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diff --git a/12491-0.txt b/12491-0.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..fef7a08 --- /dev/null +++ b/12491-0.txt @@ -0,0 +1,2443 @@ +*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 12491 *** + +TWELVE TYPES + +BY G.K. CHESTERTON + +LONDON +ARTHUR L. HUMPHREYS +1902 + + +NOTE + +These papers, with certain alterations and additions, are reprinted with +the kind permission of the Editors of _The Daily News_ and _The Speaker_. + +G.K.C. +KENSINGTON. + + + + +CONTENTS + + +CHARLOTTE BRONTË +WILLIAM MORRIS AND HIS SCHOOL +THE OPTIMISM OF BYRON +POPE AND THE ART OF SATIRE +FRANCIS +ROSTAND +CHARLES II +STEVENSON +THOMAS CARLYLE +TOLSTOY AND THE CULT OF SIMPLICITY +SAVONAROLA +THE POSITION OF SIR WALTER SCOTT + + + + +CHARLOTTE BRONTË + + +Objection is often raised against realistic biography because it reveals +so much that is important and even sacred about a man's life. The real +objection to it will rather be found in the fact that it reveals about a +man the precise points which are unimportant. It reveals and asserts and +insists on exactly those things in a man's life of which the man himself +is wholly unconscious; his exact class in society, the circumstances of +his ancestry, the place of his present location. These are things which +do not, properly speaking, ever arise before the human vision. They do +not occur to a man's mind; it may be said, with almost equal truth, that +they do not occur in a man's life. A man no more thinks about himself as +the inhabitant of the third house in a row of Brixton villas than he +thinks about himself as a strange animal with two legs. What a man's +name was, what his income was, whom he married, where he lived, these +are not sanctities; they are irrelevancies. + +A very strong case of this is the case of the Brontës. The Brontë is in +the position of the mad lady in a country village; her eccentricities +form an endless source of innocent conversation to that exceedingly mild +and bucolic circle, the literary world. The truly glorious gossips of +literature, like Mr Augustine Birrell and Mr Andrew Lang, never tire of +collecting all the glimpses and anecdotes and sermons and side-lights +and sticks and straws which will go to make a Brontë museum. They are +the most personally discussed of all Victorian authors, and the +limelight of biography has left few darkened corners in the dark old +Yorkshire house. And yet the whole of this biographical investigation, +though natural and picturesque, is not wholly suitable to the Brontës. +For the Brontë genius was above all things deputed to assert the supreme +unimportance of externals. Up to that point truth had always been +conceived as existing more or less in the novel of manners. Charlotte +Brontë electrified the world by showing that an infinitely older and +more elemental truth could be conveyed by a novel in which no person, +good or bad, had any manners at all. Her work represents the first great +assertion that the humdrum life of modern civilisation is a disguise as +tawdry and deceptive as the costume of a 'bal masqué.' She showed that +abysses may exist inside a governess and eternities inside a +manufacturer; her heroine is the commonplace spinster, with the dress of +merino and the soul of flame. It is significant to notice that Charlotte +Brontë, following consciously or unconsciously the great trend of her +genius, was the first to take away from the heroine not only the +artificial gold and diamonds of wealth and fashion, but even the natural +gold and diamonds of physical beauty and grace. Instinctively she felt +that the whole of the exterior must be made ugly that the whole of the +interior might be made sublime. She chose the ugliest of women in the +ugliest of centuries, and revealed within them all the hells and heavens +of Dante. + +It may, therefore, I think, be legitimately said that the externals of +the Brontës' life, though singularly picturesque in themselves, matter +less than the externals of almost any other writers. It is interesting +to know whether Jane Austen had any knowledge of the lives of the +officers and women of fashion whom she introduced into her masterpieces. +It is interesting to know whether Dickens had ever seen a shipwreck or +been inside a workhouse. For in these authors much of the conviction is +conveyed, not always by adherence to facts, but always by grasp of them. +But the whole aim and purport and meaning of the work of the Brontës is +that the most futile thing in the whole universe is fact. Such a story +as 'Jane Eyre' is in itself so monstrous a fable that it ought to be +excluded from a book of fairy tales. The characters do not do what they +ought to do, nor what they would do, nor, it might be said, such is the +insanity of the atmosphere, not even what they intend to do. The conduct +of Rochester is so primevally and superhumanly caddish that Bret Harte +in his admirable travesty scarcely exaggerated it. 'Then, resuming his +usual manner, he threw his boots at my head and withdrew,' does perhaps +reach to something resembling caricature. The scene in which Rochester +dresses up as an old gipsy has something in it which is really not to be +found in any other branch of art, except in the end of the pantomime, +where the Emperor turns into a pantaloon. Yet, despite this vast +nightmare of illusion and morbidity and ignorance of the world, 'Jane +Eyre' is perhaps the truest book that was ever written. Its essential +truth to life sometimes makes one catch one's breath. For it is not true +to manners, which are constantly false, or to facts, which are almost +always false; it is true to the only existing thing which is true, +emotion, the irreducible minimum, the indestructible germ. It would not +matter a single straw if a Brontë story were a hundred times more +moonstruck and improbable than 'Jane Eyre,' or a hundred times more +moonstruck and improbable than 'Wuthering Heights.' It would not matter +if George Read stood on his head, and Mrs Read rode on a dragon, if +Fairfax Rochester had four eyes and St John Rivers three legs, the story +would still remain the truest story in the world. The typical Brontë +character is, indeed, a kind of monster. Everything in him except the +essential is dislocated. His hands are on his legs and his feet on his +arms, his nose is above his eyes, but his heart is in the right place. + +The great and abiding truth for which the Brontë cycle of fiction stands +is a certain most important truth about the enduring spirit of youth, +the truth of the near kinship between terror and joy. The Brontë +heroine, dingily dressed, badly educated, hampered by a humiliating +inexperience, a kind of ugly innocence, is yet, by the very fact of her +solitude and her gaucherie, full of the greatest delight that is +possible to a human being, the delight of expectation, the delight of an +ardent and flamboyant ignorance. She serves to show how futile it is of +humanity to suppose that pleasure can be attained chiefly by putting on +evening dress every evening, and having a box at the theatre every first +night. It is not the man of pleasure who has pleasure; it is not the man +of the world who appreciates the world. The man who has learnt to do all +conventional things perfectly has at the same time learnt to do them +prosaically. It is the awkward man, whose evening dress does not fit +him, whose gloves will not go on, whose compliments will not come off, +who is really full of the ancient ecstasies of youth. He is frightened +enough of society actually to enjoy his triumphs. He has that element +of fear which is one of the eternal ingredients of joy. This spirit is +the central spirit of the Brontë novel. It is the epic of the +exhilaration of the shy man. As such it is of incalculable value in our +time, of which the curse is that it does not take joy reverently because +it does not take it fearfully. The shabby and inconspicuous governess of +Charlotte Brontë, with the small outlook and the small creed, had more +commerce with the awful and elemental forces which drive the world than +a legion of lawless minor poets. She approached the universe with real +simplicity, and, consequently, with real fear and delight. She was, so +to speak, shy before the multitude of the stars, and in this she had +possessed herself of the only force which can prevent enjoyment being +as black and barren as routine. The faculty of being shy is the first +and the most delicate of the powers of enjoyment. The fear of the Lord +is the beginning of pleasure. + +Upon the whole, therefore, I think it may justifiably be said that the +dark wild youth of the Brontës in their dark wild Yorkshire home has +been somewhat exaggerated as a necessary factor in their work and their +conception. The emotions with which they dealt were universal emotions, +emotions of the morning of existence, the springtide joy and the +springtide terror. Every one of us as a boy or girl has had some +midnight dream of nameless obstacle and unutterable menace, in which +there was, under whatever imbecile forms, all the deadly stress and +panic of 'Wuthering Heights.' Every one of us has had a day-dream of our +own potential destiny not one atom more reasonable than 'Jane Eyre.' And +the truth which the Brontës came to tell us is the truth that many +waters cannot quench love, and that suburban respectability cannot touch +or damp a secret enthusiasm. Clapham, like every other earthly city, is +built upon a volcano. Thousands of people go to and fro in the +wilderness of bricks and mortar, earning mean wages, professing a mean +religion, wearing a mean attire, thousands of women who have never found +any expression for their exaltation or their tragedy but to go on +working harder and yet harder at dull and automatic employments, at +scolding children or stitching shirts. But out of all these silent ones +one suddenly became articulate, and spoke a resonant testimony, and her +name was Charlotte Brontë. Spreading around us upon every side to-day +like a huge and radiating geometrical figure are the endless branches of +the great city. There are times when we are almost stricken crazy, as +well we may be, by the multiplicity of those appalling perspectives, the +frantic arithmetic of that unthinkable population. But this thought of +ours is in truth nothing but a fancy. There are no chains of houses; +there are no crowds of men. The colossal diagram of streets and houses +is an illusion, the opium dream of a speculative builder. Each of these +men is supremely solitary and supremely important to himself. Each of +these houses stands in the centre of the world. There is no single +house of all those millions which has not seemed to some one at some +time the heart of all things and the end of travel. + + + + +WILLIAM MORRIS AND HIS SCHOOL + + +It is proper enough that the unveiling of the bust of William Morris +should approximate to a public festival, for while there have been many +men of genius in the Victorian era more despotic than he, there have +been none so representative. He represents not only that rapacious +hunger for beauty which has now for the first time become a serious +problem in the healthy life of humanity, but he represents also that +honourable instinct for finding beauty in common necessities of +workmanship which gives it a stronger and more bony structure. The time +has passed when William Morris was conceived to be irrelevant to be +described as a designer of wall-papers. If Morris had been a hatter +instead of a decorator, we should have become gradually and painfully +conscious of an improvement in our hats. If he had been a tailor, we +should have suddenly found our frock-coats trailing on the ground with +the grandeur of mediæval raiment. If he had been a shoemaker, we should +have found, with no little consternation, our shoes gradually +approximating to the antique sandal. As a hairdresser, he would have +invented some massing of the hair worthy to be the crown of Venus; as an +ironmonger, his nails would have had some noble pattern, fit to be the +nails of the Cross. The limitations of William Morris, whatever they +were, were not the limitations of common decoration. It is true that all +his work, even his literary work, was in some sense decorative, had in +some degree the qualities of a splendid wall-paper. His characters, his +stories, his religious and political views, had, in the most emphatic +sense, length and breadth without thickness. He seemed really to believe +that men could enjoy a perfectly flat felicity. He made no account of +the unexplored and explosive possibilities of human nature, of the +unnameable terrors, and the yet more unnameable hopes. So long as a man +was graceful in every circumstance, so long as he had the inspiring +consciousness that the chestnut colour of his hair was relieved against +the blue forest a mile behind, he would be serenely happy. So he would +be, no doubt, if he were really fitted for a decorative existence; if he +were a piece of exquisitely coloured cardboard. + +But although Morris took little account of the terrible solidity of +human nature--took little account, so to speak, of human figures in the +round, it is altogether unfair to represent him as a mere æsthete. He +perceived a great public necessity and fulfilled it heroically. The +difficulty with which he grappled was one so immense that we shall have +to be separated from it by many centuries before we can really judge of +it. It was the problem of the elaborate and deliberate ugliness of the +most self-conscious of centuries. Morris at least saw the absurdity of +the thing. He felt that it was monstrous that the modern man, who was +pre-eminently capable of realising the strangest and most contradictory +beauties, who could feel at once the fiery aureole of the ascetic, and +the colossal calm of the Hellenic god, should himself, by a farcical +bathos, be buried in a black coat, and hidden under a chimney-pot hat. +He could not see why the harmless man who desired to be an artist in +raiment should be condemned to be, at best, a black and white artist. It +is indeed difficult to account for the clinging curse of ugliness which +blights everything brought forth by the most prosperous of centuries. In +all created nature there is not, perhaps, anything so completely ugly as +a pillar-box. Its shape is the most unmeaning of shapes, its height and +thickness just neutralising each other; its colour is the most +repulsive of colours--a fat and soulless red, a red without a touch of +blood or fire, like the scarlet of dead men's sins. Yet there is no +reason whatever why such hideousness should possess an object full of +civic dignity, the treasure-house of a thousand secrets, the fortress of +a thousand souls. If the old Greeks had had such an institution, we may +be sure that it would have been surmounted by the severe, but graceful, +figure of the god of letter-writing. If the mediæval Christians had +possessed it, it would have had a niche filled with the golden aureole +of St Rowland of the Postage Stamps. As it is, there it stands at all +our street-corners, disguising one of the most beautiful of ideas under +one of the most preposterous of forms. It is useless to deny that the +miracles of science have not been such an incentive to art and +imagination as were the miracles of religion. If men in the twelfth +century had been told that the lightning had been driven for leagues +underground, and had dragged at its destroying tail loads of laughing +human beings, and if they had then been told that the people alluded to +this pulverising portent chirpily as 'The Twopenny Tube,' they would +have called down the fire of Heaven on us as a race of half-witted +atheists. Probably they would have been quite right. + +This clear and fine perception of what may be called the anæsthetic +element in the Victorian era was, undoubtedly, the work of a great +reformer: it requires a fine effort of the imagination to see an evil +that surrounds us on every side. The manner in which Morris carried out +his crusade may, considering the circumstances, be called triumphant. +Our carpets began to bloom under our feet like the meadows in spring, +and our hitherto prosaic stools and sofas seemed growing legs and arms +at their own wild will. An element of freedom and rugged dignity came in +with plain and strong ornaments of copper and iron. So delicate and +universal has been the revolution in domestic art that almost every +family in England has had its taste cunningly and treacherously +improved, and if we look back at the early Victorian drawing-rooms it is +only to realise the strange but essential truth that art, or human +decoration, has, nine times out of ten in history, made things uglier +than they were before, from the 'coiffure' of a Papuan savage to the +wall-paper of a British merchant in 1830. + +But great and beneficent as was the æsthetic revolution of Morris, there +was a very definite limit to it. It did not lie only in the fact that +his revolution was in truth a reaction, though this was a partial +explanation of his partial failure. When he was denouncing the dresses +of modern ladies, 'upholstered like arm-chairs instead of being draped +like women,' as he forcibly expressed it, he would hold up for practical +imitation the costumes and handicrafts of the Middle Ages. Further than +this retrogressive and imitative movement he never seemed to go. Now, +the men of the time of Chaucer had many evil qualities, but there was at +least one exhibition of moral weakness they did not give. They would +have laughed at the idea of dressing themselves in the manner of the +bowmen at the battle of Senlac, or painting themselves an æsthetic blue, +after the custom of the ancient Britons. They would not have called that +a movement at all. Whatever was beautiful in their dress or manners +sprang honestly and naturally out of the life they led and preferred to +lead. And it may surely be maintained that any real advance in the +beauty of modern dress must spring honestly and naturally out of the +life we lead and prefer to lead. We are not altogether without hints and +hopes of such a change, in the growing orthodoxy of rough and athletic +costumes. But if this cannot be, it will be no substitute or +satisfaction to turn life into an interminable historical fancy-dress +ball. But the limitation of Morris's work lay deeper than this. We may +best suggest it by a method after his own heart. Of all the various +works he performed, none, perhaps, was so splendidly and solidly +valuable as his great protest for the fables and superstitions of +mankind. He has the supreme credit of showing that the fairy-tales +contain the deepest truth of the earth, the real record of men's feeling +for things. Trifling details may be inaccurate, Jack may not have +climbed up so tall a beanstalk, or killed so tall a giant; but it is not +such things that make a story false; it is a far different class of +things that makes every modern book of history as false as the father of +lies; ingenuity, self-consciousness, hypocritical impartiality. It +appears to us that of all the fairy-tales none contains so vital a +moral truth as the old story, existing in many forms, of Beauty and the +Beast. There is written, with all the authority of a human scripture, +the eternal and essential truth that until we love a thing in all its +ugliness we cannot make it beautiful. This was the weak point in William +Morris as a reformer: that he sought to reform modern life, and that he +hated modern life instead of loving it. Modern London is indeed a beast, +big enough and black enough to be the beast in Apocalypse, blazing with +a million eyes, and roaring with a million voices. But unless the poet +can love this fabulous monster as he is, can feel with some generous +excitement his massive and mysterious 'joie-de-vivre,' the vast scale of +his iron anatomy and the beating of his thunderous heart, he cannot and +will not change the beast into the fairy prince. Morris's disadvantage +was that he was not honestly a child of the nineteenth century: he could +not understand its fascination, and consequently he could not really +develop it. An abiding testimony to his tremendous personal influence in +the æsthetic world is the vitality and recurrence of the Arts and Crafts +Exhibitions, which are steeped in his personality like a chapel in that +of a saint. If we look round at the exhibits in one of these æsthetic +shows, we shall be struck by the large mass of modern objects that the +decorative school leaves untouched. There is a noble instinct for giving +the right touch of beauty to common and necessary things, but the things +that are so touched are the ancient things, the things that always to +some extent commended themselves to the lover of beauty. There are +beautiful gates, beautiful fountains, beautiful cups, beautiful chairs, +beautiful reading-desks. But there are no modern things made beautiful. +There are no beautiful lamp-posts, beautiful letter-boxes, beautiful +engines, beautiful bicycles. The spirit of William Morris has not seized +hold of the century and made its humblest necessities beautiful. And +this was because, with all his healthiness and energy, he had not the +supreme courage to face the ugliness of things; Beauty shrank from the +Beast and the fairy-tale had a different ending. + +But herein, indeed, lay Morris's deepest claim to the name of a great +reformer: that he left his work incomplete. There is, perhaps, no better +proof that a man is a mere meteor, merely barren and brilliant, than +that his work is done perfectly. A man like Morris draws attention to +needs he cannot supply. In after-years we may have perhaps a newer and +more daring Arts and Crafts Exhibition. In it we shall not decorate the +armour of the twelfth century but the machinery of the twentieth. A +lamp-post shall be wrought nobly in twisted iron, fit to hold the +sanctity of fire. A pillar-box shall be carved with figures emblematical +of the secrets of comradeship and the silence and honour of the State. +Railway signals, of all earthly things the most poetical, the coloured +stars of life and death, shall be lamps of green and crimson worthy of +their terrible and faithful service. But if ever this gradual and +genuine movement of our time towards beauty--not backwards, but +forwards--does truly come about, Morris will be the first prophet of it. +Poet of the childhood of nations, craftsman in the new honesties of art, +prophet of a merrier and wiser life, his full-blooded enthusiasm will be +remembered when human life has once more assumed flamboyant colours and +proved that this painful greenish grey of the æsthetic twilight in which +we now live is, in spite of all the pessimists, not of the greyness of +death, but the greyness of dawn. + + + + +THE OPTIMISM OF BYRON + +Everything is against our appreciating the spirit and the age of Byron. +The age that has just passed from us is always like a dream when we wake +in the morning, a thing incredible and centuries away. And the world of +Byron seems a sad and faded world, a weird and inhuman world, where men +were romantic in whiskers, ladies lived, apparently, in bowers, and the +very word has the sound of a piece of stage scenery. Roses and +nightingales recur in their poetry with the monotonous elegance of a +wall-paper pattern. The whole is like a revel of dead men, a revel with +splendid vesture and half-witted faces. + +But the more shrewdly and earnestly we study the histories of men, the +less ready shall we be to make use of the word "artificial." Nothing in +the world has ever been artificial. Many customs, many dresses, many +works of art are branded with artificiality because they exhibit vanity +and self-consciousness: as if vanity were not a deep and elemental +thing, like love and hate and the fear of death. Vanity may be found in +darkling deserts, in the hermit and in the wild beasts that crawl around +him. It may be good or evil, but assuredly it is not artificial: vanity +is a voice out of the abyss. + +The remarkable fact is, however, and it bears strongly on the present +position of Byron, that when a thing is unfamiliar to us, when it is +remote and the product of some other age or spirit, we think it not +savage or terrible, but merely artificial. There are many instances of +this: a fair one is the case of tropical plants and birds. When we see +some of the monstrous and flamboyant blossoms that enrich the equatorial +woods, we do not feel that they are conflagrations of nature; silent +explosions of her frightful energy. We simply find it hard to believe +that they are not wax flowers grown under a glass case. When we see some +of the tropic birds, with their tiny bodies attached to gigantic beaks, +we do not feel that they are freaks of the fierce humour of Creation. We +almost believe that they are toys out of a child's play-box, +artificially carved and artificially coloured. So it is with the great +convulsion of Nature which was known as Byronism. The volcano is not an +extinct volcano now; it is the dead stick of a rocket. It is the remains +not of a natural but of an artificial fire. + +But Byron and Byronism were something immeasurably greater than anything +that is represented by such a view as this: their real value and meaning +are indeed little understood. The first of the mistakes about Byron lies +in the fact that he is treated as a pessimist. True, he treated himself +as such, but a critic can hardly have even a slight knowledge of Byron +without knowing that he had the smallest amount of knowledge of himself +that ever fell to the lot of an intelligent man. The real character of +what is known as Byron's pessimism is better worth study than any real +pessimism could ever be. + +It is the standing peculiarity of this curious world of ours that almost +everything in it has been extolled enthusiastically and invariably +extolled to the disadvantage of everything else. + +One after another almost every one of the phenomena of the universe has +been declared to be alone capable of making life worth living. Books, +love, business, religion, alcohol, abstract truth, private emotion, +money, simplicity, mysticism, hard work, a life close to nature, a life +close to Belgrave Square are every one of them passionately maintained +by somebody to be so good that they redeem the evil of an otherwise +indefensible world. Thus while the world is almost always condemned in +summary, it is always justified, and indeed extolled, in detail after +detail. + +Existence has been praised and absolved by a chorus of pessimists. The +work of giving thanks to Heaven is, as it were, divided ingeniously +among them. Schopenhauer is told off as a kind of librarian in the House +of God, to sing the praises of the austere pleasures of the mind. +Carlyle, as steward, undertakes the working department and eulogises a +life of labour in the fields. Omar Khayyam is established in the cellar +and swears that it is the only room in the house. Even the blackest of +pessimistic artists enjoys his art. At the precise moment that he has +written some shameless and terrible indictment of Creation, his one pang +of joy in the achievement joins the universal chorus of gratitude, with +the scent of the wild flower and the song of the bird. + +Now Byron had a sensational popularity, and that popularity was, as far +as words and explanations go, founded upon his pessimism. He was adored +by an overwhelming majority, almost every individual of which despised +the majority of mankind. But when we come to regard the matter a little +more deeply we tend in some degree to cease to believe in this +popularity of the pessimist. The popularity of pure and unadulterated +pessimism is an oddity; it is almost a contradiction in terms. Men would +no more receive the news of the failure of existence or of the +harmonious hostility of the stars with ardour or popular rejoicing than +they would light bonfires for the arrival of cholera or dance a +breakdown when they were condemned to be hanged. When the pessimist is +popular it must always be not because he shows all things to be bad, but +because he shows some things to be good. Men can only join in a chorus +of praise even if it is the praise of denunciation. The man who is +popular must be optimistic about something even if he is only optimistic +about pessimism. And this was emphatically the case with Byron and the +Byronists. Their real popularity was founded not upon the fact that they +blamed everything, but upon the fact that they praised something. They +heaped curses upon man, but they used man merely as a foil. The things +they wished to praise by comparison were the energies of Nature. Man was +to them what talk and fashion were to Carlyle, what philosophical and +religious quarrels were to Omar, what the whole race after practical +happiness was to Schopenhauer, the thing which must be censured in order +that somebody else may be exalted. It was merely a recognition of the +fact that one cannot write in white chalk except on a blackboard. + +Surely it is ridiculous to maintain seriously that Byron's love of the +desolate and inhuman in nature was the mark of vital scepticism and +depression. When a young man can elect deliberately to walk alone in +winter by the side of the shattering sea, when he takes pleasure in +storms and stricken peaks, and the lawless melancholy of the older +earth, we may deduce with the certainty of logic that he is very young +and very happy. There is a certain darkness which we see in wine when +seen in shadow; we see it again in the night that has just buried a +gorgeous sunset. The wine seems black, and yet at the same time +powerfully and almost impossibly red; the sky seems black, and yet at +the same time to be only too dense a blend of purple and green. Such was +the darkness which lay around the Byronic school. Darkness with them was +only too dense a purple. They would prefer the sullen hostility of the +earth because amid all the cold and darkness their own hearts were +flaming like their own firesides. + +Matters are very different with the more modern school of doubt and +lamentation. The last movement of pessimism is perhaps expressed in Mr +Aubrey Beardsley's allegorical designs. Here we have to deal with a +pessimism which tends naturally not towards the oldest elements of the +cosmos, but towards the last and most fantastic fripperies of artificial +life. Byronism tended towards the desert; the new pessimism towards the +restaurant. Byronism was a revolt against artificiality; the new +pessimism is a revolt in its favour. The Byronic young man had an +affectation of sincerity; the decadent, going a step deeper into the +avenues of the unreal, has positively an affectation of affectation. And +it is by their fopperies and their frivolities that we know that their +sinister philosophy is sincere; in their lights and garlands and ribbons +we read their indwelling despair. It was so, indeed, with Byron himself; +his really bitter moments were his frivolous moments. He went on year +after year calling down fire upon mankind, summoning the deluge and the +destructive sea and all the ultimate energies of nature to sweep away +the cities of the spawn of man. But through all this his sub-conscious +mind was not that of a despairer; on the contrary, there is something of +a kind of lawless faith in thus parleying with such immense and +immemorial brutalities. It was not until the time in which he wrote 'Don +Juan' that he really lost this inward warmth and geniality, and a sudden +shout of hilarious laughter announced to the world that Lord Byron had +really become a pessimist. + +One of the best tests in the world of what a poet really means is his +metre. He may be a hypocrite in his metaphysics, but he cannot be a +hypocrite in his prosody. And all the time that Byron's language is of +horror and emptiness, his metre is a bounding 'pas de quatre.' He may +arraign existence on the most deadly charges, he may condemn it with the +most desolating verdict, but he cannot alter the fact that on some walk +in a spring morning when all the limbs are swinging and all the blood +alive in the body, the lips may be caught repeating: + + 'Oh, there's not a joy the world can give like that it takes away, + When the glow of early youth declines in beauty's dull decay; + 'Tis not upon the cheek of youth the blush that fades so fast, + But the tender bloom of heart is gone ere youth itself be past.' + +That automatic recitation is the answer to the whole pessimism of Byron. + +The truth is that Byron was one of a class who may be called the +unconscious optimists, who are very often, indeed, the most +uncompromising conscious pessimists, because the exuberance of their +nature demands for an adversary a dragon as big as the world. But the +whole of his essential and unconscious being was spirited and confident, +and that unconscious being, long disguised and buried under emotional +artifices, suddenly sprang into prominence in the face of a cold, hard, +political necessity. In Greece he heard the cry of reality, and at the +time that he was dying, he began to live. He heard suddenly the call of +that buried and sub-conscious happiness which is in all of us, and which +may emerge suddenly at the sight of the grass of a meadow or the spears +of the enemy. + + + + +POPE AND THE ART OF SATIRE + + +The general critical theory common in this and the last century is that +it was very easy for the imitators of Pope to write English poetry. The +classical couplet was a thing that anyone could do. So far as that goes, +one may justifiably answer by asking any one to try. It may be easier +really to have wit, than really, in the boldest and most enduring sense, +to have imagination. But it is immeasurably easier to pretend to have +imagination than to pretend to have wit. A man may indulge in a sham +rhapsody, because it may be the triumph of a rhapsody to be +unintelligible. But a man cannot indulge in a sham joke, because it is +the ruin of a joke to be unintelligible. A man may pretend to be a poet: +he can no more pretend to be a wit than he can pretend to bring rabbits +out of a hat without having learnt to be a conjuror. Therefore, it may +be submitted, there was a certain discipline in the old antithetical +couplet of Pope and his followers. If it did not permit of the great +liberty of wisdom used by the minority of great geniuses, neither did it +permit of the great liberty of folly which is used by the majority of +small writers. A prophet could not be a poet in those days, perhaps, but +at least a fool could not be a poet. If we take, for the sake of +example, such a line as Pope's + + 'Damn with faint praise, assent with civil leer,' + +the test is comparatively simple. A great poet would not have written +such a line, perhaps. But a minor poet could not. + +Supposing that a lyric poet of the new school really had to deal with +such an idea as that expressed in Pope's line about Man: + + 'A being darkly wise and rudely great.' + +Is it really so certain that he would go deeper into the matter than +that old antithetical jingle goes? I venture to doubt whether he would +really be any wiser or weirder or more imaginative or more profound. The +one thing that he would really be, would be longer. Instead of writing + + 'A being darkly wise and rudely great,' + +the contemporary poet, in his elaborately ornamented book of verses, +would produce something like the following:-- + + 'A creature + Of feature + More dark, more dark, more dark than skies, + Yea, darkly wise, yea, darkly wise: + Darkly wise as a formless fate + And if he be great + If he be great, then rudely great, + Rudely great as a plough that plies, + And darkly wise, and darkly wise.' + +Have we really learnt to think more broadly? Or have we only learnt to +spread our thoughts thinner? I have a dark suspicion that a modern poet +might manufacture an admirable lyric out of almost every line of Pope. + +There is, of course, an idea in our time that the very antithesis of +the typical line of Pope is a mark of artificiality. I shall have +occasion more than once to point out that nothing in the world has ever +been artificial. But certainly antithesis is not artificial. An element +of paradox runs through the whole of existence itself. It begins in the +realm of ultimate physics and metaphysics, in the two facts that we +cannot imagine a space that is infinite, and that we cannot imagine a +space that is finite. It runs through the inmost complications of +divinity, in that we cannot conceive that Christ in the wilderness was +truly pure, unless we also conceive that he desired to sin. It runs, in +the same manner, through all the minor matters of morals, so that we +cannot imagine courage existing except in conjunction with fear, or +magnanimity existing except in conjunction with some temptation to +meanness. If Pope and his followers caught this echo of natural +irrationality, they were not any the more artificial. Their antitheses +were fully in harmony with existence, which is itself a contradiction in +terms. + +Pope was really a great poet; he was the last great poet of +civilisation. Immediately after the fall of him and his school come +Burns and Byron, and the reaction towards the savage and the elemental. +But to Pope civilisation was still an exciting experiment. Its perruques +and ruffles were to him what feathers and bangles are to a South Sea +Islander--the real romance of civilisation. And in all the forms of art +which peculiarly belong to civilisation, he was supreme. In one +especially he was supreme--the great and civilised art of satire. And +in this we have fallen away utterly. + +We have had a great revival in our time of the cult of violence and +hostility. Mr Henley and his young men have an infinite number of +furious epithets with which to overwhelm any one who differs from them. +It is not a placid or untroubled position to be Mr Henley's enemy, +though we know that it is certainly safer than to be his friend. And +yet, despite all this, these people produce no satire. Political and +social satire is a lost art, like pottery and stained glass. It may be +worth while to make some attempt to point out a reason for this. + +It may seem a singular observation to say that we are not generous +enough to write great satire. This, however, is approximately a very +accurate way of describing the case. To write great satire, to attack a +man so that he feels the attack and half acknowledges its justice, it is +necessary to have a certain intellectual magnanimity which realises the +merits of the opponent as well as his defects. This is, indeed, only +another way of putting the simple truth that in order to attack an army +we must know not only its weak points, but also its strong points. +England in the present season and spirit fails in satire for the same +simple reason that it fails in war: it despises the enemy. In matters of +battle and conquest we have got firmly rooted in our minds the idea (an +idea fit for the philosophers of Bedlam) that we can best trample on a +people by ignoring all the particular merits which give them a chance +of trampling upon us. It has become a breach of etiquette to praise the +enemy; whereas when the enemy is strong every honest scout ought to +praise the enemy. It is impossible to vanquish an army without having a +full account of its strength. It is impossible to satirise a man without +having a full account of his virtues. It is too much the custom in +politics to describe a political opponent as utterly inhumane, as +utterly careless of his country, as utterly cynical, which no man ever +was since the beginning of the world. This kind of invective may often +have a great superficial success: it may hit the mood of the moment; it +may raise excitement and applause; it may impress millions. But there is +one man among all those millions whom it does not impress, whom it +hardly even touches; that is the man against whom it is directed. The +one person for whom the whole satire has been written in vain is the man +whom it is the whole object of the institution of satire to reach. He +knows that such a description of him is not true. He knows that he is +not utterly unpatriotic, or utterly self-seeking, or utterly barbarous +and revengeful. He knows that he is an ordinary man, and that he can +count as many kindly memories, as many humane instincts, as many hours +of decent work and responsibility as any other ordinary man. But behind +all this he has his real weaknesses, the real ironies of his soul: +behind all these ordinary merits lie the mean compromises, the craven +silences, the sullen vanities, the secret brutalities, the unmanly +visions of revenge. It is to these that satire should reach if it is to +touch the man at whom it is aimed. And to reach these it must pass and +salute a whole army of virtues. + +If we turn to the great English satirists of the seventeenth and +eighteenth centuries, for example, we find that they had this rough but +firm grasp of the size and strength, the value and the best points of +their adversary. Dryden, before hewing Ahitophel in pieces, gives a +splendid and spirited account of the insane valour and inspired cunning +of the + + 'daring pilot in extremity,' + +who was more untrustworthy in calm than in storm, and + + 'Steered too near the rocks to boast his wit.' + +The whole is, so far as it goes, a sound and picturesque version of the +great Shaftesbury. It would, in many ways, serve as a very sound and +picturesque account of Lord Randolph Churchill. But here comes in very +pointedly the difference between our modern attempts at satire and the +ancient achievement of it. The opponents of Lord Randolph Churchill, +both Liberal and Conservative, did not satirise him nobly and honestly, +as one of those great wits to madness near allied. They represented him +as a mere puppy, a silly and irreverent upstart whose impudence supplied +the lack of policy and character. Churchill had grave and even gross +faults, a certain coarseness, a certain hard boyish assertiveness, a +certain lack of magnanimity, a certain peculiar patrician vulgarity. But +he was a much larger man than satire depicted him, and therefore the +satire could not and did not overwhelm him. And here we have the cause +of the failure of contemporary satire, that it has no magnanimity, that +is to say, no patience. It cannot endure to be told that its opponent +has his strong points, just as Mr Chamberlain could not endure to be +told that the Boers had a regular army. It can be content with nothing +except persuading itself that its opponent is utterly bad or utterly +stupid--that is, that he is what he is not and what nobody else is. If +we take any prominent politician of the day--such, for example, as Sir +William Harcourt--we shall find that this is the point in which all +party invective fails. The Tory satire at the expense of Sir William +Harcourt is always desperately endeavouring to represent that he is +inept, that he makes a fool of himself, that he is disagreeable and +disgraceful and untrustworthy. The defect of all this is that we all +know that it is untrue. Everyone knows that Sir William Harcourt is not +inept, but is almost the ablest Parliamentarian now alive. Everyone +knows that he is not disagreeable or disgraceful, but a gentleman of the +old school who is on excellent social terms with his antagonists. +Everyone knows that he is not untrustworthy, but a man of unimpeachable +honour who is much trusted. Above all, he knows it himself, and is +therefore affected by the satire exactly as any one of us would be if we +were accused of being black or of keeping a shop for the receiving of +stolen goods. We might be angry at the libel, but not at the satire; for +a man is angry at a libel because it is false, but at a satire because +it is true. + +Mr Henley and his young men are very fond of invective and satire: if +they wish to know the reason of their failure in these things, they need +only turn to the opening of Pope's superb attack upon Addison. The +Henleyite's idea of satirising a man is to express a violent contempt +for him, and by the heat of this to persuade others and himself that the +man is contemptible. I remember reading a satiric attack on Mr Gladstone +by one of the young anarchic Tories, which began by asserting that Mr +Gladstone was a bad public speaker. If these people would, as I have +said, go quietly and read Pope's 'Atticus,' they would see how a great +satirist approaches a great enemy: + + 'Peace to all such! But were there one whose fires + True genius kindles, and fair fame inspires, + Blest with each talent, and each art to please, + And born to write, converse, and live with ease. + Should such a man--' + +And then follows the torrent of that terrible criticism. Pope was not +such a fool as to try to make out that Addison was a fool. He knew that +Addison was not a fool, and he knew that Addison knew it. But hatred, in +Pope's case, had become so great and, I was almost going to say, so +pure, that it illuminated all things, as love illuminates all things. He +said what was really wrong with Addison; and in calm and clear and +everlasting colours he painted the picture of the evil of the literary +temperament: + + 'Bear like the Turk, no brother near the throne, + View him with scornful, yet with jealous eyes, + And hate for arts that caused himself to rise. + + * * * * * + + Like Cato give his little Senate laws, + And sit attentive to his own applause. + While wits and templars every sentence raise, + And wonder with a foolish face of praise.' + +This is the kind of thing which really goes to the mark at which it +aims. It is penetrated with sorrow and a kind of reverence, and it is +addressed directly to a man. This is no mock-tournament to gain the +applause of the crowd. It is a deadly duel by the lonely seashore. + +In current political materialism there is everywhere the assumption +that, without understanding anything of his case or his merits, we can +benefit a man practically. Without understanding his case and his +merits, we cannot even hurt him. + + + + +FRANCIS + + +Asceticism is a thing which in its very nature, we tend in these days to +misunderstand. Asceticism, in the religious sense, is the repudiation of +the great mass of human joys because of the supreme joyfulness of the +one joy, the religious joy. But asceticism is not in the least confined +to religious asceticism: there is scientific asceticism which asserts +that truth is alone satisfying: there is æsthetic asceticism which +asserts that art is alone satisfying: there is amatory asceticism which +asserts that love is alone satisfying. There is even epicurean +asceticism, which asserts that beer and skittles are alone satisfying. +Wherever the manner of praising anything involves the statement that the +speaker could live with that thing alone, there lies the germ and +essence of asceticism. When William Morris, for example, says that 'love +is enough,' it is obvious that he asserts in those words that art, +science, politics, ambition, money, houses, carriages, concerts, gloves, +walking-sticks, door-knockers, railway-stations, cathedrals and any +other things one may choose to tabulate are unnecessary. When Omar +Khayyam says: + + 'A book of verse beneath the bough + A loaf of bread, a jug of wine and thou + Sitting beside me in the wilderness + O wilderness were Paradise enow.' + +It is clear that he speaks fully as much ascetically as he does +æsthetically. He makes a list of things and says that he wants no more. +The same thing was done by a mediæval monk. Examples might, of course, +be multiplied a hundred-fold. One of the most genuinely poetical of our +younger poets says, as the one thing certain, that + + 'From quiet home and first beginning + Out to the undiscovered ends-- + There's nothing worth the wear of winning + But laughter and the love of friends.' + +Here we have a perfect example of the main important fact, that all true +joy expresses itself in terms of asceticism. + +But if in any case it should happen that a class or a generation lose +the sense of the peculiar kind of joy which is being celebrated, they +immediately begin to call the enjoyers of that joy gloomy and +self-destroying. The most formidable liberal philosophers have called +the monks melancholy because they denied themselves the pleasures of +liberty and marriage. They might as well call the trippers on a Bank +Holiday melancholy because they deny themselves, as a rule, the +pleasures of silence and meditation. A simpler and stronger example is, +however, to hand. If ever it should happen that the system of English +athletics should vanish from the public schools and the universities, if +science should supply some new and non-competitive manner of perfecting +the physique, if public ethics swung round to an attitude of absolute +contempt and indifference towards the feeling called sport, then it is +easy to see what would happen. Future historians would simply state +that in the dark days of Queen Victoria young men at Oxford and +Cambridge were subjected to a horrible sort of religious torture. They +were forbidden, by fantastic monastic rules, to indulge in wine or +tobacco during certain arbitrarily fixed periods of time, before certain +brutal fights and festivals. Bigots insisted on their rising at +unearthly hours and running violently around fields for no object. Many +men ruined their health in these dens of superstition, many died there. +All this is perfectly true and irrefutable. Athleticism in England is an +asceticism, as much as the monastic rules. Men have over-strained +themselves and killed themselves through English athleticism. There is +one difference and one only: we do feel the love of sport; we do not +feel the love of religious offices. We see only the price in the one +case and only the purchase in the other. + +The only question that remains is what was the joy of the old Christian +ascetics of which their ascetism was merely the purchasing price. The +mere possibility of the query is an extraordinary example of the way in +which we miss the main points of human history. We are looking at +humanity too close, and see only the details and not the vast and +dominant features. We look at the rise of Christianity, and conceive it +as a rise of self-abnegation and almost of pessimism. It does not occur +to us that the mere assertion that this raging and confounding universe +is governed by justice and mercy is a piece of staggering optimism fit +to set all men capering. The detail over which these monks went mad with +joy was the universe itself; the only thing really worthy of enjoyment. +The white daylight shone over all the world, the endless forests stood +up in their order. The lightning awoke and the tree fell and the sea +gathered into mountains and the ship went down, and all these +disconnected and meaningless and terrible objects were all part of one +dark and fearful conspiracy of goodness, one merciless scheme of mercy. +That this scheme of Nature was not accurate or well founded is perfectly +tenable, but surely it is not tenable that it was not optimistic. We +insist, however, upon treating this matter tail foremost. We insist that +the ascetics were pessimists because they gave up threescore years and +ten for an eternity of happiness. We forget that the bare proposition +of an eternity of happiness is by its very nature ten thousand times +more optimistic than ten thousand pagan saturnalias. + +Mr Adderley's life of Francis of Assisi does not, of course, bring this +out; nor does it fully bring out the character of Francis. It has rather +the tone of a devotional book. A devotional book is an excellent thing, +but we do not look in it for the portrait of a man, for the same reason +that we do not look in a love-sonnet for the portrait of a woman, +because men in such conditions of mind not only apply all virtues to +their idol, but all virtues in equal quantities. There is no outline, +because the artist cannot bear to put in a black line. This blaze of +benediction, this conflict between lights, has its place in poetry, not +in biography. The successful examples of it may be found, for instance, +in the more idealistic odes of Spenser. The design is sometimes almost +indecipherable, for the poet draws in silver upon white. + +It is natural, of course, that Mr Adderley should see Francis primarily +as the founder of the Franciscan Order. We suspect this was only one, +perhaps a minor one, of the things that he was; we suspect that one of +the minor things that Christ did was to found Christianity. But the vast +practical work of Francis is assuredly not to be ignored, for this +amazingly unworldly and almost maddeningly simple--minded infant was one +of the most consistently successful men that ever fought with this +bitter world. It is the custom to say that the secret of such men is +their profound belief in themselves, and this is true, but not all the +truth. Workhouses and lunatic asylums are thronged with men who believe +in themselves. Of Francis it is far truer to say that the secret of his +success was his profound belief in other people, and it is the lack of +this that has commonly been the curse of these obscure Napoleons. +Francis always assumed that everyone must be just as anxious about their +common relative, the water-rat, as he was. He planned a visit to the +Emperor to draw his attention to the needs of 'his little sisters the +larks.' He used to talk to any thieves and robbers he met about their +misfortune in being unable to give rein to their desire for holiness. It +was an innocent habit, and doubtless the robbers often 'got round him,' +as the phrase goes. Quite as often, however, they discovered that he had +'got round' them, and discovered the other side, the side of secret +nobility. + +Conceiving of St Francis as primarily the founder of the Franciscan +Order, Mr Adderley opens his narrative with an admirable sketch of the +history of Monasticism in Europe, which is certainly the best thing in +the book. He distinguishes clearly and fairly between the Manichæan +ideal that underlies so much of Eastern Monasticism and the ideal of +self-discipline which never wholly vanished from the Christian form. But +he does not throw any light on what must be for the outsider the +absorbing problem of this Catholic asceticism, for the excellent reason +that not being an outsider he does not find it a problem at all. + +To most people, however, there is a fascinating inconsistency in the +position of St Francis. He expressed in loftier and bolder language than +any earthly thinker the conception that laughter is as divine as tears. +He called his monks the mountebanks of God. He never forgot to take +pleasure in a bird as it flashed past him, or a drop of water as it fell +from his finger: he was, perhaps, the happiest of the sons of men. Yet +this man undoubtedly founded his whole polity on the negation of what we +think the most imperious necessities; in his three vows of poverty, +chastity, and obedience, he denied to himself and those he loved most, +property, love, and liberty. Why was it that the most large-hearted and +poetic spirits in that age found their most congenial atmosphere in +these awful renunciations? Why did he who loved where all men were +blind, seek to blind himself where all men loved? Why was he a monk, and +not a troubadour? These questions are far too large to be answered fully +here, but in any life of Francis they ought at least to have been asked; +we have a suspicion that if they were answered we should suddenly find +that much of the enigma of this sullen time of ours was answered also. +So it was with the monks. The two great parties in human affairs are +only the party which sees life black against white, and the party which +sees it white against black, the party which macerates and blackens +itself with sacrifice because the background is full of the blaze of an +universal mercy, and the party which crowns itself with flowers and +lights itself with bridal torches because it stands against a black +curtain of incalculable night. The revellers are old, and the monks are +young. It was the monks who were the spendthrifts of happiness, and we +who are its misers. + +Doubtless, as is apparent from Mr Adderley's book, the clear and +tranquil life of the Three Vows had a fine and delicate effect on the +genius of Francis. He was primarily a poet. The perfection of his +literary instinct is shown in his naming the fire 'brother,' and the +water 'sister,' in the quaint demagogic dexterity of the appeal in the +sermon to the fishes 'that they alone were saved in the Flood.' In the +amazingly minute and graphic dramatisation of the life, disappointments +and excuses of any shrub or beast that he happened to be addressing, +his genius has a curious resemblance to that of Burns. But if he avoided +the weakness of Burns' verses to animals, the occasional morbidity, +bombast and moralisation on himself, the credit is surely due to a +cleaner and more transparent life. + +The general attitude of St Francis, like that of his Master, embodied a +kind of terrible common-sense. The famous remark of the Caterpillar in +'Alice in Wonderland'--'Why not?' impresses us as his general motto. He +could not see why he should not be on good terms with all things. The +pomp of war and ambition, the great empire of the Middle Ages and all +its fellows begin to look tawdry and top-heavy, under the rationality of +that innocent stare. His questions were blasting and devastating, like +the questions of a child. He would not have been afraid even of the +nightmares of cosmogony, for he had no fear in him. To him the world was +small, not because he had any views as to its size, but for the reason +that gossiping ladies find it small, because so many relatives were to +be found in it. If you had taken him to the loneliest star that the +madness of an astronomer can conceive, he would have only beheld in it +the features of a new friend. + + + + +ROSTAND + + +When 'Cyrano de Bergerac' was published, it bore the subordinate title +of a heroic comedy. We have no tradition in English literature which +would justify us in calling a comedy heroic, though there was once a +poet who called a comedy divine. By the current modern conception, the +hero has his place in a tragedy, and the one kind of strength which is +systematically denied to him is the strength to succeed. That the power +of a man's spirit might possibly go to the length of turning a tragedy +into a comedy is not admitted; nevertheless, almost all the primitive +legends of the world are comedies, not only in the sense that they have +a happy ending, but in the sense that they are based upon a certain +optimistic assumption that the hero is destined to be the destroyer of +the monster. Singularly enough, this modern idea of the essential +disastrous character of life, when seriously considered, connects itself +with a hyper-æsthetic view of tragedy and comedy which is largely due to +the influence of modern France, from which the great heroic comedies of +Monsieur Rostand have come. The French genius has an instinct for +remedying its own evil work, and France gives always the best cure for +'Frenchiness.' The idea of comedy which is held in England by the school +which pays most attention to the technical niceties of art is a view +which renders such an idea as that of heroic comedy quite impossible. +The fundamental conception in the minds of the majority of our younger +writers is that comedy is, 'par excellence,' a fragile thing. It is +conceived to be a conventional world of the most absolutely delicate and +gimcrack description. Such stories as Mr Max Beerbohm's 'Happy +Hypocrite' are conceptions which would vanish or fall into utter +nonsense if viewed by one single degree too seriously. But great comedy, +the comedy of Shakespeare or Sterne, not only can be, but must be, taken +seriously. There is nothing to which a man must give himself up with +more faith and self-abandonment than to genuine laughter. In such +comedies one laughs with the heroes and not at them. The humour which +steeps the stories of Falstaff and Uncle Toby is a cosmic and +philosophic humour, a geniality which goes down to the depths. It is not +superficial reading, it is not even, strictly speaking, light reading. +Our sympathies are as much committed to the characters as if they were +the predestined victims in a Greek tragedy. The modern writer of +comedies may be said to boast of the brittleness of his characters. He +seems always on the eve of knocking his puppets to pieces. When John +Oliver Hobbes wrote for the first time a comedy of serious emotions, she +named it, with a thinly-disguised contempt for her own work, 'A +Sentimental Comedy.' The ground of this conception of the artificiality +of comedy is a profound pessimism. Life in the eyes of these mournful +buffoons is itself an utterly tragic thing; comedy must be as hollow as +a grinning mask. It is a refuge from the world, and not even, properly +speaking, a part of it. Their wit is a thin sheet of shining ice over +the eternal waters of bitterness. + +'Cyrano de Bergerac' came to us as the new decoration of an old truth, +that merriment was one of the world's natural flowers, and not one of +its exotics. The gigantesque levity, the flamboyant eloquence, the +Rabelaisian puns and digressions were seen to be once more what they had +been in Rabelais, the mere outbursts of a human sympathy and bravado as +old and solid as the stars. The human spirit demanded wit as headlong +and haughty as its will. All was expressed in the words of Cyrano at +his highest moment of happiness. 'Il me faut des géants.' An essential +aspect of this question of heroic comedy is the question of drama in +rhyme. There is nothing that affords so easy a point of attack for the +dramatic realist as the conduct of a play in verse. According to his +canons, it is indeed absurd to represent a number of characters facing +some terrible crisis in their lives by capping rhymes like a party +playing 'bouts rimés.' In his eyes it must appear somewhat ridiculous +that two enemies taunting each other with insupportable insults should +obligingly provide each other with metrical spacing and neat and +convenient rhymes. But the whole of this view rests finally upon the +fact that few persons, if any, to-day understand what is meant by a +poetical play. It is a singular thing that those poetical plays which +are now written in England by the most advanced students of the drama +follow exclusively the lines of Maeterlinck, and use verse and rhyme for +the adornment of a profoundly tragic theme. But rhyme has a supreme +appropriateness for the treatment of the higher comedy. The land of +heroic comedy is, as it were, a paradise of lovers, in which it is not +difficult to imagine that men could talk poetry all day long. It is far +more conceivable that men's speech should flower naturally into these +harmonious forms, when they are filled with the essential spirit of +youth, than when they are sitting gloomily in the presence of immemorial +destiny. The great error consists in supposing that poetry is an +unnatural form of language. We should all like to speak poetry at the +moment when we truly live, and if we do not speak it, it is because we +have an impediment in our speech. It is not song that is the narrow or +artificial thing, it is conversation that is a broken and stammering +attempt at song. When we see men in a spiritual extravaganza, like +Cyrano de Bergerac, speaking in rhyme, it is not our language disguised +or distorted, but our language rounded and made whole. Rhymes answer +each other as the sexes in flowers and in humanity answer each other. +Men do not speak so, it is true. Even when they are inspired or in love +they talk inanities. But the poetic comedy does not misrepresent the +speech one half so much, as the speech misrepresents the soul. Monsieur +Rostand showed even more than his usual insight when he called 'Cyrano +de Bergerac' a comedy, despite the fact that, strictly speaking, it ends +with disappointment and death. The essence of tragedy is a spiritual +breakdown or decline, and in the great French play the spiritual +sentiment mounts unceasingly until the last line. It is not the facts +themselves, but our feeling about them, that makes tragedy and comedy, +and death is more joyful in Rostand than life in Maeterlinck. The same +apparent contradiction holds good in the case of the drama of +'L'Aiglon,' now being performed with so much success. Although the hero +is a weakling, the subject a fiasco, the end a premature death and a +personal disillusionment, yet, in spite of this theme, which might have +been chosen for its depressing qualities, the unconquerable pæan of the +praise of things, the ungovernable gaiety of the poet's song swells so +high that at the end it seems to drown all the weak voices of the +characters in one crashing chorus of great things and great men. A +multitude of mottoes might be taken from the play to indicate and +illustrate, not only its own spirit, but much of the spirit of modern +life. When in the vision of the field of Wagram the horrible voices of +the wounded cry out, 'Les corbeaux, les corbeaux,' the Duke, overwhelmed +with a nightmare of hideous trivialities, cries out, 'Où, où sont les +aigles?' That antithesis might stand alone as an invocation at the +beginning of the twentieth century to the spirit of heroic comedy. When +an ex-General of Napoleon is asked his reason for having betrayed the +Emperor, he replies, 'La fatigue,' and at that a veteran private of the +Great Army rushes forward, and crying passionately, 'Et nous?' pours out +a terrible description of the life lived by the common soldier. To-day +when pessimism is almost as much a symbol of wealth and fashion as +jewels or cigars, when the pampered heirs of the ages can sum up life in +few other words but 'la fatigue,' there might surely come a cry from the +vast mass of common humanity from the beginning 'et nous?' It is this +potentiality for enthusiasm among the mass of men that makes the +function of comedy at once common and sublime. Shakespeare's 'Much Ado +about Nothing' is a great comedy, because behind it is the whole +pressure of that love of love which is the youth of the world, which is +common to all the young, especially to those who swear they will die +bachelors and old maids. 'Love's Labour Lost' is filled with the same +energy, and there it falls even more definitely into the scope of our +subject since it is a comedy in rhyme in which all men speak lyrically +as naturally as the birds sing in pairing time. What the love of love is +to the Shakespearian comedies, that other and more mysterious human +passion, the love of death, is to 'L'Aiglon.' Whether we shall ever have +in England a new tradition of poetic comedy it is difficult at present +to say, but we shall assuredly never have it until we realise that +comedy is built upon everlasting foundations in the nature of things, +that it is not a thing too light to capture, but too deep to plumb. +Monsieur Rostand, in his description of the Battle of Wagram, does not +shrink from bringing about the Duke's ears the frightful voices of +actual battle, of men torn by crows, and suffocated with blood, but when +the Duke, terrified at these dreadful appeals, asks them for their final +word, they all cry together 'Vive l'Empereur!' Monsieur Rostand, +perhaps, did not know that he was writing an allegory. To me that field +of Wagram is the field of the modern war of literature. We hear nothing +but the voices of pain; the whole is one phonograph of horror. It is +right that we should hear these things, it is right that not one of them +should be silenced; but these cries of distress are not in life as they +are in modern art the only voices, they are the voices of men, but not +the voice of man. When questioned finally and seriously as to their +conception of their destiny, men have from the beginning of time +answered in a thousand philosophies and religions with a single voice +and in a sense most sacred and tremendous, 'Vive l'Empereur.' + + + + +CHARLES II + + +There are a great many bonds which still connect us with Charles II., +one of the idlest men of one of the idlest epochs. Among other things +Charles II. represented one thing which is very rare and very +satisfying; he was a real and consistent sceptic. Scepticism both in its +advantages and disadvantages is greatly misunderstood in our time. There +is a curious idea abroad that scepticism has some connection with such +theories as materialism and atheism and secularism. This is of course a +mistake; the true sceptic has nothing to do with these theories simply +because they are theories. The true sceptic is as much a spiritualist as +he is a materialist. He thinks that the savage dancing round an African +idol stands quite as good a chance of being right as Darwin. He thinks +that mysticism is every bit as rational as rationalism. He has indeed +the most profound doubts as to whether St Matthew wrote his own gospel. +But he has quite equally profound doubts as to whether the tree he is +looking at is a tree and not a rhinoceros. + +This is the real meaning of that mystery which appears so prominently in +the lives of great sceptics, which appears with especial prominence in +the life of Charles II. I mean their constant oscillation between +atheism and Roman Catholicism. Roman Catholicism is indeed a great and +fixed and formidable system, but so is atheism. Atheism is indeed the +most daring of all dogmas, more daring than the vision of a palpable day +of judgment. For it is the assertion of a universal negative; for a man +to say that there is no God in the universe is like saying that there +are no insects in any of the stars. + +Thus it was with that wholesome and systematic sceptic, Charles II. When +he took the Sacrament according to the forms of the Roman Church in his +last hour he was acting consistently as a philosopher. The wafer might +not be God; similarly it might not be a wafer. To the genuine and +poetical sceptic the whole world is incredible, with its bulbous +mountains and its fantastic trees. The whole order of things is as +outrageous as any miracle which could presume to violate it. +Transubstantiation might be a dream, but if it was, it was assuredly a +dream within a dream. Charles II. sought to guard himself against hell +fire because he could not think hell itself more fantastic than the +world as it was revealed by science. The priest crept up the staircase, +the doors were closed, the few of the faithful who were present hushed +themselves respectfully, and so, with every circumstance of secrecy and +sanctity, with the cross uplifted and the prayers poured out, was +consummated the last great act of logical unbelief. + +The problem of Charles II. consists in this, that he has scarcely a +moral virtue to his name, and yet he attracts us morally. We feel that +some of the virtues have been dropped out in the lists made by all the +saints and sages, and that Charles II. was pre-eminently successful in +these wild and unmentionable virtues. The real truth of this matter and +the real relation of Charles II. to the moral ideal is worth somewhat +more exhaustive study. + +It is a commonplace that the Restoration movement can only be understood +when considered as a reaction against Puritanism. But it is +insufficiently realised that the tyranny which half frustrated all the +good work of Puritanism was of a very peculiar kind. It was not the fire +of Puritanism, the exultation in sobriety, the frenzy of a restraint, +which passed away; that still burns in the heart of England, only to be +quenched by the final overwhelming sea. But it is seldom remembered that +the Puritans were in their day emphatically intellectual bullies, that +they relied swaggeringly on the logical necessity of Calvinism, that +they bound omnipotence itself in the chains of syllogism. The Puritans +fell, through the damning fact that they had a complete theory of life, +through the eternal paradox that a satisfactory explanation can never +satisfy. Like Brutus and the logical Romans, like the logical French +Jacobins, like the logical English utilitarians, they taught the lesson +that men's wants have always been right and their arguments always +wrong. Reason is always a kind of brute force; those who appeal to the +head rather than the heart, however pallid and polite, are necessarily +men of violence. We speak of 'touching' a man's heart, but we can do +nothing to his head but hit it. The tyranny of the Puritans over the +bodies of men was comparatively a trifle; pikes, bullets, and +conflagrations are comparatively a trifle. Their real tyranny was the +tyranny of aggressive reason over the cowed and demoralised human +spirit. Their brooding and raving can be forgiven, can in truth be loved +and reverenced, for it is humanity on fire; hatred can be genial, +madness can be homely. The Puritans fell, not because they were +fanatics, but because they were rationalists. + +When we consider these things, when we remember that Puritanism, which +means in our day a moral and almost temperamental attitude, meant in +that day a singularly arrogant logical attitude, we shall comprehend a +little more the grain of good that lay in the vulgarity and triviality +of the Restoration. The Restoration, of which Charles II. was a +pre-eminent type, was in part a revolt of all the chaotic and unclassed +parts of human nature, the parts that are left over, and will always be +left over, by every rationalistic system of life. This does not merely +account for the revolt of the vices and of that empty recklessness and +horseplay which is sometimes more irritating than any vice. It accounts +also for the return of the virtue of politeness, for that also is a +nameless thing ignored by logical codes. Politeness has indeed about it +something mystical; like religion, it is everywhere understood and +nowhere defined. Charles is not entirely to be despised because, as the +type of this movement, he let himself float upon this new tide of +politeness. There was some moral and social value in his perfection in +little things. He could not keep the Ten Commandments, but he kept the +ten thousand commandments. His name is unconnected with any great acts +of duty or sacrifice, but it is connected with a great many of those +acts of magnanimous politeness, of a kind of dramatic delicacy, which +lie on the dim borderland between morality and art. 'Charles II.,' said +Thackeray, with unerring brevity, 'was a rascal but not a snob.' Unlike +George IV. he was a gentleman, and a gentleman is a man who obeys +strange statutes, not to be found in any moral text-book, and practises +strange virtues nameless from the beginning of the world. + +So much may be said and should be said for the Restoration, that it was +the revolt of something human, if only the débris of human nature. But +more cannot be said. It was emphatically a fall and not an ascent, a +recoil and not an advance, a sudden weakness and not a sudden strength. +That the bow of human nature was by Puritanism bent immeasurably too +far, that it overstrained the soul by stretching it to the height of an +almost horrible idealism, makes the collapse of the Restoration +infinitely more excusable, but it does not make it any the less a +collapse. Nothing can efface the essential distinction that Puritanism +was one of the world's great efforts after the discovery of the true +order, whereas it was the essence of the Restoration that it involved no +effort at all. It is true that the Restoration was not, as has been +widely assumed, the most immoral epoch of our history. Its vices cannot +compare for a moment in this respect with the monstrous tragedies and +almost suffocating secrecies and villainies of the Court of James I. But +the dram-drinking and nose-slitting of the saturnalia of Charles II. +seem at once more human and more detestable than the passions and +poisons of the Renaissance, much in the same way that a monkey appears +inevitably more human and more detestable than a tiger. Compared with +the Renaissance, there is something Cockney about the Restoration. Not +only was it too indolent for great morality, it was too indolent even +for great art. It lacked that seriousness which is needed even for the +pursuit of pleasure, that discipline which is essential even to a game +of lawn tennis. It would have appeared to Charles II.'s poets quite as +arduous to write 'Paradise Lost' as to regain Paradise. + +All old and vigorous languages abound in images and metaphors, which, +though lightly and casually used, are in truth poems in themselves, and +poems of a high and striking order. Perhaps no phrase is so terribly +significant as the phrase 'killing time.' It is a tremendous and +poetical image, the image of a kind of cosmic parricide. There is on the +earth a race of revellers who do, under all their exuberance, +fundamentally regard time as an enemy. Of these were Charles II. and the +men of the Restoration. Whatever may have been their merits, and as we +have said we think that they had merits, they can never have a place +among the great representatives of the joy of life, for they belonged +to those lower epicureans who kill time, as opposed to those higher +epicureans who make time live. + +Of a people in this temper Charles II. was the natural and rightful +head. He may have been a pantomime King, but he was a King, and with all +his geniality he let nobody forget it. He was not, indeed, the aimless +flaneur that he has been represented. He was a patient and cunning +politician, who disguised his wisdom under so perfect a mask of folly +that he not only deceived his allies and opponents, but has deceived +almost all the historians that have come after him. But if Charles was, +as he emphatically was, the only Stuart who really achieved despotism, +it was greatly due to the temper of the nation and the age. Despotism is +the easiest of all governments, at any rate for the governed. + +It is indeed a form of slavery, and it is the despot who is the slave. +Men in a state of decadence employ professionals to fight for them, +professionals to dance for them, and a professional to rule them. + +Almost all the faces in the portraits of that time look, as it were, +like masks put on artificially with the perruque. A strange unreality +broods over the period. Distracted as we are with civic mysteries and +problems, we can afford to rejoice. Our tears are less desolate than +their laughter, our restraints are larger than their liberty. + + + + +STEVENSON[A] + + +A recent incident has finally convinced us that Stevenson was, as we +suspected, a great man. We knew from recent books that we have noticed, +from the scorn of 'Ephemera Critica' and Mr George Moore, that Stevenson +had the first essential qualification of a great man: that of being +misunderstood by his opponents. But from the book which Messrs Chatto & +Windus have issued, in the same binding as Stevenson's works, 'Robert +Louis Stevenson,' by Mr H. Bellyse Baildon, we learn that he +has the other essential qualification, that of being misunderstood by +his admirers. Mr Baildon has many interesting things to tell us about +Stevenson himself, whom he knew at college. Nor are his criticisms by +any means valueless. That upon the plays, especially 'Beau Austin,' is +remarkably thoughtful and true. But it is a very singular fact, and goes +far, as we say, to prove that Stevenson had that unfathomable quality +which belongs to the great, that this admiring student of Stevenson can +number and marshal all the master's work and distribute praise and blame +with decision and even severity, without ever thinking for a moment of +the principles of art and ethics which would have struck us as the very +things that Stevenson nearly killed himself to express. + +Mr Baildon, for example, is perpetually lecturing Stevenson for his +'pessimism'; surely a strange charge against the man who has done more +than any modern artist to make men ashamed of their shame of life. But +he complains that, in 'The Master of Ballantrae' and 'Dr Jekyll and Mr +Hyde,' Stevenson gives evil a final victory over good. Now if there was +one point that Stevenson more constantly and passionately emphasised +than any other it was that we must worship good for its own value and +beauty, without any reference whatever to victory or failure in space +and time. 'Whatever we are intended to do,' he said, 'we are not +intended to succeed.' That the stars in their courses fight against +virtue, that humanity is in its nature a forlorn hope, this was the very +spirit that through the whole of Stevenson's work sounded a trumpet to +all the brave. The story of Henry Durie is dark enough, but could anyone +stand beside the grave of that sodden monomaniac and not respect him? It +is strange that men should see sublime inspiration in the ruins of an +old church and see none in the ruins of a man. + +The author has most extraordinary ideas about Stevenson's tales of blood +and spoil; he appears to think that they prove Stevenson to have had (we +use Mr Baildon's own phrase) a kind of 'homicidal mania.' 'He +(Stevenson) arrives pretty much at the paradox that one can hardly be +better employed than in taking life.' Mr Baildon might as well say that +Dr Conan Doyle delights in committing inexplicable crimes, that Mr Clark +Russell is a notorious pirate, and that Mr Wilkie Collins thought that +one could hardly be better employed than in stealing moonstones and +falsifying marriage registers. But Mr Baildon is scarcely alone in this +error: few people have understood properly the goriness of Stevenson. +Stevenson was essentially the robust schoolboy who draws skeletons and +gibbets in his Latin grammar. It was not that he took pleasure in death, +but that he took pleasure in life, in every muscular and emphatic action +of life, even if it were an action that took the life of another. + +Let us suppose that one gentleman throws a knife at another gentleman +and pins him to the wall. It is scarcely necessary to remark that there +are in this transaction two somewhat varying personal points of view. +The point of view of the man pinned is the tragic and moral point of +view, and this Stevenson showed clearly that he understood in such +stories as 'The Master of Ballantrae' and 'Weir of Hermiston.' But there +is another view of the matter--that in which the whole act is an abrupt +and brilliant explosion of bodily vitality, like breaking a rock with a +blow of a hammer, or just clearing a five-barred gate. This is the +standpoint of romance, and it is the soul of 'Treasure Island' and 'The +Wrecker.' It was not, indeed, that Stevenson loved men less, but that he +loved clubs and pistols more. He had, in truth, in the devouring +universalism of his soul, a positive love for inanimate objects such as +has not been known since St Francis called the sun brother and the well +sister. We feel that he was actually in love with the wooden crutch +that Silver sent hurtling in the sunlight, with the box that Billy Bones +left at the 'Admiral Benbow,' with the knife that Wicks drove through +his own hand and the table. There is always in his work a certain +clean-cut angularity which makes us remember that he was fond of cutting +wood with an axe. + +Stevenson's new biographer, however, cannot make any allowance for this +deep-rooted poetry of mere sight and touch. He is always imputing +something to Stevenson as a crime which Stevenson really professed as an +object. He says of that glorious riot of horror, 'The Destroying Angel,' +in 'The Dynamiter,' that it is 'highly fantastic and putting a strain on +our credulity.' This is rather like describing the travels of Baron +Munchausen as 'unconvincing.' The whole story of 'The Dynamiter' is a +kind of humorous nightmare, and even in that story 'The Destroying +Angel' is supposed to be an extravagant lie made up on the spur of the +moment. It is a dream within a dream, and to accuse it of improbability +is like accusing the sky of being blue. But Mr Baildon, whether from +hasty reading or natural difference of taste, cannot in the least +comprehend the rich and romantic irony of Stevenson's London stories. He +actually says of that portentous monument of humour, Prince Florizel of +Bohemia, that, 'though evidently admired by his creator, he is to me on +the whole rather an irritating presence.' From this we are almost driven +to believe (though desperately and against our will) that Mr Baildon +thinks that Prince Florizel is to be taken seriously, as if he were a +man in real life. For ourselves, Prince Florizel is almost our favourite +character in fiction; but we willingly add the proviso that if we met +him in real life we should kill him. + +The fact is, that the whole mass of Stevenson's spiritual and +intellectual virtues have been partly frustrated by one additional +virtue--that of artistic dexterity. If he had chalked up his great +message on a wall, like Walt Whitman, in large and straggling letters, +it would have startled men like a blasphemy. But he wrote his +light-headed paradoxes in so flowing a copy-book hand that everyone +supposed they must be copy-book sentiments. He suffered from his +versatility, not, as is loosely said, by not doing every department well +enough, but by doing every department too well. As child, cockney, +pirate, or Puritan, his disguises were so good that most people could +not see the same man under all. It is an unjust fact that if a man can +play the fiddle, give legal opinions, and black boots just tolerably, he +is called an Admirable Crichton, but if he does all three thoroughly +well, he is apt to be regarded, in the several departments, as a common +fiddler, a common lawyer, and a common boot-black. This is what has +happened in the case of Stevenson. If 'Dr Jekyll,' 'The Master of +Ballantrae,' 'The Child's Garden of Verses,' and 'Across the Plains' had +been each of them one shade less perfectly done than they were, everyone +would have seen that they were all parts of the same message; but by +succeeding in the proverbial miracle of being in five places at once, +he has naturally convinced others that he was five different people. But +the real message of Stevenson was as simple as that of Mahomet, as moral +as that of Dante, as confident as that of Whitman, and as practical as +that of James Watt. + +The conception which unites the whole varied work of Stevenson was that +romance, or the vision of the possibilities of things, was far more +important than mere occurrences: that one was the soul of our life, the +other the body, and that the soul was the precious thing. The germ of +all his stories lies in the idea that every landscape or scrap of +scenery has a soul: and that soul is a story. Standing before a stunted +orchard with a broken stone wall, we may know as a mere fact that no one +has been through it but an elderly female cook. But everything exists +in the human soul: that orchard grows in our own brain, and there it is +the shrine and theatre of some strange chance between a girl and a +ragged poet and a mad farmer. Stevenson stands for the conception that +ideas are the real incidents: that our fancies are our adventures. To +think of a cow with wings is essentially to have met one. And this is +the reason for his wide diversities of narrative: he had to make one +story as rich as a ruby sunset, another as grey as a hoary monolith: for +the story was the soul, or rather the meaning, of the bodily vision. It +is quite inappropriate to judge 'The Teller of Tales' (as the Samoans +called him) by the particular novels he wrote, as one would judge Mr +George Moore by 'Esther Waters.' These novels were only the two or +three of his soul's adventures that he happened to tell. But he died +with a thousand stories in his heart. + +[Footnote A: 'Robert Louis Stevenson: A Life Study in Criticism.' By H. +Bellyse Baildon. Chatto & Windus.] + + + + +THOMAS CARLYLE + + +There are two main moral necessities for the work of a great man: the +first is that he should believe in the truth of his message; the second +is that he should believe in the acceptability of his message. It was +the whole tragedy of Carlyle that he had the first and not the second. + +The ordinary capital, however, which is made out of Carlyle's alleged +gloom is a very paltry matter. Carlyle had his faults, both as a man and +as a writer, but the attempt to explain his gospel in terms of his +'liver' is merely pitiful. If indigestion invariably resulted in a +'Sartor Resartus,' it would be a vastly more tolerable thing than it is. +Diseases do not turn into poems; even the decadent really writes with +the healthy part of his organism. If Carlyle's private faults and +literary virtues ran somewhat in the same line, he is only in the +situation of every man; for every one of us it is surely very difficult +to say precisely where our honest opinions end and our personal +predilections begin. But to attempt to denounce Carlyle as a mere savage +egotist cannot arise from anything but a pure inability to grasp +Carlyle's gospel. 'Ruskin,' says a critic, 'did, all the same, verily +believe in God; Carlyle believed only in himself.' This is certainly a +distinction between the author he has understood and the author he has +not understood. Carlyle believed in himself, but he could not have +believed in himself more than Ruskin did; they both believed in God, +because they felt that if everything else fell into wrack and ruin, +themselves were permanent witnesses to God. Where they both failed was +not in belief in God or in belief in themselves; they failed in belief +in other people. It is not enough for a prophet to believe in his +message; he must believe in its acceptability. Christ, St Francis, +Bunyan, Wesley, Mr Gladstone, Walt Whitman, men of indescribable +variety, were all alike in a certain faculty of treating the average man +as their equal, of trusting to his reason and good feeling without fear +and without condescension. It was this simplicity of confidence, not +only in God, but in the image of God, that was lacking in Carlyle. + +But the attempts to discredit Carlyle's religious sentiment must +absolutely fall to the ground. The profound security of Carlyle's sense +of the unity of the Cosmos is like that of a Hebrew prophet; and it has +the same expression that it had in the Hebrew prophets--humour. A man +must be very full of faith to jest about his divinity. No Neo-Pagan +delicately suggesting a revival of Dionysius, no vague, half-converted +Theosophist groping towards a recognition of Buddha, would ever think of +cracking jokes on the matter. But to the Hebrew prophets their religion +was so solid a thing, like a mountain or a mammoth, that the irony of +its contact with trivial and fleeting matters struck them like a blow. +So it was with Carlyle. His supreme contribution, both to philosophy and +literature, was his sense of the sarcasm of eternity. Other writers had +seen the hope or the terror of the heavens, he alone saw the humour of +them. Other writers had seen that there could be something elemental and +eternal in a song or statute, he alone saw that there could be something +elemental and eternal in a joke. No one who ever read it will forget the +passage, full of dark and agnostic gratification, in which he narrates +that some Court chronicler described Louis XV. as 'falling asleep in the +Lord.' 'Enough for us that he did fall asleep; that, curtained in thick +night, under what keeping we ask not, he at least will never, through +unending ages, insult the face of the sun any more ... and we go on, if +not to better forms of beastliness, at least to fresher ones.' + +The supreme value of Carlyle to English literature was that he was the +founder of modern irrationalism; a movement fully as important as modern +rationalism. A great deal is said in these days about the value or +valuelessness of logic. In the main, indeed, logic is not a productive +tool so much as a weapon of defence. A man building up an intellectual +system has to build like Nehemiah, with the sword in one hand and the +trowel in the other. The imagination, the constructive quality, is the +trowel, and argument is the sword. A wide experience of actual +intellectual affairs will lead most people to the conclusion that logic +is mainly valuable as a weapon wherewith to exterminate logicians. + +But though this may be true enough in practice, it scarcely clears up +the position of logic in human affairs. Logic is a machine of the mind, +and if it is used honestly it ought to bring out an honest conclusion. +When people say that you can prove anything by logic, they are not using +words in a fair sense. What they mean is that you can prove anything by +bad logic. Deep in the mystic ingratitude of the soul of man there is an +extraordinary tendency to use the name for an organ, when what is meant +is the abuse or decay of that organ. Thus we speak of a man suffering +from 'nerves,' which is about as sensible as talking about a man +suffering from ten fingers. We speak of 'liver' and 'digestion' when we +mean the failure of liver and the absence of digestion. And in the same +manner we speak of the dangers of logic, when what we really mean is the +danger of fallacy. + +But the real point about the limitation of logic and the partial +overthrow of logic by writers like Carlyle is deeper and somewhat +different. The fault of the great mass of logicians is not that they +bring out a false result, or, in other words, are not logicians at all. +Their fault is that by an inevitable psychological habit they tend to +forget that there are two parts of a logical process--the first the +choosing of an assumption, and the second the arguing upon it; and +humanity, if it devotes itself too persistently to the study of sound +reasoning, has a certain tendency to lose the faculty of sound +assumption. It is astonishing how constantly one may hear from rational +and even rationalistic persons such a phrase as 'He did not prove the +very thing with which he started,' or 'The whole of his case rested upon +a pure assumption,' two peculiarities which may be found by the curious +in the works of Euclid. It is astonishing, again, how constantly one +hears rationalists arguing upon some deep topic, apparently without +troubling about the deep assumptions involved, having lost their sense, +as it were, of the real colour and character of a man's assumption. For +instance, two men will argue about whether patriotism is a good thing +and never discover until the end, if at all, that the cosmopolitan is +basing his whole case upon the idea that man should, if he can, become +as God, with equal sympathies and no prejudices, while the nationalist +denies any such duty at the very start, and regards man as an animal +who has preferences, as a bird has feathers. + + * * * * * + +Thus it was with Carlyle: he startled men by attacking not arguments but +assumptions. He simply brushed aside all the matters which the men of +the nineteenth century held to be incontrovertible, and appealed +directly to the very different class of matters which they knew to be +true. He induced men to study less the truth of their reasoning, and +more the truth of the assumptions upon which they reasoned. Even where +his view was not the highest truth, it was always a refreshing and +beneficent heresy. He denied every one of the postulates upon which the +age of reason based itself. He denied the theory of progress which +assumed that we must be better off than the people of the twelfth +century. Whether we were better than the people of the twelfth century +according to him depended entirely upon whether we chose or deserved to +be. + +He denied every type and species of prop or association or support which +threw the responsibility upon civilisation or society, or anything but +the individual conscience. He has often been called a prophet. The real +ground of the truth of this phrase is often neglected. Since the last +era of purely religious literature, the era of English Puritanism, there +has been no writer in whose eyes the soul stood so much alone. + +Carlyle was, as we have suggested, a mystic, and mysticism was with him, +as with all its genuine professors, only a transcendent form of +common-sense. Mysticism and common-sense alike consist in a sense of the +dominance of certain truths and tendencies which cannot be formally +demonstrated or even formally named. Mysticism and common-sense are +alike appeals to realities that we all know to be real, but which have +no place in argument except as postulates. Carlyle's work did consist in +breaking through formulas, old and new, to these old and silent and +ironical sanities. Philosophers might abolish kings a hundred times +over, he maintained, they could not alter the fact that every man and +woman does choose a king and repudiate all the pride of citizenship for +the exultation of humility. If inequality of this kind was a weakness, +it was a weakness bound up with the very strength of the universe. +About hero worship, indeed, few critics have done the smallest justice +to Carlyle. Misled by those hasty and choleric passages in which he +sometimes expressed a preference for mere violence, passages which were +a great deal more connected with his temperament than with his +philosophy, they have finally imbibed the notion that Carlyle's theory +of hero worship was a theory of terrified submission to stern and +arrogant men. As a matter of fact, Carlyle is really inhumane about some +questions, but he is never inhumane about hero worship. His view is not +that human nature is so vulgar and silly a thing that it must be guided +and driven; it is, on the contrary, that human nature is so chivalrous +and fundamentally magnanimous a thing that even the meanest have it in +them to love a leader more than themselves, and to prefer loyalty to +rebellion. When he speaks of this trait in human nature Carlyle's tone +invariably softens. We feel that for the moment he is kindled with +admiration of mankind, and almost reaches the verge of Christianity. +Whatever else was acid and captious about Carlyle's utterances, his hero +worship was not only humane, it was almost optimistic. He admired great +men primarily, and perhaps correctly, because he thought that they were +more human than other men. The evil side of the influence of Carlyle and +his religion of hero worship did not consist in the emotional worship of +valour and success; that was a part of him, as, indeed, it is a part of +all healthy children. Where Carlyle really did harm was in the fact that +he, more than any modern man, is responsible for the increase of that +modern habit of what is vulgarly called 'Going the whole hog.' Often in +matters of passion and conquest it is a singularly hoggish hog. This +remarkable modern craze for making one's philosophy, religion, politics, +and temper all of a piece, of seeking in all incidents for opportunities +to assert and reassert some favourite mental attitude, is a thing which +existed comparatively little in other centuries. Solomon and Horace, +Petrarch and Shakespeare were pessimists when they were melancholy, and +optimists when they were happy. But the optimist of to-day seems obliged +to prove that gout and unrequited love make him dance with joy, and the +pessimist of to-day to prove that sunshine and a good supper convulse +him with inconsolable anguish. Carlyle was strongly possessed with this +mania for spiritual consistency. He wished to take the same view of the +wars of the angels and of the paltriest riot at Donnybrook Fair. It was +this species of insane logic which led him into his chief errors, never +his natural enthusiasms. Let us take an example. Carlyle's defence of +slavery is a thoroughly ridiculous thing, weak alike in argument and in +moral instinct. The truth is, that he only took it up from the passion +for applying everywhere his paradoxical defence of aristocracy. He +blundered, of course, because he did not see that slavery has nothing in +the world to do with aristocracy, that it is, indeed, almost its +opposite. The defence which Carlyle and all its thoughtful defenders +have made for aristocracy was that a few persons could more rapidly and +firmly decide public affairs in the interests of the people. But slavery +is not even supposed to be a government for the good of the governed. It +is a possession of the governed avowedly for the good of the governors. +Aristocracy uses the strong for the service of the weak; slavery uses +the weak for the service of the strong. It is no derogation to man as a +spiritual being, as Carlyle firmly believed he was, that he should be +ruled and guided for his own good like a child--for a child who is +always ruled and guided we regard as the very type of spiritual +existence. But it is a derogation and an absolute contradiction to that +human spirituality in which Carlyle believed that a man should be owned +like a tool for someone else's good, as if he had no personal destiny +in the Cosmos. We draw attention to this particular error of Carlyle's +because we think that it is a curious example of the waste and unclean +places into which that remarkable animal, 'the whole hog,' more than +once led him. + +In this respect Carlyle has had unquestionably long and an +unquestionably bad influence. The whole of that recent political ethic +which conceives that if we only go far enough we may finish a thing for +once and all, that being strong consists chiefly in being deliberately +deaf and blind, owes a great deal of its complete sway to his example. +Out of him flows most of the philosophy of Nietzsche, who is in modern +times the supreme maniac of this moonstruck consistency. Though +Nietzsche and Carlyle were in reality profoundly different, Carlyle +being a stiff-necked peasant and Nietzsche a very fragile aristocrat, +they were alike in this one quality of which we speak, the strange and +pitiful audacity with which they applied their single ethical test to +everything in heaven and earth. The disciple of Nietzsche, indeed, +embraces immorality like an austere and difficult faith. He urges +himself to lust and cruelty with the same tremulous enthusiasm with +which a Christian urges himself to purity and patience; he struggles as +a monk struggles with bestial visions and temptations with the ancient +necessities of honour and justice and compassion. To this madhouse, it +can hardly be denied, has Carlyle's intellectual courage brought many at +last. + + + + +TOLSTOY AND THE CULT OF SIMPLICITY + + +The whole world is certainly heading for a great simplicity, not +deliberately, but rather inevitably. It is not a mere fashion of false +innocence, like that of the French aristocrats before the Revolution, +who built an altar to Pan, and who taxed the peasantry for the enormous +expenditure which is needed in order to live the simple life of +peasants. The simplicity towards which the world is driving is the +necessary outcome of all our systems and speculations and of our deep +and continuous contemplation of things. For the universe is like +everything in it; we have to look at it repeatedly and habitually before +we see it. It is only when we have seen it for the hundredth time that +we see it for the first time. The more consistently things are +contemplated, the more they tend to unify themselves and therefore to +simplify themselves. The simplification of anything is always +sensational. Thus monotheism is the most sensational of things: it is as +if we gazed long at a design full of disconnected objects, and, +suddenly, with a stunning thrill, they came together into a huge and +staring face. + +Few people will dispute that all the typical movements of our time are +upon this road towards simplification. Each system seeks to be more +fundamental than the other; each seeks, in the literal sense, to +undermine the other. In art, for example, the old conception of man, +classic as the Apollo Belvedere, has first been attacked by the realist, +who asserts that man, as a fact of natural history, is a creature with +colourless hair and a freckled face. Then comes the Impressionist, going +yet deeper, who asserts that to his physical eye, which alone is +certain, man is a creature with purple hair and a grey face. Then comes +the Symbolist, and says that to his soul, which alone is certain, man is +a creature with green hair and a blue face. And all the great writers of +our time represent in one form or another this attempt to re-establish +communication with the elemental, or, as it is sometimes more roughly +and fallaciously expressed, to return to nature. Some think that the +return to nature consists in drinking no wine; some think that it +consists in drinking a great deal more than is good for them. Some think +that the return to nature is achieved by beating swords into +ploughshares; some think it is achieved by turning ploughshares into +very ineffectual British War Office bayonets. It is natural, according +to the Jingo, for a man to kill other people with gunpowder and himself +with gin. It is natural, according to the humanitarian revolutionist, to +kill other people with dynamite and himself with vegetarianism. It would +be too obviously Philistine a sentiment, perhaps, to suggest that the +claim of either of these persons to be obeying the voice of nature is +interesting when we consider that they require huge volumes of +paradoxical argument to persuade themselves or anyone else of the truth +of their conclusions. But the giants of our time are undoubtedly alike +in that they approach by very different roads this conception of the +return to simplicity. Ibsen returns to nature by the angular exterior of +fact, Maeterlinck by the eternal tendencies of fable. Whitman returns to +nature by seeing how much he can accept, Tolstoy by seeing how much he +can reject. + +Now, this heroic desire to return to nature is, of course, in some +respects, rather like the heroic desire of a kitten to return to its own +tail. A tail is a simple and beautiful object, rhythmic in curve and +soothing in texture; but it is certainly one of the minor but +characteristic qualities of a tail that it should hang behind. It is +impossible to deny that it would in some degree lose its character if +attached to any other part of the anatomy. Now, nature is like a tail in +the sense that it is vitally important if it is to discharge its real +duty that it should be always behind. To imagine that we can see nature, +especially our own nature, face to face is a folly; it is even a +blasphemy. It is like the conduct of a cat in some mad fairy-tale, who +should set out on his travels with the firm conviction that he would +find his tail growing like a tree in the meadows at the end of the +world. And the actual effect of the travels of the philosopher in search +of nature when seen from the outside looks very like the gyrations of +the tail-pursuing kitten, exhibiting much enthusiasm but little dignity, +much cry and very little tail. The grandeur of nature is that she is +omnipotent and unseen, that she is perhaps ruling us most when we think +that she is heeding us least. 'Thou art a God that hidest Thyself,' said +the Hebrew poet. It may be said with all reverence that it is behind a +man's back that the spirit of nature hides. + +It is this consideration that lends a certain air of futility even to +all the inspired simplicities and thunderous veracities of Tolstoy. We +feel that a man cannot make himself simple merely by warring on +complexity; we feel, indeed, in our saner moments that a man cannot make +himself simple at all. A self-conscious simplicity may well be far more +intrinsically ornate than luxury itself. Indeed, a great deal of the +pomp and sumptuousness of the world's history was simple in the truest +sense. It was born of an almost babyish receptiveness; it was the work +of men who had eyes to wonder and men who had ears to hear. + + 'King Solomon brought merchant men + Because of his desire + With peacocks, apes and ivory, + From Tarshish unto Tyre.' + +But this proceeding was not a part of the wisdom of Solomon; it was a +part of his folly--I had almost said of his innocence. Tolstoy, we feel, +would not be content with hurling satire and denunciation at 'Solomon in +all his glory.' With fierce and unimpeachable logic he would go a step +further. He would spend days and nights in the meadows stripping the +shameless crimson coronals off the lilies of the field. + +The new collection of 'Tales from Tolstoy,' translated and edited by Mr +R. Nisbet Bain, is calculated to draw particular attention to this +ethical and ascetic side of Tolstoy's work. In one sense, and that the +deepest sense, the work of Tolstoy is, of course, a genuine and noble +appeal to simplicity. The narrow notion that an artist may not teach is +pretty well exploded by now. But the truth of the matter is, that an +artist teaches far more by his mere background and properties, his +landscape, his costume, his idiom and technique--all the part of his +work, in short, of which he is probably entirely unconscious, than by +the elaborate and pompous moral dicta which he fondly imagines to be his +opinions. The real distinction between the ethics of high art and the +ethics of manufactured and didactic art lies in the simple fact that the +bad fable has a moral, while the good fable is a moral. And the real +moral of Tolstoy comes out constantly in these stories, the great moral +which lies at the heart of all his work, of which he is probably +unconscious, and of which it is quite likely that he would vehemently +disapprove. The curious cold white light of morning that shines over all +the tales, the folklore simplicity with which 'a man or a woman' are +spoken of without further identification, the love--one might almost say +the lust--for the qualities of brute materials, the hardness of wood, +and the softness of mud, the ingrained belief in a certain ancient +kindliness sitting beside the very cradle of the race of man--these +influences are truly moral. When we put beside them the trumpeting and +tearing nonsense of the didactic Tolstoy, screaming for an obscene +purity, shouting for an inhuman peace, hacking up human life into small +sins with a chopper, sneering at men, women, and children out of respect +to humanity, combining in one chaos of contradictions an unmanly Puritan +and an uncivilised prig, then, indeed, we scarcely know whither Tolstoy +has vanished. We know not what to do with this small and noisy moralist +who is inhabiting one corner of a great and good man. + +It is difficult in every case to reconcile Tolstoy the great artist with +Tolstoy the almost venomous reformer. It is difficult to believe that a +man who draws in such noble outlines the dignity of the daily life of +humanity regards as evil that divine act of procreation by which that +dignity is renewed from age to age. It is difficult to believe that a +man who has painted with so frightful an honesty the heartrending +emptiness of the life of the poor can really grudge them every one of +their pitiful pleasures, from courtship to tobacco. It is difficult to +believe that a poet in prose who has so powerfully exhibited the +earth-born air of man, the essential kinship of a human being, with the +landscape in which he lives, can deny so elemental a virtue as that +which attaches a man to his own ancestors and his own land. It is +difficult to believe that the man who feels so poignantly the detestable +insolence of oppression would not actually, if he had the chance, lay +the oppressor flat with his fist. All, however, arises from the search +after a false simplicity, the aim of being, if I may so express it, more +natural than it is natural to be. It would not only be more human, it +would be more humble of us to be content to be complex. The truest +kinship with humanity would lie in doing as humanity has always done, +accepting with a sportsmanlike relish the estate to which we are called, +the star of our happiness, and the fortunes of the land of our birth. + +The work of Tolstoy has another and more special significance. It +represents the re-assertion of a certain awful common-sense which +characterised the most extreme utterances of Christ. It is true that we +cannot turn the cheek to the smiter; it is true that we cannot give our +cloak to the robber; civilisation is too complicated, too vainglorious, +too emotional. The robber would brag, and we should blush; in other +words, the robber and we are alike sentimentalists. The command of +Christ is impossible, but it is not insane; it is rather sanity preached +to a planet of lunatics. If the whole world was suddenly stricken with a +sense of humour it would find itself mechanically fulfilling the Sermon +on the Mount. It is not the plain facts of the world which stand in the +way of that consummation, but its passions of vanity and +self-advertisement and morbid sensibility. It is true that we cannot +turn the cheek to the smiter, and the sole and sufficient reason is that +we have not the pluck. Tolstoy and his followers have shown that they +have the pluck, and even if we think they are mistaken, by this sign +they conquer. Their theory has the strength of an utterly consistent +thing. It represents that doctrine of mildness and non-resistance which +is the last and most audacious of all the forms of resistance to every +existing authority. It is the great strike of the Quakers which is more +formidable than many sanguinary revolutions. If human beings could only +succeed in achieving a real passive resistance they would be strong with +the appalling strength of inanimate things, they would be calm with the +maddening calm of oak or iron, which conquer without vengeance and are +conquered without humiliation. The theory of Christian duty enunciated +by them is that we should never conquer by force, but always, if we can, +conquer by persuasion. In their mythology St George did not conquer the +dragon: he tied a pink ribbon round its neck and gave it a saucer of +milk. According to them, a course of consistent kindness to Nero would +have turned him into something only faintly represented by Alfred the +Great. In fact, the policy recommended by this school for dealing with +the bovine stupidity and bovine fury of this world is accurately summed +up in the celebrated verse of Mr Edward Lear: + + 'There was an old man who said, "How + Shall I flee from this terrible cow? + I will sit on a stile and continue to smile, + Till I soften the heart of this cow."' + +Their confidence in human nature is really honourable and magnificent; +it takes the form of refusing to believe the overwhelming majority of +mankind, even when they set out to explain their own motives. But +although most of us would in all probability tend at first sight to +consider this new sect of Christians as little less outrageous than some +brawling and absurd sect in the Reformation, yet we should fall into a +singular error in doing so. The Christianity of Tolstoy is, when we come +to consider it, one of the most thrilling and dramatic incidents in our +modern civilisation. It represents a tribute to the Christian religion +more sensational than the breaking of seals or the falling of stars. + +From the point of view of a rationalist, the whole world is rendered +almost irrational by the single phenomenon of Christian Socialism. It +turns the scientific universe topsy-turvy, and makes it essentially +possible that the key of all social evolution may be found in the dusty +casket of some discredited creed. It cannot be amiss to consider this +phenomenon as it really is. + +The religion of Christ has, like many true things, been disproved an +extraordinary number of times. It was disproved by the Neo-Platonist +philosophers at the very moment when it was first starting forth upon +its startling and universal career. It was disproved again by many of +the sceptics of the Renaissance only a few years before its second and +supremely striking embodiment, the religion of Puritanism, was about to +triumph over many kings, and civilise many continents. We all agree that +these schools of negation were only interludes in its history; but we +all believe naturally and inevitably that the negation of our own day +is really a breaking up of the theological cosmos, an Armageddon, a +Ragnorak, a twilight of the gods. The man of the nineteenth century, +like a schoolboy of sixteen, believes that his doubt and depression are +symbols of the end of the world. In our day the great irreligionists who +did nothing but dethrone God and drive angels before them have been +outstripped, distanced, and made to look orthodox and humdrum. A newer +race of sceptics has found something infinitely more exciting to do than +nailing down the lids upon a million coffins, and the body upon a single +cross. They have disputed not only the elementary creeds, but the +elementary laws of mankind, property, patriotism, civil obedience. They +have arraigned civilisation as openly as the materialists have +arraigned theology; they have damned all the philosophers even lower +than they have damned the saints. Thousands of modern men move quietly +and conventionally among their fellows while holding views of national +limitation or landed property that would have made Voltaire shudder like +a nun listening to blasphemies. And the last and wildest phase of this +saturnalia of scepticism, the school that goes furthest among thousands +who go so far, the school that denies the moral validity of those ideals +of courage or obedience which are recognised even among pirates, this +school bases itself upon the literal words of Christ, like Dr Watts or +Messrs Moody and Sankey. Never in the whole history of the world was +such a tremendous tribute paid to the vitality of an ancient creed. +Compared with this, it would be a small thing if the Red Sea were cloven +asunder, or the sun did stand still at mid-day. We are faced with the +phenomenon that a set of revolutionists whose contempt for all the +ideals of family and nation would evoke horror in a thieves' kitchen, +who can rid themselves of those elementary instincts of the man and the +gentleman which cling to the very bones of our civilisation, cannot rid +themselves of the influence of two or three remote Oriental anecdotes +written in corrupt Greek. The fact, when realised, has about it +something stunning and hypnotic. The most convinced rationalist is in +its presence suddenly stricken with a strange and ancient vision, sees +the immense sceptical cosmogonies of this age as dreams going the way +of a thousand forgotten heresies, and believes for a moment that the +dark sayings handed down through eighteen centuries may, indeed, contain +in themselves the revolutions of which we have only begun to dream. + +This value which we have above suggested, unquestionably belongs to the +Tolstoians, who may roughly be described as the new Quakers. With their +strange optimism, and their almost appalling logical courage, they offer +a tribute to Christianity which no orthodoxies could offer. It cannot +but be remarkable to watch a revolution in which both the rulers and the +rebels march under the same symbol. But the actual theory of +non-resistance itself, with all its kindred theories, is not, I think, +characterised by that intellectual obviousness and necessity which its +supporters claim for it. A pamphlet before us shows us an extraordinary +number of statements about the New Testament, of which the accuracy is +by no means so striking as the confidence. To begin with, we must +protest against a habit of quoting and paraphrasing at the same time. +When a man is discussing what Jesus meant, let him state first of all +what He said, not what the man thinks He would have said if he had +expressed Himself more clearly. Here is an instance of question and +answer: + +Q. 'How did our Master Himself sum up the law in a few words?' + +A. 'Be ye merciful, be ye perfect even as your Father; your Father in +the spirit world is merciful, is perfect.' + +There is nothing in this, perhaps, which Christ might not have said +except the abominable metaphysical modernism of 'the spirit world'; but +to say that it is recorded that He did say it, is like saying it is +recorded that He preferred palm trees to sycamores. It is a simple and +unadulterated untruth. The author should know that these words have +meant a thousand things to a thousand people, and that if more ancient +sects had paraphrased them as cheerfully as he, he would never have had +the text upon which he founds his theory. In a pamphlet in which plain +printed words cannot be left alone, it is not surprising if there are +mis-statements upon larger matters. Here is a statement clearly and +philosophically laid down which we can only content ourselves with +flatly denying: 'The fifth rule of our Lord is that we should take +special pains to cultivate the same kind of regard for people of foreign +countries, and for those generally who do not belong to us, or even have +an antipathy to us, which we already entertain towards our own people, +and those who are in sympathy with us.' I should very much like to know +where in the whole of the New Testament the author finds this violent, +unnatural, and immoral proposition. Christ did not have the same kind of +regard for one person as for another. We are specifically told that +there were certain persons whom He specially loved. It is most +improbable that He thought of other nations as He thought of His own. +The sight of His national city moved Him to tears, and the highest +compliment He paid was, 'Behold an Israelite indeed.' The author has +simply confused two entirely distinct things. Christ commanded us to +have love for all men, but even if we had equal love for all men, to +speak of having the same love for all men is merely bewildering +nonsense. If we love a man at all, the impression he produces on us must +be vitally different to the impression produced by another man whom we +love. To speak of having the same kind of regard for both is about as +sensible as asking a man whether he prefers chrysanthemums or billiards. +Christ did not love humanity; He never said He loved humanity: He loved +men. Neither He nor anyone else can love humanity; it is like loving a +gigantic centipede. And the reason that the Tolstoians can even endure +to think of an equally distributed affection is that their love of +humanity is a logical love, a love into which they are coerced by their +own theories, a love which would be an insult to a tom-cat. + +But the greatest error of all lies in the mere act of cutting up the +teaching of the New Testament into five rules. It precisely and +ingeniously misses the most dominant characteristic of the teaching--its +absolute spontaneity. The abyss between Christ and all His modern +interpreters is that we have no record that He ever wrote a word, except +with His finger in the sand. The whole is the history of one continuous +and sublime conversation. Thousands of rules have been deduced from it +before these Tolstoian rules were made, and thousands will be deduced +afterwards. It was not for any pompous proclamation, it was not for any +elaborate output of printed volumes; it was for a few splendid and idle +words that the cross was set up on Calvary, and the earth gaped, and the +sun was darkened at noonday. + + + + +SAVONAROLA + + +Savonarola is a man whom we shall probably never understand until we +know what horror may lie at the heart of civilisation. This we shall not +know until we are civilised. It may be hoped, in one sense, that we may +never understand Savonarola. + +The great deliverers of men have, for the most part, saved them from +calamities which we all recognise as evil, from calamities which are the +ancient enemies of humanity. The great law-givers saved us from anarchy: +the great physicians saved us from pestilence: the great reformers +saved us from starvation. But there is a huge and bottomless evil +compared with which all these are flea-bites, the most desolating curse +that can fall upon men or nations, and it has no name, except we call it +satisfaction. Savonarola did not save men from anarchy, but from order; +not from pestilence, but from paralysis; not from starvation, but from +luxury. Men like Savonarola are the witnesses to the tremendous +psychological fact at the back of all our brains, but for which no name +has ever been found, that ease is the worst enemy of happiness, and +civilisation potentially the end of man. + +For I fancy that Savonarola's thrilling challenge to the luxury of his +day went far deeper than the mere question of sin. The modern +rationalistic admirers of Savonarola, from George Eliot downwards, +dwell, truly enough, upon the sound ethical justification of +Savonarola's anger, upon the hideous and extravagant character of the +crimes which polluted the palaces of the Renaissance. But they need not +be so anxious to show that Savonarola was no ascetic, that he merely +picked out the black specks of wickedness with the priggish +enlightenment of a member of an Ethical Society. Probably he did hate +the civilisation of his time, and not merely its sins; and that is +precisely where he was infinitely more profound than a modern moralist. +He saw that the actual crimes were not the only evils: that stolen +jewels and poisoned wine and obscene pictures were merely the symptoms; +that the disease was the complete dependence upon jewels and wine and +pictures. This is a thing constantly forgotten in judging of ascetics +and Puritans in old times. A denunciation of harmless sports did not +always mean an ignorant hatred of what no one but a narrow moralist +would call harmful. Sometimes it meant an exceedingly enlightened hatred +of what no one but a narrow moralist would call harmless. Ascetics are +sometimes more advanced than the average man, as well as less. + +Such, at least, was the hatred in the heart of Savonarola. He was making +war against no trivial human sins, but against godless and thankless +quiescence, against getting used to happiness, the mystic sin by which +all creation fell. He was preaching that severity which is the +sign-manual of youth and hope. He was preaching that alertness, that +clean agility and vigilance, which is as necessary to gain pleasure as +to gain holiness, as indispensable in a lover as in a monk. A critic has +truly pointed out that Savonarola could not have been fundamentally +anti-æsthetic, since he had such friends as Michael Angelo, Botticelli, +and Luca della Robbia. The fact is that this purification and austerity +are even more necessary for the appreciation of life and laughter than +for anything else. To let no bird fly past unnoticed, to spell patiently +the stones and weeds, to have the mind a storehouse of sunset, requires +a discipline in pleasure, and an education in gratitude. + +The civilisation which surrounded Savonarola on every side was a +civilisation which had already taken the wrong turn, the turn that +leads to endless inventions and no discoveries, in which new things grow +old with confounding rapidity, but in which no old things ever grow new. +The monstrosity of the crimes of the Renaissance was not a mark of +imagination; it was a mark, as all monstrosity is, of the loss of +imagination. It is only when a man has really ceased to see a horse as +it is, that he invents a centaur, only when he can no longer be +surprised at an ox, that he worships the devil. Diablerie is the +stimulant of the jaded fancy; it is the dram-drinking of the artist. +Savonarola addressed himself to the hardest of all earthly tasks, that +of making men turn back and wonder at the simplicities they had learnt +to ignore. It is strange that the most unpopular of all doctrines is +the doctrine which declares the common life divine. Democracy, of which +Savonarola was so fiery an exponent, is the hardest of gospels; there is +nothing that so terrifies men as the decree that they are all kings. +Christianity, in Savonarola's mind, identical with democracy, is the +hardest of gospels; there is nothing that so strikes men with fear as +the saying that they are all the sons of God. + +Savonarola and his republic fell. The drug of despotism was administered +to the people, and they forgot what they had been. There are some at the +present day who have so strange a respect for art and letters, and for +mere men of genius, that they conceive the reign of the Medici to be an +improvement on that of the great Florentine republican. It is such men +as these and their civilisation that we have at the present day to fear. +We are surrounded on many sides by the same symptoms as those which +awoke the unquenchable wrath of Savonarola--a hedonism that is more sick +of happiness than an invalid is sick of pain, an art sense that seeks +the assistance of crime since it has exhausted nature. In many modern +works we find veiled and horrible hints of a truly Renaissance sense of +the beauty of blood, the poetry of murder. The bankrupt and depraved +imagination does not see that a living man is far more dramatic than a +dead one. Along with this, as in the time of the Medici, goes the +falling back into the arms of despotism, the hunger for the strong man +which is unknown among strong men. The masterful hero is worshipped as +he is worshipped by the readers of the 'Bow Bells Novelettes,' and for +the same reason--a profound sense of personal weakness. That tendency to +devolve our duties descends on us, which is the soul of slavery, alike +whether for its menial tasks it employs serfs or emperors. Against all +this the great clerical republican stands in everlasting protest, +preferring his failure to his rival's success. The issue is still +between him and Lorenzo, between the responsibilities of liberty and the +licence of slavery, between the perils of truth and the security of +silence, between the pleasure of toil and the toil of pleasure. The +supporters of Lorenzo the Magnificent are assuredly among us, men for +whom even nations and empires only exist to satisfy the moment, men to +whom the last hot hour of summer is better than a sharp and wintry +spring. They have an art, a literature, a political philosophy, which +are all alike valued for their immediate effect upon the taste, not for +what they promise of the destiny of the spirit. Their statuettes and +sonnets are rounded and perfect, while 'Macbeth' is in comparison a +fragment, and the Moses of Michael Angelo a hint. Their campaigns and +battles are always called triumphant, while Cæsar and Cromwell wept for +many humiliations. And the end of it all is the hell of no resistance, +the hell of an unfathomable softness, until the whole nature recoils +into madness and the chamber of civilisation is no longer merely a +cushioned apartment, but a padded cell. + +This last and worst of human miseries Savonarola saw afar off, and bent +his whole gigantic energies to turning the chariot into another course. +Few men understood his object; some called him a madman, some a +charlatan, some an enemy of human joy. They would not even have +understood if he had told them, if he had said that he was saving them +from a calamity of contentment which should be the end of joys and +sorrows alike. But there are those to-day who feel the same silent +danger, and who bend themselves to the same silent resistance. They also +are supposed to be contending for some trivial political scruple. + +Mr M'Hardy says, in defending Savonarola, that the number of fine works +of art destroyed in the Burning of the Vanities has been much +exaggerated. I confess that I hope the pile contained stacks of +incomparable masterpieces if the sacrifice made that one real moment +more real. Of one thing I am sure, that Savonarola's friend Michael +Angelo would have piled all his own statues one on top of the other, and +burnt them to ashes, if only he had been certain that the glow +transfiguring the sky was the dawn of a younger and wiser world. + + + + +THE POSITION OF SIR WALTER SCOTT + + +Walter Scott is a writer who should just now be re-emerging into his own +high place in letters, for unquestionably the recent, though now +dwindling, schools of severely technical and æsthetic criticism have +been unfavourable to him. He was a chaotic and unequal writer, and if +there is one thing in which artists have improved since his time, it is +in consistency and equality. It would perhaps be unkind to inquire +whether the level of the modern man of letters, as compared with Scott, +is due to the absence of valleys or the absence of mountains. But in any +case, we have learnt in our day to arrange our literary effects +carefully, and the only point in which we fall short of Scott is in the +incidental misfortune that we have nothing particular to arrange. + +It is said that Scott is neglected by modern readers; if so, the matter +could be more appropriately described by saying that modern readers are +neglected by Providence. The ground of this neglect, in so far as it +exists, must be found, I suppose, in the general sentiment that, like +the beard of Polonius, he is too long. Yet it is surely a peculiar thing +that in literature alone a house should be despised because it is too +large, or a host impugned because he is too generous. If romance be +really a pleasure, it is difficult to understand the modern reader's +consuming desire to get it over, and if it be not a pleasure, it is +difficult to understand his desire to have it at all. Mere size, it +seems to me, cannot be a fault. The fault must lie in some +disproportion. If some of Scott's stories are dull and dilatory, it is +not because they are giants but because they are hunchbacks or cripples. +Scott was very far indeed from being a perfect writer, but I do not +think that it can be shown that the large and elaborate plan on which +his stories are built was by any means an imperfection. He arranged his +endless prefaces and his colossal introductions just as an architect +plans great gates and long approaches to a really large house. He did +not share the latter-day desire to get quickly through a story. He +enjoyed narrative as a sensation; he did not wish to swallow a story +like a pill that it should do him good afterwards. He desired to taste +it like a glass of port, that it might do him good at the time. The +reader sits late at his banquets. His characters have that air of +immortality which belongs to those of Dumas and Dickens. We should not +be surprised to meet them in any number of sequels. Scott, in his heart +of hearts, probably would have liked to write an endless story without +either beginning or close. + +Walter Scott is a great, and, therefore, mysterious man. He will never +be understood until Romance is understood, and that will be only when +Time, Man, and Eternity are understood. To say that Scott had more than +any other man that ever lived a sense of the romantic seems, in these +days, a slight and superficial tribute. The whole modern theory arises +from one fundamental mistake--the idea that romance is in some way a +plaything with life, a figment, a conventionality, a thing upon the +outside. No genuine criticism of romance will ever arise until we have +grasped the fact that romance lies not upon the outside of life but +absolutely in the centre of it. The centre of every man's existence is a +dream. Death, disease, insanity, are merely material accidents, like +toothache or a twisted ankle. That these brutal forces always besiege +and often capture the citadel does not prove that they are the citadel. +The boast of the realist (applying what the reviewers call his scalpel) +is that he cuts into the heart of life; but he makes a very shallow +incision if he only reaches as deep as habits and calamities and sins. +Deeper than all these lies a man's vision of himself, as swaggering and +sentimental as a penny novelette. The literature of candour unearths +innumerable weaknesses and elements of lawlessness which is called +romance. It perceives superficial habits like murder and dipsomania, but +it does not perceive the deepest of sins--the sin of vanity--vanity +which is the mother of all day-dreams and adventures, the one sin that +is not shared with any boon companion, or whispered to any priest. + +In estimating, therefore, the ground of Scott's pre-eminence in romance +we must absolutely rid ourselves of the notion that romance or +adventure are merely materialistic things involved in the tangle of a +plot or the multiplicity of drawn swords. We must remember that it is, +like tragedy or farce, a state of the soul, and that, for some dark and +elemental reason which we can never understand, this state of the soul +is evoked in us by the sight of certain places or the contemplation of +certain human crises, by a stream rushing under a heavy and covered +wooden bridge, or by a man plunging a knife or sword into tough timber. +In the selection of these situations which catch the spirit of romance +as in a net, Scott has never been equalled or even approached. His +finest scenes affect us like fragments of a hilarious dream. They have +the same quality which is often possessed by those nocturnal +comedies--that of seeming more human than our waking life--even while +they are less possible. Sir Arthur Wardour, with his daughter and the +old beggar crouching in a cranny of the cliff as night falls and the +tide closes around them, are actually in the coldest and bitterest of +practical situations. Yet the whole incident has a quality that can only +be called boyish. It is warmed with all the colours of an incredible +sunset. Rob Roy trapped in the Tolbooth, and confronted with Bailie +Nicol Jarvie, draws no sword, leaps from no window, affects none of the +dazzling external acts upon which contemporary romance depends, yet that +plain and humorous dialogue is full of the essential philosophy of +romance which is an almost equal betting upon man and destiny. Perhaps +the most profoundly thrilling of all Scott's situations is that in +which the family of Colonel Mannering are waiting for the carriage which +may or may not arrive by night to bring an unknown man into a princely +possession. Yet almost the whole of that thrilling scene consists of a +ridiculous conversation about food, and flirtation between a frivolous +old lawyer and a fashionable girl. We can say nothing about what makes +these scenes, except that the wind bloweth where it listeth, and that +here the wind blows strong. + +It is in this quality of what may be called spiritual adventurousness +that Scott stands at so different an elevation to the whole of the +contemporary crop of romancers who have followed the leadership of +Dumas. There has, indeed, been a great and inspiriting revival of +romance in our time, but it is partly frustrated in almost every case +by this rooted conception that romance consists in the vast +multiplication of incidents and the violent acceleration of narrative. +The heroes of Mr Stanley Weyman scarcely ever have their swords out of +their hands; the deeper presence of romance is far better felt when the +sword is at the hip ready for innumerable adventures too terrible to be +pictured. The Stanley Weyman hero has scarcely time to eat his supper +except in the act of leaping from a window or whilst his other hand is +employed in lunging with a rapier. In Scott's heroes, on the other hand, +there is no characteristic so typical or so worthy of honour as their +disposition to linger over their meals. The conviviality of the Clerk of +Copmanhurst or of Mr Pleydell, and the thoroughly solid things they are +described as eating, is one of the most perfect of Scott's poetic +touches. In short, Mr Stanley Weyman is filled with the conviction that +the sole essence of romance is to move with insatiable rapidity from +incident to incident. In the truer romance of Scott there is more of the +sentiment of 'Oh! still delay, thou art so fair'; more of a certain +patriarchal enjoyment of things as they are--of the sword by the side +and the wine-cup in the hand. Romance, indeed, does not consist by any +means so much in experiencing adventures as in being ready for them. How +little the actual boy cares for incidents in comparison to tools and +weapons may be tested by the fact that the most popular story of +adventure is concerned with a man who lived for years on a desert +island with two guns and a sword, which he never had to use on an enemy. + +Closely connected with this is one of the charges most commonly brought +against Scott, particularly in his own day--the charge of a fanciful and +monotonous insistence upon the details of armour and costume. The critic +in the 'Edinburgh Review' said indignantly that he could tolerate a +somewhat detailed description of the apparel of Marmion, but when it +came to an equally detailed account of the apparel of his pages and +yeomen the mind could bear it no longer. The only thing to be said about +that critic is that he had never been a little boy. He foolishly +imagined that Scott valued the plume and dagger of Marmion for Marmion's +sake. Not being himself romantic, he could not understand that Scott +valued the plume because it was a plume, and the dagger because it was a +dagger. Like a child, he loved weapons with a manual materialistic love, +as one loves the softness of fur or the coolness of marble. One of the +profound philosophical truths which are almost confined to infants is +this love of things, not for their use or origin, but for their own +inherent characteristics, the child's love of the toughness of wood, the +wetness of water, the magnificent soapiness of soap. So it was with +Scott, who had so much of the child in him. Human beings were perhaps +the principal characters in his stories, but they were certainly not the +only characters. A battle-axe was a person of importance, a castle had a +character and ways of its own. A church bell had a word to say in the +matter. Like a true child, he almost ignored the distinction between the +animate and inanimate. A two-handed sword might be carried only by a +menial in a procession, but it was something important and immeasurably +fascinating--it was a two-handed sword. + +There is one quality which is supreme and continuous in Scott which is +little appreciated at present. One of the values we have really lost in +recent fiction is the value of eloquence. The modern literary artist is +compounded of almost every man except the orator. Yet Shakespeare and +Scott are certainly alike in this, that they could both, if literature +had failed, have earned a living as professional demagogues. The feudal +heroes in the 'Waverley Novels' retort upon each other with a +passionate dignity, haughty and yet singularly human, which can hardly +be paralleled in political eloquence except in 'Julius Cæsar.' With a +certain fiery impartiality which stirs the blood, Scott distributes his +noble orations equally among saints and villains. He may deny a villain +every virtue or triumph, but he cannot endure to deny him a telling +word; he will ruin a man, but he will not silence him. In truth, one of +Scott's most splendid traits is his difficulty, or rather incapacity, +for despising any of his characters. He did not scorn the most revolting +miscreant as the realist of to-day commonly scorns his own hero. Though +his soul may be in rags, every man of Scott can speak like a king. + +This quality, as I have said, is sadly to seek in the fiction of the +passing hour. The realist would, of course, repudiate the bare idea of +putting a bold and brilliant tongue in every man's head, but even where +the moment of the story naturally demands eloquence the eloquence seems +frozen in the tap. Take any contemporary work of fiction and turn to the +scene where the young Socialist denounces the millionaire, and then +compare the stilted sociological lecture given by that self-sacrificing +bore with the surging joy of words in Rob Roy's declaration of himself, +or Athelstane's defiance of De Bracy. That ancient sea of human passion +upon which high words and great phrases are the resplendent foam is just +now at a low ebb. We have even gone the length of congratulating +ourselves because we can see the mud and the monsters at the bottom. In +politics there is not a single man whose position is due to eloquence in +the first degree; its place is taken by repartees and rejoinders purely +intellectual, like those of an omnibus conductor. In discussing +questions like the farm-burning in South Africa no critic of the war +uses his material as Burke or Grattan (perhaps exaggeratively) would +have used it--the speaker is content with facts and expositions of +facts. In another age he might have risen and hurled that great song in +prose, perfect as prose and yet rising into a chant, which Meg Merrilees +hurled at Ellangowan, at the rulers of Britain: 'Ride your ways, Laird +of Ellangowan; ride your ways, Godfrey Bertram--this day have ye +quenched seven smoking hearths. See if the fire in your ain parlour +burns the blyther for that. Ye have riven the thack of seven cottar +houses. Look if your ain roof-tree stands the faster for that. Ye may +stable your stirks in the sheilings of Dern-cleugh. See that the hare +does not couch on the hearthstane of Ellangowan. Ride your ways, Godfrey +Bertram.' + +The reason is, of course, that these men are afraid of bombast and Scott +was not. A man will not reach eloquence if he is afraid of bombast, just +as a man will not jump a hedge if he is afraid of a ditch. As the object +of all eloquence is to find the least common denominator of men's souls, +to fall just within the natural comprehension, it cannot obviously have +any chance with a literary ambition which aims at falling just outside +it. It is quite right to invent subtle analyses and detached +criticisms, but it is unreasonable to expect them to be punctuated with +roars of popular applause. It is possible to conceive of a mob shouting +any central and simple sentiment, good or bad, but it is impossible to +think of a mob shouting a distinction in terms. In the matter of +eloquence, the whole question is one of the immediate effect of +greatness, such as is produced even by fine bombast. It is absurd to +call it merely superficial; here there is no question of superficiality; +we might as well call a stone that strikes us between the eyes merely +superficial. The very word 'superficial' is founded on a fundamental +mistake about life, the idea that second thoughts are best. The +superficial impression of the world is by far the deepest. What we +really feel, naturally and casually, about the look of skies and trees +and the face of friends, that and that alone will almost certainly +remain our vital philosophy to our dying day. + +Scott's bombast, therefore, will always be stirring to anyone who +approaches it, as he should approach all literature, as a little child. +We could easily excuse the contemporary critic for not admiring +melodramas and adventure stories, and Punch and Judy, if he would admit +that it was a slight deficiency in his artistic sensibilities. Beyond +all question, it marks a lack of literary instinct to be unable to +simplify one's mind at the first signal of the advance of romance. 'You +do me wrong,' said Brian de Bois-Guilbert to Rebecca. 'Many a law, many +a commandment have I broken, but my word, never.' 'Die,' cries Balfour +of Burley to the villain in 'Old Mortality.' 'Die, hoping nothing, +believing nothing--' 'And fearing nothing,' replies the other. This is +the old and honourable fine art of bragging, as it was practised by the +great worthies of antiquity. The man who cannot appreciate it goes along +with the man who cannot appreciate beef or claret or a game with +children or a brass band. They are afraid of making fools of themselves, +and are unaware that that transformation has already been triumphantly +effected. + +Scott is separated, then, from much of the later conception of fiction +by this quality of eloquence. The whole of the best and finest work of +the modern novelist (such as the work of Mr Henry James) is primarily +concerned with that delicate and fascinating speech which burrows deeper +and deeper like a mole; but we have wholly forgotten that speech which +mounts higher and higher like a wave and falls in a crashing peroration. +Perhaps the most thoroughly brilliant and typical man of this decade is +Mr Bernard Shaw. In his admirable play of 'Candida' it is clearly a part +of the character of the Socialist clergyman that he should be eloquent, +but he is not eloquent, because the whole 'G.B.S.' condition of mind +renders impossible that poetic simplicity which eloquence requires. +Scott takes his heroes and villains seriously, which is, after all, the +way that heroes and villains take themselves--especially villains. It is +the custom to call these old romantic poses artificial; but the word +artificial is the last and silliest evasion of criticism. There was +never anything in the world that was really artificial. It had some +motive or ideal behind it, and generally a much better one than we +think. + +Of the faults of Scott as an artist it is not very necessary to speak, +for faults are generally and easily pointed out, while there is yet no +adequate valuation of the varieties and contrasts of virtue. We have +compiled a complete botanical classification of the weeds in the +poetical garden, but the flowers still flourish neglected and nameless. +It is true, for example, that Scott had an incomparably stiff and +pedantic way of dealing with his heroines: he made a lively girl of +eighteen refuse an offer in the language of Dr Johnson. To him, as to +most men of his time, woman was not an individual, but an +institution--a toast that was drunk some time after that of Church and +King. But it is far better to consider the difference rather as a +special merit, in that he stood for all those clean and bracing shocks +of incident which are untouched by passion or weakness, for a certain +breezy bachelorhood, which is almost essential to the literature of +adventure. With all his faults, and all his triumphs, he stands for the +great mass of natural manliness which must be absorbed into art unless +art is to be a mere luxury and freak. An appreciation of Scott might be +made almost a test of decadence. If ever we lose touch with this one +most reckless and defective writer, it will be a proof to us that we +have erected round ourselves a false cosmos, a world of lying and +horrible perfection, leaving outside of it Walter Scott and that +strange old world which is as confused and as indefensible and as +inspiring and as healthy as he. + + + + + + + + +End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Twelve Types, by G.K. Chesterton + +*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 12491 *** |