage over Mr. +Nicholson, the Bodley librarian of to-day. Being a clerk in Holy +Orders before the time when, in Bodley's own phrase, already quoted, +we 'changed' our religion, he was authorized by the University to say +masses for the souls of all dead donors of books, whether by gifts +_inter vivos_ or by bequest. + +The first great benefactor of Cobham's Library was Duke Humphrey of +Gloucester, the youngest son of Henry IV., and perhaps the most +'pushful' youngest son in our royal annals. Though a dissipated and +unprincipled fellow, he lives in history as 'the good Duke Humphrey,' +because he had the sense to patronize learning, collect manuscripts, +and enrich Universities. He began his gifts to Oxford as early, so say +some authorities, as 1411, and continued his donations of manuscripts +with such vivacity that the little room in St. Mary's could no longer +contain its riches. Hence the resolution of the University in 1444 to +build a new library over the Divinity School. This new room, which +was completed in 1480, forms now the central portion of that great +reading-room so affectionately remembered by thousands of still living +students. + +Duke Humphrey's Library, as the new room was popularly called, +continued to flourish and receive valuable accessions of manuscripts +and printed books belonging to divinity, medicine, natural science, +and literature until the ill-omened year 1550. Oxford has never loved +Commissioners revising her statutes and reforming her schools, but +the Commissioners of 1550 were worse than prigs, worse even than +Erastians: they were barbarians and wreckers. They were deputed by +King Edward VI., 'in the spirit of the Reformation,' to make an end of +the Popish superstition. Under their hands the library totally +disappeared, and for a long while the tailors and shoemakers and +bookbinders of Oxford were well supplied with vellum, which they found +useful in their respective callings. It was a hard fate for so +splendid a collection. True it is that for the most part the contents +of the library had been rescued from miserable ill-usage in the +monasteries and chapter-houses where they had their first habitations, +but at last they had found shelter over the Divinity School of a great +University. There at least they might hope to slumber. But our +Reformers thought otherwise. The books and manuscripts being thus +dispersed or destroyed, a prudent if unromantic Convocation exposed +for sale the wooden shelves, desks, and seats of the old library, and +so made a complete end of the whole concern, thus making room for +Thomas Bodley. + +On February 23, 1597/8, Thomas Bodley sat himself down in his London +house and addressed to the Vice-Chancellor of his University a certain +famous letter: + + 'SIR, + 'Altho' you know me not as I suppose, yet for the farthering of an + offer of evident utilitie to your whole University I will not be + too scrupulous in craving your assistance. I have been alwaies of + a mind that if God of his goodness should make me able to do + anything for the benefit of posteritie, I would shew some token of + affiction that I have ever more borne to the studies of good + learning. I know my portion is too slender to perform for the + present any answerable act to my willing disposition, but yet to + notify some part of my desire in that behalf I have resolved thus + to deal. Where there hath been heretofore a public library in + Oxford which you know is apparent by the room itself remaining and + by your statute records, I will take the charge and cost upon me to + reduce it again to its former use and to make it fit and handsome + with seats and shelves and desks and all that may be needful to + stir up other mens benevolence to help to furnish it with books. + And this I purpose to begin as soon as timber can be gotten to the + intent that you may be of some speedy profit of my project. And + where before as I conceive it was to be reputed but a store of + books of divers benefactors because it never had any lasting + allowance for augmentation of the number or supply of books + decayed, whereby it came to pass that when those that were in being + were either wasted or embezzled, the whole foundation came to ruin. + To meet with that inconvenience, I will so provide hereafter (if + God do not hinder my present design) as you shall be still assured + of a standing annual rent to be disbursed every year in buying of + books, or officers stipends and other pertinent occasions, with + which provision and some order for the preservation of the place + and the furniture of it from accustomed abuses, it may perhaps in + time to come prove a notable treasure for the multitude of volumes, + an excellent benefit for the use and ease of students, and a + singular ornament of the University.' + +The letter does not stop here, but my quotation has already probably +wearied most of my readers, though for my own part I am not ashamed to +confess that I seldom tire of retracing with my own hand the +_ipsissima verba_ whereby great and truly notable gifts have been +bestowed upon nations or Universities or even municipalities for the +advancement of learning and the spread of science. Bodley's language +is somewhat involved, but through it glows the plain intention of an +honest man. + +Convocation, we are told, embraced the offer with wonderful alacrity, +and lost no time in accepting it in good Latin. + +From February, 1598, to January, 1613 (when he died), Bodley was happy +with as glorious a hobby-horse as ever man rode astride upon. Though +Bodley, in one of his letters, modestly calls himself a mere +'smatterer,' he was, as indeed he had the sense to recognise, +excellently well fitted to be a collector of books, being both a good +linguist and personally well acquainted with the chief cities of the +Continent and with their booksellers. He was thus able to employ +well-selected agents in different parts of Europe to buy books on his +account, which it was his pleasure to receive, his rapture to unpack, +his pride to despatch in what he calls 'dry-fats'--that is, +weather-tight chests--to Dr. James, the first Bodley librarian. +Despite growing and painful infirmities (stone, ague, dropsy), Bodley +never even for a day dismounted his hobby, but rode it manfully to the +last. Nor had he any mean taint of nature that might have grudged +other men a hand in the great work. The more benefactors there were, +the better pleased was Bodley. He could not, indeed--for had he not +been educated at Geneva and attended the Divinity Lectures of Calvin +and Beza?--direct Dr. James to say masses for the souls of such donors +of money or books as should die, but he did all a poor Protestant can +do to tempt generosity: he opened and kept in a very public place in +the library a great register-book, containing the names and titles of +all benefactors. Bodley was always on the look-out for gifts and +bequests from his store of honourable friends; and in the case of Sir +Henry Savile he even relaxed the rule against lending books from the +library, because, as he frankly admits to Dr. James, he had hopes +(which proved well founded) that Sir Henry would not forget his +obligations to the Bodleian. + +The library was formally opened on November 8, 1602, and then +contained some 2,000 volumes. Two years later its founder was knighted +by King James, who on the following June directed letters patent to be +issued styling the library by the founder's name and licensing the +University to hold land in mortmain for its maintenance. The most +learned and by no means the most foolish of our Kings, this same James +I., visited the Bodleian in May, 1605. Sir Thomas was not present. +There it was that the royal pun was made that the founder's name +should have been Godly and not Bodley. King James handled certain old +manuscripts with the familiarity of a scholar, and is reported to have +said, I doubt not with perfect sincerity, that were he not King James +he would be an University man, and that were it his fate at any time +to be a captive, he would wish to be shut up in the Bodleian and to be +bound with its chains, consuming his days amongst its books as his +fellows in captivity. Indeed, he was so carried away by the atmosphere +of the place as to offer to present to the Bodleian whatever books Sir +Thomas Bodley might think fit to lay hands upon in any of the royal +libraries, and he kept this royal word so far as to confirm the gift +under the Privy Seal. But there it seems to have stopped, for the +Bodleian does not contain any volumes traceable to this source. The +King's librarians probably obstructed any such transfer of books. + +Authors seem at once to have recognised the importance of the library, +and to have made presentation copies of their works, and in 1605 we +find Bacon sending a copy of his _Advancement of Learning_ to Bodley, +with a letter in which he said: 'You, having built an ark to save +learning from deluge, deserve propriety [ownership] in any new +instrument or engine whereby learning should be improved or advanced.' +The most remarkable letter Bodley ever wrote, now extant, is one to +Bacon; but it has no reference to the library, only to the Baconian +philosophy. We do not get many glimpses of Bodley's habits of life or +ways of thinking, but there is no difficulty in discerning a +strenuous, determined, masterful figure, bent during his later years, +perhaps tyrannously bent, on effecting his object. He was not, we +learn from a correspondent, 'hasty to write but when the posts do urge +him, saying there need be no answer to your letters till more leisure +breed him opportunity.' 'Words are women, deeds are men,' is another +saying of his which I reprint without comment. + +By an indenture dated April 20, 1609, Bodley, after reciting how he +had, out of his zealous affection to the advancement of learning, +lately erected upon the ruins of the old decayed library of Oxford +University 'a most ample, commodious, and necessary building, as well +for receipt and conveyance of books as for the use and ease of +students, and had already furnished the same with excellent writers on +all sorts of sciences, arts, and tongues, not only selected out of his +own study and store, but also of others that were freely conferred by +many other men's gifts,' proceeded to grant to trustees lands and +hereditaments in Berkshire and in the city of London for the purpose +of forming a permanent endowment of his library; and so they, or the +proceeds of sale thereof, have remained unto this day. + +Sir Thomas Bodley died on January 20, 1613, his last days being +soothed by a letter he received from the Vice-Chancellor of Oxford +University condoling his sickness and signifying how much the Heads of +Houses, etc., prayed for his recovery. A cynical friend--not much of a +friend, as we shall see--called John Chamberlain, was surprised to +observe what pleasure this assurance gave to the dying man. 'Whereby,' +writes Chamberlain to Sir Ralph Winwood, 'I perceive how much fair +words work, as well upon wise men as upon others, for indeed it did +affect him very much.' + +Bodley was rather put out in his last illness by the refusal of a +Cambridge doctor, Batter, to come to see him, the doctor saying: +'Words cannot cure him, and I can do nothing else for him.' There is +an occasional curtness about Cambridge men that is hard but not +impossible to reconcile with good feeling. + +Bodley's will gave great dissatisfaction to some of his friends, +including this aforesaid John Chamberlain, and yet, on reading it +through, it is not easy to see any cause for just complaint. Bodley's +brother did not grumble, there were no children, Lady Bodley had died +in 1611, and everybody who knew the testator must have known that the +library would be (as it was) the great object of his bounty. What +annoyed Chamberlain seems to be that, whilst he had (so he says, +though I take leave to doubt it) put down Bodley for some trifle in +his will, Bodley forgot to mention Chamberlain in his. There is always +a good deal of human nature exhibited on these occasions. I will +transcribe a bit of one of this gentleman's grumbling letters, +written, one may be sure, with no view to publication, the day after +Bodley's death: + + 'Mr. Gent came to me this morning as it were to bemoan himself of + the little regard hath been had of him and others, and indeed for + ought I hear there is scant anybody pleased, but for the rest it + were no great matter if he had had more consideration or + commiseration where there was most need. But he was so carried away + with the vanity and vain-glory of his library, that he forgot all + other respects and duties, almost of Conscience, Friendship, or + Good-nature, and all he had was too little for that work. To say + the truth I never did rely much upon his conscience, but I thought + he had been more real and ingenuous. I cannot learn that he hath + given anything, no, not a good word nor so much as named any old + friend he had, but Mr. Gent and Thos. Allen, who like a couple of + Almesmen must have his best and second gown, and his best and + second cloak, but to cast a colour or shadow of something upon Mr. + Gent, he says he forgives him all he owed him, which Mr. Gent + protests is never a penny. I must intreat you to pardon me if I + seem somewhat impatient on his [_i.e._, Gent's] behalf, who hath + been so servile to him, and indeed such a perpetual servant, that + he deserved a better reward. Neither can I deny that I have a + little indignation for myself that having been acquainted with him + for almost forty years, and observed and respected him so much, I + should not be remembered with the value of a spoon, or a mourning + garment, whereas if I had gone before him (as poor a man as I am), + he should not have found himself forgotten.'[A] + + [Footnote A: _Winwood's Memorials_, vol. iii., p. 429.] + +Bodley did no more by his will, which is dated January 2, 1613, and is +all in his own handwriting, than he had bound himself to do in his +lifetime, and I feel as certain as I can feel about anything that +happened nearly 300 years ago, that Mr. Gent, of Gloucester Hall, did +owe Bodley money, though, as many another member of the University of +Oxford has done with his debts, he forgot all about it. + +The founder of the Bodleian was buried with proper pomp and +circumstance in the chapel of Merton College on March 29, 1613. Two +Latin orations were delivered over his remains, one, that of John +Hales (the ever-memorable), a Fellow of Merton, being of no +inconsiderable length. After all was over, those who had mourning +weeds or 'blacks' retired, with the Heads of Houses, to the refectory +of Merton and had a funeral dinner bestowed upon them, 'amounting to +the sum of £100,' as directed by the founder's will. + +The great foundation of Sir Thomas Bodley has, happily for all of us, +had better fortune than befell the generous gifts of the Bishops of +Durham and Worcester. The Protestant layman has had the luck, not the +large-minded prelates of the old religion. Even during the Civil War +Bodley's books remained uninjured, at all events by the Parliament +men. 'When Oxford was surrendered [June 24, 1646], the first thing +General Fairfax did was to set a good guard of soldiers to preserve +the Bodleian Library. 'Tis said there was more hurt done by the +Cavaliers [during their garrison] by way of embezzling and cutting of +chains of books than there was since. He was a lover of learning, and +had he not taken this special care that noble library had been utterly +destroyed, for there were ignorant senators enough who would have been +contented to have it so' (see Macray, p. 101). + +Oliver Cromwell, while Lord Protector, presented to the library +twenty-two Greek manuscripts he had purchased, and, what is more, when +Bodley's librarian refused the Lord Protector's request to allow the +Portugal Ambassador to borrow a manuscript, sending instead of the +manuscript a copy of the statutes forbidding loans, Oliver commended +the prudence of the founder, and subsequently made the donation just +mentioned. + +A great wave of generosity towards this foundation was early +noticeable. The Bodleian got hold of men's imaginations. In those days +there were learned men in all walks of life, and many more who, if not +learned, were endlessly curious. The great merchants of the city of +London instructed their agents in far lands to be on the look-out for +rare things, and transmit them home to find a resting-place in +Bodley's buildings. All sorts of curiosities found their way +there--crocodiles, whales, mummies, and black negro-boys in spirits. +The Ashmolean now holds most of them; the negro-boy has been +conveniently lost. + +In 1649 the total of 2,000 printed books had risen to more than +12,000--viz., folios, 5,889; quartos, 2,067; octavos, 4,918; whilst of +manuscripts there were 3,001. One of the first gifts in money came +from Sir Walter Raleigh, who in 1605 gave £50, whilst among the early +benefactors of books and manuscripts it were a sin not to name the +Earl of Pembroke, Archbishop Laud (one of the library's best friends), +Robert Burton (of the _Anatomy of Melancholy_), Sir Kenelm Digby, John +Selden, Lord Fairfax, Colonel Vernon, and Barlow, Bishop of Lincoln. +No nobler library exists in the world than the Bodleian, unless it be +in the Vatican at Rome. The foundation of Sir Thomas Bodley, though of +no antiquity, shines with unrivalled splendour in the galaxy of Oxford + + 'Amidst the stars that own another birth.' + +I must not say, being myself a Cambridge man, that the Bodleian +dominates Oxford, yet to many an English, American, and foreign +traveller to that city, which, despite railway-stations and motor-cars +and the never-ending villas and perambulators of the Banbury Road, +still breathes the charm of an earlier age, the Bodleian is the +pulsing heart of the University. Colleges, like ancient homesteads, +unless they are yours, never quite welcome you, though ready enough to +receive with civility your tendered meed of admiration. You wander +through their gardens, and pace their quadrangles with no sense of +co-ownership; not for you are their clustered memories. In the +Bodleian every lettered heart feels itself at home. + +Bodley drafted with his own hand the first statutes or rules to be +observed in his library. Speaking generally, they are wise rules. One +mistake, indeed, he made--a great mistake, but a natural one. Let him +give his own reasons: + + 'I can see no good reason to alter my rule for excluding such books + as Almanacks, Plays, and an infinite number that are daily printed + of very unworthy matters--handling such books as one thinks both + the Keeper and Under-Keeper should disdain to seek out, to deliver + to any man. Haply some plays may be worthy the keeping--but hardly + one in forty.... This is my opinion, wherein if I err I shall err + with infinite others; and the more I think upon it, the more it + doth distaste me that such kinds of books should be vouchsafed room + in so noble a library.'[A] + + [Footnote A: See correspondence in _Reliquiae Bodleianae_, London, + 1703.] + +'Baggage-books' was the contemptuous expression elsewhere employed to +describe this 'light infantry' of literature--_Belles Lettres_, as it +is now more politely designated. + +One play in forty is liberal measure, but who is to say out of the +forty plays which is the one worthy to be housed in a noble library? +The taste of Vice-Chancellors and Heads of Houses, of keepers and +under-keepers of libraries--can anybody trust it? The Bodleian is +entitled by imperial statutes to receive copies of all books published +within the realm, yet it appears, on the face of a Parliamentary +return made in 1818, that this 'noble library' refused to find room +for Ossian, the favourite poet of Goethe and Napoleon, and labelled +Miss Edgeworth's _Parent's Assistant_ and Miss Hannah More's _Sacred +Dramas_ 'Rubbish.' The sister University, home though she be of nearly +every English poet worth reading, rejected the _Siege of Corinth_, +though the work of a Trinity man; would not take in the _Thanksgiving +Ode_ of Mr. Wordsworth, of St. John's College; declined Leigh Hunt's +_Story of Rimini_; vetoed the _Headlong Hall_ of the inimitable +Peacock, and, most wonderful of all, would have nothing to say to +Scott's _Antiquary_, being probably disgusted to find that a book with +so promising a title was only a novel. + +Now this is altered, and everything is collected in the Bodleian, +including, so I am told, Christmas-cards and bills of fare. + +Bodley's rule has proved an expensive one, for the library has been +forced to buy at latter-day prices 'baggage-books' it could have got +for nothing. + +Another ill-advised regulation got rid of duplicates. Thus, when the +third Shakespeare Folio appeared in 1664, the Bodleian disposed of its +copy of the First Folio. However, this wrong was righted in 1821, +when, under the terms of Edmund Malone's bequest, the library once +again became the possessor of the edition of 1623. Quite lately the +original displaced Folio has been recovered. + +Against lending books Bodley was adamant, and here his rule prevails. +It is pre-eminently a wise one. The stealing of books, as well as the +losing of books, from public libraries is a melancholy and ancient +chapter in the histories of such institutions; indeed, there is too +much reason to believe that not a few books in the Bodleian itself +were stolen to start with. But the long possession by such a +foundation has doubtless purged the original offence. In the National +Library in Paris is at least one precious manuscript which was stolen +from the Escurial. There are volumes in the British Museum on which +the Bodleian looks with suspicion, and _vice versa_. But let sleeping +dogs lie. Bodley would not give the divines who were engaged upon a +bigger bit of work even than his library--the translation of the Bible +into that matchless English which makes King James's version our +greatest literary possession--permission to borrow 'the one or two +books' they wished to see. + +Bodley's Library has sheltered through three centuries many queer +things besides books and strangely-written manuscripts in old tongues; +queerer things even than crocodiles, whales, and mummies--I mean the +librarians and sub-librarians, janitors, and servants. Oddities many +of them have been. Honest old Jacobites, non-jurors, primitive +thinkers, as well as scandalously lazy drunkards and illiterate dogs. +An old foundation can afford to have a varied experience in these +matters. + +One of the most original of these originals was the famous Thomas +Hearne, an 'honest gentleman'--that is, a Jacobite--and one whose +collections and diaries have given pleasure to thousands. He was +appointed janitor in 1701, and sub-librarian in 1712, but in 1716, +when an Act of Parliament came into operation which imposed a fine of +£500 upon anyone who held any public office without taking the oath of +allegiance to the Hanoverians, Hearne's office was taken away from +him; but he shared with his King over the water the satisfaction of +accounting himself still _de jure_, and though he lived till 1735, +he never failed each half-year to enter his salary and fees as +sub-librarian as being still unpaid. He was perhaps a little spiteful +and vindictive, but none the less a fine old fellow. I will write down +as specimens of his humour a prayer of his and an apology, and then +leave him alone. His prayer ran as follows: + + 'O most gracious and merciful Lord God, wonderful in Thy + Providence, I return all possible thanks to Thee for the care Thou + hast always taken of me. I continually meet with most signal + instances of this Thy Providence, and one act yesterday, _when I + unexpectedly met with three old manuscripts_, for which in a + particular manner I return my thanks, beseeching Thee to continue + the same protection to me, a poor helpless sinner, and that for + Jesus Christ his sake' (_Aubrey's Letters_, i. 118). + +His apology, which I do not think was actually published, though kept +in draft, was after this fashion: + + 'I, Thomas Hearne, A.M. of the University of Oxford, having ever + since my matriculation followed my studies with as much application + as I have been capable of, and having published several books for + the honour and credit of learning, and particularly for the + reputation of the foresaid University, am very sorry that by my + declining to say anything but what I knew to be true in any of my + writings, and especially in the last book I published entituled, + &c, I should incur the displeasure of any of the Heads of Houses, + and as a token of my sorrow for their being offended at truth, I + subscribe my name to this paper and permit them to make what use of + it they please.' + +Leaping 140 years, an odd tale is thus lovingly recorded of another +sub-librarian, the Rev. A. Hackman, who died in 1874: + + 'During all the time of his service in the library (thirty-six + years) he had used as a cushion in his plain wooden armchair a + certain vellum-bound folio, which by its indented side, worn down + by continual pressure, bore testimony to the use to which it had + been put. No one had ever the curiosity to examine what the book + might be, but when, after Hackman's departure from the library, it + was removed from its resting-place of years, some amusement was + caused by finding that the chief compiler of the last printed + catalogue had omitted from his catalogue the volume on which he + sat, of which, too, though of no special value, there was no other + copy in the library' (Macray, p. 388A). + +The spectacle in the mind's eye of this devoted sub-librarian and +sound divine sitting on the vellum-bound folio for six-and-thirty +years, so absorbed in his work as to be oblivious of the fact that he +had failed to include in what was his _magnum opus_, the Great +Catalogue, the very book he was sitting upon, tickles the midriff. + +Here I must bring these prolonged but wholly insufficient observations +to a very necessary conclusion. Not a word has been said of the great +collection of bibles, or of the unique copies of the Koran and the +Talmud and the _Arabian Nights_, or of the Dante manuscripts, or of +Bishop Tanner's books (many bought on the dispersion of Archbishop +Sancroft's great library), which in course of removal by water from +Norwich to Oxford fell into the river and remained submerged for +twenty hours, nor of many other splendid benefactions of a later date. + +One thing only remains, not to be said, but to be sent round--I mean +the hat. Ignominious to relate, this glorious foundation stands in +need of money. Shade of Sir Thomas Bodley, I invoke thy aid to loosen +the purse-strings of the wealthy! The age of learned and curious +merchants, of high-spirited and learning-loving nobles, of +book-collecting bishops, of antiquaries, is over. The Bodleian cannot +condescend to beg. It is too majestical. But I, an unauthorized +stranger, have no need to be ashamed. + +Especially rich is this great library in _Americana_, and America +suggests multi-millionaires. The rich men of the United States have +been patriotically alive to the first claims of their own richly +endowed universities, and long may they so continue; but if by any +happy chance any one of them should accidentally stumble across an odd +million or even half a million of dollars hidden away in some casual +investment he had forgotten, what better thing could he do with it +than send it to this, the most famous foundation of his Old Home? It +would be acknowledged by return of post in English and in Latin, and +the donor's name would be inscribed, not indeed (and this is a +regrettable lapse) in that famous old register which Bodley provided +should always be in a prominent place in his library, but in the +Annual Statement of Accounts now regularly issued. To be associated +with the Bodleian is to share its fame and partake of the blessing it +has inherited. 'The liberal deviseth liberal things; and by liberal +things he shall stand.' + + + +BOOKWORMS + + +Great is bookishness and the charm of books. No doubt there are times +and seasons in the lives of most reading men when they rebel against +the dust of libraries and kick against the pricks of these monstrously +accumulated heaps of words. We all know 'the dark hour' when the +vanity of learning and the childishness of merely literary things are +brought home to us in such a way as almost to avail to put the pale +student out of conceit with his books, and to make him turn from his +best-loved authors as from a friend who has outstayed his welcome, +whose carriage we wish were at the door. In these unhappy moments we +are apt to call to mind the shrewd men we have known, who have been +our blithe companions on breezy fells, heathery moor, and by the +stream side, who could neither read nor write, or who, at all events, +but rarely practised those Cadmean arts. Yet they could tell the time +of day by the sun, and steer through the silent night by the stars; +and each of them had--as Emerson, a very bookish person, has said--a +dial in his mind for the whole bright calendar of the year. How racy +was their talk; how wise their judgments on men and things; how well +they did all that at the moment seemed worth doing; how universally +useful was their garnered experience--their acquired learning! How +wily were these illiterates in the pursuit of game--how ready in an +emergency! What a charm there is about out-of-door company! Who would +not sooner have spent a summer's day with Sir Walter's humble friend, +Tom Purday, than with Mr. William Wordsworth of Rydal Mount! It is, we +can only suppose, reflections such as these that make country +gentlemen and farmers the sworn foes they are of education and the +enemies of School Boards. + +I only indicate this line of thought to condemn it. Such temptations +come from below. Great, we repeat, is bookishness and the charm of +books. Even the writings, the ponderous writings, of that portentous +parson, the Rev. T.F. Dibdin, with all their lumbering gaiety and +dust-choked rapture over first editions, are not hastily to be sent +packing to the auction-room. Much red gold did they cost us, these +portly tomes, in bygone days, and on our shelves they shall remain +till the end of our time, unless our creditors intervene--were it only +to remind us of years when our enthusiasms were pure though our tastes +may have been crude. + +Some years ago Mr. Blades, the famous printer and Caxtonist, published +in vellum covers a small volume which he christened _The Enemies of +Books_. It made many friends, and now a revised and enlarged version +in comely form, adorned with pictures, and with a few prefatory words +by Dr. Garnett, has made its appearance. Mr. Blades himself has left +this world for a better one, where--so piety bids us believe--neither +fire nor water nor worm can despoil or destroy the pages of heavenly +wisdom. But the book-collector must not be caught nursing mere +sublunary hopes. There is every reason to believe that in the realms +of the blessed the library, like that of Major Ponto, will be small +though well selected. Mr. Blades had, as his friend Dr. Garnett +observes, a debonair spirit--there was nothing fiery or controversial +about him. His attitude towards the human race and its treatment of +rare books was rather mournful than angry. For example, under the head +of 'Fire,' he has occasion to refer to that great destruction of books +of magic which took place at Ephesus, to which St. Luke has called +attention in his Acts of the Apostles. Mr. Blades describes this +holocaust as righteous, and only permits himself to say in a kind of +undertone that he feels a certain mental disquietude and uneasiness at +the thought of the loss of more than £18,000 worth of books, which +could not but have thrown much light (had they been preserved) on +many curious questions of folk-lore. Personally, I am dead against the +burning of books. A far worse, because a corrupt, proceeding, was the +scandalously horrid fate that befell the monastic libraries at our +disgustingly conducted, even if generally beneficent, Reformation. The +greedy nobles and landed gentry, who grabbed the ancient foundations +of the old religion, cared nothing for the books they found cumbering +the walls, and either devoted them to vile domestic uses or sold them +in shiploads across the seas. It may well be that the monks--fine, +lusty fellows!--cared more for the contents of their fish-ponds than +of their libraries; but, at all events, they left the books alone to +take their chance--they did not rub their boots with them or sell them +at the price of old paper. A man need have a very debonair spirit who +does not lose his temper over our blessed Reformation. Mr. Blades, on +the whole, managed to keep his. + +Passing from fire, Mr. Blades has a good deal to say about water, and +the harm it has been allowed to do in our collegiate and cathedral +libraries. With really creditable composure he writes: 'Few old +libraries in England are now so thoroughly neglected as they were +thirty years ago. The state of many of our collegiate and cathedral +libraries was at that time simply appalling. I could mention many +instances--one especially--where, a window having been left broken for +a long time, the ivy had pushed through and crept over a row of books, +each of which was worth hundreds of pounds. In rainy weather the water +was conducted as by a pipe along the tops of the books, and soaked +through the whole.' Ours is indeed a learned Church. Fancy the mingled +amazement and dismay of the Dean and Chapter when they were informed +that all this mouldering literary trash had 'boodle' in it. 'In +another and a smaller collection the rain came through on to a +bookcase through a sky-light, saturating continually the top shelf, +containing Caxtons and other English books, one of which, although +rotten, was sold soon after by permission of the Charity Commissioners +for £200.' Oh, those scoundrelly Charity Commissioners! How +impertinent has been their interference with the loving care and +guardianship of the Lord's property by His lawfully consecrated +ministers! By the side of these anthropoid apes, the genuine +bookworm, the paper-eating insect, ravenous as he once was, has done +comparatively little mischief. Very little seems known of the +creature, though the purchaser of Mr. Blades's book becomes the owner +of a life-size portrait of the miscreant in one, at all events, of his +many shapes. Mr. Birdsall, of Northampton, sent Mr. Blades, in 1879, +by post, a fat little worm he had found in an old volume. Mr. Blades +did all, and more than all, that could be expected of a humane man to +keep the creature alive, actually feeding him with fragments of +Caxtons and seventeenth-century literature; but it availed not, for in +three weeks the thing died, and as the result of a post-mortem was +declared to be _Aecophera pseudopretella_. Some years later Dr. +Garnett, who has spent a long life obliging men of letters, sent Mr. +Blades two Athenian worms, which had travelled to this country in a +Hebrew Commentary; but, lovely and pleasant in their lives, in their +deaths they were not far divided. Mr. Blades, at least, mourned their +loss. The energy of bookworms, like that of men, greatly varies. Some +go much farther than others. However fair they may start on the same +folio, they end very differently. Once upon a time 212 worms began to +eat their way through a stout folio printed in the year 1477, by Peter +Schoeffer, of Mentz. It was an ungodly race they ran, but let me trace +their progress. By the time the sixty-first page was reached all but +four had given in, either slinking back the way they came, or +perishing _en route_. By the time the eighty-sixth page had been +reached but one was left, and he evidently on his last legs, for he +failed to pierce his way through page 87. At the other end of the same +book another lot of worms began to bore, hoping, I presume, to meet +in the middle, like the makers of submarine tunnels, but the last +survivor of this gang only reached the sixty ninth page from the end. +Mr. Blades was of opinion that all these worms belonged to the +_Anobium pertinax_. Worms have fallen upon evil days, for, whether +modern books are readable or not, they have long since ceased to be +edible. The worm's instinct forbids him to 'eat the china clay, the +bleaches, the plaster of Paris, the sulphate of barytes, the scores of +adulterants now used to mix with the fibre.' Alas, poor worm! Alas, +poor author! Neglected by the _Anobium pertinax_, what chance is +there of anyone, man or beast, a hundred years hence reaching his +eighty-seventh page! + +Time fails me to refer to bookbinders, frontispiece collectors, +servants and children, and other enemies of books; but the volume I +refer to is to be had of the booksellers, and is a pleasant volume, +worthy of all commendation. Its last words set me thinking; they are: + + 'Even a millionaire will ease his toils, lengthen his life, and add + 100 per cent. to his daily pleasures, if he becomes a bibliophile; + while to the man of business with a taste for books, who through + the day has struggled in the battle of life, with all its + irritating rebuffs and anxieties, what a blessed season of + pleasurable repose opens upon him as he enters his sanctum, where + every article wafts him a welcome and every book is a personal + friend!' + +As for the millionaire, I frankly say I have no desire his life should +be lengthened, and care nothing about adding 100 per cent. to his +daily pleasures. He is a nuisance, for he has raised prices nearly 100 +per cent. We curse the day when he was told it was the thing to buy +old books; and, if he must buy old books, why is he not content with +the works of Gibbon, Hume, and Robertson, and Flavius Josephus, that +learned Jew? But it is not the millionaire who set me thinking; it is +the harassed man of business; and what I am wondering is, whether, in +sober truth and earnestness, it is possible for him, as he shuts his +library door and finds himself inside, to forget his rebuffs and +anxieties--his maturing bills and overdue argosies--and to lose +himself over a favourite volume. The 'article' that wafts him welcome +I take to be his pipe. That he will put the 'article' into his mouth +and smoke it I have no manner of doubt; my dread is lest, in ten +minutes' time, the book should have dropt into his lap and the man's +eyes be staring into the fire. But for a' that, and a' that--great is +bookishness and the charm of books. + + + +CONFIRMED READERS + + +Dr. Johnson is perhaps our best example of a confirmed reader. Malone +once found him sitting in his room roasting apples and reading a +history of Birmingham. This staggered even Malone, who was himself a +somewhat far-gone reader. + +'Don't you find it rather dull?' he ventured to inquire. + +'Yes,' replied the Sage, 'it is dull.' + +Malone's eyes then rested on the apples, and he remarked he supposed +they were for medicine. + +'Why, no,' said Johnson; 'I believe they are only there because I +wanted something to do. I have been confined to the house for a week, +and so you find me roasting apples and reading the history of +Birmingham.' + +This anecdote pleasingly illustrates the habits of the confirmed +reader. Nor let the worldling sneer. Happy is the man who, in the +hours of solitude and depression, can read a history of Birmingham. +How terrible is the story Welbore Ellis told of Robert Walpole in his +magnificent library, trying book after book, and at last, with tears +in his eyes, exclaiming: 'It is all in vain: I cannot read!' + +Edmund Malone, the Shakespearian commentator and first editor of +_Boswell's Johnson_, was as confirmed a reader as it is possible for a +book-collector to be. His own life, by Sir James Prior, is full of +good things, and is not so well known as it should be. It smacks of +books and bookishness. + +Malone, who was an Irishman, was once, so he would have us believe, +deeply engaged in politics; but he then fell in love, and the affair, +for some unknown reason, ending unhappily, his interest ceased in +everything, and he was driven as a last resource to books and +writings. Thus are commentators made. They learn in suffering what +they observe in the margin. Malone may have been driven to his +pursuits, but he took to them kindly, and became a vigorous and +skilful book-buyer, operating in the market both on his own behalf and +on that of his Irish friends with great success. + +His good fortune was enormous, and this although he had a severely +restricted notion as to price. He was no reckless bidder, like Mr. +Harris, late of Covent Garden, who, just because David Garrick had a +fine library of old plays, was determined to have one himself at +whatever cost. In Malone's opinion half a guinea was a big price for a +book. As he grew older he became less careful, and in 1805, which was +seven years before his death, he gave Ford, a Manchester bookseller, +£25 for the Editio Princeps of _Venus and Adonis_. He already had the +edition of 1596--a friend had given it him--bound up with +Constable's and Daniel's Sonnets and other rarities, but he very +naturally yearned after the edition of 1593. He fondly imagined +Ford's copy to be unique: there he was wrong, but as he died in that +belief, and only gave £25 for his treasure, who dare pity him? His +copy now reposes in the Bodleian. He secured Shakespeare's Sonnets +(1609) and the first edition of the _Rape of Lucrece_ for two guineas, +and accounted half a crown a fair average price for quarto copies of +Elizabethan plays. + +Malone was a truly amiable man, of private fortune and endearing +habits. He lived on terms of intimacy with his brother +book-collectors, and when they died attended the sale of their +libraries and bid for his favourite lots, grumbling greatly if they +were not knocked down to him. At Topham Beauclerk's sale in 1781, +which lasted nine days, Malone bought for Lord Charlemont 'the +pleasauntest workes of George Gascoigne, Esquire, with the princely +pleasures at Kenilworth Castle, 1587.' He got it cheap (£1 7s.), as it +wanted a few leaves, which Malone thought he had; but to his horror, +when it came to be examined, it was found to want eleven more leaves +than he had supposed. 'Poor Mr. Beauclerk,' he writes, 'seems never to +have had his books examined or collated, otherwise he would have found +out the imperfections.' Malone was far too good a book-collector to +suggest a third method of discovering a book's imperfections--namely, +reading it. Beauclerk's library only realized £5,011, and as the Duke +of Marlborough had a mortgage upon it of £5,000, there must have been +after payment of the auctioneer's charges a considerable deficit. + +But Malone was more than a book-buyer, more even than a commentator: +he was a member of the Literary Club, and the friend of Johnson, +Reynolds, and Burke. On July 28, 1789, he went to Burke's place, the +Gregories, near Beaconsfield, with Sir Joshua, Wyndham, and Mr. +Courtenay, and spent three very agreeable days. The following extract +from the recently published Charlemont papers has interest: + + 'As I walked out before breakfast with Mr. Burke, I proposed to him + to revise and enlarge his admirable book on the _Sublime and + Beautiful_, which the experience, reading, and observation of + thirty years could not but enable him to improve considerably. But + he said the train of his thoughts had gone another way, and the + whole bent of his mind turned from such subjects, and that he was + much fitter for such speculations at the time he published that + book than now.' + +Between the Burke of 1758 and the Burke of 1789 there was a difference +indeed, but the forcible expressions, 'the train of my thoughts' and +'the whole bent of my mind,' serve to create a new impression of the +tremendous energy and fertile vigour of this amazing man. The next day +the party went over to Amersham and admired Mr. Drake's trees, and +listened to Sir Joshua's criticisms of Mr. Drake's pictures. This was +a fortnight after the taking of the Bastille. Burke's hopes were still +high. The Revolution had not yet spoilt his temper. + +Amongst the Charlemont papers is an amusing tale I do not remember +having ever seen before of young Philip Stanhope, the recipient of +Lord Chesterfield's famous letters: + + 'When at Berne, where he passed some of his boyhood in company with + Harte and the excellent Mr., now Lord, Eliott (Heathfield of + Gibraltar), he was one evening invited to a party where, together + with some ladies, there happened to be a considerable number of + Bernese senators, a dignified set of elderly gentlemen, + aristocratically proud, and perfect strangers to fun. These most + potent, grave, and reverend signors were set down to whist, and + were so studiously attentive to the game, that the unlucky brat + found little difficulty in fastening to the backs of their chairs + the flowing tails of their ample periwigs and in cutting, + unobserved by them, the tyes of their breeches. This done, he left + the room, and presently re-entered crying out, "Fire! Fire!" The + affrighted burgomasters suddenly bounced up, and exhibited to the + amazed spectators their senatorial heads and backs totally deprived + of ornament or covering.' + +Young Stanhope was no ordinary child. There is a completeness about +this jest which proclaims it a masterpiece. One or other of its points +might have occurred to anyone, but to accomplish both at once was to +show real distinction. + +Sir William Stanhope, Lord Chesterfield's brother, felt no surprise at +his nephew's failure to acquire the graces. 'What,' said he, 'could +Chesterfield expect? His mother was Dutch, he was educated at Leipsic, +and his tutor was a pedant from Oxford.' + +Papers which contain anecdotes of this kind carry with them their own +recommendation. We hear on all sides complaints--and I hold them to be +just complaints--of the abominable high prices of English books. +Thirty shillings, thirty-six shillings, are common prices. The thing +is too barefaced. His Majesty's Stationery Office set an excellent +example. They sell an octavo volume of 460 closely but well-printed +pages, provided with an excellent index, for one shilling and +elevenpence. There is not much editing, but the quality of it is +good. + +If anyone is confined to his room, even as Johnson was when Malone +found him roasting apples and reading a history of Birmingham, he +cannot do better than surround himself with the publications of the +Historical Manuscripts Commission; they will cost him next to nothing, +tell him something new on every page, revive a host of old memories +and scores of half-forgotten names, and perhaps tempt him to become a +confirmed reader. + + + +FIRST EDITIONS + + +This is an age of great publicity. Not only are our streets well +lighted, but also our lives. The cosy nooks and corners, crannies, and +dark places where, in old-fashioned days, men hugged their private +vices without shamefacedness have been swept away as ruthlessly as +Seven Dials. All the questionable pursuits, fancies, foibles of silly, +childish man are discussed grimly and at length in the newspapers and +magazines. Our poor hobby-horses are dragged out of the stable, and +made to show their shambling paces before the mob of gentlemen who +read with ease. There has been much prate lately of as innocent a +foible as ever served to make men self-forgetful for a few seconds of +time--the collecting of first editions. Somebody hard up for 'copy' +denounced this pastime, and made merry over a _virtuoso's_ whim. +Somebody else--Mr. Slater, I think it was--thought fit to put in a +defence, and thereupon a dispute arose as to why men bought first +editions dear when they could buy last editions cheap. Brutal, +domineering fellows bellowed their complete indifference to +Shakespeare's Quartos till timid _dilettanti_ turned pale and fled. + +The fact, of course, is that in such a dispute as this there is but +one thing to do--namely, to persuade the Attorney-General of the day +to enter up a _nolle prosequi_, and for him who collects first +editions to go on collecting. There is nothing to be serious about in +the matter. It is not literature. Some of the greatest lovers of +letters who have ever lived--Dr. Johnson, for example, and Thomas de +Quincey and Carlyle--have cared no more for first editions than I do +for Brussels sprouts. You may love Moliere with a love surpassing your +love of woman without any desire to beggar yourself in Paris by +purchasing early copies of the plays. You may be perfectly content to +read Walton's _Lives_ in an edition of 1905, if there is one; and as +for _Robinson Crusoe_ and _Gulliver_ and the _Vicar of Wakefield_--are +they not eternal favourites, and just as tickling to the fancy in +their nineteenth-century dress as in their eighteenth? The whole thing +is but a hobby--but a paragraph in one chapter of the vast, but most +agreeable, history of human folly. If John Doe is blankly indifferent +to Richard Roe's Elizabethan dramatists, it is only fair to remember +how sublime is Richard's contempt for John's collection of old musical +instruments. If these gentlemen are wise they will discuss, when they +meet, the weather, or the Death Duties, or some other extraneous +subject, and leave their respective hobbies in the stable. Never mind +what your hobby is--books, prints, drawings, china, scarabaei, +lepidoptera--keep it to yourself and for those like-minded with you. +Sweet indeed is the community of interest, delightful the intercourse +which a common foible begets; but correspondingly bitter and +distressful is the forced union of nervous zeal and pitiless +indifference. Spare us the so-called friends who come and gape and +stare and go! What is more painful than the chatter of the connoisseur +as it falls upon the long ears of the ignoramus! Collecting is a +secret sin--the great pushing public must be kept out. It is sheer +madness to puff and praise your hobby, and to invite Dick, Tom, and +Harry to inspect your stable: such conduct is to invite rebuff, to +expose yourself to just animadversion. Keep the beast in its box. This +is my first advice to the hobby-hunter. + +My second piece of advice is equally important, particularly at the +present time, when the world is too much with us, and it is +this--never convert a taste into a trade. The moment you become a +tradesman you cease to be a hobbyist. When the love of money comes in +at the window the love of books runs out at the door. There has been +of late years a good deal of sham book-collecting. The morals of the +Stock Exchange have corrupted even the library. Sordid souls have been +induced by wily second-hand booksellers to buy books for no other +reason than because the price demanded was a high one. This is the +very worst possible reason for buying a book. Whether it is ever wise +to buy a book, as Aulus Gellius used to do, simply because it is +cheap, and regardless of its condition, is a debatable point, but to +buy one dear at the mere bidding of a bookseller is to debase +yourself. The result of this ungodly traffic has been to enlarge for +the moment the circle of book-buyers by including in it men with +commercial instincts, sham hobbyists. But these impostors have been +lately punished in the only way they could be punished--namely, in +their pockets--by a heavy fall of prices. The stuff they were induced +to buy has not, and could not, maintain its price, and the shops are +now full of the volumes which, seven or ten years ago, fetched fancy +sums. + +If a young book-collector does but bear in mind the two bits of advice +I have proffered him, he may safely be bidden godspeed and +congratulated on his choice of a hobby, for it is, without a shadow of +a doubt, the cheapest he could have chosen. Even without means to +acquire the treasures of a Quaritch or a Pickering, he may yet derive +infinite delight from the perusal of the many hundreds of catalogues +that now weekly issue from the second-hand booksellers in town and +country. He may write an imaginary letter, ordering the books he has +previously selected from the catalogue, and then he has only to forget +to post it to avoid all disagreeable consequences. + +The constant turnover of old books is amazing. There seems no rest in +this world even for folios and quartos. The first edition of old +Burton's _Anatomy_, printed at Oxford in a small quarto in 1621, rises +to the surface as a rule no less than four times a year; so, too, does +Coryat's _Crudities_, hastily gobbled up in five months' travels in +France, Savoy, Italy, Germany, etc., 1611. What a seething, restless +place this world is, to be sure! The constant recurrence of copies of +the same books is almost startling. Hardly a year passes but every +book of first-rate importance and interest is knocked down to the +highest bidder. No doubt there are still old libraries where, buried +in dust and cobwebs, the folios and quartos lie undisturbed; but to +turn the pages or examine the index of _Book Prices Current_ is to +have a vision before your eyes of whole regiments of books passing +and repassing across the stage amidst the loud cries of auctioneers +and the bidding of booksellers. + +In the auction-mart taste is pretty steady. The old favourites hold +their own. Every now and again an immortal joins their ranks. Puffing +and pretension may win the ear of the outside public, and extort +praise from the press, but inside the rooms of a Sotheby, a Puttick, +or a Hodgson, these foolish persons count for nothing, and their names +are seldom heard. Were an author to turn the pages of _Book Prices +Current_, he could hardly fail, as he there read the names of famous +men of old, to breathe the prayer, 'May my books some day be found +forming part of this great tidal wave of literature which is for ever +breaking on Earth's human shores!' But the vanity of authors is +endless, and their prayers are apt to be but empty things. + + + +GOSSIP IN A LIBRARY + + +There were no books in Eden, and there will be none in heaven; but +between times--and it is of those I speak--it is otherwise. Mr. Thomas +Greenwood, in a most meritorious work on Public Libraries, supplies +figures which show that, without counting pamphlets (which are books +gone wrong) or manuscripts (which are books _in terrorem_), there are +at this present moment upwards of 71,000,000 printed books in bindings +in the several public libraries of Europe and America. To estimate +the number and extent of private libraries in those countries is +impossible. In many large houses there are no books at all--which is +to make ignorance visible; whilst in many small houses there are, or +seem to be, nothing else--which is to make knowledge inconvenient; yet +as there are upwards of 280,000,000 of inhabitants of Europe and +America, I cannot greatly err if a passion for round numbers drives me +to the assertion that there are at least 300,000,000 books in these +countries, not counting bibles and prayer-books. It is a poor show! +Russia is greatly to blame, her European population of 88,000,000 +being so badly provided for that it brings down the average. Were +Russia left out in the cold, we might, were our books to be divided +amongst our population _per capita_, rely upon having two volumes +apiece. This would not afford Mr. Gosse (the title of one of whose +books I have stolen) much material for gossip, particularly as his two +books might easily chance to be duplicates. There are no habits of man +more alien to the doctrine of the Communist than those of the +collector, and there is no collector, not even that basest of them +all, the Belial of his tribe, the man who collects money, whose love +of private property is intenser, whose sense of the joys of ownership +is keener than the book-collector's. Mr. William Morris once hinted at +a good time coming, when at almost every street corner there would be +a public library, where beautiful and rare books will be kept for +citizens to examine. The citizen will first wash his hands in a +parochial basin, and then dry them on a parochial towel, after which +ritual he will walk in and stand _en queue_ until it comes to be his +turn to feast his eye upon some triumph of modern or some miracle of +old typography. He will then return to a bookless home proud and +satisfied, tasting of the joy that is in widest commonalty spread. +Alas! he will do nothing of the kind, not, at least, if he is one of +those in whom the old Adam of the bookstalls still breathes. A public +library must always be an abomination. To enjoy a book, you must own +it. 'John Jones his book,' that is the best bookplate. I have never +admired the much-talked-of bookplate of Grolier, which, in addition to +his own name, bore the ridiculous advice _Et Amicorum_. Fudge! There +is no evidence that Grolier ever lent any man a book with his plate +in it. His collection was dispersed after his death, and then +sentimentalists fell a-weeping over his supposed generosity. It would +be as reasonable to commend the hospitality of a dead man because you +found amongst his papers a vast number of unposted invitations to +dinner upon a date he long outlived. Sentiment is seldom in place, but +on a bookplate it is peculiarly odious. To paste in each book an +invitation to steal it, as Grolier seems to have done, is foolish; but +so also is it to invoke, as some book-plates do, curses upon the heads +of all subsequent possessors--as if any man who wanted to add a volume +to his collection would be deterred by such braggadocio. But this is a +digression. Public libraries can never satisfy the longings of +book-collectors any more than can the private libraries of other +people. Whoever really cared a snap of his fingers for the contents of +another man's library, unless he is known to be dying? It is a +humorous spectacle to watch one book-collector exhibiting his stores +to another. If the owner is a gentleman, as he usually is, he affects +indifference--'A poor thing,' he seems to say, 'yet mine own'; whilst +the visitor, if human, as he always is, exhibits disgust. If the +volume proffered for the visitor's examination is a genuine rarity, +not in his own collection, he surlily inquires how it was come by; +whilst if it is no great thing, he testily expresses his astonishment +it should be thought worth keeping, and this although he has the very +same edition at home. + +On the other hand, though actual visits to other men's libraries +rarely seem to give pleasure, the perusal of the catalogues of such +libraries has always been a favourite pastime of collectors; but this +can be accounted for without in any way aspersing the truth of the +general statement that the only books a lover of them takes pleasure +in are his own. + +Mr. Gosse's recent volume, _Gossip in a Library_, is a very pleasing +example of the pleasure taken by a book-hunter in his own books. Just +as some men and more women assume your interest in the contents of +their nurseries, so Mr. Gosse seeks to win our ears as he talks to us +about some of the books on his shelves. He has secured my willing +attention, and is not likely to be disappointed of a considerable +audience. + +We live in vocal times, when small birds make melody on every bough. +The old book-collectors were a taciturn race--the Bindleys, the +Sykeses, the Hebers. They made their vast collections in silence; +their own tastes, fancies, predilections, they concealed. They never +gossiped of their libraries; their names are only preserved to us by +the prices given for their books after their deaths. Bindley's copy +fetched £3 10s., Sykes' £4 15s. Thus is the buyer of to-day tempted to +his doom, forgetful of the fact that these great names are only quoted +when the prices realized at their sales were less than those now +demanded. + +But solacing as is the thought of those grave, silent times, +indisposed as one often is for the chirpy familiarities of this +present, it is, or it ought to be, a pious, and therefore pleasant, +reflection that there never was a time when more people found delight +in book-hunting, or were more willing to pay for and read about their +pastime than now. + +Rich people may, no doubt, still be met with who think it a serious +matter to buy a book if it cost more than 3s. 9d. It was recently +alleged in an affidavit made by a doctor in lunacy that for a +well-to-do bachelor to go into the Strand, and in the course of the +same morning spend £5 in the purchase of 'old books,' was a ground for +belief in his insanity and for locking him up. These, however, are but +vagaries, for it is certain that the number of people who will read a +book like Mr. Gosse's steadily increases. This is its justification, +and it is a complete one. It can never be wrong to give pleasure. To +talk about books is better than to read about them, but, as a matter +of hard fact, the opportunities life affords of talking about books +are very few. The mood and the company seldom coincide; when they do, +it is delightful, but they seldom do. + +Mr. Gosse's book ought not to be read in a fierce, nagging spirit +which demands, What is the good of this? or, Who cares for that? His +talk, it must be admitted, is not of masterpieces. The books he takes +down are--in some instances, at all events--sad trash. Smart's poems, +for example, in an edition of 1752, which does not contain the +'David,' is not a book which, viewed baldly and by itself, can be +honestly described as worth reading. This remark is not prompted by +jealousy, for I have the book myself, and seldom fail to find the list +of subscribers interesting, for, among many other famous names, it +contains those of 'Mr. Gray, Peter's College, Cambridge,' 'Mr. Samuel +Richardson, editor of _Clarissa_, two books,' and 'Mr. Voltaire, +Historiographer of France.' There are various Johnsons among the +subscribers, but not Samuel, who apparently would liefer pray with Kit +Smart than buy his poetry, thereby showing the doctor's usual piety +and good sense.[A] + + [Footnote A: 'He insisted on people praying with him, and I'd as lief + pray with Kit Smart as with anyone else.'] + +Although the nagging spirit before referred to is to be deprecated, it +is sometimes amusing to lose your temper with your own hobby. If a +book-collector ever does this, he longs to silence whole libraries of +bad authors. ''Tis an inglorious acquist,' says Joseph Glanvill in his +famous _Vanity of Dogmatizing_--I quote from the first edition, 1661, +though the second is the rarer--'to have our heads or volumes laden as +were Cardinal Campeius his mules, with old and useless luggage.' +''Twas this vain idolizing of authors,' Glanvill had just before +observed, 'which gave birth to that silly vanity of _impertinent +citations_, and inducing authority in things neither requiring nor +deserving it.' In the same strain he proceeds, 'Methinks 'tis a +pitiful piece of knowledge that can be learnt from an _Index_ and a +poor ambition to be rich in the inventory of another's Treasure. To +boast a _Memory_ (the most that these pedants can aim at) is but an +humble ostentation. 'Tis better to own a Judgment, though but with a +_Curta Supellex_ of coherent notions, than a _Memory_ like a sepulchre +furnished with a load of broken and discarnate bones.' Thus far the +fascinating Glanvill, whose mode of putting things is powerful. + +There are times when the contemplation of huge libraries wearies, and +when even the names of Bindley and Sykes fail to please. Dr. Johnson's +library sold at Christie's for £247 9s. Let those sneer who dare. It +was Johnson, not Bindley, who wrote the _Lives of the Poets_. + +But, of course, no sensible man ever really quarrels with his hobby. A +little petulance every now and again variegates the monotony of +routine. Mr. Gosse tells us in his book that he cannot resist +Restoration comedies. The bulk of them he knows to be as bad as bad +can be. He admits they are not literature--whatever that may +mean--but he intends to go on collecting them all the same till the +inevitable hour when Death collects him. This is the true spirit; +herein lies happiness, which consists in being interested in +something, it does not much matter what. In this spirit let me take up +Mr. Gosse's book again, and read what he has to tell about _Pharamond; +or, the History of France. A Fam'd Romance. In Twelve Parts_, or about +Mr. John Hopkins' collection of poems, printed by Thomas Warren for +Bennet Bunbury at the Blue Anchor, in the Lower Walk of the New +Exchange, 1700. The Romance is dull, and as it occupies more than +1,100 folio pages may be pronounced tedious, and the poetry is bad, +but as I do not seriously intend ever to read a line of either the +Romance or the poetry, this is no great matter. + + + +LIBRARIANS AT PLAY + + +No man of feeling will grudge the librarians of the universe their +annual outing. Their pursuits are not indeed entirely sedentary, since +at times they have to climb tall ladders, but of exercise they must +always stand in need, and as for air, the exclusively bookish +atmosphere is as bad for the lungs as it is for the intellectuals. In +1897 the Second International Library Conference met in London, +attended several concerts, was entertained by the Marchioness of Bute +and Lady Lubbock; visited Lambeth Palace and Stafford and Apsley +Houses; witnessed a special performance of Irving's _Merchant of +Venice_; were elected honorary members of the City Liberal, Junior +Athaeneum, National Liberal, and Savage Clubs; and, generally +speaking, enjoyed themselves after the methods current during that +period. They also read forty-six papers, which now alone remain a +stately record of their proceedings. + +I have lately spent a pleasant afternoon musing over these papers. +Their variety is endless, and the dispositions of mind displayed by +these librarians are wide as the poles asunder. Some of them babble +like babies, others are evidently austere scholars; some are gravely +bent on the best methods of classifying catalogues, economizing space, +and sorting borrowers' cards; others, scorning such mechanical +details, bid us regard libraries, and consequently librarians, as the +primary factors in human evolution. 'Where,' asks Mr. Ernest Cushing +Richardson, the librarian of Princetown University, New Jersey, +U.S.A., 'lies the germ of the library?' He answers his own question +after the following convincing fashion: 'At the point where a +definitely formed concept from another's mind is placed beside one's +own idea for integration, the result being a definite new form, +including the substance of both.' The pointsman who presides over this +junction is the librarian. + +The young woman of whom Mr. Matthews, the well-known librarian of +Bristol, tells us, who, being a candidate for the post of assistant +librarian, boldly pronounced Rider Haggard to be the author of the +_Idylls of the King_, Southey of _The Mill on the Floss_, and Mark +Twain of _Modern Painters_, undoubtedly placed her own ideas at the +service of Bristol alongside the preconceived conceptions of Mr. +Matthews; but she was rejected all the same. + +To speak seriously, who are librarians, and whence come they in such +numbers? Of Bodley's librarian we have heard, and all the lettered +world honours the name of Richard Garnett, late keeper of the printed +books at the British Museum. But beyond these and half a dozen others +a great darkness prevails. This ignorance is well illustrated by a +pleasing anecdote told at the Conference by Mr. MacAlister: + + 'Only the day before yesterday, on the Calais boat, I was + introduced to a world-famed military officer who, when he + understood I had some connection with the Library Association, + exclaimed: "Why, you're just the man I want! I have been anxious of + late about my man, old Atkins. You see the old boy, with a stoop, + sheltering behind the funnel. Poor old beggar! quite past his work, + but as faithful as a dog. It has just occurred to me that if you + could shove him into some snug library in the country, I'd be + awfully grateful to you. His one fault is a fondness for reading, + and so a library would be just the thing."' + +The usual titled lady also turned up at the Conference. This time she +was recommending her late cook for the post of librarian, alleging on +her behalf the same strange trait of character--her fondness for +reading. Here, of course, one recalls Mark Pattison's famous dictum, +'The librarian who reads is lost,' about which there is much to be +said, both _pro_ and _con_; but we must not be put off our inquiry, +which is: Who are these librarians, and whence come they? They are the +custodians of the 70,000,000 printed books (be the numbers a little +more or less) in the public libraries of the Western world, and they +come from guarding their treasures. They deserve our friendliest +consideration. If occasionally their enthusiasm provokes a smile, it +is, or should be, of the kindliest. When you think of 70,000,000 +books, instinctively you wish to wash your hands. Nobody knows what +dust is who has not divided his time between the wine-cellar and the +library. The work of classification, of indexing, of packing away, +must be endless. Great men have arisen who have grappled with these +huge problems. We read respectfully of Cutter's rules, which are to +the librarian even as Kepler's laws to the astronomer. We have also +heard of Poole's index. We bow our heads. Both Cutter and Poole are +Americans. The parish of St. Pancras has just, by an overwhelming +majority, declined to have a free library, and consequently a +librarian. Brutish St. Pancras! + +Libraries are obviously of two kinds: those intended for popular use +and those meant for the scholar. The ordinary free library, in the +sense of Mr. Ewart's Act of Parliament of 1850, is a popular library +where a wearied population turns for distraction. Fiction plays a +large part. In some libraries 80 per cent. of the books in circulation +are novels. Hence Mr. Goldwin Smith's splenetic remark, 'People have +no more right to novels than to theatre-tickets out of the taxes.' +Quite true; no more they have--or to public gardens or to beautiful +pictures or to anything save to peep through the railings and down the +areas of Mr. Gradgrind's fine new house in Park Lane. + +When we are considering popular libraries, it does not do to expect +too much of tired human nature. This popular kind of library was well +represented--perhaps a little over-represented, at the Conference. All +our American cousins are not Cutters and Pooles. There was Mr. +Crunden, who keeps the public library at St. Louis, U.S.A. He is all +against dull text-books. As a boy he derived his inspiration from +Sargent's _Standard Speaker_, and the interesting sketch he gives us +of his education makes us wonder whether amidst his multitudinous +reading he ever encountered Newman's marvellous description and +handling of the young and over-read Mr. Brown, which is to be found +under the heading 'Elementary Studies' in _Lectures and Essays on +University Subjects_. + +I shuddered just a little on reading in Mr. Crunden's paper of the boy +who, before he was nine, had read Bulfinch's _Age of Chivalry_ and +_Age of Charlemagne_, Bryant's _Translation of the 'Iliad'_, a prose +translation of the _Odyssey_, Malory's _King Arthur, and several other +versions of the Arthurian legend_, Prescott's _Peru and Mexico_, +Macaulay's _Lays_, Longfellow's _Hiawatha_ and _Miles Standish_, the +Jungle Books, and other books too numerous to mention. A famous list, +but perilously long. + +Mr. Crunden supports his case for varied reading by quotations from +all quarters--Dr. William T. Harris, President Eliot, Professor +Mackenzie, Charles Dudley Warner, Sir John Lubbock--but their scraps +of wisdom or of folly do not remove my uneasiness about the digestion +of the little boy who, before he was nine years old, had (not content +with Malory) read several versions of the Arthurian legend! + +Ladies make excellent librarians, and have tender hearts for children, +and so we find a paper written by a lady librarian, entitled _Books +that Children Like_. She quotes some interesting letters from +children: 'I like books about ancient history and books about knights, +also stories of adventure, and mostly books with a deep plot and +mystery about them.' 'I do not like _Gulliver's Travels_, because I +think they are silly.' 'I read _Little Men_. I did not like this +book.' 'I like _Ivanhoe_, by Scott, better than any.' 'My favourite +books are _Tom Sawyer_, _Uncle Tom's Cabin_, and _Scudder's American +History_. I like Tom Sawyer because he was so jolly, Uncle Tom because +he was so faithful, and Nathan Hale because he was so brave.' These +are unbought verdicts no wise man will despise. + +All this is popular enough. But the unpopular library must not be +overlooked, for, after all, libraries are for the learned. We must not +let the babes and sucklings, or the weary seamstress or badgered +clerk, or even the working-man, ride rough-shod over Salmasius and +Scaliger. In the papers of Mr. Garnett, Mr. Pollard, Mr. Dziatzko, Mr. +Cutter, and others, the less popular and nobler side of the library is +duly exhibited. + +My anxiety about these librarians, who are beginning to be a +profession by themselves, is how they are to be paid. That librarians +must live is at least as obvious in their case as in that of any other +class. They must also, if they are to be of any use, be educated. In +1878 the late Mr. Robert Harrison, who for many years led a grimy life +in the London Library, advocated £250 as a minimum annual salary for a +competent librarian. But, as Mr. Ogle, of Bootle, pertinently asked at +the Conference, 'Are his views yet accepted?' We fear not. Mr. Ogle +courageously proceeds: + + 'The fear of a charge of trades unionism has long kept librarians + silent, but this matter is one of public importance, and affects + educational progress. A School-Board rate of 6d. or 1s. is + willingly paid to teach our youth to read. Shall an additional 2d. + be grudged to turn that reading talent into right and safe + channels, where it may work for the public welfare and economy?' + +_Festina lente_, good Mr. Ogle, I beseech you. That way fierce +controversy and, it may be, disaster lies. Do not stir the Philistine +within us. The British nation is still savage under the skin. It has +no real love for books, libraries, or librarians. In its hidden heart +it deems them all superfluous. Anger it, and it may in a fit of temper +sweep you all away. The loss of our free librarians would indeed be +grievous. Never again could they meet in conference and read papers +full of quaint things and odd memories. What, for example, can be more +amusing than Mr. Cowell's reminiscences of forty years' library work +in Liverpool, of the primitive days when a youthful Dicky Sam (for so +do the inhabitants of that city call themselves) mistook the _Flora of +Liverpool_ for a book either about a ship or a heroine? He knows +better now. And what shall we say of the Liverpool brushmaker who, at +a meeting of the library committee, recited a poem in praise of woman, +containing the following really magnificent line?-- + + 'The heart that beats fondest is found in the stays.' + +There is nothing in Roscoe or Mrs. Hemans (local bards) one half so +fine. Long may librarians live and flourish! May their salaries +increase, if not by leaps and bounds, yet in steady proportions. Yet +will they do well to remember that books are not everything. + + + +LAWYERS AT PLAY + + +That dreary morass, that Serbonian bog, the Bacon-Shakespeare +controversy, has been lately lit up as by the flickering light of a +will-o'-the-wisp, by the almost simultaneous publication of an +imaginary charge delivered to an equally imaginary jury by a judge of +no less eminence than the late Lord Penzance (that tough Erastian) and +of the still bolder _jeu d'esprit_, _A Report of the Trial of an Issue +in Westminster Hall_, June 20, 1627, which is the work of the +unbridled fancy of His Honour Judge Willis, late Treasurer of the +Inner Temple, and a man most intimately acquainted with the literature +of the seventeenth century. + +Neither production of these playful lawyers, clothed though they be in +the garb of judicial procedure, is in the least likely to impress the +lay mind with that sense of 'impartiality' or 'indifference' which is +supposed to be an attribute of justice, or, indeed, with anything +save the unfitness of the machinery of an action at law for the +determination of any matter which invokes the canons of criticism and +demands the arbitrament of a well-informed and lively taste. + +Lord Penzance, who favours the Baconians, made no pretence of +impartiality, and says outright in his preface that his readers 'must +not expect to find in these pages an equal and impartial leaning of +the judge alternately to the case of both parties, as would, I hope, +be found in any judicial summing-up of the evidence in a real judicial +inquiry.' And, he adds, 'the form of a summing-up is only adopted for +convenience, but it is in truth very little short of an argument for +the plaintiffs, _i.e._, the Baconians.' + +Why any man, judge or no judge, who wished to prepare an argument on +one side of a question should think fit to cast that argument for +convenience' sake in the form of a judicial summing-up of both sides +is, and must remain, a puzzle. + +Judge Willis, who is a Shakespearean, bold and unabashed, is not +content with a mere summing-up, but, with a gravity and wealth of +detail worthy of De Foe, has presented us with what purports to be a +verbatim report of so much of the proceedings in a suit of Hall _v._ +Russell as were concerned with the trial before a jury of the simple +issue--whether William Shakespeare, of Stratford-upon-Avon, 'the +testator in the cause of _Hall v. Russell_,' was the author of the +plays in the Folio of 1623. We are favoured with the names of counsel +employed, who snarl at one another with such startling verisimilitude, +whilst the remarks that fall from the bench do so with such +naturalness, that it is perhaps not surprising, or any very severe +reflection upon his literary _esprit_, that a member of the Bar, +having heard Judge Willis deliver his lecture in the Inner Temple +Hall, repaired next day to the library to study at his leisure the +hitherto unnoted case of _Hall v. Russell_. Ten witnesses are put in +the box to prove the affirmative--that Shakespeare was the author of +the plays. Mr. Blount and M. Jaggard, the publishers of the Folio, +give a most satisfactory account of the somewhat crucial point--how +they came by the manuscripts, with all the amendments and corrections, +and pass lightly over the fact that those manuscripts had disappeared. +'Rare Ben Jonson' in the witness-box is a masterpiece of dramatic +invention; he demolishes Bacon's advocate with magnificent vitality. +John Selden makes a stately witness, and Francis Meres a very useful +one. Generally speaking, the weakest part in these interesting +proceedings is the cross-examination. I have heard the learned judge +do better in old days. No witnesses are called for the Baconians, +though all the writings of the great philosopher were put in for what +they were worth. The Lord Chief Justice, who seems to have been a +friend of Shakespeare's, sums up dead in his favour, and the jury +(with whose names we are not supplied, which is a pity--Bunyan or De +Foe would have given them to us), after a short absence, a quarter of +an hour, return a Shakespearean verdict, which of course ought by +rights to make the whole question _res judicata_. + +But it has done nothing of the kind. Could we really ask Blount and +Jaggard how they came by the manuscripts, and who made the +corrections, and did we believe their replies, why, then a stray +Baconian here and there might reluctantly abandon his strange fancy; +but as _Hall v. Russell_ is Judge Willis's joke, it will convert no +Baconians any more than Dean Sherlock's once celebrated _Trial of the +Witnesses_ compels belief in the Resurrection. + +The question in reality is a compound one. Did Shakespeare write the +plays? If yes, the matter is at rest. If no--who did? If an author can +be found--Bacon or anyone else--well and good. If no author can be +found--Anon. wrote them--a conclusion which need terrify no one, since +the plays would still remain within our reach, and William +Shakespeare, apart from the plays, is very little to anybody who has +not written his life. + +But this is not the form the controversy has assumed. The +anti-Shakespeareans are to a man Baconians, and fondly imagine that if +only Will Shakespeare were put out of the way their man must step into +the vacant throne. Lord Penzance in charging his jury told them that +those of their number 'who had studied the writings of Bacon' and were +'keenly alive to his marvellous mental powers' would probably have 'no +difficulty,' if once satisfied that the author they were seeking after +was _not_ Shakespeare, in finding as a fact that he _was_ Bacon. But +suppose James Spedding had been on that jury, and, rising in his +place, had spoken as follows: + + 'My Lord,--If any man has ever studied the writings of Bacon, I + have. For twenty-five years I have done little else. If any man is + keenly alive to his marvellous mental powers, I am that man. I am + also deeply read in the plays attributed to Shakespeare, and I + think I am in a condition to say that, whoever was the real author, + it was _not_ Bacon.' + +That this is exactly what Spedding would have said we know from the +letter he wrote on the subject to Mr. Holmes, reprinted in _Essays +and Discussions_, and it completely upsets the whole scheme of +arrangement of Lord Penzance's summing-up, which proceeds on the easy +footing that the more difficulties you throw in Shakespeare's path the +smoother becomes Bacon's. + +That there are difficulties in Shakespeare's path, some things very +hard to explain, must be admitted. Lord Penzance makes the most of +these. It is, indeed, a most extraordinary thing that anybody should +have had the mother-wit to write the plays traditionally assigned to +Shakespeare. Where did he get it from? How on earth did the plays get +themselves written? Where, when, and how did the author pick up his +multifarious learnings? Lord Penzance, good, honest man, is simply +staggered by the extent of the play-wright's information. The plays, +so he says, 'teem with erudition,' and can only have been written by +someone who had the classics at his finger-ends, modern languages on +the tip of his tongue--by someone who had travelled far and read +deeply; and, above all, by a man who had spent at least a year in a +conveyancer's chambers! And yet, when this has been said, would Lord +Penzance have added that the style and character of the playwright is +the style and character of a really learned man of his period! Can +anything less like such a style be imagined? Once genius is granted, +heaven-born genius, a mother-wit beyond the dreams of fancy, and then +plain humdrum men, ordinary judicial intelligences, will do well to be +on their guard against it. 'Beware--beware! he is fooling thee.' +Shakespeare's genius has simply befooled Lord Penzance. Seafaring men, +after reading _The Tempest_, are ready to maintain that its author +must have been for at least a year before the mast. As for +Shakespeare's law, which has taken in so many matter-of-fact +practitioners, one can now refer to Ben Jonson's evidence in _Hall v. +Russell_, where that great dramatist has no difficulty in showing that +if none but a lawyer could have written Shakespeare's plays, a lawyer +alone could have preached Thomas Adams's sermons. Judge Willis's +profound knowledge of sound old divinity has served him here in good +stead. The fact is it is simply impossible to exaggerate the +quick-wittedness and light-heartedness of a great literary genius. The +absorbing power, the lightning-like faculty of apprehension, the +instant recognition of the uses to which any fact or fancy can be put, +the infinite number and delicacy of the mental feelers, thrust out in +all directions, which belong to the creative brain and keep it in +tremulous and restless activity, are quite enough so to differentiate +the possessor of these endowments from his fellow mortals as to make +comparison impossible. Shakespeare the actor was by the common consent +of his enemies one of the deftest fellows that ever made use of other +men's materials--'Convey, the wise it call.' I will again quote +Spedding: + + 'If Shakespeare was not trained as a scholar or a man of science, + neither do the works attributed to him show traces of trained + scholarship or scientific education. Given the _faculties_, you + will find that all the acquired knowledge, art, and dexterity which + the Shakespearean plays imply were easily attainable by a man who + was labouring in his vocation and had nothing else to do.' + +I greatly prefer this cool judgment of a scholar deeply read in +Elizabethan lore to Lord Penzance's heated and almost breathless +admiration for the 'teeming erudition' of the plays. + +Lord Penzance likewise displays a very creditable non-acquaintance +with the disposition of authors one to another. He is quite shocked at +the callousness of Shakespeare's contemporaries to Shakespeare if he +were indeed the author of the Quartos which bore his name in his +lifetime. But as it cannot be suggested that in, say, 1600 it was +generally known that Shakespeare was not the author of these plays, it +is hard to see how his contemporaries can be acquitted of indifference +to his prodigious superiority over themselves. Authors, however, never +take this view. Shakespeare's contemporaries thought him a mighty +clever fellow and no more. Why, even Wordsworth was well persuaded he +could write like Shakespeare had he been so minded. Mr. Arnold +remained all his life honestly indifferent to and sceptical about the +fame of both Tennyson and Browning. Great living lawyers and doctors +do not invariably idolize each other, nor do the lawyers and doctors +in a small way of business always speak well of those in a big way. +The poets and learned critics of the seventeenth and eighteenth +centuries--Dryden, Pope, Johnson--looked upon Shakespeare with an +indulgent eye, as a great but irregular genius, after much the same +fashion as did the old sea-dogs of Nelson's day regard the hero of +Trafalgar. 'Do not criticise him too harshly,' said Lord St. Vincent; +'there can only be one Nelson.' + +These are not the real difficulties, though they seem to have pressed +somewhat heavily on Lord Penzance. + +The circumstances attendant upon the publication of the Folio of 1623 +are undoubtedly puzzling. Shakespeare died in 1616, leaving behind +him more than forty plays circulating in London and more or less +associated with his name. His will, a most elaborate document, does +not contain a single reference to his literary life or labours. Seven +years after his death the Folio appears, which contains twenty-six +plays out of the odd forty just referred to, and ten extra plays which +had never before been in print, and about six of which there is a very +scanty Shakespearean tradition. Of the twenty-six old plays, seventeen +had been printed in small Quartos, possibly surreptitiously, in +Shakespeare's lifetime, but the Folio does not reprint from these +Quartos, but from enlarged, amended, and enormously improved copies. +Messrs. Heminge and Condell, the editor of this priceless treasure, +the First Folio, wrote a long-winded dedication to Lords Pembroke and +Montgomery, which contains but one pertinent passage, in which they +ask their readers to believe that it had been the office of the +editors to collect and publish the author's 'mere writings,' he being +dead, and to offer them, not 'maimed and deformed,' in surreptitious +and stolen copies, but 'cured and perfect of their limbs and all the +rest, absolute in their numbers as he conceived them, who as he was a +happie imitator of Nature was a most gentle expresser of it. His mind +and hand went together, and what he thought, he uttered with that +easiness, that we have scarce received from him a blot in his papers.' + +From whose custody did those 'papers' come? Where had they been all +the seven years? Of what did they consist? If in truth unblotted, all +the seventeen Quartos as well as the new plays must have been printed +from fair manuscript copies. From whom were these unblotted copies +received, and what became of them? The silence of these players is +irritating and perplexing,--though, possibly, the explanation of the +mystery, were it forthcoming, would be, as often happens, of the +simplest. It may be that these unblotted copies were in the theatre +library all the time. + +Whether these interrogatories, now unanswerable, raise doubts in the +mind of sufficient potency to destroy the tradition of centuries, and +to prevent us from sharing the conviction of Milton, of Dryden, of +Pope, and Johnson that Shakespeare was the author of Shakespeare's +plays must be left for individual consideration. But, however +destructive these doubts may prove, they do not go a yard of the way +to let in Bacon. + +Once more I will quote Spedding, for he, of all the moderns, by virtue +of his taste and devouring studies, is the best qualified to speak: + + 'Aristotle was an extraordinary man. Plato was an extraordinary + man. That two men each severally so extraordinary should have been + living at the same time in the same place was a very extraordinary + thing. But would it diminish the wonder to suppose the two to be + one? So I say of Bacon and Shakespeare. That a human being + possessed of the faculties necessary to make a Shakespeare should + exist is extraordinary. That a human being possessed of the + necessary faculties to make Bacon should exist is extraordinary. + That two such human beings should have been living in London at the + same time was more extraordinary still. But that one man should + have existed possessing the faculties and opportunities necessary + to make _both_ would have been the most extraordinary thing of + all' (see Spedding's _Essays and Discussions_, 1879, pp. 371, 372). + + 'Great writers, especially being contemporary, have many features + in common, but if they are really great writers they write + naturally, and nature is always individual. I doubt whether there + are five lines together to be found in Bacon which could be + mistaken for Shakespeare, or five lines in Shakespeare which could + be mistaken for Bacon, by one who was familiar with their several + styles and practised in such observations' (_Ibid._, p. 373). + + + +THE NON-JURORS + + +To anyone blessed or cursed with an ironical humour the troublesome +history of the Church of England since the Reformation cannot fail to +be an endless source of delight. It really is exciting. Just a little +more of Calvin and of Beza, half a dozen words here, or Cranmer's +pencil through a single phrase elsewhere; a 'quantum suff.' of the men +'that allowed no Eucharistic sacrifice,' and away must have gone +beyond recall the possibility of the Laudian revival and all that +still appertains thereunto. We must have lost the 'primitive' men, the +Kens, the Wilsons, the Knoxes, the Kebles, the Puseys. On the other +hand, but for the unfaltering language of the Articles, the hearty +tone of the Homilies, and the agreeable readiness of both sides to +curse the Italian impudence of the Bishop of Rome and all his +'detestable enormities,' our Anglican Church history could never have +been enriched with the names or sweetened by the memories of the +Romaines, the Flavels, the Venns, the Simeons, and of many thousand +unnamed saints who finished their course in the fervent faith of +Evangelicalism. But on what a thread it has always hung! An +ill-considered Act of Parliament, an amendment hastily accepted by a +pestered layman at midnight, a decision in a court of law, a Jerusalem +Bishoprick, a passage in an early Father, an ancient heresy restudied, +and off to Rome goes a Newman or a Manning, whilst a Baptist Noel +finds his less romantic refuge in Protestant Dissent. Schism is for +ever in the air. Disruption a lively possibility. It has always been a +ticklish business belonging to the Church of England, unless you can +muster up enough courage to be a frank Erastian, and on the rare +occasions when you attend your parish church handle the Book of Common +Prayer with all the reverence due to a schedule to an Act of +Parliament. + +Among the many noticeable humours of the present situation is the tone +adopted by an average Churchman like Canon Overton to the Non-Jurors. +When the late Mr. Lathbury published his admirable _History of the +Non-Jurors_,[A] he had to prepare himself for a very different public +of Churchmen and Churchwomen than will turn over Canon Overton's +agreeable pages.[B] In 1845 the average Churchman, after he had +conquered the serious initial difficulty of comprehending the +Non-Juror's position, was only too apt to consider him a fool for his +pains. 'It has been the custom,' wrote Mr. Lathbury, 'to speak of the +Non-Jurors as a set of unreasonable men, and should I succeed in any +measure in correcting those erroneous impressions, I shall feel that +my labour has not been in vain.' But in 1902, as Canon Overton is +ready enough to perceive, 'their position is a little better +understood.' The well-nigh 'fools' are all but 'confessors.' + + [Footnote A: _A History of the Non-Jurors_. By Thomas Lathbury. + London: Pickering, 1845.] + + [Footnote B: _The Non-Jurors_. By J.H. Overton, D.D. London: Smith, + Elder and Co., 1902, 16s.] + +The early history of the Non-Jurors is as fascinating and as fruitful +as their later history is dull, melancholy, and disappointing. + +Nobody will deny that the Bishops, clergy, and laity of the Church of +England who refused to take the oaths to William and Mary and George +I., when tendered to them, were amply justified in the Court of +Conscience. They were ridiculed by the politicians of the day for +their supersensitiveness; but what were they to do? If they took the +oaths, they apostalized from the faith they had once professed. + +Before the Revolution it was the faith of all High Churchmen--part of +the _deposition_ they had to guard--that the doctrine of +non-resistance and passive obedience was Gospel truth, primitive +doctrine, and a chief 'characteristic' of the Anglican Church. + +The saintly John Kettlewell, in his tractate, _Christianity: a +Doctrine of the Cross, or Passive Obedience under any Pretended +Invasion of Legal Rights and Liberties_ (1696), makes this perfectly +plain; and when Ken came to compose his famous will, wherein he +declared that he died in the Communion of the Church of England, 'as +it adheres to the doctrine of the Cross,' the good Bishop did not mean +what many a pious soul in later days has been edified by thinking he +did mean, the doctrine of the Atonement, but that of passive +obedience, which was the Non-Juror's cross. + +It is sad to think a doctrine dear to so many saintly men, maintained +with an erudition so vast and exemplified by sacrifices so great, +should have disappeared in the vortex of present-day conflict. It may +some day reappear in Convocation. Kettlewell, who was a precise writer +and accurate thinker, defined sovereignty as supremacy. 'Kings,' he +said, 'can be no longer sovereigns, but subjects, if they have any +superiors'; and he points out with much acumen that the best security +under a sovereign 'which sovereignty allows' is that the Kings and +Ministers are accountable and liable for breach of law as well as +others. Kettlewell, had he lived long enough, might have come to +transfer his idea of sovereignty to Kings, Lords, and Commons speaking +through an Act of Parliament, and if so, he would have urged _active +obedience_ to its enactments, when not contrary to conscience, and +_passive obedience_ if they were so contrary. Therefore, were he alive +to-day, and did he think it contrary to conscience (as he easily +might) to pay a school-rate for an 'undenominational' school, he would +not draw a cheque for the amount, but neither would he punch the +bailiff's head who came to seize his furniture. Kettlewell's treatise +is well worth reading. Its last paragraph is most spirited. + +There could be no doubt about it. The High Church party were bound +hand and foot to the doctrine of the Cross--_i.e._, passive obedience +to the Lord's Anointed. Whoever else might actively resist or forsake +the King, they could not without apostasy. But the Revolution of 1688 +was not content to pierce the High Churchmen through one hand. Not +only did the Revolution require the Church to forswear its King, but +also to see its spiritual fathers deprived and intruders set in their +places without even the semblance of any spiritual authority. If it +was hard to have James II. a fugitive in foreign lands and Dutch +William in Whitehall, it was perhaps even harder to see Sancroft +expelled from Lambeth, and the Erastian and latitudinarian Tillotson, +who was prepared to sacrifice even episcopacy for peace, usurping the +title of Archbishop of Canterbury. After all, no man, not even a +Churchman, can serve two masters. The loyalty of a High Churchman to +the throne is always subject to his loyalty to the Church, and at the +Revolution he was wounded in both houses. + +When Queen Elizabeth ascended the throne, and established what was +then unblushingly called 'the new religion,' the whole Anglican +Hierarchy, with the paltry exception of the Bishop of Llandaff, +refused the oaths of supremacy, and were superseded. In a little +more than 100 years the Protestant Bench was bombarded with a +heart-searching oath--this time of allegiance. Opinion was divided; +the point was not so clear as in 1559. The Archbishop of York and his +brethren of London, Lincoln, Bristol, Winchester, Rochester, Llandaff +and St. Asaph, Carlisle and St. David's, swore to bear true allegiance +to Their Majesties King William and Queen Mary. The Archbishop of +Canterbury and the Bishops of Bath and Wells, Ely, Gloucester, +Norwich, Peterborough, Worcester, Chichester, and Chester refused to +swear anything of the kind, and were consequently, in pursuance of the +terms of an Act of Parliament, and of an Act of Parliament only, +deprived of their ecclesiastical preferments. They thus became the +first Non-Jurors, and were long, except two who died before actual +sentence of exclusion, affectionately known and piously venerated in +all High Church homes as 'the Deprived Fathers.' + +Who can doubt that they were right, holding the faith they did? Yet +Englishmen do not take kindly to martyrdom, and some of the Bishops +were strangely puzzled. The excellent Ken, who, like Keble, was an +Englishman first and a Catholic afterwards (in other words, no true +Catholic at all), when told that James was ready to give Ireland to +France, as nearly as possible conformed, so angry was he with the +Lord's Anointed; and even the fiery Leslie, one of our most agreeable +writers, was always ready to forgive those pious, peaceful souls who +thought it no sin, though great sorrow, to comply with the demands of +Caesar, but still managed to retain their old Church and King +principles. Leslie reserved his wrath for the Tillotsons and the +Tenisons and the Burnets, who first, to use his own words, swallowed +'the morsels of usurpation' and then dressed them up 'with all the +gaudy and ridiculous flourishes that an Apostate eloquence can put +upon them.' + +The early Non-Jurors included among their number a very large +proportion of holy, learned, and primitive-minded men. At least 400 of +the general body of the clergy refused the oaths and accepted for +themselves and those dependent on them lives of poverty and seclusion. +They were from the beginning an unpopular body. They were not +Puritans, they were not Deists, they were not Presbyterians, they +would not go to their parish churches; and yet they vehemently +objected to being called Papists. What troublesome people! Five of the +deprived fathers, including the Primate, had known what it was, when +they defied their Sovereign, to be the idols of the mob; but when +they adhered to his fallen cause they were deprived of their sees, and +sent packing from their palaces without a single growl of popular +discontent. Oblivion was their portion, even as it was of their Roman +Catholic predecessors at the time of the Reformation. + +The Archbishop of Canterbury, when turned out of Lambeth by a judgment +of the Court of King's Bench to make way for Tillotson, retired to his +native village in Fressingfield, where he did not attend the parish +church, nor would allow any but non-juring clergy to perform Divine +service in his presence. Dr. Sancroft (who was a book-lover, and had +designed a binding of his own) died on November 24, 1693, and the +epitaph, of his own composition, on his tombstone may still be read +with profit by time-servers of all degrees and denominations, cleric +and lay, in Parliament and out of it. All the deprived Bishops, so Mr. +Lathbury assures us, were in very narrow circumstances, and of Turner, +of Ely, Mr. Lathbury very properly writes: 'This man who, by adhering +to the new Sovereign, and taking the oath, might have ended his day +amidst an abundance of earthly blessings, was actually sustained in +his declining years by the bounty of those who sympathized with him in +his distresses.' Bishop Turner died in 1700. + +Despite this distressing and most genuine poverty, the reader of old +books will not infrequently come across traces of many happy and +well-spent hours during which these poor Non-Jurors managed 'to fleet +the time' in their own society, for they were, many of them, men of +the most varied tastes and endowed with Christian tempers; whilst +their writings exhibit, as no other writings of the period do, the +saintliness and devotion which are supposed to be among the 'notes' +of the Catholic Church. Two better men than Kettlewell and Dodwell +are nowhere to be found, and as for vigorous writing, where is Charles +Leslie to be matched? + +So long as the deprived fathers continued to live, the schism--for +complete schism it was between 'the faithful remnant of the Church of +England' and the Established Church--was on firm ground. But what was +to happen when the last Bishop died? Dodwell, who, next to Hickes, +seems to have dominated the Non-Juring mind, did not wish the schism +to continue after the death of the deprived Bishops; for though he +admitted that the prayers for the Revolution Sovereigns would be +'unlawful prayers,' to which assent could not properly be given, he +still thought that communion with the Church of England was possible. +Hickes thought otherwise, and Hickes, it must not be forgotten, though +only known to the world and even to Non-Jurors generally, as the +deprived Dean of Worcester, was in sober truth and reality Bishop of +Thetford, having been consecrated a Suffragan Bishop under that title +by the deprived Bishops of Norwich, Peterborough, and Ely, at +Southgate, in Middlesex, on February 24, 1693, in the Bishop of +Peterborough's lodgings. At the same time the accomplished Thomas +Wagstaffe was consecrated Suffragan Bishop of Ipswich, though he +continued to earn his living as a physician all the rest of his days. + +These were clandestine consecrations, for even so well-tried and +whole-hearted a Non-Juror as Thomas Hearne, of Oxford, knew nothing +about them, though a great friend of both the new Bishops, until long +years had sped. It would be idle at this distance of time, and having +regard to the events which have happened since February, 1693, to +consider the nice questions how far the Act of Henry VIII. relating to +the appointment of suffragans could have any applicability to such +consecrations, or what degree of Episcopal authority was thereby +conferred, or for how long. + +As things turned out, Ken proved the longest liver of the deprived +fathers. The good Bishop died at Longleat, one of the few great houses +which sheltered Non-Jurors, on March 19, 1711. But before his death he +had made cession of his rights to his friend Hooper, who on the +violent death of Kidder, the intruding revolution Bishop, had been +appointed by Queen Anne, who had wished to reinstate Ken, to Bath and +Wells. It was the wish of Ken that the schism should come to an end on +his death. + +It did nothing of the kind, though some very leading Non-Jurors, +including the learned Dodwell and Nelson, rejoined the main body of +the Church, saving all just exceptions to the 'unlawful prayers.' + +Bishop Wagstaffe died in 1712, leaving Bishop Hickes alone in his +glory, who in 1713, assisted by two Scottish Bishops, consecrated +Jeremy Collier, Samuel Hawes, and Nathaniel Spinckes, Bishops of 'the +faithful remnant.' Hickes died in 1715, and the following year the +great and hugely learned Thomas Brett became a Bishop, as also did +Henry Gawdy. + +Then, alas! arose a schism which rent the faithful remnant in twain. +It was about a great subject, the Communion Service. Collier and Brett +were in favour of altering the Book of Common Prayer so as to restore +it to the First Book of King Edward VI., which provided for (1) The +mixed chalice; (2) prayers for the faithful departed; (3) prayer for +the descent of the Holy Ghost on the consecrated elements; (4) the +Oblatory Prayer, offering the elements to the Father as symbols of His +Son's body and blood. This side of the controversy became known as +'The Usagers,' whilst those Non-Jurors, headed by Bishop Spinckes, who +held by King Charles's Prayer-Book, were called 'the Non-Usagers.' The +discussion lasted long, and was distinguished by immense learning and +acumen. + +The Usagers may be said to have carried the day, for after the +controversy had lasted fourteen years, in 1731 Timothy Mawman was +consecrated a Bishop by three Bishops, two of whom were 'Usagers' and +one a 'Non-Usager.' But in the meantime what had become of the +congregations committed to their charge? Never large, they had +dwindled almost entirely away. + +The last regular Bishop was Robert Gordon, who was consecrated in 1741 +by Brett, Smith, and Mawman. Gordon, who was an out-and-out Jacobite, +died in 1779. + +I have not even mentioned the name of perhaps the greatest of the +Non-Jurors, William Law, nor that of Carte, an historian, the fruits +of whose labour may still be seen in other men's orchards. + +The whole story, were it properly told, would prove how hard it is in +a country like England, where nobody really cares about such things, +to run a schism. But who knows what may happen to-morrow? + + + +LORD CHESTERFIELD + + +'Buy good books and read them; the best books are the commonest, and +the last editions are always the best, if the editors are not +blockheads.' So wrote Lord Chesterfield to his son, that +highly-favoured and much bewritten youth, on March 19, 1750, and his +words have been chosen with great cunning by Mr. Charles Strachey as a +motto for his new edition of these famous letters.[A] + + [Footnote A: Published by Methuen and Co. in 2 vols.] + +The quotation is full of the practical wisdom, but is at the same +time--so much, at least, an old book-collector may be allowed to +say--a little suggestive of the too-well-defined limitations of their +writer's genius and character. Lord Chesterfield is always clear and +frequently convincing, yet his wisdom is that of Mr. Worldly Wiseman, +and not only never points in the direction of the Celestial City, but +seldom displays sympathy with any generous emotion or liberal taste. +Yet as we have nobody like him in the whole body of our literature, we +can welcome even another edition--portable, complete, and cheap--of +his letters to his son with as much enthusiasm as is compatible with +the graces, and with the maxim, so dear to his lordship's heart, _Nil +admirari!_ + +What, I have often wondered, induced Lord Chesterfield to write this +enormously long and troublesome series of letters to a son who was not +even his heir? Their sincerity cannot be called in question. William +Wilberforce did not more fervently desire the conversion to God of his +infant Samuel than apparently did Lord Chesterfield the transformation +of his lumpish offspring into 'the all-accomplished man' he wished to +have him. + +'All this,' so the father writes in tones of fervent pleading--'all +this you may compass if you please. You have the means, you have the +opportunities; employ them, for God's sake, while you may, and make +yourself the all-accomplished man I wish to have you. It entirely +depends upon the next two years; they are the decisive ones' (Letter +CLXXVII.). + +It is the very language of an evangelical piety applied to the +manufacture of a worldling. But what promoted the anxiety? Was it +natural affection--a father's love? If it was, never before or since +has that world-wide and homely emotion been so concealed. There is a +detestable, a forbidding, an all-pervading harshness of tone +throughout this correspondence that seems to banish affection, to +murder love. Read Letter CLXXVIII., and judge for yourselves. I will +quote a passage: + + 'The more I love you now from the good opinion I have of you, the + greater will be my indignation if I should have reason to change + it. Hitherto you have had every possible proof of my affection, + because you have deserved it, but when you cease to deserve it you + may expect every possible mark of my resentment. To leave nothing + doubtful upon this important point, I will tell you fairly + beforehand by what rule I shall judge of your conduct: by Mr. + Harte's account.... If he complains you must be guilty, and I shall + not have the least regard for anything you may allege in your own + defence.' + +Ugh! what a father! Lord Chesterfield despised the Gospels, and made +little of St. Paul; yet the New Testament could have taught him +something concerning the nature of a father's love. His language is +repulsive, repugnant, and yet how few fathers have taken the trouble +to write 400 educational letters of great length to their sons! All +one can say is that Chesterfield's letters are without natural +affection: + + 'If this be error and upon me proved, + I never writ, and no man ever loved.' + +If affection did not dictate these letters, what did? Could it be +ambition? So astute a man as Chesterfield, who was kept well informed +as to the impression made by his son, could hardly suppose it likely +that the boy would make a name for himself, and thereby confer +distinction upon the family of which he was an irregular offshoot. A +respectable diplomatic career, with an interval in the House of +Commons, was the most that so clear-sighted a man could anticipate for +the young Stanhope. Was it literary fame for himself? This, of course, +assumes that subsequent publication was contemplated by the writer. +The dodges and devices of authors are well-nigh infinite and quite +beyond conjecture, and it is, of course, possible that Lord +Chesterfield kept copies of these letters, which bear upon their +faces evidence of care and elaboration. It is not to be supposed for a +moment that he ever forgot he had written them. It is hard to believe +he never inquired after them and their whereabouts. Great men have +been known to write letters which, though they bore other addresses, +were really intended for their biographers. It would not have been +surprising if Lord Chesterfield wrote these letters intending some day +to publish them, but not only is there no warrant for such an opinion, +but the opposite is clearly established. It is, no doubt, odd that the +son should have carefully preserved more than 400 letters written to +him during a period beginning with his tenderest years and continuing +whilst he was travelling on the Continent. It seems almost a miracle. +What made the son treasure them so carefully? Did he look forward to +being his father's biographer? Hardly so at the age of ten, or even +twenty. Biographies were not then what they have since become. No +doubt in the middle of the eighteenth century letters were more +treasured than they are to-day, and young Stanhope's friends may also +have thought it wise to encourage him to preserve documentary evidence +of the great interest taken in him by his father. None the less, I +think the preservation of this correspondence is in the circumstances +a most extraordinary though well-established fact. + +The son died in 1768 of a dropsy at Avignon, and the news was +communicated to the Earl by his daughter-in-law, Mrs. Eugenia +Stanhope, of whose existence he was previously unaware. Two grandsons +accompanied her. It was a shock; but 'les manières nobles et aisées, +la tournure d'un homme de condition, le ton de la bonne compagnie, +les grâces le je ne scais quoi qui plaît,' came to Lord Chesterfield's +assistance, and he received his son's widow, who was not a pleasing +person, and her two boys with kindness and good feeling, and provided +for them quite handsomely by his will. The Earl died in 1773, in his +seventy-ninth year, and thereupon Mrs. Stanhope, who was in possession +of all the original letters addressed to her late husband, carried +her wares to market, and made a bargain with Mr. Dodsley for their +publication, she to receive £1,575. Mr. Dodsley advertised the +forthcoming work, and on that the Earl's executors, relying upon the +well-known case of Pope _v._ Curl, decided by Lord Hardwicke in 1741, +filed their bill against Mrs. Stanhope, seeking an injunction to +restrain publication. The widow put in her sworn Answer, in which she +averred that she had, on more occasions than one, mentioned +publication to the Earl, and that he, though recovering from her +certain written characters of eminent contemporaries, had seemed quite +content to let her do what she liked with the letters, only remarking +that there was too much Latin in them. The executors seem to have +moved for what is called an interim injunction--that is, an injunction +until trial of the cause, and, from the report in _Ambler_, it appears +that Lord Apsley (a feeble creature) granted such an injunction, but +recommended the executors to permit the publication if, on seeing a +copy of the correspondence, they saw no objection to it. In the result +the executors gave their consent, and the publication became an +authorized one, so much so that Dodsley was able to obtain an +interdict in the Scotch Court preventing a certain Scotch bookseller, +caller McFarquhar, from reprinting the letters in Edinburgh. Whether +the executors believed Mrs. Stanhope's story, or saw no reason to +object to the publication of the letters, I do not know, but it is +clear that the opposition was a half-hearted one. + +It would be hasty to assume that Lord Chesterfield wrote these letters +with any intention of publication, and I am therefore left without +being able to suggest any strong reason for their existence. A +restless, itching pen, perhaps, accounts for them. Some men find a +pleasure in writing, even at great length; others, of whom Carlyle was +one, though they hate the labour, are yet compelled by some fierce +necessity to blacken paper. + +At all events, we have Lord Chesterfield's letters, and, having them, +they will always have readers, for they are readable. + +That the letters are full of wit and wisdom and sound advice is +certain. Mr. Strachey, in his preface, seems to be under the +impression that in the popular estimate Chesterfield is reckoned an +elegant trifler, a man of no serious account. What the popular or +vulgar estimate of Chesterfield may be it would be hard to determine, +nor is it of the least importance, for no one who knows about Lord +Chesterfield can possibly entertain any such opinion. How it came +about that so able and ambitious a man made so poor a thing out of +life, and failed so completely, is puzzling at first, though a little +study would, I think, make the reasons of Chesterfield's failure plain +enough. + +To prove by extracts from the Letters how wise a man Chesterfield was +would be easy, but tiresome; to exhibit him in a repulsive character +would be equally easy, but spiteful. I prefer to leave him alone, and +to content myself with but one quotation, which has a touch of both +wisdom and repulsiveness: + + 'Consult your reason betimes. I do not say it will always prove an + unerring guide, for human reason is not infallible, but it will + prove the least erring guide that you can follow. Books and + conversation may assist it, but adopt neither blindly and + implicitly; try both by that best rule God has given to direct + us--reason. Of all the truths do not decline that of thinking. The + host of mankind can hardly be said to think; their prejudices are + almost all adoptive; and in general I believe it is better that it + should be so, as such common prejudices contribute more to order + and quiet than their own separate reasonings would do, uncultivated + as they are. We have many of these useful prejudices in this + country which I should be very sorry to see removed. The good + Protestant conviction that the Pope is both Antichrist and the + Whore of Babylon is a more effectual preservative against Popery + than all the solid and unanswerable arguments of Chillingworth.' + + + +THE JOHNSONIAN LEGEND + + +The ten handsome volumes which the indefatigable and unresting zeal of +Dr. Birkbeck Hill, and the high spirit of the Clarendon Press, have +edited, arranged, printed, and published for the benefit of the world +and the propagation of the Gospel according to Dr. Johnson are +pleasant things to look upon. I hope the enterprise has proved +remunerative to those concerned, but I doubt it. The parsimony of the +public in the matter of books is pitiful. The ordinary purse-carrying +Englishman holds in his head a ready-reckoner or scale of charges by +which he tests his purchases--so much for a dinner, so much for a +bottle of champagne, so much for a trip to Paris, so much for a pair +of gloves, and so much for a book. These ten volumes would cost him £4 +9s. 3d. 'Whew! What a price for a book, and where are they to be put, +and who is to dust them?' Idle questions! As for room, a bicycle takes +more room than 1,000 books; and as for dust, it is a delusion. You +should never dust books. There let it lie until the rare hour arrives +when you want to read a particular volume; then warily approach it +with a snow-white napkin, take it down from its shelf, and, +withdrawing to some back apartment, proceed to cleanse the tome. Dr. +Johnson adopted other methods. Every now and again he drew on huge +gloves, such as those once worn by hedgers and ditchers, and then, +clutching his folios and octavos, he banged and buffeted them together +until he was enveloped in a cloud of dust. This violent exercise over, +the good doctor restored the volumes, all battered and bruised, to +their places, where, of course, the dust resettled itself as speedily +as possible. + +Dr. Johnson could make books better than anybody, but his notions of +dusting them were primitive and erroneous. But the room and the dust +are mere subterfuges. The truth is, there is a disinclination to pay +£4 9s. 3d. for the ten volumes containing the complete Johnsonian +legend. To quarrel with the public is idiotic and most un-Johnsonian. +'Depend upon it, sir,' said the Sage, 'every state of society is as +luxurious as it can be.' We all, a handful of misers excepted, spend +more money than we can afford upon luxuries, but what those luxuries +are to be is largely determined for us by the fashions of our time. If +we do not buy these ten volumes, it is not because we would not like +to have them, but because we want the money they cost for something we +want more. As for dictating to men how they are to spend their money, +it were both a folly and an impertinence. + +These ten volumes ended Dr. Hill's labours as an editor of _Johnson's +Life and Personalia_, but did not leave him free. He had set his mind +on an edition of the _Lives of the Poets_. This, to the regret of all +who knew him either personally or as a Johnsonian, he did not live to +see through the press. But it is soon to appear, and will be a +storehouse of anecdote and a miracle of cross-references. A poet who +has been dead a century or two is amazing good company--at least, he +never fails to be so when Johnson tells us as much of his story as he +can remember without undue research, with that irony of his, that vast +composure, that humorous perception of the greatness and the +littleness of human life, that make the brief records of a Spratt, a +Walsh, and a Fenton so divinely entertaining. It is an immense +testimony to the healthiness of the Johnsonian atmosphere that Dr. +Hill, who breathed it almost exclusively for a quarter of a century +and upwards, showed no symptoms either of moral deterioration or +physical exhaustion. His appetite to the end was as keen as ever, nor +was his temper obviously the worse. The task never became a toil, not +even a tease. 'You have but two subjects,' said Johnson to Boswell: +'yourself and myself. I am sick of both.' Johnson hated to be talked +about, or to have it noticed what he ate or what he had on. For a +hundred years now last past he has been more talked about and noticed +than anybody else. But Dr. Hill never grew sick of Dr. Johnson. + +The _Johnsonian Miscellanies_[A] open with the _Prayers and +Meditations_, first published by the Rev. Dr. Strahan in 1785. Strahan +was the Vicar of Islington, and into his hands at an early hour one +morning Dr. Johnson, then approaching his last days, put the papers, +'with instructions for committing them to the press and with a promise +to prepare a sketch of his own life to accompany them.' This promise +the doctor was not able to keep, and shortly after his death his +reverend friend published the papers just as they were put into his +hands. One wonders he had the heart to do it, but the clerical mind is +sometimes strangely insensitive to the privacy of thought. But, as in +the case of most indelicate acts, you cannot but be glad the thing was +done. The original manuscript is at Pembroke College, Oxford. In these +_Prayers and Meditations_ we see an awful figure. The _solitary_ +Johnson, perturbed, tortured, oppressed, in distress of body and of +mind, full of alarms for the future both in this world and the next, +teased by importunate and perplexing thoughts, harassed by morbid +infirmities, vexed by idle yet constantly recurring scruples, with an +inherited melancholy and a threatened sanity, is a gloomy and even a +terrible picture, and forms a striking contrast to the social hero, +the triumphant dialectician of Boswell, Mrs. Thrale, and Madame +D'Arblay. Yet it is relieved by its inherent humanity, its fellowship +and feeling. Dr. Johnson's piety is delightfully full of human +nature--far too full to please the poet Cowper, who wrote of the +_Prayers and Meditations_ as follows: + + 'If it be fair to judge of a book by an extract, I do not wonder + that you were so little edified by Johnson's Journal. It is even + more ridiculous than was poor Rutty's of flatulent memory. The + portion of it given us in this day's paper contains not one + sentiment worth one farthing, except the last, in which he resolves + to bind himself with no more unbidden obligations. Poor man! one + would think that to pray for his dead wife and to pinch himself + with Church fasts had been almost the whole of his religion.' + + [Footnote A: Two volumes. Oxford Clarendon Press, 1897.] + +It were hateful to pit one man's religion against another's, but it +is only fair to Dr. Johnson's religion to remember that, odd compound +as it was, it saw him through the long struggle of life, and enabled +him to meet the death he so honestly feared like a man and a +Christian. The _Prayers and Meditations_ may not be an edifying book +in Cowper's sense of the word; there is nothing triumphant about it; +it is full of infirmities and even absurdities; but, for all that, it +contains more piety than 10,000 religious biographies. Nor must the +evidence it contains of weakness be exaggerated. Beset with +infirmities, a lazy dog, as he often declared himself to be, he yet +managed to do a thing or two. Here, for example, is an entry: + + '29, EASTER EVE (1777). + + 'I rose and again prayed with reference to my departed wife. I + neither read nor went to church, yet can scarcely tell how I have + been hindered. I treated with booksellers on a bargain, but the + time was not long.' + +Too long, perhaps, for Johnson's piety, but short enough to enable the +booksellers to make an uncommon good bargain for the _Lives of the +Poets_. 'As to the terms,' writes Mr. Dilly, 'it was left entirely to +the doctor to name his own; he mentioned 200 guineas; it was +immediately agreed to.' The business-like Malone makes the following +observation on the transaction: 'Had he asked 1,000, or even 1,500, +guineas the booksellers, who knew the value of his name, would +doubtless have readily given it.' Dr. Johnson, though the son of a +bookseller, was the least tradesman-like of authors. The bargain was +bad, but the book was good. + +A year later we find this record: + + 'MONDAY, _April_ 20 (1778). + + 'After a good night, as I am forced to reckon, I rose seasonably + and prayed, using the collect for yesterday. In reviewing my time + from Easter, 1777, I find a very melancholy and shameful blank. So + little has been done that days and months are without any trace. My + health has, indeed, been very much interrupted. My nights have been + commonly not only restless but painful and fatiguing.... I have + written a little of the _Lives of the Poets_, I think, with all my + usual vigour. I have made sermons, perhaps, as readily as formerly. + My memory is less faithful in retaining names, and, I am afraid, in + retaining occurrences. Of this vacillation and vagrancy of mind I + impute a great part to a fortuitous and unsettled life, and + therefore purpose to spend my life with more method. + + 'This year the 28th of March passed away without memorial. Poor + Tetty, whatever were our faults and failings, we loved each other. + I did not forget thee yesterday. Couldst thou have lived! I am now, + with the help of God, to begin a new life.' + +Dr. Hill prints an interesting letter of Mr. Jowett's, in which occur +the following observations: + + 'It is a curious question whether Boswell has unconsciously + misrepresented Johnson in any respect. I think, judging from the + materials, which are supplied chiefly by himself, that in one + respect he has. He has represented him more as a sage and + philosopher in his conduct as well as his conversation than he + really was, and less as a rollicking "King of Society." The gravity + of Johnson's own writings tends to confirm this, as I suspect, + erroneous impression. His religion was fitful and intermittent; and + when once the ice was broken he enjoyed Jack Wilkes, though he + refused to shake hands with Hume. I was much struck with a remark + of Sir John Hawkins (excuse me if I have mentioned this to you + before): "He was the most humorous man I ever knew."' + +Mr. Jowett's letter raises some nice points--the Wilkes and Hume +point, for example. Dr. Johnson hated both blasphemy and bawd, but he +hated blasphemy most. Mr. Jowett shared the doctor's antipathies, but +very likely hated bawd more than he did blasphemy. But, as I have +already said, the point is a nice one. To crack jokes with Wilkes at +the expense of Boswell and the Scotch seems to me a very different +thing from shaking hands with Hume. But, indeed, it is absurd to +overlook either Johnson's melancholy piety or his abounding humour and +love of fun and nonsense. His _Prayers and Meditations_ are full of +the one, Boswell and Mrs. Thrale and Madame D'Arblay are full of the +other. Boswell's _Johnson_ has superseded the 'authorized biography' +by Sir John Hawkins, and Dr. Hill did well to include in these +_Miscellanies_ Hawkins' inimitable description of the memorable +banquet given at the Devil Tavern, near Temple Bar, in the spring of +1751, to celebrate the publication of Mrs. Charlotte Lennox's first +novel. What delightful revelry! what innocent mirth! prolonged though +it was till long after dawn. Poor Mrs. Lennox died in distress in +1804, at the age of eighty-three. Could Johnson but have lived he +would have lent her his helping hand. He was no fair-weather friend, +but shares with Charles Lamb the honour of being able to unite narrow +means and splendid munificence. + +I must end with an anecdote: + + 'Henderson asked the doctor's opinion of _Dido_ and its author. + "Sir," said Dr. Johnson, "I never did the man an injury. Yet he + would read his tragedy to me."' + + + + +BOSWELL AS BIOGRAPHER + + +Boswell's position in English literature cannot be disputed, nor can +he ever be displaced from it. He has written our greatest biography. +That is all. Theorize about it as much as you like, account for it how +you may, the fact remains. 'Alone I did it.' There has been plenty of +theorizing. Lord Macaulay took the subject in hand and tossed it up +and down for half a dozen pages with a gusto that drove home to many +minds the conviction, the strange conviction, that our greatest +biography was written by one of the very smallest men that ever lived, +'a man of the meanest and feeblest intellect'--by a dunce, a parasite, +and a coxcomb; by one 'who, if he had not been a great fool, would +never have been a great writer.' So far Macaulay, _anno Domini_ 1831, +in the vigorous pages of the _Edinburgh Review_. A year later appears +in _Fraser's Magazine_ another theory by another hand, not then +famous, Mr. Thomas Carlyle. I own to an inordinate affection for Mr. +Carlyle as 'literary critic' As philosopher and sage, he has served +our turn. We have had the fortune, good or bad, to outlive him; and +our sad experience is that death makes a mighty difference to all but +the very greatest. The sight of the author of _Sartor Resartus_ in a +Chelsea omnibus, the sound of Dr. Newman's voice preaching to a small +congregation in Birmingham, kept alive in our minds the vision of +their greatness--it seemed then as if that greatness could know no +limit; but no sooner had they gone away, than somehow or another +one became conscious of some deficiency in their intellectual +positions--the tide of human thought rushed visibly by them, and it +became plain that to no other generation would either of these men be +what they had been to their own. But Mr. Carlyle as literary critic +has a tenacious grasp, and Boswell was a subject made for his hand. +'Your Scottish laird, says an English naturalist of those days, may be +defined as the hungriest and vainest of all bipeds yet known.' Carlyle +knew the type well enough. His general description of Boswell is +savage: + + 'Boswell was a person whose mean or bad qualities lay open to the + general eye, visible, palpable to the dullest. His good qualities, + again, belonged not to the time he lived in; were far from common + then; indeed, in such a degree were almost unexampled; not + recognisable, therefore, by everyone; nay, apt even, so strange + had they grown, to be confounded with the very vices they lay + contiguous to and had sprung out of. That he was a wine-bibber and + good liver, gluttonously fond of whatever would yield him a little + solacement, were it only of a stomachic character, is undeniable + enough. That he was vain, heedless, a babbler, had much of the + sycophant, alternating with the braggadocio, curiously spiced, too, + with an all-pervading dash of the coxcomb; that he gloried much + when the tailor by a court suit had made a new man of him; that he + appeared at the Shakespeare Jubilee with a riband imprinted + "Corsica Boswell" round his hat, and, in short, if you will, lived + no day of his life without saying and doing more than one + pretentious ineptitude, all this unhappily is evident as the sun at + noon. The very look of Boswell seems to have signified so much. In + that cocked nose, cocked partly in triumph over his weaker + fellow-creatures, partly to snuff up the smell of coming pleasure + and scent it from afar, in those big cheeks, hanging like + half-filled wine-skins, still able to contain more, in that + coarsely-protruded shelf mouth, that fat dew-lapped chin; in all + this who sees not sensuality, pretension, boisterous imbecility + enough? The underpart of Boswell's face is of a low, almost brutish + character.' + +This is character-painting with a vengeance. Portrait of a Scotch +laird by the son of a Scotch peasant. Carlyle's Boswell is to me the +very man. If so, Carlyle's paradox seems as great as Macaulay's, for +though Carlyle does not call Boswell a great fool in plain set terms, +he goes very near it. But he keeps open a door through which he +effects his escape. Carlyle sees in Bozzy 'the old reverent feeling of +discipleship, in a word, hero-worship.' + + 'How the babbling Bozzy, inspired only by love and the recognition + and vision which love can lend, epitomizes nightly the words of + Wisdom, the deeds and aspects of Wisdom, and so, little by little, + unconsciously works together for us a whole "Johnsoniad"--a more + free, perfect, sunlit and spirit-speaking likeness than for many + centuries has been drawn by man of man.' + +This I think is a little overdrawn. That Boswell loved Johnson, God +forbid I should deny. But that he was inspired only by love to write +his life, I gravely question. Boswell was, as Carlyle has said, a +greedy man--and especially was he greedy of fame--and he saw in his +revered friend a splendid subject for artistic biographic treatment. +Here is where both Macaulay and Carlyle are, as I suggest, wrong. +Boswell was a fool, but only in the sense in which hundreds of great +artists have been fools; on his own lines, and across his own bit of +country, he was no fool. He did not accidentally stumble across +success, but he deliberately aimed at what he hit. Read his preface +and you will discover his method. He was as much an artist as either +of his two famous critics. Where Carlyle goes astray is in attributing +to discipleship what was mainly due to a dramatic sense. However, +theories are no great matter. + +Our means of knowledge of James Boswell are derived mainly from +himself; he is his own incriminator. In addition to the life there is +the Corsican tour, the Hebrides tour, the letters to Erskine and to +Temple, and a few insignificant occasional publications in the shape +of letters to the people of Scotland, etc. With these before him it is +impossible for any biographer to approach Bozzy in a devotional +attitude; he was all Carlyle calls him. Our sympathies are with his +father, who despised him, and with his son, who was ashamed of him. It +is indeed strange to think of him staggering, like the drunkard he +was, between these two respectable and even stately figures--the +Senator of the Court of Justice and the courtly scholar and antiquary. +And yet it is to the drunkard humanity is debtor. Respectability is +not everything. + +Boswell had many literary projects and ambitions, and never intended +to be known merely as the biographer of Johnson. He proposed to write +a life of Lord Kames and to compose memoirs of Hume. It seems he did +write a life of Sir Robert Sibbald. He had other plans in his head, +but dissipation and a steadily increasing drunkenness destroyed them +all. As inveterate book-hunter, I confess to a great fancy to lay +hands on his _Dorando: A Spanish Tale_, a shilling book published in +Edinburgh during the progress of the once famous Douglas case, and +ordered to be suppressed as contempt of court after it had been +through three editions. It is said, probably hastily, that no copy is +known to exist--a dreary fate which, according to Lord Macaulay, might +have attended upon the _Life of Johnson_ had the copyright of that +work become the property of Boswell's son, who hated to hear it +mentioned. It is not, however, very easy to get rid of any book once +it is published, and I do not despair of reading _Dorando_ before I +die. + + + + +OLD PLEASURE GARDENS[A] + + + [Footnote A: _Pleasure Gardens of the Eighteenth Century_, by Warwick + Wroth, F.S.A., assisted by Arthur Edgar Wroth. London: Macmillan and + Co.] + +This is an honest book, disfigured by no fine writing or woeful +attempts to make us dance round may-poles with our ancestors. Terribly +is our good language abused by the swell-mob of stylists, for whom it +is certainly not enough that Chatham's language is their mother's +tongue. May the Devil fly away with these artists; though no sooner +had he done so than we should be 'wae' for auld Nicky-ben. Mr. Wroth, +of the British Museum, and his brother, Mr. Arthur Wroth, are above +such vulgar pranks, and never strain after the picturesque, but in the +plain garb of honest men carry us about to the sixty-four gardens +where the eighteenth-century Londoner, his wife and family--the John +Gilpins of the day--might take their pleasure either sadly, as indeed +best befits our pilgrim state, or uproariously to deaden the ear to +the still small voice of conscience--the pangs of slighted love, the +law's delay, the sluggish step of Fortune, the stealthy strides of +approaching poverty, or any other of the familiar incidents of our +mortal life. The sixty-two illustrations which adorn the book are as +honest as the letterpress. There is a most delightful Morland +depicting a very stout family indeed regaling itself _sub tegmine +fagi_. It is called a 'Tea Party.' A voluminous mother holds in her +roomy lap a very fat baby, whose back and neck are full upon you as +you stare into the picture. And what a jolly back and innocent neck it +is! Enough to make every right-minded woman cry out with pleasure. +Then there is the highly respectable father stirring his cup and +watching with placid content a gentleman in lace and ruffles attending +to the wife, whilst the two elder children play with a wheezy dog. + +In these pages we can see for ourselves the British public--God rest +its soul!--enjoying itself. This honest book is full of _la +bourgeoisie_. The rips and the painted ladies occasionally, it is +true, make their appearance, but they are reduced to their proper +proportions. The Adam and Eve Tea Gardens, St. Pancras, have a +somewhat rakish sound, calculated to arrest the jaded attention of the +debauchee, but what has Mr. Wroth to tell us about them? + + 'About the beginning of the present century it could still be + described as an agreeable retreat, "with enchanting prospects"; and + the gardens were laid out with arbours, flowers, and shrubs. Cows + were kept for making syllabubs, and on summer afternoons a regular + company met to play bowls and trap-ball in an adjacent field. One + proprietor fitted out a mimic squadron of frigates in the garden, + and the long-room was used a good deal for beanfeasts and + tea-drinking parties' (p. 127). + +What a pleasant place! Syllabubs! How sweet they sound! Nobody +worried then about diphtheria; they only died of it. Mimic frigates, +too! What patriotism! These gardens are as much lost as those of the +Hesperides. A cemetery swallowed them up--the cemetery which adjoins +the old St. Pancras Churchyard. The Tavern, shorn of its amenities, a +mere drink-shop, survived as far down the century as 1874, soon after +which date it also disappeared. Hornsey Wood House has a name not +unknown in the simple annals of tea-drinking. It is now part of +Finsbury Park, but in the middle of the last century its long-room 'on +popular holydays, such as Whit Sunday, might be seen crowded as early +as nine or ten in the morning with a motley assemblage eating rolls +and butter and drinking tea at an extravagant price.' 'Hone remembered +the old Hornsey Wood House as it stood embowered, and seeming a part +of the wood. It was at that time kept by two sisters--Mrs. Lloyd and +Mrs. Collier--and these aged dames were usually to be found before +their door on a seat between two venerable oaks, wherein swarms of +bees hived themselves.' + +What a picture is this of these vanished dames! Somewhere, I trust, +they are at peace. + + 'And there, they say, two bright and aged snakes, + Who once were Cadmus and Harmonia, + Bask in the glens or on the warm sea-shore.' + +A more raffish place was the Dog and Duck in St. George's Fields, +which boasted mineral springs, good for gout, stone, king's evil, sore +eyes, and inveterate cancers. Considering its virtue, the water was a +cheap liquor, for a dozen bottles could be had at the spa for a +shilling. The Dog and Duck, though at last it exhibited depraved +tastes, was at one time well conducted. Miss Talbot writes about it to +Mrs. Carter, and Dr. Johnson advised his Thralia to try the waters. It +was no mean place, but boasted a breakfast-room, a bowling-green, and +a swimming-bath 200 feet long and 100 feet (nearly) broad. Mr. Wroth +narrates the history of its fall with philosophical composure. In the +hands of one Hedger the decencies were disregarded, and thieves made +merry where once Miss Talbot sipped bohea. One of its frequenters, +Charlotte Shaftoe, is said to have betrayed seven of her intimates to +the gallows. Few visitors' lists could stand such a strain as Miss +Shaftoe put upon hers. In 1799 the Dog and Duck was suppressed, and +Bethlehem Hospital now reigns in its stead. 'The Peerless Pool' has a +Stevensonian sound. It was a dangerous pond behind Old Street, long +known as 'The Parlous or Perilous Pond' 'because divers youth by +swimming therein have been drowned.' In 1743 a London jeweller called +Kemp took it in hand, turned it into a pleasure bath, and renamed it, +happily enough, 'The Peerless Pool.' It was a fine open-air bath, 170 +feet long, more than 100 feet broad, and from 3 to 5 feet deep. 'It +was nearly surrounded by trees, and the descent was by marble steps to +a fine gravel bottom, through which the springs that supplied the pool +came bubbling up.' Mr. Kemp likewise constructed a fish-pond. The +enterprise met with success, and anglers, bathers, and at due seasons +skaters, flocked to 'The Peerless Pool.' Hone describes how every +Thursday and Saturday the boys from the Bluecoat School were wont to +plunge into its depths. You ask its fate. It has been built over. +Peerless Street, the second main turning on the left of the City Road +just beyond Old Street in coming from the City, is all that is left to +remind anyone of the once Parlous Pool, unless, indeed, it still +occasionally creeps into a cellar and drowns cockroaches instead of +divers youths. The Three Hats, Highbury Barn, Hampstead Wells, are not +places to be lightly passed over. In Mr. Wroth's book you may read +about them and trace their fortunes--their fallen fortunes. After all, +they have only shared the fate of empires. + +Of the most famous London gardens--Marylebone, Ranelagh, and, greatest +of them all, Vauxhall--Mr. Wroth writes at, of course, a becoming +length. Marylebone Gardens, when at their largest, comprised about 8 +acres. Beaumont Street, part of Devonshire Street and of Devonshire +Place and Upper Wimpole Street, now occupy their site. Music was the +main feature of Marylebone. A band played in the evening. Vocalists at +different times drew crowds. Masquerades and fireworks appeared later +in the history of the gardens, which usually were open three nights of +the week. Dr. Johnson's turbulent behaviour, on the occasion of one of +his frequent visits, will easily be remembered. Marylebone, at no +period, says Mr. Wroth, attained the vogue of Ranelagh or the +universal popularity of Vauxhall. In 1776 the gardens were closed, and +two years later the builders began to lay out streets. Ranelagh is, +perhaps, the greatest achievement of the eighteenth century. Its +Rotunda, built in 1741, is compared by Mr. Wroth to the reading-room +of the British Museum. No need to give its dimensions; only look at +the print, and you will understand what Johnson meant when he declared +that the _coup d'oeil_ of Ranelagh was the finest thing he had ever +seen. The ordinary charge for admission was half a crown, which +secured you tea or coffee and bread-and-butter. The gardens were +usually open Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays, and the amusements were +music, tea-drinking, walking, and talking. Mr. Wroth quotes a +Frenchman, who, after visiting Ranelagh in 1800, calls it 'le plus +insipide lieu d'amusement que l'on ait pu imaginer,' and even hints at +Dante's Purgatory. An earlier victim from Gaul thus records his +experience of Ranelagh: 'On s'ennui avec de la mauvaise musique, du +thé et du beurre.' So true is it that the cheerfulness you find +anywhere is the cheerfulness you have brought with you. However, +despite the Frenchman, good music and singing were at times to be +heard at Ranelagh. The nineteenth century would have nothing to do +with Ranelagh, and in 1805 it was pulled down. The site now belongs to +Chelsea Hospital. Cuper's Gardens lacked the respectability of +Marylebone and the style of Ranelagh, but they had their vogue during +the same century. They were finely situated on the south side of the +Thames opposite Somerset House. Cuper easily got altered into Cupid; +and when on the death of Ephraim Evans in 1740 the business came to be +carried on by his widow, a comely dame who knew a thing or two, it +proved to be indeed a going concern. But the new Licensing Bill of +1752 destroyed Cupid's Garden, and Mrs. Evans was left lamenting and +wholly uncompensated. Of Vauxhall Mr. Wroth treats at much length, and +this part of his book is especially rich in illustrations. Every lover +of Old London and old times and old prints should add Mr. Wroth's book +to his library. + + + + +OLD BOOKSELLERS + + +There has just been a small flutter amongst those who used to be +called stationers or text-writers in the good old days, before +printing was, and when even Peers of the Realm (now so highly +educated) could not sign their names, or, at all events, preferred not +to do so--booksellers they are now styled--and the question which +agitates them is discount. Having mentioned this, one naturally passes +on. + +No great trade has an obscurer history than the book trade. It seems +to lie choked in mountains of dust which it would be suicidal to +disturb. Men have lived from time to time of literary skill--Dr. +Johnson was one of them--who had knowledge, extensive and peculiar, of +the traditions and practices of 'the trade,' as it is proudly styled +by its votaries; but nobody has ever thought it worth his while to +make record of his knowledge, which accordingly perished with him, and +is now irrecoverably lost. + +In old days booksellers were also publishers, frequently printers, and +sometimes paper-makers. Jacob Tonson not only owned Milton's _Paradise +Lost_--for all time, as he fondly thought, for little did he dream of +the fierce construction the House of Lords was to put upon the +Copyright Act of Queen Anne--not only was Dryden's publisher, but also +kept shop in Chancery Lane, and sold books across the counter. He +allowed no discount, but, so we are told, 'spoke his mind upon all +occasions, and flattered no one,' not even glorious John. + +For a long time past the trades of bookselling and book-publishing +have been carried on apart. This has doubtless rid booksellers of all +the unpopularity which formerly belonged to them in their other +capacity. This unpopularity is now heaped as a whole upon the +publishers, who certainly need not dread the doom awaiting those of +whom the world speaks well. + +A tendency of the two trades to grow together again is perhaps +noticeable. For my part, I wish they would. Some publishers are +already booksellers, but the books they sell are usually only new +books. Now it is obvious that the true bookseller sells books both old +and new. Some booksellers are occasional publishers. May each +usurp--or, rather, reassume--the business of the other, whilst +retaining his own! + +The world, it must be admitted, owes a great deal of whatever +information it possesses about the professions, trades, and +occupations practised and carried on in its midst to those who have +failed in them. Prosperous men talk 'shop,' but seldom write it. The +book that tells us most about booksellers and bookselling in bygone +days is the work of a crack-brained fellow who published and sold in +the reigns of Queen Anne and George I., and died in 1733 in great +poverty and obscurity. I refer to John Dunton, whose _Life and +Errors_ in the edition in two volumes edited by J.B. Nichols, and +published in 1818, is a common book enough in the second-hand shops, +and one which may be safely recommended to everyone, except, indeed, +to the unfortunate man or woman who is not an adept in the art, craft, +or mystery of skipping. + +The book will strangely remind the reader of Amory's _Life of John +Buncle_--those queer volumes to which many a reader has been sent by +Hazlitt's intoxicating description of them in his _Round Table_, and +a few perhaps by a shy allusion contained in one of the essays of +Elia. The real John Dunton has not the boundless spirits of the +fictitious John Buncle; but in their religious fervour, their +passion for flirtation, their tireless egotism, and their love of +character-sketching, they greatly resemble one another. + +It is this last characteristic that imparts real value to Dunton's +book, and makes it, despite its verbiage and tortuosity, throb with +human interest. For example, he gives us a short sketch of no less +than 135 then living London booksellers in this style: 'Mr. Newton is +full of kindness and good-nature. He is affable and courteous in +trade, and is none of those men of forty whose religion is yet to +chuse, for his mind (like his looks) is serious and grave; and his +neighbours tell me his understanding does not improve too fast for his +practice, for he is not religious by start or sally, but is well fixed +in the faith and practice of a Church of England man--and has a +handsome wife into the bargain.' + +Most of the 135 booksellers were good men, according to Dunton, but +not all. 'Mr. Lee in Lombard Street. Such a pirate, such a cormorant +was never before. Copies, books, men, shops, all was one. He held no +propriety right or wrong, good or bad, till at last he began to be +known; and the booksellers, not enduring so ill a man among them, +spewed him out, and off he marched to Ireland, where he acted as +_felonious Lee_ as he did in London. And as Lee lived a thief, so he +died a hypocrite; for being asked on his death-bed if he would forgive +Mr. C. (that had formerly wronged him), "Yes," said Lee, "if I die, I +forgive him; but if I happen to live, I am resolved to be revenged on +him."' + +The Act of Union destroyed the trade of these pirates, but their +felonious editions of eighteenth-century authors still abound. Mr. +Gladstone, I need scarcely say, was careful in his Home Rule Bill +(which was denounced by thousands who never read a line of it) to +withdraw copyright from the scope of action of his proposed Dublin +Parliament. + +There are nearly eleven hundred brief character-sketches in Dunton's +book, of all sorts and kinds, but with a preference for bookish +people, divines, both of the Establishment and out of it, printers and +authors. Sometimes, indeed, the description is short enough, and tells +one very little. To many readers, references so curt to people of whom +they never heard, and whose names are recorded nowhere else, save on +their mouldering grave-stones, may seem tedious and trivial, but for +others they will have a strange fascination. Here are a few examples: + + 'Affable _Wiggins_. His conversation is general but never + impertinent. + + 'The kind and golden _Venables_. He is so good a man, and so truly + charitable, he that will write of him, must still write more. + + 'Mr. _Bury_--my old neighbour in Redcross Street. He is a plain + honest man, sells the best coffee in all the neighbourhood, and + lives in this world like a spiritual stranger and pilgrim in a + foreign country. + + 'Anabaptist (alias _Elephant_) _Smith_. He was a man of great + sincerity and happy contentment in all circumstances of life.' + +If an affection for passages of this kind be condemned as trivial, and +akin to the sentimentalism of the man in Calverley's poem who wept +over a box labelled 'This side up,' I will shelter myself behind +Carlyle, who was evidently deeply moved, as his review of Boswell's +Johnson proves, by the life-history of Mr. F. Lewis, 'of whose birth, +death, and whole terrestrial _res gestae_ this only, and, strange +enough, this actually, survives--"Sir, he lived in London, and hung +loose upon society. _Stat_ PARVI _hominis umbra_."' On that peg +Carlyle's imagination hung a whole biography. + +Dunton, who was the son of the Rector of Aston Clinton, was +apprenticed, about 1675, to a London bookseller. He had from the +beginning a great turn both for religion and love. He, to use his own +phrase, 'sat under the powerful ministry of Mr. Doolittle.' 'One +Lord's day, and I remember it with sorrow, I was to hear the Rev. Mr. +Doolittle, and it was then and there the beautiful Rachel Seaton gave +me that fatal wound.' + +The first book Dunton ever printed was by the Rev. Mr. Doolittle, and +was of an eminently religious character. + +'One Lord's Day (and I am very sensible of the sin) I was strolling +about just as my fancy led me, and, stepping into Dr. Annesley's +meeting-place--where, instead of engaging my attention to what the +Doctor said, I suffered both my mind and eyes to run at random--I soon +singled out a young lady that almost charmed me dead; but, having made +my inquiries, I found to my sorrow she was pre-engaged.' However, +Dunton was content with the elder sister, one of the three daughters +of Dr. Annesley. The one he first saw became the wife of the Reverend +Samuel Wesley, and the mother of John and Charles. The third daughter +is said to have been married to Daniel De Foe. + +As soon as he was out of his apprenticeship, Dunton set up business as +a publisher and bookseller. He says grimly enough: + + 'A man should be well furnished with an honest policy if he intends + to set out to the world nowadays. And this is no less necessary in + a bookseller than in any other tradesman, for in that way there are + plots and counter-plots, and a whole army of hackney authors that + keep their grinders moving by the travail of their pens. These + gormandizers will eat you the very life out of a _copy_ so soon as + ever it appears, for as the times go, _Original_ and _Abridgement_ + are almost reckoned as necessary as man and wife.' + +The mischief to which Dunton refers was permitted by the stupidity of +the judges, who refused to consider an abridgment of a book any +interference with its copyright. Some learned judges have, indeed, +held that an abridger is a benefactor, but as his benefactions are not +his own, but another's, a shorter name might be found for him. The law +on the subject is still uncertain. + +Dunton proceeds: 'Printing was now the uppermost in my thoughts, and +hackney authors began to ply me with _specimens_ as earnestly and +with as much passion and concern as the watermen do passengers with +_Oars_ and _Scullers_. I had some acquaintance with this generation in +my apprenticeship, and had never any warm affection for them, in +regard I always thought their great concern lay more in _how much a +sheet_, than in any generous respect they bore to the _Commonwealth of +Learning_; and indeed the learning itself of these gentlemen lies very +often in as little room as their honesty, though they will pretend to +have studied for six or seven years in the Bodleian Library, to have +turned over the Fathers, and to have read and digested the whole +compass both of human and ecclesiastic history, when, alas! they have +never been able to understand a single page of St. Cyprian, and cannot +tell you whether the Fathers lived before or after Christ.' + +Yet of one of this hateful tribe Dunton is able to speak well. He +declares Mr. Bradshaw to have been the best accomplished hackney +author he ever met with. He pronounces his style incomparably fine. He +had quarrelled with him, but none the less he writes: 'If Mr. Bradshaw +is yet alive, I here declare to the world and to him that I freely +forgive him what he owes, both in money and books, if he will only be +so kind as to make me a visit. But I am afraid the worthy gentleman is +dead, for he was wretchedly overrun with melancholy, and the very +blackness of it reigned in his countenance. He had certainly performed +wonders with his pen, had not his poverty pursued him and almost laid +the necessity upon him to be unjust.' + +All hackney authors were not poor. Some of the compilers and +abridgers made what even now would be considered by popular novelists +large sums. Scotsmen were very good at it. Gordon and Campbell became +wealthy men. If authors had a turn for politics, Sir Robert Walpole +was an excellent paymaster. Arnall, who was bred an attorney, is +stated to have been paid £11,000 in four years by the Government for +his pamphlets. + + 'Come, then, I'll comply. + Spirit of Arnall, aid me while I lie!' + +It cannot have been pleasant to read this, but then Pope belonged to +the opposition, and was a friend of Lord Bolingbroke, and would +consequently say anything. + +There is not a more interesting and artless autobiography to be read +than William Hutton's, the famous bookseller and historian of +Birmingham. Hutton has been somewhat absurdly called the English +Franklin. He is not in the least like Franklin. He has none of +Franklin's supreme literary skill, and he was a loving, generous, and +tender-hearted man, which Franklin certainly was not. Hutton's first +visit to London was paid in 1749. He walked up from Nottingham, spent +three days in London, and then walked back to Nottingham. The jaunt, +if such an expression is applicable, cost him eleven shillings less +fourpence. Yet he paid his way. The only money he spent to gain +admission to public places was a penny to see Bedlam. + +Interesting, however, as is Hutton's book, it tells us next to nothing +about book-selling, except that in his hands it was a prosperous +undertaking. + + + + +A FEW WORDS ABOUT COPYRIGHT IN BOOKS + + +Copyright, which is the exclusive liberty reserved to an author and +his assigns of printing or otherwise multiplying copies of his book +during certain fixed periods of time, is a right of modern origin. + +There is nothing about copyright in Justinian's compilations. + +It is a mistake to suppose that books did not circulate freely in the +era of manuscripts. St. Augustine was one of the most popular authors +that ever lived. His _City of God_ ran over Europe after a fashion +impossible to-day. Thousands of busy hands were employed, year out and +year in, making copies for sale of this famous treatise. Yet Augustine +had never heard of copyright, and never received a royalty on sales in +his life. + +The word 'copyright' is of purely English origin, and came into +existence as follows: + +The Stationers' Company was founded by royal charter in 1556, and from +the beginning has kept register-books, wherein, first, by decrees of +the Star Chamber, afterwards by orders of the Houses of Parliament, +and finally by Act of Parliament, the titles of all publications and +reprints have had to be entered prior to publication. + +None but booksellers, as publishers were then content to be called, +were members of the Stationers' Company, and by the usage of the +Company no entries could be made in their register-books except in the +names of members, and thereupon the book referred to in the entry +became the 'copy' of the member or members who had caused it to be +registered. + +By virtue of this registration the book became, in the opinion of the +Stationers' Company, the property _in perpetuity_ of the member or +members who had effected the registration. This was the 'right' of the +stationer to his 'copy.' + +Copyright at first is therefore not an author's, but a bookseller's +copyright. The author had no part or lot in it unless he chanced to be +both an author and a bookseller, an unusual combination in early days. +The author took his manuscript to a member of the Stationers' Company, +and made the best bargain he could for himself. The stationer, if +terms were arrived at, carried off the manuscript to his Company and +registered the title in the books, and thereupon became, in his +opinion, and in that of his Company, the owner, at common law, in +perpetuity of his 'copy.' + +The stationers, having complete control over their register-books, +made what entries they chose, and all kinds of books, even Homer and +the Classics, became the 'property' of its members. The booksellers, +nearly all Londoners, respected each other's 'copies,' and jealously +guarded access to their registers. From time to time there were sales +by auction of a bookseller's 'copies,' but the public--that is, the +country booksellers, for there were no other likely buyers--were +excluded from the sale-room. A great monopoly was thus created and +maintained by the trade. There was never any examination of title to a +bookseller's copy. Every book of repute was supposed to have a +bookseller for its owner. Bunyan's _Pilgrim's Progress_ was Mr. +Ponder's copy, Milton's _Paradise Lost_ Mr. Tonson's copy, _The Whole +Duty of Man_ Mr. Eyre's copy, and so on. The thing was a corrupt and +illegal trade combination. + +The expiration of the Licensing Act, and the consequent cessation of +the penalties it inflicted upon unlicensed printing, exposed the +proprietors of 'copies' to an invasion of their rights, real or +supposed, and in 1703, and again in 1706 and 1709, they applied to +Parliament for a Bill to protect them against the 'ruin' with which +they alleged themselves to be threatened.[A] + + [Footnote A: What the booksellers wanted was not to be left to their + common law remedy--_i.e._, an action of trespass on the case--but to + be supplied with penalties for infringement, and especially with the + right to seize and burn unauthorized editions.] + +In 1710 they got what they asked for in the shape of the famous +Statute of Queen Anne, the first copyright law in the world. A truly +English measure, ill considered and ill drawn, which did the very last +thing it was meant to do--viz., destroy the property it was intended +to protect. + +By this Act, in which the 'author' first makes his appearance actually +in front of the 'proprietor,' it was provided that, _in case of new +books_, the author and his assigns should have the sole right of +printing them for fourteen years, and if at the end of that time the +author was still alive, a second term of fourteen years was conceded. +In the case of _existing books_, there was to be but one term--viz., +twenty-one years, from August 10, 1710. + +Registration at the Stationers' Company was still required, but +nothing was said as to who might make the entries, or into whose names +they were to be made. + +Then followed the desired penalties for infringement. The booksellers +thought the terms of years meant no more than that the penalties were +to be limited by way of experiment to those periods. + +Many years flew by before the Stationers' Company discovered the +mischief wrought by the statute they had themselves promoted. To cut a +long matter short, it was not until 1774 that the House of Lords +decided that, whether there ever had been a perpetuity in literary +property at common law or not, it was destroyed by the Act of Queen +Anne, and that from and after the passing of that law neither author, +assignee, nor proprietor of 'copy' had any exclusive right of +multiplication, save for and during the periods of time the statute +created. + +It was a splendid fight--a Thirty Years' War. Great lawyers were fee'd +in it; luminous and lengthy judgments were delivered. Mansfield was a +booksellers' man; Thurlow ridiculed the pretensions of the Trade. It +can be read about in _Boswell's Johnson_ and in Campbell's _Lives of +the Lord Chancellors_. The authors stood supinely by, not contributing +a farthing towards the expenses. It was a booksellers' battle, and the +booksellers were beaten, as they deserved to be. + +All this is past history, in which the modern money-loving, motoring +author takes scant pleasure. Things are on a different footing now. +The Act of 1842 has extended the statutory periods of protection. The +perpetuity craze is over. A right in perpetuity to reprint Frank +Fustian's novel or Tom Tatter's poem would not add a penny to the +present value of the copyright of either of those productions. In +business short views must prevail. An author cannot expect to raise +money on his hope of immortality. Milton's publisher, good Mr. +Symonds, probably thought, if he thought about it at all, that he was +buying _Paradise Lost_ for ever when he registered it as his 'copy' in +the books of his Company; but into the calculations he made to +discover how much he could afford to give the author posterity did not +and could not enter. How was Symonds to know that Milton's fame was to +outlive Cleveland's or Flatman's? + +How many of the books published in 1905 would have any copyright cash +value in A.D. 2000? I do not pause for a reply. + +The modern author need have no quarrel with the statutory periods +fixed by the Act of 1842,[A] though common-sense has long since +suggested that a single term, the author's life and thirty or forty +years after, should be substituted for the alternative periods named +in the Act. + + [Footnote A: Author's life _plus_ seven years, or forty-two years + from date of publication, whichever term is the longer. The great + objection to the second term is that an author's books go out of + copyright at different dates, and the earlier editions go out + first.] + +What the modern author alone desiderates is a big, immediate, and +protected market. + +The United States of America have been a great disappointment to many +an honest British author. In the wicked old days when the States took +British books without paying for them they used to take them in large +numbers, but now that they have turned honest and passed a law +allowing the British author copyright on certain terms, they have in +great measure ceased to take; for, by the strangest of coincidences, +no sooner were British novels, histories, essays, and the like, +protected in America, than there sprang up in the States themselves, +novelists, historians, and essayists, not only numerous enough to +supply their own home markets, but talented enough to cross the +Atlantic in large numbers and challenge us in our own. Such a reward +for honesty was not contemplated. + +International copyright and the Convention of Berne are things to be +proud of and rejoice over. As the first chapter in a Code of Public +European Law, they may mark the beginning of a time of settled peace, +order, and disarmament, but they have not yet enriched a single +author, though hereafter possibly an occasional novelist or +play-wright may prosper greatly under their provisions. + +The copyright question is now at last really a settled question, save +in a single aspect of it. What, if anything, should be done in the +case of those authors, few in number, whose literary lives prove +longer than the period of statutory protection? Should any distinction +in law be struck between a Tennyson and a Tupper? between--But why +multiply examples? There is no need to be unnecessarily offensive. + +The law and practice of to-day give the meat that remains on the bones +of the dead author after the expiration of the statutory period of +protection to the Trade. Any publisher who likes to bring out an +edition can do so, though by doing so he does not gain any exclusive +rights. A brother publisher may compete with him. As a result +the public is usually well served with cheap editions of those +non-copyright authors whose works are worth reprinting the moment the +copyright expires. + +Some lovers of justice, however, think that it is unnecessary all at +once to endow the Trade with these windfalls, and that if an author's +family, or his or their assignees, were prepared to publish cheap +editions immediately after the expiration of the usual period of +protection, they ought to be allowed to do so for a further period of, +say, forty years. If they failed within a reasonable time either to do +so themselves or to arrange for others to do so, this extended period +should lapse. + +Were this to be the law nobody could say that it was unfair; but it is +never likely to be the law. It would take time for discussion, and now +there is no time left in which to discuss anything in Parliament. A +much-needed Copyright Bill has been in draft for years, has been +mentioned in Queen's and King's speeches, but it has never been read +even a first time. If it ever is read a first time, its only chance of +becoming law will be if it is taken in a lump, as it stands, without +consideration or amendment. To such a pass has legislation been +reduced in this country! + +This draft Bill does not contain any provision for specially +protecting the families of authors whose works long outlive their +mortal lives. It makes no invidious distinctions. It leaves all the +authors to hang together, the quick and the dead. Perhaps this is the +better way. + + + + +HANNAH MORE ONCE MORE + + +I have been told by more than one correspondent, and not always in +words of urbanity, that I owe an apology to the manes of Miss Hannah +More, whose works I once purchased in nineteen volumes for 8s. 6d., +and about whom in consequence I wrote a page some ten years ago.[A] + + [Footnote A: See _Collected Essays_, ii. 255.] + +To be accused of rudeness to a lady who exchanged witticisms with Dr. +Johnson, soothed the widowed heart of Mrs. Garrick, directed the early +studies of Macaulay, and in the spring of 1815 presented a small copy +of her _Sacred Dramas_ to Mr. Gladstone, is no light matter. To libel +the dead is, I know, not actionable--indeed, it is impossible; but +evil-speaking, lying, and slandering are canonical offences from which +the obligation to refrain knows no limits of time or place. + +I have often felt uneasy on this score, and never had the courage, +until this very evening, to read over again what in the irritation of +the moment I had been tempted to say about Miss Hannah More, after the +outlay upon her writings already mentioned. Eight shillings and +sixpence is, indeed, no great sum, but nineteen octavo volumes are a +good many books. Yet Richardson is in nineteen volumes in Mangin's +edition, and Swift is in nineteen volumes in Scott's edition, and +glorious John Dryden lacks but a volume to make a third example. True +enough; yet it will, I think, be granted me that you must be very fond +of an author, male or female, if nineteen octavo volumes, all his or +hers, are not a little irritating and provocative of temper. Think of +the room they take! As for selling them, it is not so easy to sell +nineteen volumes of a stone-dead author, particularly if you live +three miles from a railway-station and do not keep a trap. Elia, the +gentle Elia, as it is the idiotic fashion to call a writer who could +handle his 'maulies' in a fray as well as Hazlitt himself, has told us +how he could never see well-bound books he did not care about, but he +longed to strip them so that he might warm his ragged veterans in +their spoils. My copy of _Hannah More_ was in full calf, but never +once did it occur to me--though I, too, have many a poor author with +hardly a shirt to his back shivering in the dark corners of the +library--to strip her of her warm clothing. And yet I had to do +something, and quickly too, for sorely needed was Miss More's shelf. +So I buried the nineteen volumes in the garden. 'Out of sight, out of +mind,' said I cheerfully, stamping them down. + +This has hardly proved to be the case, for though Hannah More is +incapable of a literary resurrection, and no one of her nineteen +volumes has ever haunted my pillow, exclaiming, + + 'Think how thou stab'dst me in my prime of youth,' + +nevertheless, I have not been able to get quite rid of an uneasy +feeling that I was rude to her ten years ago in print--not, indeed, so +rude as was her revered friend Dr. Johnson 126 years ago to her face; +but then, I have not the courage to creep under the gabardine of our +great Moralist. + +When, accordingly, I saw on the counters of the trade the daintiest of +volumes, hailing, too, from the United States, entitled _Hannah +More_,[A] and perceived that it was a short biography and appreciation +of the lady on my mind, I recognised that my penitential hour had at +last come. I took the little book home with me, and sat down to read, +determined to do justice and more than justice to the once celebrated +mistress of Cowslip Green and Barley Wood. + + [Footnote A: _Hannah More_, by Marian Harland. New York and London: + G.P. Putnam.] + +Miss Harland's preface is most engaging. She reminds a married sister +how in the far-off days of their childhood in a Southern State their +Sunday reading, usually confined or sought to be confined, to 'bound +sermons and semi-detached tracts,' was enlivened by the _Works of +Hannah More_. She proceeds as follows: + + 'At my last visit to you I took from your bookshelves one of a set + of volumes in uniform binding of full calf, coloured mellowly by + the touch and the breath of fifty odd years. They belonged to the + dear old home library.... The leaves of the book I held fell apart + at _The Shepherd of Salisbury Plain_.' + +I leave my readers to judge how uncomfortable these innocent words +made me: + + 'The usher took six hasty strides + As smit with sudden pain.' + +I knew that set of volumes, their distressing uniformity of binding, +their full calf. Their very fellows lie mouldering in an East Anglian +garden, mellow enough by this time and strangely coloured. + +Circumstances alter cases. Miss Harland thinks that if the life of +Charlotte Brontë's mother had been mercifully spared, the authoress of +_Jane Eyre_ and _Villette_ might have grown up more like Hannah More +than she actually did. Perhaps so. As I say, circumstances alter +cases, and if the works of Hannah More had been in my old home +library, I might have read _The Shepherd of Salisbury Plain_ and +_The Search after Happiness_ of a Sunday, and found solace therein. +But they were not there, and I had to get along as best I could with +the _Pilgrim's Progress_, stories by A.L.O.E., the crime-stained +page of Mrs. Sherwood's _Tales from the Church Catechism_, and, +'more curious sport than that,' the _Bible in Spain_ of the +never-sufficiently-bepraised George Borrow. + +What, however, is a little odd about Miss Harland's enthusiasm for +Hannah More's writings is that it expires with the preface. _There_, +indeed, it glows with a beautiful light: + + 'And _The Search after Happiness!_ You cannot have forgotten all of + the many lines we learned by heart on Sunday afternoons in the + joyful spring-time when we were obliged to clear the pages every + few minutes of yellow jessamine bells and purple Wistaria petals + flung down by the warm wind.' + +This passage lets us into the secret. I suspect in sober truth both +Miss Harland and her sister have long since forgotten all the lines in +_The Search after Happiness_, but what they have never forgotten, what +they never can forget, are the jessamine bells and the Wistaria +petals, yellow and purple, blown about in the warm winds that visited +their now desolate and forsaken Southern home. Less beautiful things +than jessamine and Wistaria, if only they clustered round the house +where you were born, are remembered when the lines of far better +authors than Miss Hannah More have gone clean out of your head: + + 'As life wanes, all its cares and strife and toil + Seem strangely valueless, while the old trees + Which grew by our youth's home, the waving mass + Of climbing plants heavy with bloom and dew, + The morning swallows with their songs like words-- + All these seem dear, and only worth our thoughts.' + + +Thus the youthful Browning in his marvellous _Pauline_. The same note +is struck after a humbler and perhaps more moving fashion in the +following simple strain of William Allingham: + + 'Four ducks on a pond, + A grass-bank beyond; + A blue sky of spring, + White clouds on the wing; + How little a thing + To remember for years-- + To remember with tears!' + +If this be so--and who, looking into his own heart, but must own that +so it is?--it explains how it comes about that as soon as Miss Harland +finished her preface, got away from her childhood and began her +biography, she has so little to tell us about Miss More's books, and +from that little the personal note of enjoyment is entirely wanting. +Indeed, though a pious soul, she occasionally cannot restrain her +surprise how such ponderous commonplaces ever found a publisher, to +say nothing of a reader. + +'Such books as Miss More's,' she says, 'would to-day in America fall +from the press like a stone into the depths of the sea of oblivion, +creating no more sensation upon the surface than the bursting of a +bubble in mid-Atlantic.' + +And again: + +'That Hannah More was a power for righteousness in her long +generation we must take upon the testimony of her best and wisest +contemporaries.' + +However good may be your intentions, it seems hard to avoid being rude +to this excellent lady. + +I confess I never liked her love story. Anything more cold-blooded I +never read. I am not going to repeat it. Why should I? It is told at +length in Miss More's authorized biography in four volumes by William +Roberts, Esq. I saw a copy yesterday exposed for sale in New Oxford +Street, price 1s. Miss Harland also tells the tale, not without +chuckling. I refer the curious to her pages. + +Then there are those who can never get rid of the impression that +Hannah More 'fagged' her four sisters mercilessly; but who can tell? +Some people like being fagged. + +Precisely _when_ Miss More bade farewell to what in later life she was +fond of calling her gay days, when she wrote dull plays and went to +stupid Sunday parties, one finds it hard to discover, but at no time +did it ever come home to her that she needed repentance herself. She +seems always thinking of the sins and shortcomings of her neighbours, +rich and poor. Sometimes, indeed, when deluged with flattery, she +would intimate that she was a miserable sinner, but that is not what I +mean. She concerned herself greatly with the manners of the great, +and deplored their cards and fashionable falsehoods. John Newton, +captain as he had been of a slaver, saw the futility of such +pin-pricks: + +'The fashionable world,' so he wrote to Miss More, 'by their numbers +form a phalanx not easily impressible, and their habits of life are as +armour of proof which renders them not easily vulnerable. Neither the +rude club of a boisterous Reformer nor the pointed, delicate weapons +of the authoress before me can overthrow or rout them.' + +But Miss More never forgot to lecture the rich or to patronize the +poor. + +_Coelebs in Search of a Wife_ is an impossible book, and I do not +believe Miss Harland has read it; but as for the famous _Shepherd_, we +are never allowed to forget how Mr. Wilberforce declared a few years +before his death, to the admiration of the religious world, that he +would rather present himself in heaven with _The Shepherd of Salisbury +Plain_ in his hand than with--what think you?--_Peveril of the Peak_! +The bare notion of such a proceeding on anybody's part is enough to +strike one dumb with what would be horror, did not amazement swallow +up every other feeling. What rank Arminianism! I am sure the last +notion that ever would have entered the head of Sir Walter was to take +_Peveril_ to heaven. + +But whatever may be thought of the respective merits of Miss More's +nineteen volumes and Sir Walter's ninety-eight, there is no doubt that +Barley Wood was as much infested with visitors as ever was Abbotsford. +Eighty a week! + +'From twelve o'clock until three each day a constant stream of +carriages and pedestrians filled the evergreen bordered avenue +leading from the Wrington village road.' + +Among them came Lady Gladstone and W.E.G., aged six, the latter +carrying away with him the _Sacred Dramas_, to be preserved during a +long life. + +Miss More was a vivacious and agreeable talker, who certainly failed +to do herself justice with her pen. Her health was never good, yet, as +she survived thirty-five of her prescribing physicians, her vitality +must have been great. Her face in Opie's portrait is very pleasant. If +I was rude to her ten years ago, I apologize and withdraw; but as for +her books, I shall leave them where they are--buried in a cliff facing +due north, with nothing between them and the Pole but leagues upon +leagues of a wind-swept ocean. + + + + +ARTHUR YOUNG + + +The name of Arthur Young is a familiar one to all readers of that +history which begins with the forebodings of the French Revolution. +Thousands of us learnt to be interested in him as the 'good Arthur,' +'the excellent Arthur,' of Thomas Carlyle, a writer who had the art of +making not only his own narrative, but the sources of it, attractive. +Even 'Carrion-Heath,' in the famous introductory chapter to the +_Cromwell_, is invested with a kind of charm, whilst in the stormy +firmament of the _French Revolution_ the star of Arthur Young twinkles +with a mild effulgency. The autobiography of such a man could hardly +fail to be interesting.[A] The 'good Arthur' was born in 1741, the +younger son of a small 'squarson' who inherited from his father the +manor of Bradfield Combust, in Suffolk, but held the living of Thames +Ditton. Here he made the acquaintance of the Onslow family, and +Speaker Onslow was one of Arthur's godfathers. The Rev. Dr. Young died +in 1759, much in debt. The Bradfield property had been settled for +life on his wife, who had brought her husband some fortune, and to +the manor-house she retired to economize. + + [Footnote A: _The Autobiography of Arthur Young_. Edited by M. Betham + Edwards. Smith, Elder and Co.] + +Arthur's education had been muddled; and an attempt to make a merchant +of him having fallen through, he found himself, on his father's death, +aged eighteen, 'without education, profession, or employment,' and his +whole fortune, during his mother's life, consisting of a copyhold farm +of 20 acres, producing as many pounds. In these circumstances, to +think of literature was well-nigh inevitable, and, in 1762, the +autobiography tells us: + + 'I set on foot a periodical publication, entitled the _Universal + Museum_, which came out monthly, printed with glorious imprudence + on my own account. I waited on Dr. Johnson, who was sitting by the + fire so half-dressed and slovenly a figure as to make me stare at + him. I stated my plan, and begged that he would favour me with a + paper once a month, offering at the same time any remuneration that + he might name.' + +Here we see dimly prefigured a modern editor prematurely soliciting +the support of Great Names. But the Cham of literature, himself the +son of a bookseller, would have none of it. + + '"No, sir," he replied; "such a work would be sure to fail if the + booksellers have not the property, and you will lose a great deal + of money by it." + + '"Certainly, sir," I said, "if I am not fortunate enough to induce + authors of real talent to contribute." + + '"No, sir, you are mistaken; such authors will not support such a + work, nor will you persuade them to write in it. You will purchase + disappointment by the loss of your money, and I advise you by all + means to give up the plan." + + 'Somebody was introduced, and I took my leave.' + +The _Universal Museum_, none the less, appeared, but after five +numbers Young 'procured a meeting of ten or a dozen booksellers, and +had the luck and address to persuade them to take the whole scheme +upon themselves.' He then calmly adds, 'I believe no success ever +attended it.' It was, indeed, 100 years before its time. Literature +abandoned, Young took one of his mother's farms. 'I had no more idea +of farming than of physic or divinity,' nor did he, man of European +reputation as a farmer though he soon became, ever make farming pay. +He had an itching pen, and after four years' farming (1763-1766) he +published the result of his experience. Never, surely, before has an +author spoken of his first-born as in the autobiography Young speaks +of this publication: + + 'And the circumstance which perhaps of all others in my life I + most deeply regretted and considered as a sin of the blackest dye + was the publishing of my experience during these four years, + which, speaking as a farmer, was nothing but ignorance, folly, + presumption, and rascality.' + +None the less, it was writing this rascally book that seems to have +given him the idea of those agricultural tours which were to make his +name famous throughout the world. His Southern tour was in 1767, his +Northern in 1768, and his Eastern in 1770. The subject he specially +illuminated in these epoch-making books was the rotation of crops, +though he occasionally diverged upon deep-ploughing and kindred +themes. The tours excited, for the first time, the agricultural spirit +of Great Britain, and their author almost at once became a celebrated +man. + +In 1765 Young married the wrong woman, and started upon a career of +profound matrimonial discomfort, and even misery; a blunt, truthful +writer, he makes no bones about it. It was an unhappy marriage from +its beginning in 1765 to its end in 1815. Young himself, though by no +means vivacious in this autobiography, where he frankly complains of +himself as having no more wit than a fig, was a very popular person +with all classes and both sexes. He was an enormous diner-out, and his +authority as an agriculturist, united to his undeniable charm as a +companion, threw open to him all the great places in the country. But +his finances were a perpetual trouble. On carrot seeds and cabbages he +was an authority, but from 1766-1775 his income never exceeded £300 a +year. He had an excellent mother, whom he dearly loved, and who with +the characteristic bluntness of the family bade him think less about +carrots and more about his Creator. 'You may call all this rubbish if +you please, but a time will come when you will be convinced whose +notions are rubbish, yours or mine.' And the old lady was quite right, +as mothers so frequently turn out to be. In 1778 Young went over to +Ireland as agent to Lord Kingsborough. He got £500 down, and was to +have an annual salary of £500 and a house. Young soon got to work, and +became anxious to persuade his employer to let his lands direct to the +occupying cottar, and so get rid of the middlemen. This did not suit a +certain Major Thornhill, a relative and leaseholder, and thereupon a +pretty plot was hatched. Lady K. had a Catholic governess, a Miss +Crosby, upon whom it was thought my lord occasionally cast the eye of +partiality, whilst Arthur himself got on very well with her ladyship, +who was heard to pronounce him to be, as he was, 'one of the most +lively, agreeable fellows.' Out of these materials the Major and his +helpmeet concocted a double plot--namely, to make the lord jealous of +the steward, and the lady jealous of the governess, and to cause both +lord and lady respectively to believe that the steward was deeply +engaged both in abetting the amour of the lord and the governess, and +in prosecuting his own amour with the lady. The result was that both +governess and steward got notice to quit; but--and this is very +Irish--both went off with life annuities, the governess with one of +£50 per annum, and the steward with one of £72, and, what is still +more odd, we find Young at the end of his life in receipt of his +annuity. They were an expensive couple, these two. + +In 1780 Young published his _Irish Tour_, which was immediately +successful and popular in both kingdoms. In it he attacked the bounty +paid on the land-carriage of corn to Dublin. The bounty was, in the +session of Parliament next after the publication of Young's book, +reduced by one-half, and soon given up entirely. Young maintains that +this saved Ireland £80,000 a year. Nobody seems to have said 'Thank +you.' + +In May, 1783, was born the child 'Bobbin,' whose death, fourteen years +later, was to change the current of Young's life. The following year +Arthur Young paid his first visit to France, confining himself, +however, to Calais and its neighbourhood, and in the same year his +mother died, and, by an arrangement with his eldest brother, 'this +patch of landed property,' as Young calls Bradfield, descended upon +him. His first famous journey in France was made between May and +November, 1787, and cost the marvellously small sum of £118 15s. 2d. +His second and third French journeys were made in July, 1788, and in +June, 1789. The third was the longest, and extended into 1790. Three +years later Young was appointed, by Pitt, Secretary of the then Board +of Agriculture. A melancholy account is given by Young of a visit he +paid Burke at Gregory's in 1796. Young drove there in the chariot of +his fussy chief, Sir John Sinclair, to discover what Burke's +intentions might be as to an intended publication of his relating to +the price of labour. The account, which occupies four pages, is too +long for quotation. It concludes thus: + + 'I am glad once more to have seen and conversed with the man who I + hold to possess the greatest and most brilliant gifts of any penman + of the age in which he lived. Whose conversation has often + fascinated me, whose eloquence has charmed; whose writings have + delighted and instructed the world; whose name will without + question descend to the latest posterity. But to behold so great a + genius, so deepened with melancholy, stooping with infirmity of + body, feeling the anguish of a lacerated mind, and sinking to the + grave under accumulated misery--to see all this in a character I + venerate, and apparently without resource or comfort, wounded + every feeling of my soul, and I left him the next day almost as + low-spirited as himself.' + +But Young himself was soon to pass into the same Valley of the Shadow, +not so much of Death as of Joyless Life. His beloved and idolized +Bobbin died on July 14, 1797. She seems to have been a wise little +maiden, to whom her father wrote most affectionate letters, full of +rather unsuitable details, political and financial and otherwise, and +not scrupling to speak of the child's mother in a disagreeable manner. +Bobbin replies with delightful composure to these worrying letters: + + 'I have just got six of the most beautiful little rabbits you ever + saw; they skip about so prettily you can't think, and I shall have + some more in a few weeks. Having had so much physic, I am right + down tired of it. I take it still twice a day--my appetite is + better. What can you mind politics so for? I don't think about + them.--Well, good-bye, and believe me, dear papa, your dutiful + Daughter.' + +After poor little Bobbin's death, it happened to Arthur Young even as +his mother foretold. Carrots and crops and farming tours hastily +retreat, and we find the eminent agriculturist busying himself, with +the same seriousness and good faith he had devoted to the rotation of +the crops, with the sermons and treatises of Clarke and Jortin and +Secker and Tillotson, etc., and all to discover what had become of his +dear little Bobbin. His outlook upon the world was changed--the great +parties at Petworth, at Euston, at Woburn struck him differently; the +huge irreligion of the world filled him as for the first time with +amazement and horror: + + 'How few years are passed since I should have pushed on eagerly to + Woburn! This time twelve months I dined with the Duke on + Sunday--the party not very numerous, but chiefly of rank--the + entertainment more splendid than usual there. He expects me to-day, + but I have more pleasure in resting, going twice to church, and + eating a morsel of cold lamb at a very humble inn, than partaking + of gaiety and dissipation at a great table which might as well be + spread for a company of heathens as English lords and men of + fashion.' + +It is all mighty fine calling this religious hypochondria and +depression of spirits. It is one of the facts of life. Young stuck to +his post, and did his work, and quarrelled with his wife to the end, +or nearly so. He cannot have been so lively and agreeable a companion +as of old, for we find him in November, 1806, at Euston, endeavouring +to impress on the Duke of Grafton that by his tenets he had placed +himself entirely under the covenant of works, and that he must be +tried for them, and that 'I would not be in such a situation for ten +thousand worlds. He was mild and more patient than I expected.' +Perhaps, after all, Carlyle was not so far wrong when he praised our +aristocracy for their 'politeness.' In 1808 Young became blind. In +1815 his wife died. In 1820 he died himself, leaving behind him seven +packets of manuscript and twelve folio volumes of correspondence. + +Young's great work, _Travels during the Years 1787, 1788, and 1789, +undertaken more particularly with a View of Ascertaining the +Cultivation, Wealth, Resources, and National Prosperity of the Kingdom +of France_, published in 1792, is one of those books which will always +be a great favourite with somebody. It will outlive eloquence and +outstay philosophy. It contains some famous passages. + + + + +THOMAS PAINE + + +Proverbs are said to be but half-truths, but 'give a dog a bad name +and hang him' is a saying almost as veracious as it is felicitous; and +to no one can it possibly be applied with greater force than to Thomas +Paine, the rebellious staymaker, the bankrupt tobacconist, the amazing +author of _Common-sense_, _The Rights of Man_, and _The Age of Reason_. + +Until quite recently Tom Paine lay without the pale of toleration. No +circle of liberality was constructed wide enough to include him. Even +the scouted Unitarian scouted Thomas. He was 'the infamous Paine,' +'the vulgar atheist.' Whenever mentioned in pious discourse it was but +to be waved on one side as thus: 'No one of my hearers is likely to be +led astray by the scurrilous blasphemies of Paine.' + +I can well remember when an asserted intimacy with the writings of +Paine marked a man from his fellows and invested him in children's +minds with a horrid fascination. The writings themselves were only to +be seen in bookshops of evil reputation, and, when hastily turned over +with furtive glances, proved to be printed in small type and on +villainous paper. For a boy to have bought them and taken them inside +a decent home would have been to run the risk of fierce wrath in this +life and the threat of it in the next. If ever there was a hung dog, +his name was Tom Paine. + +But History is, as we know, for ever revising her records. None of her +judgments are final. A life of Thomas Paine, in two portly and +well-printed volumes, with gilt tops, wide margins, spare leaves at +the end, and all the other signs and tokens of literary +respectability, has lately appeared. No President, no Prime +Minister--nay, no Bishop or Moderator--need hope to have his memoirs +printed in better style than are these of Thomas Paine, by Mr. Moncure +D. Conway. Were any additional proof required of the complete +resuscitation of Paine's reputation, it might be found in the fact +that his life _is_ in two volumes, though it would have been far +better told in one. + +Mr. Conway believes implicitly in Paine--not merely in his virtue and +intelligence, but that he was a truly great man, who played a great +part in human affairs. He will no more admit that Paine was a +busybody, inflated with conceit and with a strong dash of insolence, +than he will that Thomas was a drunkard. That Paine's speech was +undoubtedly plain and his nose undeniably red is as far as Mr. Conway +will go. If we are to follow the biographer the whole way, we must not +only unhang the dog, but give him sepulture amongst the sceptred +Sovereigns who rule us from their urns. + +Thomas Paine was born at Thetford, in Norfolk, in January, 1737, and +sailed for America in 1774, then being thirty-seven years of age. Up +to this date he was a rank failure. His trade was staymaking, but he +had tried his hand at many things. He was twice an Excise officer, but +was twice dismissed the service, the first time for falsely +pretending to have made certain inspections which, in fact, he had not +made, and the second time for carrying on business in an excisable +article--tobacco, to wit--without the leave of the Board. Paine had +married the tobacconist's business, but neither the marriage nor the +business prospered; the second was sold by auction, and the first +terminated by mutual consent. + +Mr. Conway labours over these early days of his hero very much, but he +can make nothing of them. Paine was an Excise officer at Lewes, where, +so Mr. Conway reminds us, 'seven centuries before Paine opened his +office in Lewes, came Harold's son, possibly to take charge of the +Excise as established by Edward the Confessor, just deceased.' This +device of biographers is a little stale. The Confessor was guiltless +of the Excise. + +Paine's going to America was due to Benjamin Franklin, who made +Paine's acquaintance in London, and, having the wit to see his +ability, recommended him 'as a clerk or assistant-tutor in a school or +assistant-surveyor.' Thus armed, Paine made his appearance in +Philadelphia, where he at once obtained employment as editor of an +intended periodical called the _Pennsylvanian Magazine or American +Museum_, the first number of which appeared in January, 1775. Never +was anything luckier. Paine was, without knowing it, a born +journalist. His capacity for writing on the spur of the moment was +endless, and his delight in doing so boundless. He had no difficulty +for 'copy', though in those days contributors were few. He needed no +contributors. He was 'Atlanticus'; he was 'Vox Populi'; he was +'Aesop.' The unsigned articles were also mostly his. Having at last, +after many adventures and false starts, found his vocation, Paine +stuck to it. He spent the rest of his days with a pen in his hand, +scribbling his advice and obtruding his counsel on men and nations. +Both were usually of excellent quality. + +Paine was also happy in the moment of his arrival in America. The War +of Independence was imminent, and in April, 1775, occurred 'the +massacre of Lexington.' The Colonists were angry, but puzzled. They +hardly knew what they wanted. They lacked a definite opinion to +entertain and a cry to asseverate. Paine had no doubts. He hated +British institutions with all the hatred of a civil servant who has +had 'the sack.' + +In January, 1776, he published his pamphlet _Common-sense_, which must +be ranked with the most famous pamphlets ever written. It is difficult +to wade through now, but even _The Conduct of the Allies_ is not easy +reading, and yet between Paine and Swift there is a great gulf fixed. +The keynote of _Common-sense_ was separation once and for ever, and +the establishment of a great Republic of the West. It hit between wind +and water, had a great sale, and made its author a personage and, in +his own opinion, a divinity. + +Paine now became the penman of the rebels. His series of manifestoes, +entitled _The Crisis_, were widely read and carried healing on their +wings, and in 1777 he was elected Secretary to the Committee of +Foreign Affairs. Charles Lamb once declared that Rousseau was a good +enough Jesus Christ for the French, and he was capable of declaring +Tom Paine a good enough Milton for the Yankees. However that may be, +Paine was an indefatigable and useful public servant. He was a bad +gauger for King George, but he was an admirable scribe for a +revolution conducted on constitutional principles. + +To follow his history through the war would be tedious. What +Washington and Jefferson really thought of him we shall never know. +He was never mercenary, but his pride was wounded that so little +recognition of his astounding services was forthcoming. The +ingratitude of Kings was a commonplace; the ingratitude of peoples an +unpleasing novelty. But Washington bestirred himself at last, and +Paine was voted an estate of 277 acres, more or less, and a sum of +money. This was in 1784. + +Three years afterwards Thomas visited England, where he kept good +company and was very usefully employed engineering, for which +excellent pursuit he would appear to have had great natural aptitude. +Blackfriars Bridge had just tumbled down, and it was Paine's laudable +ambition to build its successor in iron. But the Bastille fell down as +well as Blackfriars Bridge, and was too much for Paine. As Mr. Conway +beautifully puts it: 'But again the Cause arose before him; he must +part from all--patent interests, literary leisure, fine society--and +take the hand of Liberty undowered, but as yet unstained. He must beat +his bridge-iron into a key that shall unlock the British Bastille, +whose walls he sees steadily closing around the people.' 'Miching +mallecho--this means mischief;' and so it proved. + +Burke is responsible for the _Rights of Man_. This splendid +sentimentalist published his _Reflections on the Revolution in France_ +in November, 1790. Paine immediately sat down in the Angel, Islington, +and began his reply. He was not unqualified to answer Burke; he had +fought a good fight between the years 1775 and 1784. Mr. Conway has +some ground for his epigram, 'where Burke had dabbled, Paine had +dived.' There is nothing in the _Rights of Man_ which would now +frighten, though some of its expressions might still shock, a +lady-in-waiting; but to profess Republicanism in 1791 was no joke, and +the book was proclaimed and Paine prosecuted. Acting upon the advice +of William Blake (the truly sublime), Paine escaped to France, where +he was elected by three departments to a seat in the Convention, and +in that Convention he sat from September, 1792, to December, 1793, +when he was found quarters in the Luxembourg Prison. + +This invitation to foreigners to take part in the conduct of the +French Revolution was surely one of the oddest things that ever +happened, but Paine thought it natural enough so far, at least, as he +was concerned. He could not speak a word of French, and all his +harangues had to be translated and read to the Convention by a +secretary, whilst Thomas stood smirking in the Tribune. His behaviour +throughout was most creditable to him. He acted with the Girondists, +and strongly opposed and voted against the murder of the King. His +notion of a revolution was one by pamphlet, and he shrank from deeds +of blood. His whole position was false and ridiculous. He really +counted for nothing. The members of the Convention grew tired of his +doctrinaire harangues, which, in fact, bored them not a little; but +they respected his enthusiasm and the part he had played in America, +whither they would gladly he had returned. Who put him in prison is a +mystery. Mr. Conway thinks it was the American Minister in Paris, +Gouverneur Morris. He escaped the guillotine, and was set free after +ten months' confinement. + +All this time Washington had not moved a finger in behalf of the +author of _Common-sense_ and _The Crisis_. Amongst Paine's papers this +epigram was found: + + 'ADVICE TO THE STATUARY WHO IS TO EXECUTE THE + STATUE OF WASHINGTON. + + Take from the mine the coldest, hardest stone; + It needs no fashion--it is Washington. + But if you chisel, let the stroke be rude, + And on his heart engrave--"Ingratitude."' + +This is hard hitting. + +So far we have only had the Republican Paine, the outlaw Paine; the +atheist Paine has not appeared. He did so in the _Age of Reason_, +first published in 1794-1795. The object of this book was religious. +Paine was a vehement believer in God and in the Divine government of +the world, but he was not, to put it mildly, a Bible Christian. Nobody +now is ever likely to read the _Age of Reason_ for instruction or +amusement. Who now reads even Mr. Greg's _Creed of Christendom_, which +is in effect, though not in substance, the same kind of book? Paine +was a coarse writer, without refinement of nature, and he used brutal +expressions and hurled his vulgar words about in a manner certain to +displease. Still, despite it all, the _Age of Reason_ is a religious +book, though a singularly unattractive one. + +Paine remained in France advocating all kinds of things, including a +descent on England, the abduction of the Royal Family, and a Free +Constitution. Napoleon sought him out, and assured him that he +(Napoleon) slept with the _Rights of Man_ under his pillow. Paine +believed him. + +In 1802 Paine returned to America, after fifteen years' absence. + +'Thou stricken friend of man,' exclaims Mr. Conway in a fine passage, +'who hast appealed from the God of Wrath to the God of Humanity, see +in the distance that Maryland coast which early voyagers called +Avalon, and sing again your song when first stepping on that shore +twenty-seven years ago.' + +The rest of Paine's life was spent in America without distinction or +much happiness. He continued writing to the last, and died bravely on +the morning of June 8, 1809. + +The Americans did not appreciate Paine's theology, and in 1819 allowed +Cobbett to carry the bones of the author of _Common-sense_ to England, +where--'as rare things will,' so, at least, Mr. Browning sings--they +vanished. Nobody knows what has become of them. + +As a writer Paine has no merits of a lasting character, but he had a +marvellous journalistic knack for inventing names and headings. He is +believed to have concocted the two phrases 'The United States of +America' and 'The Religion of Humanity.' Considering how little he had +read, his discourses on the theory of government are wonderful, and +his views generally were almost invariably liberal, sensible, and +humane. What ruined him was an intolerable self-conceit, which led him +to believe that his own productions superseded those of other men. He +knew off by heart, and was fond of repeating, his own _Common-sense_ +and the _Rights of Man_. He was destitute of the spirit of research, +and was wholly without one shred of humility. He was an oddity, a +character, but he never took the first step towards becoming a great +man. + + + + +CHARLES BRADLAUGH[A] + + + [Footnote A: _Charles Bradlaugh: A Record of His Life and Work_. By + his daughter, Hypatia Bradlaugh Bonner. Two vols. London: T. Fisher + Unwin, 1894.] + +Mr. Bradlaugh was a noticeable man, and his life, even though it +appears in the unwelcome but familiar shape of two octavo volumes, is +a noticeable book. It is useless to argue with biographers; they, at +all events, are neither utilitarians nor opportunists, but idealists +pure and simple. What is the good of reminding them, being so +majestical, of Guizot's pertinent remark, 'that if a book is +unreadable it will not be read,' or of the older saying, 'A great book +is a great evil'? for all such observations they simply put on one +side as being, perhaps, true for others, but not for them. Had _Mr. +Bradlaugh's Life_ been just half the size it would have had, at least, +twice as many readers. + +The pity is all the greater because Mrs. Bonner has really performed a +difficult task after a noble fashion and in a truly pious spirit. Her +father's life was a melancholy one, and it became her duty as his +biographer to break a silence on painful subjects about which he had +preferred to say nothing. His reticence was a manly reticence; though +a highly sensitive mortal, he preferred to put up with calumny rather +than lay bare family sorrows and shame. His daughter, though compelled +to break this silence, has done so in a manner full of dignity and +feeling. The ruffians who in times past slandered the moral character +of Bradlaugh will not probably read his life, nor, if they did, would +they repent of their baseness. The willingness to believe everything +evil of an adversary is incurable, springing as it does from a habit +of mind. It was well said by Mr. Mill: 'I have learned from experience +that many false opinions may be exchanged for true ones, without in +the least altering the habits of mind of which false opinions are the +result.' Now that Mr. Bradlaugh is dead, no purpose is served by +repeating false accusations as to his treatment of his wife, or of his +pious brother, or as to his disregard of family ties; but the next +atheist who crops up must not expect any more generous treatment than +Bradlaugh received from that particularly odious class of persons of +whom it has been wittily said that so great is their zeal for +religion, they have never time to say their prayers. + +Mr. Bradlaugh will, I suppose, be hereafter described in the +dictionaries of biography as 'Freethinker and Politician.' Of the +politician there is here no need to speak. He was a Radical of the +old-fashioned type. When he first stood for Northampton in 1868, his +election address was made up of tempting dishes, which afterwards +composed Mr. Chamberlain's famous but unauthorized programme of 1885, +with minority representation thrown in. Unpopular thinkers who have +been pelted with stones by Christians, slightly the worse for liquor, +are apt to think well of minorities. Mr. Bradlaugh's Radicalism had +an individualistic flavour. He thought well of thrift, thereby +incurring censure. Mr. Bradlaugh's politics are familiar enough. What +about his freethinking? English freethinkers may be divided into two +classes--those who have been educated and those who have had to +educate themselves. The former class might apply to their own case the +language once employed by Dr. Newman to describe himself and his +brethren of the Oratory: + + 'We have been nourished for the greater part of our lives in the + bosom of the great schools and universities of Protestant England; + we have been the foster foster-sons of the Edwards and Henries, the + Wykehams and Wolseys, of whom Englishmen are wont to make so much; + we have grown up amid hundreds of contemporaries, scattered at + present all over the country in those special ranks of society + which are the very walk of a member of the legislature.' + +These first-class free-thinkers have an excellent time of it, and, to +use a fashionable phrase, 'do themselves very well indeed.' They move +freely in society; their books lie on every table; they hob-a-nob with +Bishops; and when they come to die, their orthodox relations gather +round them, and lay them in the earth 'in the sure and certain +hope'--so, at least, priestly lips are found willing to assert--'of +the resurrection to eternal life through our Lord Jesus Christ.' And +yet there was not a dogma of the Christian faith in which they were in +a position to profess their belief. + +The free-thinkers of the second class, poor fellows! have hitherto led +very different lives. Their foster-parents have been poverty and +hardship; their school education has usually terminated at eleven; all +their lives they have been desperately poor; alone, unaided, they +have been left to fight the battle of a Free Press. + +Richard Carlile, as honourable a man as most, and between whose +religious opinions and (let us say) Lord Palmerston's there was +probably no difference worth mentioning, spent nine out of the +fifty-two years of his life in prison. Attorney-Generals, and, indeed, +every degree of prosecuting counsel have abused this kind of +free-thinker, not merely with professional impunity, but amidst +popular applause. Judges, speaking with emotion, have exhibited the +utmost horror of atheistical opinions, and have railed in good set +terms at the wretch who has been dragged before them, and have then, +at the rising of the court, proceeded to their club and played cards +till dinner-time with a first-class free-thinker for partner. + +This is natural and easily accounted for, but we need not be surprised +if, in the biographies of second-class freethinkers, bitterness is +occasionally exhibited towards the well-to-do brethren who decline +what Dr. Bentley, in his Boyle Lectures, called 'the public odium and +resentment of the magistrate.' + +Mr. Bradlaugh was a freethinker of the second class. His father was a +solicitor's clerk on a salary which never exceeded £2 2s. a week; his +mother had been a nursery-maid; and he himself was born in 1833 in +Bacchus Walk, Hoxton. At seven he went to a national school, but at +eleven his school education ended, and he became an office-boy. At +fourteen he was a wharf-clerk and cashier to a coal-merchant. His +parents were not much addicted to church-going, but Charles was from +the first a serious boy, and became at a somewhat early age a +Sunday-school teacher at St. Peter's, Hackney Road. The incumbent, in +order to prepare him for Confirmation, set him to work to extract the +Thirty-nine Articles out of the four Gospels. Unhappy task, worthy to +be described by the pen of the biographer of John Sterling. The +youthful wharfinger could not find the Articles in the Gospels, and +informed the Rev. J.G. Packer of the fact. His letter conveying this +intelligence is not forthcoming, and probably enough contained +offensive matter, for Mr. Packer seems at once to have denounced young +Bradlaugh as one engaged in atheistical inquiries, to have suspended +him from the Sunday-school, to have made it very disagreeable for him +at home and with his employer, and to have wound up by giving him +three days to change his views or to lose his place. + +Mr. Packer has been well abused, but it has never been the fashion to +treat youthful atheists with much respect. When Coleridge confided to +the Rev. James Boyer that he (S.T. Coleridge) was inclined to atheism, +the reverend gentleman had him stripped and flogged. Mr. Packer, +however, does seem to have been too hasty, for Bradlaugh did not +formally abandon his beliefs until some months after his suspension. +He retired for a short season, and studied Hebrew under Mr. James +Savage, of Circus Street, Marylebone. He emerged an unbeliever, aged +sixteen. Expelled from his wharf, he sold coal on commission, but his +principal, if not his only customer, the wife of a baker, discovering +that he was an infidel, gave him no more orders, being afraid, so she +said, that her bread would smell of brimstone. + +In 1850 Bradlaugh published his first pamphlet, _A Few Words on the +Christian Creed_, and dedicated it to the unhappy Mr. Packer. But +starvation stared him in the face, and in the same year he enlisted in +the 7th Dragoon Guards, and spent the next three years in Ireland, +where he earned a good character, and on more occasions than one +showed that adroitness for which he was afterwards remarkable. + +In October, 1853, his mother and sister with great difficulty raised +the £30 necessary to buy his discharge, and Bradlaugh returned to +London, not only full grown, but well fed. Had he not taken the +Queen's shilling he never would have lived to fight the battle he did. + +He became a solicitor's clerk on a miserably small pay, and took to +lecturing as 'Iconoclast.' In 1855 he was married at St. Philip's +Church, Stepney. His lectures and discussions began to assume great +proportions, and covered more than twenty years of his life. Terribly +hard work they were. Profits there were none, or next to none. Few men +have endured greater hardships. + +In 1860 the _National Reformer_ was started, and his warfare in the +courts began. In 1868 he first stood for Northampton, which he +unsuccessfully contested three times. In April, 1880, he was returned +to Parliament, and then began the famous struggle with which the +constitutional historian will have to deal. After this date the facts +are well known. Bradlaugh died on January 30, 1891. + +His life was a hard one from beginning to end. He had no advantages. +Nobody really helped him or influenced him or mollified him. He had +never either money or repose; he had no time to travel, except as a +propagandist, no time to acquire knowledge for its own sake; he was +often abused but seldom criticised. In a single sentence, he was never +taught the extent of his own ignorance. + +His attitude towards the Christian religion and the Bible was a +perfectly fair one, and ought not to have brought down upon him any +abuse whatever. There are more ways than one of dealing with religion. +It may be approached as a mystery or as a series of events supported +by testimony. If the evidence is trustworthy, if the witnesses are +irreproachable, if they submit successfully to examination and +cross-examination, then, however remarkable or out of the way may be +the facts to which they depose, they are entitled to be believed. This +is a mode of treatment with which we are all familiar, whether as +applied to the Bible or to the authority of the Church. Nobody is +expected to believe in the authority of the Church until satisfied +by the exercise of his reason that the Church in question possesses +'the notes' of a true Church. This was the aspect of the question +which engaged Bradlaugh's attention. He was critical, legal. He +took objections, insisted on discrepancies, cross-examined as to +credibility, and came to the conclusion that the case for the +supernatural was not made out. And this he did not after the +first-class fashion in the study or in octavo volumes, but in the +street. His audiences were not Mr. Mudie's subscribers, but men and +women earning weekly wages. The coarseness of his language, the +offensiveness of his imagery, have been greatly exaggerated. It is now +a good many years since I heard him lecture in a northern town on the +Bible to an audience almost wholly composed of artisans. He was bitter +and aggressive, but the treatment he was then experiencing accounted +for this. As an avowed atheist he received no quarter, and he might +fairly say with Wilfred Osbaldistone, 'It's hard I should get raps +over the costard, and only pay you back in make-believes.' + +It was not what Bradlaugh said, but the people he said it to, that +drew down upon him the censure of the magistrate, and (unkindest cut +of all) the condemnation of the House of Commons. + +Of all the evils from which the lovers of religion do well to pray +that their faith may be delivered, the worst is that it should ever +come to be discussed across the floor of the House of Commons. The +self-elected champions of the Christian faith who then ride into the +lists are of a kind well calculated to make Piety hide her head for +very shame. Rowdy noblemen, intemperate country gentlemen, sterile +lawyers, cynical but wealthy sceptics who maintain religion as another +fence round their property, hereditary Nonconformists whose God is +respectability and whose goal a baronetcy, contrive, with a score or +two of bigots thrown in, to make a carnival of folly, a veritable +devil's dance of blasphemy. The debates on Bradlaugh's oath-taking +extended over four years, and will make melancholy reading for +posterity. Two figures, and two figures only, stand out in solitary +grandeur, those of a Quaker and an Anglican--Bright and Gladstone. + +The conclusion which an attentive reading of Mr. Bradlaugh's biography +forces upon me is that in all probability he was the last freethinker +who will be exposed, for many a long day (it would be more than +usually rash to write 'ever'), to pains and penalties for uttering his +unbelief. It is true the Blasphemy Laws are not yet repealed; it may +be true for all I know that Christianity is still part and parcel +of the common law; it is possibly an indictable offence to lend +_Literature and Dogma_ and _God and the Bible_ to a friend; but, +however these things may be, Mr. Bradlaugh's stock-in-trade is now +free of the market-place, where just at present, at all events, its +price is low. It has become pretty plain that neither the Fortress of +Holy Scripture nor the Rock of Church Authority is likely to be taken +by storm. The Mystery of Creation, the unsolvable problem of matter, +continue to press upon us more heavily than ever. Neither by Paleys +nor by Bradlaughs will religion be either bolstered up or pulled down. +Sceptics and Sacramentarians must be content to put up with one +another's vagaries for some time to come. Indeed, the new socialists, +though at present but poor theologians (one hasty reading of _Lux +Mundi_ does not make a theologian), are casting favourable eyes +upon Sacramentarianism, deeming it to have a distinct flavour of +Collectivism. Calvinism, on the other hand, is considered repulsively +individualistic, being based upon the notion that it is the duty of +each man to secure his own salvation. + +But whether Bradlaugh was the last of his race or not, he was a +brave man whose life well deserves an honourable place amongst the +biographies of those Radicals who have suffered in the cause of +Free-thought, and into the fruits of whose labours others have +entered. + + + + +DISRAELI _EX RELATIONE_ SIR WILLIAM FRASER + + +The late Sir William Fraser was not, I have been told, a popular +person in that society about which he thought so much, and his book, +_Disraeli and His Day_, did not succeed in attracting much of the +notice of the general reader, and failed, so I, at least, have been +made to understand, to win a verdict of approval from the really well +informed. + +I consider the book a very good one, in the sense of being valuable. +Whatever your mood may be, that of the moralist, cynic, satirist, +humourist, whether you love, pity, or despise your fellow-man, here is +grist for your mill. It feeds the mind. + +Although in form the book is but a stringing together of stories, +incidents, and aphorisms, still the whole produces a distinct effect. +To state what that effect is would be, I suppose, the higher +criticism. It is not altogether disagreeable; it is decidedly amusing; +it is clever and somewhat contemptible. Sir William Fraser was a +baronet who thought well of his order. He desiderated a tribunal to +determine the right to the title, and he opined that the courtesy +prefix of 'Honourable,' which once, it appears, belonged to baronets, +should be restored to them. Apart from these opinions, ridiculous and +peculiar, Sir William Fraser stands revealed in this volume as cast in +a familiar mould. The words 'gentleman,' 'White's,' 'Society,' often +flow from his pen, and we may be sure were engraven on his heart. He +had seen a world wrecked. When he was young, so he tells his readers, +the world consisted of at least three, and certainly not more than +five, hundred persons who were accustomed night after night during the +season to make their appearance at a certain number of houses, which +are affectionately enumerated. A new face at any one of these +gatherings immediately attracted attention, as, indeed, it is easy to +believe it would. 'Anything for a change,' as somebody observes in +_Pickwick_. + +This is the atmosphere of the book, and Sir William breathes in it +very pleasantly. Endowed by Nature with a retentive memory and a +literary taste, active if singular, he may be discovered in his own +pages moving up and down, in and out of society, supplying and +correcting quotations, and gratifying the vanity of distinguished +authors by remembering their own writings better than they did +themselves. The book makes one clearly comprehend what a monstrous +clever fellow the rank and file of the Tory party must have felt Sir +William Fraser to be. This, however, is only background. In the front +of the picture we have the mysterious outlines, the strange +personality, struggling between the bizarre and the romantic, of 'the +Jew,' as big George Bentinck was ever accustomed to denominate his +leader. Sir William Fraser's Disraeli is a very different figure from +Sir Stafford Northcote's. The myth about the pocket Sophocles is +rudely exploded. Sir William is certain that Disraeli could not have +construed a chapter of the Greek Testament. He found such mythology +as he required where many an honest fellow has found it before him--in +Lemprière's Dictionary. His French accent, as Sir William records it, +was most satisfactory, and a conclusive proof of his _bonâ-fides_. +Disraeli, it is clear, cared as little for literature as he did for +art. He admired Gray, as every man with a sense for epithet must; he +studied Junius, whose style, so Sir William Fraser believes, he +surpassed in his 'Runnymede' letters. Sir William Fraser kindly +explains the etymology of this strange word 'Runnymede,' as he also +does that of 'Parliament,' which he says is '_Parliamo mente_' (Let us +speak our minds). Sir William clearly possessed the learning denied to +his chief. + +Beyond apparently imposing upon Sir Stafford Northcote, Disraeli +himself never made any vain pretensions to be devoted to pursuits for +which he did not care a rap. He once dreamt of an epic poem, and his +early ambition urged him a step or two in that direction, but his +critical faculty, which, despite all his monstrosities of taste, was +vital, restrained him from making a fool of himself, and he forswore +the muse, puffed the prostitute away, and carried his very saleable +wares to another market, where his efforts were crowned with +prodigious success. Sir William Fraser introduces his great man to us +as observing, in reply to a question, that revenge was the passion +which gives pleasure the latest. A man, he continued, will enjoy that +when even avarice has ceased to please. As a matter of fact, Disraeli +himself was neither avaricious nor revengeful, and, as far as one can +judge, was never tempted to be either. This is the fatal defect of +almost all Disraeli's aphorisms: they are dead words, whilst the +words of a true aphorism have veins filled with the life of their +utterer. Nothing of this sort ever escaped the lips of our modern +Sphinx. If he had any faiths, any deep convictions, any rooted +principles, he held his tongue about them. He was, Sir William tells +us, an indolent man. It is doubtful whether he ever did, apart from +the preparation and delivery of his speeches, what would be called by +a professional man a hard day's work in his life. He had courage, wit, +insight, instinct, prevision, and a thorough persuasion that he +perfectly understood the materials he had to work upon and the tools +within his reach. Perhaps no man ever gauged more accurately or more +profoundly despised that 'world' Sir William Fraser so pathetically +laments. For folly, egotism, vanity, conceit, and stupidity, he had an +amazing eye. He could not, owing to his short sight, read men's faces +across the floor of the House, but he did not require the aid of any +optic nerve to see the petty secrets of their souls. His best sayings +have men's weaknesses for their text. Sir William's book gives many +excellent examples. One laughs throughout. + +Sir William would have us believe that in later life Disraeli clung +affectionately to dulness--to gentle dulness. He did not want to be +surrounded by wits. He had been one himself in his youth, and he +questioned their sincerity. It would almost appear from passages in +the book that Disraeli found even Sir William Fraser too pungent for +him. Once, we are told, the impenetrable Prime Minister quailed before +Sir William's reproachful oratory. The story is not of a cock and a +bull, but of a question put in the House of Commons by Sir William, +who was snubbed by the Home Secretary, who was cheered by Disraeli. +This was intolerable, and accordingly next day, being, as good luck +would have it, a Friday, when, as all men and members know, 'it is in +the power of any member to bring forward any topic he may choose,' Sir +William naturally chose the topic nearest to his heart, and 'said a +few words on my wrongs.' + + 'During my performance I watched Disraeli narrowly. I could not see + his face, but I noticed that whenever I became in any way + disagreeable--in short, whenever my words really bit--they were + invariably followed by one movement. Sitting as he always did with + his right knee over his left, whenever the words touched him he + moved the pendant leg twice or three times, then curved his foot + upwards. I could observe no other sign of emotion, but this was + distinct. Some years afterwards, on a somewhat more important + occasion at the Conference at Berlin, a great German philosopher, + Herr ----, went to Berlin on purpose to study Disraeli's character. + He said afterwards that he was most struck by the more than Indian + stoicism which Disraeli showed. To this there was one exception. + "Like all men of his race, he has one sign of emotion which never + fails to show itself--the movement of the leg that is crossed over + the other, and of the foot!" The person who told me this had never + heard me hint, nor had anyone, that I had observed this peculiar + symptom on the earlier occasion to which I have referred.' + +Statesmen of Jewish descent, with a reputation for stoicism to +preserve, would do well to learn from this story not to swing their +crossed leg when tired. The great want about Mr. Disraeli is something +to hang the countless anecdotes about him upon. Most remarkable men +have some predominant feature of character round which you can build +your general conception of them, or, at all events, there has been +some great incident in their lives for ever connected with their +names, and your imagination mixes the man and the event together. Who +can think of Peel without remembering the Corn Laws and the +reverberating sentence: 'I shall leave a name execrated by every +monopolist who, for less honourable motives, clamours for Protection +because it conduces to his own individual benefit; but it may be that +I shall leave a name sometimes remembered with expressions of +good-will in the abode of those whose lot it is to labour and to earn +their daily bread with the sweat of their brow, when they shall +recruit their exhausted strength with abundant and untaxed food, the +sweeter because it is no longer leavened with a sense of injustice.' +But round what are our memories of Disraeli to cluster? Sir William +Fraser speaks rapturously of his wondrous mind and of his intellect, +but where is posterity to look for evidences of either? Certainly not +in Sir William's book, which shows us a wearied wit and nothing more. +Carlyle once asked, 'How long will John Bull permit this absurd +monkey'--meaning Mr. Disraeli--'to dance upon his stomach?' The +question was coarsely put, but there is nothing in Sir William's book +to make one wonder it should have been asked. Mr. Disraeli lived to +offer Carlyle the Grand Cross of the Order of the Bath, and that, in +Sir William's opinion, is enough to dispose of Carlyle's vituperation; +but, after all, the Grand Cross is no answer to anything except an +application for it. + +A great many other people are made to cross Sir William Fraser's +stage. His comments upon them are lively, independent, and original. +He liked Cobden and hated Bright. The reason for this he makes quite +plain. He thinks he detected in Cobden a deprecatory manner--a +recognition of the sublime truth that he, Richard Cobden, had not been +half so well educated as the mob of Tories he was addressing. Bright, +on the other band, was fat and rude, and thought that most country +gentlemen and town-bred wits were either fools or fribbles. This was +intolerable. Here was a man who not only could not have belonged to +the 'world,' but honestly did not wish to, and was persuaded--the +gross fellow--that he and his world were better in every respect than +the exclusive circles which listened to Sir William Fraser's _bon +mots_ and tags from the poets. Certainly there was nothing deprecatory +about John Bright. He could be quite as insolent in his way as any +aristocrat in his. He had a habit, we are told, of slowly getting up +and walking out of the House in the middle of Mr. Disraeli's speeches, +and just when that ingenious orator was leading up to a carefully +prepared point, and then immediately returning behind the Speaker's +chair. If this is true, it was perhaps rude, but nobody can deny that +it is a Tory dodge of indicating disdain. What was really irritating +about Mr. Bright was that his disdain was genuine. He did think very +little of the Tory party, and he did not care one straw for the +opinion of society. He positively would not have cared to have been +made a baronet. Sir William Fraser seems to have been really fond of +Disraeli, and the very last time he met his great man in the Carlton +Club he told him a story too broad to be printed. The great man +pronounced it admirable, and passed on his weary way. + + + + +A CONNOISSEUR + + +It must always be rash to speak positively about human nature, whose +various types of character are singularly tough, and endure, if not +for ever, for a very long time; yet some types do seem to show signs +of wearing out. The connoisseur, for example, here in England is +hardly what he was. He has specialized, and behind him there is now +the bottomless purse of the multi-millionaire, who buys as he is +bidden, and has no sense of prices. If the multi-millionaire wants a +thing, why should he not have it? The gaping mob, penniless but +appreciative, looks on and cheers his pluck. + +Mr. Frederick Locker, about whom I wish to write a few lines, was an +old-world connoisseur, the shy recesses of whose soul Addison might +have penetrated in the page of a _Spectator_--and a delicate operation +it would have been. + +My father-in-law was only once in the witness-box. I had the felicity +to see him there. It was a dispute about the price of a picture, and +in the course of his very short evidence he hazarded the opinion that +the grouping of the figures (they were portraits) was in bad taste. +The Judge, the late Mr. Justice Cave, an excellent lawyer of the old +school, snarled out, 'Do you think you could explain to _me_ what is +taste?' Mr. Locker surveyed the Judge through the eye-glass which +seemed almost part of his being, with a glance modest, deferential, +deprecatory, as if suggesting 'Who am _I_ to explain anything to +_you_?' but at the same time critical, ironical, and humorous. It was +but for one brief moment; the eyeglass dropped, and there came the +mournful answer, as from a man baffled at all points: 'No, my lord; I +should find it impossible!' The Judge grunted a ready, almost a +cheerful, assent. + +Properly to describe Mr. Locker, you ought to be able to explain both +to judge and jury what you mean by taste. He sometimes seemed to me to +be _all_ taste. Whatever subject he approached--was it the mystery of +religion, or the moralities of life, a poem or a print, a bit of old +china or a human being--whatever it might be, it was along the avenue +of taste that he gently made his way up to it. His favourite word of +commendation was _pleasing_, and if he ever brought himself to say +(and he was not a man who scattered his judgments, rather was he +extremely reticent of them) of a man, and still more of a woman, that +he or she was _unpleasing_, you almost shuddered at the fierceness of +the condemnation, knowing, as all Locker's intimate friends could not +help doing, what the word meant to him. 'Attractive' was another of +his critical instruments. He meets Lord Palmerston, and does not find +him 'attractive' (_My Confidences_, p. 155). + +This is a temperament which when cultivated, as it was in Mr. Locker's +case, by a life-long familiarity with beautiful things in all the arts +and crafts, is apt to make its owner very susceptible to what some +stirring folk may not unjustly consider the trifles of life. Sometimes +Locker might seem to overlook the dominant features, the main object +of the existence, either of a man or of some piece of man's work, in +his sensitively keen perception of the beauty, or the lapse from +beauty, of some trait of character or bit of workmanship. This may +have been so. Mr. Locker was more at home, more entirely his own +delightful self, when he was calling your attention to some humorous +touch in one of Bewick's tail-pieces, or to some plump figure in a +group by his favourite Stothard than when handling a Michael Angelo +drawing or an amazing Blake. Yet, had it been his humour, he could +have played the showman to Michael Angelo and Blake at least as well +as to Bewick, Stothard, or Chodowiecki. But a modesty, marvellously +mingled with irony, was of the very essence of his nature. No man +expatiated less. He never expounded anything in his born days; he very +soon wearied of those he called 'strong' talkers. His critical method +was in a conversational manner to direct your attention to something +in a poem or a picture, to make a brief suggestion or two, perhaps to +apply an epithet, and it was all over, but your eyes were opened. +Rapture he never professed, his tones were never loud enough to +express enthusiasm, but his enjoyment of what he considered good, +wherever he found it--and he was regardless of the set judgments of +the critics--was most intense and intimate. His feeling for anything +he liked was fibrous: he clung to it. For all his rare books and +prints, if he liked a thing he was very tolerant of its _format_. He +would cut a drawing out of a newspaper, frame it, hang it up, and be +just as tender towards it as if it were an impression with the unique +_remarque_. + +Mr. Locker had probably inherited his virtuoso's whim from his +ancestors. His great-grandfather was certified by Johnson in his life +of Addison to be a gentleman 'eminent for curiosity and literature,' +and though his grandfather, the Commodore, who lives for ever in our +history as the man who taught Nelson the lesson that saved an +Empire--'Lay a Frenchman close, and you will beat him'--was no +collector, his father, Edward Hawke Locker, though also a naval man, +was not only the friend of Sir Walter Scott, but a most judicious +buyer of pictures, prints, and old furniture. + +Frederick Locker was born in 1821, in Greenwich Hospital, where Edward +Hawke Locker was Civil Commissioner. His mother was the daughter of +one of the greatest book-buyers of his time, a man whose library it +took nine days to disperse--the Rev. Jonathan Boucher, the friend and +opponent of George Washington, an ecclesiastic who might have been +first Bishop of Edinburgh, but who died a better thing, the Vicar of +Epsom. + +Frederick Locker grew up among pretty things in the famous hospital. +Water-colours by Lawrence, Prout, Girtin, Turner, Chinnery, Paul +Sandby, Cipriani, and other masters; casts after Canova; mezzotints +after Sir Joshua; Hogarth's famous picture of David Garrick and his +wife, now well hung in Windsor Castle, were about him, and early +attracted his observant eye. Yet the same things were about his elder +brother Arthur, an exceedingly clever fellow, who remained quite +curiously impervious to the impressiveness of pretty things all his +days. + +Locker began collecting on his own account after his marriage, in +1850, to a daughter of Lord Byron's enemy, the Lord Elgin, who brought +the marbles from Athens to Bloomsbury. His first object, at least so +he thought, was to make his rooms pretty. From the beginning of his +life as a connoisseur he spared himself no pains, often trudging +miles, when not wanted at the Admiralty Office, in search of his prey. +If any mercantile-minded friend ever inquired what anything had cost, +he would be answered with a rueful smile, 'Much shoe leather.' He +began with old furniture, china, and bric-à-brac, which ere long +somewhat inconveniently filled his small rooms. Prices rose, and means +in those days were as small as the rooms. No more purchases of Louis +Seize and blue majolica and Palissy ware could be made. Drawings by +the old masters and small pictures were the next objects of the chase. +Here again the long purses were soon on his track, and the pursuit had +to be abandoned, but not till many treasures had been garnered. Last +of all he became a book-hunter, beginning with little volumes of +poetry and the drama from 1590 to 1610; and as time went on the +boundaries expanded, but never so as to include black letter. + +I dare not say Mr. Locker had all the characteristics of a great +collector, or that he was entirely free from the whimsicalities of the +tribe of connoisseurs, but he was certainly endowed with the chief +qualifications for the pursuit of rarities, and remained clear of the +unpleasant vices that so often mar men's most innocent avocations. Mr. +Locker always knew what he wanted and what he did not want, and never +could be persuaded to take the one for the other; he did not grow +excited in the presence of the quarry; he had patience to wait, and +to go on waiting, and he seldom lacked courage to buy. + +He rode his own hobby-horse, never employing experts as buyers. For +quantity he had no stomach. He shrank from numbers. He was not a +Bodleian man; he had not the sinews to grapple with libraries. He was +the connoisseur throughout. Of the huge acquisitiveness of a Heber or +a Huth he had not a trace. He hated a crowd, of whatsoever it was +composed. He was apt to apologize for his possessions, and to +depreciate his tastes. As for boasting of a treasure, he could as +easily have eaten beef at breakfast. + +So delicate a spirit, armed as it was for purposes of defence with a +rare gift of irony and a very shrewd insight into the weaknesses and +noisy falsettos of life, was sure to be misunderstood. The dull and +coarse witted found Locker hard to make out. He struck them as +artificial and elaborate, perhaps as frivolous, and yet they felt +uneasy in his company lest there should be a lurking ridicule behind +his quiet, humble demeanour. There was, indeed, always an element of +mockery in Locker's humility. + +An exceedingly spiteful account of him, in which it is asserted that +'most of his rarest books are miserable copies' (how book-collectors +can hate one another!), ends with the reluctant admission: 'He was +eminently a gentleman, however, and his manners were even courtly, yet +virile.' Such extorted praise is valuable. + +I can see him now before me, with a nicely graduated foot-rule in his +delicate hand, measuring with grave precision the height to a hair of +his copy of _Robinson Crusoe_ (1719), for the purpose of ascertaining +whether it was taller or shorter than one being vaunted for sale in a +bookseller's catalogue just to hand. His face, one of much refinement, +was a study, exhibiting alike a fixed determination to discover the +exact truth about the copy and a humorous realization of the inherent +triviality of the whole business. Locker was a philosopher as well as +a connoisseur. + +The Rowfant Library has disappeared. Great possessions are great +cares. 'But ships are but boards, sailors but men; there be land-rats, +water-thieves, and land-thieves--I mean pirates; and then there is the +peril of waters, winds and rocks.' To this list the nervous owner of +rare books must add fire, that dread enemy of all the arts. It is +often difficult to provide stabling for dead men's hobby-horses. It +were perhaps absurd in a world like this to grow sentimental over a +parcel of old books. Death, the great unbinder, must always make a +difference. + +Mr. Locker's poetry now forms a volume of the _Golden Treasury +Series_. The _London Lyrics_ are what they are. They have been well +praised by good critics, and have themselves been made the subject of +good verse. + + 'Apollo made one April day + A new thing in the rhyming way; + Its turn was neat, its wit was clear, + It wavered 'twixt a smile and tear. + Then Momus gave a touch satiric, + And it became a _London Lyric_.' + AUSTIN DOBSON. + +In another copy of verses Mr. Dobson adds: + + 'Or where discern a verse so neat, + So well-bred and so witty-- + So finished in its least conceit, + So mixed of mirth and pity?' + + 'Pope taught him rhythm, Prior ease, + Praed buoyancy and banter; + What modern bard would learn from these? + Ah, _tempora mutantur_!' + +Nothing can usefully be added to criticism so just, so searching, and +so happily expressed. + +Some of the _London Lyrics_ have, I think, achieved what we poor +mortals call immortality--a strange word to apply to the piping of so +slender a reed, to so slight a strain--yet + + 'In small proportions we just beauties see.' + +It is the simplest strain that lodges longest in the heart. Mr. +Locker's strains are never precisely _simple_. The gay enchantment of +the world and the sense of its bitter disappointments murmur through +all of them, and are fatal to their being simple, but the +unpretentiousness of a _London Lyric_ is akin to simplicity. + +His relation to his own poetry was somewhat peculiar. A critic in +every fibre, he judged his own verses with a severity he would have +shrunk from applying to those of any other rhyming man. He was deeply +dissatisfied, almost on bad terms, with himself, yet for all that he +was convinced that he had written some very good verses indeed. His +poetry meant a great deal to him, and he stood in need of sympathy and +of allies against his own despondency. He did not get much sympathy, +being a man hard to praise, for unless he agreed with your praise it +gave him more pain than pleasure. + +I am not sure that Mr. Dobson agrees with me, but I am very fond of +Locker's paraphrase of one of Clément Marot's _Epigrammes_; and as the +lines are redolent of his delicate connoisseurship, I will quote both +the original (dated 1544) and the paraphrase: + + 'DU RYS DE MADAME D'ALLEBRET + + 'Elle a très bien ceste gorge d'albastre, + Ce doulx parler, ce cler tainct, ces beaux yeulx: + Mais en effect, ce petit rys follastre, + C'est à mon gré ce qui lui sied le mieulx; + Elle en pourroit les chemins et les lieux + Où elle passé à plaisir inciter; + Et si ennuy me venoit contrister + Tant que par mort fust ma vie abbatue, + Il me fauldroit pour me resusciter + Que ce rys la duguel elle me tue.' + + 'How fair those locks which now the light wind stirs! + What eyes she has, and what a perfect arm! + And yet methinks that little laugh of hers-- + That little laugh--is still her crowning charm. + Where'er she passes, countryside or town, + The streets make festa and the fields rejoice. + Should sorrow come, as 'twill, to cast me down, + Or Death, as come he must, to hush my voice, + Her laugh would wake me just as now it thrills me-- + That little, giddy laugh wherewith she kills me.' + +'Tis the very laugh of Millamant in _The Way of the World_! 'I would +rather,' cried Hazlitt, 'have seen Mrs. Abington's Millamant than any +Rosalind that ever appeared on the stage.' Such wishes are idle. +Hazlitt never saw Mrs. Abington's Millamant. I have seen Miss Ethel +Irving's Millamant, _dulce ridentem_, and it was that little giddy +laugh of hers that reminded me of Marot's Epigram and of Frederick +Locker's paraphrase. So do womanly charms endure from generation to +generation, and it is one of the duties of poets to record them. + +In 1867 Mr. Locker published his _Lyra Elegantiarun. A Collection of +Some of the Best Specimens of Vers de Société and Vers d'Occasion in +the English Languages by Deceased Authors_. In his preface Locker gave +what may now be fairly called the 'classical' definition of the verses +he was collecting. '_Vers de société_ and _vers d'occasion_ should' +(so he wrote) 'be short, elegant, refined and fanciful, not seldom +distinguished by heightened sentiment, and often playful. The tone +should not be pitched high; it should be idiomatic and rather in the +conversational key; the rhythm should be crisp and sparkling, and the +rhyme frequent and never forced, while the entire poem should be +marked by tasteful moderation, high finish and completeness; for +however trivial the subject-matter may be--indeed, rather in +proportion to its triviality, subordination to the rules of +composition and perfection of execution should be strictly enforced. +The definition may be further illustrated by a few examples of pieces, +which, from the absence of some of the foregoing qualities, or from +the excess of others, cannot be properly regarded as _vers de +société_, though they may bear a certain generic resemblance to that +species of poetry. The ballad of "John Gilpin," for example, is too +broadly and simply ludicrous; Swift's "Lines on the Death of +Marlborough," and Byron's "Windsor Poetics," are too savage and +truculent; Cowper's "My Mary" is far too pathetic; Herrick's lyrics to +"Blossoms" and "Daffodils" are too elevated; "Sally in our Alley" is +too homely and too entirely simple and natural; while the "Rape of the +Lock," which would otherwise be one of the finest specimens of _vers +de société_ in any language, must be excluded on account of its +length, which renders it much too important.' + +I have made this long quotation because it is an excellent example of +Mr. Locker's way of talking about poets and poetry, and of his +intimate, searching, and unaffected criticism. + +_Lyra Elegantiarum_ is a real, not a bookseller's collection. Mr. +Locker was a great student of verse. There was hardly a stanza of any +English poet, unless it was Spenser, for whom he had no great +affection, which he had not pondered over and clearly considered as +does a lawyer his cases. He delighted in a complete success, and +grieved over any lapse from the fold of metrical virtue, over any +ill-sounding rhyme or unhappy expression. The circulation of _Lyra +Elegantiarum_ was somewhat interfered with by a 'copyright' question. +Mr. Locker had a great admiration for Landor's short poems, and +included no less than forty-one of them, which he chose with the +utmost care. Publishers are slow to perceive that the best chance of +getting rid of their poetical wares (and Landor was not popular) is to +have attention called to the artificer who produced them. The +Landorian publisher objected, and the _Lyra_ had to be 'suppressed'--a +fine word full of hidden meanings. The second-hand booksellers, a wily +race, were quick to perceive the significance of this, and have for +more than thirty years obtained inflated prices for their early +copies, being able to vend them as possessing the _Suppressed Verses_. +There is a great deal of Locker in this collection. To turn its pages +is to renew intercourse with its editor. + +In 1879 another little volume instinct with his personality came into +existence and made friends for itself. He called it _Patchwork_, and +to have given it any other name would have severely taxed his +inventiveness. It is a collection of stories, of _ana_, of quotations +in verse and prose, of original matter, of character-sketches, of +small adventures, of table-talk, and of other things besides, if other +things, indeed, there be. If you know _Patchwork_ by heart you are +well equipped. It is intensely original throughout, and never more +original than when its matter is borrowed. Readers of _Patchwork_ had +heard of Mr. Creevey long before Sir Herbert Maxwell once again let +that politician loose upon an unlettered society. + +The book had no great sale, but copies evidently fell into the hands +of the more judicious of the pressmen, who kept it by their sides, and +every now and again + + 'Waled a portion with judicious care' + +for quotation in their columns. The _Patchwork_ stories thus got into +circulation one by one. Kind friends of Mr. Locker's, who had been +told, or had discovered for themselves, that he was somewhat of a wag, +would frequently regale him with bits of his own _Patchwork_, +introducing them to his notice as something they had just heard, which +they thought he would like--murdering his own stories to give him +pleasure. His countenance on such occasions was a _rendezvous_ of +contending emotions, a battlefield of rival forces. Politeness ever +prevailed, but it took all his irony and sad philosophy to hide his +pain. _Patchwork_ is such a good collection of the kind of story he +liked best that it was really difficult to avoid telling him a story +that was _not_ in it. I made the blunder once myself with a Voltairean +anecdote. Here it is as told in _Patchwork_: 'Voltaire was one day +listening to a dramatic author reading his comedy, and who said, "Ici +le chevalier rit!" He exclaimed: "Le chevalier est _bien_ heureux!"' I +hope I told it fairly well. He smiled sadly, and said nothing, not +even _Et tu, Brute_! + +In 1886 Mr. Locker printed for presentation a catalogue of his printed +books, manuscripts, autograph letters, drawings, and pictures. Nothing +of his own figures in this catalogue, and yet in a very real sense the +whole is his. Most of the books are dispersed, but the catalogue +remains, not merely as a record of rareties and bibliographical +details dear to the collector's heart, but as a token of taste. Just +as there is, so Wordsworth reminds us, 'a spirit in the woods,' so is +there still, brooding over and haunting the pages of the 'Rowfant +Catalogue,' the spirit of true connoisseurship. In the slender lists +of Locker's 'Works' this book must always have a place. + +Frederick Locker died at Rowfant on May 30, 1895, leaving behind him, +carefully prepared for the press, a volume he had christened _My +Confidences: An Autographical Sketch addressed to My Descendants_. + +In due course the book appeared, and was misunderstood at first by +many. It cut a strange, outlandish figure among the crowd of casual +reminiscences it externally resembled. Glancing over the pages of _My +Confidences_, the careless library subscriber encountered the usual +number of names of well-known personages, whose appearance is supposed +by publishers to add sufficient zest to reminiscences to secure +for them a sale large enough, at any rate, to recoup the cost of +publication. Yet, despite these names, Mr. Locker's book is completely +unlike the modern memoir. Beneath a carefully-constructed, and +perhaps slightly artificially maintained, frivolity of tone, the book +is written in deadly earnest. Not for nothing did its author choose as +one of the mottoes for its title-page, 'Ce ne sont mes gestes que +j'écrie; c'est moy.' It may be said of this book, as of Senancour's +_Oberman_: + + 'A fever in these pages burns; + Beneath the calm they feign, + A wounded human spirit turns + Here on its bed of pain.' + +The still small voice of its author whispers through _My Confidences_. +Like Montaigne's _Essays_, the book is one of entire good faith, and +strangely uncovers a personality. + +As a tiny child Locker was thought by his parents to be very like Sir +Joshua Reynolds' picture of Puck, an engraving of which was in the +home at Greenwich Hospital, and certainly Locker carried to his +grave more than a suspicion of what is called Puckishness. In _My +Confidences_ there are traces of this quality. + +Clearly enough the author of _London Lyrics_, the editor of _Lyra +Elegantiarum_, of _Patchwork_, and the whimsical but sincere compiler +of _My Confidences_ was more than a mere connoisseur, however much +connoisseurship entered into a character in which taste played so +dominant a part. + +Stronger even than taste was his almost laborious love of kindness. +He really took too much pains about it, exposing himself to rebuffs +and misunderstandings; but he was not without his rewards. All +down-hearted folk, sorrowful, disappointed people, the unlucky, the +ill-considered, the _mésestimés_--those who found themselves condemned +to discharge uncongenial duties in unsympathetic society, turned +instinctively to Mr. Locker for a consolation, so softly administered +that it was hard to say it was intended. He had friends everywhere, in +all ranks of life, who found in him an infinity of solace, and for his +friends there was nothing he would not do. It seemed as if he could +not spare himself. I remember his calling at my chambers one hot day +in July, when he happened to have with him some presents he was in +course of delivering. Among them I noticed a bust of Voltaire and an +unusually lively tortoise, generally half-way out of a paper bag. +Wherever he went he found occasion for kindness, and his whimsical +adventures would fill a volume. I sometimes thought it would really be +worth while to leave off the struggle for existence, and gently to +subside into one of Lord Rowton's homes in order to have the pleasure +of receiving in my new quarters a first visit from Mr. Locker. How +pleasantly would he have mounted the stair, laden with who knows what +small gifts?--a box of mignonette for the window-sill, an old book or +two, as likely as not a live kitten, for indeed there was never an end +to the variety or ingenuity of his offerings! How felicitous would +have been his greeting! How cordial his compliments! How abiding the +sense of his unpatronizing friendliness! But it was not to be. One can +seldom choose one's pleasures. + +In his _Patchwork_ Mr. Locker quotes Gibbon's encomium on Charles +James Fox. Anyone less like Fox than Frederick Locker it might be hard +to discover, but fine qualities are alike wherever they are found +lodged; and if Fox was as much entitled as Locker to the full benefit +of Gibbon's praise, he was indeed a good fellow. + +'In his tour to Switzerland Mr. Fox gave me two days of free and +private society. He seemed to feel and even to envy the happiness of +my situation, while I admired the powers of a superior man as they are +blended in his character with the softness and simplicity of a child. +_Perhaps no human being was ever more perfectly exempted from the +taint of malevolence, vanity, and falsehood._' + + + + +OUR GREAT MIDDLE CLASS + + +The republication of Mr. Arnold's _Friendship's Garland_ after an +interval of twenty-seven years may well set us all a-thinking. Here it +is, in startling facsimile--the white covers, destined too soon to +become black, the gilt device, the familiar motto. As we gazed upon +it, we found ourselves exclaiming, so vividly did it recall the past: + + 'It is we, it is we, who have changed.' + +_Friendship's Garland_ was a very good joke seven-and-twenty years +ago, and though some of its once luminous paint has been rubbed off, +and a few of its jests have ceased to effervesce, it is a good joke +still. Mr. Bottle's mind, qua mind; the rowdy Philistine Adolescens +Leo, Esq.; Dr. Russell, of the _Times_, mounting his war-horse; the +tale of how Lord Lumpington and the Rev. Esau Hittall got their +degrees at Oxford; and many another ironic thrust which made the +reader laugh 'while the hair was yet brown on his head,' may well make +him laugh still, 'though his scalp is almost hairless, and his +figure's grown convex.' Since 1871 we have learnt the answer to the +sombre lesson, 'What is it to grow old?' But, thank God! we can laugh +even yet. + +The humour and high spirits of _Friendship's Garland_ were, however, +but the gilding of a pill, the artificial sweetening of a nauseous +draught. In reality, and joking apart, the book is an indictment at +the bar of _Geist_ of the English people as represented by its middle +class and by its full-voiced organ, the daily press. Mr. Arnold +invented Arminius to be the mouthpiece of this indictment, the +traducer of our 'imperial race,' because such blasphemies could not +artistically have been attributed to one of the number. He made +Arminius a Prussian because in those far-off days Prussia stood for +Von Humboldt and education and culture, and all the things Sir Thomas +Bazley and Mr. Miall were supposed to be without. Around the central +figure of Arminius the essentially playful fancy of Mr. Arnold grouped +other figures, including his own. What an old equity draughtsman would +call 'the charging parts' of the book consist in the allegations that +the Government of England had been taken out of the hands of an +aristocracy grown barren of ideas and stupid beyond words, and +entrusted to a middle class without noble traditions, wretchedly +educated, full of _Ungeist_, with a passion for clap-trap, only +wanting to be left alone to push trade and make money; so ignorant as +to believe that feudalism can be abated without any heroic Stein, by +providing that in one insignificant case out of a hundred thousand, +land shall not follow the feudal law of descent; without a single +vital idea or sentiment or feeling for beauty or appropriateness; well +persuaded that if more trade is done in England than anywhere else, if +personal independence is without a check, and newspaper publicity +unbounded, that is, by the nature of things, to be great; misled every +morning by the magnificent _Times_ or the 'rowdy' _Telegraph_; +desperately prone to preaching to other nations, proud of being able +to say what it likes, whilst wholly indifferent to the fact that it +has nothing whatever to say. + +Such, in brief, is the substance of this most agreeable volume. Its +message was lightly treated by the grave and reverend seigniors of the +State. The magnificent _Times_, the rowdy _Telegraph_, continued to +preach their gospels as before; but for all that Mr. Arnold found an +audience fit, though few, and, of course, he found it among the people +he abused. The barbarians, as he called the aristocracy, were not +likely to pay heed to a professor of poetry. Our working classes +were not readers of the _Pall Mall Gazette_ or purchasers of +four-and-sixpenny tracts bound in white cloth. No; it was the middle +class, to whom Mr. Arnold himself belonged, who took him to honest +hearts, stuck his photograph upon their writing-tables, and sounded +his praises so loudly that his fame even reached the United States of +America, where he was promptly invited to lecture, an invitation he +accepted. But for the middle classes Mr. Arnold would have had but a +poor time of it. They did not mind being insulted; they overlooked +exaggeration; they pardoned ignorance--in a word, they proved +teachable. Yet, though meek in spirit, they have not yet inherited the +earth; indeed, there are those who assert that their chances are gone, +their sceptre for ever buried. It is all over with the middle-class. +Tuck up its muddled head! Tie up its chin! + +A rabble of bad writers may now be noticed pushing their vulgar way +along, who, though born and bred in the middle classes, and disfigured +by many of the very faults Mr. Arnold deplored, yet make it a test of +their membership, an 'open sesame' to their dull orgies, that all +decent, sober-minded folk, who love virtue, and, on the whole, prefer +delicate humour to sickly lubricity, should be labelled 'middle +class.' + +Politically, it cannot but be noticed that, for good or for ill, the +old middle-class audience no longer exists in its integrity. The +crowds that flocked to hear Cobden and Bright, that abhorred slavery, +that cheered Kossuth, that hated the income-tax, are now watered down +by a huge population who do not know, and do not want to know, what +the income-tax is, but who do want to know what the Government is +going to do for them in the matter of shorter hours, better wages, and +constant employment. Will the rabble, we wonder, prove as teachable as +the middle class? Will they consent to be told their faults as meekly? +Will they buy the photograph of their physician, or heave half a brick +at him? It remains to be seen. In the meantime it would be a mistake +to assume that the middle class counts for nothing, even at an +election. As to ideas, have we got any new ones since 1871? 'To be +consequent and powerful,' says Arminius, 'men must be bottomed on some +vital idea or sentiment which lends strength and certainty to their +action.' There are those who tell us that we have at last found this +vital idea in those conceptions of the British Empire which Mr. +Chamberlain so vigorously trumpets. To trumpet a conception is hardly +a happy phrase, but, as Mr. Chamberlain plays no other instrument, it +is forced upon me. Would that we could revive Arminius, to tell us +what he thinks of our new Ariel girdling the earth with twenty Prime +Ministers, each the choicest product of a self-governing and +deeply-involved colony. Is it a vital or a vulgar idea? Is it merely a +big theory or really a great one? Is it the ornate beginning of a +Time, or but the tawdry ending of a period? At all events, it is an +idea unknown to Arminius von Thunder-Ten-Tronckh, and we ought to be, +and many are, thankful for it. + + + + +TAR AND WHITEWASH + + +I am, I confess it, hard to please. If a round dozen of Bad Women, all +made in England too, does not satisfy me, what will? What ails the +fellow at them? Yet was I at first dissatisfied, and am, therefore, +glad to notice that whilst I was demurring and splitting hairs the +great, generous public was buying the _Lives of Twelve Bad Women_, by +Arthur Vincent, and putting it into a second edition. This is as it +should be. When the excellent Dean Burgon dubbed his dozen biographies +_Twelve Good Men_, it probably never occurred to him that the title +suggested three companion volumes; but so it did, and two of them, +_Twelve Bad Men_ and _Twelve Bad Women_, have made their appearance. I +still await, with great patience, _Twelve Good Women_. Twelve was the +number of the Apostles. Had it not been, one might be tempted to ask, +Why twelve? But as there must be some limit to bookmaking, there is no +need to quarrel with an arithmetical limit. + +My criticism upon the Dean's dozen was that they were not by any +means, all of them, conspicuously good men; for, to name one only, who +would call old Dr. Routh, the President of Magdalen, a particularly +good man? In a sense, all Presidents, Provosts, Principals, and +Masters of Colleges are good men--in fact, they must be so by the +statutes--but to few of them are given the special notes of goodness. +Dr. Routh was a remarkable man, a learned man, perhaps a pious +man--undeniably, when he came to die, an old man--but he was no better +than his colleagues. This weakness of classification has run all +through the series, and it is my real quarrel with it. I do not +understand the principle of selection. I did not understand the Dean's +test of goodness, nor do I understand Mr. Seccombe's or Mr. Vincent's +test of badness. What do we mean by a good man or a bad one, a good +woman or a bad one? Most people, like the young man in the song, are +'not very good, nor yet very bad.' We move about the pastures of life +in huge herds, and all do the same things, at the same times, and for +the same reasons. 'Forty feeding like one.' Are we mean? Well, we have +done some mean things in our time. Are we generous? Occasionally we +are. Were we good sons or dutiful daughters? We have both honoured and +dishonoured our parents, who, in their turn, had done the same by +theirs. Do we melt at the sight of misery? Indeed we do. Do we forget +all about it when we have turned the corner? Frequently that is so. Do +we expect to be put to open shame at the Great Day of Judgment? We +should be terribly frightened of this did we not cling to the hope +that amidst the shocking revelations then for the first time made +public our little affairs may fail to attract much notice. Judged by +the standards of humanity, few people are either good or bad. 'I have +not been a great sinner,' said the dying Nelson; nor had he--he had +only been made a great fool of by a woman. Mankind is all tarred with +the same brush, though some who chance to be operated upon when the +brush is fresh from the barrel get more than their share of the tar. +The biography of a celebrated man usually reminds me of the outside of +a coastguardsman's cottage--all tar and whitewash. These are the two +condiments of human life--tar and whitewash--the faults and the +excuses for the faults, the passions and pettinesses that make us +occasionally drop on all fours, and the generous aspirations that at +times enable us, if not to stand upright, at least to adopt the +attitude of the kangaroo. It is rather tiresome, this perpetual game +of French and English going on inside one. True goodness and real +badness escape it altogether. A good man does not spend his life +wrestling with the Powers of Darkness. He is victor in the fray, and +the most he is called upon to do is every now and again to hit his +prostrate foe a blow over the costard just to keep him in his place. +Thus rid of a perpetual anxiety, the good man has time to grow in +goodness, to expand pleasantly, to take his ease on Zion. You can see +in his face that he is at peace with himself--that he is no longer at +war with his elements. His society, if you are fond of goodness, is +both agreeable and medicinal; but if you are a bad man it is hateful, +and you cry out with Mr. Love-lust in Bunyan's Vanity Fair: 'Away with +him. I cannot endure him; he is for ever condemning my way.' + +Not many of Dean Burgon's biographies reached this standard. The +explanation, perhaps, is that the Dean chiefly moved in clerical +circles where excellence is more frequently to be met with than +goodness. + +In the same way a really bad man is one who has frankly said, 'Evil, +be thou my good.' Like the good man, though for a very different +reason, the bad one has ceased to make war with the devil. Finding a +conspiracy against goodness going on, the bad man joins it, and thus, +like the good man, is at peace with himself. The bad man is bent upon +his own way, to get what he wants, no matter at what cost. Human +lives! What do they matter? A woman's honour! What does that matter? +Truth and fidelity! What are they? To know what you want, and not to +mind what you pay for it, is the straight path to fame, fortune, and +hell-fire. Careers, of course, vary; to dominate a continent or to +open a corner shop as a pork-butcher's, plenty of devilry may go to +either ambition. Also, genius is a rare gift. It by no means follows +that because you are a bad man you will become a great one; but to be +bad, and at the same time unsuccessful, is a hard fate. It casts a +little doubt upon a man's badness if he does not, at least, make a +little money. It is a poor business accompanying badness on to a +common scaffold, or to see it die in a wretched garret. That was one +of my complaints with Mr. Seccombe's Twelve Bad Men. Most of them came +to violent ends. They were all failures. + +But I have kept these twelve ladies waiting a most unconscionable +time. Who are they? There are amongst them four courtesans: Alice +Perrers, one of King Edward III.'s misses; Barbara Villiers, one of +King Charles II.'s; Mrs. Mary Anne Clarke, who had to be content with +a royal Duke; and Mrs. Con Phillips. Six members of the criminal +class: Alice Arden, Moll Cutpurse, Jenny Diver, Elizabeth Brownrigg, +Elizabeth Canning, and Mary Bateman; and only two ladies of title, +Frances Howard, Countess of Somerset, and Elizabeth Chudleigh, Duchess +of Kingston. Of these twelve bad women one-third were executed, Alice +Arden being burnt at Canterbury, Jenny Diver and Elizabeth Brownrigg +being hung at Tyburn, and Mary Bateman suffering the same fate at +Leeds. Elizabeth Canning was sentenced to seven years' transportation, +and, indeed, if their biographers are to be believed, all the other +ladies made miserable ends. There is nothing triumphant about their +badness. Even from the point of view of this world they had better +have been good. In fact, squalor is the badge of the whole tribe. Some +of them, probably--Elizabeth Brownrigg, for example--were mad. This +last-named poor creature bore sixteen children to a house-painter and +plasterer, and then became a parish mid-wife, and only finally a +baby-farmer. Her cruelty to her apprentices had madness in every +detail. To include her in this volume was wholly unnecessary. She +lives but in George Canning's famous parody on Southey's sonnet to the +regicide Marten. + +With those sentimentalists who maintain that all bad people are mad I +will have no dealings. It is sheer nonsense; lives of great men all +remind us it is sheer nonsense. Some of our greatest men have been +infernal scoundrels--pre-eminently bad men--with nothing mad about +them, unless it be mad to get on in the world and knock people about +in it. + +_Twelve Bad Women_ contains much interesting matter, but, on the +whole, it is depressing. It seems very dull to be bad. Perhaps the +editor desired to create this impression; if so, he has succeeded. +Hannah More had fifty times more fun in her life than all these +courtesans and criminals put together. The note of jollity is +entirely absent. It was no primrose path these unhappy women +traversed, though that it led to the everlasting bonfire it were +unchristian to doubt. The dissatisfaction I confessed to at the +beginning returns upon me as a cloud at the end; but, for all that, I +rejoice the book is in a second edition, and I hope soon to hear it is +in a third, for it has a moral tendency. + + + + +ITINERARIES + + +Anyone who is teased by the notion that it would be pleasant to be +remembered, in the sense of being read, after death, cannot do better +to secure that end than compose an Itinerary and leave it behind him +in manuscript, with his name legibly inscribed thereon. If an honest +bit of work, noting distances, detailing expenses, naming landmarks, +moors, mountains, harbours, docks, buildings--indeed, anything which, +as lawyers say, savours of realty--and but scantily interspersed with +reflections, and with no quotations, why, then, such a piece of work, +however long publication may be delayed--and a century or two will not +matter in the least--cannot fail, whenever it is printed, to attract +attention, to excite general interest and secure a permanent hold in +every decent library in the kingdom. + +Time cannot stale an Itinerary. _Iter, Via, Actus_ are words of pith +and moment. Stage-coaches, express trains, motor-cars, have written, +or are now writing, their eventful histories over the face of these +islands; but, whatever changes they have made or are destined to make, +they have left untouched the mystery of the road, although for the +moment the latest comer may seem injuriously to have affected its +majesty. + +The Itinerist alone among authors is always sure of an audience. No +matter where, no matter when, he has but to tell us how he footed it +and what he saw by the wayside, and we must listen. How can we help +it? Two hundred years ago, it may be, this Itinerist came through our +village, passed by the wall of our homestead, climbed our familiar +hill, and went on his way; it is perhaps but two lines and a half he +can afford to give us, but what lines they are! How different with +sermons, poems, and novels! On each of these is the stamp of the +author's age; sentiments, fashions, thoughts, faiths, phraseology, all +worn out--cold, dirty grate, where once there was a blazing fire. +Cheerlessness personified! Leland's anti-Papal treatise in forty-five +chapters remains in learned custody--a manuscript; a publisher it will +never find. We still have Papists and anti-Papists; in this case the +fire still blazes, but the grates are of an entirely different +construction. Leland's treatise is out of date. But his _Itinerary_ in +nine volumes, a favourite book throughout the eighteenth century, +which has graced many a bookseller's catalogue for the last hundred +years, and seldom without eliciting a purchaser--Leland's _Itinerary_ +is to-day being reprinted under the most able editorship. The charm of +the road is irresistible. The _Vicar of Wakefield_ is a delightful +book, with a great tradition behind it and a future still before it; +but it has not escaped the ravages of time, and I would, now, at all +events, gladly exchange it for Oliver Goldsmith's _Itinerary through +Germany with a Flute_! + +Vain authors, publisher's men, may write as they like about +_Shakespeare's_ country, or _Scott's_ country, or _Carlyle's_ country, +or _Crockett's_ country, but-- + + 'Oh, good gigantic smile of the brown old earth!' + +the land laughs at the delusions of the men who hurriedly cross its +surface. + + 'Rydal and Fairfield are there,-- + In the shadow Wordsworth lies dead. + So it is, so it will be for aye, + Nature is fresh as of old, + Is lovely, a mortal is dead.' + +These reflections, which by themselves would be enough to sink even an +Itinerary, seemed forced upon me by the publication of _A Journey to +Edenborough in Scotland by Joseph Taylor, Late of the Inner Temple, +Esquire_. This journey was made two hundred years ago in the Long +Vacation of 1705, but has just been printed from the original +manuscript, under the editorship of Mr. William Cowan, by the +well-known Edinburgh bookseller, Mr. Brown, of Princes Street, to whom +all lovers of things Scottish already owe much. + +Nobody can hope to be less known than this our latest Itinerist, for +not only is he not in the _Dictionary of National Biography_, but it +is at present impossible to say which of two Joseph Taylors he was. +The House of the Winged Horse has ever had Taylors on its roll, the +sign of the Middle Temple, a very fleecy sheep, being perhaps +unattractive to the clan, and in 1705 it so happened that not only +were there two Taylors, but two Joseph Taylors, entitled to write +themselves 'of the Inner Temple, Esquire.' Which was the Itinerist? +Mr. Cowan, going by age, thinks that the Itinerist can hardly have +been the Joseph Taylor who was admitted to the Inn in 1663, as in that +case he must have been at least fifty-eight when he travelled to +Edinburgh. For my part, I see nothing in the _Itinerary_ to preclude +the possibility of its author having attained that age at the date of +its composition. I observe in the _Itinerary_ references which point +to the Itinerist being a Kentish man, and he mentions more than once +his 'Cousin D'aeth.' Research among the papers of the D'aeths of +Knowlton Court, near Dover, might result in the discovery which of +these two Taylors really was the Itinerist. As nothing else is at +present known about either, the investigation could probably be made +without passion or party or even religious bias. It might be +best begun by Mr. Cowan telling us in whose custody he found the +manuscript, and how it came there. These statements should always +be made when old manuscripts are first printed. + +The journey began on August 2, 1705. The party consisted of Mr. Taylor +and his two friends, Mr. Harrison and Mr. Sloman. They travelled on +horseback, and often had difficulties with the poor beast that carried +their luggage. They reached Edinburgh in the evening of August 31, and +left it on their return journey on September 8, and got home on the +25th of the same month. The _Itinerary_ concludes as follows: + + 'Thus we spent almost 2 months in a Journy of many 100 miles, + sometimes thro' very charming Countryes, and at other times over + desolate and Barren Mountaines, and yet met with no particular + misfortune in all the Time.' + +I may say at once of these three Itinerists--Mr. Taylor, Mr. Harrison, +and Mr. Sloman--that they appear to have been thoroughly +commonplace, well behaved, occasionally hilarious Englishmen, ready to +endure whatever befell them, if unavoidable; accustomed to take their +ease in their inn and to turn round and look at any pretty woman they +might chance to meet on their travels. Their first experience of what +the Itinerist calls 'the prodigies of Nature,' 'at once an occasion +both of Horrour and Admiration,' was in the Peak Country 'described in +poetry by the ingenious Mr. Cotton.' This part of the world they 'did' +with something of the earnestness of the modern tourist. But I hardly +think they enjoyed themselves. The 'prodigious' caverns and strange +petrifactions shocked them; 'nothing can be more terrible or shocking +to Nature.' Mam Tor, with its 1,710 feet, proved very impressive, 'a +vast high mountain reaching to the very clouds.' This gloom of the +Derbyshire hills and stony valleys was partially dispelled for our +travellers by a certain 'fair Gloriana' they met at Buxton, with whom +they had great fun, 'so much the greater, because we never expected +such heavenly enjoyments in so desolate a country.' If it be on +susceptibilities of this nature that Mr. Cowan rests his case for +thinking that the Itinerist can hardly have attained 'the blasted +antiquity' of fifty-eight, we must think Mr. Cowan a trifle hasty, or +a very young man, perhaps under forty, which is young for an editor. + +After describing, somewhat too much like an auctioneer, the splendours +of Chatsworth, 'a Paradise in the deserts of Arabia,' the Itinerist +proceeds on his way north through Nottingham to Belvoir Castle, where +'my Lord Rosses Gentleman (to whom Mr. Harrison was recommended) +entertained us by his Lordship's command with good wine and the best +of malt liquors which the cellar abounds with'; the pictures in the +Long Gallery were shown them by 'my Lord himself.' At Doncaster, 'a +neat market-town which consists only in one long street,' they had +some superlative salmon just taken out of the river. By Knaresborough +Spaw, where they drank the waters and had icy cold baths, and dined at +the ordinary with a parson whose conversation startled the propriety +of the Templar, the travellers made their way to York, and for the +first and last time a few pages of _Guide Book_ are improperly +introduced. Then on to Scarborough. + + 'The next morning early we left Scarborough and travelled through a + dismall road, particularly near Robins Hood Bay; we were obliged to + lead our horses, and had much ado to get down a vast craggy + mountain which lyes within a quarter of a mile of it. The Bay is + about a mile broad, and inhabited by poor fishermen. We stopt to + taste some of their liquor and discourse with them. They told us + the French privateers came into the Very Bay and took 2 of their + Vessels but the day before, which were ransom'd for £25 a piece. We + saw a great many vessels lying upon the Shore, the masters not + daring to venture out to sea for fear of undergoing the same fate.' + +We boast too readily of our inviolate shores. + +A curious description is given of the Duke of Buckingham's alum works +near Whitby. The travellers then procured a guide, and traversed 'the +vast moors which lye between Whitby and Gisborough.' The civic +magnificence of Newcastle greatly struck our travellers, who, happier +than their modern successors, were able to see the town miles off. The +Itinerist quotes with gusto the civic proverb that the men of +Newcastle pay nothing for the Way, the Word, or the Water, 'for the +Ministers of Religion are maintained, the streets paved, and the +Conduits kept up at the publick charge.' A disagreeable account is +given of the brutishness of the people employed in the salt works at +Tynemouth. At Berwick the travellers got into trouble with the sentry, +but the mistake was rectified with the captain of the guard over '2 +bowles of punch, there being no wine in the town.' + +Scotland was now in sight, and the travellers became grave, as +befitted the occasion. They were told that the journey that lay before +them was extremely dangerous, that 'twould be difficult to escape with +their lives, much less (ominous words) without 'the distemper of the +country.' But Mr. Taylor, Mr. Harrison, and Mr. Sloman were as brave +as Mr. Pickwick, and they would on. 'Yet notwithstanding all these sad +representations, we resolv'd to proceed and stand by one another to +the last.' + +What the Itinerists thought of Scotland when they got there is not for +me to say. I was once a Scottish member. + +They arrived in Edinburgh at a great crisis in Scottish history. They +saw the Duke of Argyll, as Queen Anne's Lord High Commissioner, go to +the Parliament House in this manner: + + 'First a coach and six Horses for his Gentlemen, then a Trumpet, + then his own coach with six white horses, which were very fine, + being those presented by King William to the Duke of Queensbury, + and by him sold to the Duke of Argyle for £300; next goes a troop + of Horse Guards, cloathed like my Lord of Oxford's Regiment, but + the horses are of several colours; and the Lord Chancellor and the + Secretary of State, and the Lord Chief Justice Clerk, and other + officers of State close the cavalcade in coaches and six horses. + Thus the Commissioner goes and returns every day.' + +The Itinerists followed the Duke and his procession into the +Parliament House, and heard debated the great question--the greatest +of all possible questions for Scotland--whether this magnificence +should cease, whether there should be an end of an auld sang--in +short, whether the proposed Act of Union should be proceeded with. By +special favour, our Itinerists had leave to stand upon the steps of +the throne, and witnessed a famous fiery and prolonged debate, the +Duke once turning to them and saying, _sotto voce_, 'It is now +deciding whether England and Scotland shall go together by the ears.' +How it was decided we all know, and that it was wisely decided no one +doubts; yet, when we read our Itinerist's account of the Duke's coach +and horses, and the cavalcade that followed him, and remember that +this was what happened every day during the sitting of the Parliament, +and must not be confounded with the greater glories of the first day +of a Parliament, when every member, be he peer, knight of the shire, +or burgh member, had to ride on horseback in the procession, it is +impossible not to feel the force of Miss Grisel Dalmahoy's appeal in +the _Heart of Midlothian_, she being an ancient sempstress, to Mr. +Saddletree, the harness-maker: + + 'And as for the Lords of States ye suld mind the riding o' the + Parliament in the gude auld time before the Union. A year's rent o' + mony a gude estate gaed for horse-graith and harnessing, forby + broidered robes and foot-mantles that wad hae stude by their lane + with gold and brocade, and that were muckle in my ain line.' + +The graphic account of a famous debate given by, Taylor is worth +comparing with the _Lockhart Papers_ and Hill Burton. The date is a +little troublesome. According to our Itinerist, he heard the +discussion as to whether the Queen or the Scottish Parliament should +nominate the Commissioners. Now, according to the histories, this +all-important discussion began and ended on September 1, but our +Itinerist had only arrived in Edinburgh the night before the first, +and gives us to understand that he owed his invitation to be present +to the fact that whilst in Edinburgh he and his friends had had the +honour to have several lords and members of Parliament to dine, and +that these guests informed him 'of the grand day when the Act was to +be passed or rejected.' The Itinerist's account is too particular--for +he gives the result of the voting--to admit of any possibility of a +mistake, and he describes how several of the members came afterwards +to his lodgings, and, so he writes, 'embraced us with all the outward +marks of love and kindness, and seemed mightily pleased at what was +done, and told us we should now be no more English and Scotch, but +Brittons.' In the matter of nomenclature, at all events, the promises +of the Union have not been carried out. + +After September 1 the Parliament did not meet till the 4th, when an +Address was passed to the Queen, but apparently without any repetition +of debate. So it really is a little difficult to reconcile the dates. +Perhaps Itinerists are best advised to keep off public events. + +How our travellers escaped the 'national distemper' and journeyed +home by Ecclefechan, Carlisle, Shap Fell, Liverpool, Chester, +Coventry, and Warwick must be read in the _Journey_ itself, which, +though it only occupies 182 small pages, is full of matter and even +merriment; in fact, it is an excellent itinerary. + + + + +EPITAPHS + + +Epitaphs, if in rhyme, are the real literature of the masses. They +need no commendation and are beyond all criticism. A Cambridge don, a +London bus-driver, will own their charm in equal measure. Strange +indeed is the fascination of rhyme. A commonplace hitched into verse +instantly takes rank with Holy Scripture. This passion for poetry, as +it is sometimes called, is manifested on every side; even tradesmen +share it, and as the advertisements in our newspapers show, are +willing to pay small sums to poets who commend their wares in verse. +The widow bereft of her life's companion, the mother bending over an +empty cradle, find solace in thinking what doleful little scrag of +verse shall be graven on the tombstone of the dead. From the earliest +times men have sought to squeeze their loves and joys, their sorrows +and hatreds, into distichs and quatrains, and to inscribe them +somewhere, on walls or windows, on sepulchral urns and gravestones, as +memorials of their pleasure or their pain. + + 'Hark! how chimes the passing bell-- + There's no music to a knell; + All the other sounds we hear + Flatter and but cheat our ear.' + +So wrote Shirley the dramatist, and so does he truthfully explain the +popularity of the epitaph as distinguished from the epigram. Who ever +wearies of Martial's 'Erotion'?-- + + 'Hic festinata requiescit Erotion umbra, + Crimine quam fati sexta peremit hiems. + Quisquis eris nostri post me regnator agelli + Manibus exiguis annua justa dato. + Sic lare perpetuo, sic turba sospite, solus + Flebilis in terra sit lapis iste tua'-- + +so prettily Englished by Leigh Hunt: + + 'Underneath this greedy stone + Lies little sweet Erotion, + Whom the Fates with hearts as cold + Nipped away at six years old. + Those, whoever thou may'st be, + That hast this small field after me, + Let the yearly rites be paid + To her little slender shade; + So shall no disease or jar + Hurt thy house or chill thy Lar, + But this tomb be here alone + The only melancholy stone.' + +Our English epitaphs are to be found scattered up and down our country +churchyards--'uncouth rhymes,' as Gray calls them, yet full of the +sombre philosophy of life. They are fast becoming illegible, worn out +by the rain that raineth every day, and our prim, present-day parsons +do not look with favour upon them, besides which--to use a clumsy +phrase--besides which most of our churchyards are now closed against +burials, and without texts there can be no sermons: + + 'I'll stay and read my sermon here, + And skulls and bones shall be my text. + + * * * * + + Here learn that glory and disgrace, + Wisdom and Folly, pass away, + That mirth hath its appointed space, + That sorrow is but for a day; + That all we love and all we hate, + That all we hope and all we fear, + Each mood of mind, each turn of fate, + Must end in dust and silence here.' + +The best epitaphs are the grim ones. Designed, as epitaphs are, to +arrest and hold in their momentary grasp the wandering attention and +languid interest of the passer-by, they must hit him hard and at once, +and this they can only do by striking some very responsive chord, and +no chords are so immediately responsive as those which relate to death +and, it may be, judgment to come. + +Mr. Aubrey Stewart, in his interesting _Selection of English Epigrams +and Epitaphs_, published by Chapman and Hall, quotes an epitaph from a +Norfolk churchyard which I have seen in other parts of the country. +The last time I saw it was in the Forest of Dean. It is admirably +suited for the gravestone of any child of very tender years, say four: + + 'When the Archangel's trump shall blow + And souls to bodies join, + Many will wish their lives below + Had been as short as mine.' + +It is uncouth, but it is warranted to grip. + +Frequently, too, have I noticed how constantly the attention is +arrested by Pope's well-known lines from his magnificent 'Verses to +the Memory of an Unfortunate Lady,' which are often to be found on +tombstones: + + 'So peaceful rests without a stone and name + What once had beauty, titles, wealth, and fame. + How loved, how honoured once avails thee not, + To whom related or by whom begot. + A heap of dust alone remains of thee; + 'Tis all thou art and all the proud shall be.' + +I wish our modern poetasters who deny Pope's claim to be a poet no +worse fate than to lie under stones which have engraved upon them the +lines just quoted, for they will then secure in death what in life was +denied them--the ear of the public. + +Next to the grim epitaph, I should be disposed to rank those which +remind the passer-by of his transitory estate. In different parts of +the country--in Cumberland and Cornwall, in Croyland Abbey, in +Llangollen Churchyard, in Melton Mowbray--are to be found lines more +or less resembling the following: + + 'Man's life is like unto a winter's day, + Some break their fast and so depart away, + Others stay dinner then depart full fed, + The longest age but sups and goes to bed. + O reader, there behold and see + As we are now, so thou must be.' + +The complimentary epitaph seldom pleases. To lie like a tombstone has +become a proverb. Pope's famous epitaph on Newton: + + 'Nature and Nature's laws lay hid in night, + God said, Let Newton be! and all was light.' + +is hyperbolical and out of character with the great man it seeks to +honour. It was intended for Westminster Abbey. I rejoice at the +preference given to prose Latinity. + +The tender and emotional epitaphs have a tendency to become either +insipid or silly. But Herrick has shown us how to rival Martial: + + 'UPON A CHILD THAT DIED. + + Here she lies a pretty bud + Lately made of flesh and blood; + Who as soon fell fast asleep + As her little eyes did peep. + Give her strewings, but not stir + The earth that lightly covers her.' + +Mr. Dodd, the editor of the admirable volume called _The +Epigrammatists_, published in Bohn's Standard Library, calls these +lines a model of simplicity and elegance. So they are, but they are +very vague. But then the child was very young. Erotion, one must +remember, was six years old. Ben Jonson's beautiful epitaph on S.P., a +child of Queen Elizabeth's Chapel, beginning, + + 'Weep with me all you that read + This little story; + And know for whom the tear you shed + Death's self is sorry,' + +is fine poetry, but it is not life or death as plain people know those +sober realities. The flippant epitaph is always abominable. Gay's, for +example: + + 'Life is a jest, and all things show it. + I thought so once, but now I know it.' + +But _does_ he know it? Ay, there's the rub! The note of Christianity +is seldom struck in epitaphs. There is a deep-rooted paganism in the +English people which is for ever bubbling up and asserting itself in +the oddest of ways. Coleridge's epitaph for himself is a striking +exception: + + 'Stop, Christian passer-by! stop, child of God, + And read with gentle breast, Beneath this sod + A poet lies, or that which once seemed he. + O lift one thought in prayer for S.T.C, + That he who many a year with toil of breath + Found death in life, may here find life in death! + Mercy for praise--to be forgiven for fame, + He ask'd and hoped through Christ. Do thou the same.' + + + + +'HANSARD' + + +'Men are we, and must mourn when e'en the shade of that which once was +great has passed away.' This quotation--which, in obedience to the +prevailing taste, I print as prose--was forced upon me by reading in +the papers an account of some proceedings in a sale-room in Chancery +Lane last Tuesday,[A] when the entire stock and copyright of +_Hansard's Parliamentary History and Debates_ were exposed for sale, +and, it must be added, to ridicule. Yet 'Hansard' was once a name to +conjure with. To be in it was an ambition--costly, troublesome, but +animating; to know it was, if not a liberal education, at all events +almost certain promotion; whilst to possess it for your very own was +the outward and visible sign of serious statesmanship. No wonder that +unimaginative men still believed that _Hansard_ was a property with +money in it. Is it not the counterpart of Parliament, its dark and +majestic shadow thrown across the page of history? As the pious +Catholic studies his _Acta Sanctorum_, so should the constitutionalist +love to pore over the _ipsissima verba_ of Parliamentary gladiators, +and read their resolutions and their motions. Where else save in the +pages of _Hansard_ can we make ourselves fully acquainted with the +history of the Mother of Free Institutions? It is, no doubt, dull, but +with the soberminded a large and spacious dulness like that of +_Hansard's Debates_ is better than the incongruous chirpings of the +new 'humourists.' Besides, its dulness is exaggerated. If a reader +cannot extract amusement from it the fault is his, not _Hansard's_. +But, indeed, this perpetual talk of dulness and amusement ought not to +pass unchallenged. Since when has it become a crime to be dull? Our +fathers were not ashamed to be dull in a good cause. We are ashamed, +but without ceasing to be dull. + + [Footnote A: March 8, 1902.] + +But it is idle to argue with the higgle of the market. 'Things are +what they are,' said Bishop Butler in a passage which has lost its +freshness; that is to say, they are worth what they will fetch. 'Why, +then, should we desire to be deceived?' The test of truth remains +undiscovered, but the test of present value is the auction mart. Tried +by this test, it is plain that _Hansard_ has fallen upon evil days. +The bottled dreariness of Parliament is falling, falling, falling. An +Elizabethan song-book, the original edition of Gray's _Elegy_, or +_Peregrine Pickle_, is worth more than, or nearly as much as, the 458 +volumes of _Hansard's Parliamentary Debates_. Three complete sets were +sold last Tuesday; one brought £110, the other two but £70 each. And +yet it is not long ago since a _Hansard_ was worth three times as +much. Where were our young politicians? There are serious men on both +sides of the House. Men of their stamp twenty years ago would not have +been happy without a _Hansard_ to clothe their shelves with dignity +and their minds with quotations. But these young men were not bidders. + +As the sale proceeded, the discredit of _Hansard_ became plainer and +plainer. For the copyright, including, of course, the goodwill of the +name--the right to call yourself 'Hansard' for years to come--not a +penny was offered, and yet, as the auctioneer feelingly observed, only +eighteen months ago it was valued at £60,000. The cold douche of the +auction mart may brace the mind, but is apt to lower the price of +commodities of this kind. Then came incomplete and unbound sets, with +doleful results. For forty copies of the 'Indian Debates' for 1889 +only a penny a copy was offered. It was rumoured that the bidder +intended, had he been successful, to circulate the copies amongst the +supporters of a National Council for India; but his purpose was +frustrated by the auctioneer, who, mindful of the honour of the +Empire, sorrowfully but firmly withdrew the lot, and proceeded to the +next, amidst the jeers of a thoroughly demoralized audience. But this +subject why pursue? It is, for the reason already cited at the +beginning, a painful one. The glory of _Hansard_ has departed for +ever. Like a new-fangled and sham religion, it began in pride and +ended in a police-court, instead of beginning in a police-court and +ending in pride, which is the now well-defined course of true +religion. + +The fact that nobody wants _Hansard_ is not necessarily a rebuff to +Parliamentary eloquence, yet these low prices jump with the times and +undoubtedly indicate an impatience of oratory. We talk more than our +ancestors, but we prove our good faith by doing it very badly. We have +no Erskines at the Bar, but trials last longer than ever. There are +not half a dozen men in the House of Commons who can make a speech, +properly so called, but the session is none the shorter on that +account. _Hansard's Debates_ are said to be dull to read, but there is +a sterner fate than reading a dull debate: you may be called upon to +listen to one. The statesmen of the time must be impervious to +dulness; they must crush the artist within them to a powder. The new +people who have come bounding into politics and are now claiming their +share of the national inheritance are not orators by nature, and will +never become so by culture; but they mean business, and that is well. +Caleb Garth and not George Canning should be the model of the virtuous +politician of the future. + + + + +CONTEMPT OF COURT + + +The late Mr. Carlyle has somewhere in his voluminous but well-indexed +writings a highly humorous and characteristic passage in which he, +with all his delightful gusto, dilates upon the oddity of the scene +where a withered old sinner perched on a bench, quaintly attired in +red turned up with ermine, addresses another sinner in a wooden pew, +and bids him be taken away and hung by the neck until he is dead; and +how the sinner in the pew, instead of indignantly remonstrating with +the sinner on the bench, 'Why, you cantankerous old absurdity, what +are you about taking my life like that?' usually exhibits signs of +great depression, and meekly allows himself to be conducted to his +cell, from whence in due course he is taken and throttled according to +law. + +This situation described by Carlyle is doubtless mighty full of +humour; but, none the less, were any prisoner at the bar to adopt +Craigenputtock's suggestion, he would only add to the peccadillo of +murder the grave offence of contempt of court, which has been defined +'as a disobedience to the court, an opposing or despising the +authority, justice, and dignity thereof.' + +The whole subject of Contempt is an interesting and picturesque one, +and has been treated after an interesting and picturesque yet accurate +and learned fashion by a well-known lawyer, in a treatise[A] which +well deserves to be read not merely by the legal practitioner, but by +the student of constitutional law and the nice observer of our manners +and customs. + + [Footnote A: _Contempt of Court, etc._ By J.F. Oswald, Q.C. London: + William Clowes and Sons, Limited.] + +An ill-disposed person may exhibit contempt of court in divers +ways--for example, he may scandalize the the court itself, which may +be done not merely by the extreme measure of hurling missiles at the +presiding judge, or loudly contemning his learning or authority, but +by ostentatiously reading a newspaper in his presence, or laughing +uproariously at a joke made by somebody else. Such contempts, +committed as they are _in facie curiae_, are criminal offences, and +may be punished summarily by immediate imprisonment without the right +of appeal. It speaks well both for the great good sense of the judges +and for the deep-rooted legal instincts of our people that such +offences are seldom heard of. It would be impossible nicely to define +what measure of freedom of manners should be allowed in a court of +justice, which, as we know, is neither a church nor a theatre, but, as +a matter of practice, the happy mean between an awe-struck and unmanly +silence and free-and-easy conversation is well preserved. The +practising advocate, to avoid contempt and obtain, if instructed so to +do, a hearing, must obey certain sumptuary laws, for not only must he +don the horsehair wig, the gown, and bands of his profession, but his +upper clothing must be black, nor should his nether garment be +otherwise than of sober hue. Mr. Oswald reports Mr. Justice Byles as +having once observed to the late Lord Coleridge whilst at the Bar: 'I +always listen with little pleasure to the arguments of counsel whose +legs are encased in light gray trousers.' The junior Bar is growing +somewhat lax in these matters. Dark gray coats are not unknown, and it +was only the other day I observed a barrister duly robed sitting in +court in a white waistcoat, apparently oblivious of the fact that +whilst thus attired no judge could possibly have heard a word he said. +However, as he had nothing to say, the question did not arise. It is +doubtless the increasing Chamber practice of the judges which has +occasioned this regrettable laxity. In Chambers a judge cannot +summarily commit for contempt, nor is it necessary or customary for +counsel to appear before him in robes. Some judges object to fancy +waistcoats in Chambers, but others do not. The late Sir James Bacon, +who was a great stickler for forensic propriety, and who, sitting in +court, would not have allowed a counsel in a white waistcoat to say a +word, habitually wore one himself when sitting as vacation judge in +the summer. + +It must not be supposed that there can be no contempt out of court. +There can. To use bad language on being served with legal process is +to treat the court from whence such process issued with contempt. None +the less, considerable latitude of language on such occasions is +allowed. How necessary it is to protect the humble officers of the law +who serve writs and subpoenas is proved by the case of one Johns, who +was very rightly committed to the Fleet in 1772, it appearing by +affidavit that he had compelled the poor wretch who sought to serve +him with a subpoena to devour both the parchment and the wax seal of +the court, and had then, after kicking him so savagely as to make him +insensible, ordered his body to be cast into the river. No amount of +irritation could justify such conduct. It is no contempt to tear up +the writ or subpoena in the presence of the officer of the court, +because, the service once lawfully effected, the court is indifferent +to the treatment of its stationery; but such behaviour, though lawful, +is childish. To obstruct a witness on his way to give evidence, or to +threaten him if he does give evidence, or to tamper with the jury, are +all serious contempts. In short, there is a divinity which hedges a +court of justice, and anybody who, by action or inaction, renders the +course of justice more difficult or dilatory than it otherwise would +be, incurs the penalty of contempt. Consider, for example, the case of +documents and letters. Prior to the issue of a writ, the owner of +documents and letters may destroy them, if he pleases--the fact of his +having done so, if litigation should ensue on the subject to which the +destroyed documents related, being only matter for comment--but the +moment a writ is issued the destruction by a defendant of any document +in his possession relating to the action is a grave contempt, for +which a duchess was lately sent to prison. There is something majestic +about this. No sooner is the aid of a court of law invoked than it +assumes a seizin of every scrap of writing which will assist it in its +investigation of the matter at issue between the parties, and to +destroy any such paper is to obstruct the court in its holy task, and +therefore a contempt. + +To disobey a specific order of the court is, of course, contempt. The +old Court of Chancery had a great experience in this aspect of the +question. It was accustomed to issue many peremptory commands; it +forbade manufacturers to foul rivers, builders so to build as to +obstruct ancient lights, suitors to seek the hand in matrimony of its +female wards, Dissenting ministers from attempting to occupy the +pulpits from which their congregations had by vote ejected them, and +so on through almost all the business of this mortal life. It was more +ready to forbid than to command; but it would do either if justice +required it. And if you persisted in doing what the Court of Chancery +told you not to do, you were committed; whilst if you refused to do +what it had ordered you to do, you were attached; and the difference +between committal and attachment need not concern the lay mind. + +To pursue the subject further would be to plunge into the morasses of +the law where there is no footing for the plain man; but just a word +or two may be added on the subject of punishment for contempt. In old +days persons who were guilty of contempt _in facie curiae_ had their +right hands cut off, and Mr. Oswald prints as an appendix to his book +certain clauses of an Act of Parliament of Henry VIII. which provide +for the execution of this barbarous sentence, and also (it must be +admitted) for the kindly after-treatment of the victim, who was to +have a surgeon at hand to sear the stump, a sergeant of the poultry +with a cock ready for the surgeon to wrap about the stump, a sergeant +of the pantry with bread to eat, and a sergeant of the cellar with a +pot of red wine to drink. + +Nowadays the penalty for most contempts is costs. The guilty party in +order to purge his contempt has to pay all the costs of a motion to +commit and attach. The amount is not always inconsiderable, and when +it is paid it would be idle to apply to the other side for a pot of +red wine. They would only laugh at you. Our ancestors had a way of +mitigating their atrocities which robs the latter of more than half +their barbarity. Costs are an unmitigable atrocity. + + + + +5 EDWARD VII., CHAPTER 12 + + +The appearance of this undebated Act of Parliament in the attenuated +volume of the Statutes of 1905 almost forces upon sensitive minds an +unwelcome inquiry as to what is the attitude proper to be assumed by +an emancipated but trained intelligence towards a decision of the +House of Lords, sitting judicially as the highest (because the last) +Court of Appeal. + +So far as the _parties_ to the litigation are concerned, the decision, +if of a final character, puts an end to the _lis_. Litigation must, so +at least it has always been assumed, end somewhere, and in these +realms it ends with the House of Lords. Higher you cannot go, however +litigiously minded. + +In the vast majority of appeal cases a final appeal not only ends the +_lis_, but determines once for all the rights of the parties to the +subject-matter. The successful litigant leaves the House of Lords +quieted in his possession or restored to what he now knows to be his +own, conscious of a victory, final and complete; whilst the +unsuccessful litigant goes away exceeding sorrowful, knowing that his +only possible revenge is to file his petition in bankruptcy. + +This, however, is not always so. + +In August, 1904, the House of Lords decided in a properly constituted +_lis_ that a particular ecclesiastical body in Scotland, somewhat +reduced in numbers, but existent and militant, was entitled to certain +property held in trust for the use and behoof of the Free Church of +Scotland. There is no other way of holding property than by a legal +title. Sometimes that title has been created by an Act of Parliament, +and sometimes it is a title recognised by the general laws and customs +of the realm, but a legal title it has got to be. Titles are never +matters of rhetoric, nor are they _jure divino_, or conferred in +answer to prayer; they are strictly legal matters, and it is the very +particular business of courts of law, when properly invoked, to +recognise and enforce them. + +In the case I have in mind there were two claimants to the +subject-matter--the Free Church and the United Free Church--and the +House of Lords, after a great argle-bargle, decided that the property +in question belonged to the Free Church. + +Thereupon the expected happened. A hubbub arose in Scotland and +elsewhere, and in consequence of the hubbub an Act of Parliament has +somewhat coyly made its appearance in the Statute Book (5 Edward VII., +chapter 12) appointing and authorizing Commissioners to take away from +the successful litigant a certain portion of the property just +declared to be his, and to give it to the unsuccessful litigant. + +The reasons alleged for taking away by statute from the Free Church +some of the property that belongs to it are that the Free Church is +not big enough to administer satisfactorily all the property it +possesses; and that the State may reasonably refuse to allow a +religious body to have more property than it can in the opinion of +State-appointed Commissioners usefully employ in the propagation of +its religion. Let the reasons be well noted. They have made their +appearance before in history. These were the reasons alleged by Henry +VIII. for the suppression of the smaller monasteries. The State, +having made up its mind to take away from the Free Church so much of +its property as the Commissioners may think it cannot usefully +administer, then proceeds, by this undebated Act of Parliament, to +give the overplus to the unsuccessful litigant, the United Free +Church. Why to them? It will never do to answer this question by +saying because it is always desirable to return lost property to its +true owner, since so to reply would be to give the lie direct to a +decision of the Final Court of Appeal on a question of property. + +In the eye--I must not write the blind eye--of the law, this +parliamentary gift to the United Free Church is not a _giving back_ +but an _original free gift_ from the State by way of endowment to a +particular denomination of Presbyterian dissenters. In theory the +State could have done what it liked with so much of the property of +the Free Church as that body is not big enough to spend upon itself. +It might, for example, have divided it between Presbyterians +generally, or it might have left it to the Free Church to say who was +to be the disponee of its property. + +As a matter of hard fact, the State had no choice in the matter. It +could not select, or let the Free Church select, the object of its +bounty. The public sense (a vague term) demanded that the United Free +Church should not be required to abide by the decision of the House of +Lords, but should have given to it whatever property could, under any +decent pretext of public policy and by Act of Parliament, be taken +away from the Free Church. If the pretext of the inability of the +Free Church to administer its own estate had not been forthcoming, +some other pretext must and would have been discovered. + +Having regard, then, to 5 Edward VII., chapter 12, how ought one to +feel towards the decision of the House of Lords in the Scottish +Churches case? In public life you can usually huddle up anything, if +only all parties, for reasons, however diverse, of their own, are +agreed upon what is to be done. Like many another Act of Parliament, 5 +Edward VII., chapter 12, was bought with a sum of money. Nobody, not +even Lord Robertson, really wanted to debate or discuss it, least of +all to discover the philosophy of it. But in an essay you can huddle +up nothing. At all hazards, you must go on. This is why so many +essayists have been burnt alive. + +_First_.--Was the decision wrong? 'Yes' or 'No.' If it was right-- + +_Second_.--Was the law, in pursuance of which the decision was given, +so manifestly unjust as to demand, not the alteration of the law for +the future, but the passage through Parliament, _ex post facto_, of an +Act to prevent the decision from taking effect between the parties +according to its tenour? + +_Third_.--Supposing the decision to be right, and the law it expounded +just and reasonable in general, was there anything in the peculiar +circumstances of the successful litigant, and in the sources from +which a considerable portion of the property was derived, to justify +Parliamentary interference and the provisions of 5 Edward VII., +chapter 12? + +_Number Three_, being the easiest way out of the difficulty, has been +adopted. The _decision_ remains untouched, the _law_ it expounds +remains unaltered--nothing has gone, except the _order_ of the Final +Court giving effect to the untouched decision and to the unaltered +law. _That_ has been tampered with for the reasons suggested in +_Number Three_. + +John Locke was fond of referring questions to something he called 'the +bulk of mankind'--an undefinable, undignified, unsalaried body, of +small account at the beginning of controversies, but all-powerful at +their close. + +My own belief is that eventually 'the bulk of mankind' will say +bluntly that the House of Lords went wrong in these cases, and that +the Act of Parliament was hastily patched up to avert wrong, and to +do substantial justice between the parties. + +If asked, What can 'the bulk of mankind' know about law? I reply, with +great cheerfulness, 'Very little indeed.' But suppose that the +application of law to a particular _lis_ requires precise and full +knowledge of all that happened during an ecclesiastical contest, and, +in addition, demands a grasp of the philosophy of religion, and the +ascertainment of true views as to the innate authority of a church and +the development of doctrine, would there be anything very surprising +if half a dozen eminent authorities in our Courts of Law and Equity +were to go wrong? + +Between a frank admission of an incomplete consideration of a +complicated and badly presented case and such blunt _ex post facto_ +legislation as 5 Edward VII., chapter 12, I should have preferred the +former. The Act is what would once have been called a dangerous +precedent. To-day precedents, good or bad, are not much considered. If +we want to do a thing, we do it, precedent or no precedent. So far we +have done so very little that the question has hardly arisen. If our +Legislature ever reassumes activity under new conditions, and in +obedience to new impulses, it may be discovered whether bad precedents +are dangerous or not. + + +THE END + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + +End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of In the Name of the Bodleian and Other +Essays, by Augustine Birrell + +*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE BODLEIAN AND OTHERS *** + +***** This file should be named 12244-8.txt or 12244-8.zip ***** +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: + https://www.gutenberg.org/1/2/2/4/12244/ + +Produced by Janet Kegg and PG Distributed Proofreaders + +Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions +will be renamed. + +Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no +one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation +(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without +permission and without paying copyright royalties. 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You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + + +Title: In the Name of the Bodleian and Other Essays + +Author: Augustine Birrell + +Release Date: May 3, 2004 [EBook #12244] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1 + +*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE BODLEIAN AND OTHERS *** + + + + +Produced by Janet Kegg and PG Distributed Proofreaders + + + + + +</pre> + +<p> </p> +<p> </p> +<p> </p> +<p> </p> +<p> </p> +<p> </p> +<p> </p> +<hr> +<p> </p> +<h1>IN THE NAME OF THE BODLEIAN </h1> +<h2>AND OTHER ESSAYS</H2> +<p> </p> + + <h3>BY</h3> + <h2>AUGUSTINE BIRRELL</h2> + + <center>HONORARY FELLOW OF TRINITY HALL, CAMBRIDGE</center> + <p> </p> + +<p class="note"> + <i>'Peace be with the soul of that charitable and courteous author who + for the common benefit of his fellow-authors introduced the ingenious + way of miscellaneous writing.'</i>—<small>LORD SHAFTESBURY</small>. +</p> +<p> </p> + +<H3> + LONDON +</h3> +<h3> + 1906 +</h3> +<p> </p> + +<hr> +<H3> + AUTHOR'S NOTE +</H3> +<p class="note"> + The first paper appeared in the <i>Outlook</i>, New York, the one on Mr. + Bradlaugh in the <i>Nineteenth Century</i>, and some of the others at + different times in the <i>Speaker</i>.<br><br> + <small>3, NEW SQUARE, <br> + LINCOLN'S INN.</small> +</p> +<hr> + +<p> </p> + + +<h2>CONTENTS</h2> +<p> </p> + + + <p class="toc"><a href="#2H_4_2">I. +'IN THE NAME OF THE BODLEIAN' +</a></p> +<p class="toc"><a href="#2H_4_3">II. +BOOKWORMS +</a></p> +<p class="toc"><a href="#2H_4_4">III. +CONFIRMED READERS +</a></p> +<p class="toc"><a href="#2H_4_5">IV. +FIRST EDITIONS +</a></p> +<p class="toc"><a href="#2H_4_6">V. +GOSSIP IN A LIBRARY +</a></p> +<p class="toc"><a href="#2H_4_7">VI. +LIBRARIANS AT PLAY +</a></p> +<p class="toc"><a href="#2H_4_8">VII. +LAWYERS AT PLAY +</a></p> +<p class="toc"><a href="#2H_4_9">VIII. +THE NON-JURORS +</a></p> +<p class="toc"><a href="#2H_4_10">IX. +LORD CHESTERFIELD +</a></p> +<p class="toc"><a href="#2H_4_11">X. +THE JOHNSONIAN LEGEND +</a></p> +<p class="toc"><a href="#2H_4_12">XI. +BOSWELL AS BIOGRAPHER +</a></p> +<p class="toc"><a href="#2H_4_13">XII. +OLD PLEASURE GARDENS +</a></p> +<p class="toc"><a href="#2H_4_14">XIII. +OLD BOOKSELLERS +</a></p> +<p class="toc"><a href="#2H_4_15">XIV. +A FEW WORDS ABOUT COPYRIGHT IN BOOKS +</a></p> +<p class="toc"><a href="#2H_4_16">XV. +HANNAH MORE ONCE MORE +</a></p> +<p class="toc"><a href="#2H_4_17">XVI. +ARTHUR YOUNG +</a></p> +<p class="toc"><a href="#2H_4_18">XVII. +THOMAS PAINE +</a></p> +<p class="toc"><a href="#2H_4_19">XVIII. +CHARLES BRADLAUGH +</a></p> +<p class="toc"><a href="#2H_4_20">XIX. +DISRAELI <i>EX RELATIONE</i> SIR WILLIAM FRASER +</a></p> +<p class="toc"><a href="#2H_4_21">XX. +A CONNOISSEUR +</a></p> +<p class="toc"><a href="#2H_4_22">XXI. +OUR GREAT MIDDLE CLASS +</a></p> +<p class="toc"><a href="#2H_4_23">XXII. +TAR AND WHITEWASH +</a></p> +<p class="toc"><a href="#2H_4_24">XXIII. +ITINERARIES +</a></p> +<p class="toc"><a href="#2H_4_25">XXIV. +EPITAPHS +</a></p> +<p class="toc"><a href="#2H_4_26">XXV. +'HANSARD' +</a></p> +<p class="toc"><a href="#2H_4_27">XXVI. +CONTEMPT OF COURT +</a></p> +<p class="toc"><a href="#2H_4_28">XXVII. +5 EDWARD VII., CHAPTER 12 +</a></p> +<p> </p> + + +<hr> + + + + + +<a name="2H_4_2"><!-- H2 anchor --></a> +<p> </p> +<p> </p> +<p> </p> +<p> </p> +<h2> + 'IN THE NAME OF THE BODLEIAN' +</h2> +<p> </p> + +<p> + With what feelings, I wonder, ought one to approach in a famous + University an already venerable foundation, devoted by the last will + and indented deed of a pious benefactor to the collection and housing + of books and the promotion of learning? The Bodleian at this moment + harbours within its walls well-nigh half a million of printed volumes, + some scores of precious manuscripts in all the tongues, and has become + a name famous throughout the whole civilized world. What sort of a + poor scholar would he be whose heart did not beat within him when, for + the first time, he found himself, to quote the words of 'Elia,' 'in + the heart of learning, under the shadow of the mighty Bodley'? +</p> +<p> + Grave questions these! 'The following episode occurred during one of + Calverley's (then Blayds) appearances at "Collections," the Master + (Dr. Jenkyns) officiating. <i>Question</i>: "And with what feelings, Mr. + Blayds, ought we to regard the decalogue?" Calverley who had no very + clear idea of what was meant by the decalogue, but who had a due sense + of the importance both of the occasion and of the question, made the + following reply: "Master, with feelings of devotion, mingled with + awe!" "Quite right, young man; a very proper answer," exclaimed the + Master.' <a name="1"></a> <a href="#note-1"><small><sup>1</sup></small></a> +</p> +<p> + 'Devotion mingled with awe' might be a very proper answer for me to + make to my own questions, but possessing that acquaintance with the + history of the most picturesque of all libraries which anybody can + have who loves books enough to devote a dozen quiet hours of + rumination to the pages of Mr. Macray's <i>Annals of the Bodleian + Library</i>, second edition, Oxford, 'at the Clarendon Press, 1890,' I + cannot honestly profess to entertain in my breast, with regard to it, + the precise emotions which C.S.C. declared took possession of him when + he regarded the decalogue. A great library easily begets affection, + which may deepen into love; but devotion and awe are plants hard to + rear in our harsh climate; besides, can it be well denied that there + is something in a huge collection of the ancient learning, of + mediaeval folios, of controversial pamphlets, and in the thick black + dust these things so woefully collect, provocative of listlessness and + enervation and of a certain Solomonic dissatisfaction? The two writers + of modern times, both pre-eminently sympathetic towards the past, who + have best described this somewhat melancholy and disillusioned frame + of mind are both Americans: Washington Irving, in two essays in <i>The + Sketch-Book</i>, 'The Art of Bookmaking' and 'The Mutability of + Literature'; and Nathaniel Hawthorne, in many places, but notably in + that famous chapter on 'The Emptiness of Picture Galleries,' in <i>The + Marble Faun</i>. +</p> +<p> + It is perhaps best not to make too great demands upon our slender + stock of deep emotions, not to rhapsodize too much, or vainly to + pretend, as some travellers have done, that to them the collections + of the Bodleian, its laden shelves and precious cases, are more + attractive than wealth, fame, or family, and that it was stern Fate + that alone compelled them to leave Oxford by train after a visit + rarely exceeding twenty-four hours in duration. +</p> +<p> + Sir Thomas Bodley's Library at Oxford is, all will admit, a great and + glorious institution, one of England's sacred places; and springing, + as it did, out of the mind, heart, and head of one strong, efficient, + and resolute man, it is matter for rejoicing with every honest + gentleman to be able to observe how quickly the idea took root, + how well it has thriven, by how great a tradition it has become + consecrated, and how studiously the wishes of the founder in all their + essentials are still observed and carried out. +</p> +<p> + Saith the prophet Isaiah, 'The liberal deviseth liberal things; and by + liberal things he shall stand.' The name of Thomas Bodley still stands + all the world over by the liberal thing he devised. +</p> +<p> + A few pages about this 'second Ptolemy' will be grudged me by none but + unlettered churls. +</p> +<p> + He was a west countryman, an excellent thing to be in England if you + want backing through thick and thin, and was born in Exeter on March + 2nd, 1544—a most troublesome date. It seems our fate in the old home + never to be for long quit of the religious difficulty—which is very + hard upon us, for nobody, I suppose, would call the English a + 'religious' people. Little Thomas Bodley opened his eyes in a land + distracted with the religious difficulty. Listen to his own words; + they are full of the times: 'My father, in the time of Queen Mary, + being noted and known to be an enemy to Popery, was so cruelly + threatened and so narrowly observed by those that maliced his + religion, that for the safeguard of himself and my mother, who was + wholly affected as my father, he knew no way so secure as to fly into + Germany, where after a while he found means to call over my mother + with all his children and family, whom he settled for a time in Wesel + in Cleveland. (For there, there were many English which had left their + country for their conscience and with quietness enjoyed their meetings + and preachings.) From thence he removed to the town of Frankfort, + where there was in like sort another English congregation. Howbeit we + made no longer tarriance in either of these two towns, for that my + father had resolved to fix his abode in the city of Geneva.' +</p> +<p> + Here the Bodleys remained 'until such time as our Nation was + advertised of the death of Queen Mary and the succession of Elizabeth, + with the change of religion which caused my father to hasten into + England.' +</p> +<p> + In Geneva young Bodley and his brothers enjoyed what now would be + called great educational advantages. Small creature though he was, he + yet attended, so he says, the public lectures of Chevalerius in + Hebrew, Bersaldus in Greek, and of Calvin and Beza in Divinity. He + had also 'domestical teachers,' and was taught Homer by Robert + Constantinus, who was the author of a Greek lexicon, a luxury in those + days. +</p> +<p> + On returning to England, Bodley proceeded, not to Exeter College, as + by rights he should have done, but to Magdalen, where he became a + 'reading man,' and graduated Bachelor of Arts in 1563. The next year + he shifted his quarters to Merton, where he gave public lectures on + Greek. In 1566 he became a Master of Arts, took to the study of + natural philosophy, and three years later was Junior Proctor. He + remained in residence until 1576, thus spending seventeen years in the + University. In the last-mentioned year he obtained leave of absence to + travel on the Continent, and for four years he pursued his studies + abroad, mastering the French, Spanish, and Italian languages. Some + short time after his return home he obtained an introduction to Court + circles and became an Esquire to Queen Elizabeth, who seems to have + entertained varying opinions about him, at one time greatly commending + him and at another time wishing he were hanged—an awkward wish on + Tudor lips. In 1588 Bodley married a wealthy widow, a Mrs. Ball, the + daughter of a Bristol man named Carew. As Bodley survived his wife and + had no children, a good bit of her money remains in the Bodleian to + this day. Blessed be her memory! Nor should the names of Carew and + Ball be wholly forgotten in this connection. From 1588 to 1596 Bodley + was in the diplomatic service, chiefly at The Hague, where he did good + work in troublesome times. On being finally recalled from The Hague, + Bodley had to make up his mind whether to pursue a public life. He + suffered from having too many friends, for not only did Burleigh + patronize him, but Essex must needs do the same. No man can serve two + masters, and though to be the victim of the rival ambitions of greater + men than yourself is no uncommon fate, it is a currish one. Bodley + determined to escape it, and to make for himself after a very + different fashion a name <i>aere perennius</i>. +</p> +<blockquote> + 'I resolved thereupon to possess my soul in peace all the residue + of my days, to take my full farewell of State employments, to + satisfy my mind with the mediocrity of worldly living that I had of + mine own, and so to retire me from the Court.' +</blockquote> +<p> + But what was he to do? +</p> +<blockquote> + 'Whereupon, examining exactly for the rest of my life what course I + might take, and having sought all the ways to the wood to select + the most proper, I concluded at the last to set up my staff at the + Library door in Oxford, being thoroughly persuaded that in my + solitude and surcease from the Commonwealth affairs I could not + busy myself to better purpose than by reducing that place (which + then in every part lay ruined waste) to the publick use of + students.' +</blockquote> +<p> + It is pleasant to be admitted into the birth-chamber of a great idea + destined to be translated into action. Bodley proceeds to state the + four qualifications he felt himself to possess to do this great bit of + work: first, the necessary knowledge of ancient and modern tongues and + of 'sundry other sorts of scholastical literature'; second, purse + ability; third, a great store of honourable friends; and fourth, + leisure. +</p> +<p> + Bodley's description of the state of the old library as lying in every + part ruined and in waste was but too true. +</p> +<p> + Richard of Bury, the book-loving Bishop of Durham, seems to have been + the first donor of manuscripts on anything like a large scale to + Oxford, but the library he founded was at Durham College, which stood + where Trinity College now stands, and was in no sense a University + library. The good Bishop, known to all book-hunters as the author of + the <i>Philobiblon</i>, died in 1345, but his collection remained intact, + subject to rules he had himself laid down, until the dissolution of + the monasteries, when Durham College, which was attached to a + religious house, was put up for sale, and its library, like so much + else of good learning at this sad period, was dispersed and for the + most part destroyed. +</p> +<p> + Bodley's real predecessor, the first begetter of a University library, + was Thomas Cobham, Bishop of Worcester, who in 1320 prepared a chamber + above a vaulted room in the north-east corner of St. Mary's Church for + the reception of the books he intended to bestow upon his University. + When the Bishop of Worcester (as a matter of fact, he had once been + elected Archbishop of Canterbury; but that is another story, as + Laurence Sterne has said) died in 1327, it was discovered that he had + by his will bequeathed his library to Oxford, but he was insolvent! No + rich relict of a defunct Ball was available for a Bishop in those + days. The executors found themselves without sufficient estate to pay + for their testator's funeral expenses, even then the first charge upon + assets. They are not to be blamed for pawning the library. A good + friend redeemed the pledge, and despatched the books—all, of course, + manuscripts—to Oxford. For some reason or another Oriel took them in, + and, having become their bailee, refused to part with them, possibly + and plausibly alleging that the University was not in a position to + give a valid receipt. At Oriel they remained for ten years, when all + of a sudden the scholars of the University, animated by their + notorious affection for sound learning and a good 'row,' took Oriel by + storm, and carried off the books in triumph to Bishop Cobham's room, + where they remained in chests unread for thirty years. In 1367 the + University by statute ratified and confirmed its title to the books, + and published regulations for their use, but the quarrel with Oriel + continued till 1409, when the Cobham Library was for the first time + properly furnished and opened as a place for study and reference. +</p> +<p> + The librarian of the old Cobham Library had an advantage over Mr. + Nicholson, the Bodley librarian of to-day. Being a clerk in Holy + Orders before the time when, in Bodley's own phrase, already quoted, + we 'changed' our religion, he was authorized by the University to say + masses for the souls of all dead donors of books, whether by gifts + <i>inter vivos</i> or by bequest. +</p> +<p> + The first great benefactor of Cobham's Library was Duke Humphrey of + Gloucester, the youngest son of Henry IV., and perhaps the most + 'pushful' youngest son in our royal annals. Though a dissipated and + unprincipled fellow, he lives in history as 'the good Duke Humphrey,' + because he had the sense to patronize learning, collect manuscripts, + and enrich Universities. He began his gifts to Oxford as early, so say + some authorities, as 1411, and continued his donations of manuscripts + with such vivacity that the little room in St. Mary's could no longer + contain its riches. Hence the resolution of the University in 1444 to + build a new library over the Divinity School. This new room, which + was completed in 1480, forms now the central portion of that great + reading-room so affectionately remembered by thousands of still living + students. +</p> +<p> + Duke Humphrey's Library, as the new room was popularly called, + continued to flourish and receive valuable accessions of manuscripts + and printed books belonging to divinity, medicine, natural science, + and literature until the ill-omened year 1550. Oxford has never loved + Commissioners revising her statutes and reforming her schools, but + the Commissioners of 1550 were worse than prigs, worse even than + Erastians: they were barbarians and wreckers. They were deputed by + King Edward VI., 'in the spirit of the Reformation,' to make an end of + the Popish superstition. Under their hands the library totally + disappeared, and for a long while the tailors and shoemakers and + bookbinders of Oxford were well supplied with vellum, which they found + useful in their respective callings. It was a hard fate for so + splendid a collection. True it is that for the most part the contents + of the library had been rescued from miserable ill-usage in the + monasteries and chapter-houses where they had their first habitations, + but at last they had found shelter over the Divinity School of a great + University. There at least they might hope to slumber. But our + Reformers thought otherwise. The books and manuscripts being thus + dispersed or destroyed, a prudent if unromantic Convocation exposed + for sale the wooden shelves, desks, and seats of the old library, and + so made a complete end of the whole concern, thus making room for + Thomas Bodley. +</p> +<p> + On February 23, 1597/8, Thomas Bodley sat himself down in his London + house and addressed to the Vice-Chancellor of his University a certain + famous letter: +</p> +<blockquote> + 'SIR,<br> + + 'Altho' you know me not as I suppose, yet for the farthering of an + offer of evident utilitie to your whole University I will not be + too scrupulous in craving your assistance. I have been alwaies of + a mind that if God of his goodness should make me able to do + anything for the benefit of posteritie, I would shew some token of + affiction that I have ever more borne to the studies of good + learning. I know my portion is too slender to perform for the + present any answerable act to my willing disposition, but yet to + notify some part of my desire in that behalf I have resolved thus + to deal. Where there hath been heretofore a public library in + Oxford which you know is apparent by the room itself remaining and + by your statute records, I will take the charge and cost upon me to + reduce it again to its former use and to make it fit and handsome + with seats and shelves and desks and all that may be needful to + stir up other mens benevolence to help to furnish it with books. + And this I purpose to begin as soon as timber can be gotten to the + intent that you may be of some speedy profit of my project. And + where before as I conceive it was to be reputed but a store of + books of divers benefactors because it never had any lasting + allowance for augmentation of the number or supply of books + decayed, whereby it came to pass that when those that were in being + were either wasted or embezzled, the whole foundation came to ruin. + To meet with that inconvenience, I will so provide hereafter (if + God do not hinder my present design) as you shall be still assured + of a standing annual rent to be disbursed every year in buying of + books, or officers stipends and other pertinent occasions, with + which provision and some order for the preservation of the place + and the furniture of it from accustomed abuses, it may perhaps in + time to come prove a notable treasure for the multitude of volumes, + an excellent benefit for the use and ease of students, and a + singular ornament of the University.' +</blockquote> +<p> + The letter does not stop here, but my quotation has already probably + wearied most of my readers, though for my own part I am not ashamed to + confess that I seldom tire of retracing with my own hand the + <i>ipsissima verba</i> whereby great and truly notable gifts have been + bestowed upon nations or Universities or even municipalities for the + advancement of learning and the spread of science. Bodley's language + is somewhat involved, but through it glows the plain intention of an + honest man. +</p> +<p> + Convocation, we are told, embraced the offer with wonderful alacrity, + and lost no time in accepting it in good Latin. +</p> +<p> + From February, 1598, to January, 1613 (when he died), Bodley was happy + with as glorious a hobby-horse as ever man rode astride upon. Though + Bodley, in one of his letters, modestly calls himself a mere + 'smatterer,' he was, as indeed he had the sense to recognise, + excellently well fitted to be a collector of books, being both a good + linguist and personally well acquainted with the chief cities of the + Continent and with their booksellers. He was thus able to employ + well-selected agents in different parts of Europe to buy books on his + account, which it was his pleasure to receive, his rapture to unpack, + his pride to despatch in what he calls 'dry-fats'—that is, + weather-tight chests—to Dr. James, the first Bodley librarian. + Despite growing and painful infirmities (stone, ague, dropsy), Bodley + never even for a day dismounted his hobby, but rode it manfully to the + last. Nor had he any mean taint of nature that might have grudged + other men a hand in the great work. The more benefactors there were, + the better pleased was Bodley. He could not, indeed—for had he not + been educated at Geneva and attended the Divinity Lectures of Calvin + and Beza?—direct Dr. James to say masses for the souls of such donors + of money or books as should die, but he did all a poor Protestant can + do to tempt generosity: he opened and kept in a very public place in + the library a great register-book, containing the names and titles of + all benefactors. Bodley was always on the look-out for gifts and + bequests from his store of honourable friends; and in the case of Sir + Henry Savile he even relaxed the rule against lending books from the + library, because, as he frankly admits to Dr. James, he had hopes + (which proved well founded) that Sir Henry would not forget his + obligations to the Bodleian. +</p> +<p> + The library was formally opened on November 8, 1602, and then + contained some 2,000 volumes. Two years later its founder was knighted + by King James, who on the following June directed letters patent to be + issued styling the library by the founder's name and licensing the + University to hold land in mortmain for its maintenance. The most + learned and by no means the most foolish of our Kings, this same James + I., visited the Bodleian in May, 1605. Sir Thomas was not present. + There it was that the royal pun was made that the founder's name + should have been Godly and not Bodley. King James handled certain old + manuscripts with the familiarity of a scholar, and is reported to have + said, I doubt not with perfect sincerity, that were he not King James + he would be an University man, and that were it his fate at any time + to be a captive, he would wish to be shut up in the Bodleian and to be + bound with its chains, consuming his days amongst its books as his + fellows in captivity. Indeed, he was so carried away by the atmosphere + of the place as to offer to present to the Bodleian whatever books Sir + Thomas Bodley might think fit to lay hands upon in any of the royal + libraries, and he kept this royal word so far as to confirm the gift + under the Privy Seal. But there it seems to have stopped, for the + Bodleian does not contain any volumes traceable to this source. The + King's librarians probably obstructed any such transfer of books. +</p> +<p> + Authors seem at once to have recognised the importance of the library, + and to have made presentation copies of their works, and in 1605 we + find Bacon sending a copy of his <i>Advancement of Learning</i> to Bodley, + with a letter in which he said: 'You, having built an ark to save + learning from deluge, deserve propriety [ownership] in any new + instrument or engine whereby learning should be improved or advanced.' + The most remarkable letter Bodley ever wrote, now extant, is one to + Bacon; but it has no reference to the library, only to the Baconian + philosophy. We do not get many glimpses of Bodley's habits of life or + ways of thinking, but there is no difficulty in discerning a + strenuous, determined, masterful figure, bent during his later years, + perhaps tyrannously bent, on effecting his object. He was not, we + learn from a correspondent, 'hasty to write but when the posts do urge + him, saying there need be no answer to your letters till more leisure + breed him opportunity.' 'Words are women, deeds are men,' is another + saying of his which I reprint without comment. +</p> +<p> + By an indenture dated April 20, 1609, Bodley, after reciting how he + had, out of his zealous affection to the advancement of learning, + lately erected upon the ruins of the old decayed library of Oxford + University 'a most ample, commodious, and necessary building, as well + for receipt and conveyance of books as for the use and ease of + students, and had already furnished the same with excellent writers on + all sorts of sciences, arts, and tongues, not only selected out of his + own study and store, but also of others that were freely conferred by + many other men's gifts,' proceeded to grant to trustees lands and + hereditaments in Berkshire and in the city of London for the purpose + of forming a permanent endowment of his library; and so they, or the + proceeds of sale thereof, have remained unto this day. +</p> +<p> + Sir Thomas Bodley died on January 20, 1613, his last days being + soothed by a letter he received from the Vice-Chancellor of Oxford + University condoling his sickness and signifying how much the Heads of + Houses, etc., prayed for his recovery. A cynical friend—not much of a + friend, as we shall see—called John Chamberlain, was surprised to + observe what pleasure this assurance gave to the dying man. 'Whereby,' + writes Chamberlain to Sir Ralph Winwood, 'I perceive how much fair + words work, as well upon wise men as upon others, for indeed it did + affect him very much.' +</p> +<p> + Bodley was rather put out in his last illness by the refusal of a + Cambridge doctor, Batter, to come to see him, the doctor saying: + 'Words cannot cure him, and I can do nothing else for him.' There is + an occasional curtness about Cambridge men that is hard but not + impossible to reconcile with good feeling. +</p> +<p> + Bodley's will gave great dissatisfaction to some of his friends, + including this aforesaid John Chamberlain, and yet, on reading it + through, it is not easy to see any cause for just complaint. Bodley's + brother did not grumble, there were no children, Lady Bodley had died + in 1611, and everybody who knew the testator must have known that the + library would be (as it was) the great object of his bounty. What + annoyed Chamberlain seems to be that, whilst he had (so he says, + though I take leave to doubt it) put down Bodley for some trifle in + his will, Bodley forgot to mention Chamberlain in his. There is always + a good deal of human nature exhibited on these occasions. I will + transcribe a bit of one of this gentleman's grumbling letters, + written, one may be sure, with no view to publication, the day after + Bodley's death: +</p> +<blockquote> + 'Mr. Gent came to me this morning as it were to bemoan himself of + the little regard hath been had of him and others, and indeed for + ought I hear there is scant anybody pleased, but for the rest it + were no great matter if he had had more consideration or + commiseration where there was most need. But he was so carried away + with the vanity and vain-glory of his library, that he forgot all + other respects and duties, almost of Conscience, Friendship, or + Good-nature, and all he had was too little for that work. To say + the truth I never did rely much upon his conscience, but I thought + he had been more real and ingenuous. I cannot learn that he hath + given anything, no, not a good word nor so much as named any old + friend he had, but Mr. Gent and Thos. Allen, who like a couple of + Almesmen must have his best and second gown, and his best and + second cloak, but to cast a colour or shadow of something upon Mr. + Gent, he says he forgives him all he owed him, which Mr. Gent + protests is never a penny. I must intreat you to pardon me if I + seem somewhat impatient on his [<i>i.e.</i>, Gent's] behalf, who hath + been so servile to him, and indeed such a perpetual servant, that + he deserved a better reward. Neither can I deny that I have a + little indignation for myself that having been acquainted with him + for almost forty years, and observed and respected him so much, I + should not be remembered with the value of a spoon, or a mourning + garment, whereas if I had gone before him (as poor a man as I am), + he should not have found himself forgotten.'<a name="2"></a><a href="#note-2"><small><sup>2</sup></small></a> +</blockquote> + + <p> + Bodley did no more by his will, which is dated January 2, 1613, and is + all in his own handwriting, than he had bound himself to do in his + lifetime, and I feel as certain as I can feel about anything that + happened nearly 300 years ago, that Mr. Gent, of Gloucester Hall, did + owe Bodley money, though, as many another member of the University of + Oxford has done with his debts, he forgot all about it. +</p> +<p> + The founder of the Bodleian was buried with proper pomp and + circumstance in the chapel of Merton College on March 29, 1613. Two + Latin orations were delivered over his remains, one, that of John + Hales (the ever-memorable), a Fellow of Merton, being of no + inconsiderable length. After all was over, those who had mourning + weeds or 'blacks' retired, with the Heads of Houses, to the refectory + of Merton and had a funeral dinner bestowed upon them, 'amounting to + the sum of £100,' as directed by the founder's will. +</p> +<p> + The great foundation of Sir Thomas Bodley has, happily for all of us, + had better fortune than befell the generous gifts of the Bishops of + Durham and Worcester. The Protestant layman has had the luck, not the + large-minded prelates of the old religion. Even during the Civil War + Bodley's books remained uninjured, at all events by the Parliament + men. 'When Oxford was surrendered [June 24, 1646], the first thing + General Fairfax did was to set a good guard of soldiers to preserve + the Bodleian Library. 'Tis said there was more hurt done by the + Cavaliers [during their garrison] by way of embezzling and cutting of + chains of books than there was since. He was a lover of learning, and + had he not taken this special care that noble library had been utterly + destroyed, for there were ignorant senators enough who would have been + contented to have it so' (see Macray, p. 101). +</p> +<p> + Oliver Cromwell, while Lord Protector, presented to the library + twenty-two Greek manuscripts he had purchased, and, what is more, when + Bodley's librarian refused the Lord Protector's request to allow the + Portugal Ambassador to borrow a manuscript, sending instead of the + manuscript a copy of the statutes forbidding loans, Oliver commended + the prudence of the founder, and subsequently made the donation just + mentioned. +</p> +<p> + A great wave of generosity towards this foundation was early + noticeable. The Bodleian got hold of men's imaginations. In those days + there were learned men in all walks of life, and many more who, if not + learned, were endlessly curious. The great merchants of the city of + London instructed their agents in far lands to be on the look-out for + rare things, and transmit them home to find a resting-place in + Bodley's buildings. All sorts of curiosities found their way + there—crocodiles, whales, mummies, and black negro-boys in spirits. + The Ashmolean now holds most of them; the negro-boy has been + conveniently lost. +</p> +<p> + In 1649 the total of 2,000 printed books had risen to more than + 12,000—viz., folios, 5,889; quartos, 2,067; octavos, 4,918; whilst of + manuscripts there were 3,001. One of the first gifts in money came + from Sir Walter Raleigh, who in 1605 gave £50, whilst among the early + benefactors of books and manuscripts it were a sin not to name the + Earl of Pembroke, Archbishop Laud (one of the library's best friends), + Robert Burton (of the <i>Anatomy of Melancholy</i>), Sir Kenelm Digby, John + Selden, Lord Fairfax, Colonel Vernon, and Barlow, Bishop of Lincoln. + No nobler library exists in the world than the Bodleian, unless it be + in the Vatican at Rome. The foundation of Sir Thomas Bodley, though of + no antiquity, shines with unrivalled splendour in the galaxy of Oxford +</p> +<pre> + 'Amidst the stars that own another birth.' +</pre> +<p> + I must not say, being myself a Cambridge man, that the Bodleian + dominates Oxford, yet to many an English, American, and foreign + traveller to that city, which, despite railway-stations and motor-cars + and the never-ending villas and perambulators of the Banbury Road, + still breathes the charm of an earlier age, the Bodleian is the + pulsing heart of the University. Colleges, like ancient homesteads, + unless they are yours, never quite welcome you, though ready enough to + receive with civility your tendered meed of admiration. You wander + through their gardens, and pace their quadrangles with no sense of + co-ownership; not for you are their clustered memories. In the + Bodleian every lettered heart feels itself at home. +</p> +<p> + Bodley drafted with his own hand the first statutes or rules to be + observed in his library. Speaking generally, they are wise rules. One + mistake, indeed, he made—a great mistake, but a natural one. Let him + give his own reasons: +</p> +<blockquote> + 'I can see no good reason to alter my rule for excluding such books + as Almanacks, Plays, and an infinite number that are daily printed + of very unworthy matters—handling such books as one thinks both + the Keeper and Under-Keeper should disdain to seek out, to deliver + to any man. Haply some plays may be worthy the keeping—but hardly + one in forty.... This is my opinion, wherein if I err I shall err + with infinite others; and the more I think upon it, the more it + doth distaste me that such kinds of books should be vouchsafed room + in so noble a library.' <a name="3"></a> <a href="#note-3"><small><sup>3</sup></small></a> +</blockquote> + + +<p> + 'Baggage-books' was the contemptuous expression elsewhere employed to + describe this 'light infantry' of literature—<i>Belles Lettres</i>, as it + is now more politely designated. +</p> +<p> + One play in forty is liberal measure, but who is to say out of the + forty plays which is the one worthy to be housed in a noble library? + The taste of Vice-Chancellors and Heads of Houses, of keepers and + under-keepers of libraries—can anybody trust it? The Bodleian is + entitled by imperial statutes to receive copies of all books published + within the realm, yet it appears, on the face of a Parliamentary + return made in 1818, that this 'noble library' refused to find room + for Ossian, the favourite poet of Goethe and Napoleon, and labelled + Miss Edgeworth's <i>Parent's Assistant</i> and Miss Hannah More's <i>Sacred + Dramas</i> 'Rubbish.' The sister University, home though she be of nearly + every English poet worth reading, rejected the <i>Siege of Corinth</i>, + though the work of a Trinity man; would not take in the <i>Thanksgiving + Ode</i> of Mr. Wordsworth, of St. John's College; declined Leigh Hunt's + <i>Story of Rimini</i>; vetoed the <i>Headlong Hall</i> of the inimitable + Peacock, and, most wonderful of all, would have nothing to say to + Scott's <i>Antiquary</i>, being probably disgusted to find that a book with + so promising a title was only a novel. +</p> +<p> + Now this is altered, and everything is collected in the Bodleian, + including, so I am told, Christmas-cards and bills of fare. +</p> +<p> + Bodley's rule has proved an expensive one, for the library has been + forced to buy at latter-day prices 'baggage-books' it could have got + for nothing. +</p> +<p> + Another ill-advised regulation got rid of duplicates. Thus, when the + third Shakespeare Folio appeared in 1664, the Bodleian disposed of its + copy of the First Folio. However, this wrong was righted in 1821, + when, under the terms of Edmund Malone's bequest, the library once + again became the possessor of the edition of 1623. Quite lately the + original displaced Folio has been recovered. +</p> +<p> + Against lending books Bodley was adamant, and here his rule prevails. + It is pre-eminently a wise one. The stealing of books, as well as the + losing of books, from public libraries is a melancholy and ancient + chapter in the histories of such institutions; indeed, there is too + much reason to believe that not a few books in the Bodleian itself + were stolen to start with. But the long possession by such a + foundation has doubtless purged the original offence. In the National + Library in Paris is at least one precious manuscript which was stolen + from the Escurial. There are volumes in the British Museum on which + the Bodleian looks with suspicion, and <i>vice versa</i>. But let sleeping + dogs lie. Bodley would not give the divines who were engaged upon a + bigger bit of work even than his library—the translation of the Bible + into that matchless English which makes King James's version our + greatest literary possession—permission to borrow 'the one or two + books' they wished to see. +</p> +<p> + Bodley's Library has sheltered through three centuries many queer + things besides books and strangely-written manuscripts in old tongues; + queerer things even than crocodiles, whales, and mummies—I mean the + librarians and sub-librarians, janitors, and servants. Oddities many + of them have been. Honest old Jacobites, non-jurors, primitive + thinkers, as well as scandalously lazy drunkards and illiterate dogs. + An old foundation can afford to have a varied experience in these + matters. +</p> +<p> + One of the most original of these originals was the famous Thomas + Hearne, an 'honest gentleman'—that is, a Jacobite—and one whose + collections and diaries have given pleasure to thousands. He was + appointed janitor in 1701, and sub-librarian in 1712, but in 1716, + when an Act of Parliament came into operation which imposed a fine of + £500 upon anyone who held any public office without taking the oath of + allegiance to the Hanoverians, Hearne's office was taken away from + him; but he shared with his King over the water the satisfaction of + accounting himself still <i>de jure</i>, and though he lived till 1735, + he never failed each half-year to enter his salary and fees as + sub-librarian as being still unpaid. He was perhaps a little spiteful + and vindictive, but none the less a fine old fellow. I will write down + as specimens of his humour a prayer of his and an apology, and then + leave him alone. His prayer ran as follows: +</p> +<blockquote> + 'O most gracious and merciful Lord God, wonderful in Thy + Providence, I return all possible thanks to Thee for the care Thou + hast always taken of me. I continually meet with most signal + instances of this Thy Providence, and one act yesterday, <i>when I + unexpectedly met with three old manuscripts</i>, for which in a + particular manner I return my thanks, beseeching Thee to continue + the same protection to me, a poor helpless sinner, and that for + Jesus Christ his sake' (<i>Aubrey's Letters</i>, i. 118). +</blockquote> +<p> + His apology, which I do not think was actually published, though kept + in draft, was after this fashion: +</p> +<blockquote> + 'I, Thomas Hearne, A.M. of the University of Oxford, having ever + since my matriculation followed my studies with as much application + as I have been capable of, and having published several books for + the honour and credit of learning, and particularly for the + reputation of the foresaid University, am very sorry that by my + declining to say anything but what I knew to be true in any of my + writings, and especially in the last book I published entituled, + &c, I should incur the displeasure of any of the Heads of Houses, + and as a token of my sorrow for their being offended at truth, I + subscribe my name to this paper and permit them to make what use of + it they please.' +</blockquote> +<p> + Leaping 140 years, an odd tale is thus lovingly recorded of another + sub-librarian, the Rev. A. Hackman, who died in 1874: +</p> +<blockquote> + 'During all the time of his service in the library (thirty-six + years) he had used as a cushion in his plain wooden armchair a + certain vellum-bound folio, which by its indented side, worn down + by continual pressure, bore testimony to the use to which it had + been put. No one had ever the curiosity to examine what the book + might be, but when, after Hackman's departure from the library, it + was removed from its resting-place of years, some amusement was + caused by finding that the chief compiler of the last printed + catalogue had omitted from his catalogue the volume on which he + sat, of which, too, though of no special value, there was no other + copy in the library' (Macray, p. 388A). +</blockquote> +<p> + The spectacle in the mind's eye of this devoted sub-librarian and + sound divine sitting on the vellum-bound folio for six-and-thirty + years, so absorbed in his work as to be oblivious of the fact that he + had failed to include in what was his <i>magnum opus</i>, the Great + Catalogue, the very book he was sitting upon, tickles the midriff. +</p> +<p> + Here I must bring these prolonged but wholly insufficient observations + to a very necessary conclusion. Not a word has been said of the great + collection of bibles, or of the unique copies of the Koran and the + Talmud and the <i>Arabian Nights</i>, or of the Dante manuscripts, or of + Bishop Tanner's books (many bought on the dispersion of Archbishop + Sancroft's great library), which in course of removal by water from + Norwich to Oxford fell into the river and remained submerged for + twenty hours, nor of many other splendid benefactions of a later date. +</p> +<p> + One thing only remains, not to be said, but to be sent round—I mean + the hat. Ignominious to relate, this glorious foundation stands in + need of money. Shade of Sir Thomas Bodley, I invoke thy aid to loosen + the purse-strings of the wealthy! The age of learned and curious + merchants, of high-spirited and learning-loving nobles, of + book-collecting bishops, of antiquaries, is over. The Bodleian cannot + condescend to beg. It is too majestical. But I, an unauthorized + stranger, have no need to be ashamed. +</p> +<p> + Especially rich is this great library in <i>Americana</i>, and America + suggests multi-millionaires. The rich men of the United States have + been patriotically alive to the first claims of their own richly + endowed universities, and long may they so continue; but if by any + happy chance any one of them should accidentally stumble across an odd + million or even half a million of dollars hidden away in some casual + investment he had forgotten, what better thing could he do with it + than send it to this, the most famous foundation of his Old Home? It + would be acknowledged by return of post in English and in Latin, and + the donor's name would be inscribed, not indeed (and this is a + regrettable lapse) in that famous old register which Bodley provided + should always be in a prominent place in his library, but in the + Annual Statement of Accounts now regularly issued. To be associated + with the Bodleian is to share its fame and partake of the blessing it + has inherited. 'The liberal deviseth liberal things; and by liberal + things he shall stand.' +</p> + + <p> </p> + +<a name="note-1"><!--Note--></a> +<p class="fnote"> +<a href="#1"><sup><u>1</u></sup></a> <i>Literary Remains of C.S. Calverley</i>, p. 31. +</p> + + +<a name="note-2"><!--Note--></a> +<p class="fnote"><a href="#2"> +<sup><u>2</u></sup></a> <i>Winwood's Memorials</i>, vol. iii., p. 429. + +<a name="note-3"><!--Note--></a> +<p class="fnote"><a href="#3"> +<sup><u>3</u></sup></a> See correspondence in <i>Reliquiae Bodleianae</i>, London, + 1703. + +<a name="2H_4_3"><!-- H2 anchor --></a> +<p> </p> +<p> </p> +<p> </p> +<p> </p> +<h2> + BOOKWORMS +</h2> +<p> </p> + +<p> + Great is bookishness and the charm of books. No doubt there are times + and seasons in the lives of most reading men when they rebel against + the dust of libraries and kick against the pricks of these monstrously + accumulated heaps of words. We all know 'the dark hour' when the + vanity of learning and the childishness of merely literary things are + brought home to us in such a way as almost to avail to put the pale + student out of conceit with his books, and to make him turn from his + best-loved authors as from a friend who has outstayed his welcome, + whose carriage we wish were at the door. In these unhappy moments we + are apt to call to mind the shrewd men we have known, who have been + our blithe companions on breezy fells, heathery moor, and by the + stream side, who could neither read nor write, or who, at all events, + but rarely practised those Cadmean arts. Yet they could tell the time + of day by the sun, and steer through the silent night by the stars; + and each of them had—as Emerson, a very bookish person, has said—a + dial in his mind for the whole bright calendar of the year. How racy + was their talk; how wise their judgments on men and things; how well + they did all that at the moment seemed worth doing; how universally + useful was their garnered experience—their acquired learning! How + wily were these illiterates in the pursuit of game—how ready in an + emergency! What a charm there is about out-of-door company! Who would + not sooner have spent a summer's day with Sir Walter's humble friend, + Tom Purday, than with Mr. William Wordsworth of Rydal Mount! It is, we + can only suppose, reflections such as these that make country + gentlemen and farmers the sworn foes they are of education and the + enemies of School Boards. +</p> +<p> + I only indicate this line of thought to condemn it. Such temptations + come from below. Great, we repeat, is bookishness and the charm of + books. Even the writings, the ponderous writings, of that portentous + parson, the Rev. T.F. Dibdin, with all their lumbering gaiety and + dust-choked rapture over first editions, are not hastily to be sent + packing to the auction-room. Much red gold did they cost us, these + portly tomes, in bygone days, and on our shelves they shall remain + till the end of our time, unless our creditors intervene—were it only + to remind us of years when our enthusiasms were pure though our tastes + may have been crude. +</p> +<p> + Some years ago Mr. Blades, the famous printer and Caxtonist, published + in vellum covers a small volume which he christened <i>The Enemies of + Books</i>. It made many friends, and now a revised and enlarged version + in comely form, adorned with pictures, and with a few prefatory words + by Dr. Garnett, has made its appearance. Mr. Blades himself has left + this world for a better one, where—so piety bids us believe—neither + fire nor water nor worm can despoil or destroy the pages of heavenly + wisdom. But the book-collector must not be caught nursing mere + sublunary hopes. There is every reason to believe that in the realms + of the blessed the library, like that of Major Ponto, will be small + though well selected. Mr. Blades had, as his friend Dr. Garnett + observes, a debonair spirit—there was nothing fiery or controversial + about him. His attitude towards the human race and its treatment of + rare books was rather mournful than angry. For example, under the head + of 'Fire,' he has occasion to refer to that great destruction of books + of magic which took place at Ephesus, to which St. Luke has called + attention in his Acts of the Apostles. Mr. Blades describes this + holocaust as righteous, and only permits himself to say in a kind of + undertone that he feels a certain mental disquietude and uneasiness at + the thought of the loss of more than £18,000 worth of books, which + could not but have thrown much light (had they been preserved) on + many curious questions of folk-lore. Personally, I am dead against the + burning of books. A far worse, because a corrupt, proceeding, was the + scandalously horrid fate that befell the monastic libraries at our + disgustingly conducted, even if generally beneficent, Reformation. The + greedy nobles and landed gentry, who grabbed the ancient foundations + of the old religion, cared nothing for the books they found cumbering + the walls, and either devoted them to vile domestic uses or sold them + in shiploads across the seas. It may well be that the monks—fine, + lusty fellows!—cared more for the contents of their fish-ponds than + of their libraries; but, at all events, they left the books alone to + take their chance—they did not rub their boots with them or sell them + at the price of old paper. A man need have a very debonair spirit who + does not lose his temper over our blessed Reformation. Mr. Blades, on + the whole, managed to keep his. +</p> +<p> + Passing from fire, Mr. Blades has a good deal to say about water, and + the harm it has been allowed to do in our collegiate and cathedral + libraries. With really creditable composure he writes: 'Few old + libraries in England are now so thoroughly neglected as they were + thirty years ago. The state of many of our collegiate and cathedral + libraries was at that time simply appalling. I could mention many + instances—one especially—where, a window having been left broken for + a long time, the ivy had pushed through and crept over a row of books, + each of which was worth hundreds of pounds. In rainy weather the water + was conducted as by a pipe along the tops of the books, and soaked + through the whole.' Ours is indeed a learned Church. Fancy the mingled + amazement and dismay of the Dean and Chapter when they were informed + that all this mouldering literary trash had 'boodle' in it. 'In + another and a smaller collection the rain came through on to a + bookcase through a sky-light, saturating continually the top shelf, + containing Caxtons and other English books, one of which, although + rotten, was sold soon after by permission of the Charity Commissioners + for £200.' Oh, those scoundrelly Charity Commissioners! How + impertinent has been their interference with the loving care and + guardianship of the Lord's property by His lawfully consecrated + ministers! By the side of these anthropoid apes, the genuine + bookworm, the paper-eating insect, ravenous as he once was, has done + comparatively little mischief. Very little seems known of the + creature, though the purchaser of Mr. Blades's book becomes the owner + of a life-size portrait of the miscreant in one, at all events, of his + many shapes. Mr. Birdsall, of Northampton, sent Mr. Blades, in 1879, + by post, a fat little worm he had found in an old volume. Mr. Blades + did all, and more than all, that could be expected of a humane man to + keep the creature alive, actually feeding him with fragments of + Caxtons and seventeenth-century literature; but it availed not, for in + three weeks the thing died, and as the result of a post-mortem was + declared to be <i>Aecophera pseudopretella</i>. Some years later Dr. + Garnett, who has spent a long life obliging men of letters, sent Mr. + Blades two Athenian worms, which had travelled to this country in a + Hebrew Commentary; but, lovely and pleasant in their lives, in their + deaths they were not far divided. Mr. Blades, at least, mourned their + loss. The energy of bookworms, like that of men, greatly varies. Some + go much farther than others. However fair they may start on the same + folio, they end very differently. Once upon a time 212 worms began to + eat their way through a stout folio printed in the year 1477, by Peter + Schoeffer, of Mentz. It was an ungodly race they ran, but let me trace + their progress. By the time the sixty-first page was reached all but + four had given in, either slinking back the way they came, or + perishing <i>en route</i>. By the time the eighty-sixth page had been + reached but one was left, and he evidently on his last legs, for he + failed to pierce his way through page 87. At the other end of the same + book another lot of worms began to bore, hoping, I presume, to meet + in the middle, like the makers of submarine tunnels, but the last + survivor of this gang only reached the sixty ninth page from the end. + Mr. Blades was of opinion that all these worms belonged to the + <i>Anobium pertinax</i>. Worms have fallen upon evil days, for, whether + modern books are readable or not, they have long since ceased to be + edible. The worm's instinct forbids him to 'eat the china clay, the + bleaches, the plaster of Paris, the sulphate of barytes, the scores of + adulterants now used to mix with the fibre.' Alas, poor worm! Alas, + poor author! Neglected by the <i>Anobium pertinax</i>, what chance is + there of anyone, man or beast, a hundred years hence reaching his + eighty-seventh page! +</p> +<p> + Time fails me to refer to bookbinders, frontispiece collectors, + servants and children, and other enemies of books; but the volume I + refer to is to be had of the booksellers, and is a pleasant volume, + worthy of all commendation. Its last words set me thinking; they are: +</p> +<blockquote> + 'Even a millionaire will ease his toils, lengthen his life, and add + 100 per cent. to his daily pleasures, if he becomes a bibliophile; + while to the man of business with a taste for books, who through + the day has struggled in the battle of life, with all its + irritating rebuffs and anxieties, what a blessed season of + pleasurable repose opens upon him as he enters his sanctum, where + every article wafts him a welcome and every book is a personal + friend!' +</blockquote> +<p> + As for the millionaire, I frankly say I have no desire his life should + be lengthened, and care nothing about adding 100 per cent. to his + daily pleasures. He is a nuisance, for he has raised prices nearly 100 + per cent. We curse the day when he was told it was the thing to buy + old books; and, if he must buy old books, why is he not content with + the works of Gibbon, Hume, and Robertson, and Flavius Josephus, that + learned Jew? But it is not the millionaire who set me thinking; it is + the harassed man of business; and what I am wondering is, whether, in + sober truth and earnestness, it is possible for him, as he shuts his + library door and finds himself inside, to forget his rebuffs and + anxieties—his maturing bills and overdue argosies—and to lose + himself over a favourite volume. The 'article' that wafts him welcome + I take to be his pipe. That he will put the 'article' into his mouth + and smoke it I have no manner of doubt; my dread is lest, in ten + minutes' time, the book should have dropt into his lap and the man's + eyes be staring into the fire. But for a' that, and a' that—great is + bookishness and the charm of books. +</p> +<a name="2H_4_4"><!-- H2 anchor --></a> +<p> </p> +<p> </p> +<p> </p> +<p> </p> +<h2> + CONFIRMED READERS +</h2> +<p> </p> + +<p> + Dr. Johnson is perhaps our best example of a confirmed reader. Malone + once found him sitting in his room roasting apples and reading a + history of Birmingham. This staggered even Malone, who was himself a + somewhat far-gone reader. +</p> +<p> + 'Don't you find it rather dull?' he ventured to inquire. +</p> +<p> + 'Yes,' replied the Sage, 'it is dull.' +</p> +<p> + Malone's eyes then rested on the apples, and he remarked he supposed + they were for medicine. +</p> +<p> + 'Why, no,' said Johnson; 'I believe they are only there because I + wanted something to do. I have been confined to the house for a week, + and so you find me roasting apples and reading the history of + Birmingham.' +</p> +<p> + This anecdote pleasingly illustrates the habits of the confirmed + reader. Nor let the worldling sneer. Happy is the man who, in the + hours of solitude and depression, can read a history of Birmingham. + How terrible is the story Welbore Ellis told of Robert Walpole in his + magnificent library, trying book after book, and at last, with tears + in his eyes, exclaiming: 'It is all in vain: I cannot read!' +</p> +<p> + Edmund Malone, the Shakespearian commentator and first editor of + <i>Boswell's Johnson</i>, was as confirmed a reader as it is possible for a + book-collector to be. His own life, by Sir James Prior, is full of + good things, and is not so well known as it should be. It smacks of + books and bookishness. +</p> +<p> + Malone, who was an Irishman, was once, so he would have us believe, + deeply engaged in politics; but he then fell in love, and the affair, + for some unknown reason, ending unhappily, his interest ceased in + everything, and he was driven as a last resource to books and + writings. Thus are commentators made. They learn in suffering what + they observe in the margin. Malone may have been driven to his + pursuits, but he took to them kindly, and became a vigorous and + skilful book-buyer, operating in the market both on his own behalf and + on that of his Irish friends with great success. +</p> +<p> + His good fortune was enormous, and this although he had a severely + restricted notion as to price. He was no reckless bidder, like Mr. + Harris, late of Covent Garden, who, just because David Garrick had a + fine library of old plays, was determined to have one himself at + whatever cost. In Malone's opinion half a guinea was a big price for a + book. As he grew older he became less careful, and in 1805, which was + seven years before his death, he gave Ford, a Manchester bookseller, + £25 for the Editio Princeps of <i>Venus and Adonis</i>. He already had the + edition of 1596—a friend had given it him—bound up with + Constable's and Daniel's Sonnets and other rarities, but he very + naturally yearned after the edition of 1593. He fondly imagined + Ford's copy to be unique: there he was wrong, but as he died in that + belief, and only gave £25 for his treasure, who dare pity him? His + copy now reposes in the Bodleian. He secured Shakespeare's Sonnets + (1609) and the first edition of the <i>Rape of Lucrece</i> for two guineas, + and accounted half a crown a fair average price for quarto copies of + Elizabethan plays. +</p> +<p> + Malone was a truly amiable man, of private fortune and endearing + habits. He lived on terms of intimacy with his brother + book-collectors, and when they died attended the sale of their + libraries and bid for his favourite lots, grumbling greatly if they + were not knocked down to him. At Topham Beauclerk's sale in 1781, + which lasted nine days, Malone bought for Lord Charlemont 'the + pleasauntest workes of George Gascoigne, Esquire, with the princely + pleasures at Kenilworth Castle, 1587.' He got it cheap (£1 7s.), as it + wanted a few leaves, which Malone thought he had; but to his horror, + when it came to be examined, it was found to want eleven more leaves + than he had supposed. 'Poor Mr. Beauclerk,' he writes, 'seems never to + have had his books examined or collated, otherwise he would have found + out the imperfections.' Malone was far too good a book-collector to + suggest a third method of discovering a book's imperfections—namely, + reading it. Beauclerk's library only realized £5,011, and as the Duke + of Marlborough had a mortgage upon it of £5,000, there must have been + after payment of the auctioneer's charges a considerable deficit. +</p> +<p> + But Malone was more than a book-buyer, more even than a commentator: + he was a member of the Literary Club, and the friend of Johnson, + Reynolds, and Burke. On July 28, 1789, he went to Burke's place, the + Gregories, near Beaconsfield, with Sir Joshua, Wyndham, and Mr. + Courtenay, and spent three very agreeable days. The following extract + from the recently published Charlemont papers has interest: +</p> +<blockquote> + 'As I walked out before breakfast with Mr. Burke, I proposed to him + to revise and enlarge his admirable book on the <i>Sublime and + Beautiful</i>, which the experience, reading, and observation of + thirty years could not but enable him to improve considerably. But + he said the train of his thoughts had gone another way, and the + whole bent of his mind turned from such subjects, and that he was + much fitter for such speculations at the time he published that + book than now.' +</blockquote> +<p> + Between the Burke of 1758 and the Burke of 1789 there was a difference + indeed, but the forcible expressions, 'the train of my thoughts' and + 'the whole bent of my mind,' serve to create a new impression of the + tremendous energy and fertile vigour of this amazing man. The next day + the party went over to Amersham and admired Mr. Drake's trees, and + listened to Sir Joshua's criticisms of Mr. Drake's pictures. This was + a fortnight after the taking of the Bastille. Burke's hopes were still + high. The Revolution had not yet spoilt his temper. +</p> +<p> + Amongst the Charlemont papers is an amusing tale I do not remember + having ever seen before of young Philip Stanhope, the recipient of + Lord Chesterfield's famous letters: +</p> +<blockquote> + 'When at Berne, where he passed some of his boyhood in company with + Harte and the excellent Mr., now Lord, Eliott (Heathfield of + Gibraltar), he was one evening invited to a party where, together + with some ladies, there happened to be a considerable number of + Bernese senators, a dignified set of elderly gentlemen, + aristocratically proud, and perfect strangers to fun. These most + potent, grave, and reverend signors were set down to whist, and + were so studiously attentive to the game, that the unlucky brat + found little difficulty in fastening to the backs of their chairs + the flowing tails of their ample periwigs and in cutting, + unobserved by them, the tyes of their breeches. This done, he left + the room, and presently re-entered crying out, "Fire! Fire!" The + affrighted burgomasters suddenly bounced up, and exhibited to the + amazed spectators their senatorial heads and backs totally deprived + of ornament or covering.' +</blockquote> +<p> + Young Stanhope was no ordinary child. There is a completeness about + this jest which proclaims it a masterpiece. One or other of its points + might have occurred to anyone, but to accomplish both at once was to + show real distinction. +</p> +<p> + Sir William Stanhope, Lord Chesterfield's brother, felt no surprise at + his nephew's failure to acquire the graces. 'What,' said he, 'could + Chesterfield expect? His mother was Dutch, he was educated at Leipsic, + and his tutor was a pedant from Oxford.' +</p> +<p> + Papers which contain anecdotes of this kind carry with them their own + recommendation. We hear on all sides complaints—and I hold them to be + just complaints—of the abominable high prices of English books. + Thirty shillings, thirty-six shillings, are common prices. The thing + is too barefaced. His Majesty's Stationery Office set an excellent + example. They sell an octavo volume of 460 closely but well-printed + pages, provided with an excellent index, for one shilling and + elevenpence. There is not much editing, but the quality of it is + good. +</p> +<p> + If anyone is confined to his room, even as Johnson was when Malone + found him roasting apples and reading a history of Birmingham, he + cannot do better than surround himself with the publications of the + Historical Manuscripts Commission; they will cost him next to nothing, + tell him something new on every page, revive a host of old memories + and scores of half-forgotten names, and perhaps tempt him to become a + confirmed reader. +</p> +<a name="2H_4_5"><!-- H2 anchor --></a> +<p> </p> +<p> </p> +<p> </p> +<p> </p> +<h2> + FIRST EDITIONS +</h2> +<p> </p> + +<p> + This is an age of great publicity. Not only are our streets well + lighted, but also our lives. The cosy nooks and corners, crannies, and + dark places where, in old-fashioned days, men hugged their private + vices without shamefacedness have been swept away as ruthlessly as + Seven Dials. All the questionable pursuits, fancies, foibles of silly, + childish man are discussed grimly and at length in the newspapers and + magazines. Our poor hobby-horses are dragged out of the stable, and + made to show their shambling paces before the mob of gentlemen who + read with ease. There has been much prate lately of as innocent a + foible as ever served to make men self-forgetful for a few seconds of + time—the collecting of first editions. Somebody hard up for 'copy' + denounced this pastime, and made merry over a <i>virtuoso's</i> whim. + Somebody else—Mr. Slater, I think it was—thought fit to put in a + defence, and thereupon a dispute arose as to why men bought first + editions dear when they could buy last editions cheap. Brutal, + domineering fellows bellowed their complete indifference to + Shakespeare's Quartos till timid <i>dilettanti</i> turned pale and fled. +</p> +<p> + The fact, of course, is that in such a dispute as this there is but + one thing to do—namely, to persuade the Attorney-General of the day + to enter up a <i>nolle prosequi</i>, and for him who collects first + editions to go on collecting. There is nothing to be serious about in + the matter. It is not literature. Some of the greatest lovers of + letters who have ever lived—Dr. Johnson, for example, and Thomas de + Quincey and Carlyle—have cared no more for first editions than I do + for Brussels sprouts. You may love Moliere with a love surpassing your + love of woman without any desire to beggar yourself in Paris by + purchasing early copies of the plays. You may be perfectly content to + read Walton's <i>Lives</i> in an edition of 1905, if there is one; and as + for <i>Robinson Crusoe</i> and <i>Gulliver</i> and the <i>Vicar of Wakefield</i>—are + they not eternal favourites, and just as tickling to the fancy in + their nineteenth-century dress as in their eighteenth? The whole thing + is but a hobby—but a paragraph in one chapter of the vast, but most + agreeable, history of human folly. If John Doe is blankly indifferent + to Richard Roe's Elizabethan dramatists, it is only fair to remember + how sublime is Richard's contempt for John's collection of old musical + instruments. If these gentlemen are wise they will discuss, when they + meet, the weather, or the Death Duties, or some other extraneous + subject, and leave their respective hobbies in the stable. Never mind + what your hobby is—books, prints, drawings, china, scarabaei, + lepidoptera—keep it to yourself and for those like-minded with you. + Sweet indeed is the community of interest, delightful the intercourse + which a common foible begets; but correspondingly bitter and + distressful is the forced union of nervous zeal and pitiless + indifference. Spare us the so-called friends who come and gape and + stare and go! What is more painful than the chatter of the connoisseur + as it falls upon the long ears of the ignoramus! Collecting is a + secret sin—the great pushing public must be kept out. It is sheer + madness to puff and praise your hobby, and to invite Dick, Tom, and + Harry to inspect your stable: such conduct is to invite rebuff, to + expose yourself to just animadversion. Keep the beast in its box. This + is my first advice to the hobby-hunter. +</p> +<p> + My second piece of advice is equally important, particularly at the + present time, when the world is too much with us, and it is + this—never convert a taste into a trade. The moment you become a + tradesman you cease to be a hobbyist. When the love of money comes in + at the window the love of books runs out at the door. There has been + of late years a good deal of sham book-collecting. The morals of the + Stock Exchange have corrupted even the library. Sordid souls have been + induced by wily second-hand booksellers to buy books for no other + reason than because the price demanded was a high one. This is the + very worst possible reason for buying a book. Whether it is ever wise + to buy a book, as Aulus Gellius used to do, simply because it is + cheap, and regardless of its condition, is a debatable point, but to + buy one dear at the mere bidding of a bookseller is to debase + yourself. The result of this ungodly traffic has been to enlarge for + the moment the circle of book-buyers by including in it men with + commercial instincts, sham hobbyists. But these impostors have been + lately punished in the only way they could be punished—namely, in + their pockets—by a heavy fall of prices. The stuff they were induced + to buy has not, and could not, maintain its price, and the shops are + now full of the volumes which, seven or ten years ago, fetched fancy + sums. +</p> +<p> + If a young book-collector does but bear in mind the two bits of advice + I have proffered him, he may safely be bidden godspeed and + congratulated on his choice of a hobby, for it is, without a shadow of + a doubt, the cheapest he could have chosen. Even without means to + acquire the treasures of a Quaritch or a Pickering, he may yet derive + infinite delight from the perusal of the many hundreds of catalogues + that now weekly issue from the second-hand booksellers in town and + country. He may write an imaginary letter, ordering the books he has + previously selected from the catalogue, and then he has only to forget + to post it to avoid all disagreeable consequences. +</p> +<p> + The constant turnover of old books is amazing. There seems no rest in + this world even for folios and quartos. The first edition of old + Burton's <i>Anatomy</i>, printed at Oxford in a small quarto in 1621, rises + to the surface as a rule no less than four times a year; so, too, does + Coryat's <i>Crudities</i>, hastily gobbled up in five months' travels in + France, Savoy, Italy, Germany, etc., 1611. What a seething, restless + place this world is, to be sure! The constant recurrence of copies of + the same books is almost startling. Hardly a year passes but every + book of first-rate importance and interest is knocked down to the + highest bidder. No doubt there are still old libraries where, buried + in dust and cobwebs, the folios and quartos lie undisturbed; but to + turn the pages or examine the index of <i>Book Prices Current</i> is to + have a vision before your eyes of whole regiments of books passing + and repassing across the stage amidst the loud cries of auctioneers + and the bidding of booksellers. +</p> +<p> + In the auction-mart taste is pretty steady. The old favourites hold + their own. Every now and again an immortal joins their ranks. Puffing + and pretension may win the ear of the outside public, and extort + praise from the press, but inside the rooms of a Sotheby, a Puttick, + or a Hodgson, these foolish persons count for nothing, and their names + are seldom heard. Were an author to turn the pages of <i>Book Prices + Current</i>, he could hardly fail, as he there read the names of famous + men of old, to breathe the prayer, 'May my books some day be found + forming part of this great tidal wave of literature which is for ever + breaking on Earth's human shores!' But the vanity of authors is + endless, and their prayers are apt to be but empty things. +</p> +<a name="2H_4_6"><!-- H2 anchor --></a> +<p> </p> +<p> </p> +<p> </p> +<p> </p> +<h2> + GOSSIP IN A LIBRARY +</h2> +<p> </p> + +<p> + There were no books in Eden, and there will be none in heaven; but + between times—and it is of those I speak—it is otherwise. Mr. Thomas + Greenwood, in a most meritorious work on Public Libraries, supplies + figures which show that, without counting pamphlets (which are books + gone wrong) or manuscripts (which are books <i>in terrorem</i>), there are + at this present moment upwards of 71,000,000 printed books in bindings + in the several public libraries of Europe and America. To estimate + the number and extent of private libraries in those countries is + impossible. In many large houses there are no books at all—which is + to make ignorance visible; whilst in many small houses there are, or + seem to be, nothing else—which is to make knowledge inconvenient; yet + as there are upwards of 280,000,000 of inhabitants of Europe and + America, I cannot greatly err if a passion for round numbers drives me + to the assertion that there are at least 300,000,000 books in these + countries, not counting bibles and prayer-books. It is a poor show! + Russia is greatly to blame, her European population of 88,000,000 + being so badly provided for that it brings down the average. Were + Russia left out in the cold, we might, were our books to be divided + amongst our population <i>per capita</i>, rely upon having two volumes + apiece. This would not afford Mr. Gosse (the title of one of whose + books I have stolen) much material for gossip, particularly as his two + books might easily chance to be duplicates. There are no habits of man + more alien to the doctrine of the Communist than those of the + collector, and there is no collector, not even that basest of them + all, the Belial of his tribe, the man who collects money, whose love + of private property is intenser, whose sense of the joys of ownership + is keener than the book-collector's. Mr. William Morris once hinted at + a good time coming, when at almost every street corner there would be + a public library, where beautiful and rare books will be kept for + citizens to examine. The citizen will first wash his hands in a + parochial basin, and then dry them on a parochial towel, after which + ritual he will walk in and stand <i>en queue</i> until it comes to be his + turn to feast his eye upon some triumph of modern or some miracle of + old typography. He will then return to a bookless home proud and + satisfied, tasting of the joy that is in widest commonalty spread. + Alas! he will do nothing of the kind, not, at least, if he is one of + those in whom the old Adam of the bookstalls still breathes. A public + library must always be an abomination. To enjoy a book, you must own + it. 'John Jones his book,' that is the best bookplate. I have never + admired the much-talked-of bookplate of Grolier, which, in addition to + his own name, bore the ridiculous advice <i>Et Amicorum</i>. Fudge! There + is no evidence that Grolier ever lent any man a book with his plate + in it. His collection was dispersed after his death, and then + sentimentalists fell a-weeping over his supposed generosity. It would + be as reasonable to commend the hospitality of a dead man because you + found amongst his papers a vast number of unposted invitations to + dinner upon a date he long outlived. Sentiment is seldom in place, but + on a bookplate it is peculiarly odious. To paste in each book an + invitation to steal it, as Grolier seems to have done, is foolish; but + so also is it to invoke, as some book-plates do, curses upon the heads + of all subsequent possessors—as if any man who wanted to add a volume + to his collection would be deterred by such braggadocio. But this is a + digression. Public libraries can never satisfy the longings of + book-collectors any more than can the private libraries of other + people. Whoever really cared a snap of his fingers for the contents of + another man's library, unless he is known to be dying? It is a + humorous spectacle to watch one book-collector exhibiting his stores + to another. If the owner is a gentleman, as he usually is, he affects + indifference—'A poor thing,' he seems to say, 'yet mine own'; whilst + the visitor, if human, as he always is, exhibits disgust. If the + volume proffered for the visitor's examination is a genuine rarity, + not in his own collection, he surlily inquires how it was come by; + whilst if it is no great thing, he testily expresses his astonishment + it should be thought worth keeping, and this although he has the very + same edition at home. +</p> +<p> + On the other hand, though actual visits to other men's libraries + rarely seem to give pleasure, the perusal of the catalogues of such + libraries has always been a favourite pastime of collectors; but this + can be accounted for without in any way aspersing the truth of the + general statement that the only books a lover of them takes pleasure + in are his own. +</p> +<p> + Mr. Gosse's recent volume, <i>Gossip in a Library</i>, is a very pleasing + example of the pleasure taken by a book-hunter in his own books. Just + as some men and more women assume your interest in the contents of + their nurseries, so Mr. Gosse seeks to win our ears as he talks to us + about some of the books on his shelves. He has secured my willing + attention, and is not likely to be disappointed of a considerable + audience. +</p> +<p> + We live in vocal times, when small birds make melody on every bough. + The old book-collectors were a taciturn race—the Bindleys, the + Sykeses, the Hebers. They made their vast collections in silence; + their own tastes, fancies, predilections, they concealed. They never + gossiped of their libraries; their names are only preserved to us by + the prices given for their books after their deaths. Bindley's copy + fetched £3 10s., Sykes' £4 15s. Thus is the buyer of to-day tempted to + his doom, forgetful of the fact that these great names are only quoted + when the prices realized at their sales were less than those now + demanded. +</p> +<p> + But solacing as is the thought of those grave, silent times, + indisposed as one often is for the chirpy familiarities of this + present, it is, or it ought to be, a pious, and therefore pleasant, + reflection that there never was a time when more people found delight + in book-hunting, or were more willing to pay for and read about their + pastime than now. +</p> +<p> + Rich people may, no doubt, still be met with who think it a serious + matter to buy a book if it cost more than 3s. 9d. It was recently + alleged in an affidavit made by a doctor in lunacy that for a + well-to-do bachelor to go into the Strand, and in the course of the + same morning spend £5 in the purchase of 'old books,' was a ground for + belief in his insanity and for locking him up. These, however, are but + vagaries, for it is certain that the number of people who will read a + book like Mr. Gosse's steadily increases. This is its justification, + and it is a complete one. It can never be wrong to give pleasure. To + talk about books is better than to read about them, but, as a matter + of hard fact, the opportunities life affords of talking about books + are very few. The mood and the company seldom coincide; when they do, + it is delightful, but they seldom do. +</p> +<p> + Mr. Gosse's book ought not to be read in a fierce, nagging spirit + which demands, What is the good of this? or, Who cares for that? His + talk, it must be admitted, is not of masterpieces. The books he takes + down are—in some instances, at all events—sad trash. Smart's poems, + for example, in an edition of 1752, which does not contain the + 'David,' is not a book which, viewed baldly and by itself, can be + honestly described as worth reading. This remark is not prompted by + jealousy, for I have the book myself, and seldom fail to find the list + of subscribers interesting, for, among many other famous names, it + contains those of 'Mr. Gray, Peter's College, Cambridge,' 'Mr. Samuel + Richardson, editor of <i>Clarissa</i>, two books,' and 'Mr. Voltaire, + Historiographer of France.' There are various Johnsons among the + subscribers, but not Samuel, who apparently would liefer pray with Kit + Smart than buy his poetry, thereby showing the doctor's usual piety + and good sense. <a name="4"></a><a href="#note-4"><small><sup>1</sup></small></a> +</p> + + <p> + Although the nagging spirit before referred to is to be deprecated, it + is sometimes amusing to lose your temper with your own hobby. If a + book-collector ever does this, he longs to silence whole libraries of + bad authors. ''Tis an inglorious acquist,' says Joseph Glanvill in his + famous <i>Vanity of Dogmatizing</i>—I quote from the first edition, 1661, + though the second is the rarer—'to have our heads or volumes laden as + were Cardinal Campeius his mules, with old and useless luggage.' + ''Twas this vain idolizing of authors,' Glanvill had just before + observed, 'which gave birth to that silly vanity of <i>impertinent + citations</i>, and inducing authority in things neither requiring nor + deserving it.' In the same strain he proceeds, 'Methinks 'tis a + pitiful piece of knowledge that can be learnt from an <i>Index</i> and a + poor ambition to be rich in the inventory of another's Treasure. To + boast a <i>Memory</i> (the most that these pedants can aim at) is but an + humble ostentation. 'Tis better to own a Judgment, though but with a + <i>Curta Supellex</i> of coherent notions, than a <i>Memory</i> like a sepulchre + furnished with a load of broken and discarnate bones.' Thus far the + fascinating Glanvill, whose mode of putting things is powerful. +</p> +<p> + There are times when the contemplation of huge libraries wearies, and + when even the names of Bindley and Sykes fail to please. Dr. Johnson's + library sold at Christie's for £247 9s. Let those sneer who dare. It + was Johnson, not Bindley, who wrote the <i>Lives of the Poets</i>. +</p> +<p> + But, of course, no sensible man ever really quarrels with his hobby. A + little petulance every now and again variegates the monotony of + routine. Mr. Gosse tells us in his book that he cannot resist + Restoration comedies. The bulk of them he knows to be as bad as bad + can be. He admits they are not literature—whatever that may + mean—but he intends to go on collecting them all the same till the + inevitable hour when Death collects him. This is the true spirit; + herein lies happiness, which consists in being interested in + something, it does not much matter what. In this spirit let me take up + Mr. Gosse's book again, and read what he has to tell about <i>Pharamond; + or, the History of France. A Fam'd Romance. In Twelve Parts</i>, or about + Mr. John Hopkins' collection of poems, printed by Thomas Warren for + Bennet Bunbury at the Blue Anchor, in the Lower Walk of the New + Exchange, 1700. The Romance is dull, and as it occupies more than + 1,100 folio pages may be pronounced tedious, and the poetry is bad, + but as I do not seriously intend ever to read a line of either the + Romance or the poetry, this is no great matter. +</p> +<p> </p> + + +<a name="note-4"><!--Note--></a> +<p class="fnote"> +<a href="#4"><sup><u>1</u></sup></a> 'He insisted on people praying with him, and I'd as lief + pray with Kit Smart as with anyone else.' +</p> + +<a name="2H_4_7"><!-- H2 anchor --></a> +<p> </p> +<p> </p> +<p> </p> +<p> </p> +<h2> + LIBRARIANS AT PLAY +</h2> +<p> </p> + +<p> + No man of feeling will grudge the librarians of the universe their + annual outing. Their pursuits are not indeed entirely sedentary, since + at times they have to climb tall ladders, but of exercise they must + always stand in need, and as for air, the exclusively bookish + atmosphere is as bad for the lungs as it is for the intellectuals. In + 1897 the Second International Library Conference met in London, + attended several concerts, was entertained by the Marchioness of Bute + and Lady Lubbock; visited Lambeth Palace and Stafford and Apsley + Houses; witnessed a special performance of Irving's <i>Merchant of + Venice</i>; were elected honorary members of the City Liberal, Junior + Athaeneum, National Liberal, and Savage Clubs; and, generally + speaking, enjoyed themselves after the methods current during that + period. They also read forty-six papers, which now alone remain a + stately record of their proceedings. +</p> +<p> + I have lately spent a pleasant afternoon musing over these papers. + Their variety is endless, and the dispositions of mind displayed by + these librarians are wide as the poles asunder. Some of them babble + like babies, others are evidently austere scholars; some are gravely + bent on the best methods of classifying catalogues, economizing space, + and sorting borrowers' cards; others, scorning such mechanical + details, bid us regard libraries, and consequently librarians, as the + primary factors in human evolution. 'Where,' asks Mr. Ernest Cushing + Richardson, the librarian of Princetown University, New Jersey, + U.S.A., 'lies the germ of the library?' He answers his own question + after the following convincing fashion: 'At the point where a + definitely formed concept from another's mind is placed beside one's + own idea for integration, the result being a definite new form, + including the substance of both.' The pointsman who presides over this + junction is the librarian. +</p> +<p> + The young woman of whom Mr. Matthews, the well-known librarian of + Bristol, tells us, who, being a candidate for the post of assistant + librarian, boldly pronounced Rider Haggard to be the author of the + <i>Idylls of the King</i>, Southey of <i>The Mill on the Floss</i>, and Mark + Twain of <i>Modern Painters</i>, undoubtedly placed her own ideas at the + service of Bristol alongside the preconceived conceptions of Mr. + Matthews; but she was rejected all the same. +</p> +<p> + To speak seriously, who are librarians, and whence come they in such + numbers? Of Bodley's librarian we have heard, and all the lettered + world honours the name of Richard Garnett, late keeper of the printed + books at the British Museum. But beyond these and half a dozen others + a great darkness prevails. This ignorance is well illustrated by a + pleasing anecdote told at the Conference by Mr. MacAlister: +</p> +<blockquote> + 'Only the day before yesterday, on the Calais boat, I was + introduced to a world-famed military officer who, when he + understood I had some connection with the Library Association, + exclaimed: "Why, you're just the man I want! I have been anxious of + late about my man, old Atkins. You see the old boy, with a stoop, + sheltering behind the funnel. Poor old beggar! quite past his work, + but as faithful as a dog. It has just occurred to me that if you + could shove him into some snug library in the country, I'd be + awfully grateful to you. His one fault is a fondness for reading, + and so a library would be just the thing."' +</blockquote> +<p> + The usual titled lady also turned up at the Conference. This time she + was recommending her late cook for the post of librarian, alleging on + her behalf the same strange trait of character—her fondness for + reading. Here, of course, one recalls Mark Pattison's famous dictum, + 'The librarian who reads is lost,' about which there is much to be + said, both <i>pro</i> and <i>con</i>; but we must not be put off our inquiry, + which is: Who are these librarians, and whence come they? They are the + custodians of the 70,000,000 printed books (be the numbers a little + more or less) in the public libraries of the Western world, and they + come from guarding their treasures. They deserve our friendliest + consideration. If occasionally their enthusiasm provokes a smile, it + is, or should be, of the kindliest. When you think of 70,000,000 + books, instinctively you wish to wash your hands. Nobody knows what + dust is who has not divided his time between the wine-cellar and the + library. The work of classification, of indexing, of packing away, + must be endless. Great men have arisen who have grappled with these + huge problems. We read respectfully of Cutter's rules, which are to + the librarian even as Kepler's laws to the astronomer. We have also + heard of Poole's index. We bow our heads. Both Cutter and Poole are + Americans. The parish of St. Pancras has just, by an overwhelming + majority, declined to have a free library, and consequently a + librarian. Brutish St. Pancras! +</p> +<p> + Libraries are obviously of two kinds: those intended for popular use + and those meant for the scholar. The ordinary free library, in the + sense of Mr. Ewart's Act of Parliament of 1850, is a popular library + where a wearied population turns for distraction. Fiction plays a + large part. In some libraries 80 per cent. of the books in circulation + are novels. Hence Mr. Goldwin Smith's splenetic remark, 'People have + no more right to novels than to theatre-tickets out of the taxes.' + Quite true; no more they have—or to public gardens or to beautiful + pictures or to anything save to peep through the railings and down the + areas of Mr. Gradgrind's fine new house in Park Lane. +</p> +<p> + When we are considering popular libraries, it does not do to expect + too much of tired human nature. This popular kind of library was well + represented—perhaps a little over-represented, at the Conference. All + our American cousins are not Cutters and Pooles. There was Mr. + Crunden, who keeps the public library at St. Louis, U.S.A. He is all + against dull text-books. As a boy he derived his inspiration from + Sargent's <i>Standard Speaker</i>, and the interesting sketch he gives us + of his education makes us wonder whether amidst his multitudinous + reading he ever encountered Newman's marvellous description and + handling of the young and over-read Mr. Brown, which is to be found + under the heading 'Elementary Studies' in <i>Lectures and Essays on + University Subjects</i>. +</p> +<p> + I shuddered just a little on reading in Mr. Crunden's paper of the boy + who, before he was nine, had read Bulfinch's <i>Age of Chivalry</i> and + <i>Age of Charlemagne</i>, Bryant's <i>Translation of the 'Iliad'</i>, a prose + translation of the <i>Odyssey</i>, Malory's <i>King Arthur, and several other + versions of the Arthurian legend</i>, Prescott's <i>Peru and Mexico</i>, + Macaulay's <i>Lays</i>, Longfellow's <i>Hiawatha</i> and <i>Miles Standish</i>, the + Jungle Books, and other books too numerous to mention. A famous list, + but perilously long. +</p> +<p> + Mr. Crunden supports his case for varied reading by quotations from + all quarters—Dr. William T. Harris, President Eliot, Professor + Mackenzie, Charles Dudley Warner, Sir John Lubbock—but their scraps + of wisdom or of folly do not remove my uneasiness about the digestion + of the little boy who, before he was nine years old, had (not content + with Malory) read several versions of the Arthurian legend! +</p> +<p> + Ladies make excellent librarians, and have tender hearts for children, + and so we find a paper written by a lady librarian, entitled <i>Books + that Children Like</i>. She quotes some interesting letters from + children: 'I like books about ancient history and books about knights, + also stories of adventure, and mostly books with a deep plot and + mystery about them.' 'I do not like <i>Gulliver's Travels</i>, because I + think they are silly.' 'I read <i>Little Men</i>. I did not like this + book.' 'I like <i>Ivanhoe</i>, by Scott, better than any.' 'My favourite + books are <i>Tom Sawyer</i>, <i>Uncle Tom's Cabin</i>, and <i>Scudder's American + History</i>. I like Tom Sawyer because he was so jolly, Uncle Tom because + he was so faithful, and Nathan Hale because he was so brave.' These + are unbought verdicts no wise man will despise. +</p> +<p> + All this is popular enough. But the unpopular library must not be + overlooked, for, after all, libraries are for the learned. We must not + let the babes and sucklings, or the weary seamstress or badgered + clerk, or even the working-man, ride rough-shod over Salmasius and + Scaliger. In the papers of Mr. Garnett, Mr. Pollard, Mr. Dziatzko, Mr. + Cutter, and others, the less popular and nobler side of the library is + duly exhibited. +</p> +<p> + My anxiety about these librarians, who are beginning to be a + profession by themselves, is how they are to be paid. That librarians + must live is at least as obvious in their case as in that of any other + class. They must also, if they are to be of any use, be educated. In + 1878 the late Mr. Robert Harrison, who for many years led a grimy life + in the London Library, advocated £250 as a minimum annual salary for a + competent librarian. But, as Mr. Ogle, of Bootle, pertinently asked at + the Conference, 'Are his views yet accepted?' We fear not. Mr. Ogle + courageously proceeds: +</p> +<blockquote> + 'The fear of a charge of trades unionism has long kept librarians + silent, but this matter is one of public importance, and affects + educational progress. A School-Board rate of 6d. or 1s. is + willingly paid to teach our youth to read. Shall an additional 2d. + be grudged to turn that reading talent into right and safe + channels, where it may work for the public welfare and economy?' +</blockquote> +<p> + <i>Festina lente</i>, good Mr. Ogle, I beseech you. That way fierce + controversy and, it may be, disaster lies. Do not stir the Philistine + within us. The British nation is still savage under the skin. It has + no real love for books, libraries, or librarians. In its hidden heart + it deems them all superfluous. Anger it, and it may in a fit of temper + sweep you all away. The loss of our free librarians would indeed be + grievous. Never again could they meet in conference and read papers + full of quaint things and odd memories. What, for example, can be more + amusing than Mr. Cowell's reminiscences of forty years' library work + in Liverpool, of the primitive days when a youthful Dicky Sam (for so + do the inhabitants of that city call themselves) mistook the <i>Flora of + Liverpool</i> for a book either about a ship or a heroine? He knows + better now. And what shall we say of the Liverpool brushmaker who, at + a meeting of the library committee, recited a poem in praise of woman, + containing the following really magnificent line?— +</p> +<pre> + 'The heart that beats fondest is found in the stays.' +</pre> +<p class="noindent"> + There is nothing in Roscoe or Mrs. Hemans (local bards) one half so + fine. Long may librarians live and flourish! May their salaries + increase, if not by leaps and bounds, yet in steady proportions. Yet + will they do well to remember that books are not everything. +</p> +<a name="2H_4_8"><!-- H2 anchor --></a> +<p> </p> +<p> </p> +<p> </p> +<p> </p> +<h2> + LAWYERS AT PLAY +</h2> +<p> </p> + +<p> + That dreary morass, that Serbonian bog, the Bacon-Shakespeare + controversy, has been lately lit up as by the flickering light of a + will-o'-the-wisp, by the almost simultaneous publication of an + imaginary charge delivered to an equally imaginary jury by a judge of + no less eminence than the late Lord Penzance (that tough Erastian) and + of the still bolder <i>jeu d'esprit</i>, <i>A Report of the Trial of an Issue + in Westminster Hall</i>, June 20, 1627, which is the work of the + unbridled fancy of His Honour Judge Willis, late Treasurer of the + Inner Temple, and a man most intimately acquainted with the literature + of the seventeenth century. +</p> +<p> + Neither production of these playful lawyers, clothed though they be in + the garb of judicial procedure, is in the least likely to impress the + lay mind with that sense of 'impartiality' or 'indifference' which is + supposed to be an attribute of justice, or, indeed, with anything + save the unfitness of the machinery of an action at law for the + determination of any matter which invokes the canons of criticism and + demands the arbitrament of a well-informed and lively taste. +</p> +<p> + Lord Penzance, who favours the Baconians, made no pretence of + impartiality, and says outright in his preface that his readers 'must + not expect to find in these pages an equal and impartial leaning of + the judge alternately to the case of both parties, as would, I hope, + be found in any judicial summing-up of the evidence in a real judicial + inquiry.' And, he adds, 'the form of a summing-up is only adopted for + convenience, but it is in truth very little short of an argument for + the plaintiffs, <i>i.e.</i>, the Baconians.' +</p> +<p> + Why any man, judge or no judge, who wished to prepare an argument on + one side of a question should think fit to cast that argument for + convenience' sake in the form of a judicial summing-up of both sides + is, and must remain, a puzzle. +</p> +<p> + Judge Willis, who is a Shakespearean, bold and unabashed, is not + content with a mere summing-up, but, with a gravity and wealth of + detail worthy of De Foe, has presented us with what purports to be a + verbatim report of so much of the proceedings in a suit of Hall <i>v.</i> + Russell as were concerned with the trial before a jury of the simple + issue—whether William Shakespeare, of Stratford-upon-Avon, 'the + testator in the cause of <i>Hall v. Russell</i>,' was the author of the + plays in the Folio of 1623. We are favoured with the names of counsel + employed, who snarl at one another with such startling verisimilitude, + whilst the remarks that fall from the bench do so with such + naturalness, that it is perhaps not surprising, or any very severe + reflection upon his literary <i>esprit</i>, that a member of the Bar, + having heard Judge Willis deliver his lecture in the Inner Temple + Hall, repaired next day to the library to study at his leisure the + hitherto unnoted case of <i>Hall v. Russell</i>. Ten witnesses are put in + the box to prove the affirmative—that Shakespeare was the author of + the plays. Mr. Blount and M. Jaggard, the publishers of the Folio, + give a most satisfactory account of the somewhat crucial point—how + they came by the manuscripts, with all the amendments and corrections, + and pass lightly over the fact that those manuscripts had disappeared. + 'Rare Ben Jonson' in the witness-box is a masterpiece of dramatic + invention; he demolishes Bacon's advocate with magnificent vitality. + John Selden makes a stately witness, and Francis Meres a very useful + one. Generally speaking, the weakest part in these interesting + proceedings is the cross-examination. I have heard the learned judge + do better in old days. No witnesses are called for the Baconians, + though all the writings of the great philosopher were put in for what + they were worth. The Lord Chief Justice, who seems to have been a + friend of Shakespeare's, sums up dead in his favour, and the jury + (with whose names we are not supplied, which is a pity—Bunyan or De + Foe would have given them to us), after a short absence, a quarter of + an hour, return a Shakespearean verdict, which of course ought by + rights to make the whole question <i>res judicata</i>. +</p> +<p> + But it has done nothing of the kind. Could we really ask Blount and + Jaggard how they came by the manuscripts, and who made the + corrections, and did we believe their replies, why, then a stray + Baconian here and there might reluctantly abandon his strange fancy; + but as <i>Hall v. Russell</i> is Judge Willis's joke, it will convert no + Baconians any more than Dean Sherlock's once celebrated <i>Trial of the + Witnesses</i> compels belief in the Resurrection. +</p> +<p> + The question in reality is a compound one. Did Shakespeare write the + plays? If yes, the matter is at rest. If no—who did? If an author can + be found—Bacon or anyone else—well and good. If no author can be + found—Anon. wrote them—a conclusion which need terrify no one, since + the plays would still remain within our reach, and William + Shakespeare, apart from the plays, is very little to anybody who has + not written his life. +</p> +<p> + But this is not the form the controversy has assumed. The + anti-Shakespeareans are to a man Baconians, and fondly imagine that if + only Will Shakespeare were put out of the way their man must step into + the vacant throne. Lord Penzance in charging his jury told them that + those of their number 'who had studied the writings of Bacon' and were + 'keenly alive to his marvellous mental powers' would probably have 'no + difficulty,' if once satisfied that the author they were seeking after + was <i>not</i> Shakespeare, in finding as a fact that he <i>was</i> Bacon. But + suppose James Spedding had been on that jury, and, rising in his + place, had spoken as follows: +</p> +<blockquote> + 'My Lord,—If any man has ever studied the writings of Bacon, I + have. For twenty-five years I have done little else. If any man is + keenly alive to his marvellous mental powers, I am that man. I am + also deeply read in the plays attributed to Shakespeare, and I + think I am in a condition to say that, whoever was the real author, + it was <i>not</i> Bacon.' +</blockquote> +<p> + That this is exactly what Spedding would have said we know from the + letter he wrote on the subject to Mr. Holmes, reprinted in <i>Essays + and Discussions</i>, and it completely upsets the whole scheme of + arrangement of Lord Penzance's summing-up, which proceeds on the easy + footing that the more difficulties you throw in Shakespeare's path the + smoother becomes Bacon's. +</p> +<p> + That there are difficulties in Shakespeare's path, some things very + hard to explain, must be admitted. Lord Penzance makes the most of + these. It is, indeed, a most extraordinary thing that anybody should + have had the mother-wit to write the plays traditionally assigned to + Shakespeare. Where did he get it from? How on earth did the plays get + themselves written? Where, when, and how did the author pick up his + multifarious learnings? Lord Penzance, good, honest man, is simply + staggered by the extent of the play-wright's information. The plays, + so he says, 'teem with erudition,' and can only have been written by + someone who had the classics at his finger-ends, modern languages on + the tip of his tongue—by someone who had travelled far and read + deeply; and, above all, by a man who had spent at least a year in a + conveyancer's chambers! And yet, when this has been said, would Lord + Penzance have added that the style and character of the playwright is + the style and character of a really learned man of his period! Can + anything less like such a style be imagined? Once genius is granted, + heaven-born genius, a mother-wit beyond the dreams of fancy, and then + plain humdrum men, ordinary judicial intelligences, will do well to be + on their guard against it. 'Beware—beware! he is fooling thee.' + Shakespeare's genius has simply befooled Lord Penzance. Seafaring men, + after reading <i>The Tempest</i>, are ready to maintain that its author + must have been for at least a year before the mast. As for + Shakespeare's law, which has taken in so many matter-of-fact + practitioners, one can now refer to Ben Jonson's evidence in <i>Hall v. + Russell</i>, where that great dramatist has no difficulty in showing that + if none but a lawyer could have written Shakespeare's plays, a lawyer + alone could have preached Thomas Adams's sermons. Judge Willis's + profound knowledge of sound old divinity has served him here in good + stead. The fact is it is simply impossible to exaggerate the + quick-wittedness and light-heartedness of a great literary genius. The + absorbing power, the lightning-like faculty of apprehension, the + instant recognition of the uses to which any fact or fancy can be put, + the infinite number and delicacy of the mental feelers, thrust out in + all directions, which belong to the creative brain and keep it in + tremulous and restless activity, are quite enough so to differentiate + the possessor of these endowments from his fellow mortals as to make + comparison impossible. Shakespeare the actor was by the common consent + of his enemies one of the deftest fellows that ever made use of other + men's materials—'Convey, the wise it call.' I will again quote + Spedding: +</p> +<blockquote> + 'If Shakespeare was not trained as a scholar or a man of science, + neither do the works attributed to him show traces of trained + scholarship or scientific education. Given the <i>faculties</i>, you + will find that all the acquired knowledge, art, and dexterity which + the Shakespearean plays imply were easily attainable by a man who + was labouring in his vocation and had nothing else to do.' +</blockquote> +<p> + I greatly prefer this cool judgment of a scholar deeply read in + Elizabethan lore to Lord Penzance's heated and almost breathless + admiration for the 'teeming erudition' of the plays. +</p> +<p> + Lord Penzance likewise displays a very creditable non-acquaintance + with the disposition of authors one to another. He is quite shocked at + the callousness of Shakespeare's contemporaries to Shakespeare if he + were indeed the author of the Quartos which bore his name in his + lifetime. But as it cannot be suggested that in, say, 1600 it was + generally known that Shakespeare was not the author of these plays, it + is hard to see how his contemporaries can be acquitted of indifference + to his prodigious superiority over themselves. Authors, however, never + take this view. Shakespeare's contemporaries thought him a mighty + clever fellow and no more. Why, even Wordsworth was well persuaded he + could write like Shakespeare had he been so minded. Mr. Arnold + remained all his life honestly indifferent to and sceptical about the + fame of both Tennyson and Browning. Great living lawyers and doctors + do not invariably idolize each other, nor do the lawyers and doctors + in a small way of business always speak well of those in a big way. + The poets and learned critics of the seventeenth and eighteenth + centuries—Dryden, Pope, Johnson—looked upon Shakespeare with an + indulgent eye, as a great but irregular genius, after much the same + fashion as did the old sea-dogs of Nelson's day regard the hero of + Trafalgar. 'Do not criticise him too harshly,' said Lord St. Vincent; + 'there can only be one Nelson.' +</p> +<p> + These are not the real difficulties, though they seem to have pressed + somewhat heavily on Lord Penzance. +</p> +<p> + The circumstances attendant upon the publication of the Folio of 1623 + are undoubtedly puzzling. Shakespeare died in 1616, leaving behind + him more than forty plays circulating in London and more or less + associated with his name. His will, a most elaborate document, does + not contain a single reference to his literary life or labours. Seven + years after his death the Folio appears, which contains twenty-six + plays out of the odd forty just referred to, and ten extra plays which + had never before been in print, and about six of which there is a very + scanty Shakespearean tradition. Of the twenty-six old plays, seventeen + had been printed in small Quartos, possibly surreptitiously, in + Shakespeare's lifetime, but the Folio does not reprint from these + Quartos, but from enlarged, amended, and enormously improved copies. + Messrs. Heminge and Condell, the editor of this priceless treasure, + the First Folio, wrote a long-winded dedication to Lords Pembroke and + Montgomery, which contains but one pertinent passage, in which they + ask their readers to believe that it had been the office of the + editors to collect and publish the author's 'mere writings,' he being + dead, and to offer them, not 'maimed and deformed,' in surreptitious + and stolen copies, but 'cured and perfect of their limbs and all the + rest, absolute in their numbers as he conceived them, who as he was a + happie imitator of Nature was a most gentle expresser of it. His mind + and hand went together, and what he thought, he uttered with that + easiness, that we have scarce received from him a blot in his papers.' +</p> +<p> + From whose custody did those 'papers' come? Where had they been all + the seven years? Of what did they consist? If in truth unblotted, all + the seventeen Quartos as well as the new plays must have been printed + from fair manuscript copies. From whom were these unblotted copies + received, and what became of them? The silence of these players is + irritating and perplexing,—though, possibly, the explanation of the + mystery, were it forthcoming, would be, as often happens, of the + simplest. It may be that these unblotted copies were in the theatre + library all the time. +</p> +<p> + Whether these interrogatories, now unanswerable, raise doubts in the + mind of sufficient potency to destroy the tradition of centuries, and + to prevent us from sharing the conviction of Milton, of Dryden, of + Pope, and Johnson that Shakespeare was the author of Shakespeare's + plays must be left for individual consideration. But, however + destructive these doubts may prove, they do not go a yard of the way + to let in Bacon. +</p> +<p> + Once more I will quote Spedding, for he, of all the moderns, by virtue + of his taste and devouring studies, is the best qualified to speak: +</p> +<blockquote> + 'Aristotle was an extraordinary man. Plato was an extraordinary + man. That two men each severally so extraordinary should have been + living at the same time in the same place was a very extraordinary + thing. But would it diminish the wonder to suppose the two to be + one? So I say of Bacon and Shakespeare. That a human being + possessed of the faculties necessary to make a Shakespeare should + exist is extraordinary. That a human being possessed of the + necessary faculties to make Bacon should exist is extraordinary. + That two such human beings should have been living in London at the + same time was more extraordinary still. But that one man should + have existed possessing the faculties and opportunities necessary + to make <i>both</i> would have been the most extraordinary thing of + all' (see Spedding's <i>Essays and Discussions</i>, 1879, pp. 371, 372).<br><br> + + 'Great writers, especially being contemporary, have many features + in common, but if they are really great writers they write + naturally, and nature is always individual. I doubt whether there + are five lines together to be found in Bacon which could be + mistaken for Shakespeare, or five lines in Shakespeare which could + be mistaken for Bacon, by one who was familiar with their several + styles and practised in such observations' (<i>Ibid.</i>, p. 373). +</blockquote> +<a name="2H_4_9"><!-- H2 anchor --></a> +<p> </p> +<p> </p> +<p> </p> +<p> </p> +<h2> + THE NON-JURORS +</h2> +<p> </p> + +<p> + To anyone blessed or cursed with an ironical humour the troublesome + history of the Church of England since the Reformation cannot fail to + be an endless source of delight. It really is exciting. Just a little + more of Calvin and of Beza, half a dozen words here, or Cranmer's + pencil through a single phrase elsewhere; a 'quantum suff.' of the men + 'that allowed no Eucharistic sacrifice,' and away must have gone + beyond recall the possibility of the Laudian revival and all that + still appertains thereunto. We must have lost the 'primitive' men, the + Kens, the Wilsons, the Knoxes, the Kebles, the Puseys. On the other + hand, but for the unfaltering language of the Articles, the hearty + tone of the Homilies, and the agreeable readiness of both sides to + curse the Italian impudence of the Bishop of Rome and all his + 'detestable enormities,' our Anglican Church history could never have + been enriched with the names or sweetened by the memories of the + Romaines, the Flavels, the Venns, the Simeons, and of many thousand + unnamed saints who finished their course in the fervent faith of + Evangelicalism. But on what a thread it has always hung! An + ill-considered Act of Parliament, an amendment hastily accepted by a + pestered layman at midnight, a decision in a court of law, a Jerusalem + Bishoprick, a passage in an early Father, an ancient heresy restudied, + and off to Rome goes a Newman or a Manning, whilst a Baptist Noel + finds his less romantic refuge in Protestant Dissent. Schism is for + ever in the air. Disruption a lively possibility. It has always been a + ticklish business belonging to the Church of England, unless you can + muster up enough courage to be a frank Erastian, and on the rare + occasions when you attend your parish church handle the Book of Common + Prayer with all the reverence due to a schedule to an Act of + Parliament. +</p> +<p> + Among the many noticeable humours of the present situation is the tone + adopted by an average Churchman like Canon Overton to the Non-Jurors. + When the late Mr. Lathbury published his admirable <i>History of the + Non-Jurors</i>,<a name="5"></a> <a href="#note-5"><small><sup>1</sup></small></a> he had to prepare himself for a very different public + of Churchmen and Churchwomen than will turn over Canon Overton's + agreeable pages. <a name="6"></a> <a href="#note-6"><small><sup>2</sup></small></a> In 1845 the average Churchman, after he had + conquered the serious initial difficulty of comprehending the + Non-Juror's position, was only too apt to consider him a fool for his + pains. 'It has been the custom,' wrote Mr. Lathbury, 'to speak of the + Non-Jurors as a set of unreasonable men, and should I succeed in any + measure in correcting those erroneous impressions, I shall feel that + my labour has not been in vain.' But in 1902, as Canon Overton is + ready enough to perceive, 'their position is a little better + understood.' The well-nigh 'fools' are all but 'confessors.' +</p> + + +<p> + The early history of the Non-Jurors is as fascinating and as fruitful + as their later history is dull, melancholy, and disappointing. +</p> +<p> + Nobody will deny that the Bishops, clergy, and laity of the Church of + England who refused to take the oaths to William and Mary and George + I., when tendered to them, were amply justified in the Court of + Conscience. They were ridiculed by the politicians of the day for + their supersensitiveness; but what were they to do? If they took the + oaths, they apostalized from the faith they had once professed. +</p> +<p> + Before the Revolution it was the faith of all High Churchmen—part of + the <i>deposition</i> they had to guard—that the doctrine of + non-resistance and passive obedience was Gospel truth, primitive + doctrine, and a chief 'characteristic' of the Anglican Church. +</p> +<p> + The saintly John Kettlewell, in his tractate, <i>Christianity: a + Doctrine of the Cross, or Passive Obedience under any Pretended + Invasion of Legal Rights and Liberties</i> (1696), makes this perfectly + plain; and when Ken came to compose his famous will, wherein he + declared that he died in the Communion of the Church of England, 'as + it adheres to the doctrine of the Cross,' the good Bishop did not mean + what many a pious soul in later days has been edified by thinking he + did mean, the doctrine of the Atonement, but that of passive + obedience, which was the Non-Juror's cross. +</p> +<p> + It is sad to think a doctrine dear to so many saintly men, maintained + with an erudition so vast and exemplified by sacrifices so great, + should have disappeared in the vortex of present-day conflict. It may + some day reappear in Convocation. Kettlewell, who was a precise writer + and accurate thinker, defined sovereignty as supremacy. 'Kings,' he + said, 'can be no longer sovereigns, but subjects, if they have any + superiors'; and he points out with much acumen that the best security + under a sovereign 'which sovereignty allows' is that the Kings and + Ministers are accountable and liable for breach of law as well as + others. Kettlewell, had he lived long enough, might have come to + transfer his idea of sovereignty to Kings, Lords, and Commons speaking + through an Act of Parliament, and if so, he would have urged <i>active + obedience</i> to its enactments, when not contrary to conscience, and + <i>passive obedience</i> if they were so contrary. Therefore, were he alive + to-day, and did he think it contrary to conscience (as he easily + might) to pay a school-rate for an 'undenominational' school, he would + not draw a cheque for the amount, but neither would he punch the + bailiff's head who came to seize his furniture. Kettlewell's treatise + is well worth reading. Its last paragraph is most spirited. +</p> +<p> + There could be no doubt about it. The High Church party were bound + hand and foot to the doctrine of the Cross—<i>i.e.</i>, passive obedience + to the Lord's Anointed. Whoever else might actively resist or forsake + the King, they could not without apostasy. But the Revolution of 1688 + was not content to pierce the High Churchmen through one hand. Not + only did the Revolution require the Church to forswear its King, but + also to see its spiritual fathers deprived and intruders set in their + places without even the semblance of any spiritual authority. If it + was hard to have James II. a fugitive in foreign lands and Dutch + William in Whitehall, it was perhaps even harder to see Sancroft + expelled from Lambeth, and the Erastian and latitudinarian Tillotson, + who was prepared to sacrifice even episcopacy for peace, usurping the + title of Archbishop of Canterbury. After all, no man, not even a + Churchman, can serve two masters. The loyalty of a High Churchman to + the throne is always subject to his loyalty to the Church, and at the + Revolution he was wounded in both houses. +</p> +<p> + When Queen Elizabeth ascended the throne, and established what was + then unblushingly called 'the new religion,' the whole Anglican + Hierarchy, with the paltry exception of the Bishop of Llandaff, + refused the oaths of supremacy, and were superseded. In a little + more than 100 years the Protestant Bench was bombarded with a + heart-searching oath—this time of allegiance. Opinion was divided; + the point was not so clear as in 1559. The Archbishop of York and his + brethren of London, Lincoln, Bristol, Winchester, Rochester, Llandaff + and St. Asaph, Carlisle and St. David's, swore to bear true allegiance + to Their Majesties King William and Queen Mary. The Archbishop of + Canterbury and the Bishops of Bath and Wells, Ely, Gloucester, + Norwich, Peterborough, Worcester, Chichester, and Chester refused to + swear anything of the kind, and were consequently, in pursuance of the + terms of an Act of Parliament, and of an Act of Parliament only, + deprived of their ecclesiastical preferments. They thus became the + first Non-Jurors, and were long, except two who died before actual + sentence of exclusion, affectionately known and piously venerated in + all High Church homes as 'the Deprived Fathers.' +</p> +<p> + Who can doubt that they were right, holding the faith they did? Yet + Englishmen do not take kindly to martyrdom, and some of the Bishops + were strangely puzzled. The excellent Ken, who, like Keble, was an + Englishman first and a Catholic afterwards (in other words, no true + Catholic at all), when told that James was ready to give Ireland to + France, as nearly as possible conformed, so angry was he with the + Lord's Anointed; and even the fiery Leslie, one of our most agreeable + writers, was always ready to forgive those pious, peaceful souls who + thought it no sin, though great sorrow, to comply with the demands of + Caesar, but still managed to retain their old Church and King + principles. Leslie reserved his wrath for the Tillotsons and the + Tenisons and the Burnets, who first, to use his own words, swallowed + 'the morsels of usurpation' and then dressed them up 'with all the + gaudy and ridiculous flourishes that an Apostate eloquence can put + upon them.' +</p> +<p> + The early Non-Jurors included among their number a very large + proportion of holy, learned, and primitive-minded men. At least 400 of + the general body of the clergy refused the oaths and accepted for + themselves and those dependent on them lives of poverty and seclusion. + They were from the beginning an unpopular body. They were not + Puritans, they were not Deists, they were not Presbyterians, they + would not go to their parish churches; and yet they vehemently + objected to being called Papists. What troublesome people! Five of the + deprived fathers, including the Primate, had known what it was, when + they defied their Sovereign, to be the idols of the mob; but when + they adhered to his fallen cause they were deprived of their sees, and + sent packing from their palaces without a single growl of popular + discontent. Oblivion was their portion, even as it was of their Roman + Catholic predecessors at the time of the Reformation. +</p> +<p> + The Archbishop of Canterbury, when turned out of Lambeth by a judgment + of the Court of King's Bench to make way for Tillotson, retired to his + native village in Fressingfield, where he did not attend the parish + church, nor would allow any but non-juring clergy to perform Divine + service in his presence. Dr. Sancroft (who was a book-lover, and had + designed a binding of his own) died on November 24, 1693, and the + epitaph, of his own composition, on his tombstone may still be read + with profit by time-servers of all degrees and denominations, cleric + and lay, in Parliament and out of it. All the deprived Bishops, so Mr. + Lathbury assures us, were in very narrow circumstances, and of Turner, + of Ely, Mr. Lathbury very properly writes: 'This man who, by adhering + to the new Sovereign, and taking the oath, might have ended his day + amidst an abundance of earthly blessings, was actually sustained in + his declining years by the bounty of those who sympathized with him in + his distresses.' Bishop Turner died in 1700. +</p> +<p> + Despite this distressing and most genuine poverty, the reader of old + books will not infrequently come across traces of many happy and + well-spent hours during which these poor Non-Jurors managed 'to fleet + the time' in their own society, for they were, many of them, men of + the most varied tastes and endowed with Christian tempers; whilst + their writings exhibit, as no other writings of the period do, the + saintliness and devotion which are supposed to be among the 'notes' + of the Catholic Church. Two better men than Kettlewell and Dodwell + are nowhere to be found, and as for vigorous writing, where is Charles + Leslie to be matched? +</p> +<p> + So long as the deprived fathers continued to live, the schism—for + complete schism it was between 'the faithful remnant of the Church of + England' and the Established Church—was on firm ground. But what was + to happen when the last Bishop died? Dodwell, who, next to Hickes, + seems to have dominated the Non-Juring mind, did not wish the schism + to continue after the death of the deprived Bishops; for though he + admitted that the prayers for the Revolution Sovereigns would be + 'unlawful prayers,' to which assent could not properly be given, he + still thought that communion with the Church of England was possible. + Hickes thought otherwise, and Hickes, it must not be forgotten, though + only known to the world and even to Non-Jurors generally, as the + deprived Dean of Worcester, was in sober truth and reality Bishop of + Thetford, having been consecrated a Suffragan Bishop under that title + by the deprived Bishops of Norwich, Peterborough, and Ely, at + Southgate, in Middlesex, on February 24, 1693, in the Bishop of + Peterborough's lodgings. At the same time the accomplished Thomas + Wagstaffe was consecrated Suffragan Bishop of Ipswich, though he + continued to earn his living as a physician all the rest of his days. +</p> +<p> + These were clandestine consecrations, for even so well-tried and + whole-hearted a Non-Juror as Thomas Hearne, of Oxford, knew nothing + about them, though a great friend of both the new Bishops, until long + years had sped. It would be idle at this distance of time, and having + regard to the events which have happened since February, 1693, to + consider the nice questions how far the Act of Henry VIII. relating to + the appointment of suffragans could have any applicability to such + consecrations, or what degree of Episcopal authority was thereby + conferred, or for how long. +</p> +<p> + As things turned out, Ken proved the longest liver of the deprived + fathers. The good Bishop died at Longleat, one of the few great houses + which sheltered Non-Jurors, on March 19, 1711. But before his death he + had made cession of his rights to his friend Hooper, who on the + violent death of Kidder, the intruding revolution Bishop, had been + appointed by Queen Anne, who had wished to reinstate Ken, to Bath and + Wells. It was the wish of Ken that the schism should come to an end on + his death. +</p> +<p> + It did nothing of the kind, though some very leading Non-Jurors, + including the learned Dodwell and Nelson, rejoined the main body of + the Church, saving all just exceptions to the 'unlawful prayers.' +</p> +<p> + Bishop Wagstaffe died in 1712, leaving Bishop Hickes alone in his + glory, who in 1713, assisted by two Scottish Bishops, consecrated + Jeremy Collier, Samuel Hawes, and Nathaniel Spinckes, Bishops of 'the + faithful remnant.' Hickes died in 1715, and the following year the + great and hugely learned Thomas Brett became a Bishop, as also did + Henry Gawdy. +</p> +<p> + Then, alas! arose a schism which rent the faithful remnant in twain. + It was about a great subject, the Communion Service. Collier and Brett + were in favour of altering the Book of Common Prayer so as to restore + it to the First Book of King Edward VI., which provided for (1) The + mixed chalice; (2) prayers for the faithful departed; (3) prayer for + the descent of the Holy Ghost on the consecrated elements; (4) the + Oblatory Prayer, offering the elements to the Father as symbols of His + Son's body and blood. This side of the controversy became known as + 'The Usagers,' whilst those Non-Jurors, headed by Bishop Spinckes, who + held by King Charles's Prayer-Book, were called 'the Non-Usagers.' The + discussion lasted long, and was distinguished by immense learning and + acumen. +</p> +<p> + The Usagers may be said to have carried the day, for after the + controversy had lasted fourteen years, in 1731 Timothy Mawman was + consecrated a Bishop by three Bishops, two of whom were 'Usagers' and + one a 'Non-Usager.' But in the meantime what had become of the + congregations committed to their charge? Never large, they had + dwindled almost entirely away. +</p> +<p> + The last regular Bishop was Robert Gordon, who was consecrated in 1741 + by Brett, Smith, and Mawman. Gordon, who was an out-and-out Jacobite, + died in 1779. +</p> +<p> + I have not even mentioned the name of perhaps the greatest of the + Non-Jurors, William Law, nor that of Carte, an historian, the fruits + of whose labour may still be seen in other men's orchards. +</p> +<p> + The whole story, were it properly told, would prove how hard it is in + a country like England, where nobody really cares about such things, + to run a schism. But who knows what may happen to-morrow? +</p> +<p> </p> + + +<a name="note-5"><!--Note--></a> +<p class="fnote"><a href="#5"> +<sup><u>1</u></sup></a> <i>A History of the Non-Jurors</i>. By Thomas Lathbury. + London: Pickering, 1845. + +</p> +<a name="note-6"><!--Note--></a> +<p class="fnote"><a href="#6"> +<sup><u>2</u></sup></a> <i>The Non-Jurors</i>. By J.H. Overton, D.D. London: Smith, + Elder and Co., 1902, 16s. +</p> + + +<a name="2H_4_10"><!-- H2 anchor --></a> +<p> </p> +<p> </p> +<p> </p> +<p> </p> +<h2> + LORD CHESTERFIELD +</h2> +<p> </p> + +<p> + 'Buy good books and read them; the best books are the commonest, and + the last editions are always the best, if the editors are not + blockheads.' So wrote Lord Chesterfield to his son, that + highly-favoured and much bewritten youth, on March 19, 1750, and his + words have been chosen with great cunning by Mr. Charles Strachey as a + motto for his new edition of these famous letters. <a name="7"></a> <a href="#note-7"><small><sup>1</sup></small></a> +</p> +<p> + The quotation is full of the practical wisdom, but is at the same + time—so much, at least, an old book-collector may be allowed to + say—a little suggestive of the too-well-defined limitations of their + writer's genius and character. Lord Chesterfield is always clear and + frequently convincing, yet his wisdom is that of Mr. Worldly Wiseman, + and not only never points in the direction of the Celestial City, but + seldom displays sympathy with any generous emotion or liberal taste. + Yet as we have nobody like him in the whole body of our literature, we + can welcome even another edition—portable, complete, and cheap—of + his letters to his son with as much enthusiasm as is compatible with + the graces, and with the maxim, so dear to his lordship's heart, <i>Nil + admirari!</i> +</p> +<p> + What, I have often wondered, induced Lord Chesterfield to write this + enormously long and troublesome series of letters to a son who was not + even his heir? Their sincerity cannot be called in question. William + Wilberforce did not more fervently desire the conversion to God of his + infant Samuel than apparently did Lord Chesterfield the transformation + of his lumpish offspring into 'the all-accomplished man' he wished to + have him. +</p> +<p> + 'All this,' so the father writes in tones of fervent pleading—'all + this you may compass if you please. You have the means, you have the + opportunities; employ them, for God's sake, while you may, and make + yourself the all-accomplished man I wish to have you. It entirely + depends upon the next two years; they are the decisive ones' (Letter + CLXXVII.). +</p> +<p> + It is the very language of an evangelical piety applied to the + manufacture of a worldling. But what promoted the anxiety? Was it + natural affection—a father's love? If it was, never before or since + has that world-wide and homely emotion been so concealed. There is a + detestable, a forbidding, an all-pervading harshness of tone + throughout this correspondence that seems to banish affection, to + murder love. Read Letter CLXXVIII., and judge for yourselves. I will + quote a passage: +</p> +<blockquote> + 'The more I love you now from the good opinion I have of you, the + greater will be my indignation if I should have reason to change + it. Hitherto you have had every possible proof of my affection, + because you have deserved it, but when you cease to deserve it you + may expect every possible mark of my resentment. To leave nothing + doubtful upon this important point, I will tell you fairly + beforehand by what rule I shall judge of your conduct: by Mr. + Harte's account.... If he complains you must be guilty, and I shall + not have the least regard for anything you may allege in your own + defence.' +</blockquote> +<p> + Ugh! what a father! Lord Chesterfield despised the Gospels, and made + little of St. Paul; yet the New Testament could have taught him + something concerning the nature of a father's love. His language is + repulsive, repugnant, and yet how few fathers have taken the trouble + to write 400 educational letters of great length to their sons! All + one can say is that Chesterfield's letters are without natural + affection: +</p> +<pre> + 'If this be error and upon me proved, + I never writ, and no man ever loved.' +</pre> +<p> + If affection did not dictate these letters, what did? Could it be + ambition? So astute a man as Chesterfield, who was kept well informed + as to the impression made by his son, could hardly suppose it likely + that the boy would make a name for himself, and thereby confer + distinction upon the family of which he was an irregular offshoot. A + respectable diplomatic career, with an interval in the House of + Commons, was the most that so clear-sighted a man could anticipate for + the young Stanhope. Was it literary fame for himself? This, of course, + assumes that subsequent publication was contemplated by the writer. + The dodges and devices of authors are well-nigh infinite and quite + beyond conjecture, and it is, of course, possible that Lord + Chesterfield kept copies of these letters, which bear upon their + faces evidence of care and elaboration. It is not to be supposed for a + moment that he ever forgot he had written them. It is hard to believe + he never inquired after them and their whereabouts. Great men have + been known to write letters which, though they bore other addresses, + were really intended for their biographers. It would not have been + surprising if Lord Chesterfield wrote these letters intending some day + to publish them, but not only is there no warrant for such an opinion, + but the opposite is clearly established. It is, no doubt, odd that the + son should have carefully preserved more than 400 letters written to + him during a period beginning with his tenderest years and continuing + whilst he was travelling on the Continent. It seems almost a miracle. + What made the son treasure them so carefully? Did he look forward to + being his father's biographer? Hardly so at the age of ten, or even + twenty. Biographies were not then what they have since become. No + doubt in the middle of the eighteenth century letters were more + treasured than they are to-day, and young Stanhope's friends may also + have thought it wise to encourage him to preserve documentary evidence + of the great interest taken in him by his father. None the less, I + think the preservation of this correspondence is in the circumstances + a most extraordinary though well-established fact. +</p> +<p> + The son died in 1768 of a dropsy at Avignon, and the news was + communicated to the Earl by his daughter-in-law, Mrs. Eugenia + Stanhope, of whose existence he was previously unaware. Two grandsons + accompanied her. It was a shock; but 'les manières nobles et aisées, + la tournure d'un homme de condition, le ton de la bonne compagnie, + les grâces le je ne scais quoi qui plaît,' came to Lord Chesterfield's + assistance, and he received his son's widow, who was not a pleasing + person, and her two boys with kindness and good feeling, and provided + for them quite handsomely by his will. The Earl died in 1773, in his + seventy-ninth year, and thereupon Mrs. Stanhope, who was in possession + of all the original letters addressed to her late husband, carried + her wares to market, and made a bargain with Mr. Dodsley for their + publication, she to receive £1,575. Mr. Dodsley advertised the + forthcoming work, and on that the Earl's executors, relying upon the + well-known case of Pope <i>v.</i> Curl, decided by Lord Hardwicke in 1741, + filed their bill against Mrs. Stanhope, seeking an injunction to + restrain publication. The widow put in her sworn Answer, in which she + averred that she had, on more occasions than one, mentioned + publication to the Earl, and that he, though recovering from her + certain written characters of eminent contemporaries, had seemed quite + content to let her do what she liked with the letters, only remarking + that there was too much Latin in them. The executors seem to have + moved for what is called an interim injunction—that is, an injunction + until trial of the cause, and, from the report in <i>Ambler</i>, it appears + that Lord Apsley (a feeble creature) granted such an injunction, but + recommended the executors to permit the publication if, on seeing a + copy of the correspondence, they saw no objection to it. In the result + the executors gave their consent, and the publication became an + authorized one, so much so that Dodsley was able to obtain an + interdict in the Scotch Court preventing a certain Scotch bookseller, + caller McFarquhar, from reprinting the letters in Edinburgh. Whether + the executors believed Mrs. Stanhope's story, or saw no reason to + object to the publication of the letters, I do not know, but it is + clear that the opposition was a half-hearted one. +</p> +<p> + It would be hasty to assume that Lord Chesterfield wrote these letters + with any intention of publication, and I am therefore left without + being able to suggest any strong reason for their existence. A + restless, itching pen, perhaps, accounts for them. Some men find a + pleasure in writing, even at great length; others, of whom Carlyle was + one, though they hate the labour, are yet compelled by some fierce + necessity to blacken paper. +</p> +<p> + At all events, we have Lord Chesterfield's letters, and, having them, + they will always have readers, for they are readable. +</p> +<p> + That the letters are full of wit and wisdom and sound advice is + certain. Mr. Strachey, in his preface, seems to be under the + impression that in the popular estimate Chesterfield is reckoned an + elegant trifler, a man of no serious account. What the popular or + vulgar estimate of Chesterfield may be it would be hard to determine, + nor is it of the least importance, for no one who knows about Lord + Chesterfield can possibly entertain any such opinion. How it came + about that so able and ambitious a man made so poor a thing out of + life, and failed so completely, is puzzling at first, though a little + study would, I think, make the reasons of Chesterfield's failure plain + enough. +</p> +<p> + To prove by extracts from the Letters how wise a man Chesterfield was + would be easy, but tiresome; to exhibit him in a repulsive character + would be equally easy, but spiteful. I prefer to leave him alone, and + to content myself with but one quotation, which has a touch of both + wisdom and repulsiveness: +</p> +<blockquote> + 'Consult your reason betimes. I do not say it will always prove an + unerring guide, for human reason is not infallible, but it will + prove the least erring guide that you can follow. Books and + conversation may assist it, but adopt neither blindly and + implicitly; try both by that best rule God has given to direct + us—reason. Of all the truths do not decline that of thinking. The + host of mankind can hardly be said to think; their prejudices are + almost all adoptive; and in general I believe it is better that it + should be so, as such common prejudices contribute more to order + and quiet than their own separate reasonings would do, uncultivated + as they are. We have many of these useful prejudices in this + country which I should be very sorry to see removed. The good + Protestant conviction that the Pope is both Antichrist and the + Whore of Babylon is a more effectual preservative against Popery + than all the solid and unanswerable arguments of Chillingworth.' +</blockquote> +<p> </p> + + +<a name="note-7"><!--Note--></a> +<p class="fnote"><a href="#7"> +<sup><u>1</u></sup></a> Published by Methuen and Co. in 2 vols. +</p> + +<a name="2H_4_11"><!-- H2 anchor --></a> +<p> </p> +<p> </p> +<p> </p> +<p> </p> +<h2> + THE JOHNSONIAN LEGEND +</h2> +<p> </p> + +<p> + The ten handsome volumes which the indefatigable and unresting zeal of + Dr. Birkbeck Hill, and the high spirit of the Clarendon Press, have + edited, arranged, printed, and published for the benefit of the world + and the propagation of the Gospel according to Dr. Johnson are + pleasant things to look upon. I hope the enterprise has proved + remunerative to those concerned, but I doubt it. The parsimony of the + public in the matter of books is pitiful. The ordinary purse-carrying + Englishman holds in his head a ready-reckoner or scale of charges by + which he tests his purchases—so much for a dinner, so much for a + bottle of champagne, so much for a trip to Paris, so much for a pair + of gloves, and so much for a book. These ten volumes would cost him £4 + 9s. 3d. 'Whew! What a price for a book, and where are they to be put, + and who is to dust them?' Idle questions! As for room, a bicycle takes + more room than 1,000 books; and as for dust, it is a delusion. You + should never dust books. There let it lie until the rare hour arrives + when you want to read a particular volume; then warily approach it + with a snow-white napkin, take it down from its shelf, and, + withdrawing to some back apartment, proceed to cleanse the tome. Dr. + Johnson adopted other methods. Every now and again he drew on huge + gloves, such as those once worn by hedgers and ditchers, and then, + clutching his folios and octavos, he banged and buffeted them together + until he was enveloped in a cloud of dust. This violent exercise over, + the good doctor restored the volumes, all battered and bruised, to + their places, where, of course, the dust resettled itself as speedily + as possible. +</p> +<p> + Dr. Johnson could make books better than anybody, but his notions of + dusting them were primitive and erroneous. But the room and the dust + are mere subterfuges. The truth is, there is a disinclination to pay + £4 9s. 3d. for the ten volumes containing the complete Johnsonian + legend. To quarrel with the public is idiotic and most un-Johnsonian. + 'Depend upon it, sir,' said the Sage, 'every state of society is as + luxurious as it can be.' We all, a handful of misers excepted, spend + more money than we can afford upon luxuries, but what those luxuries + are to be is largely determined for us by the fashions of our time. If + we do not buy these ten volumes, it is not because we would not like + to have them, but because we want the money they cost for something we + want more. As for dictating to men how they are to spend their money, + it were both a folly and an impertinence. +</p> +<p> + These ten volumes ended Dr. Hill's labours as an editor of <i>Johnson's + Life and Personalia</i>, but did not leave him free. He had set his mind + on an edition of the <i>Lives of the Poets</i>. This, to the regret of all + who knew him either personally or as a Johnsonian, he did not live to + see through the press. But it is soon to appear, and will be a + storehouse of anecdote and a miracle of cross-references. A poet who + has been dead a century or two is amazing good company—at least, he + never fails to be so when Johnson tells us as much of his story as he + can remember without undue research, with that irony of his, that vast + composure, that humorous perception of the greatness and the + littleness of human life, that make the brief records of a Spratt, a + Walsh, and a Fenton so divinely entertaining. It is an immense + testimony to the healthiness of the Johnsonian atmosphere that Dr. + Hill, who breathed it almost exclusively for a quarter of a century + and upwards, showed no symptoms either of moral deterioration or + physical exhaustion. His appetite to the end was as keen as ever, nor + was his temper obviously the worse. The task never became a toil, not + even a tease. 'You have but two subjects,' said Johnson to Boswell: + 'yourself and myself. I am sick of both.' Johnson hated to be talked + about, or to have it noticed what he ate or what he had on. For a + hundred years now last past he has been more talked about and noticed + than anybody else. But Dr. Hill never grew sick of Dr. Johnson. +</p> +<p> + The <i>Johnsonian Miscellanies</i><a name="8"></a><a href="#note-8"><small><sup>1</sup></small></a> open with the <i>Prayers and Meditations</i>, + first published by the Rev. Dr. Strahan in 1785. Strahan was the Vicar of + Islington, and into his hands at an early hour one morning Dr. + Johnson, then approaching his last days, put the papers, 'with + instructions for committing them to the press and with a promise to + prepare a sketch of his own life to accompany them.' This promise the + doctor was not able to keep, and shortly after his death his reverend + friend published the papers just as they were put into his hands. One + wonders he had the heart to do it, but the clerical mind is sometimes + strangely insensitive to the privacy of thought. But, as in the case + of most indelicate acts, you cannot but be glad the thing was done. + The original manuscript is at Pembroke College, Oxford. In these + <i>Prayers and Meditations</i> we see an awful figure. The <i>solitary</i> + Johnson, perturbed, tortured, oppressed, in distress of body and of + mind, full of alarms for the future both in this world and the next, + teased by importunate and perplexing thoughts, harassed by morbid + infirmities, vexed by idle yet constantly recurring scruples, with an + inherited melancholy and a threatened sanity, is a gloomy and even a + terrible picture, and forms a striking contrast to the social hero, + the triumphant dialectician of Boswell, Mrs. Thrale, and Madame + D'Arblay. Yet it is relieved by its inherent humanity, its fellowship + and feeling. Dr. Johnson's piety is delightfully full of human + nature—far too full to please the poet Cowper, who wrote of the + <i>Prayers and Meditations</i> as follows: +</p> +<blockquote> + 'If it be fair to judge of a book by an extract, I do not wonder + that you were so little edified by Johnson's Journal. It is even + more ridiculous than was poor Rutty's of flatulent memory. The + portion of it given us in this day's paper contains not one + sentiment worth one farthing, except the last, in which he resolves + to bind himself with no more unbidden obligations. Poor man! one + would think that to pray for his dead wife and to pinch himself + with Church fasts had been almost the whole of his religion.' +</blockquote> + +<p> + It were hateful to pit one man's religion against another's, but it + is only fair to Dr. Johnson's religion to remember that, odd compound + as it was, it saw him through the long struggle of life, and enabled + him to meet the death he so honestly feared like a man and a + Christian. The <i>Prayers and Meditations</i> may not be an edifying book + in Cowper's sense of the word; there is nothing triumphant about it; + it is full of infirmities and even absurdities; but, for all that, it + contains more piety than 10,000 religious biographies. Nor must the + evidence it contains of weakness be exaggerated. Beset with + infirmities, a lazy dog, as he often declared himself to be, he yet + managed to do a thing or two. Here, for example, is an entry: +</p> + <p class="ar"> <small> '29, EASTER EVE (1777).</small></p> +<blockquote> + 'I rose and again prayed with reference to my departed wife. I + neither read nor went to church, yet can scarcely tell how I have + been hindered. I treated with booksellers on a bargain, but the + time was not long.' +</blockquote> +<p> + Too long, perhaps, for Johnson's piety, but short enough to enable the + booksellers to make an uncommon good bargain for the <i>Lives of the + Poets</i>. 'As to the terms,' writes Mr. Dilly, 'it was left entirely to + the doctor to name his own; he mentioned 200 guineas; it was + immediately agreed to.' The business-like Malone makes the following + observation on the transaction: 'Had he asked 1,000, or even 1,500, + guineas the booksellers, who knew the value of his name, would + doubtless have readily given it.' Dr. Johnson, though the son of a + bookseller, was the least tradesman-like of authors. The bargain was + bad, but the book was good. +</p> +<p> + A year later we find this record: +</p> + <p class="ar"> <small> 'MONDAY, <i>April</i> 20 (1778).</small></p> + +<blockquote> + 'After a good night, as I am forced to reckon, I rose seasonably + and prayed, using the collect for yesterday. In reviewing my time + from Easter, 1777, I find a very melancholy and shameful blank. So + little has been done that days and months are without any trace. My + health has, indeed, been very much interrupted. My nights have been + commonly not only restless but painful and fatiguing.... I have + written a little of the <i>Lives of the Poets</i>, I think, with all my + usual vigour. I have made sermons, perhaps, as readily as formerly. + My memory is less faithful in retaining names, and, I am afraid, in + retaining occurrences. Of this vacillation and vagrancy of mind I + impute a great part to a fortuitous and unsettled life, and + therefore purpose to spend my life with more method.<br><br> + + 'This year the 28th of March passed away without memorial. Poor + Tetty, whatever were our faults and failings, we loved each other. + I did not forget thee yesterday. Couldst thou have lived! I am now, + with the help of God, to begin a new life.' +</blockquote> +<p> + Dr. Hill prints an interesting letter of Mr. Jowett's, in which occur + the following observations: +</p> +<blockquote> + 'It is a curious question whether Boswell has unconsciously + misrepresented Johnson in any respect. I think, judging from the + materials, which are supplied chiefly by himself, that in one + respect he has. He has represented him more as a sage and + philosopher in his conduct as well as his conversation than he + really was, and less as a rollicking "King of Society." The gravity + of Johnson's own writings tends to confirm this, as I suspect, + erroneous impression. His religion was fitful and intermittent; and + when once the ice was broken he enjoyed Jack Wilkes, though he + refused to shake hands with Hume. I was much struck with a remark + of Sir John Hawkins (excuse me if I have mentioned this to you + before): "He was the most humorous man I ever knew."' +</blockquote> +<p> + Mr. Jowett's letter raises some nice points—the Wilkes and Hume + point, for example. Dr. Johnson hated both blasphemy and bawd, but he + hated blasphemy most. Mr. Jowett shared the doctor's antipathies, but + very likely hated bawd more than he did blasphemy. But, as I have + already said, the point is a nice one. To crack jokes with Wilkes at + the expense of Boswell and the Scotch seems to me a very different + thing from shaking hands with Hume. But, indeed, it is absurd to + overlook either Johnson's melancholy piety or his abounding humour and + love of fun and nonsense. His <i>Prayers and Meditations</i> are full of + the one, Boswell and Mrs. Thrale and Madame D'Arblay are full of the + other. Boswell's <i>Johnson</i> has superseded the 'authorized biography' + by Sir John Hawkins, and Dr. Hill did well to include in these + <i>Miscellanies</i> Hawkins' inimitable description of the memorable + banquet given at the Devil Tavern, near Temple Bar, in the spring of + 1751, to celebrate the publication of Mrs. Charlotte Lennox's first + novel. What delightful revelry! what innocent mirth! prolonged though + it was till long after dawn. Poor Mrs. Lennox died in distress in + 1804, at the age of eighty-three. Could Johnson but have lived he + would have lent her his helping hand. He was no fair-weather friend, + but shares with Charles Lamb the honour of being able to unite narrow + means and splendid munificence. +</p> +<p> + I must end with an anecdote: +</p> +<blockquote> + 'Henderson asked the doctor's opinion of <i>Dido</i> and its author. + "Sir," said Dr. Johnson, "I never did the man an injury. Yet he + would read his tragedy to me."' +</blockquote> +<p> </p> + +<a name="note-8"><!--Note--></a> +<p class="fnote"><a href="#8"> +<sup><u>1</u></sup></a> Two volumes. Oxford Clarendon Press, 1897. +</p> + + +<a name="2H_4_12"><!-- H2 anchor --></a> +<p> </p> +<p> </p> +<p> </p> +<p> </p> +<h2> + BOSWELL AS BIOGRAPHER +</h2> +<p> </p> + +<p> + Boswell's position in English literature cannot be disputed, nor can + he ever be displaced from it. He has written our greatest biography. + That is all. Theorize about it as much as you like, account for it how + you may, the fact remains. 'Alone I did it.' There has been plenty of + theorizing. Lord Macaulay took the subject in hand and tossed it up + and down for half a dozen pages with a gusto that drove home to many + minds the conviction, the strange conviction, that our greatest + biography was written by one of the very smallest men that ever lived, + 'a man of the meanest and feeblest intellect'—by a dunce, a parasite, + and a coxcomb; by one 'who, if he had not been a great fool, would + never have been a great writer.' So far Macaulay, <i>anno Domini</i> 1831, + in the vigorous pages of the <i>Edinburgh Review</i>. A year later appears + in <i>Fraser's Magazine</i> another theory by another hand, not then + famous, Mr. Thomas Carlyle. I own to an inordinate affection for Mr. + Carlyle as 'literary critic' As philosopher and sage, he has served + our turn. We have had the fortune, good or bad, to outlive him; and + our sad experience is that death makes a mighty difference to all but + the very greatest. The sight of the author of <i>Sartor Resartus</i> in a + Chelsea omnibus, the sound of Dr. Newman's voice preaching to a small + congregation in Birmingham, kept alive in our minds the vision of + their greatness—it seemed then as if that greatness could know no + limit; but no sooner had they gone away, than somehow or another + one became conscious of some deficiency in their intellectual + positions—the tide of human thought rushed visibly by them, and it + became plain that to no other generation would either of these men be + what they had been to their own. But Mr. Carlyle as literary critic + has a tenacious grasp, and Boswell was a subject made for his hand. + 'Your Scottish laird, says an English naturalist of those days, may be + defined as the hungriest and vainest of all bipeds yet known.' Carlyle + knew the type well enough. His general description of Boswell is + savage: +</p> +<blockquote> + 'Boswell was a person whose mean or bad qualities lay open to the + general eye, visible, palpable to the dullest. His good qualities, + again, belonged not to the time he lived in; were far from common + then; indeed, in such a degree were almost unexampled; not + recognisable, therefore, by everyone; nay, apt even, so strange + had they grown, to be confounded with the very vices they lay + contiguous to and had sprung out of. That he was a wine-bibber and + good liver, gluttonously fond of whatever would yield him a little + solacement, were it only of a stomachic character, is undeniable + enough. That he was vain, heedless, a babbler, had much of the + sycophant, alternating with the braggadocio, curiously spiced, too, + with an all-pervading dash of the coxcomb; that he gloried much + when the tailor by a court suit had made a new man of him; that he + appeared at the Shakespeare Jubilee with a riband imprinted + "Corsica Boswell" round his hat, and, in short, if you will, lived + no day of his life without saying and doing more than one + pretentious ineptitude, all this unhappily is evident as the sun at + noon. The very look of Boswell seems to have signified so much. In + that cocked nose, cocked partly in triumph over his weaker + fellow-creatures, partly to snuff up the smell of coming pleasure + and scent it from afar, in those big cheeks, hanging like + half-filled wine-skins, still able to contain more, in that + coarsely-protruded shelf mouth, that fat dew-lapped chin; in all + this who sees not sensuality, pretension, boisterous imbecility + enough? The underpart of Boswell's face is of a low, almost brutish + character.' +</blockquote> +<p> + This is character-painting with a vengeance. Portrait of a Scotch + laird by the son of a Scotch peasant. Carlyle's Boswell is to me the + very man. If so, Carlyle's paradox seems as great as Macaulay's, for + though Carlyle does not call Boswell a great fool in plain set terms, + he goes very near it. But he keeps open a door through which he + effects his escape. Carlyle sees in Bozzy 'the old reverent feeling of + discipleship, in a word, hero-worship.' +</p> +<blockquote> + 'How the babbling Bozzy, inspired only by love and the recognition + and vision which love can lend, epitomizes nightly the words of + Wisdom, the deeds and aspects of Wisdom, and so, little by little, + unconsciously works together for us a whole "Johnsoniad"—a more + free, perfect, sunlit and spirit-speaking likeness than for many + centuries has been drawn by man of man.' +</blockquote> +<p> + This I think is a little overdrawn. That Boswell loved Johnson, God + forbid I should deny. But that he was inspired only by love to write + his life, I gravely question. Boswell was, as Carlyle has said, a + greedy man—and especially was he greedy of fame—and he saw in his + revered friend a splendid subject for artistic biographic treatment. + Here is where both Macaulay and Carlyle are, as I suggest, wrong. + Boswell was a fool, but only in the sense in which hundreds of great + artists have been fools; on his own lines, and across his own bit of + country, he was no fool. He did not accidentally stumble across + success, but he deliberately aimed at what he hit. Read his preface + and you will discover his method. He was as much an artist as either + of his two famous critics. Where Carlyle goes astray is in attributing + to discipleship what was mainly due to a dramatic sense. However, + theories are no great matter. +</p> +<p> + Our means of knowledge of James Boswell are derived mainly from + himself; he is his own incriminator. In addition to the life there is + the Corsican tour, the Hebrides tour, the letters to Erskine and to + Temple, and a few insignificant occasional publications in the shape + of letters to the people of Scotland, etc. With these before him it is + impossible for any biographer to approach Bozzy in a devotional + attitude; he was all Carlyle calls him. Our sympathies are with his + father, who despised him, and with his son, who was ashamed of him. It + is indeed strange to think of him staggering, like the drunkard he + was, between these two respectable and even stately figures—the + Senator of the Court of Justice and the courtly scholar and antiquary. + And yet it is to the drunkard humanity is debtor. Respectability is + not everything. +</p> +<p> + Boswell had many literary projects and ambitions, and never intended + to be known merely as the biographer of Johnson. He proposed to write + a life of Lord Kames and to compose memoirs of Hume. It seems he did + write a life of Sir Robert Sibbald. He had other plans in his head, + but dissipation and a steadily increasing drunkenness destroyed them + all. As inveterate book-hunter, I confess to a great fancy to lay + hands on his <i>Dorando: A Spanish Tale</i>, a shilling book published in + Edinburgh during the progress of the once famous Douglas case, and + ordered to be suppressed as contempt of court after it had been + through three editions. It is said, probably hastily, that no copy is + known to exist—a dreary fate which, according to Lord Macaulay, might + have attended upon the <i>Life of Johnson</i> had the copyright of that + work become the property of Boswell's son, who hated to hear it + mentioned. It is not, however, very easy to get rid of any book once + it is published, and I do not despair of reading <i>Dorando</i> before I + die. +</p> +<a name="2H_4_13"><!-- H2 anchor --></a> +<p> </p> +<p> </p> +<p> </p> +<p> </p> +<h2> + OLD PLEASURE GARDENS <a name="9"></a> <a href="#note-9"><small><sup>1</sup></small></a> +</h2> +<p> </p> + + <p> + This is an honest book, disfigured by no fine writing or woeful + attempts to make us dance round may-poles with our ancestors. Terribly + is our good language abused by the swell-mob of stylists, for whom it + is certainly not enough that Chatham's language is their mother's + tongue. May the Devil fly away with these artists; though no sooner + had he done so than we should be 'wae' for auld Nicky-ben. Mr. Wroth, + of the British Museum, and his brother, Mr. Arthur Wroth, are above + such vulgar pranks, and never strain after the picturesque, but in the + plain garb of honest men carry us about to the sixty-four gardens + where the eighteenth-century Londoner, his wife and family—the John + Gilpins of the day—might take their pleasure either sadly, as indeed + best befits our pilgrim state, or uproariously to deaden the ear to + the still small voice of conscience—the pangs of slighted love, the + law's delay, the sluggish step of Fortune, the stealthy strides of + approaching poverty, or any other of the familiar incidents of our + mortal life. The sixty-two illustrations which adorn the book are as + honest as the letterpress. There is a most delightful Morland + depicting a very stout family indeed regaling itself <i>sub tegmine + fagi</i>. It is called a 'Tea Party.' A voluminous mother holds in her + roomy lap a very fat baby, whose back and neck are full upon you as + you stare into the picture. And what a jolly back and innocent neck it + is! Enough to make every right-minded woman cry out with pleasure. + Then there is the highly respectable father stirring his cup and + watching with placid content a gentleman in lace and ruffles attending + to the wife, whilst the two elder children play with a wheezy dog. +</p> +<p> + In these pages we can see for ourselves the British public—God rest + its soul!—enjoying itself. This honest book is full of <i>la + bourgeoisie</i>. The rips and the painted ladies occasionally, it is + true, make their appearance, but they are reduced to their proper + proportions. The Adam and Eve Tea Gardens, St. Pancras, have a + somewhat rakish sound, calculated to arrest the jaded attention of the + debauchee, but what has Mr. Wroth to tell us about them? +</p> +<blockquote> + 'About the beginning of the present century it could still be + described as an agreeable retreat, "with enchanting prospects"; and + the gardens were laid out with arbours, flowers, and shrubs. Cows + were kept for making syllabubs, and on summer afternoons a regular + company met to play bowls and trap-ball in an adjacent field. One + proprietor fitted out a mimic squadron of frigates in the garden, + and the long-room was used a good deal for beanfeasts and + tea-drinking parties' (p. 127). +</blockquote> +<p> + What a pleasant place! Syllabubs! How sweet they sound! Nobody + worried then about diphtheria; they only died of it. Mimic frigates, + too! What patriotism! These gardens are as much lost as those of the + Hesperides. A cemetery swallowed them up—the cemetery which adjoins + the old St. Pancras Churchyard. The Tavern, shorn of its amenities, a + mere drink-shop, survived as far down the century as 1874, soon after + which date it also disappeared. Hornsey Wood House has a name not + unknown in the simple annals of tea-drinking. It is now part of + Finsbury Park, but in the middle of the last century its long-room 'on + popular holydays, such as Whit Sunday, might be seen crowded as early + as nine or ten in the morning with a motley assemblage eating rolls + and butter and drinking tea at an extravagant price.' 'Hone remembered + the old Hornsey Wood House as it stood embowered, and seeming a part + of the wood. It was at that time kept by two sisters—Mrs. Lloyd and + Mrs. Collier—and these aged dames were usually to be found before + their door on a seat between two venerable oaks, wherein swarms of + bees hived themselves.' +</p> +<p> + What a picture is this of these vanished dames! Somewhere, I trust, + they are at peace. +</p> +<pre> + 'And there, they say, two bright and aged snakes, + Who once were Cadmus and Harmonia, + Bask in the glens or on the warm sea-shore.' +</pre> +<p> + A more raffish place was the Dog and Duck in St. George's Fields, + which boasted mineral springs, good for gout, stone, king's evil, sore + eyes, and inveterate cancers. Considering its virtue, the water was a + cheap liquor, for a dozen bottles could be had at the spa for a + shilling. The Dog and Duck, though at last it exhibited depraved + tastes, was at one time well conducted. Miss Talbot writes about it to + Mrs. Carter, and Dr. Johnson advised his Thralia to try the waters. It + was no mean place, but boasted a breakfast-room, a bowling-green, and + a swimming-bath 200 feet long and 100 feet (nearly) broad. Mr. Wroth + narrates the history of its fall with philosophical composure. In the + hands of one Hedger the decencies were disregarded, and thieves made + merry where once Miss Talbot sipped bohea. One of its frequenters, + Charlotte Shaftoe, is said to have betrayed seven of her intimates to + the gallows. Few visitors' lists could stand such a strain as Miss + Shaftoe put upon hers. In 1799 the Dog and Duck was suppressed, and + Bethlehem Hospital now reigns in its stead. 'The Peerless Pool' has a + Stevensonian sound. It was a dangerous pond behind Old Street, long + known as 'The Parlous or Perilous Pond' 'because divers youth by + swimming therein have been drowned.' In 1743 a London jeweller called + Kemp took it in hand, turned it into a pleasure bath, and renamed it, + happily enough, 'The Peerless Pool.' It was a fine open-air bath, 170 + feet long, more than 100 feet broad, and from 3 to 5 feet deep. 'It + was nearly surrounded by trees, and the descent was by marble steps to + a fine gravel bottom, through which the springs that supplied the pool + came bubbling up.' Mr. Kemp likewise constructed a fish-pond. The + enterprise met with success, and anglers, bathers, and at due seasons + skaters, flocked to 'The Peerless Pool.' Hone describes how every + Thursday and Saturday the boys from the Bluecoat School were wont to + plunge into its depths. You ask its fate. It has been built over. + Peerless Street, the second main turning on the left of the City Road + just beyond Old Street in coming from the City, is all that is left to + remind anyone of the once Parlous Pool, unless, indeed, it still + occasionally creeps into a cellar and drowns cockroaches instead of + divers youths. The Three Hats, Highbury Barn, Hampstead Wells, are not + places to be lightly passed over. In Mr. Wroth's book you may read + about them and trace their fortunes—their fallen fortunes. After all, + they have only shared the fate of empires. +</p> +<p> + Of the most famous London gardens—Marylebone, Ranelagh, and, greatest + of them all, Vauxhall—Mr. Wroth writes at, of course, a becoming + length. Marylebone Gardens, when at their largest, comprised about 8 + acres. Beaumont Street, part of Devonshire Street and of Devonshire + Place and Upper Wimpole Street, now occupy their site. Music was the + main feature of Marylebone. A band played in the evening. Vocalists at + different times drew crowds. Masquerades and fireworks appeared later + in the history of the gardens, which usually were open three nights of + the week. Dr. Johnson's turbulent behaviour, on the occasion of one of + his frequent visits, will easily be remembered. Marylebone, at no + period, says Mr. Wroth, attained the vogue of Ranelagh or the + universal popularity of Vauxhall. In 1776 the gardens were closed, and + two years later the builders began to lay out streets. Ranelagh is, + perhaps, the greatest achievement of the eighteenth century. Its + Rotunda, built in 1741, is compared by Mr. Wroth to the reading-room + of the British Museum. No need to give its dimensions; only look at + the print, and you will understand what Johnson meant when he declared + that the <i>coup d'oeil</i> of Ranelagh was the finest thing he had ever + seen. The ordinary charge for admission was half a crown, which + secured you tea or coffee and bread-and-butter. The gardens were + usually open Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays, and the amusements were + music, tea-drinking, walking, and talking. Mr. Wroth quotes a + Frenchman, who, after visiting Ranelagh in 1800, calls it 'le plus + insipide lieu d'amusement que l'on ait pu imaginer,' and even hints at + Dante's Purgatory. An earlier victim from Gaul thus records his + experience of Ranelagh: 'On s'ennui avec de la mauvaise musique, du + thé et du beurre.' So true is it that the cheerfulness you find + anywhere is the cheerfulness you have brought with you. However, + despite the Frenchman, good music and singing were at times to be + heard at Ranelagh. The nineteenth century would have nothing to do + with Ranelagh, and in 1805 it was pulled down. The site now belongs to + Chelsea Hospital. Cuper's Gardens lacked the respectability of + Marylebone and the style of Ranelagh, but they had their vogue during + the same century. They were finely situated on the south side of the + Thames opposite Somerset House. Cuper easily got altered into Cupid; + and when on the death of Ephraim Evans in 1740 the business came to be + carried on by his widow, a comely dame who knew a thing or two, it + proved to be indeed a going concern. But the new Licensing Bill of + 1752 destroyed Cupid's Garden, and Mrs. Evans was left lamenting and + wholly uncompensated. Of Vauxhall Mr. Wroth treats at much length, and + this part of his book is especially rich in illustrations. Every lover + of Old London and old times and old prints should add Mr. Wroth's book + to his library. +</p> +<p> </p> + +<a name="note-9"><!--Note--></a> +<p class="fnote"> <a href="#9"> +<sup><u>1</u></sup></a> <i>Pleasure Gardens of the Eighteenth Century</i>, by Warwick + Wroth, F.S.A., assisted by Arthur Edgar Wroth. London: Macmillan and + Co. +</p> + +<a name="2H_4_14"><!-- H2 anchor --></a> +<p> </p> +<p> </p> +<p> </p> +<p> </p> +<h2> + OLD BOOKSELLERS +</h2> +<p> </p> + +<p> + There has just been a small flutter amongst those who used to be + called stationers or text-writers in the good old days, before + printing was, and when even Peers of the Realm (now so highly + educated) could not sign their names, or, at all events, preferred not + to do so—booksellers they are now styled—and the question which + agitates them is discount. Having mentioned this, one naturally passes + on. +</p> +<p> + No great trade has an obscurer history than the book trade. It seems + to lie choked in mountains of dust which it would be suicidal to + disturb. Men have lived from time to time of literary skill—Dr. + Johnson was one of them—who had knowledge, extensive and peculiar, of + the traditions and practices of 'the trade,' as it is proudly styled + by its votaries; but nobody has ever thought it worth his while to + make record of his knowledge, which accordingly perished with him, and + is now irrecoverably lost. +</p> +<p> + In old days booksellers were also publishers, frequently printers, and + sometimes paper-makers. Jacob Tonson not only owned Milton's <i>Paradise + Lost</i>—for all time, as he fondly thought, for little did he dream of + the fierce construction the House of Lords was to put upon the + Copyright Act of Queen Anne—not only was Dryden's publisher, but also + kept shop in Chancery Lane, and sold books across the counter. He + allowed no discount, but, so we are told, 'spoke his mind upon all + occasions, and flattered no one,' not even glorious John. +</p> +<p> + For a long time past the trades of bookselling and book-publishing + have been carried on apart. This has doubtless rid booksellers of all + the unpopularity which formerly belonged to them in their other + capacity. This unpopularity is now heaped as a whole upon the + publishers, who certainly need not dread the doom awaiting those of + whom the world speaks well. +</p> +<p> + A tendency of the two trades to grow together again is perhaps + noticeable. For my part, I wish they would. Some publishers are + already booksellers, but the books they sell are usually only new + books. Now it is obvious that the true bookseller sells books both old + and new. Some booksellers are occasional publishers. May each + usurp—or, rather, reassume—the business of the other, whilst + retaining his own! +</p> +<p> + The world, it must be admitted, owes a great deal of whatever + information it possesses about the professions, trades, and + occupations practised and carried on in its midst to those who have + failed in them. Prosperous men talk 'shop,' but seldom write it. The + book that tells us most about booksellers and bookselling in bygone + days is the work of a crack-brained fellow who published and sold in + the reigns of Queen Anne and George I., and died in 1733 in great + poverty and obscurity. I refer to John Dunton, whose <i>Life and + Errors</i> in the edition in two volumes edited by J.B. Nichols, and + published in 1818, is a common book enough in the second-hand shops, + and one which may be safely recommended to everyone, except, indeed, + to the unfortunate man or woman who is not an adept in the art, craft, + or mystery of skipping. +</p> +<p> + The book will strangely remind the reader of Amory's <i>Life of John + Buncle</i>—those queer volumes to which many a reader has been sent by + Hazlitt's intoxicating description of them in his <i>Round Table</i>, and + a few perhaps by a shy allusion contained in one of the essays of + Elia. The real John Dunton has not the boundless spirits of the + fictitious John Buncle; but in their religious fervour, their + passion for flirtation, their tireless egotism, and their love of + character-sketching, they greatly resemble one another. +</p> +<p> + It is this last characteristic that imparts real value to Dunton's + book, and makes it, despite its verbiage and tortuosity, throb with + human interest. For example, he gives us a short sketch of no less + than 135 then living London booksellers in this style: 'Mr. Newton is + full of kindness and good-nature. He is affable and courteous in + trade, and is none of those men of forty whose religion is yet to + chuse, for his mind (like his looks) is serious and grave; and his + neighbours tell me his understanding does not improve too fast for his + practice, for he is not religious by start or sally, but is well fixed + in the faith and practice of a Church of England man—and has a + handsome wife into the bargain.' +</p> +<p> + Most of the 135 booksellers were good men, according to Dunton, but + not all. 'Mr. Lee in Lombard Street. Such a pirate, such a cormorant + was never before. Copies, books, men, shops, all was one. He held no + propriety right or wrong, good or bad, till at last he began to be + known; and the booksellers, not enduring so ill a man among them, + spewed him out, and off he marched to Ireland, where he acted as + <i>felonious Lee</i> as he did in London. And as Lee lived a thief, so he + died a hypocrite; for being asked on his death-bed if he would forgive + Mr. C. (that had formerly wronged him), "Yes," said Lee, "if I die, I + forgive him; but if I happen to live, I am resolved to be revenged on + him."' +</p> +<p> + The Act of Union destroyed the trade of these pirates, but their + felonious editions of eighteenth-century authors still abound. Mr. + Gladstone, I need scarcely say, was careful in his Home Rule Bill + (which was denounced by thousands who never read a line of it) to + withdraw copyright from the scope of action of his proposed Dublin + Parliament. +</p> +<p> + There are nearly eleven hundred brief character-sketches in Dunton's + book, of all sorts and kinds, but with a preference for bookish + people, divines, both of the Establishment and out of it, printers and + authors. Sometimes, indeed, the description is short enough, and tells + one very little. To many readers, references so curt to people of whom + they never heard, and whose names are recorded nowhere else, save on + their mouldering grave-stones, may seem tedious and trivial, but for + others they will have a strange fascination. Here are a few examples: +</p> +<blockquote> + 'Affable <i>Wiggins</i>. His conversation is general but never + impertinent.<br><br> + + 'The kind and golden <i>Venables</i>. He is so good a man, and so truly + charitable, he that will write of him, must still write more.<br><br> + + 'Mr. <i>Bury</i>—my old neighbour in Redcross Street. He is a plain + honest man, sells the best coffee in all the neighbourhood, and + lives in this world like a spiritual stranger and pilgrim in a + foreign country.<br><br> + + 'Anabaptist (alias <i>Elephant</i>) <i>Smith</i>. He was a man of great + sincerity and happy contentment in all circumstances of life.' +</blockquote> +<p> + If an affection for passages of this kind be condemned as trivial, and + akin to the sentimentalism of the man in Calverley's poem who wept + over a box labelled 'This side up,' I will shelter myself behind + Carlyle, who was evidently deeply moved, as his review of Boswell's + Johnson proves, by the life-history of Mr. F. Lewis, 'of whose birth, + death, and whole terrestrial <i>res gestae</i> this only, and, strange + enough, this actually, survives—"Sir, he lived in London, and hung + loose upon society. <i>Stat</i> PARVI <i>hominis umbra</i>."' On that peg + Carlyle's imagination hung a whole biography. +</p> +<p> + Dunton, who was the son of the Rector of Aston Clinton, was + apprenticed, about 1675, to a London bookseller. He had from the + beginning a great turn both for religion and love. He, to use his own + phrase, 'sat under the powerful ministry of Mr. Doolittle.' 'One + Lord's day, and I remember it with sorrow, I was to hear the Rev. Mr. + Doolittle, and it was then and there the beautiful Rachel Seaton gave + me that fatal wound.' +</p> +<p> + The first book Dunton ever printed was by the Rev. Mr. Doolittle, and + was of an eminently religious character. +</p> +<p> + 'One Lord's Day (and I am very sensible of the sin) I was strolling + about just as my fancy led me, and, stepping into Dr. Annesley's + meeting-place—where, instead of engaging my attention to what the + Doctor said, I suffered both my mind and eyes to run at random—I soon + singled out a young lady that almost charmed me dead; but, having made + my inquiries, I found to my sorrow she was pre-engaged.' However, + Dunton was content with the elder sister, one of the three daughters + of Dr. Annesley. The one he first saw became the wife of the Reverend + Samuel Wesley, and the mother of John and Charles. The third daughter + is said to have been married to Daniel De Foe. +</p> +<p> + As soon as he was out of his apprenticeship, Dunton set up business as + a publisher and bookseller. He says grimly enough: +</p> +<blockquote> + 'A man should be well furnished with an honest policy if he intends + to set out to the world nowadays. And this is no less necessary in + a bookseller than in any other tradesman, for in that way there are + plots and counter-plots, and a whole army of hackney authors that + keep their grinders moving by the travail of their pens. These + gormandizers will eat you the very life out of a <i>copy</i> so soon as + ever it appears, for as the times go, <i>Original</i> and <i>Abridgement</i> + are almost reckoned as necessary as man and wife.' +</blockquote> +<p> + The mischief to which Dunton refers was permitted by the stupidity of + the judges, who refused to consider an abridgment of a book any + interference with its copyright. Some learned judges have, indeed, + held that an abridger is a benefactor, but as his benefactions are not + his own, but another's, a shorter name might be found for him. The law + on the subject is still uncertain. +</p> +<p> + Dunton proceeds: 'Printing was now the uppermost in my thoughts, and + hackney authors began to ply me with <i>specimens</i> as earnestly and + with as much passion and concern as the watermen do passengers with + <i>Oars</i> and <i>Scullers</i>. I had some acquaintance with this generation in + my apprenticeship, and had never any warm affection for them, in + regard I always thought their great concern lay more in <i>how much a + sheet</i>, than in any generous respect they bore to the <i>Commonwealth of + Learning</i>; and indeed the learning itself of these gentlemen lies very + often in as little room as their honesty, though they will pretend to + have studied for six or seven years in the Bodleian Library, to have + turned over the Fathers, and to have read and digested the whole + compass both of human and ecclesiastic history, when, alas! they have + never been able to understand a single page of St. Cyprian, and cannot + tell you whether the Fathers lived before or after Christ.' +</p> +<p> + Yet of one of this hateful tribe Dunton is able to speak well. He + declares Mr. Bradshaw to have been the best accomplished hackney + author he ever met with. He pronounces his style incomparably fine. He + had quarrelled with him, but none the less he writes: 'If Mr. Bradshaw + is yet alive, I here declare to the world and to him that I freely + forgive him what he owes, both in money and books, if he will only be + so kind as to make me a visit. But I am afraid the worthy gentleman is + dead, for he was wretchedly overrun with melancholy, and the very + blackness of it reigned in his countenance. He had certainly performed + wonders with his pen, had not his poverty pursued him and almost laid + the necessity upon him to be unjust.' +</p> +<p> + All hackney authors were not poor. Some of the compilers and + abridgers made what even now would be considered by popular novelists + large sums. Scotsmen were very good at it. Gordon and Campbell became + wealthy men. If authors had a turn for politics, Sir Robert Walpole + was an excellent paymaster. Arnall, who was bred an attorney, is + stated to have been paid £11,000 in four years by the Government for + his pamphlets. +</p> +<pre> + 'Come, then, I'll comply. + Spirit of Arnall, aid me while I lie!' +</pre> +<p> + It cannot have been pleasant to read this, but then Pope belonged to + the opposition, and was a friend of Lord Bolingbroke, and would + consequently say anything. +</p> +<p> + There is not a more interesting and artless autobiography to be read + than William Hutton's, the famous bookseller and historian of + Birmingham. Hutton has been somewhat absurdly called the English + Franklin. He is not in the least like Franklin. He has none of + Franklin's supreme literary skill, and he was a loving, generous, and + tender-hearted man, which Franklin certainly was not. Hutton's first + visit to London was paid in 1749. He walked up from Nottingham, spent + three days in London, and then walked back to Nottingham. The jaunt, + if such an expression is applicable, cost him eleven shillings less + fourpence. Yet he paid his way. The only money he spent to gain + admission to public places was a penny to see Bedlam. +</p> +<p> + Interesting, however, as is Hutton's book, it tells us next to nothing + about book-selling, except that in his hands it was a prosperous + undertaking. +</p> +<a name="2H_4_15"><!-- H2 anchor --></a> +<p> </p> +<p> </p> +<p> </p> +<p> </p> +<h2> + A FEW WORDS ABOUT COPYRIGHT IN BOOKS +</h2> +<p> </p> + +<p> + Copyright, which is the exclusive liberty reserved to an author and + his assigns of printing or otherwise multiplying copies of his book + during certain fixed periods of time, is a right of modern origin. +</p> +<p> + There is nothing about copyright in Justinian's compilations. +</p> +<p> + It is a mistake to suppose that books did not circulate freely in the + era of manuscripts. St. Augustine was one of the most popular authors + that ever lived. His <i>City of God</i> ran over Europe after a fashion + impossible to-day. Thousands of busy hands were employed, year out and + year in, making copies for sale of this famous treatise. Yet Augustine + had never heard of copyright, and never received a royalty on sales in + his life. +</p> +<p> + The word 'copyright' is of purely English origin, and came into + existence as follows: +</p> +<p> + The Stationers' Company was founded by royal charter in 1556, and from + the beginning has kept register-books, wherein, first, by decrees of + the Star Chamber, afterwards by orders of the Houses of Parliament, + and finally by Act of Parliament, the titles of all publications and + reprints have had to be entered prior to publication. +</p> +<p> + None but booksellers, as publishers were then content to be called, + were members of the Stationers' Company, and by the usage of the + Company no entries could be made in their register-books except in the + names of members, and thereupon the book referred to in the entry + became the 'copy' of the member or members who had caused it to be + registered. +</p> +<p> + By virtue of this registration the book became, in the opinion of the + Stationers' Company, the property <i>in perpetuity</i> of the member or + members who had effected the registration. This was the 'right' of the + stationer to his 'copy.' +</p> +<p> + Copyright at first is therefore not an author's, but a bookseller's + copyright. The author had no part or lot in it unless he chanced to be + both an author and a bookseller, an unusual combination in early days. + The author took his manuscript to a member of the Stationers' Company, + and made the best bargain he could for himself. The stationer, if + terms were arrived at, carried off the manuscript to his Company and + registered the title in the books, and thereupon became, in his + opinion, and in that of his Company, the owner, at common law, in + perpetuity of his 'copy.' +</p> +<p> + The stationers, having complete control over their register-books, + made what entries they chose, and all kinds of books, even Homer and + the Classics, became the 'property' of its members. The booksellers, + nearly all Londoners, respected each other's 'copies,' and jealously + guarded access to their registers. From time to time there were sales + by auction of a bookseller's 'copies,' but the public—that is, the + country booksellers, for there were no other likely buyers—were + excluded from the sale-room. A great monopoly was thus created and + maintained by the trade. There was never any examination of title to a + bookseller's copy. Every book of repute was supposed to have a + bookseller for its owner. Bunyan's <i>Pilgrim's Progress</i> was Mr. + Ponder's copy, Milton's <i>Paradise Lost</i> Mr. Tonson's copy, <i>The Whole + Duty of Man</i> Mr. Eyre's copy, and so on. The thing was a corrupt and + illegal trade combination. +</p> +<p> + The expiration of the Licensing Act, and the consequent cessation of + the penalties it inflicted upon unlicensed printing, exposed the + proprietors of 'copies' to an invasion of their rights, real or + supposed, and in 1703, and again in 1706 and 1709, they applied to + Parliament for a Bill to protect them against the 'ruin' with which + they alleged themselves to be threatened. <a name="10"></a><a href="#note-10"><small><sup>1</sup></small></a> +</p> + +<p> + In 1710 they got what they asked for in the shape of the famous + Statute of Queen Anne, the first copyright law in the world. A truly + English measure, ill considered and ill drawn, which did the very last + thing it was meant to do—viz., destroy the property it was intended + to protect. +</p> +<p> + By this Act, in which the 'author' first makes his appearance actually + in front of the 'proprietor,' it was provided that, <i>in case of new + books</i>, the author and his assigns should have the sole right of + printing them for fourteen years, and if at the end of that time the + author was still alive, a second term of fourteen years was conceded. + In the case of <i>existing books</i>, there was to be but one term—viz., + twenty-one years, from August 10, 1710. +</p> +<p> + Registration at the Stationers' Company was still required, but + nothing was said as to who might make the entries, or into whose names + they were to be made. +</p> +<p> + Then followed the desired penalties for infringement. The booksellers + thought the terms of years meant no more than that the penalties were + to be limited by way of experiment to those periods. +</p> +<p> + Many years flew by before the Stationers' Company discovered the + mischief wrought by the statute they had themselves promoted. To cut a + long matter short, it was not until 1774 that the House of Lords + decided that, whether there ever had been a perpetuity in literary + property at common law or not, it was destroyed by the Act of Queen + Anne, and that from and after the passing of that law neither author, + assignee, nor proprietor of 'copy' had any exclusive right of + multiplication, save for and during the periods of time the statute + created. +</p> +<p> + It was a splendid fight—a Thirty Years' War. Great lawyers were fee'd + in it; luminous and lengthy judgments were delivered. Mansfield was a + booksellers' man; Thurlow ridiculed the pretensions of the Trade. It + can be read about in <i>Boswell's Johnson</i> and in Campbell's <i>Lives of + the Lord Chancellors</i>. The authors stood supinely by, not contributing + a farthing towards the expenses. It was a booksellers' battle, and the + booksellers were beaten, as they deserved to be. +</p> +<p> + All this is past history, in which the modern money-loving, motoring + author takes scant pleasure. Things are on a different footing now. + The Act of 1842 has extended the statutory periods of protection. The + perpetuity craze is over. A right in perpetuity to reprint Frank + Fustian's novel or Tom Tatter's poem would not add a penny to the + present value of the copyright of either of those productions. In + business short views must prevail. An author cannot expect to raise + money on his hope of immortality. Milton's publisher, good Mr. + Symonds, probably thought, if he thought about it at all, that he was + buying <i>Paradise Lost</i> for ever when he registered it as his 'copy' in + the books of his Company; but into the calculations he made to + discover how much he could afford to give the author posterity did not + and could not enter. How was Symonds to know that Milton's fame was to + outlive Cleveland's or Flatman's? +</p> +<p> + How many of the books published in 1905 would have any copyright cash + value in A.D. 2000? I do not pause for a reply. +</p> +<p> + The modern author need have no quarrel with the statutory periods + fixed by the Act of 1842, <a name="11"></a><a href="#note-11"><small><sup>2</sup></small></a> though common-sense has long since + suggested that a single term, the author's life and thirty or forty + years after, should be substituted for the alternative periods named + in the Act. +</p> + +<p> + What the modern author alone desiderates is a big, immediate, and + protected market. +</p> +<p> + The United States of America have been a great disappointment to many + an honest British author. In the wicked old days when the States took + British books without paying for them they used to take them in large + numbers, but now that they have turned honest and passed a law + allowing the British author copyright on certain terms, they have in + great measure ceased to take; for, by the strangest of coincidences, + no sooner were British novels, histories, essays, and the like, + protected in America, than there sprang up in the States themselves, + novelists, historians, and essayists, not only numerous enough to + supply their own home markets, but talented enough to cross the + Atlantic in large numbers and challenge us in our own. Such a reward + for honesty was not contemplated. +</p> +<p> + International copyright and the Convention of Berne are things to be + proud of and rejoice over. As the first chapter in a Code of Public + European Law, they may mark the beginning of a time of settled peace, + order, and disarmament, but they have not yet enriched a single + author, though hereafter possibly an occasional novelist or + play-wright may prosper greatly under their provisions. +</p> +<p> + The copyright question is now at last really a settled question, save + in a single aspect of it. What, if anything, should be done in the + case of those authors, few in number, whose literary lives prove + longer than the period of statutory protection? Should any distinction + in law be struck between a Tennyson and a Tupper? between—But why + multiply examples? There is no need to be unnecessarily offensive. +</p> +<p> + The law and practice of to-day give the meat that remains on the bones + of the dead author after the expiration of the statutory period of + protection to the Trade. Any publisher who likes to bring out an + edition can do so, though by doing so he does not gain any exclusive + rights. A brother publisher may compete with him. As a result + the public is usually well served with cheap editions of those + non-copyright authors whose works are worth reprinting the moment the + copyright expires. +</p> +<p> + Some lovers of justice, however, think that it is unnecessary all at + once to endow the Trade with these windfalls, and that if an author's + family, or his or their assignees, were prepared to publish cheap + editions immediately after the expiration of the usual period of + protection, they ought to be allowed to do so for a further period of, + say, forty years. If they failed within a reasonable time either to do + so themselves or to arrange for others to do so, this extended period + should lapse. +</p> +<p> + Were this to be the law nobody could say that it was unfair; but it is + never likely to be the law. It would take time for discussion, and now + there is no time left in which to discuss anything in Parliament. A + much-needed Copyright Bill has been in draft for years, has been + mentioned in Queen's and King's speeches, but it has never been read + even a first time. If it ever is read a first time, its only chance of + becoming law will be if it is taken in a lump, as it stands, without + consideration or amendment. To such a pass has legislation been + reduced in this country! +</p> +<p> + This draft Bill does not contain any provision for specially + protecting the families of authors whose works long outlive their + mortal lives. It makes no invidious distinctions. It leaves all the + authors to hang together, the quick and the dead. Perhaps this is the + better way. +</p> +<p> </p> + + +<a name="note-10"><!--Note--></a> +<p class="fnote"><a href="#10"> +<sup><u>1</u></sup></a> What the booksellers wanted was not to be left to their + common law remedy—<i>i.e.</i>, an action of trespass on the case—but to + be supplied with penalties for infringement, and especially with the + right to seize and burn unauthorized editions. +</p> + +<a name="note-11"><!--Note--></a> +<p class="fnote"><a href="#11"> +<sup><u>2</u></sup></a> Author's life <i>plus</i> seven years, or forty-two years from + date of publication, whichever term is the longer. The great objection + to the second term is that an author's books go out of copyright at + different dates, and the earlier editions go out first. +</p> + +<a name="2H_4_16"><!-- H2 anchor --></a> +<p> </p> +<p> </p> +<p> </p> +<p> </p> +<h2> + HANNAH MORE ONCE MORE +</h2> +<p> </p> + +<p> + I have been told by more than one correspondent, and not always in + words of urbanity, that I owe an apology to the manes of Miss Hannah + More, whose works I once purchased in nineteen volumes for 8s. 6d., + and about whom in consequence I wrote a page some ten years ago. <a name="12"></a> <a href="#note-12"><small><sup>1</sup></small></a> +</p> + +<p> + To be accused of rudeness to a lady who exchanged witticisms with Dr. + Johnson, soothed the widowed heart of Mrs. Garrick, directed the early + studies of Macaulay, and in the spring of 1815 presented a small copy + of her <i>Sacred Dramas</i> to Mr. Gladstone, is no light matter. To libel + the dead is, I know, not actionable—indeed, it is impossible; but + evil-speaking, lying, and slandering are canonical offences from which + the obligation to refrain knows no limits of time or place. +</p> +<p> + I have often felt uneasy on this score, and never had the courage, + until this very evening, to read over again what in the irritation of + the moment I had been tempted to say about Miss Hannah More, after the + outlay upon her writings already mentioned. Eight shillings and + sixpence is, indeed, no great sum, but nineteen octavo volumes are a + good many books. Yet Richardson is in nineteen volumes in Mangin's + edition, and Swift is in nineteen volumes in Scott's edition, and + glorious John Dryden lacks but a volume to make a third example. True + enough; yet it will, I think, be granted me that you must be very fond + of an author, male or female, if nineteen octavo volumes, all his or + hers, are not a little irritating and provocative of temper. Think of + the room they take! As for selling them, it is not so easy to sell + nineteen volumes of a stone-dead author, particularly if you live + three miles from a railway-station and do not keep a trap. Elia, the + gentle Elia, as it is the idiotic fashion to call a writer who could + handle his 'maulies' in a fray as well as Hazlitt himself, has told us + how he could never see well-bound books he did not care about, but he + longed to strip them so that he might warm his ragged veterans in + their spoils. My copy of <i>Hannah More</i> was in full calf, but never + once did it occur to me—though I, too, have many a poor author with + hardly a shirt to his back shivering in the dark corners of the + library—to strip her of her warm clothing. And yet I had to do + something, and quickly too, for sorely needed was Miss More's shelf. + So I buried the nineteen volumes in the garden. 'Out of sight, out of + mind,' said I cheerfully, stamping them down. +</p> +<p> + This has hardly proved to be the case, for though Hannah More is + incapable of a literary resurrection, and no one of her nineteen + volumes has ever haunted my pillow, exclaiming, +</p> +<pre> + 'Think how thou stab'dst me in my prime of youth,' +</pre> +<p class="noindent"> + nevertheless, I have not been able to get quite rid of an uneasy + feeling that I was rude to her ten years ago in print—not, indeed, so + rude as was her revered friend Dr. Johnson 126 years ago to her face; + but then, I have not the courage to creep under the gabardine of our + great Moralist. +</p> +<p> + When, accordingly, I saw on the counters of the trade the daintiest of + volumes, hailing, too, from the United States, entitled <i>Hannah + More</i>, <a name="13"></a> <a href="#note-13"><small><sup>2</sup></small></a> and perceived that it was a short biography and appreciation + of the lady on my mind, I recognised that my penitential hour had at + last come. I took the little book home with me, and sat down to read, + determined to do justice and more than justice to the once celebrated + mistress of Cowslip Green and Barley Wood. +</p> + +<p> + Miss Harland's preface is most engaging. She reminds a married sister + how in the far-off days of their childhood in a Southern State their + Sunday reading, usually confined or sought to be confined, to 'bound + sermons and semi-detached tracts,' was enlivened by the <i>Works of + Hannah More</i>. She proceeds as follows: +</p> +<blockquote> + 'At my last visit to you I took from your bookshelves one of a set + of volumes in uniform binding of full calf, coloured mellowly by + the touch and the breath of fifty odd years. They belonged to the + dear old home library.... The leaves of the book I held fell apart + at <i>The Shepherd of Salisbury Plain</i>.' +</blockquote> +<p> + I leave my readers to judge how uncomfortable these innocent words + made me: +</p> +<pre> + 'The usher took six hasty strides + As smit with sudden pain.' +</pre> +<p class="noindent"> + I knew that set of volumes, their distressing uniformity of binding, + their full calf. Their very fellows lie mouldering in an East Anglian + garden, mellow enough by this time and strangely coloured. +</p> +<p> + Circumstances alter cases. Miss Harland thinks that if the life of + Charlotte Brontë's mother had been mercifully spared, the authoress of + <i>Jane Eyre</i> and <i>Villette</i> might have grown up more like Hannah More + than she actually did. Perhaps so. As I say, circumstances alter + cases, and if the works of Hannah More had been in my old home + library, I might have read <i>The Shepherd of Salisbury Plain</i> and + <i>The Search after Happiness</i> of a Sunday, and found solace therein. + But they were not there, and I had to get along as best I could with + the <i>Pilgrim's Progress</i>, stories by A.L.O.E., the crime-stained + page of Mrs. Sherwood's <i>Tales from the Church Catechism</i>, and, + 'more curious sport than that,' the <i>Bible in Spain</i> of the + never-sufficiently-bepraised George Borrow. +</p> +<p> + What, however, is a little odd about Miss Harland's enthusiasm for + Hannah More's writings is that it expires with the preface. <i>There</i>, + indeed, it glows with a beautiful light: +</p> +<blockquote> + 'And <i>The Search after Happiness!</i> You cannot have forgotten all of + the many lines we learned by heart on Sunday afternoons in the + joyful spring-time when we were obliged to clear the pages every + few minutes of yellow jessamine bells and purple Wistaria petals + flung down by the warm wind.' +</blockquote> +<p> + This passage lets us into the secret. I suspect in sober truth both + Miss Harland and her sister have long since forgotten all the lines in + <i>The Search after Happiness</i>, but what they have never forgotten, what + they never can forget, are the jessamine bells and the Wistaria + petals, yellow and purple, blown about in the warm winds that visited + their now desolate and forsaken Southern home. Less beautiful things + than jessamine and Wistaria, if only they clustered round the house + where you were born, are remembered when the lines of far better + authors than Miss Hannah More have gone clean out of your head: +</p> +<pre> + 'As life wanes, all its cares and strife and toil + Seem strangely valueless, while the old trees + Which grew by our youth's home, the waving mass + Of climbing plants heavy with bloom and dew, + The morning swallows with their songs like words— + All these seem dear, and only worth our thoughts.' +</pre> +<p> + Thus the youthful Browning in his marvellous <i>Pauline</i>. The same note + is struck after a humbler and perhaps more moving fashion in the + following simple strain of William Allingham: +</p> +<pre> + 'Four ducks on a pond, + A grass-bank beyond; + A blue sky of spring, + White clouds on the wing; + How little a thing + To remember for years— + To remember with tears!' +</pre> +<p> + If this be so—and who, looking into his own heart, but must own that + so it is?—it explains how it comes about that as soon as Miss Harland + finished her preface, got away from her childhood and began her + biography, she has so little to tell us about Miss More's books, and + from that little the personal note of enjoyment is entirely wanting. + Indeed, though a pious soul, she occasionally cannot restrain her + surprise how such ponderous commonplaces ever found a publisher, to + say nothing of a reader. +</p> +<p> + 'Such books as Miss More's,' she says, 'would to-day in America fall + from the press like a stone into the depths of the sea of oblivion, + creating no more sensation upon the surface than the bursting of a + bubble in mid-Atlantic.' +</p> +<p> + And again: +</p> +<p> + 'That Hannah More was a power for righteousness in her long + generation we must take upon the testimony of her best and wisest + contemporaries.' +</p> +<p> + However good may be your intentions, it seems hard to avoid being rude + to this excellent lady. +</p> +<p> + I confess I never liked her love story. Anything more cold-blooded I + never read. I am not going to repeat it. Why should I? It is told at + length in Miss More's authorized biography in four volumes by William + Roberts, Esq. I saw a copy yesterday exposed for sale in New Oxford + Street, price 1s. Miss Harland also tells the tale, not without + chuckling. I refer the curious to her pages. +</p> +<p> + Then there are those who can never get rid of the impression that + Hannah More 'fagged' her four sisters mercilessly; but who can tell? + Some people like being fagged. +</p> +<p> + Precisely <i>when</i> Miss More bade farewell to what in later life she was + fond of calling her gay days, when she wrote dull plays and went to + stupid Sunday parties, one finds it hard to discover, but at no time + did it ever come home to her that she needed repentance herself. She + seems always thinking of the sins and shortcomings of her neighbours, + rich and poor. Sometimes, indeed, when deluged with flattery, she + would intimate that she was a miserable sinner, but that is not what I + mean. She concerned herself greatly with the manners of the great, + and deplored their cards and fashionable falsehoods. John Newton, + captain as he had been of a slaver, saw the futility of such + pin-pricks: +</p> +<p> + 'The fashionable world,' so he wrote to Miss More, 'by their numbers + form a phalanx not easily impressible, and their habits of life are as + armour of proof which renders them not easily vulnerable. Neither the + rude club of a boisterous Reformer nor the pointed, delicate weapons + of the authoress before me can overthrow or rout them.' +</p> +<p> + But Miss More never forgot to lecture the rich or to patronize the + poor. +</p> +<p> + <i>Coelebs in Search of a Wife</i> is an impossible book, and I do not + believe Miss Harland has read it; but as for the famous <i>Shepherd</i>, we + are never allowed to forget how Mr. Wilberforce declared a few years + before his death, to the admiration of the religious world, that he + would rather present himself in heaven with <i>The Shepherd of Salisbury + Plain</i> in his hand than with—what think you?—<i>Peveril of the Peak</i>! + The bare notion of such a proceeding on anybody's part is enough to + strike one dumb with what would be horror, did not amazement swallow + up every other feeling. What rank Arminianism! I am sure the last + notion that ever would have entered the head of Sir Walter was to take + <i>Peveril</i> to heaven. +</p> +<p> + But whatever may be thought of the respective merits of Miss More's + nineteen volumes and Sir Walter's ninety-eight, there is no doubt that + Barley Wood was as much infested with visitors as ever was Abbotsford. + Eighty a week! +</p> +<p> + 'From twelve o'clock until three each day a constant stream of + carriages and pedestrians filled the evergreen bordered avenue + leading from the Wrington village road.' +</p> +<p> + Among them came Lady Gladstone and W.E.G., aged six, the latter + carrying away with him the <i>Sacred Dramas</i>, to be preserved during a + long life. +</p> +<p> + Miss More was a vivacious and agreeable talker, who certainly failed + to do herself justice with her pen. Her health was never good, yet, as + she survived thirty-five of her prescribing physicians, her vitality + must have been great. Her face in Opie's portrait is very pleasant. If + I was rude to her ten years ago, I apologize and withdraw; but as for + her books, I shall leave them where they are—buried in a cliff facing + due north, with nothing between them and the Pole but leagues upon + leagues of a wind-swept ocean. +</p> +<p> </p> + + +<a name="note-12"><!--Note--></a> +<p class="fnote"> <a href="#12"> +<sup><u>1</u></sup></a> See <i>Collected Essays</i>, ii. 255. +</p> + +<a name="note-13"><!--Note--></a> +<p class="fnote"><a href="#13"> +<sup><u>2</u></sup></a> <i>Hannah More</i>, by Marian Harland. New York and London: G.P. Putnam. +</p> + + +<a name="2H_4_17"><!-- H2 anchor --></a> +<p> </p> +<p> </p> +<p> </p> +<p> </p> +<h2> + ARTHUR YOUNG +</h2> +<p> </p> + +<p> + The name of Arthur Young is a familiar one to all readers of that + history which begins with the forebodings of the French Revolution. + Thousands of us learnt to be interested in him as the 'good Arthur,' + 'the excellent Arthur,' of Thomas Carlyle, a writer who had the art of + making not only his own narrative, but the sources of it, attractive. + Even 'Carrion-Heath,' in the famous introductory chapter to the + <i>Cromwell</i>, is invested with a kind of charm, whilst in the stormy + firmament of the <i>French Revolution</i> the star of Arthur Young twinkles + with a mild effulgency. The autobiography of such a man could hardly + fail to be interesting. <a name="14"></a> <a href="#note-14"><small><sup>1</sup></small></a> The 'good Arthur' was born in 1741, the + younger son of a small 'squarson' who inherited from his father the + manor of Bradfield Combust, in Suffolk, but held the living of Thames + Ditton. Here he made the acquaintance of the Onslow family, and + Speaker Onslow was one of Arthur's godfathers. The Rev. Dr. Young died + in 1759, much in debt. The Bradfield property had been settled for + life on his wife, who had brought her husband some fortune, and to + the manor-house she retired to economize. +</p> + +<p> + Arthur's education had been muddled; and an attempt to make a merchant + of him having fallen through, he found himself, on his father's death, + aged eighteen, 'without education, profession, or employment,' and his + whole fortune, during his mother's life, consisting of a copyhold farm + of 20 acres, producing as many pounds. In these circumstances, to + think of literature was well-nigh inevitable, and, in 1762, the + autobiography tells us: +</p> +<blockquote> + 'I set on foot a periodical publication, entitled the <i>Universal + Museum</i>, which came out monthly, printed with glorious imprudence + on my own account. I waited on Dr. Johnson, who was sitting by the + fire so half-dressed and slovenly a figure as to make me stare at + him. I stated my plan, and begged that he would favour me with a + paper once a month, offering at the same time any remuneration that + he might name.' +</blockquote> +<p> + Here we see dimly prefigured a modern editor prematurely soliciting + the support of Great Names. But the Cham of literature, himself the + son of a bookseller, would have none of it. +</p> +<blockquote> + '"No, sir," he replied; "such a work would be sure to fail if the + booksellers have not the property, and you will lose a great deal + of money by it."<br><br> + + '"Certainly, sir," I said, "if I am not fortunate enough to induce + authors of real talent to contribute."<br><br> + + '"No, sir, you are mistaken; such authors will not support such a + work, nor will you persuade them to write in it. You will purchase + disappointment by the loss of your money, and I advise you by all + means to give up the plan."<br><br> + + 'Somebody was introduced, and I took my leave.' +</blockquote> +<p> + The <i>Universal Museum</i>, none the less, appeared, but after five + numbers Young 'procured a meeting of ten or a dozen booksellers, and + had the luck and address to persuade them to take the whole scheme + upon themselves.' He then calmly adds, 'I believe no success ever + attended it.' It was, indeed, 100 years before its time. Literature + abandoned, Young took one of his mother's farms. 'I had no more idea + of farming than of physic or divinity,' nor did he, man of European + reputation as a farmer though he soon became, ever make farming pay. + He had an itching pen, and after four years' farming (1763-1766) he + published the result of his experience. Never, surely, before has an + author spoken of his first-born as in the autobiography Young speaks + of this publication: +</p> +<blockquote> + 'And the circumstance which perhaps of all others in my life I + most deeply regretted and considered as a sin of the blackest dye + was the publishing of my experience during these four years, + which, speaking as a farmer, was nothing but ignorance, folly, + presumption, and rascality.' +</blockquote> +<p> + None the less, it was writing this rascally book that seems to have + given him the idea of those agricultural tours which were to make his + name famous throughout the world. His Southern tour was in 1767, his + Northern in 1768, and his Eastern in 1770. The subject he specially + illuminated in these epoch-making books was the rotation of crops, + though he occasionally diverged upon deep-ploughing and kindred + themes. The tours excited, for the first time, the agricultural spirit + of Great Britain, and their author almost at once became a celebrated + man. +</p> +<p> + In 1765 Young married the wrong woman, and started upon a career of + profound matrimonial discomfort, and even misery; a blunt, truthful + writer, he makes no bones about it. It was an unhappy marriage from + its beginning in 1765 to its end in 1815. Young himself, though by no + means vivacious in this autobiography, where he frankly complains of + himself as having no more wit than a fig, was a very popular person + with all classes and both sexes. He was an enormous diner-out, and his + authority as an agriculturist, united to his undeniable charm as a + companion, threw open to him all the great places in the country. But + his finances were a perpetual trouble. On carrot seeds and cabbages he + was an authority, but from 1766-1775 his income never exceeded £300 a + year. He had an excellent mother, whom he dearly loved, and who with + the characteristic bluntness of the family bade him think less about + carrots and more about his Creator. 'You may call all this rubbish if + you please, but a time will come when you will be convinced whose + notions are rubbish, yours or mine.' And the old lady was quite right, + as mothers so frequently turn out to be. In 1778 Young went over to + Ireland as agent to Lord Kingsborough. He got £500 down, and was to + have an annual salary of £500 and a house. Young soon got to work, and + became anxious to persuade his employer to let his lands direct to the + occupying cottar, and so get rid of the middlemen. This did not suit a + certain Major Thornhill, a relative and leaseholder, and thereupon a + pretty plot was hatched. Lady K. had a Catholic governess, a Miss + Crosby, upon whom it was thought my lord occasionally cast the eye of + partiality, whilst Arthur himself got on very well with her ladyship, + who was heard to pronounce him to be, as he was, 'one of the most + lively, agreeable fellows.' Out of these materials the Major and his + helpmeet concocted a double plot—namely, to make the lord jealous of + the steward, and the lady jealous of the governess, and to cause both + lord and lady respectively to believe that the steward was deeply + engaged both in abetting the amour of the lord and the governess, and + in prosecuting his own amour with the lady. The result was that both + governess and steward got notice to quit; but—and this is very + Irish—both went off with life annuities, the governess with one of + £50 per annum, and the steward with one of £72, and, what is still + more odd, we find Young at the end of his life in receipt of his + annuity. They were an expensive couple, these two. +</p> +<p> + In 1780 Young published his <i>Irish Tour</i>, which was immediately + successful and popular in both kingdoms. In it he attacked the bounty + paid on the land-carriage of corn to Dublin. The bounty was, in the + session of Parliament next after the publication of Young's book, + reduced by one-half, and soon given up entirely. Young maintains that + this saved Ireland £80,000 a year. Nobody seems to have said 'Thank + you.' +</p> +<p> + In May, 1783, was born the child 'Bobbin,' whose death, fourteen years + later, was to change the current of Young's life. The following year + Arthur Young paid his first visit to France, confining himself, + however, to Calais and its neighbourhood, and in the same year his + mother died, and, by an arrangement with his eldest brother, 'this + patch of landed property,' as Young calls Bradfield, descended upon + him. His first famous journey in France was made between May and + November, 1787, and cost the marvellously small sum of £118 15s. 2d. + His second and third French journeys were made in July, 1788, and in + June, 1789. The third was the longest, and extended into 1790. Three + years later Young was appointed, by Pitt, Secretary of the then Board + of Agriculture. A melancholy account is given by Young of a visit he + paid Burke at Gregory's in 1796. Young drove there in the chariot of + his fussy chief, Sir John Sinclair, to discover what Burke's + intentions might be as to an intended publication of his relating to + the price of labour. The account, which occupies four pages, is too + long for quotation. It concludes thus: +</p> +<blockquote> + 'I am glad once more to have seen and conversed with the man who I + hold to possess the greatest and most brilliant gifts of any penman + of the age in which he lived. Whose conversation has often + fascinated me, whose eloquence has charmed; whose writings have + delighted and instructed the world; whose name will without + question descend to the latest posterity. But to behold so great a + genius, so deepened with melancholy, stooping with infirmity of + body, feeling the anguish of a lacerated mind, and sinking to the + grave under accumulated misery—to see all this in a character I + venerate, and apparently without resource or comfort, wounded + every feeling of my soul, and I left him the next day almost as + low-spirited as himself.' +</blockquote> +<p> + But Young himself was soon to pass into the same Valley of the Shadow, + not so much of Death as of Joyless Life. His beloved and idolized + Bobbin died on July 14, 1797. She seems to have been a wise little + maiden, to whom her father wrote most affectionate letters, full of + rather unsuitable details, political and financial and otherwise, and + not scrupling to speak of the child's mother in a disagreeable manner. + Bobbin replies with delightful composure to these worrying letters: +</p> +<blockquote> + 'I have just got six of the most beautiful little rabbits you ever + saw; they skip about so prettily you can't think, and I shall have + some more in a few weeks. Having had so much physic, I am right + down tired of it. I take it still twice a day—my appetite is + better. What can you mind politics so for? I don't think about + them.—Well, good-bye, and believe me, dear papa, your dutiful + Daughter.' +</blockquote> +<p> + After poor little Bobbin's death, it happened to Arthur Young even as + his mother foretold. Carrots and crops and farming tours hastily + retreat, and we find the eminent agriculturist busying himself, with + the same seriousness and good faith he had devoted to the rotation of + the crops, with the sermons and treatises of Clarke and Jortin and + Secker and Tillotson, etc., and all to discover what had become of his + dear little Bobbin. His outlook upon the world was changed—the great + parties at Petworth, at Euston, at Woburn struck him differently; the + huge irreligion of the world filled him as for the first time with + amazement and horror: +</p> +<blockquote> + 'How few years are passed since I should have pushed on eagerly to + Woburn! This time twelve months I dined with the Duke on + Sunday—the party not very numerous, but chiefly of rank—the + entertainment more splendid than usual there. He expects me to-day, + but I have more pleasure in resting, going twice to church, and + eating a morsel of cold lamb at a very humble inn, than partaking + of gaiety and dissipation at a great table which might as well be + spread for a company of heathens as English lords and men of + fashion.' +</blockquote> +<p> + It is all mighty fine calling this religious hypochondria and + depression of spirits. It is one of the facts of life. Young stuck to + his post, and did his work, and quarrelled with his wife to the end, + or nearly so. He cannot have been so lively and agreeable a companion + as of old, for we find him in November, 1806, at Euston, endeavouring + to impress on the Duke of Grafton that by his tenets he had placed + himself entirely under the covenant of works, and that he must be + tried for them, and that 'I would not be in such a situation for ten + thousand worlds. He was mild and more patient than I expected.' + Perhaps, after all, Carlyle was not so far wrong when he praised our + aristocracy for their 'politeness.' In 1808 Young became blind. In + 1815 his wife died. In 1820 he died himself, leaving behind him seven + packets of manuscript and twelve folio volumes of correspondence. +</p> +<p> + Young's great work, <i>Travels during the Years 1787, 1788, and 1789, + undertaken more particularly with a View of Ascertaining the + Cultivation, Wealth, Resources, and National Prosperity of the Kingdom + of France</i>, published in 1792, is one of those books which will always + be a great favourite with somebody. It will outlive eloquence and + outstay philosophy. It contains some famous passages. +</p> +<p> </p> + +<a name="note-14"><!--Note--></a> +<p class="fnote"><a href="#14"> +<sup><u>1</u></sup></a> <i>The Autobiography of Arthur Young</i>. Edited by M. Betham + Edwards. Smith, Elder and Co. +</p> + +<a name="2H_4_18"><!-- H2 anchor --></a> +<p> </p> +<p> </p> +<p> </p> +<p> </p> +<h2> + THOMAS PAINE +</h2> +<p> </p> + +<p> + Proverbs are said to be but half-truths, but 'give a dog a bad name + and hang him' is a saying almost as veracious as it is felicitous; and + to no one can it possibly be applied with greater force than to Thomas + Paine, the rebellious staymaker, the bankrupt tobacconist, the amazing + author of <i>Common-sense</i>, <i>The Rights of Man</i>, and <i>The Age of Reason</i>. +</p> +<p> + Until quite recently Tom Paine lay without the pale of toleration. No + circle of liberality was constructed wide enough to include him. Even + the scouted Unitarian scouted Thomas. He was 'the infamous Paine,' + 'the vulgar atheist.' Whenever mentioned in pious discourse it was but + to be waved on one side as thus: 'No one of my hearers is likely to be + led astray by the scurrilous blasphemies of Paine.' +</p> +<p> + I can well remember when an asserted intimacy with the writings of + Paine marked a man from his fellows and invested him in children's + minds with a horrid fascination. The writings themselves were only to + be seen in bookshops of evil reputation, and, when hastily turned over + with furtive glances, proved to be printed in small type and on + villainous paper. For a boy to have bought them and taken them inside + a decent home would have been to run the risk of fierce wrath in this + life and the threat of it in the next. If ever there was a hung dog, + his name was Tom Paine. +</p> +<p> + But History is, as we know, for ever revising her records. None of her + judgments are final. A life of Thomas Paine, in two portly and + well-printed volumes, with gilt tops, wide margins, spare leaves at + the end, and all the other signs and tokens of literary + respectability, has lately appeared. No President, no Prime + Minister—nay, no Bishop or Moderator—need hope to have his memoirs + printed in better style than are these of Thomas Paine, by Mr. Moncure + D. Conway. Were any additional proof required of the complete + resuscitation of Paine's reputation, it might be found in the fact + that his life <i>is</i> in two volumes, though it would have been far + better told in one. +</p> +<p> + Mr. Conway believes implicitly in Paine—not merely in his virtue and + intelligence, but that he was a truly great man, who played a great + part in human affairs. He will no more admit that Paine was a + busybody, inflated with conceit and with a strong dash of insolence, + than he will that Thomas was a drunkard. That Paine's speech was + undoubtedly plain and his nose undeniably red is as far as Mr. Conway + will go. If we are to follow the biographer the whole way, we must not + only unhang the dog, but give him sepulture amongst the sceptred + Sovereigns who rule us from their urns. +</p> +<p> + Thomas Paine was born at Thetford, in Norfolk, in January, 1737, and + sailed for America in 1774, then being thirty-seven years of age. Up + to this date he was a rank failure. His trade was staymaking, but he + had tried his hand at many things. He was twice an Excise officer, but + was twice dismissed the service, the first time for falsely + pretending to have made certain inspections which, in fact, he had not + made, and the second time for carrying on business in an excisable + article—tobacco, to wit—without the leave of the Board. Paine had + married the tobacconist's business, but neither the marriage nor the + business prospered; the second was sold by auction, and the first + terminated by mutual consent. +</p> +<p> + Mr. Conway labours over these early days of his hero very much, but he + can make nothing of them. Paine was an Excise officer at Lewes, where, + so Mr. Conway reminds us, 'seven centuries before Paine opened his + office in Lewes, came Harold's son, possibly to take charge of the + Excise as established by Edward the Confessor, just deceased.' This + device of biographers is a little stale. The Confessor was guiltless + of the Excise. +</p> +<p> + Paine's going to America was due to Benjamin Franklin, who made + Paine's acquaintance in London, and, having the wit to see his + ability, recommended him 'as a clerk or assistant-tutor in a school or + assistant-surveyor.' Thus armed, Paine made his appearance in + Philadelphia, where he at once obtained employment as editor of an + intended periodical called the <i>Pennsylvanian Magazine or American + Museum</i>, the first number of which appeared in January, 1775. Never + was anything luckier. Paine was, without knowing it, a born + journalist. His capacity for writing on the spur of the moment was + endless, and his delight in doing so boundless. He had no difficulty + for 'copy', though in those days contributors were few. He needed no + contributors. He was 'Atlanticus'; he was 'Vox Populi'; he was + 'Aesop.' The unsigned articles were also mostly his. Having at last, + after many adventures and false starts, found his vocation, Paine + stuck to it. He spent the rest of his days with a pen in his hand, + scribbling his advice and obtruding his counsel on men and nations. + Both were usually of excellent quality. +</p> +<p> + Paine was also happy in the moment of his arrival in America. The War + of Independence was imminent, and in April, 1775, occurred 'the + massacre of Lexington.' The Colonists were angry, but puzzled. They + hardly knew what they wanted. They lacked a definite opinion to + entertain and a cry to asseverate. Paine had no doubts. He hated + British institutions with all the hatred of a civil servant who has + had 'the sack.' +</p> +<p> + In January, 1776, he published his pamphlet <i>Common-sense</i>, which must + be ranked with the most famous pamphlets ever written. It is difficult + to wade through now, but even <i>The Conduct of the Allies</i> is not easy + reading, and yet between Paine and Swift there is a great gulf fixed. + The keynote of <i>Common-sense</i> was separation once and for ever, and + the establishment of a great Republic of the West. It hit between wind + and water, had a great sale, and made its author a personage and, in + his own opinion, a divinity. +</p> +<p> + Paine now became the penman of the rebels. His series of manifestoes, + entitled <i>The Crisis</i>, were widely read and carried healing on their + wings, and in 1777 he was elected Secretary to the Committee of + Foreign Affairs. Charles Lamb once declared that Rousseau was a good + enough Jesus Christ for the French, and he was capable of declaring + Tom Paine a good enough Milton for the Yankees. However that may be, + Paine was an indefatigable and useful public servant. He was a bad + gauger for King George, but he was an admirable scribe for a + revolution conducted on constitutional principles. +</p> +<p> + To follow his history through the war would be tedious. What + Washington and Jefferson really thought of him we shall never know. + He was never mercenary, but his pride was wounded that so little + recognition of his astounding services was forthcoming. The + ingratitude of Kings was a commonplace; the ingratitude of peoples an + unpleasing novelty. But Washington bestirred himself at last, and + Paine was voted an estate of 277 acres, more or less, and a sum of + money. This was in 1784. +</p> +<p> + Three years afterwards Thomas visited England, where he kept good + company and was very usefully employed engineering, for which + excellent pursuit he would appear to have had great natural aptitude. + Blackfriars Bridge had just tumbled down, and it was Paine's laudable + ambition to build its successor in iron. But the Bastille fell down as + well as Blackfriars Bridge, and was too much for Paine. As Mr. Conway + beautifully puts it: 'But again the Cause arose before him; he must + part from all—patent interests, literary leisure, fine society—and + take the hand of Liberty undowered, but as yet unstained. He must beat + his bridge-iron into a key that shall unlock the British Bastille, + whose walls he sees steadily closing around the people.' 'Miching + mallecho—this means mischief;' and so it proved. +</p> +<p> + Burke is responsible for the <i>Rights of Man</i>. This splendid + sentimentalist published his <i>Reflections on the Revolution in France</i> + in November, 1790. Paine immediately sat down in the Angel, Islington, + and began his reply. He was not unqualified to answer Burke; he had + fought a good fight between the years 1775 and 1784. Mr. Conway has + some ground for his epigram, 'where Burke had dabbled, Paine had + dived.' There is nothing in the <i>Rights of Man</i> which would now + frighten, though some of its expressions might still shock, a + lady-in-waiting; but to profess Republicanism in 1791 was no joke, and + the book was proclaimed and Paine prosecuted. Acting upon the advice + of William Blake (the truly sublime), Paine escaped to France, where + he was elected by three departments to a seat in the Convention, and + in that Convention he sat from September, 1792, to December, 1793, + when he was found quarters in the Luxembourg Prison. +</p> +<p> + This invitation to foreigners to take part in the conduct of the + French Revolution was surely one of the oddest things that ever + happened, but Paine thought it natural enough so far, at least, as he + was concerned. He could not speak a word of French, and all his + harangues had to be translated and read to the Convention by a + secretary, whilst Thomas stood smirking in the Tribune. His behaviour + throughout was most creditable to him. He acted with the Girondists, + and strongly opposed and voted against the murder of the King. His + notion of a revolution was one by pamphlet, and he shrank from deeds + of blood. His whole position was false and ridiculous. He really + counted for nothing. The members of the Convention grew tired of his + doctrinaire harangues, which, in fact, bored them not a little; but + they respected his enthusiasm and the part he had played in America, + whither they would gladly he had returned. Who put him in prison is a + mystery. Mr. Conway thinks it was the American Minister in Paris, + Gouverneur Morris. He escaped the guillotine, and was set free after + ten months' confinement. +</p> +<p> + All this time Washington had not moved a finger in behalf of the + author of <i>Common-sense</i> and <i>The Crisis</i>. Amongst Paine's papers this + epigram was found: +</p> +<pre> + 'ADVICE TO THE STATUARY WHO IS TO + EXECUTE THE STATUE OF WASHINGTON. + + Take from the mine the coldest, hardest stone; + It needs no fashion—it is Washington. + But if you chisel, let the stroke be rude, + And on his heart engrave—"Ingratitude."' +</pre> +<p class="noindent"> + This is hard hitting. +</p> +<p> + So far we have only had the Republican Paine, the outlaw Paine; the + atheist Paine has not appeared. He did so in the <i>Age of Reason</i>, + first published in 1794-1795. The object of this book was religious. + Paine was a vehement believer in God and in the Divine government of + the world, but he was not, to put it mildly, a Bible Christian. Nobody + now is ever likely to read the <i>Age of Reason</i> for instruction or + amusement. Who now reads even Mr. Greg's <i>Creed of Christendom</i>, which + is in effect, though not in substance, the same kind of book? Paine + was a coarse writer, without refinement of nature, and he used brutal + expressions and hurled his vulgar words about in a manner certain to + displease. Still, despite it all, the <i>Age of Reason</i> is a religious + book, though a singularly unattractive one. +</p> +<p> + Paine remained in France advocating all kinds of things, including a + descent on England, the abduction of the Royal Family, and a Free + Constitution. Napoleon sought him out, and assured him that he + (Napoleon) slept with the <i>Rights of Man</i> under his pillow. Paine + believed him. +</p> +<p> + In 1802 Paine returned to America, after fifteen years' absence. +</p> +<p> + 'Thou stricken friend of man,' exclaims Mr. Conway in a fine passage, + 'who hast appealed from the God of Wrath to the God of Humanity, see + in the distance that Maryland coast which early voyagers called + Avalon, and sing again your song when first stepping on that shore + twenty-seven years ago.' +</p> +<p> + The rest of Paine's life was spent in America without distinction or + much happiness. He continued writing to the last, and died bravely on + the morning of June 8, 1809. +</p> +<p> + The Americans did not appreciate Paine's theology, and in 1819 allowed + Cobbett to carry the bones of the author of <i>Common-sense</i> to England, + where—'as rare things will,' so, at least, Mr. Browning sings—they + vanished. Nobody knows what has become of them. +</p> +<p> + As a writer Paine has no merits of a lasting character, but he had a + marvellous journalistic knack for inventing names and headings. He is + believed to have concocted the two phrases 'The United States of + America' and 'The Religion of Humanity.' Considering how little he had + read, his discourses on the theory of government are wonderful, and + his views generally were almost invariably liberal, sensible, and + humane. What ruined him was an intolerable self-conceit, which led him + to believe that his own productions superseded those of other men. He + knew off by heart, and was fond of repeating, his own <i>Common-sense</i> + and the <i>Rights of Man</i>. He was destitute of the spirit of research, + and was wholly without one shred of humility. He was an oddity, a + character, but he never took the first step towards becoming a great + man. +</p> +<a name="2H_4_19"><!-- H2 anchor --></a> +<p> </p> +<p> </p> +<p> </p> +<p> </p> +<h2> + CHARLES BRADLAUGH <a name="15"></a> <a href="#note-15"><small><sup>1</sup></small></a> +</h2> +<p> </p> + +<p> + Mr. Bradlaugh was a noticeable man, and his life, even though it + appears in the unwelcome but familiar shape of two octavo volumes, is + a noticeable book. It is useless to argue with biographers; they, at + all events, are neither utilitarians nor opportunists, but idealists + pure and simple. What is the good of reminding them, being so + majestical, of Guizot's pertinent remark, 'that if a book is + unreadable it will not be read,' or of the older saying, 'A great book + is a great evil'? for all such observations they simply put on one + side as being, perhaps, true for others, but not for them. Had <i>Mr. + Bradlaugh's Life</i> been just half the size it would have had, at least, + twice as many readers. +</p> +<p> + The pity is all the greater because Mrs. Bonner has really performed a + difficult task after a noble fashion and in a truly pious spirit. Her + father's life was a melancholy one, and it became her duty as his + biographer to break a silence on painful subjects about which he had + preferred to say nothing. His reticence was a manly reticence; though + a highly sensitive mortal, he preferred to put up with calumny rather + than lay bare family sorrows and shame. His daughter, though compelled + to break this silence, has done so in a manner full of dignity and + feeling. The ruffians who in times past slandered the moral character + of Bradlaugh will not probably read his life, nor, if they did, would + they repent of their baseness. The willingness to believe everything + evil of an adversary is incurable, springing as it does from a habit + of mind. It was well said by Mr. Mill: 'I have learned from experience + that many false opinions may be exchanged for true ones, without in + the least altering the habits of mind of which false opinions are the + result.' Now that Mr. Bradlaugh is dead, no purpose is served by + repeating false accusations as to his treatment of his wife, or of his + pious brother, or as to his disregard of family ties; but the next + atheist who crops up must not expect any more generous treatment than + Bradlaugh received from that particularly odious class of persons of + whom it has been wittily said that so great is their zeal for + religion, they have never time to say their prayers. +</p> +<p> + Mr. Bradlaugh will, I suppose, be hereafter described in the + dictionaries of biography as 'Freethinker and Politician.' Of the + politician there is here no need to speak. He was a Radical of the + old-fashioned type. When he first stood for Northampton in 1868, his + election address was made up of tempting dishes, which afterwards + composed Mr. Chamberlain's famous but unauthorized programme of 1885, + with minority representation thrown in. Unpopular thinkers who have + been pelted with stones by Christians, slightly the worse for liquor, + are apt to think well of minorities. Mr. Bradlaugh's Radicalism had + an individualistic flavour. He thought well of thrift, thereby + incurring censure. Mr. Bradlaugh's politics are familiar enough. What + about his freethinking? English freethinkers may be divided into two + classes—those who have been educated and those who have had to + educate themselves. The former class might apply to their own case the + language once employed by Dr. Newman to describe himself and his + brethren of the Oratory: +</p> +<blockquote> + 'We have been nourished for the greater part of our lives in the + bosom of the great schools and universities of Protestant England; + we have been the foster foster-sons of the Edwards and Henries, the + Wykehams and Wolseys, of whom Englishmen are wont to make so much; + we have grown up amid hundreds of contemporaries, scattered at + present all over the country in those special ranks of society + which are the very walk of a member of the legislature.' +</blockquote> +<p> + These first-class free-thinkers have an excellent time of it, and, to + use a fashionable phrase, 'do themselves very well indeed.' They move + freely in society; their books lie on every table; they hob-a-nob with + Bishops; and when they come to die, their orthodox relations gather + round them, and lay them in the earth 'in the sure and certain + hope'—so, at least, priestly lips are found willing to assert—'of + the resurrection to eternal life through our Lord Jesus Christ.' And + yet there was not a dogma of the Christian faith in which they were in + a position to profess their belief. +</p> +<p> + The free-thinkers of the second class, poor fellows! have hitherto led + very different lives. Their foster-parents have been poverty and + hardship; their school education has usually terminated at eleven; all + their lives they have been desperately poor; alone, unaided, they + have been left to fight the battle of a Free Press. +</p> +<p> + Richard Carlile, as honourable a man as most, and between whose + religious opinions and (let us say) Lord Palmerston's there was + probably no difference worth mentioning, spent nine out of the + fifty-two years of his life in prison. Attorney-Generals, and, indeed, + every degree of prosecuting counsel have abused this kind of + free-thinker, not merely with professional impunity, but amidst + popular applause. Judges, speaking with emotion, have exhibited the + utmost horror of atheistical opinions, and have railed in good set + terms at the wretch who has been dragged before them, and have then, + at the rising of the court, proceeded to their club and played cards + till dinner-time with a first-class free-thinker for partner. +</p> +<p> + This is natural and easily accounted for, but we need not be surprised + if, in the biographies of second-class freethinkers, bitterness is + occasionally exhibited towards the well-to-do brethren who decline + what Dr. Bentley, in his Boyle Lectures, called 'the public odium and + resentment of the magistrate.' +</p> +<p> + Mr. Bradlaugh was a freethinker of the second class. His father was a + solicitor's clerk on a salary which never exceeded £2 2s. a week; his + mother had been a nursery-maid; and he himself was born in 1833 in + Bacchus Walk, Hoxton. At seven he went to a national school, but at + eleven his school education ended, and he became an office-boy. At + fourteen he was a wharf-clerk and cashier to a coal-merchant. His + parents were not much addicted to church-going, but Charles was from + the first a serious boy, and became at a somewhat early age a + Sunday-school teacher at St. Peter's, Hackney Road. The incumbent, in + order to prepare him for Confirmation, set him to work to extract the + Thirty-nine Articles out of the four Gospels. Unhappy task, worthy to + be described by the pen of the biographer of John Sterling. The + youthful wharfinger could not find the Articles in the Gospels, and + informed the Rev. J.G. Packer of the fact. His letter conveying this + intelligence is not forthcoming, and probably enough contained + offensive matter, for Mr. Packer seems at once to have denounced young + Bradlaugh as one engaged in atheistical inquiries, to have suspended + him from the Sunday-school, to have made it very disagreeable for him + at home and with his employer, and to have wound up by giving him + three days to change his views or to lose his place. +</p> +<p> + Mr. Packer has been well abused, but it has never been the fashion to + treat youthful atheists with much respect. When Coleridge confided to + the Rev. James Boyer that he (S.T. Coleridge) was inclined to atheism, + the reverend gentleman had him stripped and flogged. Mr. Packer, + however, does seem to have been too hasty, for Bradlaugh did not + formally abandon his beliefs until some months after his suspension. + He retired for a short season, and studied Hebrew under Mr. James + Savage, of Circus Street, Marylebone. He emerged an unbeliever, aged + sixteen. Expelled from his wharf, he sold coal on commission, but his + principal, if not his only customer, the wife of a baker, discovering + that he was an infidel, gave him no more orders, being afraid, so she + said, that her bread would smell of brimstone. +</p> +<p> + In 1850 Bradlaugh published his first pamphlet, <i>A Few Words on the + Christian Creed</i>, and dedicated it to the unhappy Mr. Packer. But + starvation stared him in the face, and in the same year he enlisted in + the 7th Dragoon Guards, and spent the next three years in Ireland, + where he earned a good character, and on more occasions than one + showed that adroitness for which he was afterwards remarkable. +</p> +<p> + In October, 1853, his mother and sister with great difficulty raised + the £30 necessary to buy his discharge, and Bradlaugh returned to + London, not only full grown, but well fed. Had he not taken the + Queen's shilling he never would have lived to fight the battle he did. +</p> +<p> + He became a solicitor's clerk on a miserably small pay, and took to + lecturing as 'Iconoclast.' In 1855 he was married at St. Philip's + Church, Stepney. His lectures and discussions began to assume great + proportions, and covered more than twenty years of his life. Terribly + hard work they were. Profits there were none, or next to none. Few men + have endured greater hardships. +</p> +<p> + In 1860 the <i>National Reformer</i> was started, and his warfare in the + courts began. In 1868 he first stood for Northampton, which he + unsuccessfully contested three times. In April, 1880, he was returned + to Parliament, and then began the famous struggle with which the + constitutional historian will have to deal. After this date the facts + are well known. Bradlaugh died on January 30, 1891. +</p> +<p> + His life was a hard one from beginning to end. He had no advantages. + Nobody really helped him or influenced him or mollified him. He had + never either money or repose; he had no time to travel, except as a + propagandist, no time to acquire knowledge for its own sake; he was + often abused but seldom criticised. In a single sentence, he was never + taught the extent of his own ignorance. +</p> +<p> + His attitude towards the Christian religion and the Bible was a + perfectly fair one, and ought not to have brought down upon him any + abuse whatever. There are more ways than one of dealing with religion. + It may be approached as a mystery or as a series of events supported + by testimony. If the evidence is trustworthy, if the witnesses are + irreproachable, if they submit successfully to examination and + cross-examination, then, however remarkable or out of the way may be + the facts to which they depose, they are entitled to be believed. This + is a mode of treatment with which we are all familiar, whether as + applied to the Bible or to the authority of the Church. Nobody is + expected to believe in the authority of the Church until satisfied + by the exercise of his reason that the Church in question possesses + 'the notes' of a true Church. This was the aspect of the question + which engaged Bradlaugh's attention. He was critical, legal. He + took objections, insisted on discrepancies, cross-examined as to + credibility, and came to the conclusion that the case for the + supernatural was not made out. And this he did not after the + first-class fashion in the study or in octavo volumes, but in the + street. His audiences were not Mr. Mudie's subscribers, but men and + women earning weekly wages. The coarseness of his language, the + offensiveness of his imagery, have been greatly exaggerated. It is now + a good many years since I heard him lecture in a northern town on the + Bible to an audience almost wholly composed of artisans. He was bitter + and aggressive, but the treatment he was then experiencing accounted + for this. As an avowed atheist he received no quarter, and he might + fairly say with Wilfred Osbaldistone, 'It's hard I should get raps + over the costard, and only pay you back in make-believes.' +</p> +<p> + It was not what Bradlaugh said, but the people he said it to, that + drew down upon him the censure of the magistrate, and (unkindest cut + of all) the condemnation of the House of Commons. +</p> +<p> + Of all the evils from which the lovers of religion do well to pray + that their faith may be delivered, the worst is that it should ever + come to be discussed across the floor of the House of Commons. The + self-elected champions of the Christian faith who then ride into the + lists are of a kind well calculated to make Piety hide her head for + very shame. Rowdy noblemen, intemperate country gentlemen, sterile + lawyers, cynical but wealthy sceptics who maintain religion as another + fence round their property, hereditary Nonconformists whose God is + respectability and whose goal a baronetcy, contrive, with a score or + two of bigots thrown in, to make a carnival of folly, a veritable + devil's dance of blasphemy. The debates on Bradlaugh's oath-taking + extended over four years, and will make melancholy reading for + posterity. Two figures, and two figures only, stand out in solitary + grandeur, those of a Quaker and an Anglican—Bright and Gladstone. +</p> +<p> + The conclusion which an attentive reading of Mr. Bradlaugh's biography + forces upon me is that in all probability he was the last freethinker + who will be exposed, for many a long day (it would be more than + usually rash to write 'ever'), to pains and penalties for uttering his + unbelief. It is true the Blasphemy Laws are not yet repealed; it may + be true for all I know that Christianity is still part and parcel + of the common law; it is possibly an indictable offence to lend + <i>Literature and Dogma</i> and <i>God and the Bible</i> to a friend; but, + however these things may be, Mr. Bradlaugh's stock-in-trade is now + free of the market-place, where just at present, at all events, its + price is low. It has become pretty plain that neither the Fortress of + Holy Scripture nor the Rock of Church Authority is likely to be taken + by storm. The Mystery of Creation, the unsolvable problem of matter, + continue to press upon us more heavily than ever. Neither by Paleys + nor by Bradlaughs will religion be either bolstered up or pulled down. + Sceptics and Sacramentarians must be content to put up with one + another's vagaries for some time to come. Indeed, the new socialists, + though at present but poor theologians (one hasty reading of <i>Lux + Mundi</i> does not make a theologian), are casting favourable eyes + upon Sacramentarianism, deeming it to have a distinct flavour of + Collectivism. Calvinism, on the other hand, is considered repulsively + individualistic, being based upon the notion that it is the duty of + each man to secure his own salvation. +</p> +<p> + But whether Bradlaugh was the last of his race or not, he was a + brave man whose life well deserves an honourable place amongst the + biographies of those Radicals who have suffered in the cause of + Free-thought, and into the fruits of whose labours others have + entered. +</p> +<p> </p> + +<a name="note-15"><!--Note--></a> +<p class="fnote"> <a href="#15"> +<sup><u>1</u></sup></a> <i>Charles Bradlaugh: A Record of His Life and Work</i>. By his daughter, Hypatia Bradlaugh Bonner. Two vols. London: T. Fisher + Unwin, 1894. +</p> + +<a name="2H_4_20"><!-- H2 anchor --></a> +<p> </p> +<p> </p> +<p> </p> +<p> </p> +<h2> + DISRAELI <i>EX RELATIONE</i> SIR WILLIAM FRASER +</h2> +<p> </p> + +<p> + The late Sir William Fraser was not, I have been told, a popular + person in that society about which he thought so much, and his book, + <i>Disraeli and His Day</i>, did not succeed in attracting much of the + notice of the general reader, and failed, so I, at least, have been + made to understand, to win a verdict of approval from the really well + informed. +</p> +<p> + I consider the book a very good one, in the sense of being valuable. + Whatever your mood may be, that of the moralist, cynic, satirist, + humourist, whether you love, pity, or despise your fellow-man, here is + grist for your mill. It feeds the mind. +</p> +<p> + Although in form the book is but a stringing together of stories, + incidents, and aphorisms, still the whole produces a distinct effect. + To state what that effect is would be, I suppose, the higher + criticism. It is not altogether disagreeable; it is decidedly amusing; + it is clever and somewhat contemptible. Sir William Fraser was a + baronet who thought well of his order. He desiderated a tribunal to + determine the right to the title, and he opined that the courtesy + prefix of 'Honourable,' which once, it appears, belonged to baronets, + should be restored to them. Apart from these opinions, ridiculous and + peculiar, Sir William Fraser stands revealed in this volume as cast in + a familiar mould. The words 'gentleman,' 'White's,' 'Society,' often + flow from his pen, and we may be sure were engraven on his heart. He + had seen a world wrecked. When he was young, so he tells his readers, + the world consisted of at least three, and certainly not more than + five, hundred persons who were accustomed night after night during the + season to make their appearance at a certain number of houses, which + are affectionately enumerated. A new face at any one of these + gatherings immediately attracted attention, as, indeed, it is easy to + believe it would. 'Anything for a change,' as somebody observes in + <i>Pickwick</i>. +</p> +<p> + This is the atmosphere of the book, and Sir William breathes in it + very pleasantly. Endowed by Nature with a retentive memory and a + literary taste, active if singular, he may be discovered in his own + pages moving up and down, in and out of society, supplying and + correcting quotations, and gratifying the vanity of distinguished + authors by remembering their own writings better than they did + themselves. The book makes one clearly comprehend what a monstrous + clever fellow the rank and file of the Tory party must have felt Sir + William Fraser to be. This, however, is only background. In the front + of the picture we have the mysterious outlines, the strange + personality, struggling between the bizarre and the romantic, of 'the + Jew,' as big George Bentinck was ever accustomed to denominate his + leader. Sir William Fraser's Disraeli is a very different figure from + Sir Stafford Northcote's. The myth about the pocket Sophocles is + rudely exploded. Sir William is certain that Disraeli could not have + construed a chapter of the Greek Testament. He found such mythology + as he required where many an honest fellow has found it before him—in + Lemprière's Dictionary. His French accent, as Sir William records it, + was most satisfactory, and a conclusive proof of his <i>bonâ-fides</i>. + Disraeli, it is clear, cared as little for literature as he did for + art. He admired Gray, as every man with a sense for epithet must; he + studied Junius, whose style, so Sir William Fraser believes, he + surpassed in his 'Runnymede' letters. Sir William Fraser kindly + explains the etymology of this strange word 'Runnymede,' as he also + does that of 'Parliament,' which he says is '<i>Parliamo mente</i>' (Let us + speak our minds). Sir William clearly possessed the learning denied to + his chief. +</p> +<p> + Beyond apparently imposing upon Sir Stafford Northcote, Disraeli + himself never made any vain pretensions to be devoted to pursuits for + which he did not care a rap. He once dreamt of an epic poem, and his + early ambition urged him a step or two in that direction, but his + critical faculty, which, despite all his monstrosities of taste, was + vital, restrained him from making a fool of himself, and he forswore + the muse, puffed the prostitute away, and carried his very saleable + wares to another market, where his efforts were crowned with + prodigious success. Sir William Fraser introduces his great man to us + as observing, in reply to a question, that revenge was the passion + which gives pleasure the latest. A man, he continued, will enjoy that + when even avarice has ceased to please. As a matter of fact, Disraeli + himself was neither avaricious nor revengeful, and, as far as one can + judge, was never tempted to be either. This is the fatal defect of + almost all Disraeli's aphorisms: they are dead words, whilst the + words of a true aphorism have veins filled with the life of their + utterer. Nothing of this sort ever escaped the lips of our modern + Sphinx. If he had any faiths, any deep convictions, any rooted + principles, he held his tongue about them. He was, Sir William tells + us, an indolent man. It is doubtful whether he ever did, apart from + the preparation and delivery of his speeches, what would be called by + a professional man a hard day's work in his life. He had courage, wit, + insight, instinct, prevision, and a thorough persuasion that he + perfectly understood the materials he had to work upon and the tools + within his reach. Perhaps no man ever gauged more accurately or more + profoundly despised that 'world' Sir William Fraser so pathetically + laments. For folly, egotism, vanity, conceit, and stupidity, he had an + amazing eye. He could not, owing to his short sight, read men's faces + across the floor of the House, but he did not require the aid of any + optic nerve to see the petty secrets of their souls. His best sayings + have men's weaknesses for their text. Sir William's book gives many + excellent examples. One laughs throughout. +</p> +<p> + Sir William would have us believe that in later life Disraeli clung + affectionately to dulness—to gentle dulness. He did not want to be + surrounded by wits. He had been one himself in his youth, and he + questioned their sincerity. It would almost appear from passages in + the book that Disraeli found even Sir William Fraser too pungent for + him. Once, we are told, the impenetrable Prime Minister quailed before + Sir William's reproachful oratory. The story is not of a cock and a + bull, but of a question put in the House of Commons by Sir William, + who was snubbed by the Home Secretary, who was cheered by Disraeli. + This was intolerable, and accordingly next day, being, as good luck + would have it, a Friday, when, as all men and members know, 'it is in + the power of any member to bring forward any topic he may choose,' Sir + William naturally chose the topic nearest to his heart, and 'said a + few words on my wrongs.' +</p> +<blockquote> + 'During my performance I watched Disraeli narrowly. I could not see + his face, but I noticed that whenever I became in any way + disagreeable—in short, whenever my words really bit—they were + invariably followed by one movement. Sitting as he always did with + his right knee over his left, whenever the words touched him he + moved the pendant leg twice or three times, then curved his foot + upwards. I could observe no other sign of emotion, but this was + distinct. Some years afterwards, on a somewhat more important + occasion at the Conference at Berlin, a great German philosopher, + Herr ——, went to Berlin on purpose to study Disraeli's character. + He said afterwards that he was most struck by the more than Indian + stoicism which Disraeli showed. To this there was one exception. + "Like all men of his race, he has one sign of emotion which never + fails to show itself—the movement of the leg that is crossed over + the other, and of the foot!" The person who told me this had never + heard me hint, nor had anyone, that I had observed this peculiar + symptom on the earlier occasion to which I have referred.' +</blockquote> +<p> + Statesmen of Jewish descent, with a reputation for stoicism to + preserve, would do well to learn from this story not to swing their + crossed leg when tired. The great want about Mr. Disraeli is something + to hang the countless anecdotes about him upon. Most remarkable men + have some predominant feature of character round which you can build + your general conception of them, or, at all events, there has been + some great incident in their lives for ever connected with their + names, and your imagination mixes the man and the event together. Who + can think of Peel without remembering the Corn Laws and the + reverberating sentence: 'I shall leave a name execrated by every + monopolist who, for less honourable motives, clamours for Protection + because it conduces to his own individual benefit; but it may be that + I shall leave a name sometimes remembered with expressions of + good-will in the abode of those whose lot it is to labour and to earn + their daily bread with the sweat of their brow, when they shall + recruit their exhausted strength with abundant and untaxed food, the + sweeter because it is no longer leavened with a sense of injustice.' + But round what are our memories of Disraeli to cluster? Sir William + Fraser speaks rapturously of his wondrous mind and of his intellect, + but where is posterity to look for evidences of either? Certainly not + in Sir William's book, which shows us a wearied wit and nothing more. + Carlyle once asked, 'How long will John Bull permit this absurd + monkey'—meaning Mr. Disraeli—'to dance upon his stomach?' The + question was coarsely put, but there is nothing in Sir William's book + to make one wonder it should have been asked. Mr. Disraeli lived to + offer Carlyle the Grand Cross of the Order of the Bath, and that, in + Sir William's opinion, is enough to dispose of Carlyle's vituperation; + but, after all, the Grand Cross is no answer to anything except an + application for it. +</p> +<p> + A great many other people are made to cross Sir William Fraser's + stage. His comments upon them are lively, independent, and original. + He liked Cobden and hated Bright. The reason for this he makes quite + plain. He thinks he detected in Cobden a deprecatory manner—a + recognition of the sublime truth that he, Richard Cobden, had not been + half so well educated as the mob of Tories he was addressing. Bright, + on the other band, was fat and rude, and thought that most country + gentlemen and town-bred wits were either fools or fribbles. This was + intolerable. Here was a man who not only could not have belonged to + the 'world,' but honestly did not wish to, and was persuaded—the + gross fellow—that he and his world were better in every respect than + the exclusive circles which listened to Sir William Fraser's <i>bon + mots</i> and tags from the poets. Certainly there was nothing deprecatory + about John Bright. He could be quite as insolent in his way as any + aristocrat in his. He had a habit, we are told, of slowly getting up + and walking out of the House in the middle of Mr. Disraeli's speeches, + and just when that ingenious orator was leading up to a carefully + prepared point, and then immediately returning behind the Speaker's + chair. If this is true, it was perhaps rude, but nobody can deny that + it is a Tory dodge of indicating disdain. What was really irritating + about Mr. Bright was that his disdain was genuine. He did think very + little of the Tory party, and he did not care one straw for the + opinion of society. He positively would not have cared to have been + made a baronet. Sir William Fraser seems to have been really fond of + Disraeli, and the very last time he met his great man in the Carlton + Club he told him a story too broad to be printed. The great man + pronounced it admirable, and passed on his weary way. +</p> +<a name="2H_4_21"><!-- H2 anchor --></a> +<p> </p> +<p> </p> +<p> </p> +<p> </p> +<h2> + A CONNOISSEUR +</h2> +<p> </p> + +<p> + It must always be rash to speak positively about human nature, whose + various types of character are singularly tough, and endure, if not + for ever, for a very long time; yet some types do seem to show signs + of wearing out. The connoisseur, for example, here in England is + hardly what he was. He has specialized, and behind him there is now + the bottomless purse of the multi-millionaire, who buys as he is + bidden, and has no sense of prices. If the multi-millionaire wants a + thing, why should he not have it? The gaping mob, penniless but + appreciative, looks on and cheers his pluck. +</p> +<p> + Mr. Frederick Locker, about whom I wish to write a few lines, was an + old-world connoisseur, the shy recesses of whose soul Addison might + have penetrated in the page of a <i>Spectator</i>—and a delicate operation + it would have been. +</p> +<p> + My father-in-law was only once in the witness-box. I had the felicity + to see him there. It was a dispute about the price of a picture, and + in the course of his very short evidence he hazarded the opinion that + the grouping of the figures (they were portraits) was in bad taste. + The Judge, the late Mr. Justice Cave, an excellent lawyer of the old + school, snarled out, 'Do you think you could explain to <i>me</i> what is + taste?' Mr. Locker surveyed the Judge through the eye-glass which + seemed almost part of his being, with a glance modest, deferential, + deprecatory, as if suggesting 'Who am <i>I</i> to explain anything to + <i>you</i>?' but at the same time critical, ironical, and humorous. It was + but for one brief moment; the eyeglass dropped, and there came the + mournful answer, as from a man baffled at all points: 'No, my lord; I + should find it impossible!' The Judge grunted a ready, almost a + cheerful, assent. +</p> +<p> + Properly to describe Mr. Locker, you ought to be able to explain both + to judge and jury what you mean by taste. He sometimes seemed to me to + be <i>all</i> taste. Whatever subject he approached—was it the mystery of + religion, or the moralities of life, a poem or a print, a bit of old + china or a human being—whatever it might be, it was along the avenue + of taste that he gently made his way up to it. His favourite word of + commendation was <i>pleasing</i>, and if he ever brought himself to say + (and he was not a man who scattered his judgments, rather was he + extremely reticent of them) of a man, and still more of a woman, that + he or she was <i>unpleasing</i>, you almost shuddered at the fierceness of + the condemnation, knowing, as all Locker's intimate friends could not + help doing, what the word meant to him. 'Attractive' was another of + his critical instruments. He meets Lord Palmerston, and does not find + him 'attractive' (<i>My Confidences</i>, p. 155). +</p> +<p> + This is a temperament which when cultivated, as it was in Mr. Locker's + case, by a life-long familiarity with beautiful things in all the arts + and crafts, is apt to make its owner very susceptible to what some + stirring folk may not unjustly consider the trifles of life. Sometimes + Locker might seem to overlook the dominant features, the main object + of the existence, either of a man or of some piece of man's work, in + his sensitively keen perception of the beauty, or the lapse from + beauty, of some trait of character or bit of workmanship. This may + have been so. Mr. Locker was more at home, more entirely his own + delightful self, when he was calling your attention to some humorous + touch in one of Bewick's tail-pieces, or to some plump figure in a + group by his favourite Stothard than when handling a Michael Angelo + drawing or an amazing Blake. Yet, had it been his humour, he could + have played the showman to Michael Angelo and Blake at least as well + as to Bewick, Stothard, or Chodowiecki. But a modesty, marvellously + mingled with irony, was of the very essence of his nature. No man + expatiated less. He never expounded anything in his born days; he very + soon wearied of those he called 'strong' talkers. His critical method + was in a conversational manner to direct your attention to something + in a poem or a picture, to make a brief suggestion or two, perhaps to + apply an epithet, and it was all over, but your eyes were opened. + Rapture he never professed, his tones were never loud enough to + express enthusiasm, but his enjoyment of what he considered good, + wherever he found it—and he was regardless of the set judgments of + the critics—was most intense and intimate. His feeling for anything + he liked was fibrous: he clung to it. For all his rare books and + prints, if he liked a thing he was very tolerant of its <i>format</i>. He + would cut a drawing out of a newspaper, frame it, hang it up, and be + just as tender towards it as if it were an impression with the unique + <i>remarque</i>. +</p> +<p> + Mr. Locker had probably inherited his virtuoso's whim from his + ancestors. His great-grandfather was certified by Johnson in his life + of Addison to be a gentleman 'eminent for curiosity and literature,' + and though his grandfather, the Commodore, who lives for ever in our + history as the man who taught Nelson the lesson that saved an + Empire—'Lay a Frenchman close, and you will beat him'—was no + collector, his father, Edward Hawke Locker, though also a naval man, + was not only the friend of Sir Walter Scott, but a most judicious + buyer of pictures, prints, and old furniture. +</p> +<p> + Frederick Locker was born in 1821, in Greenwich Hospital, where Edward + Hawke Locker was Civil Commissioner. His mother was the daughter of + one of the greatest book-buyers of his time, a man whose library it + took nine days to disperse—the Rev. Jonathan Boucher, the friend and + opponent of George Washington, an ecclesiastic who might have been + first Bishop of Edinburgh, but who died a better thing, the Vicar of + Epsom. +</p> +<p> + Frederick Locker grew up among pretty things in the famous hospital. + Water-colours by Lawrence, Prout, Girtin, Turner, Chinnery, Paul + Sandby, Cipriani, and other masters; casts after Canova; mezzotints + after Sir Joshua; Hogarth's famous picture of David Garrick and his + wife, now well hung in Windsor Castle, were about him, and early + attracted his observant eye. Yet the same things were about his elder + brother Arthur, an exceedingly clever fellow, who remained quite + curiously impervious to the impressiveness of pretty things all his + days. +</p> +<p> + Locker began collecting on his own account after his marriage, in + 1850, to a daughter of Lord Byron's enemy, the Lord Elgin, who brought + the marbles from Athens to Bloomsbury. His first object, at least so + he thought, was to make his rooms pretty. From the beginning of his + life as a connoisseur he spared himself no pains, often trudging + miles, when not wanted at the Admiralty Office, in search of his prey. + If any mercantile-minded friend ever inquired what anything had cost, + he would be answered with a rueful smile, 'Much shoe leather.' He + began with old furniture, china, and bric-à-brac, which ere long + somewhat inconveniently filled his small rooms. Prices rose, and means + in those days were as small as the rooms. No more purchases of Louis + Seize and blue majolica and Palissy ware could be made. Drawings by + the old masters and small pictures were the next objects of the chase. + Here again the long purses were soon on his track, and the pursuit had + to be abandoned, but not till many treasures had been garnered. Last + of all he became a book-hunter, beginning with little volumes of + poetry and the drama from 1590 to 1610; and as time went on the + boundaries expanded, but never so as to include black letter. +</p> +<p> + I dare not say Mr. Locker had all the characteristics of a great + collector, or that he was entirely free from the whimsicalities of the + tribe of connoisseurs, but he was certainly endowed with the chief + qualifications for the pursuit of rarities, and remained clear of the + unpleasant vices that so often mar men's most innocent avocations. Mr. + Locker always knew what he wanted and what he did not want, and never + could be persuaded to take the one for the other; he did not grow + excited in the presence of the quarry; he had patience to wait, and + to go on waiting, and he seldom lacked courage to buy. +</p> +<p> + He rode his own hobby-horse, never employing experts as buyers. For + quantity he had no stomach. He shrank from numbers. He was not a + Bodleian man; he had not the sinews to grapple with libraries. He was + the connoisseur throughout. Of the huge acquisitiveness of a Heber or + a Huth he had not a trace. He hated a crowd, of whatsoever it was + composed. He was apt to apologize for his possessions, and to + depreciate his tastes. As for boasting of a treasure, he could as + easily have eaten beef at breakfast. +</p> +<p> + So delicate a spirit, armed as it was for purposes of defence with a + rare gift of irony and a very shrewd insight into the weaknesses and + noisy falsettos of life, was sure to be misunderstood. The dull and + coarse witted found Locker hard to make out. He struck them as + artificial and elaborate, perhaps as frivolous, and yet they felt + uneasy in his company lest there should be a lurking ridicule behind + his quiet, humble demeanour. There was, indeed, always an element of + mockery in Locker's humility. +</p> +<p> + An exceedingly spiteful account of him, in which it is asserted that + 'most of his rarest books are miserable copies' (how book-collectors + can hate one another!), ends with the reluctant admission: 'He was + eminently a gentleman, however, and his manners were even courtly, yet + virile.' Such extorted praise is valuable. +</p> +<p> + I can see him now before me, with a nicely graduated foot-rule in his + delicate hand, measuring with grave precision the height to a hair of + his copy of <i>Robinson Crusoe</i> (1719), for the purpose of ascertaining + whether it was taller or shorter than one being vaunted for sale in a + bookseller's catalogue just to hand. His face, one of much refinement, + was a study, exhibiting alike a fixed determination to discover the + exact truth about the copy and a humorous realization of the inherent + triviality of the whole business. Locker was a philosopher as well as + a connoisseur. +</p> +<p> + The Rowfant Library has disappeared. Great possessions are great + cares. 'But ships are but boards, sailors but men; there be land-rats, + water-thieves, and land-thieves—I mean pirates; and then there is the + peril of waters, winds and rocks.' To this list the nervous owner of + rare books must add fire, that dread enemy of all the arts. It is + often difficult to provide stabling for dead men's hobby-horses. It + were perhaps absurd in a world like this to grow sentimental over a + parcel of old books. Death, the great unbinder, must always make a + difference. +</p> +<p> + Mr. Locker's poetry now forms a volume of the <i>Golden Treasury + Series</i>. The <i>London Lyrics</i> are what they are. They have been well + praised by good critics, and have themselves been made the subject of + good verse. +</p> +<pre> + 'Apollo made one April day + A new thing in the rhyming way; + Its turn was neat, its wit was clear, + It wavered 'twixt a smile and tear. + Then Momus gave a touch satiric, + And it became a <i>London Lyric</i>.' + AUSTIN DOBSON. +</pre> +<p> + In another copy of verses Mr. Dobson adds: +</p> +<pre> + 'Or where discern a verse so neat, + So well-bred and so witty— + So finished in its least conceit, + So mixed of mirth and pity?' + + 'Pope taught him rhythm, Prior ease, + Praed buoyancy and banter; + What modern bard would learn from these? + Ah, <i>tempora mutantur</i>!' +</pre> +<p> + Nothing can usefully be added to criticism so just, so searching, and + so happily expressed. +</p> +<p> + Some of the <i>London Lyrics</i> have, I think, achieved what we poor + mortals call immortality—a strange word to apply to the piping of so + slender a reed, to so slight a strain—yet +</p> +<pre> + 'In small proportions we just beauties see.' +</pre> +<p class="noindent"> + It is the simplest strain that lodges longest in the heart. Mr. + Locker's strains are never precisely <i>simple</i>. The gay enchantment of + the world and the sense of its bitter disappointments murmur through + all of them, and are fatal to their being simple, but the + unpretentiousness of a <i>London Lyric</i> is akin to simplicity. +</p> +<p> + His relation to his own poetry was somewhat peculiar. A critic in + every fibre, he judged his own verses with a severity he would have + shrunk from applying to those of any other rhyming man. He was deeply + dissatisfied, almost on bad terms, with himself, yet for all that he + was convinced that he had written some very good verses indeed. His + poetry meant a great deal to him, and he stood in need of sympathy and + of allies against his own despondency. He did not get much sympathy, + being a man hard to praise, for unless he agreed with your praise it + gave him more pain than pleasure. +</p> +<p> + I am not sure that Mr. Dobson agrees with me, but I am very fond of + Locker's paraphrase of one of Clément Marot's <i>Epigrammes</i>; and as the + lines are redolent of his delicate connoisseurship, I will quote both + the original (dated 1544) and the paraphrase: +</p> +<pre> + 'DU RYS DE MADAME D'ALLEBRET + + 'Elle a très bien ceste gorge d'albastre, + Ce doulx parler, ce cler tainct, ces beaux yeulx: + Mais en effect, ce petit rys follastre, + C'est à mon gré ce qui lui sied le mieulx; + Elle en pourroit les chemins et les lieux + Où elle passé à plaisir inciter; + Et si ennuy me venoit contrister + Tant que par mort fust ma vie abbatue, + Il me fauldroit pour me resusciter + Que ce rys la duguel elle me tue.' + + 'How fair those locks which now the light wind stirs! + What eyes she has, and what a perfect arm! + And yet methinks that little laugh of hers— + That little laugh—is still her crowning charm. + Where'er she passes, countryside or town, + The streets make festa and the fields rejoice. + Should sorrow come, as 'twill, to cast me down, + Or Death, as come he must, to hush my voice, + Her laugh would wake me just as now it thrills me— + That little, giddy laugh wherewith she kills me.' +</pre> +<p> + 'Tis the very laugh of Millamant in <i>The Way of the World</i>! 'I would + rather,' cried Hazlitt, 'have seen Mrs. Abington's Millamant than any + Rosalind that ever appeared on the stage.' Such wishes are idle. + Hazlitt never saw Mrs. Abington's Millamant. I have seen Miss Ethel + Irving's Millamant, <i>dulce ridentem</i>, and it was that little giddy + laugh of hers that reminded me of Marot's Epigram and of Frederick + Locker's paraphrase. So do womanly charms endure from generation to + generation, and it is one of the duties of poets to record them. +</p> +<p> + In 1867 Mr. Locker published his <i>Lyra Elegantiarun. A Collection of + Some of the Best Specimens of Vers de Société and Vers d'Occasion in + the English Languages by Deceased Authors</i>. In his preface Locker gave + what may now be fairly called the 'classical' definition of the verses + he was collecting. '<i>Vers de société</i> and <i>vers d'occasion</i> should' + (so he wrote) 'be short, elegant, refined and fanciful, not seldom + distinguished by heightened sentiment, and often playful. The tone + should not be pitched high; it should be idiomatic and rather in the + conversational key; the rhythm should be crisp and sparkling, and the + rhyme frequent and never forced, while the entire poem should be + marked by tasteful moderation, high finish and completeness; for + however trivial the subject-matter may be—indeed, rather in + proportion to its triviality, subordination to the rules of + composition and perfection of execution should be strictly enforced. + The definition may be further illustrated by a few examples of pieces, + which, from the absence of some of the foregoing qualities, or from + the excess of others, cannot be properly regarded as <i>vers de + société</i>, though they may bear a certain generic resemblance to that + species of poetry. The ballad of "John Gilpin," for example, is too + broadly and simply ludicrous; Swift's "Lines on the Death of + Marlborough," and Byron's "Windsor Poetics," are too savage and + truculent; Cowper's "My Mary" is far too pathetic; Herrick's lyrics to + "Blossoms" and "Daffodils" are too elevated; "Sally in our Alley" is + too homely and too entirely simple and natural; while the "Rape of the + Lock," which would otherwise be one of the finest specimens of <i>vers + de société</i> in any language, must be excluded on account of its + length, which renders it much too important.' +</p> +<p> + I have made this long quotation because it is an excellent example of + Mr. Locker's way of talking about poets and poetry, and of his + intimate, searching, and unaffected criticism. +</p> +<p> + <i>Lyra Elegantiarum</i> is a real, not a bookseller's collection. Mr. + Locker was a great student of verse. There was hardly a stanza of any + English poet, unless it was Spenser, for whom he had no great + affection, which he had not pondered over and clearly considered as + does a lawyer his cases. He delighted in a complete success, and + grieved over any lapse from the fold of metrical virtue, over any + ill-sounding rhyme or unhappy expression. The circulation of <i>Lyra + Elegantiarum</i> was somewhat interfered with by a 'copyright' question. + Mr. Locker had a great admiration for Landor's short poems, and + included no less than forty-one of them, which he chose with the + utmost care. Publishers are slow to perceive that the best chance of + getting rid of their poetical wares (and Landor was not popular) is to + have attention called to the artificer who produced them. The + Landorian publisher objected, and the <i>Lyra</i> had to be 'suppressed'—a + fine word full of hidden meanings. The second-hand booksellers, a wily + race, were quick to perceive the significance of this, and have for + more than thirty years obtained inflated prices for their early + copies, being able to vend them as possessing the <i>Suppressed Verses</i>. + There is a great deal of Locker in this collection. To turn its pages + is to renew intercourse with its editor. +</p> +<p> + In 1879 another little volume instinct with his personality came into + existence and made friends for itself. He called it <i>Patchwork</i>, and + to have given it any other name would have severely taxed his + inventiveness. It is a collection of stories, of <i>ana</i>, of quotations + in verse and prose, of original matter, of character-sketches, of + small adventures, of table-talk, and of other things besides, if other + things, indeed, there be. If you know <i>Patchwork</i> by heart you are + well equipped. It is intensely original throughout, and never more + original than when its matter is borrowed. Readers of <i>Patchwork</i> had + heard of Mr. Creevey long before Sir Herbert Maxwell once again let + that politician loose upon an unlettered society. +</p> +<p> + The book had no great sale, but copies evidently fell into the hands + of the more judicious of the pressmen, who kept it by their sides, and + every now and again +</p> +<pre> + 'Waled a portion with judicious care' +</pre> +<p class="noindent"> + for quotation in their columns. The <i>Patchwork</i> stories thus got into + circulation one by one. Kind friends of Mr. Locker's, who had been + told, or had discovered for themselves, that he was somewhat of a wag, + would frequently regale him with bits of his own <i>Patchwork</i>, + introducing them to his notice as something they had just heard, which + they thought he would like—murdering his own stories to give him + pleasure. His countenance on such occasions was a <i>rendezvous</i> of + contending emotions, a battlefield of rival forces. Politeness ever + prevailed, but it took all his irony and sad philosophy to hide his + pain. <i>Patchwork</i> is such a good collection of the kind of story he + liked best that it was really difficult to avoid telling him a story + that was <i>not</i> in it. I made the blunder once myself with a Voltairean + anecdote. Here it is as told in <i>Patchwork</i>: 'Voltaire was one day + listening to a dramatic author reading his comedy, and who said, "Ici + le chevalier rit!" He exclaimed: "Le chevalier est <i>bien</i> heureux!"' I + hope I told it fairly well. He smiled sadly, and said nothing, not + even <i>Et tu, Brute</i>! +</p> +<p> + In 1886 Mr. Locker printed for presentation a catalogue of his printed + books, manuscripts, autograph letters, drawings, and pictures. Nothing + of his own figures in this catalogue, and yet in a very real sense the + whole is his. Most of the books are dispersed, but the catalogue + remains, not merely as a record of rareties and bibliographical + details dear to the collector's heart, but as a token of taste. Just + as there is, so Wordsworth reminds us, 'a spirit in the woods,' so is + there still, brooding over and haunting the pages of the 'Rowfant + Catalogue,' the spirit of true connoisseurship. In the slender lists + of Locker's 'Works' this book must always have a place. +</p> +<p> + Frederick Locker died at Rowfant on May 30, 1895, leaving behind him, + carefully prepared for the press, a volume he had christened <i>My + Confidences: An Autographical Sketch addressed to My Descendants</i>. +</p> +<p> + In due course the book appeared, and was misunderstood at first by + many. It cut a strange, outlandish figure among the crowd of casual + reminiscences it externally resembled. Glancing over the pages of <i>My + Confidences</i>, the careless library subscriber encountered the usual + number of names of well-known personages, whose appearance is supposed + by publishers to add sufficient zest to reminiscences to secure + for them a sale large enough, at any rate, to recoup the cost of + publication. Yet, despite these names, Mr. Locker's book is completely + unlike the modern memoir. Beneath a carefully-constructed, and + perhaps slightly artificially maintained, frivolity of tone, the book + is written in deadly earnest. Not for nothing did its author choose as + one of the mottoes for its title-page, 'Ce ne sont mes gestes que + j'écrie; c'est moy.' It may be said of this book, as of Senancour's + <i>Oberman</i>: +</p> +<pre> + 'A fever in these pages burns; + Beneath the calm they feign, + A wounded human spirit turns + Here on its bed of pain.' +</pre> +<p> + The still small voice of its author whispers through <i>My Confidences</i>. + Like Montaigne's <i>Essays</i>, the book is one of entire good faith, and + strangely uncovers a personality. +</p> +<p> + As a tiny child Locker was thought by his parents to be very like Sir + Joshua Reynolds' picture of Puck, an engraving of which was in the + home at Greenwich Hospital, and certainly Locker carried to his + grave more than a suspicion of what is called Puckishness. In <i>My + Confidences</i> there are traces of this quality. +</p> +<p> + Clearly enough the author of <i>London Lyrics</i>, the editor of <i>Lyra + Elegantiarum</i>, of <i>Patchwork</i>, and the whimsical but sincere compiler + of <i>My Confidences</i> was more than a mere connoisseur, however much + connoisseurship entered into a character in which taste played so + dominant a part. +</p> +<p> + Stronger even than taste was his almost laborious love of kindness. + He really took too much pains about it, exposing himself to rebuffs + and misunderstandings; but he was not without his rewards. All + down-hearted folk, sorrowful, disappointed people, the unlucky, the + ill-considered, the <i>mésestimés</i>—those who found themselves condemned + to discharge uncongenial duties in unsympathetic society, turned + instinctively to Mr. Locker for a consolation, so softly administered + that it was hard to say it was intended. He had friends everywhere, in + all ranks of life, who found in him an infinity of solace, and for his + friends there was nothing he would not do. It seemed as if he could + not spare himself. I remember his calling at my chambers one hot day + in July, when he happened to have with him some presents he was in + course of delivering. Among them I noticed a bust of Voltaire and an + unusually lively tortoise, generally half-way out of a paper bag. + Wherever he went he found occasion for kindness, and his whimsical + adventures would fill a volume. I sometimes thought it would really be + worth while to leave off the struggle for existence, and gently to + subside into one of Lord Rowton's homes in order to have the pleasure + of receiving in my new quarters a first visit from Mr. Locker. How + pleasantly would he have mounted the stair, laden with who knows what + small gifts?—a box of mignonette for the window-sill, an old book or + two, as likely as not a live kitten, for indeed there was never an end + to the variety or ingenuity of his offerings! How felicitous would + have been his greeting! How cordial his compliments! How abiding the + sense of his unpatronizing friendliness! But it was not to be. One can + seldom choose one's pleasures. +</p> +<p> + In his <i>Patchwork</i> Mr. Locker quotes Gibbon's encomium on Charles + James Fox. Anyone less like Fox than Frederick Locker it might be hard + to discover, but fine qualities are alike wherever they are found + lodged; and if Fox was as much entitled as Locker to the full benefit + of Gibbon's praise, he was indeed a good fellow. +</p> +<p> + 'In his tour to Switzerland Mr. Fox gave me two days of free and + private society. He seemed to feel and even to envy the happiness of + my situation, while I admired the powers of a superior man as they are + blended in his character with the softness and simplicity of a child. + <i>Perhaps no human being was ever more perfectly exempted from the + taint of malevolence, vanity, and falsehood.</i>' +</p> +<a name="2H_4_22"><!-- H2 anchor --></a> +<p> </p> +<p> </p> +<p> </p> +<p> </p> +<h2> + OUR GREAT MIDDLE CLASS +</h2> +<p> </p> + +<p> + The republication of Mr. Arnold's <i>Friendship's Garland</i> after an + interval of twenty-seven years may well set us all a-thinking. Here it + is, in startling facsimile—the white covers, destined too soon to + become black, the gilt device, the familiar motto. As we gazed upon + it, we found ourselves exclaiming, so vividly did it recall the past: +</p> +<pre> + 'It is we, it is we, who have changed.' +</pre> +<p> + <i>Friendship's Garland</i> was a very good joke seven-and-twenty years + ago, and though some of its once luminous paint has been rubbed off, + and a few of its jests have ceased to effervesce, it is a good joke + still. Mr. Bottle's mind, qua mind; the rowdy Philistine Adolescens + Leo, Esq.; Dr. Russell, of the <i>Times</i>, mounting his war-horse; the + tale of how Lord Lumpington and the Rev. Esau Hittall got their + degrees at Oxford; and many another ironic thrust which made the + reader laugh 'while the hair was yet brown on his head,' may well make + him laugh still, 'though his scalp is almost hairless, and his + figure's grown convex.' Since 1871 we have learnt the answer to the + sombre lesson, 'What is it to grow old?' But, thank God! we can laugh + even yet. +</p> +<p> + The humour and high spirits of <i>Friendship's Garland</i> were, however, + but the gilding of a pill, the artificial sweetening of a nauseous + draught. In reality, and joking apart, the book is an indictment at + the bar of <i>Geist</i> of the English people as represented by its middle + class and by its full-voiced organ, the daily press. Mr. Arnold + invented Arminius to be the mouthpiece of this indictment, the + traducer of our 'imperial race,' because such blasphemies could not + artistically have been attributed to one of the number. He made + Arminius a Prussian because in those far-off days Prussia stood for + Von Humboldt and education and culture, and all the things Sir Thomas + Bazley and Mr. Miall were supposed to be without. Around the central + figure of Arminius the essentially playful fancy of Mr. Arnold grouped + other figures, including his own. What an old equity draughtsman would + call 'the charging parts' of the book consist in the allegations that + the Government of England had been taken out of the hands of an + aristocracy grown barren of ideas and stupid beyond words, and + entrusted to a middle class without noble traditions, wretchedly + educated, full of <i>Ungeist</i>, with a passion for clap-trap, only + wanting to be left alone to push trade and make money; so ignorant as + to believe that feudalism can be abated without any heroic Stein, by + providing that in one insignificant case out of a hundred thousand, + land shall not follow the feudal law of descent; without a single + vital idea or sentiment or feeling for beauty or appropriateness; well + persuaded that if more trade is done in England than anywhere else, if + personal independence is without a check, and newspaper publicity + unbounded, that is, by the nature of things, to be great; misled every + morning by the magnificent <i>Times</i> or the 'rowdy' <i>Telegraph</i>; + desperately prone to preaching to other nations, proud of being able + to say what it likes, whilst wholly indifferent to the fact that it + has nothing whatever to say. +</p> +<p> + Such, in brief, is the substance of this most agreeable volume. Its + message was lightly treated by the grave and reverend seigniors of the + State. The magnificent <i>Times</i>, the rowdy <i>Telegraph</i>, continued to + preach their gospels as before; but for all that Mr. Arnold found an + audience fit, though few, and, of course, he found it among the people + he abused. The barbarians, as he called the aristocracy, were not + likely to pay heed to a professor of poetry. Our working classes + were not readers of the <i>Pall Mall Gazette</i> or purchasers of + four-and-sixpenny tracts bound in white cloth. No; it was the middle + class, to whom Mr. Arnold himself belonged, who took him to honest + hearts, stuck his photograph upon their writing-tables, and sounded + his praises so loudly that his fame even reached the United States of + America, where he was promptly invited to lecture, an invitation he + accepted. But for the middle classes Mr. Arnold would have had but a + poor time of it. They did not mind being insulted; they overlooked + exaggeration; they pardoned ignorance—in a word, they proved + teachable. Yet, though meek in spirit, they have not yet inherited the + earth; indeed, there are those who assert that their chances are gone, + their sceptre for ever buried. It is all over with the middle-class. + Tuck up its muddled head! Tie up its chin! +</p> +<p> + A rabble of bad writers may now be noticed pushing their vulgar way + along, who, though born and bred in the middle classes, and disfigured + by many of the very faults Mr. Arnold deplored, yet make it a test of + their membership, an 'open sesame' to their dull orgies, that all + decent, sober-minded folk, who love virtue, and, on the whole, prefer + delicate humour to sickly lubricity, should be labelled 'middle + class.' +</p> +<p> + Politically, it cannot but be noticed that, for good or for ill, the + old middle-class audience no longer exists in its integrity. The + crowds that flocked to hear Cobden and Bright, that abhorred slavery, + that cheered Kossuth, that hated the income-tax, are now watered down + by a huge population who do not know, and do not want to know, what + the income-tax is, but who do want to know what the Government is + going to do for them in the matter of shorter hours, better wages, and + constant employment. Will the rabble, we wonder, prove as teachable as + the middle class? Will they consent to be told their faults as meekly? + Will they buy the photograph of their physician, or heave half a brick + at him? It remains to be seen. In the meantime it would be a mistake + to assume that the middle class counts for nothing, even at an + election. As to ideas, have we got any new ones since 1871? 'To be + consequent and powerful,' says Arminius, 'men must be bottomed on some + vital idea or sentiment which lends strength and certainty to their + action.' There are those who tell us that we have at last found this + vital idea in those conceptions of the British Empire which Mr. + Chamberlain so vigorously trumpets. To trumpet a conception is hardly + a happy phrase, but, as Mr. Chamberlain plays no other instrument, it + is forced upon me. Would that we could revive Arminius, to tell us + what he thinks of our new Ariel girdling the earth with twenty Prime + Ministers, each the choicest product of a self-governing and + deeply-involved colony. Is it a vital or a vulgar idea? Is it merely a + big theory or really a great one? Is it the ornate beginning of a + Time, or but the tawdry ending of a period? At all events, it is an + idea unknown to Arminius von Thunder-Ten-Tronckh, and we ought to be, + and many are, thankful for it. +</p> +<a name="2H_4_23"><!-- H2 anchor --></a> +<p> </p> +<p> </p> +<p> </p> +<p> </p> +<h2> + TAR AND WHITEWASH +</h2> +<p> </p> + +<p> + I am, I confess it, hard to please. If a round dozen of Bad Women, all + made in England too, does not satisfy me, what will? What ails the + fellow at them? Yet was I at first dissatisfied, and am, therefore, + glad to notice that whilst I was demurring and splitting hairs the + great, generous public was buying the <i>Lives of Twelve Bad Women</i>, by + Arthur Vincent, and putting it into a second edition. This is as it + should be. When the excellent Dean Burgon dubbed his dozen biographies + <i>Twelve Good Men</i>, it probably never occurred to him that the title + suggested three companion volumes; but so it did, and two of them, + <i>Twelve Bad Men</i> and <i>Twelve Bad Women</i>, have made their appearance. I + still await, with great patience, <i>Twelve Good Women</i>. Twelve was the + number of the Apostles. Had it not been, one might be tempted to ask, + Why twelve? But as there must be some limit to bookmaking, there is no + need to quarrel with an arithmetical limit. +</p> +<p> + My criticism upon the Dean's dozen was that they were not by any + means, all of them, conspicuously good men; for, to name one only, who + would call old Dr. Routh, the President of Magdalen, a particularly + good man? In a sense, all Presidents, Provosts, Principals, and + Masters of Colleges are good men—in fact, they must be so by the + statutes—but to few of them are given the special notes of goodness. + Dr. Routh was a remarkable man, a learned man, perhaps a pious + man—undeniably, when he came to die, an old man—but he was no better + than his colleagues. This weakness of classification has run all + through the series, and it is my real quarrel with it. I do not + understand the principle of selection. I did not understand the Dean's + test of goodness, nor do I understand Mr. Seccombe's or Mr. Vincent's + test of badness. What do we mean by a good man or a bad one, a good + woman or a bad one? Most people, like the young man in the song, are + 'not very good, nor yet very bad.' We move about the pastures of life + in huge herds, and all do the same things, at the same times, and for + the same reasons. 'Forty feeding like one.' Are we mean? Well, we have + done some mean things in our time. Are we generous? Occasionally we + are. Were we good sons or dutiful daughters? We have both honoured and + dishonoured our parents, who, in their turn, had done the same by + theirs. Do we melt at the sight of misery? Indeed we do. Do we forget + all about it when we have turned the corner? Frequently that is so. Do + we expect to be put to open shame at the Great Day of Judgment? We + should be terribly frightened of this did we not cling to the hope + that amidst the shocking revelations then for the first time made + public our little affairs may fail to attract much notice. Judged by + the standards of humanity, few people are either good or bad. 'I have + not been a great sinner,' said the dying Nelson; nor had he—he had + only been made a great fool of by a woman. Mankind is all tarred with + the same brush, though some who chance to be operated upon when the + brush is fresh from the barrel get more than their share of the tar. + The biography of a celebrated man usually reminds me of the outside of + a coastguardsman's cottage—all tar and whitewash. These are the two + condiments of human life—tar and whitewash—the faults and the + excuses for the faults, the passions and pettinesses that make us + occasionally drop on all fours, and the generous aspirations that at + times enable us, if not to stand upright, at least to adopt the + attitude of the kangaroo. It is rather tiresome, this perpetual game + of French and English going on inside one. True goodness and real + badness escape it altogether. A good man does not spend his life + wrestling with the Powers of Darkness. He is victor in the fray, and + the most he is called upon to do is every now and again to hit his + prostrate foe a blow over the costard just to keep him in his place. + Thus rid of a perpetual anxiety, the good man has time to grow in + goodness, to expand pleasantly, to take his ease on Zion. You can see + in his face that he is at peace with himself—that he is no longer at + war with his elements. His society, if you are fond of goodness, is + both agreeable and medicinal; but if you are a bad man it is hateful, + and you cry out with Mr. Love-lust in Bunyan's Vanity Fair: 'Away with + him. I cannot endure him; he is for ever condemning my way.' +</p> +<p> + Not many of Dean Burgon's biographies reached this standard. The + explanation, perhaps, is that the Dean chiefly moved in clerical + circles where excellence is more frequently to be met with than + goodness. +</p> +<p> + In the same way a really bad man is one who has frankly said, 'Evil, + be thou my good.' Like the good man, though for a very different + reason, the bad one has ceased to make war with the devil. Finding a + conspiracy against goodness going on, the bad man joins it, and thus, + like the good man, is at peace with himself. The bad man is bent upon + his own way, to get what he wants, no matter at what cost. Human + lives! What do they matter? A woman's honour! What does that matter? + Truth and fidelity! What are they? To know what you want, and not to + mind what you pay for it, is the straight path to fame, fortune, and + hell-fire. Careers, of course, vary; to dominate a continent or to + open a corner shop as a pork-butcher's, plenty of devilry may go to + either ambition. Also, genius is a rare gift. It by no means follows + that because you are a bad man you will become a great one; but to be + bad, and at the same time unsuccessful, is a hard fate. It casts a + little doubt upon a man's badness if he does not, at least, make a + little money. It is a poor business accompanying badness on to a + common scaffold, or to see it die in a wretched garret. That was one + of my complaints with Mr. Seccombe's Twelve Bad Men. Most of them came + to violent ends. They were all failures. +</p> +<p> + But I have kept these twelve ladies waiting a most unconscionable + time. Who are they? There are amongst them four courtesans: Alice + Perrers, one of King Edward III.'s misses; Barbara Villiers, one of + King Charles II.'s; Mrs. Mary Anne Clarke, who had to be content with + a royal Duke; and Mrs. Con Phillips. Six members of the criminal + class: Alice Arden, Moll Cutpurse, Jenny Diver, Elizabeth Brownrigg, + Elizabeth Canning, and Mary Bateman; and only two ladies of title, + Frances Howard, Countess of Somerset, and Elizabeth Chudleigh, Duchess + of Kingston. Of these twelve bad women one-third were executed, Alice + Arden being burnt at Canterbury, Jenny Diver and Elizabeth Brownrigg + being hung at Tyburn, and Mary Bateman suffering the same fate at + Leeds. Elizabeth Canning was sentenced to seven years' transportation, + and, indeed, if their biographers are to be believed, all the other + ladies made miserable ends. There is nothing triumphant about their + badness. Even from the point of view of this world they had better + have been good. In fact, squalor is the badge of the whole tribe. Some + of them, probably—Elizabeth Brownrigg, for example—were mad. This + last-named poor creature bore sixteen children to a house-painter and + plasterer, and then became a parish mid-wife, and only finally a + baby-farmer. Her cruelty to her apprentices had madness in every + detail. To include her in this volume was wholly unnecessary. She + lives but in George Canning's famous parody on Southey's sonnet to the + regicide Marten. +</p> +<p> + With those sentimentalists who maintain that all bad people are mad I + will have no dealings. It is sheer nonsense; lives of great men all + remind us it is sheer nonsense. Some of our greatest men have been + infernal scoundrels—pre-eminently bad men—with nothing mad about + them, unless it be mad to get on in the world and knock people about + in it. +</p> +<p> + <i>Twelve Bad Women</i> contains much interesting matter, but, on the + whole, it is depressing. It seems very dull to be bad. Perhaps the + editor desired to create this impression; if so, he has succeeded. + Hannah More had fifty times more fun in her life than all these + courtesans and criminals put together. The note of jollity is + entirely absent. It was no primrose path these unhappy women + traversed, though that it led to the everlasting bonfire it were + unchristian to doubt. The dissatisfaction I confessed to at the + beginning returns upon me as a cloud at the end; but, for all that, I + rejoice the book is in a second edition, and I hope soon to hear it is + in a third, for it has a moral tendency. +</p> +<a name="2H_4_24"><!-- H2 anchor --></a> +<p> </p> +<p> </p> +<p> </p> +<p> </p> +<h2> + ITINERARIES +</h2> +<p> </p> + +<p> + Anyone who is teased by the notion that it would be pleasant to be + remembered, in the sense of being read, after death, cannot do better + to secure that end than compose an Itinerary and leave it behind him + in manuscript, with his name legibly inscribed thereon. If an honest + bit of work, noting distances, detailing expenses, naming landmarks, + moors, mountains, harbours, docks, buildings—indeed, anything which, + as lawyers say, savours of realty—and but scantily interspersed with + reflections, and with no quotations, why, then, such a piece of work, + however long publication may be delayed—and a century or two will not + matter in the least—cannot fail, whenever it is printed, to attract + attention, to excite general interest and secure a permanent hold in + every decent library in the kingdom. +</p> +<p> + Time cannot stale an Itinerary. <i>Iter, Via, Actus</i> are words of pith + and moment. Stage-coaches, express trains, motor-cars, have written, + or are now writing, their eventful histories over the face of these + islands; but, whatever changes they have made or are destined to make, + they have left untouched the mystery of the road, although for the + moment the latest comer may seem injuriously to have affected its + majesty. +</p> +<p> + The Itinerist alone among authors is always sure of an audience. No + matter where, no matter when, he has but to tell us how he footed it + and what he saw by the wayside, and we must listen. How can we help + it? Two hundred years ago, it may be, this Itinerist came through our + village, passed by the wall of our homestead, climbed our familiar + hill, and went on his way; it is perhaps but two lines and a half he + can afford to give us, but what lines they are! How different with + sermons, poems, and novels! On each of these is the stamp of the + author's age; sentiments, fashions, thoughts, faiths, phraseology, all + worn out—cold, dirty grate, where once there was a blazing fire. + Cheerlessness personified! Leland's anti-Papal treatise in forty-five + chapters remains in learned custody—a manuscript; a publisher it will + never find. We still have Papists and anti-Papists; in this case the + fire still blazes, but the grates are of an entirely different + construction. Leland's treatise is out of date. But his <i>Itinerary</i> in + nine volumes, a favourite book throughout the eighteenth century, + which has graced many a bookseller's catalogue for the last hundred + years, and seldom without eliciting a purchaser—Leland's <i>Itinerary</i> + is to-day being reprinted under the most able editorship. The charm of + the road is irresistible. The <i>Vicar of Wakefield</i> is a delightful + book, with a great tradition behind it and a future still before it; + but it has not escaped the ravages of time, and I would, now, at all + events, gladly exchange it for Oliver Goldsmith's <i>Itinerary through + Germany with a Flute</i>! +</p> +<p> + Vain authors, publisher's men, may write as they like about + <i>Shakespeare's</i> country, or <i>Scott's</i> country, or <i>Carlyle's</i> country, + or <i>Crockett's</i> country, but— +</p> +<pre> + 'Oh, good gigantic smile of the brown old earth!' +</pre> +<p class="noindent"> + the land laughs at the delusions of the men who hurriedly cross its + surface. +</p> +<pre> + 'Rydal and Fairfield are there,— + In the shadow Wordsworth lies dead. + So it is, so it will be for aye, + Nature is fresh as of old, + Is lovely, a mortal is dead.' +</pre> +<p> + These reflections, which by themselves would be enough to sink even an + Itinerary, seemed forced upon me by the publication of <i>A Journey to + Edenborough in Scotland by Joseph Taylor, Late of the Inner Temple, + Esquire</i>. This journey was made two hundred years ago in the Long + Vacation of 1705, but has just been printed from the original + manuscript, under the editorship of Mr. William Cowan, by the + well-known Edinburgh bookseller, Mr. Brown, of Princes Street, to whom + all lovers of things Scottish already owe much. +</p> +<p> + Nobody can hope to be less known than this our latest Itinerist, for + not only is he not in the <i>Dictionary of National Biography</i>, but it + is at present impossible to say which of two Joseph Taylors he was. + The House of the Winged Horse has ever had Taylors on its roll, the + sign of the Middle Temple, a very fleecy sheep, being perhaps + unattractive to the clan, and in 1705 it so happened that not only + were there two Taylors, but two Joseph Taylors, entitled to write + themselves 'of the Inner Temple, Esquire.' Which was the Itinerist? + Mr. Cowan, going by age, thinks that the Itinerist can hardly have + been the Joseph Taylor who was admitted to the Inn in 1663, as in that + case he must have been at least fifty-eight when he travelled to + Edinburgh. For my part, I see nothing in the <i>Itinerary</i> to preclude + the possibility of its author having attained that age at the date of + its composition. I observe in the <i>Itinerary</i> references which point + to the Itinerist being a Kentish man, and he mentions more than once + his 'Cousin D'aeth.' Research among the papers of the D'aeths of + Knowlton Court, near Dover, might result in the discovery which of + these two Taylors really was the Itinerist. As nothing else is at + present known about either, the investigation could probably be made + without passion or party or even religious bias. It might be + best begun by Mr. Cowan telling us in whose custody he found the + manuscript, and how it came there. These statements should always + be made when old manuscripts are first printed. +</p> +<p> + The journey began on August 2, 1705. The party consisted of Mr. Taylor + and his two friends, Mr. Harrison and Mr. Sloman. They travelled on + horseback, and often had difficulties with the poor beast that carried + their luggage. They reached Edinburgh in the evening of August 31, and + left it on their return journey on September 8, and got home on the + 25th of the same month. The <i>Itinerary</i> concludes as follows: +</p> +<blockquote> + 'Thus we spent almost 2 months in a Journy of many 100 miles, + sometimes thro' very charming Countryes, and at other times over + desolate and Barren Mountaines, and yet met with no particular + misfortune in all the Time.' +</blockquote> +<p> + I may say at once of these three Itinerists—Mr. Taylor, Mr. Harrison, + and Mr. Sloman—that they appear to have been thoroughly + commonplace, well behaved, occasionally hilarious Englishmen, ready to + endure whatever befell them, if unavoidable; accustomed to take their + ease in their inn and to turn round and look at any pretty woman they + might chance to meet on their travels. Their first experience of what + the Itinerist calls 'the prodigies of Nature,' 'at once an occasion + both of Horrour and Admiration,' was in the Peak Country 'described in + poetry by the ingenious Mr. Cotton.' This part of the world they 'did' + with something of the earnestness of the modern tourist. But I hardly + think they enjoyed themselves. The 'prodigious' caverns and strange + petrifactions shocked them; 'nothing can be more terrible or shocking + to Nature.' Mam Tor, with its 1,710 feet, proved very impressive, 'a + vast high mountain reaching to the very clouds.' This gloom of the + Derbyshire hills and stony valleys was partially dispelled for our + travellers by a certain 'fair Gloriana' they met at Buxton, with whom + they had great fun, 'so much the greater, because we never expected + such heavenly enjoyments in so desolate a country.' If it be on + susceptibilities of this nature that Mr. Cowan rests his case for + thinking that the Itinerist can hardly have attained 'the blasted + antiquity' of fifty-eight, we must think Mr. Cowan a trifle hasty, or + a very young man, perhaps under forty, which is young for an editor. +</p> +<p> + After describing, somewhat too much like an auctioneer, the splendours + of Chatsworth, 'a Paradise in the deserts of Arabia,' the Itinerist + proceeds on his way north through Nottingham to Belvoir Castle, where + 'my Lord Rosses Gentleman (to whom Mr. Harrison was recommended) + entertained us by his Lordship's command with good wine and the best + of malt liquors which the cellar abounds with'; the pictures in the + Long Gallery were shown them by 'my Lord himself.' At Doncaster, 'a + neat market-town which consists only in one long street,' they had + some superlative salmon just taken out of the river. By Knaresborough + Spaw, where they drank the waters and had icy cold baths, and dined at + the ordinary with a parson whose conversation startled the propriety + of the Templar, the travellers made their way to York, and for the + first and last time a few pages of <i>Guide Book</i> are improperly + introduced. Then on to Scarborough. +</p> +<blockquote> + 'The next morning early we left Scarborough and travelled through a + dismall road, particularly near Robins Hood Bay; we were obliged to + lead our horses, and had much ado to get down a vast craggy + mountain which lyes within a quarter of a mile of it. The Bay is + about a mile broad, and inhabited by poor fishermen. We stopt to + taste some of their liquor and discourse with them. They told us + the French privateers came into the Very Bay and took 2 of their + Vessels but the day before, which were ransom'd for £25 a piece. We + saw a great many vessels lying upon the Shore, the masters not + daring to venture out to sea for fear of undergoing the same fate.' +</blockquote> +<p> + We boast too readily of our inviolate shores. +</p> +<p> + A curious description is given of the Duke of Buckingham's alum works + near Whitby. The travellers then procured a guide, and traversed 'the + vast moors which lye between Whitby and Gisborough.' The civic + magnificence of Newcastle greatly struck our travellers, who, happier + than their modern successors, were able to see the town miles off. The + Itinerist quotes with gusto the civic proverb that the men of + Newcastle pay nothing for the Way, the Word, or the Water, 'for the + Ministers of Religion are maintained, the streets paved, and the + Conduits kept up at the publick charge.' A disagreeable account is + given of the brutishness of the people employed in the salt works at + Tynemouth. At Berwick the travellers got into trouble with the sentry, + but the mistake was rectified with the captain of the guard over '2 + bowles of punch, there being no wine in the town.' +</p> +<p> + Scotland was now in sight, and the travellers became grave, as + befitted the occasion. They were told that the journey that lay before + them was extremely dangerous, that 'twould be difficult to escape with + their lives, much less (ominous words) without 'the distemper of the + country.' But Mr. Taylor, Mr. Harrison, and Mr. Sloman were as brave + as Mr. Pickwick, and they would on. 'Yet notwithstanding all these sad + representations, we resolv'd to proceed and stand by one another to + the last.' +</p> +<p> + What the Itinerists thought of Scotland when they got there is not for + me to say. I was once a Scottish member. +</p> +<p> + They arrived in Edinburgh at a great crisis in Scottish history. They + saw the Duke of Argyll, as Queen Anne's Lord High Commissioner, go to + the Parliament House in this manner: +</p> +<blockquote> + 'First a coach and six Horses for his Gentlemen, then a Trumpet, + then his own coach with six white horses, which were very fine, + being those presented by King William to the Duke of Queensbury, + and by him sold to the Duke of Argyle for £300; next goes a troop + of Horse Guards, cloathed like my Lord of Oxford's Regiment, but + the horses are of several colours; and the Lord Chancellor and the + Secretary of State, and the Lord Chief Justice Clerk, and other + officers of State close the cavalcade in coaches and six horses. + Thus the Commissioner goes and returns every day.' +</blockquote> +<p> + The Itinerists followed the Duke and his procession into the + Parliament House, and heard debated the great question—the greatest + of all possible questions for Scotland—whether this magnificence + should cease, whether there should be an end of an auld sang—in + short, whether the proposed Act of Union should be proceeded with. By + special favour, our Itinerists had leave to stand upon the steps of + the throne, and witnessed a famous fiery and prolonged debate, the + Duke once turning to them and saying, <i>sotto voce</i>, 'It is now + deciding whether England and Scotland shall go together by the ears.' + How it was decided we all know, and that it was wisely decided no one + doubts; yet, when we read our Itinerist's account of the Duke's coach + and horses, and the cavalcade that followed him, and remember that + this was what happened every day during the sitting of the Parliament, + and must not be confounded with the greater glories of the first day + of a Parliament, when every member, be he peer, knight of the shire, + or burgh member, had to ride on horseback in the procession, it is + impossible not to feel the force of Miss Grisel Dalmahoy's appeal in + the <i>Heart of Midlothian</i>, she being an ancient sempstress, to Mr. + Saddletree, the harness-maker: +</p> +<blockquote> + 'And as for the Lords of States ye suld mind the riding o' the + Parliament in the gude auld time before the Union. A year's rent o' + mony a gude estate gaed for horse-graith and harnessing, forby + broidered robes and foot-mantles that wad hae stude by their lane + with gold and brocade, and that were muckle in my ain line.' +</blockquote> +<p> + The graphic account of a famous debate given by, Taylor is worth + comparing with the <i>Lockhart Papers</i> and Hill Burton. The date is a + little troublesome. According to our Itinerist, he heard the + discussion as to whether the Queen or the Scottish Parliament should + nominate the Commissioners. Now, according to the histories, this + all-important discussion began and ended on September 1, but our + Itinerist had only arrived in Edinburgh the night before the first, + and gives us to understand that he owed his invitation to be present + to the fact that whilst in Edinburgh he and his friends had had the + honour to have several lords and members of Parliament to dine, and + that these guests informed him 'of the grand day when the Act was to + be passed or rejected.' The Itinerist's account is too particular—for + he gives the result of the voting—to admit of any possibility of a + mistake, and he describes how several of the members came afterwards + to his lodgings, and, so he writes, 'embraced us with all the outward + marks of love and kindness, and seemed mightily pleased at what was + done, and told us we should now be no more English and Scotch, but + Brittons.' In the matter of nomenclature, at all events, the promises + of the Union have not been carried out. +</p> +<p> + After September 1 the Parliament did not meet till the 4th, when an + Address was passed to the Queen, but apparently without any repetition + of debate. So it really is a little difficult to reconcile the dates. + Perhaps Itinerists are best advised to keep off public events. +</p> +<p> + How our travellers escaped the 'national distemper' and journeyed + home by Ecclefechan, Carlisle, Shap Fell, Liverpool, Chester, + Coventry, and Warwick must be read in the <i>Journey</i> itself, which, + though it only occupies 182 small pages, is full of matter and even + merriment; in fact, it is an excellent itinerary. +</p> +<a name="2H_4_25"><!-- H2 anchor --></a> +<p> </p> +<p> </p> +<p> </p> +<p> </p> +<h2> + EPITAPHS +</h2> +<p> </p> + +<p> + Epitaphs, if in rhyme, are the real literature of the masses. They + need no commendation and are beyond all criticism. A Cambridge don, a + London bus-driver, will own their charm in equal measure. Strange + indeed is the fascination of rhyme. A commonplace hitched into verse + instantly takes rank with Holy Scripture. This passion for poetry, as + it is sometimes called, is manifested on every side; even tradesmen + share it, and as the advertisements in our newspapers show, are + willing to pay small sums to poets who commend their wares in verse. + The widow bereft of her life's companion, the mother bending over an + empty cradle, find solace in thinking what doleful little scrag of + verse shall be graven on the tombstone of the dead. From the earliest + times men have sought to squeeze their loves and joys, their sorrows + and hatreds, into distichs and quatrains, and to inscribe them + somewhere, on walls or windows, on sepulchral urns and gravestones, as + memorials of their pleasure or their pain. +</p> +<pre> + 'Hark! how chimes the passing bell— + There's no music to a knell; + All the other sounds we hear + Flatter and but cheat our ear.' +</pre> +<p> + So wrote Shirley the dramatist, and so does he truthfully explain the + popularity of the epitaph as distinguished from the epigram. Who ever + wearies of Martial's 'Erotion'?— +</p> +<pre> + 'Hic festinata requiescit Erotion umbra, + Crimine quam fati sexta peremit hiems. + Quisquis eris nostri post me regnator agelli + Manibus exiguis annua justa dato. + Sic lare perpetuo, sic turba sospite, solus + Flebilis in terra sit lapis iste tua'— +</pre> +<p class="noindent"> + so prettily Englished by Leigh Hunt: +</p> +<pre> + 'Underneath this greedy stone + Lies little sweet Erotion, + Whom the Fates with hearts as cold + Nipped away at six years old. + Those, whoever thou may'st be, + That hast this small field after me, + Let the yearly rites be paid + To her little slender shade; + So shall no disease or jar + Hurt thy house or chill thy Lar, + But this tomb be here alone + The only melancholy stone.' +</pre> +<p> + Our English epitaphs are to be found scattered up and down our country + churchyards—'uncouth rhymes,' as Gray calls them, yet full of the + sombre philosophy of life. They are fast becoming illegible, worn out + by the rain that raineth every day, and our prim, present-day parsons + do not look with favour upon them, besides which—to use a clumsy + phrase—besides which most of our churchyards are now closed against + burials, and without texts there can be no sermons: +</p> +<pre> + 'I'll stay and read my sermon here, + And skulls and bones shall be my text. + * * * * + Here learn that glory and disgrace, + Wisdom and Folly, pass away, + That mirth hath its appointed space, + That sorrow is but for a day; + That all we love and all we hate, + That all we hope and all we fear, + Each mood of mind, each turn of fate, + Must end in dust and silence here.' +</pre> +<p> + The best epitaphs are the grim ones. Designed, as epitaphs are, to + arrest and hold in their momentary grasp the wandering attention and + languid interest of the passer-by, they must hit him hard and at once, + and this they can only do by striking some very responsive chord, and + no chords are so immediately responsive as those which relate to death + and, it may be, judgment to come. +</p> +<p> + Mr. Aubrey Stewart, in his interesting <i>Selection of English Epigrams + and Epitaphs</i>, published by Chapman and Hall, quotes an epitaph from a + Norfolk churchyard which I have seen in other parts of the country. + The last time I saw it was in the Forest of Dean. It is admirably + suited for the gravestone of any child of very tender years, say four: +</p> +<pre> + 'When the Archangel's trump shall blow + And souls to bodies join, + Many will wish their lives below + Had been as short as mine.' +</pre> +<p class="noindent"> + It is uncouth, but it is warranted to grip. +</p> +<p> + Frequently, too, have I noticed how constantly the attention is + arrested by Pope's well-known lines from his magnificent 'Verses to + the Memory of an Unfortunate Lady,' which are often to be found on + tombstones: +</p> +<pre> + 'So peaceful rests without a stone and name + What once had beauty, titles, wealth, and fame. + How loved, how honoured once avails thee not, + To whom related or by whom begot. + A heap of dust alone remains of thee; + 'Tis all thou art and all the proud shall be.' +</pre> +<p> + I wish our modern poetasters who deny Pope's claim to be a poet no + worse fate than to lie under stones which have engraved upon them the + lines just quoted, for they will then secure in death what in life was + denied them—the ear of the public. +</p> +<p> + Next to the grim epitaph, I should be disposed to rank those which + remind the passer-by of his transitory estate. In different parts of + the country—in Cumberland and Cornwall, in Croyland Abbey, in + Llangollen Churchyard, in Melton Mowbray—are to be found lines more + or less resembling the following: +</p> +<pre> + 'Man's life is like unto a winter's day, + Some break their fast and so depart away, + Others stay dinner then depart full fed, + The longest age but sups and goes to bed. + O reader, there behold and see + As we are now, so thou must be.' +</pre> +<p> + The complimentary epitaph seldom pleases. To lie like a tombstone has + become a proverb. Pope's famous epitaph on Newton: +</p> +<pre> + 'Nature and Nature's laws lay hid in night, + God said, Let Newton be! and all was light.' +</pre> +<p class="noindent"> + is hyperbolical and out of character with the great man it seeks to + honour. It was intended for Westminster Abbey. I rejoice at the + preference given to prose Latinity. +</p> +<p> + The tender and emotional epitaphs have a tendency to become either + insipid or silly. But Herrick has shown us how to rival Martial: +</p> +<pre> + 'UPON A CHILD THAT DIED. + + Here she lies a pretty bud + Lately made of flesh and blood; + Who as soon fell fast asleep + As her little eyes did peep. + Give her strewings, but not stir + The earth that lightly covers her.' +</pre> +<p> + Mr. Dodd, the editor of the admirable volume called <i>The + Epigrammatists</i>, published in Bohn's Standard Library, calls these + lines a model of simplicity and elegance. So they are, but they are + very vague. But then the child was very young. Erotion, one must + remember, was six years old. Ben Jonson's beautiful epitaph on S.P., a + child of Queen Elizabeth's Chapel, beginning, +</p> +<pre> + 'Weep with me all you that read + This little story; + And know for whom the tear you shed + Death's self is sorry,' +</pre> +<p class="noindent"> + is fine poetry, but it is not life or death as plain people know those + sober realities. The flippant epitaph is always abominable. Gay's, for + example: +</p> +<pre> + 'Life is a jest, and all things show it. + I thought so once, but now I know it.' +</pre> +<p class="noindent"> + But <i>does</i> he know it? Ay, there's the rub! The note of Christianity + is seldom struck in epitaphs. There is a deep-rooted paganism in the + English people which is for ever bubbling up and asserting itself in + the oddest of ways. Coleridge's epitaph for himself is a striking + exception: +</p> +<pre> + 'Stop, Christian passer-by! stop, child of God, + And read with gentle breast, Beneath this sod + A poet lies, or that which once seemed he. + O lift one thought in prayer for S.T.C, + That he who many a year with toil of breath + Found death in life, may here find life in death! + Mercy for praise—to be forgiven for fame, + He ask'd and hoped through Christ. Do thou the same.' +</pre> +<a name="2H_4_26"><!-- H2 anchor --></a> +<p> </p> +<p> </p> +<p> </p> +<p> </p> +<h2> + 'HANSARD' +</h2> +<p> </p> + +<p> + 'Men are we, and must mourn when e'en the shade of that which once was + great has passed away.' This quotation—which, in obedience to the + prevailing taste, I print as prose—was forced upon me by reading in + the papers an account of some proceedings in a sale-room in Chancery + Lane last Tuesday, <a name="16"></a> <a href="#note-16"><small><sup>1</sup></small></a> when the entire stock and copyright of + <i>Hansard's Parliamentary History and Debates</i> were exposed for sale, + and, it must be added, to ridicule. Yet 'Hansard' was once a name to + conjure with. To be in it was an ambition—costly, troublesome, but + animating; to know it was, if not a liberal education, at all events + almost certain promotion; whilst to possess it for your very own was + the outward and visible sign of serious statesmanship. No wonder that + unimaginative men still believed that <i>Hansard</i> was a property with + money in it. Is it not the counterpart of Parliament, its dark and + majestic shadow thrown across the page of history? As the pious + Catholic studies his <i>Acta Sanctorum</i>, so should the constitutionalist + love to pore over the <i>ipsissima verba</i> of Parliamentary gladiators, + and read their resolutions and their motions. Where else save in the + pages of <i>Hansard</i> can we make ourselves fully acquainted with the + history of the Mother of Free Institutions? It is, no doubt, dull, but + with the soberminded a large and spacious dulness like that of + <i>Hansard's Debates</i> is better than the incongruous chirpings of the + new 'humourists.' Besides, its dulness is exaggerated. If a reader + cannot extract amusement from it the fault is his, not <i>Hansard's</i>. + But, indeed, this perpetual talk of dulness and amusement ought not to + pass unchallenged. Since when has it become a crime to be dull? Our + fathers were not ashamed to be dull in a good cause. We are ashamed, + but without ceasing to be dull. +</p> + +<p> + But it is idle to argue with the higgle of the market. 'Things are + what they are,' said Bishop Butler in a passage which has lost its + freshness; that is to say, they are worth what they will fetch. 'Why, + then, should we desire to be deceived?' The test of truth remains + undiscovered, but the test of present value is the auction mart. Tried + by this test, it is plain that <i>Hansard</i> has fallen upon evil days. + The bottled dreariness of Parliament is falling, falling, falling. An + Elizabethan song-book, the original edition of Gray's <i>Elegy</i>, or + <i>Peregrine Pickle</i>, is worth more than, or nearly as much as, the 458 + volumes of <i>Hansard's Parliamentary Debates</i>. Three complete sets were + sold last Tuesday; one brought £110, the other two but £70 each. And + yet it is not long ago since a <i>Hansard</i> was worth three times as + much. Where were our young politicians? There are serious men on both + sides of the House. Men of their stamp twenty years ago would not have + been happy without a <i>Hansard</i> to clothe their shelves with dignity + and their minds with quotations. But these young men were not bidders. +</p> +<p> + As the sale proceeded, the discredit of <i>Hansard</i> became plainer and + plainer. For the copyright, including, of course, the goodwill of the + name—the right to call yourself 'Hansard' for years to come—not a + penny was offered, and yet, as the auctioneer feelingly observed, only + eighteen months ago it was valued at £60,000. The cold douche of the + auction mart may brace the mind, but is apt to lower the price of + commodities of this kind. Then came incomplete and unbound sets, with + doleful results. For forty copies of the 'Indian Debates' for 1889 + only a penny a copy was offered. It was rumoured that the bidder + intended, had he been successful, to circulate the copies amongst the + supporters of a National Council for India; but his purpose was + frustrated by the auctioneer, who, mindful of the honour of the + Empire, sorrowfully but firmly withdrew the lot, and proceeded to the + next, amidst the jeers of a thoroughly demoralized audience. But this + subject why pursue? It is, for the reason already cited at the + beginning, a painful one. The glory of <i>Hansard</i> has departed for + ever. Like a new-fangled and sham religion, it began in pride and + ended in a police-court, instead of beginning in a police-court and + ending in pride, which is the now well-defined course of true + religion. +</p> +<p> + The fact that nobody wants <i>Hansard</i> is not necessarily a rebuff to + Parliamentary eloquence, yet these low prices jump with the times and + undoubtedly indicate an impatience of oratory. We talk more than our + ancestors, but we prove our good faith by doing it very badly. We have + no Erskines at the Bar, but trials last longer than ever. There are + not half a dozen men in the House of Commons who can make a speech, + properly so called, but the session is none the shorter on that + account. <i>Hansard's Debates</i> are said to be dull to read, but there is + a sterner fate than reading a dull debate: you may be called upon to + listen to one. The statesmen of the time must be impervious to + dulness; they must crush the artist within them to a powder. The new + people who have come bounding into politics and are now claiming their + share of the national inheritance are not orators by nature, and will + never become so by culture; but they mean business, and that is well. + Caleb Garth and not George Canning should be the model of the virtuous + politician of the future. +</p> +<p> </p> + +<a name="note-16"><!--Note--></a> +<p class="fnote"><a href="#16"> +<sup><u>1</u></sup></a> March 8, 1902. +</p> + +<a name="2H_4_27"><!-- H2 anchor --></a> +<p> </p> +<p> </p> +<p> </p> +<p> </p> +<h2> + CONTEMPT OF COURT +</h2> +<p> </p> + +<p> + The late Mr. Carlyle has somewhere in his voluminous but well-indexed + writings a highly humorous and characteristic passage in which he, + with all his delightful gusto, dilates upon the oddity of the scene + where a withered old sinner perched on a bench, quaintly attired in + red turned up with ermine, addresses another sinner in a wooden pew, + and bids him be taken away and hung by the neck until he is dead; and + how the sinner in the pew, instead of indignantly remonstrating with + the sinner on the bench, 'Why, you cantankerous old absurdity, what + are you about taking my life like that?' usually exhibits signs of + great depression, and meekly allows himself to be conducted to his + cell, from whence in due course he is taken and throttled according to + law. +</p> +<p> + This situation described by Carlyle is doubtless mighty full of + humour; but, none the less, were any prisoner at the bar to adopt + Craigenputtock's suggestion, he would only add to the peccadillo of + murder the grave offence of contempt of court, which has been defined + 'as a disobedience to the court, an opposing or despising the + authority, justice, and dignity thereof.' +</p> +<p> + The whole subject of Contempt is an interesting and picturesque one, + and has been treated after an interesting and picturesque yet accurate + and learned fashion by a well-known lawyer, in a treatise <a name="17"></a> <a href="#note-17"><small><sup>1</sup></small></a> which + well deserves to be read not merely by the legal practitioner, but by + the student of constitutional law and the nice observer of our manners + and customs. +</p> + +<p> + An ill-disposed person may exhibit contempt of court in divers + ways—for example, he may scandalize the the court itself, which may + be done not merely by the extreme measure of hurling missiles at the + presiding judge, or loudly contemning his learning or authority, but + by ostentatiously reading a newspaper in his presence, or laughing + uproariously at a joke made by somebody else. Such contempts, + committed as they are <i>in facie curiae</i>, are criminal offences, and + may be punished summarily by immediate imprisonment without the right + of appeal. It speaks well both for the great good sense of the judges + and for the deep-rooted legal instincts of our people that such + offences are seldom heard of. It would be impossible nicely to define + what measure of freedom of manners should be allowed in a court of + justice, which, as we know, is neither a church nor a theatre, but, as + a matter of practice, the happy mean between an awe-struck and unmanly + silence and free-and-easy conversation is well preserved. The + practising advocate, to avoid contempt and obtain, if instructed so to + do, a hearing, must obey certain sumptuary laws, for not only must he + don the horsehair wig, the gown, and bands of his profession, but his + upper clothing must be black, nor should his nether garment be + otherwise than of sober hue. Mr. Oswald reports Mr. Justice Byles as + having once observed to the late Lord Coleridge whilst at the Bar: 'I + always listen with little pleasure to the arguments of counsel whose + legs are encased in light gray trousers.' The junior Bar is growing + somewhat lax in these matters. Dark gray coats are not unknown, and it + was only the other day I observed a barrister duly robed sitting in + court in a white waistcoat, apparently oblivious of the fact that + whilst thus attired no judge could possibly have heard a word he said. + However, as he had nothing to say, the question did not arise. It is + doubtless the increasing Chamber practice of the judges which has + occasioned this regrettable laxity. In Chambers a judge cannot + summarily commit for contempt, nor is it necessary or customary for + counsel to appear before him in robes. Some judges object to fancy + waistcoats in Chambers, but others do not. The late Sir James Bacon, + who was a great stickler for forensic propriety, and who, sitting in + court, would not have allowed a counsel in a white waistcoat to say a + word, habitually wore one himself when sitting as vacation judge in + the summer. +</p> +<p> + It must not be supposed that there can be no contempt out of court. + There can. To use bad language on being served with legal process is + to treat the court from whence such process issued with contempt. None + the less, considerable latitude of language on such occasions is + allowed. How necessary it is to protect the humble officers of the law + who serve writs and subpoenas is proved by the case of one Johns, who + was very rightly committed to the Fleet in 1772, it appearing by + affidavit that he had compelled the poor wretch who sought to serve + him with a subpoena to devour both the parchment and the wax seal of + the court, and had then, after kicking him so savagely as to make him + insensible, ordered his body to be cast into the river. No amount of + irritation could justify such conduct. It is no contempt to tear up + the writ or subpoena in the presence of the officer of the court, + because, the service once lawfully effected, the court is indifferent + to the treatment of its stationery; but such behaviour, though lawful, + is childish. To obstruct a witness on his way to give evidence, or to + threaten him if he does give evidence, or to tamper with the jury, are + all serious contempts. In short, there is a divinity which hedges a + court of justice, and anybody who, by action or inaction, renders the + course of justice more difficult or dilatory than it otherwise would + be, incurs the penalty of contempt. Consider, for example, the case of + documents and letters. Prior to the issue of a writ, the owner of + documents and letters may destroy them, if he pleases—the fact of his + having done so, if litigation should ensue on the subject to which the + destroyed documents related, being only matter for comment—but the + moment a writ is issued the destruction by a defendant of any document + in his possession relating to the action is a grave contempt, for + which a duchess was lately sent to prison. There is something majestic + about this. No sooner is the aid of a court of law invoked than it + assumes a seizin of every scrap of writing which will assist it in its + investigation of the matter at issue between the parties, and to + destroy any such paper is to obstruct the court in its holy task, and + therefore a contempt. +</p> +<p> + To disobey a specific order of the court is, of course, contempt. The + old Court of Chancery had a great experience in this aspect of the + question. It was accustomed to issue many peremptory commands; it + forbade manufacturers to foul rivers, builders so to build as to + obstruct ancient lights, suitors to seek the hand in matrimony of its + female wards, Dissenting ministers from attempting to occupy the + pulpits from which their congregations had by vote ejected them, and + so on through almost all the business of this mortal life. It was more + ready to forbid than to command; but it would do either if justice + required it. And if you persisted in doing what the Court of Chancery + told you not to do, you were committed; whilst if you refused to do + what it had ordered you to do, you were attached; and the difference + between committal and attachment need not concern the lay mind. +</p> +<p> + To pursue the subject further would be to plunge into the morasses of + the law where there is no footing for the plain man; but just a word + or two may be added on the subject of punishment for contempt. In old + days persons who were guilty of contempt <i>in facie curiae</i> had their + right hands cut off, and Mr. Oswald prints as an appendix to his book + certain clauses of an Act of Parliament of Henry VIII. which provide + for the execution of this barbarous sentence, and also (it must be + admitted) for the kindly after-treatment of the victim, who was to + have a surgeon at hand to sear the stump, a sergeant of the poultry + with a cock ready for the surgeon to wrap about the stump, a sergeant + of the pantry with bread to eat, and a sergeant of the cellar with a + pot of red wine to drink. +</p> +<p> + Nowadays the penalty for most contempts is costs. The guilty party in + order to purge his contempt has to pay all the costs of a motion to + commit and attach. The amount is not always inconsiderable, and when + it is paid it would be idle to apply to the other side for a pot of + red wine. They would only laugh at you. Our ancestors had a way of + mitigating their atrocities which robs the latter of more than half + their barbarity. Costs are an unmitigable atrocity. +</p> +<p> </p> + + +<a name="note-17"><!--Note--></a> +<p class="fnote"><a href="#17"> +<sup><u>1</u></sup></a> <i>Contempt of Court, etc.</i> By J.F. Oswald, Q.C. London: + William Clowes and Sons, Limited. +</p> + +<a name="2H_4_28"><!-- H2 anchor --></a> +<p> </p> +<p> </p> +<p> </p> +<p> </p> +<h2> + 5 EDWARD VII., CHAPTER 12 +</h2> +<p> </p> + +<p> + The appearance of this undebated Act of Parliament in the attenuated + volume of the Statutes of 1905 almost forces upon sensitive minds an + unwelcome inquiry as to what is the attitude proper to be assumed by + an emancipated but trained intelligence towards a decision of the + House of Lords, sitting judicially as the highest (because the last) + Court of Appeal. +</p> +<p> + So far as the <i>parties</i> to the litigation are concerned, the decision, + if of a final character, puts an end to the <i>lis</i>. Litigation must, so + at least it has always been assumed, end somewhere, and in these + realms it ends with the House of Lords. Higher you cannot go, however + litigiously minded. +</p> +<p> + In the vast majority of appeal cases a final appeal not only ends the + <i>lis</i>, but determines once for all the rights of the parties to the + subject-matter. The successful litigant leaves the House of Lords + quieted in his possession or restored to what he now knows to be his + own, conscious of a victory, final and complete; whilst the + unsuccessful litigant goes away exceeding sorrowful, knowing that his + only possible revenge is to file his petition in bankruptcy. +</p> +<p> + This, however, is not always so. +</p> +<p> + In August, 1904, the House of Lords decided in a properly constituted + <i>lis</i> that a particular ecclesiastical body in Scotland, somewhat + reduced in numbers, but existent and militant, was entitled to certain + property held in trust for the use and behoof of the Free Church of + Scotland. There is no other way of holding property than by a legal + title. Sometimes that title has been created by an Act of Parliament, + and sometimes it is a title recognised by the general laws and customs + of the realm, but a legal title it has got to be. Titles are never + matters of rhetoric, nor are they <i>jure divino</i>, or conferred in + answer to prayer; they are strictly legal matters, and it is the very + particular business of courts of law, when properly invoked, to + recognise and enforce them. +</p> +<p> + In the case I have in mind there were two claimants to the + subject-matter—the Free Church and the United Free Church—and the + House of Lords, after a great argle-bargle, decided that the property + in question belonged to the Free Church. +</p> +<p> + Thereupon the expected happened. A hubbub arose in Scotland and + elsewhere, and in consequence of the hubbub an Act of Parliament has + somewhat coyly made its appearance in the Statute Book (5 Edward VII., + chapter 12) appointing and authorizing Commissioners to take away from + the successful litigant a certain portion of the property just + declared to be his, and to give it to the unsuccessful litigant. +</p> +<p> + The reasons alleged for taking away by statute from the Free Church + some of the property that belongs to it are that the Free Church is + not big enough to administer satisfactorily all the property it + possesses; and that the State may reasonably refuse to allow a + religious body to have more property than it can in the opinion of + State-appointed Commissioners usefully employ in the propagation of + its religion. Let the reasons be well noted. They have made their + appearance before in history. These were the reasons alleged by Henry + VIII. for the suppression of the smaller monasteries. The State, + having made up its mind to take away from the Free Church so much of + its property as the Commissioners may think it cannot usefully + administer, then proceeds, by this undebated Act of Parliament, to + give the overplus to the unsuccessful litigant, the United Free + Church. Why to them? It will never do to answer this question by + saying because it is always desirable to return lost property to its + true owner, since so to reply would be to give the lie direct to a + decision of the Final Court of Appeal on a question of property. +</p> +<p> + In the eye—I must not write the blind eye—of the law, this + parliamentary gift to the United Free Church is not a <i>giving back</i> + but an <i>original free gift</i> from the State by way of endowment to a + particular denomination of Presbyterian dissenters. In theory the + State could have done what it liked with so much of the property of + the Free Church as that body is not big enough to spend upon itself. + It might, for example, have divided it between Presbyterians + generally, or it might have left it to the Free Church to say who was + to be the disponee of its property. +</p> +<p> + As a matter of hard fact, the State had no choice in the matter. It + could not select, or let the Free Church select, the object of its + bounty. The public sense (a vague term) demanded that the United Free + Church should not be required to abide by the decision of the House of + Lords, but should have given to it whatever property could, under any + decent pretext of public policy and by Act of Parliament, be taken + away from the Free Church. If the pretext of the inability of the + Free Church to administer its own estate had not been forthcoming, + some other pretext must and would have been discovered. +</p> +<p> + Having regard, then, to 5 Edward VII., chapter 12, how ought one to + feel towards the decision of the House of Lords in the Scottish + Churches case? In public life you can usually huddle up anything, if + only all parties, for reasons, however diverse, of their own, are + agreed upon what is to be done. Like many another Act of Parliament, 5 + Edward VII., chapter 12, was bought with a sum of money. Nobody, not + even Lord Robertson, really wanted to debate or discuss it, least of + all to discover the philosophy of it. But in an essay you can huddle + up nothing. At all hazards, you must go on. This is why so many + essayists have been burnt alive. +</p> +<p> + <i>First</i>.—Was the decision wrong? 'Yes' or 'No.' If it was right— +</p> +<p> + <i>Second</i>.—Was the law, in pursuance of which the decision was given, + so manifestly unjust as to demand, not the alteration of the law for + the future, but the passage through Parliament, <i>ex post facto</i>, of an + Act to prevent the decision from taking effect between the parties + according to its tenour? +</p> +<p> + <i>Third</i>.—Supposing the decision to be right, and the law it expounded + just and reasonable in general, was there anything in the peculiar + circumstances of the successful litigant, and in the sources from + which a considerable portion of the property was derived, to justify + Parliamentary interference and the provisions of 5 Edward VII., + chapter 12? +</p> +<p> + <i>Number Three</i>, being the easiest way out of the difficulty, has been + adopted. The <i>decision</i> remains untouched, the <i>law</i> it expounds + remains unaltered—nothing has gone, except the <i>order</i> of the Final + Court giving effect to the untouched decision and to the unaltered + law. <i>That</i> has been tampered with for the reasons suggested in + <i>Number Three</i>. +</p> +<p> + John Locke was fond of referring questions to something he called 'the + bulk of mankind'—an undefinable, undignified, unsalaried body, of + small account at the beginning of controversies, but all-powerful at + their close. +</p> +<p> + My own belief is that eventually 'the bulk of mankind' will say + bluntly that the House of Lords went wrong in these cases, and that + the Act of Parliament was hastily patched up to avert wrong, and to + do substantial justice between the parties. +</p> +<p> + If asked, What can 'the bulk of mankind' know about law? I reply, with + great cheerfulness, 'Very little indeed.' But suppose that the + application of law to a particular <i>lis</i> requires precise and full + knowledge of all that happened during an ecclesiastical contest, and, + in addition, demands a grasp of the philosophy of religion, and the + ascertainment of true views as to the innate authority of a church and + the development of doctrine, would there be anything very surprising + if half a dozen eminent authorities in our Courts of Law and Equity + were to go wrong? +</p> +<p> + Between a frank admission of an incomplete consideration of a + complicated and badly presented case and such blunt <i>ex post facto</i> + legislation as 5 Edward VII., chapter 12, I should have preferred the + former. The Act is what would once have been called a dangerous + precedent. To-day precedents, good or bad, are not much considered. If + we want to do a thing, we do it, precedent or no precedent. So far we + have done so very little that the question has hardly arisen. If our + Legislature ever reassumes activity under new conditions, and in + obedience to new impulses, it may be discovered whether bad precedents + are dangerous or not. +</p> +<p> </p> + +<h3> + THE END +</h3> +<p> </p> +<p> </p> +<p> </p> + + + + + + + +<pre> + + + + + +End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of In the Name of the Bodleian and Other +Essays, by Augustine Birrell + +*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE BODLEIAN AND OTHERS *** + +***** This file should be named 12244-h.htm or 12244-h.zip ***** +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: + https://www.gutenberg.org/1/2/2/4/12244/ + +Produced by Janet Kegg and PG Distributed Proofreaders + +Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions +will be renamed. + +Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no +one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation +(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without +permission and without paying copyright royalties. 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You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + + +Title: In the Name of the Bodleian and Other Essays + +Author: Augustine Birrell + +Release Date: May 3, 2004 [EBook #12244] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ASCII + +*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE BODLEIAN AND OTHERS *** + + + + +Produced by Janet Kegg and PG Distributed Proofreaders + + + + + + + + + +IN THE NAME OF THE BODLEIAN +AND OTHER ESSAYS + + +By + +AUGUSTINE BIRRELL + + +HONORARY FELLOW OF TRINITY HALL, CAMBRIDGE + + +_'Peace be with the soul of that charitable and courteous author who +for the common benefit of his fellow-authors introduced the ingenious +way of miscellaneous writing.'_--LORD SHAFTESBURY. + + +LONDON + +1906 + + + + +AUTHOR'S NOTE + +The first paper appeared in the _Outlook_, New York, the one on Mr. +Bradlaugh in the _Nineteenth Century_, and some of the others at +different times in the _Speaker_. + +3, NEW SQUARE, +LINCOLN'S INN. + + + + + CONTENTS + + I. 'IN THE NAME OF THE BODLEIAN' + II. BOOKWORMS + III. CONFIRMED READERS + IV. FIRST EDITIONS + V. GOSSIP IN A LIBRARY + VI. LIBRARIANS AT PLAY + VII. LAWYERS AT PLAY + VIII. THE NON-JURORS + IX. LORD CHESTERFIELD + X. THE JOHNSONIAN LEGEND + XI. BOSWELL AS BIOGRAPHER + XII. OLD PLEASURE GARDENS + XIII. OLD BOOKSELLERS + XIV. A FEW WORDS ABOUT COPYRIGHT IN BOOKS + XV. HANNAH MORE ONCE MORE + XVI. ARTHUR YOUNG + XVII. THOMAS PAINE + XVIII. CHARLES BRADLAUGH + XIX. DISRAELI _EX RELATIONE_ SIR WILLIAM FRASER + XX. A CONNOISSEUR + XXI. OUR GREAT MIDDLE CLASS + XXII. TAR AND WHITEWASH + XXIII. ITINERARIES + XXIV. EPITAPHS + XXV. 'HANSARD' + XXVI. CONTEMPT OF COURT + XXVII. 5 EDWARD VII., CHAPTER 12 + + + + +'IN THE NAME OF THE BODLEIAN' + + +With what feelings, I wonder, ought one to approach in a famous +University an already venerable foundation, devoted by the last will +and indented deed of a pious benefactor to the collection and housing +of books and the promotion of learning? The Bodleian at this moment +harbours within its walls well-nigh half a million of printed volumes, +some scores of precious manuscripts in all the tongues, and has become +a name famous throughout the whole civilized world. What sort of a +poor scholar would he be whose heart did not beat within him when, for +the first time, he found himself, to quote the words of 'Elia,' 'in +the heart of learning, under the shadow of the mighty Bodley'? + +Grave questions these! 'The following episode occurred during one of +Calverley's (then Blayds) appearances at "Collections," the Master +(Dr. Jenkyns) officiating. _Question_: "And with what feelings, Mr. +Blayds, ought we to regard the decalogue?" Calverley who had no very +clear idea of what was meant by the decalogue, but who had a due sense +of the importance both of the occasion and of the question, made the +following reply: "Master, with feelings of devotion, mingled with +awe!" "Quite right, young man; a very proper answer," exclaimed the +Master.'[A] + + [Footnote A: _Literary Remains of C.S. Calverley_, p. 31.] + +'Devotion mingled with awe' might be a very proper answer for me to +make to my own questions, but possessing that acquaintance with the +history of the most picturesque of all libraries which anybody can +have who loves books enough to devote a dozen quiet hours of +rumination to the pages of Mr. Macray's _Annals of the Bodleian +Library_, second edition, Oxford, 'at the Clarendon Press, 1890,' I +cannot honestly profess to entertain in my breast, with regard to it, +the precise emotions which C.S.C. declared took possession of him when +he regarded the decalogue. A great library easily begets affection, +which may deepen into love; but devotion and awe are plants hard to +rear in our harsh climate; besides, can it be well denied that there +is something in a huge collection of the ancient learning, of +mediaeval folios, of controversial pamphlets, and in the thick black +dust these things so woefully collect, provocative of listlessness and +enervation and of a certain Solomonic dissatisfaction? The two writers +of modern times, both pre-eminently sympathetic towards the past, who +have best described this somewhat melancholy and disillusioned frame +of mind are both Americans: Washington Irving, in two essays in _The +Sketch-Book_, 'The Art of Bookmaking' and 'The Mutability of +Literature'; and Nathaniel Hawthorne, in many places, but notably in +that famous chapter on 'The Emptiness of Picture Galleries,' in _The +Marble Faun_. + +It is perhaps best not to make too great demands upon our slender +stock of deep emotions, not to rhapsodize too much, or vainly to +pretend, as some travellers have done, that to them the collections +of the Bodleian, its laden shelves and precious cases, are more +attractive than wealth, fame, or family, and that it was stern Fate +that alone compelled them to leave Oxford by train after a visit +rarely exceeding twenty-four hours in duration. + +Sir Thomas Bodley's Library at Oxford is, all will admit, a great and +glorious institution, one of England's sacred places; and springing, +as it did, out of the mind, heart, and head of one strong, efficient, +and resolute man, it is matter for rejoicing with every honest +gentleman to be able to observe how quickly the idea took root, +how well it has thriven, by how great a tradition it has become +consecrated, and how studiously the wishes of the founder in all their +essentials are still observed and carried out. + +Saith the prophet Isaiah, 'The liberal deviseth liberal things; and by +liberal things he shall stand.' The name of Thomas Bodley still stands +all the world over by the liberal thing he devised. + +A few pages about this 'second Ptolemy' will be grudged me by none but +unlettered churls. + +He was a west countryman, an excellent thing to be in England if you +want backing through thick and thin, and was born in Exeter on March +2nd, 1544--a most troublesome date. It seems our fate in the old home +never to be for long quit of the religious difficulty--which is very +hard upon us, for nobody, I suppose, would call the English a +'religious' people. Little Thomas Bodley opened his eyes in a land +distracted with the religious difficulty. Listen to his own words; +they are full of the times: 'My father, in the time of Queen Mary, +being noted and known to be an enemy to Popery, was so cruelly +threatened and so narrowly observed by those that maliced his +religion, that for the safeguard of himself and my mother, who was +wholly affected as my father, he knew no way so secure as to fly into +Germany, where after a while he found means to call over my mother +with all his children and family, whom he settled for a time in Wesel +in Cleveland. (For there, there were many English which had left their +country for their conscience and with quietness enjoyed their meetings +and preachings.) From thence he removed to the town of Frankfort, +where there was in like sort another English congregation. Howbeit we +made no longer tarriance in either of these two towns, for that my +father had resolved to fix his abode in the city of Geneva.' + +Here the Bodleys remained 'until such time as our Nation was +advertised of the death of Queen Mary and the succession of Elizabeth, +with the change of religion which caused my father to hasten into +England.' + +In Geneva young Bodley and his brothers enjoyed what now would be +called great educational advantages. Small creature though he was, he +yet attended, so he says, the public lectures of Chevalerius in +Hebrew, Bersaldus in Greek, and of Calvin and Beza in Divinity. He +had also 'domestical teachers,' and was taught Homer by Robert +Constantinus, who was the author of a Greek lexicon, a luxury in those +days. + +On returning to England, Bodley proceeded, not to Exeter College, as +by rights he should have done, but to Magdalen, where he became a +'reading man,' and graduated Bachelor of Arts in 1563. The next year +he shifted his quarters to Merton, where he gave public lectures on +Greek. In 1566 he became a Master of Arts, took to the study of +natural philosophy, and three years later was Junior Proctor. He +remained in residence until 1576, thus spending seventeen years in the +University. In the last-mentioned year he obtained leave of absence to +travel on the Continent, and for four years he pursued his studies +abroad, mastering the French, Spanish, and Italian languages. Some +short time after his return home he obtained an introduction to Court +circles and became an Esquire to Queen Elizabeth, who seems to have +entertained varying opinions about him, at one time greatly commending +him and at another time wishing he were hanged--an awkward wish on +Tudor lips. In 1588 Bodley married a wealthy widow, a Mrs. Ball, the +daughter of a Bristol man named Carew. As Bodley survived his wife and +had no children, a good bit of her money remains in the Bodleian to +this day. Blessed be her memory! Nor should the names of Carew and +Ball be wholly forgotten in this connection. From 1588 to 1596 Bodley +was in the diplomatic service, chiefly at The Hague, where he did good +work in troublesome times. On being finally recalled from The Hague, +Bodley had to make up his mind whether to pursue a public life. He +suffered from having too many friends, for not only did Burleigh +patronize him, but Essex must needs do the same. No man can serve two +masters, and though to be the victim of the rival ambitions of greater +men than yourself is no uncommon fate, it is a currish one. Bodley +determined to escape it, and to make for himself after a very +different fashion a name _aere perennius_. + + 'I resolved thereupon to possess my soul in peace all the residue + of my days, to take my full farewell of State employments, to + satisfy my mind with the mediocrity of worldly living that I had of + mine own, and so to retire me from the Court.' + +But what was he to do? + + 'Whereupon, examining exactly for the rest of my life what course I + might take, and having sought all the ways to the wood to select + the most proper, I concluded at the last to set up my staff at the + Library door in Oxford, being thoroughly persuaded that in my + solitude and surcease from the Commonwealth affairs I could not + busy myself to better purpose than by reducing that place (which + then in every part lay ruined waste) to the publick use of + students.' + +It is pleasant to be admitted into the birth-chamber of a great idea +destined to be translated into action. Bodley proceeds to state the +four qualifications he felt himself to possess to do this great bit of +work: first, the necessary knowledge of ancient and modern tongues and +of 'sundry other sorts of scholastical literature'; second, purse +ability; third, a great store of honourable friends; and fourth, +leisure. + +Bodley's description of the state of the old library as lying in every +part ruined and in waste was but too true. + +Richard of Bury, the book-loving Bishop of Durham, seems to have been +the first donor of manuscripts on anything like a large scale to +Oxford, but the library he founded was at Durham College, which stood +where Trinity College now stands, and was in no sense a University +library. The good Bishop, known to all book-hunters as the author of +the _Philobiblon_, died in 1345, but his collection remained intact, +subject to rules he had himself laid down, until the dissolution of +the monasteries, when Durham College, which was attached to a +religious house, was put up for sale, and its library, like so much +else of good learning at this sad period, was dispersed and for the +most part destroyed. + +Bodley's real predecessor, the first begetter of a University library, +was Thomas Cobham, Bishop of Worcester, who in 1320 prepared a chamber +above a vaulted room in the north-east corner of St. Mary's Church for +the reception of the books he intended to bestow upon his University. +When the Bishop of Worcester (as a matter of fact, he had once been +elected Archbishop of Canterbury; but that is another story, as +Laurence Sterne has said) died in 1327, it was discovered that he had +by his will bequeathed his library to Oxford, but he was insolvent! No +rich relict of a defunct Ball was available for a Bishop in those +days. The executors found themselves without sufficient estate to pay +for their testator's funeral expenses, even then the first charge upon +assets. They are not to be blamed for pawning the library. A good +friend redeemed the pledge, and despatched the books--all, of course, +manuscripts--to Oxford. For some reason or another Oriel took them in, +and, having become their bailee, refused to part with them, possibly +and plausibly alleging that the University was not in a position to +give a valid receipt. At Oriel they remained for ten years, when all +of a sudden the scholars of the University, animated by their +notorious affection for sound learning and a good 'row,' took Oriel by +storm, and carried off the books in triumph to Bishop Cobham's room, +where they remained in chests unread for thirty years. In 1367 the +University by statute ratified and confirmed its title to the books, +and published regulations for their use, but the quarrel with Oriel +continued till 1409, when the Cobham Library was for the first time +properly furnished and opened as a place for study and reference. + +The librarian of the old Cobham Library had an advantage over Mr. +Nicholson, the Bodley librarian of to-day. Being a clerk in Holy +Orders before the time when, in Bodley's own phrase, already quoted, +we 'changed' our religion, he was authorized by the University to say +masses for the souls of all dead donors of books, whether by gifts +_inter vivos_ or by bequest. + +The first great benefactor of Cobham's Library was Duke Humphrey of +Gloucester, the youngest son of Henry IV., and perhaps the most +'pushful' youngest son in our royal annals. Though a dissipated and +unprincipled fellow, he lives in history as 'the good Duke Humphrey,' +because he had the sense to patronize learning, collect manuscripts, +and enrich Universities. He began his gifts to Oxford as early, so say +some authorities, as 1411, and continued his donations of manuscripts +with such vivacity that the little room in St. Mary's could no longer +contain its riches. Hence the resolution of the University in 1444 to +build a new library over the Divinity School. This new room, which +was completed in 1480, forms now the central portion of that great +reading-room so affectionately remembered by thousands of still living +students. + +Duke Humphrey's Library, as the new room was popularly called, +continued to flourish and receive valuable accessions of manuscripts +and printed books belonging to divinity, medicine, natural science, +and literature until the ill-omened year 1550. Oxford has never loved +Commissioners revising her statutes and reforming her schools, but +the Commissioners of 1550 were worse than prigs, worse even than +Erastians: they were barbarians and wreckers. They were deputed by +King Edward VI., 'in the spirit of the Reformation,' to make an end of +the Popish superstition. Under their hands the library totally +disappeared, and for a long while the tailors and shoemakers and +bookbinders of Oxford were well supplied with vellum, which they found +useful in their respective callings. It was a hard fate for so +splendid a collection. True it is that for the most part the contents +of the library had been rescued from miserable ill-usage in the +monasteries and chapter-houses where they had their first habitations, +but at last they had found shelter over the Divinity School of a great +University. There at least they might hope to slumber. But our +Reformers thought otherwise. The books and manuscripts being thus +dispersed or destroyed, a prudent if unromantic Convocation exposed +for sale the wooden shelves, desks, and seats of the old library, and +so made a complete end of the whole concern, thus making room for +Thomas Bodley. + +On February 23, 1597/8, Thomas Bodley sat himself down in his London +house and addressed to the Vice-Chancellor of his University a certain +famous letter: + + 'SIR, + 'Altho' you know me not as I suppose, yet for the farthering of an + offer of evident utilitie to your whole University I will not be + too scrupulous in craving your assistance. I have been alwaies of + a mind that if God of his goodness should make me able to do + anything for the benefit of posteritie, I would shew some token of + affiction that I have ever more borne to the studies of good + learning. I know my portion is too slender to perform for the + present any answerable act to my willing disposition, but yet to + notify some part of my desire in that behalf I have resolved thus + to deal. Where there hath been heretofore a public library in + Oxford which you know is apparent by the room itself remaining and + by your statute records, I will take the charge and cost upon me to + reduce it again to its former use and to make it fit and handsome + with seats and shelves and desks and all that may be needful to + stir up other mens benevolence to help to furnish it with books. + And this I purpose to begin as soon as timber can be gotten to the + intent that you may be of some speedy profit of my project. And + where before as I conceive it was to be reputed but a store of + books of divers benefactors because it never had any lasting + allowance for augmentation of the number or supply of books + decayed, whereby it came to pass that when those that were in being + were either wasted or embezzled, the whole foundation came to ruin. + To meet with that inconvenience, I will so provide hereafter (if + God do not hinder my present design) as you shall be still assured + of a standing annual rent to be disbursed every year in buying of + books, or officers stipends and other pertinent occasions, with + which provision and some order for the preservation of the place + and the furniture of it from accustomed abuses, it may perhaps in + time to come prove a notable treasure for the multitude of volumes, + an excellent benefit for the use and ease of students, and a + singular ornament of the University.' + +The letter does not stop here, but my quotation has already probably +wearied most of my readers, though for my own part I am not ashamed to +confess that I seldom tire of retracing with my own hand the +_ipsissima verba_ whereby great and truly notable gifts have been +bestowed upon nations or Universities or even municipalities for the +advancement of learning and the spread of science. Bodley's language +is somewhat involved, but through it glows the plain intention of an +honest man. + +Convocation, we are told, embraced the offer with wonderful alacrity, +and lost no time in accepting it in good Latin. + +From February, 1598, to January, 1613 (when he died), Bodley was happy +with as glorious a hobby-horse as ever man rode astride upon. Though +Bodley, in one of his letters, modestly calls himself a mere +'smatterer,' he was, as indeed he had the sense to recognise, +excellently well fitted to be a collector of books, being both a good +linguist and personally well acquainted with the chief cities of the +Continent and with their booksellers. He was thus able to employ +well-selected agents in different parts of Europe to buy books on his +account, which it was his pleasure to receive, his rapture to unpack, +his pride to despatch in what he calls 'dry-fats'--that is, +weather-tight chests--to Dr. James, the first Bodley librarian. +Despite growing and painful infirmities (stone, ague, dropsy), Bodley +never even for a day dismounted his hobby, but rode it manfully to the +last. Nor had he any mean taint of nature that might have grudged +other men a hand in the great work. The more benefactors there were, +the better pleased was Bodley. He could not, indeed--for had he not +been educated at Geneva and attended the Divinity Lectures of Calvin +and Beza?--direct Dr. James to say masses for the souls of such donors +of money or books as should die, but he did all a poor Protestant can +do to tempt generosity: he opened and kept in a very public place in +the library a great register-book, containing the names and titles of +all benefactors. Bodley was always on the look-out for gifts and +bequests from his store of honourable friends; and in the case of Sir +Henry Savile he even relaxed the rule against lending books from the +library, because, as he frankly admits to Dr. James, he had hopes +(which proved well founded) that Sir Henry would not forget his +obligations to the Bodleian. + +The library was formally opened on November 8, 1602, and then +contained some 2,000 volumes. Two years later its founder was knighted +by King James, who on the following June directed letters patent to be +issued styling the library by the founder's name and licensing the +University to hold land in mortmain for its maintenance. The most +learned and by no means the most foolish of our Kings, this same James +I., visited the Bodleian in May, 1605. Sir Thomas was not present. +There it was that the royal pun was made that the founder's name +should have been Godly and not Bodley. King James handled certain old +manuscripts with the familiarity of a scholar, and is reported to have +said, I doubt not with perfect sincerity, that were he not King James +he would be an University man, and that were it his fate at any time +to be a captive, he would wish to be shut up in the Bodleian and to be +bound with its chains, consuming his days amongst its books as his +fellows in captivity. Indeed, he was so carried away by the atmosphere +of the place as to offer to present to the Bodleian whatever books Sir +Thomas Bodley might think fit to lay hands upon in any of the royal +libraries, and he kept this royal word so far as to confirm the gift +under the Privy Seal. But there it seems to have stopped, for the +Bodleian does not contain any volumes traceable to this source. The +King's librarians probably obstructed any such transfer of books. + +Authors seem at once to have recognised the importance of the library, +and to have made presentation copies of their works, and in 1605 we +find Bacon sending a copy of his _Advancement of Learning_ to Bodley, +with a letter in which he said: 'You, having built an ark to save +learning from deluge, deserve propriety [ownership] in any new +instrument or engine whereby learning should be improved or advanced.' +The most remarkable letter Bodley ever wrote, now extant, is one to +Bacon; but it has no reference to the library, only to the Baconian +philosophy. We do not get many glimpses of Bodley's habits of life or +ways of thinking, but there is no difficulty in discerning a +strenuous, determined, masterful figure, bent during his later years, +perhaps tyrannously bent, on effecting his object. He was not, we +learn from a correspondent, 'hasty to write but when the posts do urge +him, saying there need be no answer to your letters till more leisure +breed him opportunity.' 'Words are women, deeds are men,' is another +saying of his which I reprint without comment. + +By an indenture dated April 20, 1609, Bodley, after reciting how he +had, out of his zealous affection to the advancement of learning, +lately erected upon the ruins of the old decayed library of Oxford +University 'a most ample, commodious, and necessary building, as well +for receipt and conveyance of books as for the use and ease of +students, and had already furnished the same with excellent writers on +all sorts of sciences, arts, and tongues, not only selected out of his +own study and store, but also of others that were freely conferred by +many other men's gifts,' proceeded to grant to trustees lands and +hereditaments in Berkshire and in the city of London for the purpose +of forming a permanent endowment of his library; and so they, or the +proceeds of sale thereof, have remained unto this day. + +Sir Thomas Bodley died on January 20, 1613, his last days being +soothed by a letter he received from the Vice-Chancellor of Oxford +University condoling his sickness and signifying how much the Heads of +Houses, etc., prayed for his recovery. A cynical friend--not much of a +friend, as we shall see--called John Chamberlain, was surprised to +observe what pleasure this assurance gave to the dying man. 'Whereby,' +writes Chamberlain to Sir Ralph Winwood, 'I perceive how much fair +words work, as well upon wise men as upon others, for indeed it did +affect him very much.' + +Bodley was rather put out in his last illness by the refusal of a +Cambridge doctor, Batter, to come to see him, the doctor saying: +'Words cannot cure him, and I can do nothing else for him.' There is +an occasional curtness about Cambridge men that is hard but not +impossible to reconcile with good feeling. + +Bodley's will gave great dissatisfaction to some of his friends, +including this aforesaid John Chamberlain, and yet, on reading it +through, it is not easy to see any cause for just complaint. Bodley's +brother did not grumble, there were no children, Lady Bodley had died +in 1611, and everybody who knew the testator must have known that the +library would be (as it was) the great object of his bounty. What +annoyed Chamberlain seems to be that, whilst he had (so he says, +though I take leave to doubt it) put down Bodley for some trifle in +his will, Bodley forgot to mention Chamberlain in his. There is always +a good deal of human nature exhibited on these occasions. I will +transcribe a bit of one of this gentleman's grumbling letters, +written, one may be sure, with no view to publication, the day after +Bodley's death: + + 'Mr. Gent came to me this morning as it were to bemoan himself of + the little regard hath been had of him and others, and indeed for + ought I hear there is scant anybody pleased, but for the rest it + were no great matter if he had had more consideration or + commiseration where there was most need. But he was so carried away + with the vanity and vain-glory of his library, that he forgot all + other respects and duties, almost of Conscience, Friendship, or + Good-nature, and all he had was too little for that work. To say + the truth I never did rely much upon his conscience, but I thought + he had been more real and ingenuous. I cannot learn that he hath + given anything, no, not a good word nor so much as named any old + friend he had, but Mr. Gent and Thos. Allen, who like a couple of + Almesmen must have his best and second gown, and his best and + second cloak, but to cast a colour or shadow of something upon Mr. + Gent, he says he forgives him all he owed him, which Mr. Gent + protests is never a penny. I must intreat you to pardon me if I + seem somewhat impatient on his [_i.e._, Gent's] behalf, who hath + been so servile to him, and indeed such a perpetual servant, that + he deserved a better reward. Neither can I deny that I have a + little indignation for myself that having been acquainted with him + for almost forty years, and observed and respected him so much, I + should not be remembered with the value of a spoon, or a mourning + garment, whereas if I had gone before him (as poor a man as I am), + he should not have found himself forgotten.'[A] + + [Footnote A: _Winwood's Memorials_, vol. iii., p. 429.] + +Bodley did no more by his will, which is dated January 2, 1613, and is +all in his own handwriting, than he had bound himself to do in his +lifetime, and I feel as certain as I can feel about anything that +happened nearly 300 years ago, that Mr. Gent, of Gloucester Hall, did +owe Bodley money, though, as many another member of the University of +Oxford has done with his debts, he forgot all about it. + +The founder of the Bodleian was buried with proper pomp and +circumstance in the chapel of Merton College on March 29, 1613. Two +Latin orations were delivered over his remains, one, that of John +Hales (the ever-memorable), a Fellow of Merton, being of no +inconsiderable length. After all was over, those who had mourning +weeds or 'blacks' retired, with the Heads of Houses, to the refectory +of Merton and had a funeral dinner bestowed upon them, 'amounting to +the sum of L100,' as directed by the founder's will. + +The great foundation of Sir Thomas Bodley has, happily for all of us, +had better fortune than befell the generous gifts of the Bishops of +Durham and Worcester. The Protestant layman has had the luck, not the +large-minded prelates of the old religion. Even during the Civil War +Bodley's books remained uninjured, at all events by the Parliament +men. 'When Oxford was surrendered [June 24, 1646], the first thing +General Fairfax did was to set a good guard of soldiers to preserve +the Bodleian Library. 'Tis said there was more hurt done by the +Cavaliers [during their garrison] by way of embezzling and cutting of +chains of books than there was since. He was a lover of learning, and +had he not taken this special care that noble library had been utterly +destroyed, for there were ignorant senators enough who would have been +contented to have it so' (see Macray, p. 101). + +Oliver Cromwell, while Lord Protector, presented to the library +twenty-two Greek manuscripts he had purchased, and, what is more, when +Bodley's librarian refused the Lord Protector's request to allow the +Portugal Ambassador to borrow a manuscript, sending instead of the +manuscript a copy of the statutes forbidding loans, Oliver commended +the prudence of the founder, and subsequently made the donation just +mentioned. + +A great wave of generosity towards this foundation was early +noticeable. The Bodleian got hold of men's imaginations. In those days +there were learned men in all walks of life, and many more who, if not +learned, were endlessly curious. The great merchants of the city of +London instructed their agents in far lands to be on the look-out for +rare things, and transmit them home to find a resting-place in +Bodley's buildings. All sorts of curiosities found their way +there--crocodiles, whales, mummies, and black negro-boys in spirits. +The Ashmolean now holds most of them; the negro-boy has been +conveniently lost. + +In 1649 the total of 2,000 printed books had risen to more than +12,000--viz., folios, 5,889; quartos, 2,067; octavos, 4,918; whilst of +manuscripts there were 3,001. One of the first gifts in money came +from Sir Walter Raleigh, who in 1605 gave L50, whilst among the early +benefactors of books and manuscripts it were a sin not to name the +Earl of Pembroke, Archbishop Laud (one of the library's best friends), +Robert Burton (of the _Anatomy of Melancholy_), Sir Kenelm Digby, John +Selden, Lord Fairfax, Colonel Vernon, and Barlow, Bishop of Lincoln. +No nobler library exists in the world than the Bodleian, unless it be +in the Vatican at Rome. The foundation of Sir Thomas Bodley, though of +no antiquity, shines with unrivalled splendour in the galaxy of Oxford + + 'Amidst the stars that own another birth.' + +I must not say, being myself a Cambridge man, that the Bodleian +dominates Oxford, yet to many an English, American, and foreign +traveller to that city, which, despite railway-stations and motor-cars +and the never-ending villas and perambulators of the Banbury Road, +still breathes the charm of an earlier age, the Bodleian is the +pulsing heart of the University. Colleges, like ancient homesteads, +unless they are yours, never quite welcome you, though ready enough to +receive with civility your tendered meed of admiration. You wander +through their gardens, and pace their quadrangles with no sense of +co-ownership; not for you are their clustered memories. In the +Bodleian every lettered heart feels itself at home. + +Bodley drafted with his own hand the first statutes or rules to be +observed in his library. Speaking generally, they are wise rules. One +mistake, indeed, he made--a great mistake, but a natural one. Let him +give his own reasons: + + 'I can see no good reason to alter my rule for excluding such books + as Almanacks, Plays, and an infinite number that are daily printed + of very unworthy matters--handling such books as one thinks both + the Keeper and Under-Keeper should disdain to seek out, to deliver + to any man. Haply some plays may be worthy the keeping--but hardly + one in forty.... This is my opinion, wherein if I err I shall err + with infinite others; and the more I think upon it, the more it + doth distaste me that such kinds of books should be vouchsafed room + in so noble a library.'[A] + + [Footnote A: See correspondence in _Reliquiae Bodleianae_, London, + 1703.] + +'Baggage-books' was the contemptuous expression elsewhere employed to +describe this 'light infantry' of literature--_Belles Lettres_, as it +is now more politely designated. + +One play in forty is liberal measure, but who is to say out of the +forty plays which is the one worthy to be housed in a noble library? +The taste of Vice-Chancellors and Heads of Houses, of keepers and +under-keepers of libraries--can anybody trust it? The Bodleian is +entitled by imperial statutes to receive copies of all books published +within the realm, yet it appears, on the face of a Parliamentary +return made in 1818, that this 'noble library' refused to find room +for Ossian, the favourite poet of Goethe and Napoleon, and labelled +Miss Edgeworth's _Parent's Assistant_ and Miss Hannah More's _Sacred +Dramas_ 'Rubbish.' The sister University, home though she be of nearly +every English poet worth reading, rejected the _Siege of Corinth_, +though the work of a Trinity man; would not take in the _Thanksgiving +Ode_ of Mr. Wordsworth, of St. John's College; declined Leigh Hunt's +_Story of Rimini_; vetoed the _Headlong Hall_ of the inimitable +Peacock, and, most wonderful of all, would have nothing to say to +Scott's _Antiquary_, being probably disgusted to find that a book with +so promising a title was only a novel. + +Now this is altered, and everything is collected in the Bodleian, +including, so I am told, Christmas-cards and bills of fare. + +Bodley's rule has proved an expensive one, for the library has been +forced to buy at latter-day prices 'baggage-books' it could have got +for nothing. + +Another ill-advised regulation got rid of duplicates. Thus, when the +third Shakespeare Folio appeared in 1664, the Bodleian disposed of its +copy of the First Folio. However, this wrong was righted in 1821, +when, under the terms of Edmund Malone's bequest, the library once +again became the possessor of the edition of 1623. Quite lately the +original displaced Folio has been recovered. + +Against lending books Bodley was adamant, and here his rule prevails. +It is pre-eminently a wise one. The stealing of books, as well as the +losing of books, from public libraries is a melancholy and ancient +chapter in the histories of such institutions; indeed, there is too +much reason to believe that not a few books in the Bodleian itself +were stolen to start with. But the long possession by such a +foundation has doubtless purged the original offence. In the National +Library in Paris is at least one precious manuscript which was stolen +from the Escurial. There are volumes in the British Museum on which +the Bodleian looks with suspicion, and _vice versa_. But let sleeping +dogs lie. Bodley would not give the divines who were engaged upon a +bigger bit of work even than his library--the translation of the Bible +into that matchless English which makes King James's version our +greatest literary possession--permission to borrow 'the one or two +books' they wished to see. + +Bodley's Library has sheltered through three centuries many queer +things besides books and strangely-written manuscripts in old tongues; +queerer things even than crocodiles, whales, and mummies--I mean the +librarians and sub-librarians, janitors, and servants. Oddities many +of them have been. Honest old Jacobites, non-jurors, primitive +thinkers, as well as scandalously lazy drunkards and illiterate dogs. +An old foundation can afford to have a varied experience in these +matters. + +One of the most original of these originals was the famous Thomas +Hearne, an 'honest gentleman'--that is, a Jacobite--and one whose +collections and diaries have given pleasure to thousands. He was +appointed janitor in 1701, and sub-librarian in 1712, but in 1716, +when an Act of Parliament came into operation which imposed a fine of +L500 upon anyone who held any public office without taking the oath of +allegiance to the Hanoverians, Hearne's office was taken away from +him; but he shared with his King over the water the satisfaction of +accounting himself still _de jure_, and though he lived till 1735, +he never failed each half-year to enter his salary and fees as +sub-librarian as being still unpaid. He was perhaps a little spiteful +and vindictive, but none the less a fine old fellow. I will write down +as specimens of his humour a prayer of his and an apology, and then +leave him alone. His prayer ran as follows: + + 'O most gracious and merciful Lord God, wonderful in Thy + Providence, I return all possible thanks to Thee for the care Thou + hast always taken of me. I continually meet with most signal + instances of this Thy Providence, and one act yesterday, _when I + unexpectedly met with three old manuscripts_, for which in a + particular manner I return my thanks, beseeching Thee to continue + the same protection to me, a poor helpless sinner, and that for + Jesus Christ his sake' (_Aubrey's Letters_, i. 118). + +His apology, which I do not think was actually published, though kept +in draft, was after this fashion: + + 'I, Thomas Hearne, A.M. of the University of Oxford, having ever + since my matriculation followed my studies with as much application + as I have been capable of, and having published several books for + the honour and credit of learning, and particularly for the + reputation of the foresaid University, am very sorry that by my + declining to say anything but what I knew to be true in any of my + writings, and especially in the last book I published entituled, + &c, I should incur the displeasure of any of the Heads of Houses, + and as a token of my sorrow for their being offended at truth, I + subscribe my name to this paper and permit them to make what use of + it they please.' + +Leaping 140 years, an odd tale is thus lovingly recorded of another +sub-librarian, the Rev. A. Hackman, who died in 1874: + + 'During all the time of his service in the library (thirty-six + years) he had used as a cushion in his plain wooden armchair a + certain vellum-bound folio, which by its indented side, worn down + by continual pressure, bore testimony to the use to which it had + been put. No one had ever the curiosity to examine what the book + might be, but when, after Hackman's departure from the library, it + was removed from its resting-place of years, some amusement was + caused by finding that the chief compiler of the last printed + catalogue had omitted from his catalogue the volume on which he + sat, of which, too, though of no special value, there was no other + copy in the library' (Macray, p. 388A). + +The spectacle in the mind's eye of this devoted sub-librarian and +sound divine sitting on the vellum-bound folio for six-and-thirty +years, so absorbed in his work as to be oblivious of the fact that he +had failed to include in what was his _magnum opus_, the Great +Catalogue, the very book he was sitting upon, tickles the midriff. + +Here I must bring these prolonged but wholly insufficient observations +to a very necessary conclusion. Not a word has been said of the great +collection of bibles, or of the unique copies of the Koran and the +Talmud and the _Arabian Nights_, or of the Dante manuscripts, or of +Bishop Tanner's books (many bought on the dispersion of Archbishop +Sancroft's great library), which in course of removal by water from +Norwich to Oxford fell into the river and remained submerged for +twenty hours, nor of many other splendid benefactions of a later date. + +One thing only remains, not to be said, but to be sent round--I mean +the hat. Ignominious to relate, this glorious foundation stands in +need of money. Shade of Sir Thomas Bodley, I invoke thy aid to loosen +the purse-strings of the wealthy! The age of learned and curious +merchants, of high-spirited and learning-loving nobles, of +book-collecting bishops, of antiquaries, is over. The Bodleian cannot +condescend to beg. It is too majestical. But I, an unauthorized +stranger, have no need to be ashamed. + +Especially rich is this great library in _Americana_, and America +suggests multi-millionaires. The rich men of the United States have +been patriotically alive to the first claims of their own richly +endowed universities, and long may they so continue; but if by any +happy chance any one of them should accidentally stumble across an odd +million or even half a million of dollars hidden away in some casual +investment he had forgotten, what better thing could he do with it +than send it to this, the most famous foundation of his Old Home? It +would be acknowledged by return of post in English and in Latin, and +the donor's name would be inscribed, not indeed (and this is a +regrettable lapse) in that famous old register which Bodley provided +should always be in a prominent place in his library, but in the +Annual Statement of Accounts now regularly issued. To be associated +with the Bodleian is to share its fame and partake of the blessing it +has inherited. 'The liberal deviseth liberal things; and by liberal +things he shall stand.' + + + +BOOKWORMS + + +Great is bookishness and the charm of books. No doubt there are times +and seasons in the lives of most reading men when they rebel against +the dust of libraries and kick against the pricks of these monstrously +accumulated heaps of words. We all know 'the dark hour' when the +vanity of learning and the childishness of merely literary things are +brought home to us in such a way as almost to avail to put the pale +student out of conceit with his books, and to make him turn from his +best-loved authors as from a friend who has outstayed his welcome, +whose carriage we wish were at the door. In these unhappy moments we +are apt to call to mind the shrewd men we have known, who have been +our blithe companions on breezy fells, heathery moor, and by the +stream side, who could neither read nor write, or who, at all events, +but rarely practised those Cadmean arts. Yet they could tell the time +of day by the sun, and steer through the silent night by the stars; +and each of them had--as Emerson, a very bookish person, has said--a +dial in his mind for the whole bright calendar of the year. How racy +was their talk; how wise their judgments on men and things; how well +they did all that at the moment seemed worth doing; how universally +useful was their garnered experience--their acquired learning! How +wily were these illiterates in the pursuit of game--how ready in an +emergency! What a charm there is about out-of-door company! Who would +not sooner have spent a summer's day with Sir Walter's humble friend, +Tom Purday, than with Mr. William Wordsworth of Rydal Mount! It is, we +can only suppose, reflections such as these that make country +gentlemen and farmers the sworn foes they are of education and the +enemies of School Boards. + +I only indicate this line of thought to condemn it. Such temptations +come from below. Great, we repeat, is bookishness and the charm of +books. Even the writings, the ponderous writings, of that portentous +parson, the Rev. T.F. Dibdin, with all their lumbering gaiety and +dust-choked rapture over first editions, are not hastily to be sent +packing to the auction-room. Much red gold did they cost us, these +portly tomes, in bygone days, and on our shelves they shall remain +till the end of our time, unless our creditors intervene--were it only +to remind us of years when our enthusiasms were pure though our tastes +may have been crude. + +Some years ago Mr. Blades, the famous printer and Caxtonist, published +in vellum covers a small volume which he christened _The Enemies of +Books_. It made many friends, and now a revised and enlarged version +in comely form, adorned with pictures, and with a few prefatory words +by Dr. Garnett, has made its appearance. Mr. Blades himself has left +this world for a better one, where--so piety bids us believe--neither +fire nor water nor worm can despoil or destroy the pages of heavenly +wisdom. But the book-collector must not be caught nursing mere +sublunary hopes. There is every reason to believe that in the realms +of the blessed the library, like that of Major Ponto, will be small +though well selected. Mr. Blades had, as his friend Dr. Garnett +observes, a debonair spirit--there was nothing fiery or controversial +about him. His attitude towards the human race and its treatment of +rare books was rather mournful than angry. For example, under the head +of 'Fire,' he has occasion to refer to that great destruction of books +of magic which took place at Ephesus, to which St. Luke has called +attention in his Acts of the Apostles. Mr. Blades describes this +holocaust as righteous, and only permits himself to say in a kind of +undertone that he feels a certain mental disquietude and uneasiness at +the thought of the loss of more than L18,000 worth of books, which +could not but have thrown much light (had they been preserved) on +many curious questions of folk-lore. Personally, I am dead against the +burning of books. A far worse, because a corrupt, proceeding, was the +scandalously horrid fate that befell the monastic libraries at our +disgustingly conducted, even if generally beneficent, Reformation. The +greedy nobles and landed gentry, who grabbed the ancient foundations +of the old religion, cared nothing for the books they found cumbering +the walls, and either devoted them to vile domestic uses or sold them +in shiploads across the seas. It may well be that the monks--fine, +lusty fellows!--cared more for the contents of their fish-ponds than +of their libraries; but, at all events, they left the books alone to +take their chance--they did not rub their boots with them or sell them +at the price of old paper. A man need have a very debonair spirit who +does not lose his temper over our blessed Reformation. Mr. Blades, on +the whole, managed to keep his. + +Passing from fire, Mr. Blades has a good deal to say about water, and +the harm it has been allowed to do in our collegiate and cathedral +libraries. With really creditable composure he writes: 'Few old +libraries in England are now so thoroughly neglected as they were +thirty years ago. The state of many of our collegiate and cathedral +libraries was at that time simply appalling. I could mention many +instances--one especially--where, a window having been left broken for +a long time, the ivy had pushed through and crept over a row of books, +each of which was worth hundreds of pounds. In rainy weather the water +was conducted as by a pipe along the tops of the books, and soaked +through the whole.' Ours is indeed a learned Church. Fancy the mingled +amazement and dismay of the Dean and Chapter when they were informed +that all this mouldering literary trash had 'boodle' in it. 'In +another and a smaller collection the rain came through on to a +bookcase through a sky-light, saturating continually the top shelf, +containing Caxtons and other English books, one of which, although +rotten, was sold soon after by permission of the Charity Commissioners +for L200.' Oh, those scoundrelly Charity Commissioners! How +impertinent has been their interference with the loving care and +guardianship of the Lord's property by His lawfully consecrated +ministers! By the side of these anthropoid apes, the genuine +bookworm, the paper-eating insect, ravenous as he once was, has done +comparatively little mischief. Very little seems known of the +creature, though the purchaser of Mr. Blades's book becomes the owner +of a life-size portrait of the miscreant in one, at all events, of his +many shapes. Mr. Birdsall, of Northampton, sent Mr. Blades, in 1879, +by post, a fat little worm he had found in an old volume. Mr. Blades +did all, and more than all, that could be expected of a humane man to +keep the creature alive, actually feeding him with fragments of +Caxtons and seventeenth-century literature; but it availed not, for in +three weeks the thing died, and as the result of a post-mortem was +declared to be _Aecophera pseudopretella_. Some years later Dr. +Garnett, who has spent a long life obliging men of letters, sent Mr. +Blades two Athenian worms, which had travelled to this country in a +Hebrew Commentary; but, lovely and pleasant in their lives, in their +deaths they were not far divided. Mr. Blades, at least, mourned their +loss. The energy of bookworms, like that of men, greatly varies. Some +go much farther than others. However fair they may start on the same +folio, they end very differently. Once upon a time 212 worms began to +eat their way through a stout folio printed in the year 1477, by Peter +Schoeffer, of Mentz. It was an ungodly race they ran, but let me trace +their progress. By the time the sixty-first page was reached all but +four had given in, either slinking back the way they came, or +perishing _en route_. By the time the eighty-sixth page had been +reached but one was left, and he evidently on his last legs, for he +failed to pierce his way through page 87. At the other end of the same +book another lot of worms began to bore, hoping, I presume, to meet +in the middle, like the makers of submarine tunnels, but the last +survivor of this gang only reached the sixty ninth page from the end. +Mr. Blades was of opinion that all these worms belonged to the +_Anobium pertinax_. Worms have fallen upon evil days, for, whether +modern books are readable or not, they have long since ceased to be +edible. The worm's instinct forbids him to 'eat the china clay, the +bleaches, the plaster of Paris, the sulphate of barytes, the scores of +adulterants now used to mix with the fibre.' Alas, poor worm! Alas, +poor author! Neglected by the _Anobium pertinax_, what chance is +there of anyone, man or beast, a hundred years hence reaching his +eighty-seventh page! + +Time fails me to refer to bookbinders, frontispiece collectors, +servants and children, and other enemies of books; but the volume I +refer to is to be had of the booksellers, and is a pleasant volume, +worthy of all commendation. Its last words set me thinking; they are: + + 'Even a millionaire will ease his toils, lengthen his life, and add + 100 per cent. to his daily pleasures, if he becomes a bibliophile; + while to the man of business with a taste for books, who through + the day has struggled in the battle of life, with all its + irritating rebuffs and anxieties, what a blessed season of + pleasurable repose opens upon him as he enters his sanctum, where + every article wafts him a welcome and every book is a personal + friend!' + +As for the millionaire, I frankly say I have no desire his life should +be lengthened, and care nothing about adding 100 per cent. to his +daily pleasures. He is a nuisance, for he has raised prices nearly 100 +per cent. We curse the day when he was told it was the thing to buy +old books; and, if he must buy old books, why is he not content with +the works of Gibbon, Hume, and Robertson, and Flavius Josephus, that +learned Jew? But it is not the millionaire who set me thinking; it is +the harassed man of business; and what I am wondering is, whether, in +sober truth and earnestness, it is possible for him, as he shuts his +library door and finds himself inside, to forget his rebuffs and +anxieties--his maturing bills and overdue argosies--and to lose +himself over a favourite volume. The 'article' that wafts him welcome +I take to be his pipe. That he will put the 'article' into his mouth +and smoke it I have no manner of doubt; my dread is lest, in ten +minutes' time, the book should have dropt into his lap and the man's +eyes be staring into the fire. But for a' that, and a' that--great is +bookishness and the charm of books. + + + +CONFIRMED READERS + + +Dr. Johnson is perhaps our best example of a confirmed reader. Malone +once found him sitting in his room roasting apples and reading a +history of Birmingham. This staggered even Malone, who was himself a +somewhat far-gone reader. + +'Don't you find it rather dull?' he ventured to inquire. + +'Yes,' replied the Sage, 'it is dull.' + +Malone's eyes then rested on the apples, and he remarked he supposed +they were for medicine. + +'Why, no,' said Johnson; 'I believe they are only there because I +wanted something to do. I have been confined to the house for a week, +and so you find me roasting apples and reading the history of +Birmingham.' + +This anecdote pleasingly illustrates the habits of the confirmed +reader. Nor let the worldling sneer. Happy is the man who, in the +hours of solitude and depression, can read a history of Birmingham. +How terrible is the story Welbore Ellis told of Robert Walpole in his +magnificent library, trying book after book, and at last, with tears +in his eyes, exclaiming: 'It is all in vain: I cannot read!' + +Edmund Malone, the Shakespearian commentator and first editor of +_Boswell's Johnson_, was as confirmed a reader as it is possible for a +book-collector to be. His own life, by Sir James Prior, is full of +good things, and is not so well known as it should be. It smacks of +books and bookishness. + +Malone, who was an Irishman, was once, so he would have us believe, +deeply engaged in politics; but he then fell in love, and the affair, +for some unknown reason, ending unhappily, his interest ceased in +everything, and he was driven as a last resource to books and +writings. Thus are commentators made. They learn in suffering what +they observe in the margin. Malone may have been driven to his +pursuits, but he took to them kindly, and became a vigorous and +skilful book-buyer, operating in the market both on his own behalf and +on that of his Irish friends with great success. + +His good fortune was enormous, and this although he had a severely +restricted notion as to price. He was no reckless bidder, like Mr. +Harris, late of Covent Garden, who, just because David Garrick had a +fine library of old plays, was determined to have one himself at +whatever cost. In Malone's opinion half a guinea was a big price for a +book. As he grew older he became less careful, and in 1805, which was +seven years before his death, he gave Ford, a Manchester bookseller, +L25 for the Editio Princeps of _Venus and Adonis_. He already had the +edition of 1596--a friend had given it him--bound up with +Constable's and Daniel's Sonnets and other rarities, but he very +naturally yearned after the edition of 1593. He fondly imagined +Ford's copy to be unique: there he was wrong, but as he died in that +belief, and only gave L25 for his treasure, who dare pity him? His +copy now reposes in the Bodleian. He secured Shakespeare's Sonnets +(1609) and the first edition of the _Rape of Lucrece_ for two guineas, +and accounted half a crown a fair average price for quarto copies of +Elizabethan plays. + +Malone was a truly amiable man, of private fortune and endearing +habits. He lived on terms of intimacy with his brother +book-collectors, and when they died attended the sale of their +libraries and bid for his favourite lots, grumbling greatly if they +were not knocked down to him. At Topham Beauclerk's sale in 1781, +which lasted nine days, Malone bought for Lord Charlemont 'the +pleasauntest workes of George Gascoigne, Esquire, with the princely +pleasures at Kenilworth Castle, 1587.' He got it cheap (L1 7s.), as it +wanted a few leaves, which Malone thought he had; but to his horror, +when it came to be examined, it was found to want eleven more leaves +than he had supposed. 'Poor Mr. Beauclerk,' he writes, 'seems never to +have had his books examined or collated, otherwise he would have found +out the imperfections.' Malone was far too good a book-collector to +suggest a third method of discovering a book's imperfections--namely, +reading it. Beauclerk's library only realized L5,011, and as the Duke +of Marlborough had a mortgage upon it of L5,000, there must have been +after payment of the auctioneer's charges a considerable deficit. + +But Malone was more than a book-buyer, more even than a commentator: +he was a member of the Literary Club, and the friend of Johnson, +Reynolds, and Burke. On July 28, 1789, he went to Burke's place, the +Gregories, near Beaconsfield, with Sir Joshua, Wyndham, and Mr. +Courtenay, and spent three very agreeable days. The following extract +from the recently published Charlemont papers has interest: + + 'As I walked out before breakfast with Mr. Burke, I proposed to him + to revise and enlarge his admirable book on the _Sublime and + Beautiful_, which the experience, reading, and observation of + thirty years could not but enable him to improve considerably. But + he said the train of his thoughts had gone another way, and the + whole bent of his mind turned from such subjects, and that he was + much fitter for such speculations at the time he published that + book than now.' + +Between the Burke of 1758 and the Burke of 1789 there was a difference +indeed, but the forcible expressions, 'the train of my thoughts' and +'the whole bent of my mind,' serve to create a new impression of the +tremendous energy and fertile vigour of this amazing man. The next day +the party went over to Amersham and admired Mr. Drake's trees, and +listened to Sir Joshua's criticisms of Mr. Drake's pictures. This was +a fortnight after the taking of the Bastille. Burke's hopes were still +high. The Revolution had not yet spoilt his temper. + +Amongst the Charlemont papers is an amusing tale I do not remember +having ever seen before of young Philip Stanhope, the recipient of +Lord Chesterfield's famous letters: + + 'When at Berne, where he passed some of his boyhood in company with + Harte and the excellent Mr., now Lord, Eliott (Heathfield of + Gibraltar), he was one evening invited to a party where, together + with some ladies, there happened to be a considerable number of + Bernese senators, a dignified set of elderly gentlemen, + aristocratically proud, and perfect strangers to fun. These most + potent, grave, and reverend signors were set down to whist, and + were so studiously attentive to the game, that the unlucky brat + found little difficulty in fastening to the backs of their chairs + the flowing tails of their ample periwigs and in cutting, + unobserved by them, the tyes of their breeches. This done, he left + the room, and presently re-entered crying out, "Fire! Fire!" The + affrighted burgomasters suddenly bounced up, and exhibited to the + amazed spectators their senatorial heads and backs totally deprived + of ornament or covering.' + +Young Stanhope was no ordinary child. There is a completeness about +this jest which proclaims it a masterpiece. One or other of its points +might have occurred to anyone, but to accomplish both at once was to +show real distinction. + +Sir William Stanhope, Lord Chesterfield's brother, felt no surprise at +his nephew's failure to acquire the graces. 'What,' said he, 'could +Chesterfield expect? His mother was Dutch, he was educated at Leipsic, +and his tutor was a pedant from Oxford.' + +Papers which contain anecdotes of this kind carry with them their own +recommendation. We hear on all sides complaints--and I hold them to be +just complaints--of the abominable high prices of English books. +Thirty shillings, thirty-six shillings, are common prices. The thing +is too barefaced. His Majesty's Stationery Office set an excellent +example. They sell an octavo volume of 460 closely but well-printed +pages, provided with an excellent index, for one shilling and +elevenpence. There is not much editing, but the quality of it is +good. + +If anyone is confined to his room, even as Johnson was when Malone +found him roasting apples and reading a history of Birmingham, he +cannot do better than surround himself with the publications of the +Historical Manuscripts Commission; they will cost him next to nothing, +tell him something new on every page, revive a host of old memories +and scores of half-forgotten names, and perhaps tempt him to become a +confirmed reader. + + + +FIRST EDITIONS + + +This is an age of great publicity. Not only are our streets well +lighted, but also our lives. The cosy nooks and corners, crannies, and +dark places where, in old-fashioned days, men hugged their private +vices without shamefacedness have been swept away as ruthlessly as +Seven Dials. All the questionable pursuits, fancies, foibles of silly, +childish man are discussed grimly and at length in the newspapers and +magazines. Our poor hobby-horses are dragged out of the stable, and +made to show their shambling paces before the mob of gentlemen who +read with ease. There has been much prate lately of as innocent a +foible as ever served to make men self-forgetful for a few seconds of +time--the collecting of first editions. Somebody hard up for 'copy' +denounced this pastime, and made merry over a _virtuoso's_ whim. +Somebody else--Mr. Slater, I think it was--thought fit to put in a +defence, and thereupon a dispute arose as to why men bought first +editions dear when they could buy last editions cheap. Brutal, +domineering fellows bellowed their complete indifference to +Shakespeare's Quartos till timid _dilettanti_ turned pale and fled. + +The fact, of course, is that in such a dispute as this there is but +one thing to do--namely, to persuade the Attorney-General of the day +to enter up a _nolle prosequi_, and for him who collects first +editions to go on collecting. There is nothing to be serious about in +the matter. It is not literature. Some of the greatest lovers of +letters who have ever lived--Dr. Johnson, for example, and Thomas de +Quincey and Carlyle--have cared no more for first editions than I do +for Brussels sprouts. You may love Moliere with a love surpassing your +love of woman without any desire to beggar yourself in Paris by +purchasing early copies of the plays. You may be perfectly content to +read Walton's _Lives_ in an edition of 1905, if there is one; and as +for _Robinson Crusoe_ and _Gulliver_ and the _Vicar of Wakefield_--are +they not eternal favourites, and just as tickling to the fancy in +their nineteenth-century dress as in their eighteenth? The whole thing +is but a hobby--but a paragraph in one chapter of the vast, but most +agreeable, history of human folly. If John Doe is blankly indifferent +to Richard Roe's Elizabethan dramatists, it is only fair to remember +how sublime is Richard's contempt for John's collection of old musical +instruments. If these gentlemen are wise they will discuss, when they +meet, the weather, or the Death Duties, or some other extraneous +subject, and leave their respective hobbies in the stable. Never mind +what your hobby is--books, prints, drawings, china, scarabaei, +lepidoptera--keep it to yourself and for those like-minded with you. +Sweet indeed is the community of interest, delightful the intercourse +which a common foible begets; but correspondingly bitter and +distressful is the forced union of nervous zeal and pitiless +indifference. Spare us the so-called friends who come and gape and +stare and go! What is more painful than the chatter of the connoisseur +as it falls upon the long ears of the ignoramus! Collecting is a +secret sin--the great pushing public must be kept out. It is sheer +madness to puff and praise your hobby, and to invite Dick, Tom, and +Harry to inspect your stable: such conduct is to invite rebuff, to +expose yourself to just animadversion. Keep the beast in its box. This +is my first advice to the hobby-hunter. + +My second piece of advice is equally important, particularly at the +present time, when the world is too much with us, and it is +this--never convert a taste into a trade. The moment you become a +tradesman you cease to be a hobbyist. When the love of money comes in +at the window the love of books runs out at the door. There has been +of late years a good deal of sham book-collecting. The morals of the +Stock Exchange have corrupted even the library. Sordid souls have been +induced by wily second-hand booksellers to buy books for no other +reason than because the price demanded was a high one. This is the +very worst possible reason for buying a book. Whether it is ever wise +to buy a book, as Aulus Gellius used to do, simply because it is +cheap, and regardless of its condition, is a debatable point, but to +buy one dear at the mere bidding of a bookseller is to debase +yourself. The result of this ungodly traffic has been to enlarge for +the moment the circle of book-buyers by including in it men with +commercial instincts, sham hobbyists. But these impostors have been +lately punished in the only way they could be punished--namely, in +their pockets--by a heavy fall of prices. The stuff they were induced +to buy has not, and could not, maintain its price, and the shops are +now full of the volumes which, seven or ten years ago, fetched fancy +sums. + +If a young book-collector does but bear in mind the two bits of advice +I have proffered him, he may safely be bidden godspeed and +congratulated on his choice of a hobby, for it is, without a shadow of +a doubt, the cheapest he could have chosen. Even without means to +acquire the treasures of a Quaritch or a Pickering, he may yet derive +infinite delight from the perusal of the many hundreds of catalogues +that now weekly issue from the second-hand booksellers in town and +country. He may write an imaginary letter, ordering the books he has +previously selected from the catalogue, and then he has only to forget +to post it to avoid all disagreeable consequences. + +The constant turnover of old books is amazing. There seems no rest in +this world even for folios and quartos. The first edition of old +Burton's _Anatomy_, printed at Oxford in a small quarto in 1621, rises +to the surface as a rule no less than four times a year; so, too, does +Coryat's _Crudities_, hastily gobbled up in five months' travels in +France, Savoy, Italy, Germany, etc., 1611. What a seething, restless +place this world is, to be sure! The constant recurrence of copies of +the same books is almost startling. Hardly a year passes but every +book of first-rate importance and interest is knocked down to the +highest bidder. No doubt there are still old libraries where, buried +in dust and cobwebs, the folios and quartos lie undisturbed; but to +turn the pages or examine the index of _Book Prices Current_ is to +have a vision before your eyes of whole regiments of books passing +and repassing across the stage amidst the loud cries of auctioneers +and the bidding of booksellers. + +In the auction-mart taste is pretty steady. The old favourites hold +their own. Every now and again an immortal joins their ranks. Puffing +and pretension may win the ear of the outside public, and extort +praise from the press, but inside the rooms of a Sotheby, a Puttick, +or a Hodgson, these foolish persons count for nothing, and their names +are seldom heard. Were an author to turn the pages of _Book Prices +Current_, he could hardly fail, as he there read the names of famous +men of old, to breathe the prayer, 'May my books some day be found +forming part of this great tidal wave of literature which is for ever +breaking on Earth's human shores!' But the vanity of authors is +endless, and their prayers are apt to be but empty things. + + + +GOSSIP IN A LIBRARY + + +There were no books in Eden, and there will be none in heaven; but +between times--and it is of those I speak--it is otherwise. Mr. Thomas +Greenwood, in a most meritorious work on Public Libraries, supplies +figures which show that, without counting pamphlets (which are books +gone wrong) or manuscripts (which are books _in terrorem_), there are +at this present moment upwards of 71,000,000 printed books in bindings +in the several public libraries of Europe and America. To estimate +the number and extent of private libraries in those countries is +impossible. In many large houses there are no books at all--which is +to make ignorance visible; whilst in many small houses there are, or +seem to be, nothing else--which is to make knowledge inconvenient; yet +as there are upwards of 280,000,000 of inhabitants of Europe and +America, I cannot greatly err if a passion for round numbers drives me +to the assertion that there are at least 300,000,000 books in these +countries, not counting bibles and prayer-books. It is a poor show! +Russia is greatly to blame, her European population of 88,000,000 +being so badly provided for that it brings down the average. Were +Russia left out in the cold, we might, were our books to be divided +amongst our population _per capita_, rely upon having two volumes +apiece. This would not afford Mr. Gosse (the title of one of whose +books I have stolen) much material for gossip, particularly as his two +books might easily chance to be duplicates. There are no habits of man +more alien to the doctrine of the Communist than those of the +collector, and there is no collector, not even that basest of them +all, the Belial of his tribe, the man who collects money, whose love +of private property is intenser, whose sense of the joys of ownership +is keener than the book-collector's. Mr. William Morris once hinted at +a good time coming, when at almost every street corner there would be +a public library, where beautiful and rare books will be kept for +citizens to examine. The citizen will first wash his hands in a +parochial basin, and then dry them on a parochial towel, after which +ritual he will walk in and stand _en queue_ until it comes to be his +turn to feast his eye upon some triumph of modern or some miracle of +old typography. He will then return to a bookless home proud and +satisfied, tasting of the joy that is in widest commonalty spread. +Alas! he will do nothing of the kind, not, at least, if he is one of +those in whom the old Adam of the bookstalls still breathes. A public +library must always be an abomination. To enjoy a book, you must own +it. 'John Jones his book,' that is the best bookplate. I have never +admired the much-talked-of bookplate of Grolier, which, in addition to +his own name, bore the ridiculous advice _Et Amicorum_. Fudge! There +is no evidence that Grolier ever lent any man a book with his plate +in it. His collection was dispersed after his death, and then +sentimentalists fell a-weeping over his supposed generosity. It would +be as reasonable to commend the hospitality of a dead man because you +found amongst his papers a vast number of unposted invitations to +dinner upon a date he long outlived. Sentiment is seldom in place, but +on a bookplate it is peculiarly odious. To paste in each book an +invitation to steal it, as Grolier seems to have done, is foolish; but +so also is it to invoke, as some book-plates do, curses upon the heads +of all subsequent possessors--as if any man who wanted to add a volume +to his collection would be deterred by such braggadocio. But this is a +digression. Public libraries can never satisfy the longings of +book-collectors any more than can the private libraries of other +people. Whoever really cared a snap of his fingers for the contents of +another man's library, unless he is known to be dying? It is a +humorous spectacle to watch one book-collector exhibiting his stores +to another. If the owner is a gentleman, as he usually is, he affects +indifference--'A poor thing,' he seems to say, 'yet mine own'; whilst +the visitor, if human, as he always is, exhibits disgust. If the +volume proffered for the visitor's examination is a genuine rarity, +not in his own collection, he surlily inquires how it was come by; +whilst if it is no great thing, he testily expresses his astonishment +it should be thought worth keeping, and this although he has the very +same edition at home. + +On the other hand, though actual visits to other men's libraries +rarely seem to give pleasure, the perusal of the catalogues of such +libraries has always been a favourite pastime of collectors; but this +can be accounted for without in any way aspersing the truth of the +general statement that the only books a lover of them takes pleasure +in are his own. + +Mr. Gosse's recent volume, _Gossip in a Library_, is a very pleasing +example of the pleasure taken by a book-hunter in his own books. Just +as some men and more women assume your interest in the contents of +their nurseries, so Mr. Gosse seeks to win our ears as he talks to us +about some of the books on his shelves. He has secured my willing +attention, and is not likely to be disappointed of a considerable +audience. + +We live in vocal times, when small birds make melody on every bough. +The old book-collectors were a taciturn race--the Bindleys, the +Sykeses, the Hebers. They made their vast collections in silence; +their own tastes, fancies, predilections, they concealed. They never +gossiped of their libraries; their names are only preserved to us by +the prices given for their books after their deaths. Bindley's copy +fetched L3 10s., Sykes' L4 15s. Thus is the buyer of to-day tempted to +his doom, forgetful of the fact that these great names are only quoted +when the prices realized at their sales were less than those now +demanded. + +But solacing as is the thought of those grave, silent times, +indisposed as one often is for the chirpy familiarities of this +present, it is, or it ought to be, a pious, and therefore pleasant, +reflection that there never was a time when more people found delight +in book-hunting, or were more willing to pay for and read about their +pastime than now. + +Rich people may, no doubt, still be met with who think it a serious +matter to buy a book if it cost more than 3s. 9d. It was recently +alleged in an affidavit made by a doctor in lunacy that for a +well-to-do bachelor to go into the Strand, and in the course of the +same morning spend L5 in the purchase of 'old books,' was a ground for +belief in his insanity and for locking him up. These, however, are but +vagaries, for it is certain that the number of people who will read a +book like Mr. Gosse's steadily increases. This is its justification, +and it is a complete one. It can never be wrong to give pleasure. To +talk about books is better than to read about them, but, as a matter +of hard fact, the opportunities life affords of talking about books +are very few. The mood and the company seldom coincide; when they do, +it is delightful, but they seldom do. + +Mr. Gosse's book ought not to be read in a fierce, nagging spirit +which demands, What is the good of this? or, Who cares for that? His +talk, it must be admitted, is not of masterpieces. The books he takes +down are--in some instances, at all events--sad trash. Smart's poems, +for example, in an edition of 1752, which does not contain the +'David,' is not a book which, viewed baldly and by itself, can be +honestly described as worth reading. This remark is not prompted by +jealousy, for I have the book myself, and seldom fail to find the list +of subscribers interesting, for, among many other famous names, it +contains those of 'Mr. Gray, Peter's College, Cambridge,' 'Mr. Samuel +Richardson, editor of _Clarissa_, two books,' and 'Mr. Voltaire, +Historiographer of France.' There are various Johnsons among the +subscribers, but not Samuel, who apparently would liefer pray with Kit +Smart than buy his poetry, thereby showing the doctor's usual piety +and good sense.[A] + + [Footnote A: 'He insisted on people praying with him, and I'd as lief + pray with Kit Smart as with anyone else.'] + +Although the nagging spirit before referred to is to be deprecated, it +is sometimes amusing to lose your temper with your own hobby. If a +book-collector ever does this, he longs to silence whole libraries of +bad authors. ''Tis an inglorious acquist,' says Joseph Glanvill in his +famous _Vanity of Dogmatizing_--I quote from the first edition, 1661, +though the second is the rarer--'to have our heads or volumes laden as +were Cardinal Campeius his mules, with old and useless luggage.' +''Twas this vain idolizing of authors,' Glanvill had just before +observed, 'which gave birth to that silly vanity of _impertinent +citations_, and inducing authority in things neither requiring nor +deserving it.' In the same strain he proceeds, 'Methinks 'tis a +pitiful piece of knowledge that can be learnt from an _Index_ and a +poor ambition to be rich in the inventory of another's Treasure. To +boast a _Memory_ (the most that these pedants can aim at) is but an +humble ostentation. 'Tis better to own a Judgment, though but with a +_Curta Supellex_ of coherent notions, than a _Memory_ like a sepulchre +furnished with a load of broken and discarnate bones.' Thus far the +fascinating Glanvill, whose mode of putting things is powerful. + +There are times when the contemplation of huge libraries wearies, and +when even the names of Bindley and Sykes fail to please. Dr. Johnson's +library sold at Christie's for L247 9s. Let those sneer who dare. It +was Johnson, not Bindley, who wrote the _Lives of the Poets_. + +But, of course, no sensible man ever really quarrels with his hobby. A +little petulance every now and again variegates the monotony of +routine. Mr. Gosse tells us in his book that he cannot resist +Restoration comedies. The bulk of them he knows to be as bad as bad +can be. He admits they are not literature--whatever that may +mean--but he intends to go on collecting them all the same till the +inevitable hour when Death collects him. This is the true spirit; +herein lies happiness, which consists in being interested in +something, it does not much matter what. In this spirit let me take up +Mr. Gosse's book again, and read what he has to tell about _Pharamond; +or, the History of France. A Fam'd Romance. In Twelve Parts_, or about +Mr. John Hopkins' collection of poems, printed by Thomas Warren for +Bennet Bunbury at the Blue Anchor, in the Lower Walk of the New +Exchange, 1700. The Romance is dull, and as it occupies more than +1,100 folio pages may be pronounced tedious, and the poetry is bad, +but as I do not seriously intend ever to read a line of either the +Romance or the poetry, this is no great matter. + + + +LIBRARIANS AT PLAY + + +No man of feeling will grudge the librarians of the universe their +annual outing. Their pursuits are not indeed entirely sedentary, since +at times they have to climb tall ladders, but of exercise they must +always stand in need, and as for air, the exclusively bookish +atmosphere is as bad for the lungs as it is for the intellectuals. In +1897 the Second International Library Conference met in London, +attended several concerts, was entertained by the Marchioness of Bute +and Lady Lubbock; visited Lambeth Palace and Stafford and Apsley +Houses; witnessed a special performance of Irving's _Merchant of +Venice_; were elected honorary members of the City Liberal, Junior +Athaeneum, National Liberal, and Savage Clubs; and, generally +speaking, enjoyed themselves after the methods current during that +period. They also read forty-six papers, which now alone remain a +stately record of their proceedings. + +I have lately spent a pleasant afternoon musing over these papers. +Their variety is endless, and the dispositions of mind displayed by +these librarians are wide as the poles asunder. Some of them babble +like babies, others are evidently austere scholars; some are gravely +bent on the best methods of classifying catalogues, economizing space, +and sorting borrowers' cards; others, scorning such mechanical +details, bid us regard libraries, and consequently librarians, as the +primary factors in human evolution. 'Where,' asks Mr. Ernest Cushing +Richardson, the librarian of Princetown University, New Jersey, +U.S.A., 'lies the germ of the library?' He answers his own question +after the following convincing fashion: 'At the point where a +definitely formed concept from another's mind is placed beside one's +own idea for integration, the result being a definite new form, +including the substance of both.' The pointsman who presides over this +junction is the librarian. + +The young woman of whom Mr. Matthews, the well-known librarian of +Bristol, tells us, who, being a candidate for the post of assistant +librarian, boldly pronounced Rider Haggard to be the author of the +_Idylls of the King_, Southey of _The Mill on the Floss_, and Mark +Twain of _Modern Painters_, undoubtedly placed her own ideas at the +service of Bristol alongside the preconceived conceptions of Mr. +Matthews; but she was rejected all the same. + +To speak seriously, who are librarians, and whence come they in such +numbers? Of Bodley's librarian we have heard, and all the lettered +world honours the name of Richard Garnett, late keeper of the printed +books at the British Museum. But beyond these and half a dozen others +a great darkness prevails. This ignorance is well illustrated by a +pleasing anecdote told at the Conference by Mr. MacAlister: + + 'Only the day before yesterday, on the Calais boat, I was + introduced to a world-famed military officer who, when he + understood I had some connection with the Library Association, + exclaimed: "Why, you're just the man I want! I have been anxious of + late about my man, old Atkins. You see the old boy, with a stoop, + sheltering behind the funnel. Poor old beggar! quite past his work, + but as faithful as a dog. It has just occurred to me that if you + could shove him into some snug library in the country, I'd be + awfully grateful to you. His one fault is a fondness for reading, + and so a library would be just the thing."' + +The usual titled lady also turned up at the Conference. This time she +was recommending her late cook for the post of librarian, alleging on +her behalf the same strange trait of character--her fondness for +reading. Here, of course, one recalls Mark Pattison's famous dictum, +'The librarian who reads is lost,' about which there is much to be +said, both _pro_ and _con_; but we must not be put off our inquiry, +which is: Who are these librarians, and whence come they? They are the +custodians of the 70,000,000 printed books (be the numbers a little +more or less) in the public libraries of the Western world, and they +come from guarding their treasures. They deserve our friendliest +consideration. If occasionally their enthusiasm provokes a smile, it +is, or should be, of the kindliest. When you think of 70,000,000 +books, instinctively you wish to wash your hands. Nobody knows what +dust is who has not divided his time between the wine-cellar and the +library. The work of classification, of indexing, of packing away, +must be endless. Great men have arisen who have grappled with these +huge problems. We read respectfully of Cutter's rules, which are to +the librarian even as Kepler's laws to the astronomer. We have also +heard of Poole's index. We bow our heads. Both Cutter and Poole are +Americans. The parish of St. Pancras has just, by an overwhelming +majority, declined to have a free library, and consequently a +librarian. Brutish St. Pancras! + +Libraries are obviously of two kinds: those intended for popular use +and those meant for the scholar. The ordinary free library, in the +sense of Mr. Ewart's Act of Parliament of 1850, is a popular library +where a wearied population turns for distraction. Fiction plays a +large part. In some libraries 80 per cent. of the books in circulation +are novels. Hence Mr. Goldwin Smith's splenetic remark, 'People have +no more right to novels than to theatre-tickets out of the taxes.' +Quite true; no more they have--or to public gardens or to beautiful +pictures or to anything save to peep through the railings and down the +areas of Mr. Gradgrind's fine new house in Park Lane. + +When we are considering popular libraries, it does not do to expect +too much of tired human nature. This popular kind of library was well +represented--perhaps a little over-represented, at the Conference. All +our American cousins are not Cutters and Pooles. There was Mr. +Crunden, who keeps the public library at St. Louis, U.S.A. He is all +against dull text-books. As a boy he derived his inspiration from +Sargent's _Standard Speaker_, and the interesting sketch he gives us +of his education makes us wonder whether amidst his multitudinous +reading he ever encountered Newman's marvellous description and +handling of the young and over-read Mr. Brown, which is to be found +under the heading 'Elementary Studies' in _Lectures and Essays on +University Subjects_. + +I shuddered just a little on reading in Mr. Crunden's paper of the boy +who, before he was nine, had read Bulfinch's _Age of Chivalry_ and +_Age of Charlemagne_, Bryant's _Translation of the 'Iliad'_, a prose +translation of the _Odyssey_, Malory's _King Arthur, and several other +versions of the Arthurian legend_, Prescott's _Peru and Mexico_, +Macaulay's _Lays_, Longfellow's _Hiawatha_ and _Miles Standish_, the +Jungle Books, and other books too numerous to mention. A famous list, +but perilously long. + +Mr. Crunden supports his case for varied reading by quotations from +all quarters--Dr. William T. Harris, President Eliot, Professor +Mackenzie, Charles Dudley Warner, Sir John Lubbock--but their scraps +of wisdom or of folly do not remove my uneasiness about the digestion +of the little boy who, before he was nine years old, had (not content +with Malory) read several versions of the Arthurian legend! + +Ladies make excellent librarians, and have tender hearts for children, +and so we find a paper written by a lady librarian, entitled _Books +that Children Like_. She quotes some interesting letters from +children: 'I like books about ancient history and books about knights, +also stories of adventure, and mostly books with a deep plot and +mystery about them.' 'I do not like _Gulliver's Travels_, because I +think they are silly.' 'I read _Little Men_. I did not like this +book.' 'I like _Ivanhoe_, by Scott, better than any.' 'My favourite +books are _Tom Sawyer_, _Uncle Tom's Cabin_, and _Scudder's American +History_. I like Tom Sawyer because he was so jolly, Uncle Tom because +he was so faithful, and Nathan Hale because he was so brave.' These +are unbought verdicts no wise man will despise. + +All this is popular enough. But the unpopular library must not be +overlooked, for, after all, libraries are for the learned. We must not +let the babes and sucklings, or the weary seamstress or badgered +clerk, or even the working-man, ride rough-shod over Salmasius and +Scaliger. In the papers of Mr. Garnett, Mr. Pollard, Mr. Dziatzko, Mr. +Cutter, and others, the less popular and nobler side of the library is +duly exhibited. + +My anxiety about these librarians, who are beginning to be a +profession by themselves, is how they are to be paid. That librarians +must live is at least as obvious in their case as in that of any other +class. They must also, if they are to be of any use, be educated. In +1878 the late Mr. Robert Harrison, who for many years led a grimy life +in the London Library, advocated L250 as a minimum annual salary for a +competent librarian. But, as Mr. Ogle, of Bootle, pertinently asked at +the Conference, 'Are his views yet accepted?' We fear not. Mr. Ogle +courageously proceeds: + + 'The fear of a charge of trades unionism has long kept librarians + silent, but this matter is one of public importance, and affects + educational progress. A School-Board rate of 6d. or 1s. is + willingly paid to teach our youth to read. Shall an additional 2d. + be grudged to turn that reading talent into right and safe + channels, where it may work for the public welfare and economy?' + +_Festina lente_, good Mr. Ogle, I beseech you. That way fierce +controversy and, it may be, disaster lies. Do not stir the Philistine +within us. The British nation is still savage under the skin. It has +no real love for books, libraries, or librarians. In its hidden heart +it deems them all superfluous. Anger it, and it may in a fit of temper +sweep you all away. The loss of our free librarians would indeed be +grievous. Never again could they meet in conference and read papers +full of quaint things and odd memories. What, for example, can be more +amusing than Mr. Cowell's reminiscences of forty years' library work +in Liverpool, of the primitive days when a youthful Dicky Sam (for so +do the inhabitants of that city call themselves) mistook the _Flora of +Liverpool_ for a book either about a ship or a heroine? He knows +better now. And what shall we say of the Liverpool brushmaker who, at +a meeting of the library committee, recited a poem in praise of woman, +containing the following really magnificent line?-- + + 'The heart that beats fondest is found in the stays.' + +There is nothing in Roscoe or Mrs. Hemans (local bards) one half so +fine. Long may librarians live and flourish! May their salaries +increase, if not by leaps and bounds, yet in steady proportions. Yet +will they do well to remember that books are not everything. + + + +LAWYERS AT PLAY + + +That dreary morass, that Serbonian bog, the Bacon-Shakespeare +controversy, has been lately lit up as by the flickering light of a +will-o'-the-wisp, by the almost simultaneous publication of an +imaginary charge delivered to an equally imaginary jury by a judge of +no less eminence than the late Lord Penzance (that tough Erastian) and +of the still bolder _jeu d'esprit_, _A Report of the Trial of an Issue +in Westminster Hall_, June 20, 1627, which is the work of the +unbridled fancy of His Honour Judge Willis, late Treasurer of the +Inner Temple, and a man most intimately acquainted with the literature +of the seventeenth century. + +Neither production of these playful lawyers, clothed though they be in +the garb of judicial procedure, is in the least likely to impress the +lay mind with that sense of 'impartiality' or 'indifference' which is +supposed to be an attribute of justice, or, indeed, with anything +save the unfitness of the machinery of an action at law for the +determination of any matter which invokes the canons of criticism and +demands the arbitrament of a well-informed and lively taste. + +Lord Penzance, who favours the Baconians, made no pretence of +impartiality, and says outright in his preface that his readers 'must +not expect to find in these pages an equal and impartial leaning of +the judge alternately to the case of both parties, as would, I hope, +be found in any judicial summing-up of the evidence in a real judicial +inquiry.' And, he adds, 'the form of a summing-up is only adopted for +convenience, but it is in truth very little short of an argument for +the plaintiffs, _i.e._, the Baconians.' + +Why any man, judge or no judge, who wished to prepare an argument on +one side of a question should think fit to cast that argument for +convenience' sake in the form of a judicial summing-up of both sides +is, and must remain, a puzzle. + +Judge Willis, who is a Shakespearean, bold and unabashed, is not +content with a mere summing-up, but, with a gravity and wealth of +detail worthy of De Foe, has presented us with what purports to be a +verbatim report of so much of the proceedings in a suit of Hall _v._ +Russell as were concerned with the trial before a jury of the simple +issue--whether William Shakespeare, of Stratford-upon-Avon, 'the +testator in the cause of _Hall v. Russell_,' was the author of the +plays in the Folio of 1623. We are favoured with the names of counsel +employed, who snarl at one another with such startling verisimilitude, +whilst the remarks that fall from the bench do so with such +naturalness, that it is perhaps not surprising, or any very severe +reflection upon his literary _esprit_, that a member of the Bar, +having heard Judge Willis deliver his lecture in the Inner Temple +Hall, repaired next day to the library to study at his leisure the +hitherto unnoted case of _Hall v. Russell_. Ten witnesses are put in +the box to prove the affirmative--that Shakespeare was the author of +the plays. Mr. Blount and M. Jaggard, the publishers of the Folio, +give a most satisfactory account of the somewhat crucial point--how +they came by the manuscripts, with all the amendments and corrections, +and pass lightly over the fact that those manuscripts had disappeared. +'Rare Ben Jonson' in the witness-box is a masterpiece of dramatic +invention; he demolishes Bacon's advocate with magnificent vitality. +John Selden makes a stately witness, and Francis Meres a very useful +one. Generally speaking, the weakest part in these interesting +proceedings is the cross-examination. I have heard the learned judge +do better in old days. No witnesses are called for the Baconians, +though all the writings of the great philosopher were put in for what +they were worth. The Lord Chief Justice, who seems to have been a +friend of Shakespeare's, sums up dead in his favour, and the jury +(with whose names we are not supplied, which is a pity--Bunyan or De +Foe would have given them to us), after a short absence, a quarter of +an hour, return a Shakespearean verdict, which of course ought by +rights to make the whole question _res judicata_. + +But it has done nothing of the kind. Could we really ask Blount and +Jaggard how they came by the manuscripts, and who made the +corrections, and did we believe their replies, why, then a stray +Baconian here and there might reluctantly abandon his strange fancy; +but as _Hall v. Russell_ is Judge Willis's joke, it will convert no +Baconians any more than Dean Sherlock's once celebrated _Trial of the +Witnesses_ compels belief in the Resurrection. + +The question in reality is a compound one. Did Shakespeare write the +plays? If yes, the matter is at rest. If no--who did? If an author can +be found--Bacon or anyone else--well and good. If no author can be +found--Anon. wrote them--a conclusion which need terrify no one, since +the plays would still remain within our reach, and William +Shakespeare, apart from the plays, is very little to anybody who has +not written his life. + +But this is not the form the controversy has assumed. The +anti-Shakespeareans are to a man Baconians, and fondly imagine that if +only Will Shakespeare were put out of the way their man must step into +the vacant throne. Lord Penzance in charging his jury told them that +those of their number 'who had studied the writings of Bacon' and were +'keenly alive to his marvellous mental powers' would probably have 'no +difficulty,' if once satisfied that the author they were seeking after +was _not_ Shakespeare, in finding as a fact that he _was_ Bacon. But +suppose James Spedding had been on that jury, and, rising in his +place, had spoken as follows: + + 'My Lord,--If any man has ever studied the writings of Bacon, I + have. For twenty-five years I have done little else. If any man is + keenly alive to his marvellous mental powers, I am that man. I am + also deeply read in the plays attributed to Shakespeare, and I + think I am in a condition to say that, whoever was the real author, + it was _not_ Bacon.' + +That this is exactly what Spedding would have said we know from the +letter he wrote on the subject to Mr. Holmes, reprinted in _Essays +and Discussions_, and it completely upsets the whole scheme of +arrangement of Lord Penzance's summing-up, which proceeds on the easy +footing that the more difficulties you throw in Shakespeare's path the +smoother becomes Bacon's. + +That there are difficulties in Shakespeare's path, some things very +hard to explain, must be admitted. Lord Penzance makes the most of +these. It is, indeed, a most extraordinary thing that anybody should +have had the mother-wit to write the plays traditionally assigned to +Shakespeare. Where did he get it from? How on earth did the plays get +themselves written? Where, when, and how did the author pick up his +multifarious learnings? Lord Penzance, good, honest man, is simply +staggered by the extent of the play-wright's information. The plays, +so he says, 'teem with erudition,' and can only have been written by +someone who had the classics at his finger-ends, modern languages on +the tip of his tongue--by someone who had travelled far and read +deeply; and, above all, by a man who had spent at least a year in a +conveyancer's chambers! And yet, when this has been said, would Lord +Penzance have added that the style and character of the playwright is +the style and character of a really learned man of his period! Can +anything less like such a style be imagined? Once genius is granted, +heaven-born genius, a mother-wit beyond the dreams of fancy, and then +plain humdrum men, ordinary judicial intelligences, will do well to be +on their guard against it. 'Beware--beware! he is fooling thee.' +Shakespeare's genius has simply befooled Lord Penzance. Seafaring men, +after reading _The Tempest_, are ready to maintain that its author +must have been for at least a year before the mast. As for +Shakespeare's law, which has taken in so many matter-of-fact +practitioners, one can now refer to Ben Jonson's evidence in _Hall v. +Russell_, where that great dramatist has no difficulty in showing that +if none but a lawyer could have written Shakespeare's plays, a lawyer +alone could have preached Thomas Adams's sermons. Judge Willis's +profound knowledge of sound old divinity has served him here in good +stead. The fact is it is simply impossible to exaggerate the +quick-wittedness and light-heartedness of a great literary genius. The +absorbing power, the lightning-like faculty of apprehension, the +instant recognition of the uses to which any fact or fancy can be put, +the infinite number and delicacy of the mental feelers, thrust out in +all directions, which belong to the creative brain and keep it in +tremulous and restless activity, are quite enough so to differentiate +the possessor of these endowments from his fellow mortals as to make +comparison impossible. Shakespeare the actor was by the common consent +of his enemies one of the deftest fellows that ever made use of other +men's materials--'Convey, the wise it call.' I will again quote +Spedding: + + 'If Shakespeare was not trained as a scholar or a man of science, + neither do the works attributed to him show traces of trained + scholarship or scientific education. Given the _faculties_, you + will find that all the acquired knowledge, art, and dexterity which + the Shakespearean plays imply were easily attainable by a man who + was labouring in his vocation and had nothing else to do.' + +I greatly prefer this cool judgment of a scholar deeply read in +Elizabethan lore to Lord Penzance's heated and almost breathless +admiration for the 'teeming erudition' of the plays. + +Lord Penzance likewise displays a very creditable non-acquaintance +with the disposition of authors one to another. He is quite shocked at +the callousness of Shakespeare's contemporaries to Shakespeare if he +were indeed the author of the Quartos which bore his name in his +lifetime. But as it cannot be suggested that in, say, 1600 it was +generally known that Shakespeare was not the author of these plays, it +is hard to see how his contemporaries can be acquitted of indifference +to his prodigious superiority over themselves. Authors, however, never +take this view. Shakespeare's contemporaries thought him a mighty +clever fellow and no more. Why, even Wordsworth was well persuaded he +could write like Shakespeare had he been so minded. Mr. Arnold +remained all his life honestly indifferent to and sceptical about the +fame of both Tennyson and Browning. Great living lawyers and doctors +do not invariably idolize each other, nor do the lawyers and doctors +in a small way of business always speak well of those in a big way. +The poets and learned critics of the seventeenth and eighteenth +centuries--Dryden, Pope, Johnson--looked upon Shakespeare with an +indulgent eye, as a great but irregular genius, after much the same +fashion as did the old sea-dogs of Nelson's day regard the hero of +Trafalgar. 'Do not criticise him too harshly,' said Lord St. Vincent; +'there can only be one Nelson.' + +These are not the real difficulties, though they seem to have pressed +somewhat heavily on Lord Penzance. + +The circumstances attendant upon the publication of the Folio of 1623 +are undoubtedly puzzling. Shakespeare died in 1616, leaving behind +him more than forty plays circulating in London and more or less +associated with his name. His will, a most elaborate document, does +not contain a single reference to his literary life or labours. Seven +years after his death the Folio appears, which contains twenty-six +plays out of the odd forty just referred to, and ten extra plays which +had never before been in print, and about six of which there is a very +scanty Shakespearean tradition. Of the twenty-six old plays, seventeen +had been printed in small Quartos, possibly surreptitiously, in +Shakespeare's lifetime, but the Folio does not reprint from these +Quartos, but from enlarged, amended, and enormously improved copies. +Messrs. Heminge and Condell, the editor of this priceless treasure, +the First Folio, wrote a long-winded dedication to Lords Pembroke and +Montgomery, which contains but one pertinent passage, in which they +ask their readers to believe that it had been the office of the +editors to collect and publish the author's 'mere writings,' he being +dead, and to offer them, not 'maimed and deformed,' in surreptitious +and stolen copies, but 'cured and perfect of their limbs and all the +rest, absolute in their numbers as he conceived them, who as he was a +happie imitator of Nature was a most gentle expresser of it. His mind +and hand went together, and what he thought, he uttered with that +easiness, that we have scarce received from him a blot in his papers.' + +From whose custody did those 'papers' come? Where had they been all +the seven years? Of what did they consist? If in truth unblotted, all +the seventeen Quartos as well as the new plays must have been printed +from fair manuscript copies. From whom were these unblotted copies +received, and what became of them? The silence of these players is +irritating and perplexing,--though, possibly, the explanation of the +mystery, were it forthcoming, would be, as often happens, of the +simplest. It may be that these unblotted copies were in the theatre +library all the time. + +Whether these interrogatories, now unanswerable, raise doubts in the +mind of sufficient potency to destroy the tradition of centuries, and +to prevent us from sharing the conviction of Milton, of Dryden, of +Pope, and Johnson that Shakespeare was the author of Shakespeare's +plays must be left for individual consideration. But, however +destructive these doubts may prove, they do not go a yard of the way +to let in Bacon. + +Once more I will quote Spedding, for he, of all the moderns, by virtue +of his taste and devouring studies, is the best qualified to speak: + + 'Aristotle was an extraordinary man. Plato was an extraordinary + man. That two men each severally so extraordinary should have been + living at the same time in the same place was a very extraordinary + thing. But would it diminish the wonder to suppose the two to be + one? So I say of Bacon and Shakespeare. That a human being + possessed of the faculties necessary to make a Shakespeare should + exist is extraordinary. That a human being possessed of the + necessary faculties to make Bacon should exist is extraordinary. + That two such human beings should have been living in London at the + same time was more extraordinary still. But that one man should + have existed possessing the faculties and opportunities necessary + to make _both_ would have been the most extraordinary thing of + all' (see Spedding's _Essays and Discussions_, 1879, pp. 371, 372). + + 'Great writers, especially being contemporary, have many features + in common, but if they are really great writers they write + naturally, and nature is always individual. I doubt whether there + are five lines together to be found in Bacon which could be + mistaken for Shakespeare, or five lines in Shakespeare which could + be mistaken for Bacon, by one who was familiar with their several + styles and practised in such observations' (_Ibid._, p. 373). + + + +THE NON-JURORS + + +To anyone blessed or cursed with an ironical humour the troublesome +history of the Church of England since the Reformation cannot fail to +be an endless source of delight. It really is exciting. Just a little +more of Calvin and of Beza, half a dozen words here, or Cranmer's +pencil through a single phrase elsewhere; a 'quantum suff.' of the men +'that allowed no Eucharistic sacrifice,' and away must have gone +beyond recall the possibility of the Laudian revival and all that +still appertains thereunto. We must have lost the 'primitive' men, the +Kens, the Wilsons, the Knoxes, the Kebles, the Puseys. On the other +hand, but for the unfaltering language of the Articles, the hearty +tone of the Homilies, and the agreeable readiness of both sides to +curse the Italian impudence of the Bishop of Rome and all his +'detestable enormities,' our Anglican Church history could never have +been enriched with the names or sweetened by the memories of the +Romaines, the Flavels, the Venns, the Simeons, and of many thousand +unnamed saints who finished their course in the fervent faith of +Evangelicalism. But on what a thread it has always hung! An +ill-considered Act of Parliament, an amendment hastily accepted by a +pestered layman at midnight, a decision in a court of law, a Jerusalem +Bishoprick, a passage in an early Father, an ancient heresy restudied, +and off to Rome goes a Newman or a Manning, whilst a Baptist Noel +finds his less romantic refuge in Protestant Dissent. Schism is for +ever in the air. Disruption a lively possibility. It has always been a +ticklish business belonging to the Church of England, unless you can +muster up enough courage to be a frank Erastian, and on the rare +occasions when you attend your parish church handle the Book of Common +Prayer with all the reverence due to a schedule to an Act of +Parliament. + +Among the many noticeable humours of the present situation is the tone +adopted by an average Churchman like Canon Overton to the Non-Jurors. +When the late Mr. Lathbury published his admirable _History of the +Non-Jurors_,[A] he had to prepare himself for a very different public +of Churchmen and Churchwomen than will turn over Canon Overton's +agreeable pages.[B] In 1845 the average Churchman, after he had +conquered the serious initial difficulty of comprehending the +Non-Juror's position, was only too apt to consider him a fool for his +pains. 'It has been the custom,' wrote Mr. Lathbury, 'to speak of the +Non-Jurors as a set of unreasonable men, and should I succeed in any +measure in correcting those erroneous impressions, I shall feel that +my labour has not been in vain.' But in 1902, as Canon Overton is +ready enough to perceive, 'their position is a little better +understood.' The well-nigh 'fools' are all but 'confessors.' + + [Footnote A: _A History of the Non-Jurors_. By Thomas Lathbury. + London: Pickering, 1845.] + + [Footnote B: _The Non-Jurors_. By J.H. Overton, D.D. London: Smith, + Elder and Co., 1902, 16s.] + +The early history of the Non-Jurors is as fascinating and as fruitful +as their later history is dull, melancholy, and disappointing. + +Nobody will deny that the Bishops, clergy, and laity of the Church of +England who refused to take the oaths to William and Mary and George +I., when tendered to them, were amply justified in the Court of +Conscience. They were ridiculed by the politicians of the day for +their supersensitiveness; but what were they to do? If they took the +oaths, they apostalized from the faith they had once professed. + +Before the Revolution it was the faith of all High Churchmen--part of +the _deposition_ they had to guard--that the doctrine of +non-resistance and passive obedience was Gospel truth, primitive +doctrine, and a chief 'characteristic' of the Anglican Church. + +The saintly John Kettlewell, in his tractate, _Christianity: a +Doctrine of the Cross, or Passive Obedience under any Pretended +Invasion of Legal Rights and Liberties_ (1696), makes this perfectly +plain; and when Ken came to compose his famous will, wherein he +declared that he died in the Communion of the Church of England, 'as +it adheres to the doctrine of the Cross,' the good Bishop did not mean +what many a pious soul in later days has been edified by thinking he +did mean, the doctrine of the Atonement, but that of passive +obedience, which was the Non-Juror's cross. + +It is sad to think a doctrine dear to so many saintly men, maintained +with an erudition so vast and exemplified by sacrifices so great, +should have disappeared in the vortex of present-day conflict. It may +some day reappear in Convocation. Kettlewell, who was a precise writer +and accurate thinker, defined sovereignty as supremacy. 'Kings,' he +said, 'can be no longer sovereigns, but subjects, if they have any +superiors'; and he points out with much acumen that the best security +under a sovereign 'which sovereignty allows' is that the Kings and +Ministers are accountable and liable for breach of law as well as +others. Kettlewell, had he lived long enough, might have come to +transfer his idea of sovereignty to Kings, Lords, and Commons speaking +through an Act of Parliament, and if so, he would have urged _active +obedience_ to its enactments, when not contrary to conscience, and +_passive obedience_ if they were so contrary. Therefore, were he alive +to-day, and did he think it contrary to conscience (as he easily +might) to pay a school-rate for an 'undenominational' school, he would +not draw a cheque for the amount, but neither would he punch the +bailiff's head who came to seize his furniture. Kettlewell's treatise +is well worth reading. Its last paragraph is most spirited. + +There could be no doubt about it. The High Church party were bound +hand and foot to the doctrine of the Cross--_i.e._, passive obedience +to the Lord's Anointed. Whoever else might actively resist or forsake +the King, they could not without apostasy. But the Revolution of 1688 +was not content to pierce the High Churchmen through one hand. Not +only did the Revolution require the Church to forswear its King, but +also to see its spiritual fathers deprived and intruders set in their +places without even the semblance of any spiritual authority. If it +was hard to have James II. a fugitive in foreign lands and Dutch +William in Whitehall, it was perhaps even harder to see Sancroft +expelled from Lambeth, and the Erastian and latitudinarian Tillotson, +who was prepared to sacrifice even episcopacy for peace, usurping the +title of Archbishop of Canterbury. After all, no man, not even a +Churchman, can serve two masters. The loyalty of a High Churchman to +the throne is always subject to his loyalty to the Church, and at the +Revolution he was wounded in both houses. + +When Queen Elizabeth ascended the throne, and established what was +then unblushingly called 'the new religion,' the whole Anglican +Hierarchy, with the paltry exception of the Bishop of Llandaff, +refused the oaths of supremacy, and were superseded. In a little +more than 100 years the Protestant Bench was bombarded with a +heart-searching oath--this time of allegiance. Opinion was divided; +the point was not so clear as in 1559. The Archbishop of York and his +brethren of London, Lincoln, Bristol, Winchester, Rochester, Llandaff +and St. Asaph, Carlisle and St. David's, swore to bear true allegiance +to Their Majesties King William and Queen Mary. The Archbishop of +Canterbury and the Bishops of Bath and Wells, Ely, Gloucester, +Norwich, Peterborough, Worcester, Chichester, and Chester refused to +swear anything of the kind, and were consequently, in pursuance of the +terms of an Act of Parliament, and of an Act of Parliament only, +deprived of their ecclesiastical preferments. They thus became the +first Non-Jurors, and were long, except two who died before actual +sentence of exclusion, affectionately known and piously venerated in +all High Church homes as 'the Deprived Fathers.' + +Who can doubt that they were right, holding the faith they did? Yet +Englishmen do not take kindly to martyrdom, and some of the Bishops +were strangely puzzled. The excellent Ken, who, like Keble, was an +Englishman first and a Catholic afterwards (in other words, no true +Catholic at all), when told that James was ready to give Ireland to +France, as nearly as possible conformed, so angry was he with the +Lord's Anointed; and even the fiery Leslie, one of our most agreeable +writers, was always ready to forgive those pious, peaceful souls who +thought it no sin, though great sorrow, to comply with the demands of +Caesar, but still managed to retain their old Church and King +principles. Leslie reserved his wrath for the Tillotsons and the +Tenisons and the Burnets, who first, to use his own words, swallowed +'the morsels of usurpation' and then dressed them up 'with all the +gaudy and ridiculous flourishes that an Apostate eloquence can put +upon them.' + +The early Non-Jurors included among their number a very large +proportion of holy, learned, and primitive-minded men. At least 400 of +the general body of the clergy refused the oaths and accepted for +themselves and those dependent on them lives of poverty and seclusion. +They were from the beginning an unpopular body. They were not +Puritans, they were not Deists, they were not Presbyterians, they +would not go to their parish churches; and yet they vehemently +objected to being called Papists. What troublesome people! Five of the +deprived fathers, including the Primate, had known what it was, when +they defied their Sovereign, to be the idols of the mob; but when +they adhered to his fallen cause they were deprived of their sees, and +sent packing from their palaces without a single growl of popular +discontent. Oblivion was their portion, even as it was of their Roman +Catholic predecessors at the time of the Reformation. + +The Archbishop of Canterbury, when turned out of Lambeth by a judgment +of the Court of King's Bench to make way for Tillotson, retired to his +native village in Fressingfield, where he did not attend the parish +church, nor would allow any but non-juring clergy to perform Divine +service in his presence. Dr. Sancroft (who was a book-lover, and had +designed a binding of his own) died on November 24, 1693, and the +epitaph, of his own composition, on his tombstone may still be read +with profit by time-servers of all degrees and denominations, cleric +and lay, in Parliament and out of it. All the deprived Bishops, so Mr. +Lathbury assures us, were in very narrow circumstances, and of Turner, +of Ely, Mr. Lathbury very properly writes: 'This man who, by adhering +to the new Sovereign, and taking the oath, might have ended his day +amidst an abundance of earthly blessings, was actually sustained in +his declining years by the bounty of those who sympathized with him in +his distresses.' Bishop Turner died in 1700. + +Despite this distressing and most genuine poverty, the reader of old +books will not infrequently come across traces of many happy and +well-spent hours during which these poor Non-Jurors managed 'to fleet +the time' in their own society, for they were, many of them, men of +the most varied tastes and endowed with Christian tempers; whilst +their writings exhibit, as no other writings of the period do, the +saintliness and devotion which are supposed to be among the 'notes' +of the Catholic Church. Two better men than Kettlewell and Dodwell +are nowhere to be found, and as for vigorous writing, where is Charles +Leslie to be matched? + +So long as the deprived fathers continued to live, the schism--for +complete schism it was between 'the faithful remnant of the Church of +England' and the Established Church--was on firm ground. But what was +to happen when the last Bishop died? Dodwell, who, next to Hickes, +seems to have dominated the Non-Juring mind, did not wish the schism +to continue after the death of the deprived Bishops; for though he +admitted that the prayers for the Revolution Sovereigns would be +'unlawful prayers,' to which assent could not properly be given, he +still thought that communion with the Church of England was possible. +Hickes thought otherwise, and Hickes, it must not be forgotten, though +only known to the world and even to Non-Jurors generally, as the +deprived Dean of Worcester, was in sober truth and reality Bishop of +Thetford, having been consecrated a Suffragan Bishop under that title +by the deprived Bishops of Norwich, Peterborough, and Ely, at +Southgate, in Middlesex, on February 24, 1693, in the Bishop of +Peterborough's lodgings. At the same time the accomplished Thomas +Wagstaffe was consecrated Suffragan Bishop of Ipswich, though he +continued to earn his living as a physician all the rest of his days. + +These were clandestine consecrations, for even so well-tried and +whole-hearted a Non-Juror as Thomas Hearne, of Oxford, knew nothing +about them, though a great friend of both the new Bishops, until long +years had sped. It would be idle at this distance of time, and having +regard to the events which have happened since February, 1693, to +consider the nice questions how far the Act of Henry VIII. relating to +the appointment of suffragans could have any applicability to such +consecrations, or what degree of Episcopal authority was thereby +conferred, or for how long. + +As things turned out, Ken proved the longest liver of the deprived +fathers. The good Bishop died at Longleat, one of the few great houses +which sheltered Non-Jurors, on March 19, 1711. But before his death he +had made cession of his rights to his friend Hooper, who on the +violent death of Kidder, the intruding revolution Bishop, had been +appointed by Queen Anne, who had wished to reinstate Ken, to Bath and +Wells. It was the wish of Ken that the schism should come to an end on +his death. + +It did nothing of the kind, though some very leading Non-Jurors, +including the learned Dodwell and Nelson, rejoined the main body of +the Church, saving all just exceptions to the 'unlawful prayers.' + +Bishop Wagstaffe died in 1712, leaving Bishop Hickes alone in his +glory, who in 1713, assisted by two Scottish Bishops, consecrated +Jeremy Collier, Samuel Hawes, and Nathaniel Spinckes, Bishops of 'the +faithful remnant.' Hickes died in 1715, and the following year the +great and hugely learned Thomas Brett became a Bishop, as also did +Henry Gawdy. + +Then, alas! arose a schism which rent the faithful remnant in twain. +It was about a great subject, the Communion Service. Collier and Brett +were in favour of altering the Book of Common Prayer so as to restore +it to the First Book of King Edward VI., which provided for (1) The +mixed chalice; (2) prayers for the faithful departed; (3) prayer for +the descent of the Holy Ghost on the consecrated elements; (4) the +Oblatory Prayer, offering the elements to the Father as symbols of His +Son's body and blood. This side of the controversy became known as +'The Usagers,' whilst those Non-Jurors, headed by Bishop Spinckes, who +held by King Charles's Prayer-Book, were called 'the Non-Usagers.' The +discussion lasted long, and was distinguished by immense learning and +acumen. + +The Usagers may be said to have carried the day, for after the +controversy had lasted fourteen years, in 1731 Timothy Mawman was +consecrated a Bishop by three Bishops, two of whom were 'Usagers' and +one a 'Non-Usager.' But in the meantime what had become of the +congregations committed to their charge? Never large, they had +dwindled almost entirely away. + +The last regular Bishop was Robert Gordon, who was consecrated in 1741 +by Brett, Smith, and Mawman. Gordon, who was an out-and-out Jacobite, +died in 1779. + +I have not even mentioned the name of perhaps the greatest of the +Non-Jurors, William Law, nor that of Carte, an historian, the fruits +of whose labour may still be seen in other men's orchards. + +The whole story, were it properly told, would prove how hard it is in +a country like England, where nobody really cares about such things, +to run a schism. But who knows what may happen to-morrow? + + + +LORD CHESTERFIELD + + +'Buy good books and read them; the best books are the commonest, and +the last editions are always the best, if the editors are not +blockheads.' So wrote Lord Chesterfield to his son, that +highly-favoured and much bewritten youth, on March 19, 1750, and his +words have been chosen with great cunning by Mr. Charles Strachey as a +motto for his new edition of these famous letters.[A] + + [Footnote A: Published by Methuen and Co. in 2 vols.] + +The quotation is full of the practical wisdom, but is at the same +time--so much, at least, an old book-collector may be allowed to +say--a little suggestive of the too-well-defined limitations of their +writer's genius and character. Lord Chesterfield is always clear and +frequently convincing, yet his wisdom is that of Mr. Worldly Wiseman, +and not only never points in the direction of the Celestial City, but +seldom displays sympathy with any generous emotion or liberal taste. +Yet as we have nobody like him in the whole body of our literature, we +can welcome even another edition--portable, complete, and cheap--of +his letters to his son with as much enthusiasm as is compatible with +the graces, and with the maxim, so dear to his lordship's heart, _Nil +admirari!_ + +What, I have often wondered, induced Lord Chesterfield to write this +enormously long and troublesome series of letters to a son who was not +even his heir? Their sincerity cannot be called in question. William +Wilberforce did not more fervently desire the conversion to God of his +infant Samuel than apparently did Lord Chesterfield the transformation +of his lumpish offspring into 'the all-accomplished man' he wished to +have him. + +'All this,' so the father writes in tones of fervent pleading--'all +this you may compass if you please. You have the means, you have the +opportunities; employ them, for God's sake, while you may, and make +yourself the all-accomplished man I wish to have you. It entirely +depends upon the next two years; they are the decisive ones' (Letter +CLXXVII.). + +It is the very language of an evangelical piety applied to the +manufacture of a worldling. But what promoted the anxiety? Was it +natural affection--a father's love? If it was, never before or since +has that world-wide and homely emotion been so concealed. There is a +detestable, a forbidding, an all-pervading harshness of tone +throughout this correspondence that seems to banish affection, to +murder love. Read Letter CLXXVIII., and judge for yourselves. I will +quote a passage: + + 'The more I love you now from the good opinion I have of you, the + greater will be my indignation if I should have reason to change + it. Hitherto you have had every possible proof of my affection, + because you have deserved it, but when you cease to deserve it you + may expect every possible mark of my resentment. To leave nothing + doubtful upon this important point, I will tell you fairly + beforehand by what rule I shall judge of your conduct: by Mr. + Harte's account.... If he complains you must be guilty, and I shall + not have the least regard for anything you may allege in your own + defence.' + +Ugh! what a father! Lord Chesterfield despised the Gospels, and made +little of St. Paul; yet the New Testament could have taught him +something concerning the nature of a father's love. His language is +repulsive, repugnant, and yet how few fathers have taken the trouble +to write 400 educational letters of great length to their sons! All +one can say is that Chesterfield's letters are without natural +affection: + + 'If this be error and upon me proved, + I never writ, and no man ever loved.' + +If affection did not dictate these letters, what did? Could it be +ambition? So astute a man as Chesterfield, who was kept well informed +as to the impression made by his son, could hardly suppose it likely +that the boy would make a name for himself, and thereby confer +distinction upon the family of which he was an irregular offshoot. A +respectable diplomatic career, with an interval in the House of +Commons, was the most that so clear-sighted a man could anticipate for +the young Stanhope. Was it literary fame for himself? This, of course, +assumes that subsequent publication was contemplated by the writer. +The dodges and devices of authors are well-nigh infinite and quite +beyond conjecture, and it is, of course, possible that Lord +Chesterfield kept copies of these letters, which bear upon their +faces evidence of care and elaboration. It is not to be supposed for a +moment that he ever forgot he had written them. It is hard to believe +he never inquired after them and their whereabouts. Great men have +been known to write letters which, though they bore other addresses, +were really intended for their biographers. It would not have been +surprising if Lord Chesterfield wrote these letters intending some day +to publish them, but not only is there no warrant for such an opinion, +but the opposite is clearly established. It is, no doubt, odd that the +son should have carefully preserved more than 400 letters written to +him during a period beginning with his tenderest years and continuing +whilst he was travelling on the Continent. It seems almost a miracle. +What made the son treasure them so carefully? Did he look forward to +being his father's biographer? Hardly so at the age of ten, or even +twenty. Biographies were not then what they have since become. No +doubt in the middle of the eighteenth century letters were more +treasured than they are to-day, and young Stanhope's friends may also +have thought it wise to encourage him to preserve documentary evidence +of the great interest taken in him by his father. None the less, I +think the preservation of this correspondence is in the circumstances +a most extraordinary though well-established fact. + +The son died in 1768 of a dropsy at Avignon, and the news was +communicated to the Earl by his daughter-in-law, Mrs. Eugenia +Stanhope, of whose existence he was previously unaware. Two grandsons +accompanied her. It was a shock; but 'les manieres nobles et aisees, +la tournure d'un homme de condition, le ton de la bonne compagnie, +les graces le je ne scais quoi qui plait,' came to Lord Chesterfield's +assistance, and he received his son's widow, who was not a pleasing +person, and her two boys with kindness and good feeling, and provided +for them quite handsomely by his will. The Earl died in 1773, in his +seventy-ninth year, and thereupon Mrs. Stanhope, who was in possession +of all the original letters addressed to her late husband, carried +her wares to market, and made a bargain with Mr. Dodsley for their +publication, she to receive L1,575. Mr. Dodsley advertised the +forthcoming work, and on that the Earl's executors, relying upon the +well-known case of Pope _v._ Curl, decided by Lord Hardwicke in 1741, +filed their bill against Mrs. Stanhope, seeking an injunction to +restrain publication. The widow put in her sworn Answer, in which she +averred that she had, on more occasions than one, mentioned +publication to the Earl, and that he, though recovering from her +certain written characters of eminent contemporaries, had seemed quite +content to let her do what she liked with the letters, only remarking +that there was too much Latin in them. The executors seem to have +moved for what is called an interim injunction--that is, an injunction +until trial of the cause, and, from the report in _Ambler_, it appears +that Lord Apsley (a feeble creature) granted such an injunction, but +recommended the executors to permit the publication if, on seeing a +copy of the correspondence, they saw no objection to it. In the result +the executors gave their consent, and the publication became an +authorized one, so much so that Dodsley was able to obtain an +interdict in the Scotch Court preventing a certain Scotch bookseller, +caller McFarquhar, from reprinting the letters in Edinburgh. Whether +the executors believed Mrs. Stanhope's story, or saw no reason to +object to the publication of the letters, I do not know, but it is +clear that the opposition was a half-hearted one. + +It would be hasty to assume that Lord Chesterfield wrote these letters +with any intention of publication, and I am therefore left without +being able to suggest any strong reason for their existence. A +restless, itching pen, perhaps, accounts for them. Some men find a +pleasure in writing, even at great length; others, of whom Carlyle was +one, though they hate the labour, are yet compelled by some fierce +necessity to blacken paper. + +At all events, we have Lord Chesterfield's letters, and, having them, +they will always have readers, for they are readable. + +That the letters are full of wit and wisdom and sound advice is +certain. Mr. Strachey, in his preface, seems to be under the +impression that in the popular estimate Chesterfield is reckoned an +elegant trifler, a man of no serious account. What the popular or +vulgar estimate of Chesterfield may be it would be hard to determine, +nor is it of the least importance, for no one who knows about Lord +Chesterfield can possibly entertain any such opinion. How it came +about that so able and ambitious a man made so poor a thing out of +life, and failed so completely, is puzzling at first, though a little +study would, I think, make the reasons of Chesterfield's failure plain +enough. + +To prove by extracts from the Letters how wise a man Chesterfield was +would be easy, but tiresome; to exhibit him in a repulsive character +would be equally easy, but spiteful. I prefer to leave him alone, and +to content myself with but one quotation, which has a touch of both +wisdom and repulsiveness: + + 'Consult your reason betimes. I do not say it will always prove an + unerring guide, for human reason is not infallible, but it will + prove the least erring guide that you can follow. Books and + conversation may assist it, but adopt neither blindly and + implicitly; try both by that best rule God has given to direct + us--reason. Of all the truths do not decline that of thinking. The + host of mankind can hardly be said to think; their prejudices are + almost all adoptive; and in general I believe it is better that it + should be so, as such common prejudices contribute more to order + and quiet than their own separate reasonings would do, uncultivated + as they are. We have many of these useful prejudices in this + country which I should be very sorry to see removed. The good + Protestant conviction that the Pope is both Antichrist and the + Whore of Babylon is a more effectual preservative against Popery + than all the solid and unanswerable arguments of Chillingworth.' + + + +THE JOHNSONIAN LEGEND + + +The ten handsome volumes which the indefatigable and unresting zeal of +Dr. Birkbeck Hill, and the high spirit of the Clarendon Press, have +edited, arranged, printed, and published for the benefit of the world +and the propagation of the Gospel according to Dr. Johnson are +pleasant things to look upon. I hope the enterprise has proved +remunerative to those concerned, but I doubt it. The parsimony of the +public in the matter of books is pitiful. The ordinary purse-carrying +Englishman holds in his head a ready-reckoner or scale of charges by +which he tests his purchases--so much for a dinner, so much for a +bottle of champagne, so much for a trip to Paris, so much for a pair +of gloves, and so much for a book. These ten volumes would cost him L4 +9s. 3d. 'Whew! What a price for a book, and where are they to be put, +and who is to dust them?' Idle questions! As for room, a bicycle takes +more room than 1,000 books; and as for dust, it is a delusion. You +should never dust books. There let it lie until the rare hour arrives +when you want to read a particular volume; then warily approach it +with a snow-white napkin, take it down from its shelf, and, +withdrawing to some back apartment, proceed to cleanse the tome. Dr. +Johnson adopted other methods. Every now and again he drew on huge +gloves, such as those once worn by hedgers and ditchers, and then, +clutching his folios and octavos, he banged and buffeted them together +until he was enveloped in a cloud of dust. This violent exercise over, +the good doctor restored the volumes, all battered and bruised, to +their places, where, of course, the dust resettled itself as speedily +as possible. + +Dr. Johnson could make books better than anybody, but his notions of +dusting them were primitive and erroneous. But the room and the dust +are mere subterfuges. The truth is, there is a disinclination to pay +L4 9s. 3d. for the ten volumes containing the complete Johnsonian +legend. To quarrel with the public is idiotic and most un-Johnsonian. +'Depend upon it, sir,' said the Sage, 'every state of society is as +luxurious as it can be.' We all, a handful of misers excepted, spend +more money than we can afford upon luxuries, but what those luxuries +are to be is largely determined for us by the fashions of our time. If +we do not buy these ten volumes, it is not because we would not like +to have them, but because we want the money they cost for something we +want more. As for dictating to men how they are to spend their money, +it were both a folly and an impertinence. + +These ten volumes ended Dr. Hill's labours as an editor of _Johnson's +Life and Personalia_, but did not leave him free. He had set his mind +on an edition of the _Lives of the Poets_. This, to the regret of all +who knew him either personally or as a Johnsonian, he did not live to +see through the press. But it is soon to appear, and will be a +storehouse of anecdote and a miracle of cross-references. A poet who +has been dead a century or two is amazing good company--at least, he +never fails to be so when Johnson tells us as much of his story as he +can remember without undue research, with that irony of his, that vast +composure, that humorous perception of the greatness and the +littleness of human life, that make the brief records of a Spratt, a +Walsh, and a Fenton so divinely entertaining. It is an immense +testimony to the healthiness of the Johnsonian atmosphere that Dr. +Hill, who breathed it almost exclusively for a quarter of a century +and upwards, showed no symptoms either of moral deterioration or +physical exhaustion. His appetite to the end was as keen as ever, nor +was his temper obviously the worse. The task never became a toil, not +even a tease. 'You have but two subjects,' said Johnson to Boswell: +'yourself and myself. I am sick of both.' Johnson hated to be talked +about, or to have it noticed what he ate or what he had on. For a +hundred years now last past he has been more talked about and noticed +than anybody else. But Dr. Hill never grew sick of Dr. Johnson. + +The _Johnsonian Miscellanies_[A] open with the _Prayers and +Meditations_, first published by the Rev. Dr. Strahan in 1785. Strahan +was the Vicar of Islington, and into his hands at an early hour one +morning Dr. Johnson, then approaching his last days, put the papers, +'with instructions for committing them to the press and with a promise +to prepare a sketch of his own life to accompany them.' This promise +the doctor was not able to keep, and shortly after his death his +reverend friend published the papers just as they were put into his +hands. One wonders he had the heart to do it, but the clerical mind is +sometimes strangely insensitive to the privacy of thought. But, as in +the case of most indelicate acts, you cannot but be glad the thing was +done. The original manuscript is at Pembroke College, Oxford. In these +_Prayers and Meditations_ we see an awful figure. The _solitary_ +Johnson, perturbed, tortured, oppressed, in distress of body and of +mind, full of alarms for the future both in this world and the next, +teased by importunate and perplexing thoughts, harassed by morbid +infirmities, vexed by idle yet constantly recurring scruples, with an +inherited melancholy and a threatened sanity, is a gloomy and even a +terrible picture, and forms a striking contrast to the social hero, +the triumphant dialectician of Boswell, Mrs. Thrale, and Madame +D'Arblay. Yet it is relieved by its inherent humanity, its fellowship +and feeling. Dr. Johnson's piety is delightfully full of human +nature--far too full to please the poet Cowper, who wrote of the +_Prayers and Meditations_ as follows: + + 'If it be fair to judge of a book by an extract, I do not wonder + that you were so little edified by Johnson's Journal. It is even + more ridiculous than was poor Rutty's of flatulent memory. The + portion of it given us in this day's paper contains not one + sentiment worth one farthing, except the last, in which he resolves + to bind himself with no more unbidden obligations. Poor man! one + would think that to pray for his dead wife and to pinch himself + with Church fasts had been almost the whole of his religion.' + + [Footnote A: Two volumes. Oxford Clarendon Press, 1897.] + +It were hateful to pit one man's religion against another's, but it +is only fair to Dr. Johnson's religion to remember that, odd compound +as it was, it saw him through the long struggle of life, and enabled +him to meet the death he so honestly feared like a man and a +Christian. The _Prayers and Meditations_ may not be an edifying book +in Cowper's sense of the word; there is nothing triumphant about it; +it is full of infirmities and even absurdities; but, for all that, it +contains more piety than 10,000 religious biographies. Nor must the +evidence it contains of weakness be exaggerated. Beset with +infirmities, a lazy dog, as he often declared himself to be, he yet +managed to do a thing or two. Here, for example, is an entry: + + '29, EASTER EVE (1777). + + 'I rose and again prayed with reference to my departed wife. I + neither read nor went to church, yet can scarcely tell how I have + been hindered. I treated with booksellers on a bargain, but the + time was not long.' + +Too long, perhaps, for Johnson's piety, but short enough to enable the +booksellers to make an uncommon good bargain for the _Lives of the +Poets_. 'As to the terms,' writes Mr. Dilly, 'it was left entirely to +the doctor to name his own; he mentioned 200 guineas; it was +immediately agreed to.' The business-like Malone makes the following +observation on the transaction: 'Had he asked 1,000, or even 1,500, +guineas the booksellers, who knew the value of his name, would +doubtless have readily given it.' Dr. Johnson, though the son of a +bookseller, was the least tradesman-like of authors. The bargain was +bad, but the book was good. + +A year later we find this record: + + 'MONDAY, _April_ 20 (1778). + + 'After a good night, as I am forced to reckon, I rose seasonably + and prayed, using the collect for yesterday. In reviewing my time + from Easter, 1777, I find a very melancholy and shameful blank. So + little has been done that days and months are without any trace. My + health has, indeed, been very much interrupted. My nights have been + commonly not only restless but painful and fatiguing.... I have + written a little of the _Lives of the Poets_, I think, with all my + usual vigour. I have made sermons, perhaps, as readily as formerly. + My memory is less faithful in retaining names, and, I am afraid, in + retaining occurrences. Of this vacillation and vagrancy of mind I + impute a great part to a fortuitous and unsettled life, and + therefore purpose to spend my life with more method. + + 'This year the 28th of March passed away without memorial. Poor + Tetty, whatever were our faults and failings, we loved each other. + I did not forget thee yesterday. Couldst thou have lived! I am now, + with the help of God, to begin a new life.' + +Dr. Hill prints an interesting letter of Mr. Jowett's, in which occur +the following observations: + + 'It is a curious question whether Boswell has unconsciously + misrepresented Johnson in any respect. I think, judging from the + materials, which are supplied chiefly by himself, that in one + respect he has. He has represented him more as a sage and + philosopher in his conduct as well as his conversation than he + really was, and less as a rollicking "King of Society." The gravity + of Johnson's own writings tends to confirm this, as I suspect, + erroneous impression. His religion was fitful and intermittent; and + when once the ice was broken he enjoyed Jack Wilkes, though he + refused to shake hands with Hume. I was much struck with a remark + of Sir John Hawkins (excuse me if I have mentioned this to you + before): "He was the most humorous man I ever knew."' + +Mr. Jowett's letter raises some nice points--the Wilkes and Hume +point, for example. Dr. Johnson hated both blasphemy and bawd, but he +hated blasphemy most. Mr. Jowett shared the doctor's antipathies, but +very likely hated bawd more than he did blasphemy. But, as I have +already said, the point is a nice one. To crack jokes with Wilkes at +the expense of Boswell and the Scotch seems to me a very different +thing from shaking hands with Hume. But, indeed, it is absurd to +overlook either Johnson's melancholy piety or his abounding humour and +love of fun and nonsense. His _Prayers and Meditations_ are full of +the one, Boswell and Mrs. Thrale and Madame D'Arblay are full of the +other. Boswell's _Johnson_ has superseded the 'authorized biography' +by Sir John Hawkins, and Dr. Hill did well to include in these +_Miscellanies_ Hawkins' inimitable description of the memorable +banquet given at the Devil Tavern, near Temple Bar, in the spring of +1751, to celebrate the publication of Mrs. Charlotte Lennox's first +novel. What delightful revelry! what innocent mirth! prolonged though +it was till long after dawn. Poor Mrs. Lennox died in distress in +1804, at the age of eighty-three. Could Johnson but have lived he +would have lent her his helping hand. He was no fair-weather friend, +but shares with Charles Lamb the honour of being able to unite narrow +means and splendid munificence. + +I must end with an anecdote: + + 'Henderson asked the doctor's opinion of _Dido_ and its author. + "Sir," said Dr. Johnson, "I never did the man an injury. Yet he + would read his tragedy to me."' + + + + +BOSWELL AS BIOGRAPHER + + +Boswell's position in English literature cannot be disputed, nor can +he ever be displaced from it. He has written our greatest biography. +That is all. Theorize about it as much as you like, account for it how +you may, the fact remains. 'Alone I did it.' There has been plenty of +theorizing. Lord Macaulay took the subject in hand and tossed it up +and down for half a dozen pages with a gusto that drove home to many +minds the conviction, the strange conviction, that our greatest +biography was written by one of the very smallest men that ever lived, +'a man of the meanest and feeblest intellect'--by a dunce, a parasite, +and a coxcomb; by one 'who, if he had not been a great fool, would +never have been a great writer.' So far Macaulay, _anno Domini_ 1831, +in the vigorous pages of the _Edinburgh Review_. A year later appears +in _Fraser's Magazine_ another theory by another hand, not then +famous, Mr. Thomas Carlyle. I own to an inordinate affection for Mr. +Carlyle as 'literary critic' As philosopher and sage, he has served +our turn. We have had the fortune, good or bad, to outlive him; and +our sad experience is that death makes a mighty difference to all but +the very greatest. The sight of the author of _Sartor Resartus_ in a +Chelsea omnibus, the sound of Dr. Newman's voice preaching to a small +congregation in Birmingham, kept alive in our minds the vision of +their greatness--it seemed then as if that greatness could know no +limit; but no sooner had they gone away, than somehow or another +one became conscious of some deficiency in their intellectual +positions--the tide of human thought rushed visibly by them, and it +became plain that to no other generation would either of these men be +what they had been to their own. But Mr. Carlyle as literary critic +has a tenacious grasp, and Boswell was a subject made for his hand. +'Your Scottish laird, says an English naturalist of those days, may be +defined as the hungriest and vainest of all bipeds yet known.' Carlyle +knew the type well enough. His general description of Boswell is +savage: + + 'Boswell was a person whose mean or bad qualities lay open to the + general eye, visible, palpable to the dullest. His good qualities, + again, belonged not to the time he lived in; were far from common + then; indeed, in such a degree were almost unexampled; not + recognisable, therefore, by everyone; nay, apt even, so strange + had they grown, to be confounded with the very vices they lay + contiguous to and had sprung out of. That he was a wine-bibber and + good liver, gluttonously fond of whatever would yield him a little + solacement, were it only of a stomachic character, is undeniable + enough. That he was vain, heedless, a babbler, had much of the + sycophant, alternating with the braggadocio, curiously spiced, too, + with an all-pervading dash of the coxcomb; that he gloried much + when the tailor by a court suit had made a new man of him; that he + appeared at the Shakespeare Jubilee with a riband imprinted + "Corsica Boswell" round his hat, and, in short, if you will, lived + no day of his life without saying and doing more than one + pretentious ineptitude, all this unhappily is evident as the sun at + noon. The very look of Boswell seems to have signified so much. In + that cocked nose, cocked partly in triumph over his weaker + fellow-creatures, partly to snuff up the smell of coming pleasure + and scent it from afar, in those big cheeks, hanging like + half-filled wine-skins, still able to contain more, in that + coarsely-protruded shelf mouth, that fat dew-lapped chin; in all + this who sees not sensuality, pretension, boisterous imbecility + enough? The underpart of Boswell's face is of a low, almost brutish + character.' + +This is character-painting with a vengeance. Portrait of a Scotch +laird by the son of a Scotch peasant. Carlyle's Boswell is to me the +very man. If so, Carlyle's paradox seems as great as Macaulay's, for +though Carlyle does not call Boswell a great fool in plain set terms, +he goes very near it. But he keeps open a door through which he +effects his escape. Carlyle sees in Bozzy 'the old reverent feeling of +discipleship, in a word, hero-worship.' + + 'How the babbling Bozzy, inspired only by love and the recognition + and vision which love can lend, epitomizes nightly the words of + Wisdom, the deeds and aspects of Wisdom, and so, little by little, + unconsciously works together for us a whole "Johnsoniad"--a more + free, perfect, sunlit and spirit-speaking likeness than for many + centuries has been drawn by man of man.' + +This I think is a little overdrawn. That Boswell loved Johnson, God +forbid I should deny. But that he was inspired only by love to write +his life, I gravely question. Boswell was, as Carlyle has said, a +greedy man--and especially was he greedy of fame--and he saw in his +revered friend a splendid subject for artistic biographic treatment. +Here is where both Macaulay and Carlyle are, as I suggest, wrong. +Boswell was a fool, but only in the sense in which hundreds of great +artists have been fools; on his own lines, and across his own bit of +country, he was no fool. He did not accidentally stumble across +success, but he deliberately aimed at what he hit. Read his preface +and you will discover his method. He was as much an artist as either +of his two famous critics. Where Carlyle goes astray is in attributing +to discipleship what was mainly due to a dramatic sense. However, +theories are no great matter. + +Our means of knowledge of James Boswell are derived mainly from +himself; he is his own incriminator. In addition to the life there is +the Corsican tour, the Hebrides tour, the letters to Erskine and to +Temple, and a few insignificant occasional publications in the shape +of letters to the people of Scotland, etc. With these before him it is +impossible for any biographer to approach Bozzy in a devotional +attitude; he was all Carlyle calls him. Our sympathies are with his +father, who despised him, and with his son, who was ashamed of him. It +is indeed strange to think of him staggering, like the drunkard he +was, between these two respectable and even stately figures--the +Senator of the Court of Justice and the courtly scholar and antiquary. +And yet it is to the drunkard humanity is debtor. Respectability is +not everything. + +Boswell had many literary projects and ambitions, and never intended +to be known merely as the biographer of Johnson. He proposed to write +a life of Lord Kames and to compose memoirs of Hume. It seems he did +write a life of Sir Robert Sibbald. He had other plans in his head, +but dissipation and a steadily increasing drunkenness destroyed them +all. As inveterate book-hunter, I confess to a great fancy to lay +hands on his _Dorando: A Spanish Tale_, a shilling book published in +Edinburgh during the progress of the once famous Douglas case, and +ordered to be suppressed as contempt of court after it had been +through three editions. It is said, probably hastily, that no copy is +known to exist--a dreary fate which, according to Lord Macaulay, might +have attended upon the _Life of Johnson_ had the copyright of that +work become the property of Boswell's son, who hated to hear it +mentioned. It is not, however, very easy to get rid of any book once +it is published, and I do not despair of reading _Dorando_ before I +die. + + + + +OLD PLEASURE GARDENS[A] + + + [Footnote A: _Pleasure Gardens of the Eighteenth Century_, by Warwick + Wroth, F.S.A., assisted by Arthur Edgar Wroth. London: Macmillan and + Co.] + +This is an honest book, disfigured by no fine writing or woeful +attempts to make us dance round may-poles with our ancestors. Terribly +is our good language abused by the swell-mob of stylists, for whom it +is certainly not enough that Chatham's language is their mother's +tongue. May the Devil fly away with these artists; though no sooner +had he done so than we should be 'wae' for auld Nicky-ben. Mr. Wroth, +of the British Museum, and his brother, Mr. Arthur Wroth, are above +such vulgar pranks, and never strain after the picturesque, but in the +plain garb of honest men carry us about to the sixty-four gardens +where the eighteenth-century Londoner, his wife and family--the John +Gilpins of the day--might take their pleasure either sadly, as indeed +best befits our pilgrim state, or uproariously to deaden the ear to +the still small voice of conscience--the pangs of slighted love, the +law's delay, the sluggish step of Fortune, the stealthy strides of +approaching poverty, or any other of the familiar incidents of our +mortal life. The sixty-two illustrations which adorn the book are as +honest as the letterpress. There is a most delightful Morland +depicting a very stout family indeed regaling itself _sub tegmine +fagi_. It is called a 'Tea Party.' A voluminous mother holds in her +roomy lap a very fat baby, whose back and neck are full upon you as +you stare into the picture. And what a jolly back and innocent neck it +is! Enough to make every right-minded woman cry out with pleasure. +Then there is the highly respectable father stirring his cup and +watching with placid content a gentleman in lace and ruffles attending +to the wife, whilst the two elder children play with a wheezy dog. + +In these pages we can see for ourselves the British public--God rest +its soul!--enjoying itself. This honest book is full of _la +bourgeoisie_. The rips and the painted ladies occasionally, it is +true, make their appearance, but they are reduced to their proper +proportions. The Adam and Eve Tea Gardens, St. Pancras, have a +somewhat rakish sound, calculated to arrest the jaded attention of the +debauchee, but what has Mr. Wroth to tell us about them? + + 'About the beginning of the present century it could still be + described as an agreeable retreat, "with enchanting prospects"; and + the gardens were laid out with arbours, flowers, and shrubs. Cows + were kept for making syllabubs, and on summer afternoons a regular + company met to play bowls and trap-ball in an adjacent field. One + proprietor fitted out a mimic squadron of frigates in the garden, + and the long-room was used a good deal for beanfeasts and + tea-drinking parties' (p. 127). + +What a pleasant place! Syllabubs! How sweet they sound! Nobody +worried then about diphtheria; they only died of it. Mimic frigates, +too! What patriotism! These gardens are as much lost as those of the +Hesperides. A cemetery swallowed them up--the cemetery which adjoins +the old St. Pancras Churchyard. The Tavern, shorn of its amenities, a +mere drink-shop, survived as far down the century as 1874, soon after +which date it also disappeared. Hornsey Wood House has a name not +unknown in the simple annals of tea-drinking. It is now part of +Finsbury Park, but in the middle of the last century its long-room 'on +popular holydays, such as Whit Sunday, might be seen crowded as early +as nine or ten in the morning with a motley assemblage eating rolls +and butter and drinking tea at an extravagant price.' 'Hone remembered +the old Hornsey Wood House as it stood embowered, and seeming a part +of the wood. It was at that time kept by two sisters--Mrs. Lloyd and +Mrs. Collier--and these aged dames were usually to be found before +their door on a seat between two venerable oaks, wherein swarms of +bees hived themselves.' + +What a picture is this of these vanished dames! Somewhere, I trust, +they are at peace. + + 'And there, they say, two bright and aged snakes, + Who once were Cadmus and Harmonia, + Bask in the glens or on the warm sea-shore.' + +A more raffish place was the Dog and Duck in St. George's Fields, +which boasted mineral springs, good for gout, stone, king's evil, sore +eyes, and inveterate cancers. Considering its virtue, the water was a +cheap liquor, for a dozen bottles could be had at the spa for a +shilling. The Dog and Duck, though at last it exhibited depraved +tastes, was at one time well conducted. Miss Talbot writes about it to +Mrs. Carter, and Dr. Johnson advised his Thralia to try the waters. It +was no mean place, but boasted a breakfast-room, a bowling-green, and +a swimming-bath 200 feet long and 100 feet (nearly) broad. Mr. Wroth +narrates the history of its fall with philosophical composure. In the +hands of one Hedger the decencies were disregarded, and thieves made +merry where once Miss Talbot sipped bohea. One of its frequenters, +Charlotte Shaftoe, is said to have betrayed seven of her intimates to +the gallows. Few visitors' lists could stand such a strain as Miss +Shaftoe put upon hers. In 1799 the Dog and Duck was suppressed, and +Bethlehem Hospital now reigns in its stead. 'The Peerless Pool' has a +Stevensonian sound. It was a dangerous pond behind Old Street, long +known as 'The Parlous or Perilous Pond' 'because divers youth by +swimming therein have been drowned.' In 1743 a London jeweller called +Kemp took it in hand, turned it into a pleasure bath, and renamed it, +happily enough, 'The Peerless Pool.' It was a fine open-air bath, 170 +feet long, more than 100 feet broad, and from 3 to 5 feet deep. 'It +was nearly surrounded by trees, and the descent was by marble steps to +a fine gravel bottom, through which the springs that supplied the pool +came bubbling up.' Mr. Kemp likewise constructed a fish-pond. The +enterprise met with success, and anglers, bathers, and at due seasons +skaters, flocked to 'The Peerless Pool.' Hone describes how every +Thursday and Saturday the boys from the Bluecoat School were wont to +plunge into its depths. You ask its fate. It has been built over. +Peerless Street, the second main turning on the left of the City Road +just beyond Old Street in coming from the City, is all that is left to +remind anyone of the once Parlous Pool, unless, indeed, it still +occasionally creeps into a cellar and drowns cockroaches instead of +divers youths. The Three Hats, Highbury Barn, Hampstead Wells, are not +places to be lightly passed over. In Mr. Wroth's book you may read +about them and trace their fortunes--their fallen fortunes. After all, +they have only shared the fate of empires. + +Of the most famous London gardens--Marylebone, Ranelagh, and, greatest +of them all, Vauxhall--Mr. Wroth writes at, of course, a becoming +length. Marylebone Gardens, when at their largest, comprised about 8 +acres. Beaumont Street, part of Devonshire Street and of Devonshire +Place and Upper Wimpole Street, now occupy their site. Music was the +main feature of Marylebone. A band played in the evening. Vocalists at +different times drew crowds. Masquerades and fireworks appeared later +in the history of the gardens, which usually were open three nights of +the week. Dr. Johnson's turbulent behaviour, on the occasion of one of +his frequent visits, will easily be remembered. Marylebone, at no +period, says Mr. Wroth, attained the vogue of Ranelagh or the +universal popularity of Vauxhall. In 1776 the gardens were closed, and +two years later the builders began to lay out streets. Ranelagh is, +perhaps, the greatest achievement of the eighteenth century. Its +Rotunda, built in 1741, is compared by Mr. Wroth to the reading-room +of the British Museum. No need to give its dimensions; only look at +the print, and you will understand what Johnson meant when he declared +that the _coup d'oeil_ of Ranelagh was the finest thing he had ever +seen. The ordinary charge for admission was half a crown, which +secured you tea or coffee and bread-and-butter. The gardens were +usually open Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays, and the amusements were +music, tea-drinking, walking, and talking. Mr. Wroth quotes a +Frenchman, who, after visiting Ranelagh in 1800, calls it 'le plus +insipide lieu d'amusement que l'on ait pu imaginer,' and even hints at +Dante's Purgatory. An earlier victim from Gaul thus records his +experience of Ranelagh: 'On s'ennui avec de la mauvaise musique, du +the et du beurre.' So true is it that the cheerfulness you find +anywhere is the cheerfulness you have brought with you. However, +despite the Frenchman, good music and singing were at times to be +heard at Ranelagh. The nineteenth century would have nothing to do +with Ranelagh, and in 1805 it was pulled down. The site now belongs to +Chelsea Hospital. Cuper's Gardens lacked the respectability of +Marylebone and the style of Ranelagh, but they had their vogue during +the same century. They were finely situated on the south side of the +Thames opposite Somerset House. Cuper easily got altered into Cupid; +and when on the death of Ephraim Evans in 1740 the business came to be +carried on by his widow, a comely dame who knew a thing or two, it +proved to be indeed a going concern. But the new Licensing Bill of +1752 destroyed Cupid's Garden, and Mrs. Evans was left lamenting and +wholly uncompensated. Of Vauxhall Mr. Wroth treats at much length, and +this part of his book is especially rich in illustrations. Every lover +of Old London and old times and old prints should add Mr. Wroth's book +to his library. + + + + +OLD BOOKSELLERS + + +There has just been a small flutter amongst those who used to be +called stationers or text-writers in the good old days, before +printing was, and when even Peers of the Realm (now so highly +educated) could not sign their names, or, at all events, preferred not +to do so--booksellers they are now styled--and the question which +agitates them is discount. Having mentioned this, one naturally passes +on. + +No great trade has an obscurer history than the book trade. It seems +to lie choked in mountains of dust which it would be suicidal to +disturb. Men have lived from time to time of literary skill--Dr. +Johnson was one of them--who had knowledge, extensive and peculiar, of +the traditions and practices of 'the trade,' as it is proudly styled +by its votaries; but nobody has ever thought it worth his while to +make record of his knowledge, which accordingly perished with him, and +is now irrecoverably lost. + +In old days booksellers were also publishers, frequently printers, and +sometimes paper-makers. Jacob Tonson not only owned Milton's _Paradise +Lost_--for all time, as he fondly thought, for little did he dream of +the fierce construction the House of Lords was to put upon the +Copyright Act of Queen Anne--not only was Dryden's publisher, but also +kept shop in Chancery Lane, and sold books across the counter. He +allowed no discount, but, so we are told, 'spoke his mind upon all +occasions, and flattered no one,' not even glorious John. + +For a long time past the trades of bookselling and book-publishing +have been carried on apart. This has doubtless rid booksellers of all +the unpopularity which formerly belonged to them in their other +capacity. This unpopularity is now heaped as a whole upon the +publishers, who certainly need not dread the doom awaiting those of +whom the world speaks well. + +A tendency of the two trades to grow together again is perhaps +noticeable. For my part, I wish they would. Some publishers are +already booksellers, but the books they sell are usually only new +books. Now it is obvious that the true bookseller sells books both old +and new. Some booksellers are occasional publishers. May each +usurp--or, rather, reassume--the business of the other, whilst +retaining his own! + +The world, it must be admitted, owes a great deal of whatever +information it possesses about the professions, trades, and +occupations practised and carried on in its midst to those who have +failed in them. Prosperous men talk 'shop,' but seldom write it. The +book that tells us most about booksellers and bookselling in bygone +days is the work of a crack-brained fellow who published and sold in +the reigns of Queen Anne and George I., and died in 1733 in great +poverty and obscurity. I refer to John Dunton, whose _Life and +Errors_ in the edition in two volumes edited by J.B. Nichols, and +published in 1818, is a common book enough in the second-hand shops, +and one which may be safely recommended to everyone, except, indeed, +to the unfortunate man or woman who is not an adept in the art, craft, +or mystery of skipping. + +The book will strangely remind the reader of Amory's _Life of John +Buncle_--those queer volumes to which many a reader has been sent by +Hazlitt's intoxicating description of them in his _Round Table_, and +a few perhaps by a shy allusion contained in one of the essays of +Elia. The real John Dunton has not the boundless spirits of the +fictitious John Buncle; but in their religious fervour, their +passion for flirtation, their tireless egotism, and their love of +character-sketching, they greatly resemble one another. + +It is this last characteristic that imparts real value to Dunton's +book, and makes it, despite its verbiage and tortuosity, throb with +human interest. For example, he gives us a short sketch of no less +than 135 then living London booksellers in this style: 'Mr. Newton is +full of kindness and good-nature. He is affable and courteous in +trade, and is none of those men of forty whose religion is yet to +chuse, for his mind (like his looks) is serious and grave; and his +neighbours tell me his understanding does not improve too fast for his +practice, for he is not religious by start or sally, but is well fixed +in the faith and practice of a Church of England man--and has a +handsome wife into the bargain.' + +Most of the 135 booksellers were good men, according to Dunton, but +not all. 'Mr. Lee in Lombard Street. Such a pirate, such a cormorant +was never before. Copies, books, men, shops, all was one. He held no +propriety right or wrong, good or bad, till at last he began to be +known; and the booksellers, not enduring so ill a man among them, +spewed him out, and off he marched to Ireland, where he acted as +_felonious Lee_ as he did in London. And as Lee lived a thief, so he +died a hypocrite; for being asked on his death-bed if he would forgive +Mr. C. (that had formerly wronged him), "Yes," said Lee, "if I die, I +forgive him; but if I happen to live, I am resolved to be revenged on +him."' + +The Act of Union destroyed the trade of these pirates, but their +felonious editions of eighteenth-century authors still abound. Mr. +Gladstone, I need scarcely say, was careful in his Home Rule Bill +(which was denounced by thousands who never read a line of it) to +withdraw copyright from the scope of action of his proposed Dublin +Parliament. + +There are nearly eleven hundred brief character-sketches in Dunton's +book, of all sorts and kinds, but with a preference for bookish +people, divines, both of the Establishment and out of it, printers and +authors. Sometimes, indeed, the description is short enough, and tells +one very little. To many readers, references so curt to people of whom +they never heard, and whose names are recorded nowhere else, save on +their mouldering grave-stones, may seem tedious and trivial, but for +others they will have a strange fascination. Here are a few examples: + + 'Affable _Wiggins_. His conversation is general but never + impertinent. + + 'The kind and golden _Venables_. He is so good a man, and so truly + charitable, he that will write of him, must still write more. + + 'Mr. _Bury_--my old neighbour in Redcross Street. He is a plain + honest man, sells the best coffee in all the neighbourhood, and + lives in this world like a spiritual stranger and pilgrim in a + foreign country. + + 'Anabaptist (alias _Elephant_) _Smith_. He was a man of great + sincerity and happy contentment in all circumstances of life.' + +If an affection for passages of this kind be condemned as trivial, and +akin to the sentimentalism of the man in Calverley's poem who wept +over a box labelled 'This side up,' I will shelter myself behind +Carlyle, who was evidently deeply moved, as his review of Boswell's +Johnson proves, by the life-history of Mr. F. Lewis, 'of whose birth, +death, and whole terrestrial _res gestae_ this only, and, strange +enough, this actually, survives--"Sir, he lived in London, and hung +loose upon society. _Stat_ PARVI _hominis umbra_."' On that peg +Carlyle's imagination hung a whole biography. + +Dunton, who was the son of the Rector of Aston Clinton, was +apprenticed, about 1675, to a London bookseller. He had from the +beginning a great turn both for religion and love. He, to use his own +phrase, 'sat under the powerful ministry of Mr. Doolittle.' 'One +Lord's day, and I remember it with sorrow, I was to hear the Rev. Mr. +Doolittle, and it was then and there the beautiful Rachel Seaton gave +me that fatal wound.' + +The first book Dunton ever printed was by the Rev. Mr. Doolittle, and +was of an eminently religious character. + +'One Lord's Day (and I am very sensible of the sin) I was strolling +about just as my fancy led me, and, stepping into Dr. Annesley's +meeting-place--where, instead of engaging my attention to what the +Doctor said, I suffered both my mind and eyes to run at random--I soon +singled out a young lady that almost charmed me dead; but, having made +my inquiries, I found to my sorrow she was pre-engaged.' However, +Dunton was content with the elder sister, one of the three daughters +of Dr. Annesley. The one he first saw became the wife of the Reverend +Samuel Wesley, and the mother of John and Charles. The third daughter +is said to have been married to Daniel De Foe. + +As soon as he was out of his apprenticeship, Dunton set up business as +a publisher and bookseller. He says grimly enough: + + 'A man should be well furnished with an honest policy if he intends + to set out to the world nowadays. And this is no less necessary in + a bookseller than in any other tradesman, for in that way there are + plots and counter-plots, and a whole army of hackney authors that + keep their grinders moving by the travail of their pens. These + gormandizers will eat you the very life out of a _copy_ so soon as + ever it appears, for as the times go, _Original_ and _Abridgement_ + are almost reckoned as necessary as man and wife.' + +The mischief to which Dunton refers was permitted by the stupidity of +the judges, who refused to consider an abridgment of a book any +interference with its copyright. Some learned judges have, indeed, +held that an abridger is a benefactor, but as his benefactions are not +his own, but another's, a shorter name might be found for him. The law +on the subject is still uncertain. + +Dunton proceeds: 'Printing was now the uppermost in my thoughts, and +hackney authors began to ply me with _specimens_ as earnestly and +with as much passion and concern as the watermen do passengers with +_Oars_ and _Scullers_. I had some acquaintance with this generation in +my apprenticeship, and had never any warm affection for them, in +regard I always thought their great concern lay more in _how much a +sheet_, than in any generous respect they bore to the _Commonwealth of +Learning_; and indeed the learning itself of these gentlemen lies very +often in as little room as their honesty, though they will pretend to +have studied for six or seven years in the Bodleian Library, to have +turned over the Fathers, and to have read and digested the whole +compass both of human and ecclesiastic history, when, alas! they have +never been able to understand a single page of St. Cyprian, and cannot +tell you whether the Fathers lived before or after Christ.' + +Yet of one of this hateful tribe Dunton is able to speak well. He +declares Mr. Bradshaw to have been the best accomplished hackney +author he ever met with. He pronounces his style incomparably fine. He +had quarrelled with him, but none the less he writes: 'If Mr. Bradshaw +is yet alive, I here declare to the world and to him that I freely +forgive him what he owes, both in money and books, if he will only be +so kind as to make me a visit. But I am afraid the worthy gentleman is +dead, for he was wretchedly overrun with melancholy, and the very +blackness of it reigned in his countenance. He had certainly performed +wonders with his pen, had not his poverty pursued him and almost laid +the necessity upon him to be unjust.' + +All hackney authors were not poor. Some of the compilers and +abridgers made what even now would be considered by popular novelists +large sums. Scotsmen were very good at it. Gordon and Campbell became +wealthy men. If authors had a turn for politics, Sir Robert Walpole +was an excellent paymaster. Arnall, who was bred an attorney, is +stated to have been paid L11,000 in four years by the Government for +his pamphlets. + + 'Come, then, I'll comply. + Spirit of Arnall, aid me while I lie!' + +It cannot have been pleasant to read this, but then Pope belonged to +the opposition, and was a friend of Lord Bolingbroke, and would +consequently say anything. + +There is not a more interesting and artless autobiography to be read +than William Hutton's, the famous bookseller and historian of +Birmingham. Hutton has been somewhat absurdly called the English +Franklin. He is not in the least like Franklin. He has none of +Franklin's supreme literary skill, and he was a loving, generous, and +tender-hearted man, which Franklin certainly was not. Hutton's first +visit to London was paid in 1749. He walked up from Nottingham, spent +three days in London, and then walked back to Nottingham. The jaunt, +if such an expression is applicable, cost him eleven shillings less +fourpence. Yet he paid his way. The only money he spent to gain +admission to public places was a penny to see Bedlam. + +Interesting, however, as is Hutton's book, it tells us next to nothing +about book-selling, except that in his hands it was a prosperous +undertaking. + + + + +A FEW WORDS ABOUT COPYRIGHT IN BOOKS + + +Copyright, which is the exclusive liberty reserved to an author and +his assigns of printing or otherwise multiplying copies of his book +during certain fixed periods of time, is a right of modern origin. + +There is nothing about copyright in Justinian's compilations. + +It is a mistake to suppose that books did not circulate freely in the +era of manuscripts. St. Augustine was one of the most popular authors +that ever lived. His _City of God_ ran over Europe after a fashion +impossible to-day. Thousands of busy hands were employed, year out and +year in, making copies for sale of this famous treatise. Yet Augustine +had never heard of copyright, and never received a royalty on sales in +his life. + +The word 'copyright' is of purely English origin, and came into +existence as follows: + +The Stationers' Company was founded by royal charter in 1556, and from +the beginning has kept register-books, wherein, first, by decrees of +the Star Chamber, afterwards by orders of the Houses of Parliament, +and finally by Act of Parliament, the titles of all publications and +reprints have had to be entered prior to publication. + +None but booksellers, as publishers were then content to be called, +were members of the Stationers' Company, and by the usage of the +Company no entries could be made in their register-books except in the +names of members, and thereupon the book referred to in the entry +became the 'copy' of the member or members who had caused it to be +registered. + +By virtue of this registration the book became, in the opinion of the +Stationers' Company, the property _in perpetuity_ of the member or +members who had effected the registration. This was the 'right' of the +stationer to his 'copy.' + +Copyright at first is therefore not an author's, but a bookseller's +copyright. The author had no part or lot in it unless he chanced to be +both an author and a bookseller, an unusual combination in early days. +The author took his manuscript to a member of the Stationers' Company, +and made the best bargain he could for himself. The stationer, if +terms were arrived at, carried off the manuscript to his Company and +registered the title in the books, and thereupon became, in his +opinion, and in that of his Company, the owner, at common law, in +perpetuity of his 'copy.' + +The stationers, having complete control over their register-books, +made what entries they chose, and all kinds of books, even Homer and +the Classics, became the 'property' of its members. The booksellers, +nearly all Londoners, respected each other's 'copies,' and jealously +guarded access to their registers. From time to time there were sales +by auction of a bookseller's 'copies,' but the public--that is, the +country booksellers, for there were no other likely buyers--were +excluded from the sale-room. A great monopoly was thus created and +maintained by the trade. There was never any examination of title to a +bookseller's copy. Every book of repute was supposed to have a +bookseller for its owner. Bunyan's _Pilgrim's Progress_ was Mr. +Ponder's copy, Milton's _Paradise Lost_ Mr. Tonson's copy, _The Whole +Duty of Man_ Mr. Eyre's copy, and so on. The thing was a corrupt and +illegal trade combination. + +The expiration of the Licensing Act, and the consequent cessation of +the penalties it inflicted upon unlicensed printing, exposed the +proprietors of 'copies' to an invasion of their rights, real or +supposed, and in 1703, and again in 1706 and 1709, they applied to +Parliament for a Bill to protect them against the 'ruin' with which +they alleged themselves to be threatened.[A] + + [Footnote A: What the booksellers wanted was not to be left to their + common law remedy--_i.e._, an action of trespass on the case--but to + be supplied with penalties for infringement, and especially with the + right to seize and burn unauthorized editions.] + +In 1710 they got what they asked for in the shape of the famous +Statute of Queen Anne, the first copyright law in the world. A truly +English measure, ill considered and ill drawn, which did the very last +thing it was meant to do--viz., destroy the property it was intended +to protect. + +By this Act, in which the 'author' first makes his appearance actually +in front of the 'proprietor,' it was provided that, _in case of new +books_, the author and his assigns should have the sole right of +printing them for fourteen years, and if at the end of that time the +author was still alive, a second term of fourteen years was conceded. +In the case of _existing books_, there was to be but one term--viz., +twenty-one years, from August 10, 1710. + +Registration at the Stationers' Company was still required, but +nothing was said as to who might make the entries, or into whose names +they were to be made. + +Then followed the desired penalties for infringement. The booksellers +thought the terms of years meant no more than that the penalties were +to be limited by way of experiment to those periods. + +Many years flew by before the Stationers' Company discovered the +mischief wrought by the statute they had themselves promoted. To cut a +long matter short, it was not until 1774 that the House of Lords +decided that, whether there ever had been a perpetuity in literary +property at common law or not, it was destroyed by the Act of Queen +Anne, and that from and after the passing of that law neither author, +assignee, nor proprietor of 'copy' had any exclusive right of +multiplication, save for and during the periods of time the statute +created. + +It was a splendid fight--a Thirty Years' War. Great lawyers were fee'd +in it; luminous and lengthy judgments were delivered. Mansfield was a +booksellers' man; Thurlow ridiculed the pretensions of the Trade. It +can be read about in _Boswell's Johnson_ and in Campbell's _Lives of +the Lord Chancellors_. The authors stood supinely by, not contributing +a farthing towards the expenses. It was a booksellers' battle, and the +booksellers were beaten, as they deserved to be. + +All this is past history, in which the modern money-loving, motoring +author takes scant pleasure. Things are on a different footing now. +The Act of 1842 has extended the statutory periods of protection. The +perpetuity craze is over. A right in perpetuity to reprint Frank +Fustian's novel or Tom Tatter's poem would not add a penny to the +present value of the copyright of either of those productions. In +business short views must prevail. An author cannot expect to raise +money on his hope of immortality. Milton's publisher, good Mr. +Symonds, probably thought, if he thought about it at all, that he was +buying _Paradise Lost_ for ever when he registered it as his 'copy' in +the books of his Company; but into the calculations he made to +discover how much he could afford to give the author posterity did not +and could not enter. How was Symonds to know that Milton's fame was to +outlive Cleveland's or Flatman's? + +How many of the books published in 1905 would have any copyright cash +value in A.D. 2000? I do not pause for a reply. + +The modern author need have no quarrel with the statutory periods +fixed by the Act of 1842,[A] though common-sense has long since +suggested that a single term, the author's life and thirty or forty +years after, should be substituted for the alternative periods named +in the Act. + + [Footnote A: Author's life _plus_ seven years, or forty-two years + from date of publication, whichever term is the longer. The great + objection to the second term is that an author's books go out of + copyright at different dates, and the earlier editions go out + first.] + +What the modern author alone desiderates is a big, immediate, and +protected market. + +The United States of America have been a great disappointment to many +an honest British author. In the wicked old days when the States took +British books without paying for them they used to take them in large +numbers, but now that they have turned honest and passed a law +allowing the British author copyright on certain terms, they have in +great measure ceased to take; for, by the strangest of coincidences, +no sooner were British novels, histories, essays, and the like, +protected in America, than there sprang up in the States themselves, +novelists, historians, and essayists, not only numerous enough to +supply their own home markets, but talented enough to cross the +Atlantic in large numbers and challenge us in our own. Such a reward +for honesty was not contemplated. + +International copyright and the Convention of Berne are things to be +proud of and rejoice over. As the first chapter in a Code of Public +European Law, they may mark the beginning of a time of settled peace, +order, and disarmament, but they have not yet enriched a single +author, though hereafter possibly an occasional novelist or +play-wright may prosper greatly under their provisions. + +The copyright question is now at last really a settled question, save +in a single aspect of it. What, if anything, should be done in the +case of those authors, few in number, whose literary lives prove +longer than the period of statutory protection? Should any distinction +in law be struck between a Tennyson and a Tupper? between--But why +multiply examples? There is no need to be unnecessarily offensive. + +The law and practice of to-day give the meat that remains on the bones +of the dead author after the expiration of the statutory period of +protection to the Trade. Any publisher who likes to bring out an +edition can do so, though by doing so he does not gain any exclusive +rights. A brother publisher may compete with him. As a result +the public is usually well served with cheap editions of those +non-copyright authors whose works are worth reprinting the moment the +copyright expires. + +Some lovers of justice, however, think that it is unnecessary all at +once to endow the Trade with these windfalls, and that if an author's +family, or his or their assignees, were prepared to publish cheap +editions immediately after the expiration of the usual period of +protection, they ought to be allowed to do so for a further period of, +say, forty years. If they failed within a reasonable time either to do +so themselves or to arrange for others to do so, this extended period +should lapse. + +Were this to be the law nobody could say that it was unfair; but it is +never likely to be the law. It would take time for discussion, and now +there is no time left in which to discuss anything in Parliament. A +much-needed Copyright Bill has been in draft for years, has been +mentioned in Queen's and King's speeches, but it has never been read +even a first time. If it ever is read a first time, its only chance of +becoming law will be if it is taken in a lump, as it stands, without +consideration or amendment. To such a pass has legislation been +reduced in this country! + +This draft Bill does not contain any provision for specially +protecting the families of authors whose works long outlive their +mortal lives. It makes no invidious distinctions. It leaves all the +authors to hang together, the quick and the dead. Perhaps this is the +better way. + + + + +HANNAH MORE ONCE MORE + + +I have been told by more than one correspondent, and not always in +words of urbanity, that I owe an apology to the manes of Miss Hannah +More, whose works I once purchased in nineteen volumes for 8s. 6d., +and about whom in consequence I wrote a page some ten years ago.[A] + + [Footnote A: See _Collected Essays_, ii. 255.] + +To be accused of rudeness to a lady who exchanged witticisms with Dr. +Johnson, soothed the widowed heart of Mrs. Garrick, directed the early +studies of Macaulay, and in the spring of 1815 presented a small copy +of her _Sacred Dramas_ to Mr. Gladstone, is no light matter. To libel +the dead is, I know, not actionable--indeed, it is impossible; but +evil-speaking, lying, and slandering are canonical offences from which +the obligation to refrain knows no limits of time or place. + +I have often felt uneasy on this score, and never had the courage, +until this very evening, to read over again what in the irritation of +the moment I had been tempted to say about Miss Hannah More, after the +outlay upon her writings already mentioned. Eight shillings and +sixpence is, indeed, no great sum, but nineteen octavo volumes are a +good many books. Yet Richardson is in nineteen volumes in Mangin's +edition, and Swift is in nineteen volumes in Scott's edition, and +glorious John Dryden lacks but a volume to make a third example. True +enough; yet it will, I think, be granted me that you must be very fond +of an author, male or female, if nineteen octavo volumes, all his or +hers, are not a little irritating and provocative of temper. Think of +the room they take! As for selling them, it is not so easy to sell +nineteen volumes of a stone-dead author, particularly if you live +three miles from a railway-station and do not keep a trap. Elia, the +gentle Elia, as it is the idiotic fashion to call a writer who could +handle his 'maulies' in a fray as well as Hazlitt himself, has told us +how he could never see well-bound books he did not care about, but he +longed to strip them so that he might warm his ragged veterans in +their spoils. My copy of _Hannah More_ was in full calf, but never +once did it occur to me--though I, too, have many a poor author with +hardly a shirt to his back shivering in the dark corners of the +library--to strip her of her warm clothing. And yet I had to do +something, and quickly too, for sorely needed was Miss More's shelf. +So I buried the nineteen volumes in the garden. 'Out of sight, out of +mind,' said I cheerfully, stamping them down. + +This has hardly proved to be the case, for though Hannah More is +incapable of a literary resurrection, and no one of her nineteen +volumes has ever haunted my pillow, exclaiming, + + 'Think how thou stab'dst me in my prime of youth,' + +nevertheless, I have not been able to get quite rid of an uneasy +feeling that I was rude to her ten years ago in print--not, indeed, so +rude as was her revered friend Dr. Johnson 126 years ago to her face; +but then, I have not the courage to creep under the gabardine of our +great Moralist. + +When, accordingly, I saw on the counters of the trade the daintiest of +volumes, hailing, too, from the United States, entitled _Hannah +More_,[A] and perceived that it was a short biography and appreciation +of the lady on my mind, I recognised that my penitential hour had at +last come. I took the little book home with me, and sat down to read, +determined to do justice and more than justice to the once celebrated +mistress of Cowslip Green and Barley Wood. + + [Footnote A: _Hannah More_, by Marian Harland. New York and London: + G.P. Putnam.] + +Miss Harland's preface is most engaging. She reminds a married sister +how in the far-off days of their childhood in a Southern State their +Sunday reading, usually confined or sought to be confined, to 'bound +sermons and semi-detached tracts,' was enlivened by the _Works of +Hannah More_. She proceeds as follows: + + 'At my last visit to you I took from your bookshelves one of a set + of volumes in uniform binding of full calf, coloured mellowly by + the touch and the breath of fifty odd years. They belonged to the + dear old home library.... The leaves of the book I held fell apart + at _The Shepherd of Salisbury Plain_.' + +I leave my readers to judge how uncomfortable these innocent words +made me: + + 'The usher took six hasty strides + As smit with sudden pain.' + +I knew that set of volumes, their distressing uniformity of binding, +their full calf. Their very fellows lie mouldering in an East Anglian +garden, mellow enough by this time and strangely coloured. + +Circumstances alter cases. Miss Harland thinks that if the life of +Charlotte Bronte's mother had been mercifully spared, the authoress of +_Jane Eyre_ and _Villette_ might have grown up more like Hannah More +than she actually did. Perhaps so. As I say, circumstances alter +cases, and if the works of Hannah More had been in my old home +library, I might have read _The Shepherd of Salisbury Plain_ and +_The Search after Happiness_ of a Sunday, and found solace therein. +But they were not there, and I had to get along as best I could with +the _Pilgrim's Progress_, stories by A.L.O.E., the crime-stained +page of Mrs. Sherwood's _Tales from the Church Catechism_, and, +'more curious sport than that,' the _Bible in Spain_ of the +never-sufficiently-bepraised George Borrow. + +What, however, is a little odd about Miss Harland's enthusiasm for +Hannah More's writings is that it expires with the preface. _There_, +indeed, it glows with a beautiful light: + + 'And _The Search after Happiness!_ You cannot have forgotten all of + the many lines we learned by heart on Sunday afternoons in the + joyful spring-time when we were obliged to clear the pages every + few minutes of yellow jessamine bells and purple Wistaria petals + flung down by the warm wind.' + +This passage lets us into the secret. I suspect in sober truth both +Miss Harland and her sister have long since forgotten all the lines in +_The Search after Happiness_, but what they have never forgotten, what +they never can forget, are the jessamine bells and the Wistaria +petals, yellow and purple, blown about in the warm winds that visited +their now desolate and forsaken Southern home. Less beautiful things +than jessamine and Wistaria, if only they clustered round the house +where you were born, are remembered when the lines of far better +authors than Miss Hannah More have gone clean out of your head: + + 'As life wanes, all its cares and strife and toil + Seem strangely valueless, while the old trees + Which grew by our youth's home, the waving mass + Of climbing plants heavy with bloom and dew, + The morning swallows with their songs like words-- + All these seem dear, and only worth our thoughts.' + + +Thus the youthful Browning in his marvellous _Pauline_. The same note +is struck after a humbler and perhaps more moving fashion in the +following simple strain of William Allingham: + + 'Four ducks on a pond, + A grass-bank beyond; + A blue sky of spring, + White clouds on the wing; + How little a thing + To remember for years-- + To remember with tears!' + +If this be so--and who, looking into his own heart, but must own that +so it is?--it explains how it comes about that as soon as Miss Harland +finished her preface, got away from her childhood and began her +biography, she has so little to tell us about Miss More's books, and +from that little the personal note of enjoyment is entirely wanting. +Indeed, though a pious soul, she occasionally cannot restrain her +surprise how such ponderous commonplaces ever found a publisher, to +say nothing of a reader. + +'Such books as Miss More's,' she says, 'would to-day in America fall +from the press like a stone into the depths of the sea of oblivion, +creating no more sensation upon the surface than the bursting of a +bubble in mid-Atlantic.' + +And again: + +'That Hannah More was a power for righteousness in her long +generation we must take upon the testimony of her best and wisest +contemporaries.' + +However good may be your intentions, it seems hard to avoid being rude +to this excellent lady. + +I confess I never liked her love story. Anything more cold-blooded I +never read. I am not going to repeat it. Why should I? It is told at +length in Miss More's authorized biography in four volumes by William +Roberts, Esq. I saw a copy yesterday exposed for sale in New Oxford +Street, price 1s. Miss Harland also tells the tale, not without +chuckling. I refer the curious to her pages. + +Then there are those who can never get rid of the impression that +Hannah More 'fagged' her four sisters mercilessly; but who can tell? +Some people like being fagged. + +Precisely _when_ Miss More bade farewell to what in later life she was +fond of calling her gay days, when she wrote dull plays and went to +stupid Sunday parties, one finds it hard to discover, but at no time +did it ever come home to her that she needed repentance herself. She +seems always thinking of the sins and shortcomings of her neighbours, +rich and poor. Sometimes, indeed, when deluged with flattery, she +would intimate that she was a miserable sinner, but that is not what I +mean. She concerned herself greatly with the manners of the great, +and deplored their cards and fashionable falsehoods. John Newton, +captain as he had been of a slaver, saw the futility of such +pin-pricks: + +'The fashionable world,' so he wrote to Miss More, 'by their numbers +form a phalanx not easily impressible, and their habits of life are as +armour of proof which renders them not easily vulnerable. Neither the +rude club of a boisterous Reformer nor the pointed, delicate weapons +of the authoress before me can overthrow or rout them.' + +But Miss More never forgot to lecture the rich or to patronize the +poor. + +_Coelebs in Search of a Wife_ is an impossible book, and I do not +believe Miss Harland has read it; but as for the famous _Shepherd_, we +are never allowed to forget how Mr. Wilberforce declared a few years +before his death, to the admiration of the religious world, that he +would rather present himself in heaven with _The Shepherd of Salisbury +Plain_ in his hand than with--what think you?--_Peveril of the Peak_! +The bare notion of such a proceeding on anybody's part is enough to +strike one dumb with what would be horror, did not amazement swallow +up every other feeling. What rank Arminianism! I am sure the last +notion that ever would have entered the head of Sir Walter was to take +_Peveril_ to heaven. + +But whatever may be thought of the respective merits of Miss More's +nineteen volumes and Sir Walter's ninety-eight, there is no doubt that +Barley Wood was as much infested with visitors as ever was Abbotsford. +Eighty a week! + +'From twelve o'clock until three each day a constant stream of +carriages and pedestrians filled the evergreen bordered avenue +leading from the Wrington village road.' + +Among them came Lady Gladstone and W.E.G., aged six, the latter +carrying away with him the _Sacred Dramas_, to be preserved during a +long life. + +Miss More was a vivacious and agreeable talker, who certainly failed +to do herself justice with her pen. Her health was never good, yet, as +she survived thirty-five of her prescribing physicians, her vitality +must have been great. Her face in Opie's portrait is very pleasant. If +I was rude to her ten years ago, I apologize and withdraw; but as for +her books, I shall leave them where they are--buried in a cliff facing +due north, with nothing between them and the Pole but leagues upon +leagues of a wind-swept ocean. + + + + +ARTHUR YOUNG + + +The name of Arthur Young is a familiar one to all readers of that +history which begins with the forebodings of the French Revolution. +Thousands of us learnt to be interested in him as the 'good Arthur,' +'the excellent Arthur,' of Thomas Carlyle, a writer who had the art of +making not only his own narrative, but the sources of it, attractive. +Even 'Carrion-Heath,' in the famous introductory chapter to the +_Cromwell_, is invested with a kind of charm, whilst in the stormy +firmament of the _French Revolution_ the star of Arthur Young twinkles +with a mild effulgency. The autobiography of such a man could hardly +fail to be interesting.[A] The 'good Arthur' was born in 1741, the +younger son of a small 'squarson' who inherited from his father the +manor of Bradfield Combust, in Suffolk, but held the living of Thames +Ditton. Here he made the acquaintance of the Onslow family, and +Speaker Onslow was one of Arthur's godfathers. The Rev. Dr. Young died +in 1759, much in debt. The Bradfield property had been settled for +life on his wife, who had brought her husband some fortune, and to +the manor-house she retired to economize. + + [Footnote A: _The Autobiography of Arthur Young_. Edited by M. Betham + Edwards. Smith, Elder and Co.] + +Arthur's education had been muddled; and an attempt to make a merchant +of him having fallen through, he found himself, on his father's death, +aged eighteen, 'without education, profession, or employment,' and his +whole fortune, during his mother's life, consisting of a copyhold farm +of 20 acres, producing as many pounds. In these circumstances, to +think of literature was well-nigh inevitable, and, in 1762, the +autobiography tells us: + + 'I set on foot a periodical publication, entitled the _Universal + Museum_, which came out monthly, printed with glorious imprudence + on my own account. I waited on Dr. Johnson, who was sitting by the + fire so half-dressed and slovenly a figure as to make me stare at + him. I stated my plan, and begged that he would favour me with a + paper once a month, offering at the same time any remuneration that + he might name.' + +Here we see dimly prefigured a modern editor prematurely soliciting +the support of Great Names. But the Cham of literature, himself the +son of a bookseller, would have none of it. + + '"No, sir," he replied; "such a work would be sure to fail if the + booksellers have not the property, and you will lose a great deal + of money by it." + + '"Certainly, sir," I said, "if I am not fortunate enough to induce + authors of real talent to contribute." + + '"No, sir, you are mistaken; such authors will not support such a + work, nor will you persuade them to write in it. You will purchase + disappointment by the loss of your money, and I advise you by all + means to give up the plan." + + 'Somebody was introduced, and I took my leave.' + +The _Universal Museum_, none the less, appeared, but after five +numbers Young 'procured a meeting of ten or a dozen booksellers, and +had the luck and address to persuade them to take the whole scheme +upon themselves.' He then calmly adds, 'I believe no success ever +attended it.' It was, indeed, 100 years before its time. Literature +abandoned, Young took one of his mother's farms. 'I had no more idea +of farming than of physic or divinity,' nor did he, man of European +reputation as a farmer though he soon became, ever make farming pay. +He had an itching pen, and after four years' farming (1763-1766) he +published the result of his experience. Never, surely, before has an +author spoken of his first-born as in the autobiography Young speaks +of this publication: + + 'And the circumstance which perhaps of all others in my life I + most deeply regretted and considered as a sin of the blackest dye + was the publishing of my experience during these four years, + which, speaking as a farmer, was nothing but ignorance, folly, + presumption, and rascality.' + +None the less, it was writing this rascally book that seems to have +given him the idea of those agricultural tours which were to make his +name famous throughout the world. His Southern tour was in 1767, his +Northern in 1768, and his Eastern in 1770. The subject he specially +illuminated in these epoch-making books was the rotation of crops, +though he occasionally diverged upon deep-ploughing and kindred +themes. The tours excited, for the first time, the agricultural spirit +of Great Britain, and their author almost at once became a celebrated +man. + +In 1765 Young married the wrong woman, and started upon a career of +profound matrimonial discomfort, and even misery; a blunt, truthful +writer, he makes no bones about it. It was an unhappy marriage from +its beginning in 1765 to its end in 1815. Young himself, though by no +means vivacious in this autobiography, where he frankly complains of +himself as having no more wit than a fig, was a very popular person +with all classes and both sexes. He was an enormous diner-out, and his +authority as an agriculturist, united to his undeniable charm as a +companion, threw open to him all the great places in the country. But +his finances were a perpetual trouble. On carrot seeds and cabbages he +was an authority, but from 1766-1775 his income never exceeded L300 a +year. He had an excellent mother, whom he dearly loved, and who with +the characteristic bluntness of the family bade him think less about +carrots and more about his Creator. 'You may call all this rubbish if +you please, but a time will come when you will be convinced whose +notions are rubbish, yours or mine.' And the old lady was quite right, +as mothers so frequently turn out to be. In 1778 Young went over to +Ireland as agent to Lord Kingsborough. He got L500 down, and was to +have an annual salary of L500 and a house. Young soon got to work, and +became anxious to persuade his employer to let his lands direct to the +occupying cottar, and so get rid of the middlemen. This did not suit a +certain Major Thornhill, a relative and leaseholder, and thereupon a +pretty plot was hatched. Lady K. had a Catholic governess, a Miss +Crosby, upon whom it was thought my lord occasionally cast the eye of +partiality, whilst Arthur himself got on very well with her ladyship, +who was heard to pronounce him to be, as he was, 'one of the most +lively, agreeable fellows.' Out of these materials the Major and his +helpmeet concocted a double plot--namely, to make the lord jealous of +the steward, and the lady jealous of the governess, and to cause both +lord and lady respectively to believe that the steward was deeply +engaged both in abetting the amour of the lord and the governess, and +in prosecuting his own amour with the lady. The result was that both +governess and steward got notice to quit; but--and this is very +Irish--both went off with life annuities, the governess with one of +L50 per annum, and the steward with one of L72, and, what is still +more odd, we find Young at the end of his life in receipt of his +annuity. They were an expensive couple, these two. + +In 1780 Young published his _Irish Tour_, which was immediately +successful and popular in both kingdoms. In it he attacked the bounty +paid on the land-carriage of corn to Dublin. The bounty was, in the +session of Parliament next after the publication of Young's book, +reduced by one-half, and soon given up entirely. Young maintains that +this saved Ireland L80,000 a year. Nobody seems to have said 'Thank +you.' + +In May, 1783, was born the child 'Bobbin,' whose death, fourteen years +later, was to change the current of Young's life. The following year +Arthur Young paid his first visit to France, confining himself, +however, to Calais and its neighbourhood, and in the same year his +mother died, and, by an arrangement with his eldest brother, 'this +patch of landed property,' as Young calls Bradfield, descended upon +him. His first famous journey in France was made between May and +November, 1787, and cost the marvellously small sum of L118 15s. 2d. +His second and third French journeys were made in July, 1788, and in +June, 1789. The third was the longest, and extended into 1790. Three +years later Young was appointed, by Pitt, Secretary of the then Board +of Agriculture. A melancholy account is given by Young of a visit he +paid Burke at Gregory's in 1796. Young drove there in the chariot of +his fussy chief, Sir John Sinclair, to discover what Burke's +intentions might be as to an intended publication of his relating to +the price of labour. The account, which occupies four pages, is too +long for quotation. It concludes thus: + + 'I am glad once more to have seen and conversed with the man who I + hold to possess the greatest and most brilliant gifts of any penman + of the age in which he lived. Whose conversation has often + fascinated me, whose eloquence has charmed; whose writings have + delighted and instructed the world; whose name will without + question descend to the latest posterity. But to behold so great a + genius, so deepened with melancholy, stooping with infirmity of + body, feeling the anguish of a lacerated mind, and sinking to the + grave under accumulated misery--to see all this in a character I + venerate, and apparently without resource or comfort, wounded + every feeling of my soul, and I left him the next day almost as + low-spirited as himself.' + +But Young himself was soon to pass into the same Valley of the Shadow, +not so much of Death as of Joyless Life. His beloved and idolized +Bobbin died on July 14, 1797. She seems to have been a wise little +maiden, to whom her father wrote most affectionate letters, full of +rather unsuitable details, political and financial and otherwise, and +not scrupling to speak of the child's mother in a disagreeable manner. +Bobbin replies with delightful composure to these worrying letters: + + 'I have just got six of the most beautiful little rabbits you ever + saw; they skip about so prettily you can't think, and I shall have + some more in a few weeks. Having had so much physic, I am right + down tired of it. I take it still twice a day--my appetite is + better. What can you mind politics so for? I don't think about + them.--Well, good-bye, and believe me, dear papa, your dutiful + Daughter.' + +After poor little Bobbin's death, it happened to Arthur Young even as +his mother foretold. Carrots and crops and farming tours hastily +retreat, and we find the eminent agriculturist busying himself, with +the same seriousness and good faith he had devoted to the rotation of +the crops, with the sermons and treatises of Clarke and Jortin and +Secker and Tillotson, etc., and all to discover what had become of his +dear little Bobbin. His outlook upon the world was changed--the great +parties at Petworth, at Euston, at Woburn struck him differently; the +huge irreligion of the world filled him as for the first time with +amazement and horror: + + 'How few years are passed since I should have pushed on eagerly to + Woburn! This time twelve months I dined with the Duke on + Sunday--the party not very numerous, but chiefly of rank--the + entertainment more splendid than usual there. He expects me to-day, + but I have more pleasure in resting, going twice to church, and + eating a morsel of cold lamb at a very humble inn, than partaking + of gaiety and dissipation at a great table which might as well be + spread for a company of heathens as English lords and men of + fashion.' + +It is all mighty fine calling this religious hypochondria and +depression of spirits. It is one of the facts of life. Young stuck to +his post, and did his work, and quarrelled with his wife to the end, +or nearly so. He cannot have been so lively and agreeable a companion +as of old, for we find him in November, 1806, at Euston, endeavouring +to impress on the Duke of Grafton that by his tenets he had placed +himself entirely under the covenant of works, and that he must be +tried for them, and that 'I would not be in such a situation for ten +thousand worlds. He was mild and more patient than I expected.' +Perhaps, after all, Carlyle was not so far wrong when he praised our +aristocracy for their 'politeness.' In 1808 Young became blind. In +1815 his wife died. In 1820 he died himself, leaving behind him seven +packets of manuscript and twelve folio volumes of correspondence. + +Young's great work, _Travels during the Years 1787, 1788, and 1789, +undertaken more particularly with a View of Ascertaining the +Cultivation, Wealth, Resources, and National Prosperity of the Kingdom +of France_, published in 1792, is one of those books which will always +be a great favourite with somebody. It will outlive eloquence and +outstay philosophy. It contains some famous passages. + + + + +THOMAS PAINE + + +Proverbs are said to be but half-truths, but 'give a dog a bad name +and hang him' is a saying almost as veracious as it is felicitous; and +to no one can it possibly be applied with greater force than to Thomas +Paine, the rebellious staymaker, the bankrupt tobacconist, the amazing +author of _Common-sense_, _The Rights of Man_, and _The Age of Reason_. + +Until quite recently Tom Paine lay without the pale of toleration. No +circle of liberality was constructed wide enough to include him. Even +the scouted Unitarian scouted Thomas. He was 'the infamous Paine,' +'the vulgar atheist.' Whenever mentioned in pious discourse it was but +to be waved on one side as thus: 'No one of my hearers is likely to be +led astray by the scurrilous blasphemies of Paine.' + +I can well remember when an asserted intimacy with the writings of +Paine marked a man from his fellows and invested him in children's +minds with a horrid fascination. The writings themselves were only to +be seen in bookshops of evil reputation, and, when hastily turned over +with furtive glances, proved to be printed in small type and on +villainous paper. For a boy to have bought them and taken them inside +a decent home would have been to run the risk of fierce wrath in this +life and the threat of it in the next. If ever there was a hung dog, +his name was Tom Paine. + +But History is, as we know, for ever revising her records. None of her +judgments are final. A life of Thomas Paine, in two portly and +well-printed volumes, with gilt tops, wide margins, spare leaves at +the end, and all the other signs and tokens of literary +respectability, has lately appeared. No President, no Prime +Minister--nay, no Bishop or Moderator--need hope to have his memoirs +printed in better style than are these of Thomas Paine, by Mr. Moncure +D. Conway. Were any additional proof required of the complete +resuscitation of Paine's reputation, it might be found in the fact +that his life _is_ in two volumes, though it would have been far +better told in one. + +Mr. Conway believes implicitly in Paine--not merely in his virtue and +intelligence, but that he was a truly great man, who played a great +part in human affairs. He will no more admit that Paine was a +busybody, inflated with conceit and with a strong dash of insolence, +than he will that Thomas was a drunkard. That Paine's speech was +undoubtedly plain and his nose undeniably red is as far as Mr. Conway +will go. If we are to follow the biographer the whole way, we must not +only unhang the dog, but give him sepulture amongst the sceptred +Sovereigns who rule us from their urns. + +Thomas Paine was born at Thetford, in Norfolk, in January, 1737, and +sailed for America in 1774, then being thirty-seven years of age. Up +to this date he was a rank failure. His trade was staymaking, but he +had tried his hand at many things. He was twice an Excise officer, but +was twice dismissed the service, the first time for falsely +pretending to have made certain inspections which, in fact, he had not +made, and the second time for carrying on business in an excisable +article--tobacco, to wit--without the leave of the Board. Paine had +married the tobacconist's business, but neither the marriage nor the +business prospered; the second was sold by auction, and the first +terminated by mutual consent. + +Mr. Conway labours over these early days of his hero very much, but he +can make nothing of them. Paine was an Excise officer at Lewes, where, +so Mr. Conway reminds us, 'seven centuries before Paine opened his +office in Lewes, came Harold's son, possibly to take charge of the +Excise as established by Edward the Confessor, just deceased.' This +device of biographers is a little stale. The Confessor was guiltless +of the Excise. + +Paine's going to America was due to Benjamin Franklin, who made +Paine's acquaintance in London, and, having the wit to see his +ability, recommended him 'as a clerk or assistant-tutor in a school or +assistant-surveyor.' Thus armed, Paine made his appearance in +Philadelphia, where he at once obtained employment as editor of an +intended periodical called the _Pennsylvanian Magazine or American +Museum_, the first number of which appeared in January, 1775. Never +was anything luckier. Paine was, without knowing it, a born +journalist. His capacity for writing on the spur of the moment was +endless, and his delight in doing so boundless. He had no difficulty +for 'copy', though in those days contributors were few. He needed no +contributors. He was 'Atlanticus'; he was 'Vox Populi'; he was +'Aesop.' The unsigned articles were also mostly his. Having at last, +after many adventures and false starts, found his vocation, Paine +stuck to it. He spent the rest of his days with a pen in his hand, +scribbling his advice and obtruding his counsel on men and nations. +Both were usually of excellent quality. + +Paine was also happy in the moment of his arrival in America. The War +of Independence was imminent, and in April, 1775, occurred 'the +massacre of Lexington.' The Colonists were angry, but puzzled. They +hardly knew what they wanted. They lacked a definite opinion to +entertain and a cry to asseverate. Paine had no doubts. He hated +British institutions with all the hatred of a civil servant who has +had 'the sack.' + +In January, 1776, he published his pamphlet _Common-sense_, which must +be ranked with the most famous pamphlets ever written. It is difficult +to wade through now, but even _The Conduct of the Allies_ is not easy +reading, and yet between Paine and Swift there is a great gulf fixed. +The keynote of _Common-sense_ was separation once and for ever, and +the establishment of a great Republic of the West. It hit between wind +and water, had a great sale, and made its author a personage and, in +his own opinion, a divinity. + +Paine now became the penman of the rebels. His series of manifestoes, +entitled _The Crisis_, were widely read and carried healing on their +wings, and in 1777 he was elected Secretary to the Committee of +Foreign Affairs. Charles Lamb once declared that Rousseau was a good +enough Jesus Christ for the French, and he was capable of declaring +Tom Paine a good enough Milton for the Yankees. However that may be, +Paine was an indefatigable and useful public servant. He was a bad +gauger for King George, but he was an admirable scribe for a +revolution conducted on constitutional principles. + +To follow his history through the war would be tedious. What +Washington and Jefferson really thought of him we shall never know. +He was never mercenary, but his pride was wounded that so little +recognition of his astounding services was forthcoming. The +ingratitude of Kings was a commonplace; the ingratitude of peoples an +unpleasing novelty. But Washington bestirred himself at last, and +Paine was voted an estate of 277 acres, more or less, and a sum of +money. This was in 1784. + +Three years afterwards Thomas visited England, where he kept good +company and was very usefully employed engineering, for which +excellent pursuit he would appear to have had great natural aptitude. +Blackfriars Bridge had just tumbled down, and it was Paine's laudable +ambition to build its successor in iron. But the Bastille fell down as +well as Blackfriars Bridge, and was too much for Paine. As Mr. Conway +beautifully puts it: 'But again the Cause arose before him; he must +part from all--patent interests, literary leisure, fine society--and +take the hand of Liberty undowered, but as yet unstained. He must beat +his bridge-iron into a key that shall unlock the British Bastille, +whose walls he sees steadily closing around the people.' 'Miching +mallecho--this means mischief;' and so it proved. + +Burke is responsible for the _Rights of Man_. This splendid +sentimentalist published his _Reflections on the Revolution in France_ +in November, 1790. Paine immediately sat down in the Angel, Islington, +and began his reply. He was not unqualified to answer Burke; he had +fought a good fight between the years 1775 and 1784. Mr. Conway has +some ground for his epigram, 'where Burke had dabbled, Paine had +dived.' There is nothing in the _Rights of Man_ which would now +frighten, though some of its expressions might still shock, a +lady-in-waiting; but to profess Republicanism in 1791 was no joke, and +the book was proclaimed and Paine prosecuted. Acting upon the advice +of William Blake (the truly sublime), Paine escaped to France, where +he was elected by three departments to a seat in the Convention, and +in that Convention he sat from September, 1792, to December, 1793, +when he was found quarters in the Luxembourg Prison. + +This invitation to foreigners to take part in the conduct of the +French Revolution was surely one of the oddest things that ever +happened, but Paine thought it natural enough so far, at least, as he +was concerned. He could not speak a word of French, and all his +harangues had to be translated and read to the Convention by a +secretary, whilst Thomas stood smirking in the Tribune. His behaviour +throughout was most creditable to him. He acted with the Girondists, +and strongly opposed and voted against the murder of the King. His +notion of a revolution was one by pamphlet, and he shrank from deeds +of blood. His whole position was false and ridiculous. He really +counted for nothing. The members of the Convention grew tired of his +doctrinaire harangues, which, in fact, bored them not a little; but +they respected his enthusiasm and the part he had played in America, +whither they would gladly he had returned. Who put him in prison is a +mystery. Mr. Conway thinks it was the American Minister in Paris, +Gouverneur Morris. He escaped the guillotine, and was set free after +ten months' confinement. + +All this time Washington had not moved a finger in behalf of the +author of _Common-sense_ and _The Crisis_. Amongst Paine's papers this +epigram was found: + + 'ADVICE TO THE STATUARY WHO IS TO EXECUTE THE + STATUE OF WASHINGTON. + + Take from the mine the coldest, hardest stone; + It needs no fashion--it is Washington. + But if you chisel, let the stroke be rude, + And on his heart engrave--"Ingratitude."' + +This is hard hitting. + +So far we have only had the Republican Paine, the outlaw Paine; the +atheist Paine has not appeared. He did so in the _Age of Reason_, +first published in 1794-1795. The object of this book was religious. +Paine was a vehement believer in God and in the Divine government of +the world, but he was not, to put it mildly, a Bible Christian. Nobody +now is ever likely to read the _Age of Reason_ for instruction or +amusement. Who now reads even Mr. Greg's _Creed of Christendom_, which +is in effect, though not in substance, the same kind of book? Paine +was a coarse writer, without refinement of nature, and he used brutal +expressions and hurled his vulgar words about in a manner certain to +displease. Still, despite it all, the _Age of Reason_ is a religious +book, though a singularly unattractive one. + +Paine remained in France advocating all kinds of things, including a +descent on England, the abduction of the Royal Family, and a Free +Constitution. Napoleon sought him out, and assured him that he +(Napoleon) slept with the _Rights of Man_ under his pillow. Paine +believed him. + +In 1802 Paine returned to America, after fifteen years' absence. + +'Thou stricken friend of man,' exclaims Mr. Conway in a fine passage, +'who hast appealed from the God of Wrath to the God of Humanity, see +in the distance that Maryland coast which early voyagers called +Avalon, and sing again your song when first stepping on that shore +twenty-seven years ago.' + +The rest of Paine's life was spent in America without distinction or +much happiness. He continued writing to the last, and died bravely on +the morning of June 8, 1809. + +The Americans did not appreciate Paine's theology, and in 1819 allowed +Cobbett to carry the bones of the author of _Common-sense_ to England, +where--'as rare things will,' so, at least, Mr. Browning sings--they +vanished. Nobody knows what has become of them. + +As a writer Paine has no merits of a lasting character, but he had a +marvellous journalistic knack for inventing names and headings. He is +believed to have concocted the two phrases 'The United States of +America' and 'The Religion of Humanity.' Considering how little he had +read, his discourses on the theory of government are wonderful, and +his views generally were almost invariably liberal, sensible, and +humane. What ruined him was an intolerable self-conceit, which led him +to believe that his own productions superseded those of other men. He +knew off by heart, and was fond of repeating, his own _Common-sense_ +and the _Rights of Man_. He was destitute of the spirit of research, +and was wholly without one shred of humility. He was an oddity, a +character, but he never took the first step towards becoming a great +man. + + + + +CHARLES BRADLAUGH[A] + + + [Footnote A: _Charles Bradlaugh: A Record of His Life and Work_. By + his daughter, Hypatia Bradlaugh Bonner. Two vols. London: T. Fisher + Unwin, 1894.] + +Mr. Bradlaugh was a noticeable man, and his life, even though it +appears in the unwelcome but familiar shape of two octavo volumes, is +a noticeable book. It is useless to argue with biographers; they, at +all events, are neither utilitarians nor opportunists, but idealists +pure and simple. What is the good of reminding them, being so +majestical, of Guizot's pertinent remark, 'that if a book is +unreadable it will not be read,' or of the older saying, 'A great book +is a great evil'? for all such observations they simply put on one +side as being, perhaps, true for others, but not for them. Had _Mr. +Bradlaugh's Life_ been just half the size it would have had, at least, +twice as many readers. + +The pity is all the greater because Mrs. Bonner has really performed a +difficult task after a noble fashion and in a truly pious spirit. Her +father's life was a melancholy one, and it became her duty as his +biographer to break a silence on painful subjects about which he had +preferred to say nothing. His reticence was a manly reticence; though +a highly sensitive mortal, he preferred to put up with calumny rather +than lay bare family sorrows and shame. His daughter, though compelled +to break this silence, has done so in a manner full of dignity and +feeling. The ruffians who in times past slandered the moral character +of Bradlaugh will not probably read his life, nor, if they did, would +they repent of their baseness. The willingness to believe everything +evil of an adversary is incurable, springing as it does from a habit +of mind. It was well said by Mr. Mill: 'I have learned from experience +that many false opinions may be exchanged for true ones, without in +the least altering the habits of mind of which false opinions are the +result.' Now that Mr. Bradlaugh is dead, no purpose is served by +repeating false accusations as to his treatment of his wife, or of his +pious brother, or as to his disregard of family ties; but the next +atheist who crops up must not expect any more generous treatment than +Bradlaugh received from that particularly odious class of persons of +whom it has been wittily said that so great is their zeal for +religion, they have never time to say their prayers. + +Mr. Bradlaugh will, I suppose, be hereafter described in the +dictionaries of biography as 'Freethinker and Politician.' Of the +politician there is here no need to speak. He was a Radical of the +old-fashioned type. When he first stood for Northampton in 1868, his +election address was made up of tempting dishes, which afterwards +composed Mr. Chamberlain's famous but unauthorized programme of 1885, +with minority representation thrown in. Unpopular thinkers who have +been pelted with stones by Christians, slightly the worse for liquor, +are apt to think well of minorities. Mr. Bradlaugh's Radicalism had +an individualistic flavour. He thought well of thrift, thereby +incurring censure. Mr. Bradlaugh's politics are familiar enough. What +about his freethinking? English freethinkers may be divided into two +classes--those who have been educated and those who have had to +educate themselves. The former class might apply to their own case the +language once employed by Dr. Newman to describe himself and his +brethren of the Oratory: + + 'We have been nourished for the greater part of our lives in the + bosom of the great schools and universities of Protestant England; + we have been the foster foster-sons of the Edwards and Henries, the + Wykehams and Wolseys, of whom Englishmen are wont to make so much; + we have grown up amid hundreds of contemporaries, scattered at + present all over the country in those special ranks of society + which are the very walk of a member of the legislature.' + +These first-class free-thinkers have an excellent time of it, and, to +use a fashionable phrase, 'do themselves very well indeed.' They move +freely in society; their books lie on every table; they hob-a-nob with +Bishops; and when they come to die, their orthodox relations gather +round them, and lay them in the earth 'in the sure and certain +hope'--so, at least, priestly lips are found willing to assert--'of +the resurrection to eternal life through our Lord Jesus Christ.' And +yet there was not a dogma of the Christian faith in which they were in +a position to profess their belief. + +The free-thinkers of the second class, poor fellows! have hitherto led +very different lives. Their foster-parents have been poverty and +hardship; their school education has usually terminated at eleven; all +their lives they have been desperately poor; alone, unaided, they +have been left to fight the battle of a Free Press. + +Richard Carlile, as honourable a man as most, and between whose +religious opinions and (let us say) Lord Palmerston's there was +probably no difference worth mentioning, spent nine out of the +fifty-two years of his life in prison. Attorney-Generals, and, indeed, +every degree of prosecuting counsel have abused this kind of +free-thinker, not merely with professional impunity, but amidst +popular applause. Judges, speaking with emotion, have exhibited the +utmost horror of atheistical opinions, and have railed in good set +terms at the wretch who has been dragged before them, and have then, +at the rising of the court, proceeded to their club and played cards +till dinner-time with a first-class free-thinker for partner. + +This is natural and easily accounted for, but we need not be surprised +if, in the biographies of second-class freethinkers, bitterness is +occasionally exhibited towards the well-to-do brethren who decline +what Dr. Bentley, in his Boyle Lectures, called 'the public odium and +resentment of the magistrate.' + +Mr. Bradlaugh was a freethinker of the second class. His father was a +solicitor's clerk on a salary which never exceeded L2 2s. a week; his +mother had been a nursery-maid; and he himself was born in 1833 in +Bacchus Walk, Hoxton. At seven he went to a national school, but at +eleven his school education ended, and he became an office-boy. At +fourteen he was a wharf-clerk and cashier to a coal-merchant. His +parents were not much addicted to church-going, but Charles was from +the first a serious boy, and became at a somewhat early age a +Sunday-school teacher at St. Peter's, Hackney Road. The incumbent, in +order to prepare him for Confirmation, set him to work to extract the +Thirty-nine Articles out of the four Gospels. Unhappy task, worthy to +be described by the pen of the biographer of John Sterling. The +youthful wharfinger could not find the Articles in the Gospels, and +informed the Rev. J.G. Packer of the fact. His letter conveying this +intelligence is not forthcoming, and probably enough contained +offensive matter, for Mr. Packer seems at once to have denounced young +Bradlaugh as one engaged in atheistical inquiries, to have suspended +him from the Sunday-school, to have made it very disagreeable for him +at home and with his employer, and to have wound up by giving him +three days to change his views or to lose his place. + +Mr. Packer has been well abused, but it has never been the fashion to +treat youthful atheists with much respect. When Coleridge confided to +the Rev. James Boyer that he (S.T. Coleridge) was inclined to atheism, +the reverend gentleman had him stripped and flogged. Mr. Packer, +however, does seem to have been too hasty, for Bradlaugh did not +formally abandon his beliefs until some months after his suspension. +He retired for a short season, and studied Hebrew under Mr. James +Savage, of Circus Street, Marylebone. He emerged an unbeliever, aged +sixteen. Expelled from his wharf, he sold coal on commission, but his +principal, if not his only customer, the wife of a baker, discovering +that he was an infidel, gave him no more orders, being afraid, so she +said, that her bread would smell of brimstone. + +In 1850 Bradlaugh published his first pamphlet, _A Few Words on the +Christian Creed_, and dedicated it to the unhappy Mr. Packer. But +starvation stared him in the face, and in the same year he enlisted in +the 7th Dragoon Guards, and spent the next three years in Ireland, +where he earned a good character, and on more occasions than one +showed that adroitness for which he was afterwards remarkable. + +In October, 1853, his mother and sister with great difficulty raised +the L30 necessary to buy his discharge, and Bradlaugh returned to +London, not only full grown, but well fed. Had he not taken the +Queen's shilling he never would have lived to fight the battle he did. + +He became a solicitor's clerk on a miserably small pay, and took to +lecturing as 'Iconoclast.' In 1855 he was married at St. Philip's +Church, Stepney. His lectures and discussions began to assume great +proportions, and covered more than twenty years of his life. Terribly +hard work they were. Profits there were none, or next to none. Few men +have endured greater hardships. + +In 1860 the _National Reformer_ was started, and his warfare in the +courts began. In 1868 he first stood for Northampton, which he +unsuccessfully contested three times. In April, 1880, he was returned +to Parliament, and then began the famous struggle with which the +constitutional historian will have to deal. After this date the facts +are well known. Bradlaugh died on January 30, 1891. + +His life was a hard one from beginning to end. He had no advantages. +Nobody really helped him or influenced him or mollified him. He had +never either money or repose; he had no time to travel, except as a +propagandist, no time to acquire knowledge for its own sake; he was +often abused but seldom criticised. In a single sentence, he was never +taught the extent of his own ignorance. + +His attitude towards the Christian religion and the Bible was a +perfectly fair one, and ought not to have brought down upon him any +abuse whatever. There are more ways than one of dealing with religion. +It may be approached as a mystery or as a series of events supported +by testimony. If the evidence is trustworthy, if the witnesses are +irreproachable, if they submit successfully to examination and +cross-examination, then, however remarkable or out of the way may be +the facts to which they depose, they are entitled to be believed. This +is a mode of treatment with which we are all familiar, whether as +applied to the Bible or to the authority of the Church. Nobody is +expected to believe in the authority of the Church until satisfied +by the exercise of his reason that the Church in question possesses +'the notes' of a true Church. This was the aspect of the question +which engaged Bradlaugh's attention. He was critical, legal. He +took objections, insisted on discrepancies, cross-examined as to +credibility, and came to the conclusion that the case for the +supernatural was not made out. And this he did not after the +first-class fashion in the study or in octavo volumes, but in the +street. His audiences were not Mr. Mudie's subscribers, but men and +women earning weekly wages. The coarseness of his language, the +offensiveness of his imagery, have been greatly exaggerated. It is now +a good many years since I heard him lecture in a northern town on the +Bible to an audience almost wholly composed of artisans. He was bitter +and aggressive, but the treatment he was then experiencing accounted +for this. As an avowed atheist he received no quarter, and he might +fairly say with Wilfred Osbaldistone, 'It's hard I should get raps +over the costard, and only pay you back in make-believes.' + +It was not what Bradlaugh said, but the people he said it to, that +drew down upon him the censure of the magistrate, and (unkindest cut +of all) the condemnation of the House of Commons. + +Of all the evils from which the lovers of religion do well to pray +that their faith may be delivered, the worst is that it should ever +come to be discussed across the floor of the House of Commons. The +self-elected champions of the Christian faith who then ride into the +lists are of a kind well calculated to make Piety hide her head for +very shame. Rowdy noblemen, intemperate country gentlemen, sterile +lawyers, cynical but wealthy sceptics who maintain religion as another +fence round their property, hereditary Nonconformists whose God is +respectability and whose goal a baronetcy, contrive, with a score or +two of bigots thrown in, to make a carnival of folly, a veritable +devil's dance of blasphemy. The debates on Bradlaugh's oath-taking +extended over four years, and will make melancholy reading for +posterity. Two figures, and two figures only, stand out in solitary +grandeur, those of a Quaker and an Anglican--Bright and Gladstone. + +The conclusion which an attentive reading of Mr. Bradlaugh's biography +forces upon me is that in all probability he was the last freethinker +who will be exposed, for many a long day (it would be more than +usually rash to write 'ever'), to pains and penalties for uttering his +unbelief. It is true the Blasphemy Laws are not yet repealed; it may +be true for all I know that Christianity is still part and parcel +of the common law; it is possibly an indictable offence to lend +_Literature and Dogma_ and _God and the Bible_ to a friend; but, +however these things may be, Mr. Bradlaugh's stock-in-trade is now +free of the market-place, where just at present, at all events, its +price is low. It has become pretty plain that neither the Fortress of +Holy Scripture nor the Rock of Church Authority is likely to be taken +by storm. The Mystery of Creation, the unsolvable problem of matter, +continue to press upon us more heavily than ever. Neither by Paleys +nor by Bradlaughs will religion be either bolstered up or pulled down. +Sceptics and Sacramentarians must be content to put up with one +another's vagaries for some time to come. Indeed, the new socialists, +though at present but poor theologians (one hasty reading of _Lux +Mundi_ does not make a theologian), are casting favourable eyes +upon Sacramentarianism, deeming it to have a distinct flavour of +Collectivism. Calvinism, on the other hand, is considered repulsively +individualistic, being based upon the notion that it is the duty of +each man to secure his own salvation. + +But whether Bradlaugh was the last of his race or not, he was a +brave man whose life well deserves an honourable place amongst the +biographies of those Radicals who have suffered in the cause of +Free-thought, and into the fruits of whose labours others have +entered. + + + + +DISRAELI _EX RELATIONE_ SIR WILLIAM FRASER + + +The late Sir William Fraser was not, I have been told, a popular +person in that society about which he thought so much, and his book, +_Disraeli and His Day_, did not succeed in attracting much of the +notice of the general reader, and failed, so I, at least, have been +made to understand, to win a verdict of approval from the really well +informed. + +I consider the book a very good one, in the sense of being valuable. +Whatever your mood may be, that of the moralist, cynic, satirist, +humourist, whether you love, pity, or despise your fellow-man, here is +grist for your mill. It feeds the mind. + +Although in form the book is but a stringing together of stories, +incidents, and aphorisms, still the whole produces a distinct effect. +To state what that effect is would be, I suppose, the higher +criticism. It is not altogether disagreeable; it is decidedly amusing; +it is clever and somewhat contemptible. Sir William Fraser was a +baronet who thought well of his order. He desiderated a tribunal to +determine the right to the title, and he opined that the courtesy +prefix of 'Honourable,' which once, it appears, belonged to baronets, +should be restored to them. Apart from these opinions, ridiculous and +peculiar, Sir William Fraser stands revealed in this volume as cast in +a familiar mould. The words 'gentleman,' 'White's,' 'Society,' often +flow from his pen, and we may be sure were engraven on his heart. He +had seen a world wrecked. When he was young, so he tells his readers, +the world consisted of at least three, and certainly not more than +five, hundred persons who were accustomed night after night during the +season to make their appearance at a certain number of houses, which +are affectionately enumerated. A new face at any one of these +gatherings immediately attracted attention, as, indeed, it is easy to +believe it would. 'Anything for a change,' as somebody observes in +_Pickwick_. + +This is the atmosphere of the book, and Sir William breathes in it +very pleasantly. Endowed by Nature with a retentive memory and a +literary taste, active if singular, he may be discovered in his own +pages moving up and down, in and out of society, supplying and +correcting quotations, and gratifying the vanity of distinguished +authors by remembering their own writings better than they did +themselves. The book makes one clearly comprehend what a monstrous +clever fellow the rank and file of the Tory party must have felt Sir +William Fraser to be. This, however, is only background. In the front +of the picture we have the mysterious outlines, the strange +personality, struggling between the bizarre and the romantic, of 'the +Jew,' as big George Bentinck was ever accustomed to denominate his +leader. Sir William Fraser's Disraeli is a very different figure from +Sir Stafford Northcote's. The myth about the pocket Sophocles is +rudely exploded. Sir William is certain that Disraeli could not have +construed a chapter of the Greek Testament. He found such mythology +as he required where many an honest fellow has found it before him--in +Lempriere's Dictionary. His French accent, as Sir William records it, +was most satisfactory, and a conclusive proof of his _bona-fides_. +Disraeli, it is clear, cared as little for literature as he did for +art. He admired Gray, as every man with a sense for epithet must; he +studied Junius, whose style, so Sir William Fraser believes, he +surpassed in his 'Runnymede' letters. Sir William Fraser kindly +explains the etymology of this strange word 'Runnymede,' as he also +does that of 'Parliament,' which he says is '_Parliamo mente_' (Let us +speak our minds). Sir William clearly possessed the learning denied to +his chief. + +Beyond apparently imposing upon Sir Stafford Northcote, Disraeli +himself never made any vain pretensions to be devoted to pursuits for +which he did not care a rap. He once dreamt of an epic poem, and his +early ambition urged him a step or two in that direction, but his +critical faculty, which, despite all his monstrosities of taste, was +vital, restrained him from making a fool of himself, and he forswore +the muse, puffed the prostitute away, and carried his very saleable +wares to another market, where his efforts were crowned with +prodigious success. Sir William Fraser introduces his great man to us +as observing, in reply to a question, that revenge was the passion +which gives pleasure the latest. A man, he continued, will enjoy that +when even avarice has ceased to please. As a matter of fact, Disraeli +himself was neither avaricious nor revengeful, and, as far as one can +judge, was never tempted to be either. This is the fatal defect of +almost all Disraeli's aphorisms: they are dead words, whilst the +words of a true aphorism have veins filled with the life of their +utterer. Nothing of this sort ever escaped the lips of our modern +Sphinx. If he had any faiths, any deep convictions, any rooted +principles, he held his tongue about them. He was, Sir William tells +us, an indolent man. It is doubtful whether he ever did, apart from +the preparation and delivery of his speeches, what would be called by +a professional man a hard day's work in his life. He had courage, wit, +insight, instinct, prevision, and a thorough persuasion that he +perfectly understood the materials he had to work upon and the tools +within his reach. Perhaps no man ever gauged more accurately or more +profoundly despised that 'world' Sir William Fraser so pathetically +laments. For folly, egotism, vanity, conceit, and stupidity, he had an +amazing eye. He could not, owing to his short sight, read men's faces +across the floor of the House, but he did not require the aid of any +optic nerve to see the petty secrets of their souls. His best sayings +have men's weaknesses for their text. Sir William's book gives many +excellent examples. One laughs throughout. + +Sir William would have us believe that in later life Disraeli clung +affectionately to dulness--to gentle dulness. He did not want to be +surrounded by wits. He had been one himself in his youth, and he +questioned their sincerity. It would almost appear from passages in +the book that Disraeli found even Sir William Fraser too pungent for +him. Once, we are told, the impenetrable Prime Minister quailed before +Sir William's reproachful oratory. The story is not of a cock and a +bull, but of a question put in the House of Commons by Sir William, +who was snubbed by the Home Secretary, who was cheered by Disraeli. +This was intolerable, and accordingly next day, being, as good luck +would have it, a Friday, when, as all men and members know, 'it is in +the power of any member to bring forward any topic he may choose,' Sir +William naturally chose the topic nearest to his heart, and 'said a +few words on my wrongs.' + + 'During my performance I watched Disraeli narrowly. I could not see + his face, but I noticed that whenever I became in any way + disagreeable--in short, whenever my words really bit--they were + invariably followed by one movement. Sitting as he always did with + his right knee over his left, whenever the words touched him he + moved the pendant leg twice or three times, then curved his foot + upwards. I could observe no other sign of emotion, but this was + distinct. Some years afterwards, on a somewhat more important + occasion at the Conference at Berlin, a great German philosopher, + Herr ----, went to Berlin on purpose to study Disraeli's character. + He said afterwards that he was most struck by the more than Indian + stoicism which Disraeli showed. To this there was one exception. + "Like all men of his race, he has one sign of emotion which never + fails to show itself--the movement of the leg that is crossed over + the other, and of the foot!" The person who told me this had never + heard me hint, nor had anyone, that I had observed this peculiar + symptom on the earlier occasion to which I have referred.' + +Statesmen of Jewish descent, with a reputation for stoicism to +preserve, would do well to learn from this story not to swing their +crossed leg when tired. The great want about Mr. Disraeli is something +to hang the countless anecdotes about him upon. Most remarkable men +have some predominant feature of character round which you can build +your general conception of them, or, at all events, there has been +some great incident in their lives for ever connected with their +names, and your imagination mixes the man and the event together. Who +can think of Peel without remembering the Corn Laws and the +reverberating sentence: 'I shall leave a name execrated by every +monopolist who, for less honourable motives, clamours for Protection +because it conduces to his own individual benefit; but it may be that +I shall leave a name sometimes remembered with expressions of +good-will in the abode of those whose lot it is to labour and to earn +their daily bread with the sweat of their brow, when they shall +recruit their exhausted strength with abundant and untaxed food, the +sweeter because it is no longer leavened with a sense of injustice.' +But round what are our memories of Disraeli to cluster? Sir William +Fraser speaks rapturously of his wondrous mind and of his intellect, +but where is posterity to look for evidences of either? Certainly not +in Sir William's book, which shows us a wearied wit and nothing more. +Carlyle once asked, 'How long will John Bull permit this absurd +monkey'--meaning Mr. Disraeli--'to dance upon his stomach?' The +question was coarsely put, but there is nothing in Sir William's book +to make one wonder it should have been asked. Mr. Disraeli lived to +offer Carlyle the Grand Cross of the Order of the Bath, and that, in +Sir William's opinion, is enough to dispose of Carlyle's vituperation; +but, after all, the Grand Cross is no answer to anything except an +application for it. + +A great many other people are made to cross Sir William Fraser's +stage. His comments upon them are lively, independent, and original. +He liked Cobden and hated Bright. The reason for this he makes quite +plain. He thinks he detected in Cobden a deprecatory manner--a +recognition of the sublime truth that he, Richard Cobden, had not been +half so well educated as the mob of Tories he was addressing. Bright, +on the other band, was fat and rude, and thought that most country +gentlemen and town-bred wits were either fools or fribbles. This was +intolerable. Here was a man who not only could not have belonged to +the 'world,' but honestly did not wish to, and was persuaded--the +gross fellow--that he and his world were better in every respect than +the exclusive circles which listened to Sir William Fraser's _bon +mots_ and tags from the poets. Certainly there was nothing deprecatory +about John Bright. He could be quite as insolent in his way as any +aristocrat in his. He had a habit, we are told, of slowly getting up +and walking out of the House in the middle of Mr. Disraeli's speeches, +and just when that ingenious orator was leading up to a carefully +prepared point, and then immediately returning behind the Speaker's +chair. If this is true, it was perhaps rude, but nobody can deny that +it is a Tory dodge of indicating disdain. What was really irritating +about Mr. Bright was that his disdain was genuine. He did think very +little of the Tory party, and he did not care one straw for the +opinion of society. He positively would not have cared to have been +made a baronet. Sir William Fraser seems to have been really fond of +Disraeli, and the very last time he met his great man in the Carlton +Club he told him a story too broad to be printed. The great man +pronounced it admirable, and passed on his weary way. + + + + +A CONNOISSEUR + + +It must always be rash to speak positively about human nature, whose +various types of character are singularly tough, and endure, if not +for ever, for a very long time; yet some types do seem to show signs +of wearing out. The connoisseur, for example, here in England is +hardly what he was. He has specialized, and behind him there is now +the bottomless purse of the multi-millionaire, who buys as he is +bidden, and has no sense of prices. If the multi-millionaire wants a +thing, why should he not have it? The gaping mob, penniless but +appreciative, looks on and cheers his pluck. + +Mr. Frederick Locker, about whom I wish to write a few lines, was an +old-world connoisseur, the shy recesses of whose soul Addison might +have penetrated in the page of a _Spectator_--and a delicate operation +it would have been. + +My father-in-law was only once in the witness-box. I had the felicity +to see him there. It was a dispute about the price of a picture, and +in the course of his very short evidence he hazarded the opinion that +the grouping of the figures (they were portraits) was in bad taste. +The Judge, the late Mr. Justice Cave, an excellent lawyer of the old +school, snarled out, 'Do you think you could explain to _me_ what is +taste?' Mr. Locker surveyed the Judge through the eye-glass which +seemed almost part of his being, with a glance modest, deferential, +deprecatory, as if suggesting 'Who am _I_ to explain anything to +_you_?' but at the same time critical, ironical, and humorous. It was +but for one brief moment; the eyeglass dropped, and there came the +mournful answer, as from a man baffled at all points: 'No, my lord; I +should find it impossible!' The Judge grunted a ready, almost a +cheerful, assent. + +Properly to describe Mr. Locker, you ought to be able to explain both +to judge and jury what you mean by taste. He sometimes seemed to me to +be _all_ taste. Whatever subject he approached--was it the mystery of +religion, or the moralities of life, a poem or a print, a bit of old +china or a human being--whatever it might be, it was along the avenue +of taste that he gently made his way up to it. His favourite word of +commendation was _pleasing_, and if he ever brought himself to say +(and he was not a man who scattered his judgments, rather was he +extremely reticent of them) of a man, and still more of a woman, that +he or she was _unpleasing_, you almost shuddered at the fierceness of +the condemnation, knowing, as all Locker's intimate friends could not +help doing, what the word meant to him. 'Attractive' was another of +his critical instruments. He meets Lord Palmerston, and does not find +him 'attractive' (_My Confidences_, p. 155). + +This is a temperament which when cultivated, as it was in Mr. Locker's +case, by a life-long familiarity with beautiful things in all the arts +and crafts, is apt to make its owner very susceptible to what some +stirring folk may not unjustly consider the trifles of life. Sometimes +Locker might seem to overlook the dominant features, the main object +of the existence, either of a man or of some piece of man's work, in +his sensitively keen perception of the beauty, or the lapse from +beauty, of some trait of character or bit of workmanship. This may +have been so. Mr. Locker was more at home, more entirely his own +delightful self, when he was calling your attention to some humorous +touch in one of Bewick's tail-pieces, or to some plump figure in a +group by his favourite Stothard than when handling a Michael Angelo +drawing or an amazing Blake. Yet, had it been his humour, he could +have played the showman to Michael Angelo and Blake at least as well +as to Bewick, Stothard, or Chodowiecki. But a modesty, marvellously +mingled with irony, was of the very essence of his nature. No man +expatiated less. He never expounded anything in his born days; he very +soon wearied of those he called 'strong' talkers. His critical method +was in a conversational manner to direct your attention to something +in a poem or a picture, to make a brief suggestion or two, perhaps to +apply an epithet, and it was all over, but your eyes were opened. +Rapture he never professed, his tones were never loud enough to +express enthusiasm, but his enjoyment of what he considered good, +wherever he found it--and he was regardless of the set judgments of +the critics--was most intense and intimate. His feeling for anything +he liked was fibrous: he clung to it. For all his rare books and +prints, if he liked a thing he was very tolerant of its _format_. He +would cut a drawing out of a newspaper, frame it, hang it up, and be +just as tender towards it as if it were an impression with the unique +_remarque_. + +Mr. Locker had probably inherited his virtuoso's whim from his +ancestors. His great-grandfather was certified by Johnson in his life +of Addison to be a gentleman 'eminent for curiosity and literature,' +and though his grandfather, the Commodore, who lives for ever in our +history as the man who taught Nelson the lesson that saved an +Empire--'Lay a Frenchman close, and you will beat him'--was no +collector, his father, Edward Hawke Locker, though also a naval man, +was not only the friend of Sir Walter Scott, but a most judicious +buyer of pictures, prints, and old furniture. + +Frederick Locker was born in 1821, in Greenwich Hospital, where Edward +Hawke Locker was Civil Commissioner. His mother was the daughter of +one of the greatest book-buyers of his time, a man whose library it +took nine days to disperse--the Rev. Jonathan Boucher, the friend and +opponent of George Washington, an ecclesiastic who might have been +first Bishop of Edinburgh, but who died a better thing, the Vicar of +Epsom. + +Frederick Locker grew up among pretty things in the famous hospital. +Water-colours by Lawrence, Prout, Girtin, Turner, Chinnery, Paul +Sandby, Cipriani, and other masters; casts after Canova; mezzotints +after Sir Joshua; Hogarth's famous picture of David Garrick and his +wife, now well hung in Windsor Castle, were about him, and early +attracted his observant eye. Yet the same things were about his elder +brother Arthur, an exceedingly clever fellow, who remained quite +curiously impervious to the impressiveness of pretty things all his +days. + +Locker began collecting on his own account after his marriage, in +1850, to a daughter of Lord Byron's enemy, the Lord Elgin, who brought +the marbles from Athens to Bloomsbury. His first object, at least so +he thought, was to make his rooms pretty. From the beginning of his +life as a connoisseur he spared himself no pains, often trudging +miles, when not wanted at the Admiralty Office, in search of his prey. +If any mercantile-minded friend ever inquired what anything had cost, +he would be answered with a rueful smile, 'Much shoe leather.' He +began with old furniture, china, and bric-a-brac, which ere long +somewhat inconveniently filled his small rooms. Prices rose, and means +in those days were as small as the rooms. No more purchases of Louis +Seize and blue majolica and Palissy ware could be made. Drawings by +the old masters and small pictures were the next objects of the chase. +Here again the long purses were soon on his track, and the pursuit had +to be abandoned, but not till many treasures had been garnered. Last +of all he became a book-hunter, beginning with little volumes of +poetry and the drama from 1590 to 1610; and as time went on the +boundaries expanded, but never so as to include black letter. + +I dare not say Mr. Locker had all the characteristics of a great +collector, or that he was entirely free from the whimsicalities of the +tribe of connoisseurs, but he was certainly endowed with the chief +qualifications for the pursuit of rarities, and remained clear of the +unpleasant vices that so often mar men's most innocent avocations. Mr. +Locker always knew what he wanted and what he did not want, and never +could be persuaded to take the one for the other; he did not grow +excited in the presence of the quarry; he had patience to wait, and +to go on waiting, and he seldom lacked courage to buy. + +He rode his own hobby-horse, never employing experts as buyers. For +quantity he had no stomach. He shrank from numbers. He was not a +Bodleian man; he had not the sinews to grapple with libraries. He was +the connoisseur throughout. Of the huge acquisitiveness of a Heber or +a Huth he had not a trace. He hated a crowd, of whatsoever it was +composed. He was apt to apologize for his possessions, and to +depreciate his tastes. As for boasting of a treasure, he could as +easily have eaten beef at breakfast. + +So delicate a spirit, armed as it was for purposes of defence with a +rare gift of irony and a very shrewd insight into the weaknesses and +noisy falsettos of life, was sure to be misunderstood. The dull and +coarse witted found Locker hard to make out. He struck them as +artificial and elaborate, perhaps as frivolous, and yet they felt +uneasy in his company lest there should be a lurking ridicule behind +his quiet, humble demeanour. There was, indeed, always an element of +mockery in Locker's humility. + +An exceedingly spiteful account of him, in which it is asserted that +'most of his rarest books are miserable copies' (how book-collectors +can hate one another!), ends with the reluctant admission: 'He was +eminently a gentleman, however, and his manners were even courtly, yet +virile.' Such extorted praise is valuable. + +I can see him now before me, with a nicely graduated foot-rule in his +delicate hand, measuring with grave precision the height to a hair of +his copy of _Robinson Crusoe_ (1719), for the purpose of ascertaining +whether it was taller or shorter than one being vaunted for sale in a +bookseller's catalogue just to hand. His face, one of much refinement, +was a study, exhibiting alike a fixed determination to discover the +exact truth about the copy and a humorous realization of the inherent +triviality of the whole business. Locker was a philosopher as well as +a connoisseur. + +The Rowfant Library has disappeared. Great possessions are great +cares. 'But ships are but boards, sailors but men; there be land-rats, +water-thieves, and land-thieves--I mean pirates; and then there is the +peril of waters, winds and rocks.' To this list the nervous owner of +rare books must add fire, that dread enemy of all the arts. It is +often difficult to provide stabling for dead men's hobby-horses. It +were perhaps absurd in a world like this to grow sentimental over a +parcel of old books. Death, the great unbinder, must always make a +difference. + +Mr. Locker's poetry now forms a volume of the _Golden Treasury +Series_. The _London Lyrics_ are what they are. They have been well +praised by good critics, and have themselves been made the subject of +good verse. + + 'Apollo made one April day + A new thing in the rhyming way; + Its turn was neat, its wit was clear, + It wavered 'twixt a smile and tear. + Then Momus gave a touch satiric, + And it became a _London Lyric_.' + AUSTIN DOBSON. + +In another copy of verses Mr. Dobson adds: + + 'Or where discern a verse so neat, + So well-bred and so witty-- + So finished in its least conceit, + So mixed of mirth and pity?' + + 'Pope taught him rhythm, Prior ease, + Praed buoyancy and banter; + What modern bard would learn from these? + Ah, _tempora mutantur_!' + +Nothing can usefully be added to criticism so just, so searching, and +so happily expressed. + +Some of the _London Lyrics_ have, I think, achieved what we poor +mortals call immortality--a strange word to apply to the piping of so +slender a reed, to so slight a strain--yet + + 'In small proportions we just beauties see.' + +It is the simplest strain that lodges longest in the heart. Mr. +Locker's strains are never precisely _simple_. The gay enchantment of +the world and the sense of its bitter disappointments murmur through +all of them, and are fatal to their being simple, but the +unpretentiousness of a _London Lyric_ is akin to simplicity. + +His relation to his own poetry was somewhat peculiar. A critic in +every fibre, he judged his own verses with a severity he would have +shrunk from applying to those of any other rhyming man. He was deeply +dissatisfied, almost on bad terms, with himself, yet for all that he +was convinced that he had written some very good verses indeed. His +poetry meant a great deal to him, and he stood in need of sympathy and +of allies against his own despondency. He did not get much sympathy, +being a man hard to praise, for unless he agreed with your praise it +gave him more pain than pleasure. + +I am not sure that Mr. Dobson agrees with me, but I am very fond of +Locker's paraphrase of one of Clement Marot's _Epigrammes_; and as the +lines are redolent of his delicate connoisseurship, I will quote both +the original (dated 1544) and the paraphrase: + + 'DU RYS DE MADAME D'ALLEBRET + + 'Elle a tres bien ceste gorge d'albastre, + Ce doulx parler, ce cler tainct, ces beaux yeulx: + Mais en effect, ce petit rys follastre, + C'est a mon gre ce qui lui sied le mieulx; + Elle en pourroit les chemins et les lieux + Ou elle passe a plaisir inciter; + Et si ennuy me venoit contrister + Tant que par mort fust ma vie abbatue, + Il me fauldroit pour me resusciter + Que ce rys la duguel elle me tue.' + + 'How fair those locks which now the light wind stirs! + What eyes she has, and what a perfect arm! + And yet methinks that little laugh of hers-- + That little laugh--is still her crowning charm. + Where'er she passes, countryside or town, + The streets make festa and the fields rejoice. + Should sorrow come, as 'twill, to cast me down, + Or Death, as come he must, to hush my voice, + Her laugh would wake me just as now it thrills me-- + That little, giddy laugh wherewith she kills me.' + +'Tis the very laugh of Millamant in _The Way of the World_! 'I would +rather,' cried Hazlitt, 'have seen Mrs. Abington's Millamant than any +Rosalind that ever appeared on the stage.' Such wishes are idle. +Hazlitt never saw Mrs. Abington's Millamant. I have seen Miss Ethel +Irving's Millamant, _dulce ridentem_, and it was that little giddy +laugh of hers that reminded me of Marot's Epigram and of Frederick +Locker's paraphrase. So do womanly charms endure from generation to +generation, and it is one of the duties of poets to record them. + +In 1867 Mr. Locker published his _Lyra Elegantiarun. A Collection of +Some of the Best Specimens of Vers de Societe and Vers d'Occasion in +the English Languages by Deceased Authors_. In his preface Locker gave +what may now be fairly called the 'classical' definition of the verses +he was collecting. '_Vers de societe_ and _vers d'occasion_ should' +(so he wrote) 'be short, elegant, refined and fanciful, not seldom +distinguished by heightened sentiment, and often playful. The tone +should not be pitched high; it should be idiomatic and rather in the +conversational key; the rhythm should be crisp and sparkling, and the +rhyme frequent and never forced, while the entire poem should be +marked by tasteful moderation, high finish and completeness; for +however trivial the subject-matter may be--indeed, rather in +proportion to its triviality, subordination to the rules of +composition and perfection of execution should be strictly enforced. +The definition may be further illustrated by a few examples of pieces, +which, from the absence of some of the foregoing qualities, or from +the excess of others, cannot be properly regarded as _vers de +societe_, though they may bear a certain generic resemblance to that +species of poetry. The ballad of "John Gilpin," for example, is too +broadly and simply ludicrous; Swift's "Lines on the Death of +Marlborough," and Byron's "Windsor Poetics," are too savage and +truculent; Cowper's "My Mary" is far too pathetic; Herrick's lyrics to +"Blossoms" and "Daffodils" are too elevated; "Sally in our Alley" is +too homely and too entirely simple and natural; while the "Rape of the +Lock," which would otherwise be one of the finest specimens of _vers +de societe_ in any language, must be excluded on account of its +length, which renders it much too important.' + +I have made this long quotation because it is an excellent example of +Mr. Locker's way of talking about poets and poetry, and of his +intimate, searching, and unaffected criticism. + +_Lyra Elegantiarum_ is a real, not a bookseller's collection. Mr. +Locker was a great student of verse. There was hardly a stanza of any +English poet, unless it was Spenser, for whom he had no great +affection, which he had not pondered over and clearly considered as +does a lawyer his cases. He delighted in a complete success, and +grieved over any lapse from the fold of metrical virtue, over any +ill-sounding rhyme or unhappy expression. The circulation of _Lyra +Elegantiarum_ was somewhat interfered with by a 'copyright' question. +Mr. Locker had a great admiration for Landor's short poems, and +included no less than forty-one of them, which he chose with the +utmost care. Publishers are slow to perceive that the best chance of +getting rid of their poetical wares (and Landor was not popular) is to +have attention called to the artificer who produced them. The +Landorian publisher objected, and the _Lyra_ had to be 'suppressed'--a +fine word full of hidden meanings. The second-hand booksellers, a wily +race, were quick to perceive the significance of this, and have for +more than thirty years obtained inflated prices for their early +copies, being able to vend them as possessing the _Suppressed Verses_. +There is a great deal of Locker in this collection. To turn its pages +is to renew intercourse with its editor. + +In 1879 another little volume instinct with his personality came into +existence and made friends for itself. He called it _Patchwork_, and +to have given it any other name would have severely taxed his +inventiveness. It is a collection of stories, of _ana_, of quotations +in verse and prose, of original matter, of character-sketches, of +small adventures, of table-talk, and of other things besides, if other +things, indeed, there be. If you know _Patchwork_ by heart you are +well equipped. It is intensely original throughout, and never more +original than when its matter is borrowed. Readers of _Patchwork_ had +heard of Mr. Creevey long before Sir Herbert Maxwell once again let +that politician loose upon an unlettered society. + +The book had no great sale, but copies evidently fell into the hands +of the more judicious of the pressmen, who kept it by their sides, and +every now and again + + 'Waled a portion with judicious care' + +for quotation in their columns. The _Patchwork_ stories thus got into +circulation one by one. Kind friends of Mr. Locker's, who had been +told, or had discovered for themselves, that he was somewhat of a wag, +would frequently regale him with bits of his own _Patchwork_, +introducing them to his notice as something they had just heard, which +they thought he would like--murdering his own stories to give him +pleasure. His countenance on such occasions was a _rendezvous_ of +contending emotions, a battlefield of rival forces. Politeness ever +prevailed, but it took all his irony and sad philosophy to hide his +pain. _Patchwork_ is such a good collection of the kind of story he +liked best that it was really difficult to avoid telling him a story +that was _not_ in it. I made the blunder once myself with a Voltairean +anecdote. Here it is as told in _Patchwork_: 'Voltaire was one day +listening to a dramatic author reading his comedy, and who said, "Ici +le chevalier rit!" He exclaimed: "Le chevalier est _bien_ heureux!"' I +hope I told it fairly well. He smiled sadly, and said nothing, not +even _Et tu, Brute_! + +In 1886 Mr. Locker printed for presentation a catalogue of his printed +books, manuscripts, autograph letters, drawings, and pictures. Nothing +of his own figures in this catalogue, and yet in a very real sense the +whole is his. Most of the books are dispersed, but the catalogue +remains, not merely as a record of rareties and bibliographical +details dear to the collector's heart, but as a token of taste. Just +as there is, so Wordsworth reminds us, 'a spirit in the woods,' so is +there still, brooding over and haunting the pages of the 'Rowfant +Catalogue,' the spirit of true connoisseurship. In the slender lists +of Locker's 'Works' this book must always have a place. + +Frederick Locker died at Rowfant on May 30, 1895, leaving behind him, +carefully prepared for the press, a volume he had christened _My +Confidences: An Autographical Sketch addressed to My Descendants_. + +In due course the book appeared, and was misunderstood at first by +many. It cut a strange, outlandish figure among the crowd of casual +reminiscences it externally resembled. Glancing over the pages of _My +Confidences_, the careless library subscriber encountered the usual +number of names of well-known personages, whose appearance is supposed +by publishers to add sufficient zest to reminiscences to secure +for them a sale large enough, at any rate, to recoup the cost of +publication. Yet, despite these names, Mr. Locker's book is completely +unlike the modern memoir. Beneath a carefully-constructed, and +perhaps slightly artificially maintained, frivolity of tone, the book +is written in deadly earnest. Not for nothing did its author choose as +one of the mottoes for its title-page, 'Ce ne sont mes gestes que +j'ecrie; c'est moy.' It may be said of this book, as of Senancour's +_Oberman_: + + 'A fever in these pages burns; + Beneath the calm they feign, + A wounded human spirit turns + Here on its bed of pain.' + +The still small voice of its author whispers through _My Confidences_. +Like Montaigne's _Essays_, the book is one of entire good faith, and +strangely uncovers a personality. + +As a tiny child Locker was thought by his parents to be very like Sir +Joshua Reynolds' picture of Puck, an engraving of which was in the +home at Greenwich Hospital, and certainly Locker carried to his +grave more than a suspicion of what is called Puckishness. In _My +Confidences_ there are traces of this quality. + +Clearly enough the author of _London Lyrics_, the editor of _Lyra +Elegantiarum_, of _Patchwork_, and the whimsical but sincere compiler +of _My Confidences_ was more than a mere connoisseur, however much +connoisseurship entered into a character in which taste played so +dominant a part. + +Stronger even than taste was his almost laborious love of kindness. +He really took too much pains about it, exposing himself to rebuffs +and misunderstandings; but he was not without his rewards. All +down-hearted folk, sorrowful, disappointed people, the unlucky, the +ill-considered, the _mesestimes_--those who found themselves condemned +to discharge uncongenial duties in unsympathetic society, turned +instinctively to Mr. Locker for a consolation, so softly administered +that it was hard to say it was intended. He had friends everywhere, in +all ranks of life, who found in him an infinity of solace, and for his +friends there was nothing he would not do. It seemed as if he could +not spare himself. I remember his calling at my chambers one hot day +in July, when he happened to have with him some presents he was in +course of delivering. Among them I noticed a bust of Voltaire and an +unusually lively tortoise, generally half-way out of a paper bag. +Wherever he went he found occasion for kindness, and his whimsical +adventures would fill a volume. I sometimes thought it would really be +worth while to leave off the struggle for existence, and gently to +subside into one of Lord Rowton's homes in order to have the pleasure +of receiving in my new quarters a first visit from Mr. Locker. How +pleasantly would he have mounted the stair, laden with who knows what +small gifts?--a box of mignonette for the window-sill, an old book or +two, as likely as not a live kitten, for indeed there was never an end +to the variety or ingenuity of his offerings! How felicitous would +have been his greeting! How cordial his compliments! How abiding the +sense of his unpatronizing friendliness! But it was not to be. One can +seldom choose one's pleasures. + +In his _Patchwork_ Mr. Locker quotes Gibbon's encomium on Charles +James Fox. Anyone less like Fox than Frederick Locker it might be hard +to discover, but fine qualities are alike wherever they are found +lodged; and if Fox was as much entitled as Locker to the full benefit +of Gibbon's praise, he was indeed a good fellow. + +'In his tour to Switzerland Mr. Fox gave me two days of free and +private society. He seemed to feel and even to envy the happiness of +my situation, while I admired the powers of a superior man as they are +blended in his character with the softness and simplicity of a child. +_Perhaps no human being was ever more perfectly exempted from the +taint of malevolence, vanity, and falsehood._' + + + + +OUR GREAT MIDDLE CLASS + + +The republication of Mr. Arnold's _Friendship's Garland_ after an +interval of twenty-seven years may well set us all a-thinking. Here it +is, in startling facsimile--the white covers, destined too soon to +become black, the gilt device, the familiar motto. As we gazed upon +it, we found ourselves exclaiming, so vividly did it recall the past: + + 'It is we, it is we, who have changed.' + +_Friendship's Garland_ was a very good joke seven-and-twenty years +ago, and though some of its once luminous paint has been rubbed off, +and a few of its jests have ceased to effervesce, it is a good joke +still. Mr. Bottle's mind, qua mind; the rowdy Philistine Adolescens +Leo, Esq.; Dr. Russell, of the _Times_, mounting his war-horse; the +tale of how Lord Lumpington and the Rev. Esau Hittall got their +degrees at Oxford; and many another ironic thrust which made the +reader laugh 'while the hair was yet brown on his head,' may well make +him laugh still, 'though his scalp is almost hairless, and his +figure's grown convex.' Since 1871 we have learnt the answer to the +sombre lesson, 'What is it to grow old?' But, thank God! we can laugh +even yet. + +The humour and high spirits of _Friendship's Garland_ were, however, +but the gilding of a pill, the artificial sweetening of a nauseous +draught. In reality, and joking apart, the book is an indictment at +the bar of _Geist_ of the English people as represented by its middle +class and by its full-voiced organ, the daily press. Mr. Arnold +invented Arminius to be the mouthpiece of this indictment, the +traducer of our 'imperial race,' because such blasphemies could not +artistically have been attributed to one of the number. He made +Arminius a Prussian because in those far-off days Prussia stood for +Von Humboldt and education and culture, and all the things Sir Thomas +Bazley and Mr. Miall were supposed to be without. Around the central +figure of Arminius the essentially playful fancy of Mr. Arnold grouped +other figures, including his own. What an old equity draughtsman would +call 'the charging parts' of the book consist in the allegations that +the Government of England had been taken out of the hands of an +aristocracy grown barren of ideas and stupid beyond words, and +entrusted to a middle class without noble traditions, wretchedly +educated, full of _Ungeist_, with a passion for clap-trap, only +wanting to be left alone to push trade and make money; so ignorant as +to believe that feudalism can be abated without any heroic Stein, by +providing that in one insignificant case out of a hundred thousand, +land shall not follow the feudal law of descent; without a single +vital idea or sentiment or feeling for beauty or appropriateness; well +persuaded that if more trade is done in England than anywhere else, if +personal independence is without a check, and newspaper publicity +unbounded, that is, by the nature of things, to be great; misled every +morning by the magnificent _Times_ or the 'rowdy' _Telegraph_; +desperately prone to preaching to other nations, proud of being able +to say what it likes, whilst wholly indifferent to the fact that it +has nothing whatever to say. + +Such, in brief, is the substance of this most agreeable volume. Its +message was lightly treated by the grave and reverend seigniors of the +State. The magnificent _Times_, the rowdy _Telegraph_, continued to +preach their gospels as before; but for all that Mr. Arnold found an +audience fit, though few, and, of course, he found it among the people +he abused. The barbarians, as he called the aristocracy, were not +likely to pay heed to a professor of poetry. Our working classes +were not readers of the _Pall Mall Gazette_ or purchasers of +four-and-sixpenny tracts bound in white cloth. No; it was the middle +class, to whom Mr. Arnold himself belonged, who took him to honest +hearts, stuck his photograph upon their writing-tables, and sounded +his praises so loudly that his fame even reached the United States of +America, where he was promptly invited to lecture, an invitation he +accepted. But for the middle classes Mr. Arnold would have had but a +poor time of it. They did not mind being insulted; they overlooked +exaggeration; they pardoned ignorance--in a word, they proved +teachable. Yet, though meek in spirit, they have not yet inherited the +earth; indeed, there are those who assert that their chances are gone, +their sceptre for ever buried. It is all over with the middle-class. +Tuck up its muddled head! Tie up its chin! + +A rabble of bad writers may now be noticed pushing their vulgar way +along, who, though born and bred in the middle classes, and disfigured +by many of the very faults Mr. Arnold deplored, yet make it a test of +their membership, an 'open sesame' to their dull orgies, that all +decent, sober-minded folk, who love virtue, and, on the whole, prefer +delicate humour to sickly lubricity, should be labelled 'middle +class.' + +Politically, it cannot but be noticed that, for good or for ill, the +old middle-class audience no longer exists in its integrity. The +crowds that flocked to hear Cobden and Bright, that abhorred slavery, +that cheered Kossuth, that hated the income-tax, are now watered down +by a huge population who do not know, and do not want to know, what +the income-tax is, but who do want to know what the Government is +going to do for them in the matter of shorter hours, better wages, and +constant employment. Will the rabble, we wonder, prove as teachable as +the middle class? Will they consent to be told their faults as meekly? +Will they buy the photograph of their physician, or heave half a brick +at him? It remains to be seen. In the meantime it would be a mistake +to assume that the middle class counts for nothing, even at an +election. As to ideas, have we got any new ones since 1871? 'To be +consequent and powerful,' says Arminius, 'men must be bottomed on some +vital idea or sentiment which lends strength and certainty to their +action.' There are those who tell us that we have at last found this +vital idea in those conceptions of the British Empire which Mr. +Chamberlain so vigorously trumpets. To trumpet a conception is hardly +a happy phrase, but, as Mr. Chamberlain plays no other instrument, it +is forced upon me. Would that we could revive Arminius, to tell us +what he thinks of our new Ariel girdling the earth with twenty Prime +Ministers, each the choicest product of a self-governing and +deeply-involved colony. Is it a vital or a vulgar idea? Is it merely a +big theory or really a great one? Is it the ornate beginning of a +Time, or but the tawdry ending of a period? At all events, it is an +idea unknown to Arminius von Thunder-Ten-Tronckh, and we ought to be, +and many are, thankful for it. + + + + +TAR AND WHITEWASH + + +I am, I confess it, hard to please. If a round dozen of Bad Women, all +made in England too, does not satisfy me, what will? What ails the +fellow at them? Yet was I at first dissatisfied, and am, therefore, +glad to notice that whilst I was demurring and splitting hairs the +great, generous public was buying the _Lives of Twelve Bad Women_, by +Arthur Vincent, and putting it into a second edition. This is as it +should be. When the excellent Dean Burgon dubbed his dozen biographies +_Twelve Good Men_, it probably never occurred to him that the title +suggested three companion volumes; but so it did, and two of them, +_Twelve Bad Men_ and _Twelve Bad Women_, have made their appearance. I +still await, with great patience, _Twelve Good Women_. Twelve was the +number of the Apostles. Had it not been, one might be tempted to ask, +Why twelve? But as there must be some limit to bookmaking, there is no +need to quarrel with an arithmetical limit. + +My criticism upon the Dean's dozen was that they were not by any +means, all of them, conspicuously good men; for, to name one only, who +would call old Dr. Routh, the President of Magdalen, a particularly +good man? In a sense, all Presidents, Provosts, Principals, and +Masters of Colleges are good men--in fact, they must be so by the +statutes--but to few of them are given the special notes of goodness. +Dr. Routh was a remarkable man, a learned man, perhaps a pious +man--undeniably, when he came to die, an old man--but he was no better +than his colleagues. This weakness of classification has run all +through the series, and it is my real quarrel with it. I do not +understand the principle of selection. I did not understand the Dean's +test of goodness, nor do I understand Mr. Seccombe's or Mr. Vincent's +test of badness. What do we mean by a good man or a bad one, a good +woman or a bad one? Most people, like the young man in the song, are +'not very good, nor yet very bad.' We move about the pastures of life +in huge herds, and all do the same things, at the same times, and for +the same reasons. 'Forty feeding like one.' Are we mean? Well, we have +done some mean things in our time. Are we generous? Occasionally we +are. Were we good sons or dutiful daughters? We have both honoured and +dishonoured our parents, who, in their turn, had done the same by +theirs. Do we melt at the sight of misery? Indeed we do. Do we forget +all about it when we have turned the corner? Frequently that is so. Do +we expect to be put to open shame at the Great Day of Judgment? We +should be terribly frightened of this did we not cling to the hope +that amidst the shocking revelations then for the first time made +public our little affairs may fail to attract much notice. Judged by +the standards of humanity, few people are either good or bad. 'I have +not been a great sinner,' said the dying Nelson; nor had he--he had +only been made a great fool of by a woman. Mankind is all tarred with +the same brush, though some who chance to be operated upon when the +brush is fresh from the barrel get more than their share of the tar. +The biography of a celebrated man usually reminds me of the outside of +a coastguardsman's cottage--all tar and whitewash. These are the two +condiments of human life--tar and whitewash--the faults and the +excuses for the faults, the passions and pettinesses that make us +occasionally drop on all fours, and the generous aspirations that at +times enable us, if not to stand upright, at least to adopt the +attitude of the kangaroo. It is rather tiresome, this perpetual game +of French and English going on inside one. True goodness and real +badness escape it altogether. A good man does not spend his life +wrestling with the Powers of Darkness. He is victor in the fray, and +the most he is called upon to do is every now and again to hit his +prostrate foe a blow over the costard just to keep him in his place. +Thus rid of a perpetual anxiety, the good man has time to grow in +goodness, to expand pleasantly, to take his ease on Zion. You can see +in his face that he is at peace with himself--that he is no longer at +war with his elements. His society, if you are fond of goodness, is +both agreeable and medicinal; but if you are a bad man it is hateful, +and you cry out with Mr. Love-lust in Bunyan's Vanity Fair: 'Away with +him. I cannot endure him; he is for ever condemning my way.' + +Not many of Dean Burgon's biographies reached this standard. The +explanation, perhaps, is that the Dean chiefly moved in clerical +circles where excellence is more frequently to be met with than +goodness. + +In the same way a really bad man is one who has frankly said, 'Evil, +be thou my good.' Like the good man, though for a very different +reason, the bad one has ceased to make war with the devil. Finding a +conspiracy against goodness going on, the bad man joins it, and thus, +like the good man, is at peace with himself. The bad man is bent upon +his own way, to get what he wants, no matter at what cost. Human +lives! What do they matter? A woman's honour! What does that matter? +Truth and fidelity! What are they? To know what you want, and not to +mind what you pay for it, is the straight path to fame, fortune, and +hell-fire. Careers, of course, vary; to dominate a continent or to +open a corner shop as a pork-butcher's, plenty of devilry may go to +either ambition. Also, genius is a rare gift. It by no means follows +that because you are a bad man you will become a great one; but to be +bad, and at the same time unsuccessful, is a hard fate. It casts a +little doubt upon a man's badness if he does not, at least, make a +little money. It is a poor business accompanying badness on to a +common scaffold, or to see it die in a wretched garret. That was one +of my complaints with Mr. Seccombe's Twelve Bad Men. Most of them came +to violent ends. They were all failures. + +But I have kept these twelve ladies waiting a most unconscionable +time. Who are they? There are amongst them four courtesans: Alice +Perrers, one of King Edward III.'s misses; Barbara Villiers, one of +King Charles II.'s; Mrs. Mary Anne Clarke, who had to be content with +a royal Duke; and Mrs. Con Phillips. Six members of the criminal +class: Alice Arden, Moll Cutpurse, Jenny Diver, Elizabeth Brownrigg, +Elizabeth Canning, and Mary Bateman; and only two ladies of title, +Frances Howard, Countess of Somerset, and Elizabeth Chudleigh, Duchess +of Kingston. Of these twelve bad women one-third were executed, Alice +Arden being burnt at Canterbury, Jenny Diver and Elizabeth Brownrigg +being hung at Tyburn, and Mary Bateman suffering the same fate at +Leeds. Elizabeth Canning was sentenced to seven years' transportation, +and, indeed, if their biographers are to be believed, all the other +ladies made miserable ends. There is nothing triumphant about their +badness. Even from the point of view of this world they had better +have been good. In fact, squalor is the badge of the whole tribe. Some +of them, probably--Elizabeth Brownrigg, for example--were mad. This +last-named poor creature bore sixteen children to a house-painter and +plasterer, and then became a parish mid-wife, and only finally a +baby-farmer. Her cruelty to her apprentices had madness in every +detail. To include her in this volume was wholly unnecessary. She +lives but in George Canning's famous parody on Southey's sonnet to the +regicide Marten. + +With those sentimentalists who maintain that all bad people are mad I +will have no dealings. It is sheer nonsense; lives of great men all +remind us it is sheer nonsense. Some of our greatest men have been +infernal scoundrels--pre-eminently bad men--with nothing mad about +them, unless it be mad to get on in the world and knock people about +in it. + +_Twelve Bad Women_ contains much interesting matter, but, on the +whole, it is depressing. It seems very dull to be bad. Perhaps the +editor desired to create this impression; if so, he has succeeded. +Hannah More had fifty times more fun in her life than all these +courtesans and criminals put together. The note of jollity is +entirely absent. It was no primrose path these unhappy women +traversed, though that it led to the everlasting bonfire it were +unchristian to doubt. The dissatisfaction I confessed to at the +beginning returns upon me as a cloud at the end; but, for all that, I +rejoice the book is in a second edition, and I hope soon to hear it is +in a third, for it has a moral tendency. + + + + +ITINERARIES + + +Anyone who is teased by the notion that it would be pleasant to be +remembered, in the sense of being read, after death, cannot do better +to secure that end than compose an Itinerary and leave it behind him +in manuscript, with his name legibly inscribed thereon. If an honest +bit of work, noting distances, detailing expenses, naming landmarks, +moors, mountains, harbours, docks, buildings--indeed, anything which, +as lawyers say, savours of realty--and but scantily interspersed with +reflections, and with no quotations, why, then, such a piece of work, +however long publication may be delayed--and a century or two will not +matter in the least--cannot fail, whenever it is printed, to attract +attention, to excite general interest and secure a permanent hold in +every decent library in the kingdom. + +Time cannot stale an Itinerary. _Iter, Via, Actus_ are words of pith +and moment. Stage-coaches, express trains, motor-cars, have written, +or are now writing, their eventful histories over the face of these +islands; but, whatever changes they have made or are destined to make, +they have left untouched the mystery of the road, although for the +moment the latest comer may seem injuriously to have affected its +majesty. + +The Itinerist alone among authors is always sure of an audience. No +matter where, no matter when, he has but to tell us how he footed it +and what he saw by the wayside, and we must listen. How can we help +it? Two hundred years ago, it may be, this Itinerist came through our +village, passed by the wall of our homestead, climbed our familiar +hill, and went on his way; it is perhaps but two lines and a half he +can afford to give us, but what lines they are! How different with +sermons, poems, and novels! On each of these is the stamp of the +author's age; sentiments, fashions, thoughts, faiths, phraseology, all +worn out--cold, dirty grate, where once there was a blazing fire. +Cheerlessness personified! Leland's anti-Papal treatise in forty-five +chapters remains in learned custody--a manuscript; a publisher it will +never find. We still have Papists and anti-Papists; in this case the +fire still blazes, but the grates are of an entirely different +construction. Leland's treatise is out of date. But his _Itinerary_ in +nine volumes, a favourite book throughout the eighteenth century, +which has graced many a bookseller's catalogue for the last hundred +years, and seldom without eliciting a purchaser--Leland's _Itinerary_ +is to-day being reprinted under the most able editorship. The charm of +the road is irresistible. The _Vicar of Wakefield_ is a delightful +book, with a great tradition behind it and a future still before it; +but it has not escaped the ravages of time, and I would, now, at all +events, gladly exchange it for Oliver Goldsmith's _Itinerary through +Germany with a Flute_! + +Vain authors, publisher's men, may write as they like about +_Shakespeare's_ country, or _Scott's_ country, or _Carlyle's_ country, +or _Crockett's_ country, but-- + + 'Oh, good gigantic smile of the brown old earth!' + +the land laughs at the delusions of the men who hurriedly cross its +surface. + + 'Rydal and Fairfield are there,-- + In the shadow Wordsworth lies dead. + So it is, so it will be for aye, + Nature is fresh as of old, + Is lovely, a mortal is dead.' + +These reflections, which by themselves would be enough to sink even an +Itinerary, seemed forced upon me by the publication of _A Journey to +Edenborough in Scotland by Joseph Taylor, Late of the Inner Temple, +Esquire_. This journey was made two hundred years ago in the Long +Vacation of 1705, but has just been printed from the original +manuscript, under the editorship of Mr. William Cowan, by the +well-known Edinburgh bookseller, Mr. Brown, of Princes Street, to whom +all lovers of things Scottish already owe much. + +Nobody can hope to be less known than this our latest Itinerist, for +not only is he not in the _Dictionary of National Biography_, but it +is at present impossible to say which of two Joseph Taylors he was. +The House of the Winged Horse has ever had Taylors on its roll, the +sign of the Middle Temple, a very fleecy sheep, being perhaps +unattractive to the clan, and in 1705 it so happened that not only +were there two Taylors, but two Joseph Taylors, entitled to write +themselves 'of the Inner Temple, Esquire.' Which was the Itinerist? +Mr. Cowan, going by age, thinks that the Itinerist can hardly have +been the Joseph Taylor who was admitted to the Inn in 1663, as in that +case he must have been at least fifty-eight when he travelled to +Edinburgh. For my part, I see nothing in the _Itinerary_ to preclude +the possibility of its author having attained that age at the date of +its composition. I observe in the _Itinerary_ references which point +to the Itinerist being a Kentish man, and he mentions more than once +his 'Cousin D'aeth.' Research among the papers of the D'aeths of +Knowlton Court, near Dover, might result in the discovery which of +these two Taylors really was the Itinerist. As nothing else is at +present known about either, the investigation could probably be made +without passion or party or even religious bias. It might be +best begun by Mr. Cowan telling us in whose custody he found the +manuscript, and how it came there. These statements should always +be made when old manuscripts are first printed. + +The journey began on August 2, 1705. The party consisted of Mr. Taylor +and his two friends, Mr. Harrison and Mr. Sloman. They travelled on +horseback, and often had difficulties with the poor beast that carried +their luggage. They reached Edinburgh in the evening of August 31, and +left it on their return journey on September 8, and got home on the +25th of the same month. The _Itinerary_ concludes as follows: + + 'Thus we spent almost 2 months in a Journy of many 100 miles, + sometimes thro' very charming Countryes, and at other times over + desolate and Barren Mountaines, and yet met with no particular + misfortune in all the Time.' + +I may say at once of these three Itinerists--Mr. Taylor, Mr. Harrison, +and Mr. Sloman--that they appear to have been thoroughly +commonplace, well behaved, occasionally hilarious Englishmen, ready to +endure whatever befell them, if unavoidable; accustomed to take their +ease in their inn and to turn round and look at any pretty woman they +might chance to meet on their travels. Their first experience of what +the Itinerist calls 'the prodigies of Nature,' 'at once an occasion +both of Horrour and Admiration,' was in the Peak Country 'described in +poetry by the ingenious Mr. Cotton.' This part of the world they 'did' +with something of the earnestness of the modern tourist. But I hardly +think they enjoyed themselves. The 'prodigious' caverns and strange +petrifactions shocked them; 'nothing can be more terrible or shocking +to Nature.' Mam Tor, with its 1,710 feet, proved very impressive, 'a +vast high mountain reaching to the very clouds.' This gloom of the +Derbyshire hills and stony valleys was partially dispelled for our +travellers by a certain 'fair Gloriana' they met at Buxton, with whom +they had great fun, 'so much the greater, because we never expected +such heavenly enjoyments in so desolate a country.' If it be on +susceptibilities of this nature that Mr. Cowan rests his case for +thinking that the Itinerist can hardly have attained 'the blasted +antiquity' of fifty-eight, we must think Mr. Cowan a trifle hasty, or +a very young man, perhaps under forty, which is young for an editor. + +After describing, somewhat too much like an auctioneer, the splendours +of Chatsworth, 'a Paradise in the deserts of Arabia,' the Itinerist +proceeds on his way north through Nottingham to Belvoir Castle, where +'my Lord Rosses Gentleman (to whom Mr. Harrison was recommended) +entertained us by his Lordship's command with good wine and the best +of malt liquors which the cellar abounds with'; the pictures in the +Long Gallery were shown them by 'my Lord himself.' At Doncaster, 'a +neat market-town which consists only in one long street,' they had +some superlative salmon just taken out of the river. By Knaresborough +Spaw, where they drank the waters and had icy cold baths, and dined at +the ordinary with a parson whose conversation startled the propriety +of the Templar, the travellers made their way to York, and for the +first and last time a few pages of _Guide Book_ are improperly +introduced. Then on to Scarborough. + + 'The next morning early we left Scarborough and travelled through a + dismall road, particularly near Robins Hood Bay; we were obliged to + lead our horses, and had much ado to get down a vast craggy + mountain which lyes within a quarter of a mile of it. The Bay is + about a mile broad, and inhabited by poor fishermen. We stopt to + taste some of their liquor and discourse with them. They told us + the French privateers came into the Very Bay and took 2 of their + Vessels but the day before, which were ransom'd for L25 a piece. We + saw a great many vessels lying upon the Shore, the masters not + daring to venture out to sea for fear of undergoing the same fate.' + +We boast too readily of our inviolate shores. + +A curious description is given of the Duke of Buckingham's alum works +near Whitby. The travellers then procured a guide, and traversed 'the +vast moors which lye between Whitby and Gisborough.' The civic +magnificence of Newcastle greatly struck our travellers, who, happier +than their modern successors, were able to see the town miles off. The +Itinerist quotes with gusto the civic proverb that the men of +Newcastle pay nothing for the Way, the Word, or the Water, 'for the +Ministers of Religion are maintained, the streets paved, and the +Conduits kept up at the publick charge.' A disagreeable account is +given of the brutishness of the people employed in the salt works at +Tynemouth. At Berwick the travellers got into trouble with the sentry, +but the mistake was rectified with the captain of the guard over '2 +bowles of punch, there being no wine in the town.' + +Scotland was now in sight, and the travellers became grave, as +befitted the occasion. They were told that the journey that lay before +them was extremely dangerous, that 'twould be difficult to escape with +their lives, much less (ominous words) without 'the distemper of the +country.' But Mr. Taylor, Mr. Harrison, and Mr. Sloman were as brave +as Mr. Pickwick, and they would on. 'Yet notwithstanding all these sad +representations, we resolv'd to proceed and stand by one another to +the last.' + +What the Itinerists thought of Scotland when they got there is not for +me to say. I was once a Scottish member. + +They arrived in Edinburgh at a great crisis in Scottish history. They +saw the Duke of Argyll, as Queen Anne's Lord High Commissioner, go to +the Parliament House in this manner: + + 'First a coach and six Horses for his Gentlemen, then a Trumpet, + then his own coach with six white horses, which were very fine, + being those presented by King William to the Duke of Queensbury, + and by him sold to the Duke of Argyle for L300; next goes a troop + of Horse Guards, cloathed like my Lord of Oxford's Regiment, but + the horses are of several colours; and the Lord Chancellor and the + Secretary of State, and the Lord Chief Justice Clerk, and other + officers of State close the cavalcade in coaches and six horses. + Thus the Commissioner goes and returns every day.' + +The Itinerists followed the Duke and his procession into the +Parliament House, and heard debated the great question--the greatest +of all possible questions for Scotland--whether this magnificence +should cease, whether there should be an end of an auld sang--in +short, whether the proposed Act of Union should be proceeded with. By +special favour, our Itinerists had leave to stand upon the steps of +the throne, and witnessed a famous fiery and prolonged debate, the +Duke once turning to them and saying, _sotto voce_, 'It is now +deciding whether England and Scotland shall go together by the ears.' +How it was decided we all know, and that it was wisely decided no one +doubts; yet, when we read our Itinerist's account of the Duke's coach +and horses, and the cavalcade that followed him, and remember that +this was what happened every day during the sitting of the Parliament, +and must not be confounded with the greater glories of the first day +of a Parliament, when every member, be he peer, knight of the shire, +or burgh member, had to ride on horseback in the procession, it is +impossible not to feel the force of Miss Grisel Dalmahoy's appeal in +the _Heart of Midlothian_, she being an ancient sempstress, to Mr. +Saddletree, the harness-maker: + + 'And as for the Lords of States ye suld mind the riding o' the + Parliament in the gude auld time before the Union. A year's rent o' + mony a gude estate gaed for horse-graith and harnessing, forby + broidered robes and foot-mantles that wad hae stude by their lane + with gold and brocade, and that were muckle in my ain line.' + +The graphic account of a famous debate given by, Taylor is worth +comparing with the _Lockhart Papers_ and Hill Burton. The date is a +little troublesome. According to our Itinerist, he heard the +discussion as to whether the Queen or the Scottish Parliament should +nominate the Commissioners. Now, according to the histories, this +all-important discussion began and ended on September 1, but our +Itinerist had only arrived in Edinburgh the night before the first, +and gives us to understand that he owed his invitation to be present +to the fact that whilst in Edinburgh he and his friends had had the +honour to have several lords and members of Parliament to dine, and +that these guests informed him 'of the grand day when the Act was to +be passed or rejected.' The Itinerist's account is too particular--for +he gives the result of the voting--to admit of any possibility of a +mistake, and he describes how several of the members came afterwards +to his lodgings, and, so he writes, 'embraced us with all the outward +marks of love and kindness, and seemed mightily pleased at what was +done, and told us we should now be no more English and Scotch, but +Brittons.' In the matter of nomenclature, at all events, the promises +of the Union have not been carried out. + +After September 1 the Parliament did not meet till the 4th, when an +Address was passed to the Queen, but apparently without any repetition +of debate. So it really is a little difficult to reconcile the dates. +Perhaps Itinerists are best advised to keep off public events. + +How our travellers escaped the 'national distemper' and journeyed +home by Ecclefechan, Carlisle, Shap Fell, Liverpool, Chester, +Coventry, and Warwick must be read in the _Journey_ itself, which, +though it only occupies 182 small pages, is full of matter and even +merriment; in fact, it is an excellent itinerary. + + + + +EPITAPHS + + +Epitaphs, if in rhyme, are the real literature of the masses. They +need no commendation and are beyond all criticism. A Cambridge don, a +London bus-driver, will own their charm in equal measure. Strange +indeed is the fascination of rhyme. A commonplace hitched into verse +instantly takes rank with Holy Scripture. This passion for poetry, as +it is sometimes called, is manifested on every side; even tradesmen +share it, and as the advertisements in our newspapers show, are +willing to pay small sums to poets who commend their wares in verse. +The widow bereft of her life's companion, the mother bending over an +empty cradle, find solace in thinking what doleful little scrag of +verse shall be graven on the tombstone of the dead. From the earliest +times men have sought to squeeze their loves and joys, their sorrows +and hatreds, into distichs and quatrains, and to inscribe them +somewhere, on walls or windows, on sepulchral urns and gravestones, as +memorials of their pleasure or their pain. + + 'Hark! how chimes the passing bell-- + There's no music to a knell; + All the other sounds we hear + Flatter and but cheat our ear.' + +So wrote Shirley the dramatist, and so does he truthfully explain the +popularity of the epitaph as distinguished from the epigram. Who ever +wearies of Martial's 'Erotion'?-- + + 'Hic festinata requiescit Erotion umbra, + Crimine quam fati sexta peremit hiems. + Quisquis eris nostri post me regnator agelli + Manibus exiguis annua justa dato. + Sic lare perpetuo, sic turba sospite, solus + Flebilis in terra sit lapis iste tua'-- + +so prettily Englished by Leigh Hunt: + + 'Underneath this greedy stone + Lies little sweet Erotion, + Whom the Fates with hearts as cold + Nipped away at six years old. + Those, whoever thou may'st be, + That hast this small field after me, + Let the yearly rites be paid + To her little slender shade; + So shall no disease or jar + Hurt thy house or chill thy Lar, + But this tomb be here alone + The only melancholy stone.' + +Our English epitaphs are to be found scattered up and down our country +churchyards--'uncouth rhymes,' as Gray calls them, yet full of the +sombre philosophy of life. They are fast becoming illegible, worn out +by the rain that raineth every day, and our prim, present-day parsons +do not look with favour upon them, besides which--to use a clumsy +phrase--besides which most of our churchyards are now closed against +burials, and without texts there can be no sermons: + + 'I'll stay and read my sermon here, + And skulls and bones shall be my text. + + * * * * + + Here learn that glory and disgrace, + Wisdom and Folly, pass away, + That mirth hath its appointed space, + That sorrow is but for a day; + That all we love and all we hate, + That all we hope and all we fear, + Each mood of mind, each turn of fate, + Must end in dust and silence here.' + +The best epitaphs are the grim ones. Designed, as epitaphs are, to +arrest and hold in their momentary grasp the wandering attention and +languid interest of the passer-by, they must hit him hard and at once, +and this they can only do by striking some very responsive chord, and +no chords are so immediately responsive as those which relate to death +and, it may be, judgment to come. + +Mr. Aubrey Stewart, in his interesting _Selection of English Epigrams +and Epitaphs_, published by Chapman and Hall, quotes an epitaph from a +Norfolk churchyard which I have seen in other parts of the country. +The last time I saw it was in the Forest of Dean. It is admirably +suited for the gravestone of any child of very tender years, say four: + + 'When the Archangel's trump shall blow + And souls to bodies join, + Many will wish their lives below + Had been as short as mine.' + +It is uncouth, but it is warranted to grip. + +Frequently, too, have I noticed how constantly the attention is +arrested by Pope's well-known lines from his magnificent 'Verses to +the Memory of an Unfortunate Lady,' which are often to be found on +tombstones: + + 'So peaceful rests without a stone and name + What once had beauty, titles, wealth, and fame. + How loved, how honoured once avails thee not, + To whom related or by whom begot. + A heap of dust alone remains of thee; + 'Tis all thou art and all the proud shall be.' + +I wish our modern poetasters who deny Pope's claim to be a poet no +worse fate than to lie under stones which have engraved upon them the +lines just quoted, for they will then secure in death what in life was +denied them--the ear of the public. + +Next to the grim epitaph, I should be disposed to rank those which +remind the passer-by of his transitory estate. In different parts of +the country--in Cumberland and Cornwall, in Croyland Abbey, in +Llangollen Churchyard, in Melton Mowbray--are to be found lines more +or less resembling the following: + + 'Man's life is like unto a winter's day, + Some break their fast and so depart away, + Others stay dinner then depart full fed, + The longest age but sups and goes to bed. + O reader, there behold and see + As we are now, so thou must be.' + +The complimentary epitaph seldom pleases. To lie like a tombstone has +become a proverb. Pope's famous epitaph on Newton: + + 'Nature and Nature's laws lay hid in night, + God said, Let Newton be! and all was light.' + +is hyperbolical and out of character with the great man it seeks to +honour. It was intended for Westminster Abbey. I rejoice at the +preference given to prose Latinity. + +The tender and emotional epitaphs have a tendency to become either +insipid or silly. But Herrick has shown us how to rival Martial: + + 'UPON A CHILD THAT DIED. + + Here she lies a pretty bud + Lately made of flesh and blood; + Who as soon fell fast asleep + As her little eyes did peep. + Give her strewings, but not stir + The earth that lightly covers her.' + +Mr. Dodd, the editor of the admirable volume called _The +Epigrammatists_, published in Bohn's Standard Library, calls these +lines a model of simplicity and elegance. So they are, but they are +very vague. But then the child was very young. Erotion, one must +remember, was six years old. Ben Jonson's beautiful epitaph on S.P., a +child of Queen Elizabeth's Chapel, beginning, + + 'Weep with me all you that read + This little story; + And know for whom the tear you shed + Death's self is sorry,' + +is fine poetry, but it is not life or death as plain people know those +sober realities. The flippant epitaph is always abominable. Gay's, for +example: + + 'Life is a jest, and all things show it. + I thought so once, but now I know it.' + +But _does_ he know it? Ay, there's the rub! The note of Christianity +is seldom struck in epitaphs. There is a deep-rooted paganism in the +English people which is for ever bubbling up and asserting itself in +the oddest of ways. Coleridge's epitaph for himself is a striking +exception: + + 'Stop, Christian passer-by! stop, child of God, + And read with gentle breast, Beneath this sod + A poet lies, or that which once seemed he. + O lift one thought in prayer for S.T.C, + That he who many a year with toil of breath + Found death in life, may here find life in death! + Mercy for praise--to be forgiven for fame, + He ask'd and hoped through Christ. Do thou the same.' + + + + +'HANSARD' + + +'Men are we, and must mourn when e'en the shade of that which once was +great has passed away.' This quotation--which, in obedience to the +prevailing taste, I print as prose--was forced upon me by reading in +the papers an account of some proceedings in a sale-room in Chancery +Lane last Tuesday,[A] when the entire stock and copyright of +_Hansard's Parliamentary History and Debates_ were exposed for sale, +and, it must be added, to ridicule. Yet 'Hansard' was once a name to +conjure with. To be in it was an ambition--costly, troublesome, but +animating; to know it was, if not a liberal education, at all events +almost certain promotion; whilst to possess it for your very own was +the outward and visible sign of serious statesmanship. No wonder that +unimaginative men still believed that _Hansard_ was a property with +money in it. Is it not the counterpart of Parliament, its dark and +majestic shadow thrown across the page of history? As the pious +Catholic studies his _Acta Sanctorum_, so should the constitutionalist +love to pore over the _ipsissima verba_ of Parliamentary gladiators, +and read their resolutions and their motions. Where else save in the +pages of _Hansard_ can we make ourselves fully acquainted with the +history of the Mother of Free Institutions? It is, no doubt, dull, but +with the soberminded a large and spacious dulness like that of +_Hansard's Debates_ is better than the incongruous chirpings of the +new 'humourists.' Besides, its dulness is exaggerated. If a reader +cannot extract amusement from it the fault is his, not _Hansard's_. +But, indeed, this perpetual talk of dulness and amusement ought not to +pass unchallenged. Since when has it become a crime to be dull? Our +fathers were not ashamed to be dull in a good cause. We are ashamed, +but without ceasing to be dull. + + [Footnote A: March 8, 1902.] + +But it is idle to argue with the higgle of the market. 'Things are +what they are,' said Bishop Butler in a passage which has lost its +freshness; that is to say, they are worth what they will fetch. 'Why, +then, should we desire to be deceived?' The test of truth remains +undiscovered, but the test of present value is the auction mart. Tried +by this test, it is plain that _Hansard_ has fallen upon evil days. +The bottled dreariness of Parliament is falling, falling, falling. An +Elizabethan song-book, the original edition of Gray's _Elegy_, or +_Peregrine Pickle_, is worth more than, or nearly as much as, the 458 +volumes of _Hansard's Parliamentary Debates_. Three complete sets were +sold last Tuesday; one brought L110, the other two but L70 each. And +yet it is not long ago since a _Hansard_ was worth three times as +much. Where were our young politicians? There are serious men on both +sides of the House. Men of their stamp twenty years ago would not have +been happy without a _Hansard_ to clothe their shelves with dignity +and their minds with quotations. But these young men were not bidders. + +As the sale proceeded, the discredit of _Hansard_ became plainer and +plainer. For the copyright, including, of course, the goodwill of the +name--the right to call yourself 'Hansard' for years to come--not a +penny was offered, and yet, as the auctioneer feelingly observed, only +eighteen months ago it was valued at L60,000. The cold douche of the +auction mart may brace the mind, but is apt to lower the price of +commodities of this kind. Then came incomplete and unbound sets, with +doleful results. For forty copies of the 'Indian Debates' for 1889 +only a penny a copy was offered. It was rumoured that the bidder +intended, had he been successful, to circulate the copies amongst the +supporters of a National Council for India; but his purpose was +frustrated by the auctioneer, who, mindful of the honour of the +Empire, sorrowfully but firmly withdrew the lot, and proceeded to the +next, amidst the jeers of a thoroughly demoralized audience. But this +subject why pursue? It is, for the reason already cited at the +beginning, a painful one. The glory of _Hansard_ has departed for +ever. Like a new-fangled and sham religion, it began in pride and +ended in a police-court, instead of beginning in a police-court and +ending in pride, which is the now well-defined course of true +religion. + +The fact that nobody wants _Hansard_ is not necessarily a rebuff to +Parliamentary eloquence, yet these low prices jump with the times and +undoubtedly indicate an impatience of oratory. We talk more than our +ancestors, but we prove our good faith by doing it very badly. We have +no Erskines at the Bar, but trials last longer than ever. There are +not half a dozen men in the House of Commons who can make a speech, +properly so called, but the session is none the shorter on that +account. _Hansard's Debates_ are said to be dull to read, but there is +a sterner fate than reading a dull debate: you may be called upon to +listen to one. The statesmen of the time must be impervious to +dulness; they must crush the artist within them to a powder. The new +people who have come bounding into politics and are now claiming their +share of the national inheritance are not orators by nature, and will +never become so by culture; but they mean business, and that is well. +Caleb Garth and not George Canning should be the model of the virtuous +politician of the future. + + + + +CONTEMPT OF COURT + + +The late Mr. Carlyle has somewhere in his voluminous but well-indexed +writings a highly humorous and characteristic passage in which he, +with all his delightful gusto, dilates upon the oddity of the scene +where a withered old sinner perched on a bench, quaintly attired in +red turned up with ermine, addresses another sinner in a wooden pew, +and bids him be taken away and hung by the neck until he is dead; and +how the sinner in the pew, instead of indignantly remonstrating with +the sinner on the bench, 'Why, you cantankerous old absurdity, what +are you about taking my life like that?' usually exhibits signs of +great depression, and meekly allows himself to be conducted to his +cell, from whence in due course he is taken and throttled according to +law. + +This situation described by Carlyle is doubtless mighty full of +humour; but, none the less, were any prisoner at the bar to adopt +Craigenputtock's suggestion, he would only add to the peccadillo of +murder the grave offence of contempt of court, which has been defined +'as a disobedience to the court, an opposing or despising the +authority, justice, and dignity thereof.' + +The whole subject of Contempt is an interesting and picturesque one, +and has been treated after an interesting and picturesque yet accurate +and learned fashion by a well-known lawyer, in a treatise[A] which +well deserves to be read not merely by the legal practitioner, but by +the student of constitutional law and the nice observer of our manners +and customs. + + [Footnote A: _Contempt of Court, etc._ By J.F. Oswald, Q.C. London: + William Clowes and Sons, Limited.] + +An ill-disposed person may exhibit contempt of court in divers +ways--for example, he may scandalize the the court itself, which may +be done not merely by the extreme measure of hurling missiles at the +presiding judge, or loudly contemning his learning or authority, but +by ostentatiously reading a newspaper in his presence, or laughing +uproariously at a joke made by somebody else. Such contempts, +committed as they are _in facie curiae_, are criminal offences, and +may be punished summarily by immediate imprisonment without the right +of appeal. It speaks well both for the great good sense of the judges +and for the deep-rooted legal instincts of our people that such +offences are seldom heard of. It would be impossible nicely to define +what measure of freedom of manners should be allowed in a court of +justice, which, as we know, is neither a church nor a theatre, but, as +a matter of practice, the happy mean between an awe-struck and unmanly +silence and free-and-easy conversation is well preserved. The +practising advocate, to avoid contempt and obtain, if instructed so to +do, a hearing, must obey certain sumptuary laws, for not only must he +don the horsehair wig, the gown, and bands of his profession, but his +upper clothing must be black, nor should his nether garment be +otherwise than of sober hue. Mr. Oswald reports Mr. Justice Byles as +having once observed to the late Lord Coleridge whilst at the Bar: 'I +always listen with little pleasure to the arguments of counsel whose +legs are encased in light gray trousers.' The junior Bar is growing +somewhat lax in these matters. Dark gray coats are not unknown, and it +was only the other day I observed a barrister duly robed sitting in +court in a white waistcoat, apparently oblivious of the fact that +whilst thus attired no judge could possibly have heard a word he said. +However, as he had nothing to say, the question did not arise. It is +doubtless the increasing Chamber practice of the judges which has +occasioned this regrettable laxity. In Chambers a judge cannot +summarily commit for contempt, nor is it necessary or customary for +counsel to appear before him in robes. Some judges object to fancy +waistcoats in Chambers, but others do not. The late Sir James Bacon, +who was a great stickler for forensic propriety, and who, sitting in +court, would not have allowed a counsel in a white waistcoat to say a +word, habitually wore one himself when sitting as vacation judge in +the summer. + +It must not be supposed that there can be no contempt out of court. +There can. To use bad language on being served with legal process is +to treat the court from whence such process issued with contempt. None +the less, considerable latitude of language on such occasions is +allowed. How necessary it is to protect the humble officers of the law +who serve writs and subpoenas is proved by the case of one Johns, who +was very rightly committed to the Fleet in 1772, it appearing by +affidavit that he had compelled the poor wretch who sought to serve +him with a subpoena to devour both the parchment and the wax seal of +the court, and had then, after kicking him so savagely as to make him +insensible, ordered his body to be cast into the river. No amount of +irritation could justify such conduct. It is no contempt to tear up +the writ or subpoena in the presence of the officer of the court, +because, the service once lawfully effected, the court is indifferent +to the treatment of its stationery; but such behaviour, though lawful, +is childish. To obstruct a witness on his way to give evidence, or to +threaten him if he does give evidence, or to tamper with the jury, are +all serious contempts. In short, there is a divinity which hedges a +court of justice, and anybody who, by action or inaction, renders the +course of justice more difficult or dilatory than it otherwise would +be, incurs the penalty of contempt. Consider, for example, the case of +documents and letters. Prior to the issue of a writ, the owner of +documents and letters may destroy them, if he pleases--the fact of his +having done so, if litigation should ensue on the subject to which the +destroyed documents related, being only matter for comment--but the +moment a writ is issued the destruction by a defendant of any document +in his possession relating to the action is a grave contempt, for +which a duchess was lately sent to prison. There is something majestic +about this. No sooner is the aid of a court of law invoked than it +assumes a seizin of every scrap of writing which will assist it in its +investigation of the matter at issue between the parties, and to +destroy any such paper is to obstruct the court in its holy task, and +therefore a contempt. + +To disobey a specific order of the court is, of course, contempt. The +old Court of Chancery had a great experience in this aspect of the +question. It was accustomed to issue many peremptory commands; it +forbade manufacturers to foul rivers, builders so to build as to +obstruct ancient lights, suitors to seek the hand in matrimony of its +female wards, Dissenting ministers from attempting to occupy the +pulpits from which their congregations had by vote ejected them, and +so on through almost all the business of this mortal life. It was more +ready to forbid than to command; but it would do either if justice +required it. And if you persisted in doing what the Court of Chancery +told you not to do, you were committed; whilst if you refused to do +what it had ordered you to do, you were attached; and the difference +between committal and attachment need not concern the lay mind. + +To pursue the subject further would be to plunge into the morasses of +the law where there is no footing for the plain man; but just a word +or two may be added on the subject of punishment for contempt. In old +days persons who were guilty of contempt _in facie curiae_ had their +right hands cut off, and Mr. Oswald prints as an appendix to his book +certain clauses of an Act of Parliament of Henry VIII. which provide +for the execution of this barbarous sentence, and also (it must be +admitted) for the kindly after-treatment of the victim, who was to +have a surgeon at hand to sear the stump, a sergeant of the poultry +with a cock ready for the surgeon to wrap about the stump, a sergeant +of the pantry with bread to eat, and a sergeant of the cellar with a +pot of red wine to drink. + +Nowadays the penalty for most contempts is costs. The guilty party in +order to purge his contempt has to pay all the costs of a motion to +commit and attach. The amount is not always inconsiderable, and when +it is paid it would be idle to apply to the other side for a pot of +red wine. They would only laugh at you. Our ancestors had a way of +mitigating their atrocities which robs the latter of more than half +their barbarity. Costs are an unmitigable atrocity. + + + + +5 EDWARD VII., CHAPTER 12 + + +The appearance of this undebated Act of Parliament in the attenuated +volume of the Statutes of 1905 almost forces upon sensitive minds an +unwelcome inquiry as to what is the attitude proper to be assumed by +an emancipated but trained intelligence towards a decision of the +House of Lords, sitting judicially as the highest (because the last) +Court of Appeal. + +So far as the _parties_ to the litigation are concerned, the decision, +if of a final character, puts an end to the _lis_. Litigation must, so +at least it has always been assumed, end somewhere, and in these +realms it ends with the House of Lords. Higher you cannot go, however +litigiously minded. + +In the vast majority of appeal cases a final appeal not only ends the +_lis_, but determines once for all the rights of the parties to the +subject-matter. The successful litigant leaves the House of Lords +quieted in his possession or restored to what he now knows to be his +own, conscious of a victory, final and complete; whilst the +unsuccessful litigant goes away exceeding sorrowful, knowing that his +only possible revenge is to file his petition in bankruptcy. + +This, however, is not always so. + +In August, 1904, the House of Lords decided in a properly constituted +_lis_ that a particular ecclesiastical body in Scotland, somewhat +reduced in numbers, but existent and militant, was entitled to certain +property held in trust for the use and behoof of the Free Church of +Scotland. There is no other way of holding property than by a legal +title. Sometimes that title has been created by an Act of Parliament, +and sometimes it is a title recognised by the general laws and customs +of the realm, but a legal title it has got to be. Titles are never +matters of rhetoric, nor are they _jure divino_, or conferred in +answer to prayer; they are strictly legal matters, and it is the very +particular business of courts of law, when properly invoked, to +recognise and enforce them. + +In the case I have in mind there were two claimants to the +subject-matter--the Free Church and the United Free Church--and the +House of Lords, after a great argle-bargle, decided that the property +in question belonged to the Free Church. + +Thereupon the expected happened. A hubbub arose in Scotland and +elsewhere, and in consequence of the hubbub an Act of Parliament has +somewhat coyly made its appearance in the Statute Book (5 Edward VII., +chapter 12) appointing and authorizing Commissioners to take away from +the successful litigant a certain portion of the property just +declared to be his, and to give it to the unsuccessful litigant. + +The reasons alleged for taking away by statute from the Free Church +some of the property that belongs to it are that the Free Church is +not big enough to administer satisfactorily all the property it +possesses; and that the State may reasonably refuse to allow a +religious body to have more property than it can in the opinion of +State-appointed Commissioners usefully employ in the propagation of +its religion. Let the reasons be well noted. They have made their +appearance before in history. These were the reasons alleged by Henry +VIII. for the suppression of the smaller monasteries. The State, +having made up its mind to take away from the Free Church so much of +its property as the Commissioners may think it cannot usefully +administer, then proceeds, by this undebated Act of Parliament, to +give the overplus to the unsuccessful litigant, the United Free +Church. Why to them? It will never do to answer this question by +saying because it is always desirable to return lost property to its +true owner, since so to reply would be to give the lie direct to a +decision of the Final Court of Appeal on a question of property. + +In the eye--I must not write the blind eye--of the law, this +parliamentary gift to the United Free Church is not a _giving back_ +but an _original free gift_ from the State by way of endowment to a +particular denomination of Presbyterian dissenters. In theory the +State could have done what it liked with so much of the property of +the Free Church as that body is not big enough to spend upon itself. +It might, for example, have divided it between Presbyterians +generally, or it might have left it to the Free Church to say who was +to be the disponee of its property. + +As a matter of hard fact, the State had no choice in the matter. It +could not select, or let the Free Church select, the object of its +bounty. The public sense (a vague term) demanded that the United Free +Church should not be required to abide by the decision of the House of +Lords, but should have given to it whatever property could, under any +decent pretext of public policy and by Act of Parliament, be taken +away from the Free Church. If the pretext of the inability of the +Free Church to administer its own estate had not been forthcoming, +some other pretext must and would have been discovered. + +Having regard, then, to 5 Edward VII., chapter 12, how ought one to +feel towards the decision of the House of Lords in the Scottish +Churches case? In public life you can usually huddle up anything, if +only all parties, for reasons, however diverse, of their own, are +agreed upon what is to be done. Like many another Act of Parliament, 5 +Edward VII., chapter 12, was bought with a sum of money. Nobody, not +even Lord Robertson, really wanted to debate or discuss it, least of +all to discover the philosophy of it. But in an essay you can huddle +up nothing. At all hazards, you must go on. This is why so many +essayists have been burnt alive. + +_First_.--Was the decision wrong? 'Yes' or 'No.' If it was right-- + +_Second_.--Was the law, in pursuance of which the decision was given, +so manifestly unjust as to demand, not the alteration of the law for +the future, but the passage through Parliament, _ex post facto_, of an +Act to prevent the decision from taking effect between the parties +according to its tenour? + +_Third_.--Supposing the decision to be right, and the law it expounded +just and reasonable in general, was there anything in the peculiar +circumstances of the successful litigant, and in the sources from +which a considerable portion of the property was derived, to justify +Parliamentary interference and the provisions of 5 Edward VII., +chapter 12? + +_Number Three_, being the easiest way out of the difficulty, has been +adopted. The _decision_ remains untouched, the _law_ it expounds +remains unaltered--nothing has gone, except the _order_ of the Final +Court giving effect to the untouched decision and to the unaltered +law. _That_ has been tampered with for the reasons suggested in +_Number Three_. + +John Locke was fond of referring questions to something he called 'the +bulk of mankind'--an undefinable, undignified, unsalaried body, of +small account at the beginning of controversies, but all-powerful at +their close. + +My own belief is that eventually 'the bulk of mankind' will say +bluntly that the House of Lords went wrong in these cases, and that +the Act of Parliament was hastily patched up to avert wrong, and to +do substantial justice between the parties. + +If asked, What can 'the bulk of mankind' know about law? I reply, with +great cheerfulness, 'Very little indeed.' But suppose that the +application of law to a particular _lis_ requires precise and full +knowledge of all that happened during an ecclesiastical contest, and, +in addition, demands a grasp of the philosophy of religion, and the +ascertainment of true views as to the innate authority of a church and +the development of doctrine, would there be anything very surprising +if half a dozen eminent authorities in our Courts of Law and Equity +were to go wrong? + +Between a frank admission of an incomplete consideration of a +complicated and badly presented case and such blunt _ex post facto_ +legislation as 5 Edward VII., chapter 12, I should have preferred the +former. The Act is what would once have been called a dangerous +precedent. To-day precedents, good or bad, are not much considered. If +we want to do a thing, we do it, precedent or no precedent. So far we +have done so very little that the question has hardly arisen. If our +Legislature ever reassumes activity under new conditions, and in +obedience to new impulses, it may be discovered whether bad precedents +are dangerous or not. + + +THE END + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + +End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of In the Name of the Bodleian and Other +Essays, by Augustine Birrell + +*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE BODLEIAN AND OTHERS *** + +***** This file should be named 12244.txt or 12244.zip ***** +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: + https://www.gutenberg.org/1/2/2/4/12244/ + +Produced by Janet Kegg and PG Distributed Proofreaders + +Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions +will be renamed. + +Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no +one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation +(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without +permission and without paying copyright royalties. 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