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diff --git a/.gitattributes b/.gitattributes new file mode 100644 index 0000000..6833f05 --- /dev/null +++ b/.gitattributes @@ -0,0 +1,3 @@ +* text=auto +*.txt text +*.md text diff --git a/1594-h.zip b/1594-h.zip Binary files differnew file mode 100644 index 0000000..913ef6f --- /dev/null +++ b/1594-h.zip diff --git a/1594-h/1594-h.htm b/1594-h/1594-h.htm new file mode 100644 index 0000000..abc4ce9 --- /dev/null +++ b/1594-h/1594-h.htm @@ -0,0 +1,6911 @@ +<!DOCTYPE html + PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Strict//EN" + "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-strict.dtd"> +<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" xml:lang="en" lang="en"> +<head> +<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=US-ASCII" /> +<title>Essays in Little</title> + <style type="text/css"> +/*<![CDATA[ XML blockout */ +<!-- + P { margin-top: .75em; + margin-bottom: .75em; + } + P.headingsummary { margin-left: 5%;} + H1, H2 { + text-align: center; + margin-top: 2em; + margin-bottom: 2em; + } + H3, H4, H5 { + text-align: left; + margin-top: 1em; + margin-bottom: 1em; + } + BODY{margin-left: 10%; + margin-right: 10%; + } + table { border-collapse: collapse; } + td { vertical-align: top; border: 1px solid black;} + td p { margin: 0.2em; } + .blkquot {margin-left: 4em; margin-right: 4em;} /* block indent */ + + .smcap {font-variant: small-caps;} + + .pagenum {position: absolute; + left: 92%; + font-size: smaller; + text-align: right; + color: gray;} + + .citation {vertical-align: super; + font-size: .8em; + text-decoration: none;} + // --> + /* XML end ]]>*/ + </style> +</head> +<body> +<h2> +<a href="#startoftext">Essays in Little, by Andrew Lang</a> +</h2> +<pre> +The Project Gutenberg eBook, Essays in Little, by Andrew Lang, Edited by +W. H. Davenport Adams + + +This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with +almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + + + + + +Title: Essays in Little + + +Author: Andrew Lang + +Editor: W. H. Davenport Adams + +Release Date: December 29, 2007 [eBook #1594] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ISO-646-US (US-ASCII) + + +***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK ESSAYS IN LITTLE*** +</pre> +<p><a name="startoftext"></a></p> +<p>Transcribed from the 1891 Henry and Co. edition by David +Price, email ccx074@pglaf.org</p> +<h1>ESSAYS IN LITTLE.</h1> +<p style="text-align: center">by<br /> +ANDREW LANG.</p> +<p style="text-align: center"><span class="smcap"><i>with +portrait of the author</i></span>.</p> +<p style="text-align: center"><span +class="smcap">london</span>:<br /> +HENRY AND CO., BOUVERIE STREET, E.C.<br /> +1891.</p> +<p style="text-align: center"><i>Printed by Hazell</i>, +<i>Watson</i>, <i>& Vincy</i>, <i>Ld.</i>, <i>London and +Aylesbury</i>.</p> +<p>CONTENTS.</p> +<p>Preface<br /> +Alexandre Dumas<br /> +Mr. Stevenson’s works<br /> +Thomas Haynes Bayly<br /> +Théodore de Banville<br /> +Homer and the Study of Greek<br /> +The Last Fashionable Novel<br /> +Thackeray<br /> +Dickens<br /> +Adventures of Buccaneers<br /> +The Sagas<br /> +Charles Kingsley<br /> +Charles Lever: His books, adventures and misfortunes<br /> +The poems of Sir Walter Scott<br /> +John Bunyan<br /> +To a Young Journalist<br /> +Mr. Kipling’s stories</p> +<p style="text-align: center"> +<a href="images/p0b.jpg"> +<img alt="Portrait of Andrew Lang" src="images/p0s.jpg" /> +</a></p> +<h2>PREFACE</h2> +<p>Of the following essays, five are new, and were written for +this volume. They are the paper on Mr. R. L. Stevenson, the +“Letter to a Young Journalist,” the study of Mr. +Kipling, the note on Homer, and “The Last Fashionable +Novel.” The article on the author of “Oh, no! +we never mention Her,” appeared in the New York <i>Sun</i>, +and was suggested by Mr. Dana, the editor of that journal. +The papers on Thackeray and Dickens were published in <i>Good +Words</i>, that on Dumas appeared in <i>Scribner’s +Magazine</i>, that on M. Théodore de Banville in <i>The +New Quarterly Review</i>. The other essays were originally +written for a newspaper “Syndicate.” They have +been re-cast, augmented, and, to a great extent, re-written.</p> +<p style="text-align: right">A. L.</p> +<h2>ALEXANDRE DUMAS</h2> +<p>Alexandre Dumas is a writer, and his life is a topic, of which +his devotees never weary. Indeed, one lifetime is not long +enough wherein to tire of them. The long days and years of +Hilpa and Shalum, in Addison—the antediluvian age, when a +picnic lasted for half a century and a courtship for two hundred +years, might have sufficed for an exhaustive study of +Dumas. No such study have I to offer, in the brief seasons +of our perishable days. I own that I have not read, and do +not, in the circumstances, expect to read, all of Dumas, nor even +the greater part of his thousand volumes. We only dip a cup +in that sparkling spring, and drink, and go on,—we cannot +hope to exhaust the fountain, nor to carry away with us the well +itself. It is but a word of gratitude and delight that we +can say to the heroic and indomitable master, only an <i>ave</i> +of friendship that we can call across the bourne to the shade of +the Porthos of fiction. That his works (his best works) +should be even still more widely circulated than they are; that +the young should read them, and learn frankness, kindness, +generosity—should esteem the tender heart, and the gay, +invincible wit; that the old should read them again, and find +forgetfulness of trouble, and taste the anodyne of dreams, that +is what we desire.</p> +<p>Dumas said of himself (“Mémoires,” v. 13) +that when he was young he tried several times to read forbidden +books—books that are sold <i>sous le manteau</i>. But +he never got farther than the tenth page, in the</p> +<blockquote><p> “scrofulous French +novel<br /> +On gray paper with blunt type;”</p> +</blockquote> +<p>he never made his way so far as</p> +<blockquote><p>“the woful sixteenth print.”</p> +</blockquote> +<p>“I had, thank God, a natural sentiment of delicacy; and +thus, out of my six hundred volumes (in 1852) there are not four +which the most scrupulous mother may not give to her +daughter.” Much later, in 1864, when the +<i>Censure</i> threatened one of his plays, he wrote to the +Emperor: “Of my twelve hundred volumes there is not one +which a girl in our most modest quarter, the Faubourg +Saint-Germain, may not be allowed to read.” The +mothers of the Faubourg, and mothers in general, may not take +Dumas exactly at his word. There is a passage, for example, +in the story of Miladi (“Les Trois Mousquetaires”) +which a parent or guardian may well think undesirable reading for +youth. But compare it with the original passage in the +“Mémoires” of D’Artagnan! It has +passed through a medium, as Dumas himself declared, of natural +delicacy and good taste. His enormous popularity, the +widest in the world of letters, owes absolutely nothing to +prurience or curiosity. The air which he breathes is a +healthy air, is the open air; and that by his own choice, for he +had every temptation to seek another kind of vogue, and every +opportunity.</p> +<p>Two anecdotes are told of Dumas’ books, one by M. Edmond +About, the other by his own son, which show, in brief space, why +this novelist is so beloved, and why he deserves our affection +and esteem. M. Villaud, a railway engineer who had lived +much in Italy, Russia, and Spain, was the person whose enthusiasm +finally secured a statue for Dumas. He felt so much +gratitude to the unknown friend of lonely nights in long exiles, +that he could not be happy till his gratitude found a permanent +expression. On returning to France he went to consult M. +Victor Borie, who told him this tale about George Sand. M. +Borie chanced to visit the famous novelist just before her death, +and found Dumas’ novel, “Les Quarante Cinq” +(one of the cycle about the Valois kings) lying on her +table. He expressed his wonder that she was reading it for +the first time.</p> +<p>“For the first time!—why, this is the fifth or +sixth time I have read ‘Les Quarante Cinq,’ and the +others. When I am ill, anxious, melancholy, tired, +discouraged, nothing helps me against moral or physical troubles +like a book of Dumas.” Again, M. About says that M. +Sarcey was in the same class at school with a little Spanish +boy. The child was homesick; he could not eat, he could not +sleep; he was almost in a decline.</p> +<p>“You want to see your mother?” said young +Sarcey.</p> +<p>“No: she is dead.”</p> +<p>“Your father, then?”</p> +<p>“No: he used to beat me.”</p> +<p>“Your brothers and sisters?”</p> +<p>“I have none.”</p> +<p>“Then why are you so eager to be back in +Spain?”</p> +<p>“To finish a book I began in the holidays.”</p> +<p>“And what was its name?”</p> +<p>“‘Los Tres Mosqueteros’!”</p> +<p>He was homesick for “The Three Musketeers,” and +they cured him easily.</p> +<p>That is what Dumas does. He gives courage and life to +old age, he charms away the half-conscious <i>nostalgie</i>, the +<i>Heimweh</i>, of childhood. We are all homesick, in the +dark days and black towns, for the land of blue skies and brave +adventures in forests, and in lonely inns, on the battle-field, +in the prison, on the desert isle. And then Dumas comes, +and, like Argive Helen, in Homer, he casts a drug into the wine, +the drug nepenthe, “that puts all evil out of +mind.” Does any one suppose that when George Sand was +old and tired, and near her death, she would have found this +anodyne, and this stimulant, in the novels of M. Tolstoï, M. +Dostoiefsky, M. Zola, or any of the “scientific” +observers whom we are actually requested to hail as the masters +of a new art, the art of the future? Would they make her +laugh, as Chicot does? make her forget, as Porthos, Athos, and +Aramis do? take her away from the heavy, familiar time, as the +enchanter Dumas takes us? No; let it be enough for these +new authors to be industrious, keen, accurate, +<i>précieux</i>, pitiful, charitable, veracious; but give +us high spirits now and then, a light heart, a sharp sword, a +fair wench, a good horse, or even that old Gascon rouncy of +D’Artagnan’s. Like the good Lord James Douglas, +we had liefer hear the lark sing over moor and down, with Chicot, +than listen to the starved-mouse squeak in the <i>bouge</i> of +Thérèse Raquin, with M. Zola. Not that there +is not a place and an hour for him, and others like him; but they +are not, if you please, to have the whole world to themselves, +and all the time, and all the praise; they are not to turn the +world into a dissecting-room, time into tedium, and the laurels +of Scott and Dumas into crowns of nettles.</p> +<p>There is no complete life of Alexandre Dumas. The age +has not produced the intellectual athlete who can gird himself up +for that labour. One of the worst books that ever was +written, if it can be said to be written, is, I think, the +English attempt at a biography of Dumas. Style, grammar, +taste, feeling, are all bad. The author does not so much +write a life as draw up an indictment. The spirit of his +work is grudging, sneering, contemptuous, and pitifully +peddling. The great charge is that Dumas was a humbug, that +he was not the author of his own books, that his books were +written by “collaborators”—above all, by M. +Maquet. There is no doubt that Dumas had a regular system +of collaboration, which he never concealed. But whereas +Dumas could turn out books that <i>live</i>, whoever his +assistants were, could any of his assistants write books that +live, without Dumas? One might as well call any barrister +in good practice a thief and an impostor because he has juniors +to “devil” for him, as make charges of this kind +against Dumas. He once asked his son to help him; the +younger Alexandre declined. “It is worth a thousand a +year, and you have only to make objections,” the sire +urged; but the son was not to be tempted. Some excellent +novelists of to-day would be much better if they employed a +friend to make objections. But, as a rule, the collaborator +did much more. Dumas’ method, apparently, was first +to talk the subject over with his <i>aide-de-camp</i>. This +is an excellent practice, as ideas are knocked out, like sparks +(an elderly illustration!), by the contact of minds. Then +the young man probably made researches, put a rough sketch on +paper, and supplied Dumas, as it were, with his +“brief.” Then Dumas took the +“brief” and wrote the novel. He gave it life, +he gave it the spark (<i>l’étincelle</i>); and the +story lived and moved.</p> +<p>It is true that he “took his own where he found +it,” like Molère and that he took a good deal. +In the gallery of an old country-house, on a wet day, I came once +on the “Mémoires” of D’Artagnan, where +they had lain since the family bought them in Queen Anne’s +time. There were our old friends the Musketeers, and there +were many of their adventures, told at great length and +breadth. But how much more vivacious they are in +Dumas! M. About repeats a story of Dumas and his ways +of work. He met the great man at Marseilles, where, indeed, +Alexandre chanced to be “on with the new love” before +being completely “off with the old.” Dumas +picked up M. About, literally lifted him in his embrace, and +carried him off to see a play which he had written in three +days. The play was a success; the supper was prolonged till +three in the morning; M. About was almost asleep as he walked +home, but Dumas was as fresh as if he had just got out of +bed. “Go to sleep, old man,” he said: “I, +who am only fifty-five, have three <i>feuilletons</i> to write, +which must be posted to-morrow. If I have time I shall +knock up a little piece for Montigny—the idea is running in +my head.” So next morning M. About saw the three +<i>feuilletons</i> made up for the post, and another packet +addressed to M. Montigny: it was the play <i>L’Invitation +à la Valse</i>, a chef-d’oeuvre! Well, the +material had been prepared for Dumas. M. About saw one of +his novels at Marseilles in the chrysalis. It was a stout +copy-book full of paper, composed by a practised hand, on the +master’s design. Dumas copied out each little leaf on +a big leaf of paper, <i>en y semant l’esprit à +pleines mains</i>. This was his method. As a rule, in +collaboration, one man does the work while the other looks +on. Is it likely that Dumas looked on? That was not +the manner of Dumas. “Mirecourt and others,” M. +About says, “have wept crocodile tears for the +collaborators, the victims of his glory and his talent. But +it is difficult to lament over the survivors (1884). The +master neither took their money—for they are rich, nor +their fame—for they are celebrated, nor their +merit—for they had and still have plenty. And they +never bewailed their fate: the reverse! The proudest +congratulate themselves on having been at so good a school; and +M. Auguste Maquet, the chief of them, speaks with real reverence +and affection of his great friend.” And M. About +writes “as one who had taken the master red-handed, and in +the act of collaboration.” Dumas has a curious note +on collaboration in his “Souvenirs +Dramatiques.” Of the two men at work together, +“one is always the dupe, and <i>he</i> is the man of +talent.”</p> +<p>There is no biography of Dumas, but the small change of a +biography exists in abundance. There are the many volumes +of his “Mémoires,” there are all the tomes he +wrote on his travels and adventures in Africa, Spain, Italy, +Russia; the book he wrote on his beasts; the romance of <i>Ange +Pitou</i>, partly autobiographical; and there are plenty of +little studies by people who knew him. As to his +“Mémoires,” as to all he wrote about himself, +of course his imagination entered into the narrative. Like +Scott, when he had a good story he liked to dress it up with a +cocked hat and a sword. Did he perform all those +astonishing and innumerable feats of strength, skill, courage, +address, in revolutions, in voyages, in love, in war, in +cookery? The narrative need not be taken “at the foot +of the letter”; great as was his force and his courage, his +fancy was greater still. There is no room for a biography +of him here. His descent was noble on one side, with or +without the bend sinister, which he said he would never have +disclaimed, had it been his, but which he did not happen to +inherit. On the other side he <i>may</i> have descended +from kings; but, as in the case of “The Fair Cuban,” +he must have added, “African, unfortunately.” +Did his father perform these mythical feats of strength? did he +lift up a horse between his legs while clutching a rafter with +his hands? did he throw his regiment before him over a wall, as +Guy Heavistone threw the mare which refused the leap +(“Mémoires,” i. 122)? No doubt Dumas +believed what he heard about this ancestor—in whom, +perhaps, one may see a hint of the giant Porthos. In the +Revolution and in the wars his father won the name of Monsieur de +l’Humanité, because he made a bonfire of a +guillotine; and of Horatius Cocles, because he held a pass as +bravely as the Roman “in the brave days of old.”</p> +<p>This was a father to be proud of; and pluck, tenderness, +generosity, strength, remained the favourite virtues of +Dumas. These he preached and practised. They say he +was generous before he was just; it is to be feared this was +true, but he gave even more freely than he received. A +regiment of seedy people sponged on him always; he could not +listen to a tale of misery but he gave what he had, and sometimes +left himself short of a dinner. He could not even turn a +dog out of doors. At his Abbotsford, “Monte +Cristo,” the gates were open to everybody but +bailiffs. His dog asked other dogs to come and stay: twelve +came, making thirteen in all. The old butler wanted to turn +them adrift, and Dumas consented, and repented.</p> +<p>“Michel,” he said, “there are some expenses +which a man’s social position and the character which he +has had the ill-luck to receive from heaven force upon him. +I don’t believe these dogs ruin me. Let them +bide! But, in the interests of their own good luck, see +they are not thirteen, an unfortunate number!”</p> +<p>“Monsieur, I’ll drive one of them away.”</p> +<p>“No, no, Michel; let a fourteenth come. These dogs +cost me some three pounds a month,” said Dumas. +“A dinner to five or six friends would cost thrice as much, +and, when they went home, they would say my wine was good, but +certainly that my books were bad.” In this fashion +Dumas fared royally “to the dogs,” and his Abbotsford +ruined him as certainly as that other unhappy palace ruined Sir +Walter. He, too, had his miscellaneous kennel; he, too, +gave while he had anything to give, and, when he had nothing +else, gave the work of his pen. Dumas tells how his big +dog, Mouton once flew at him and bit one of his hands, while the +other held the throat of the brute. “Luckily my hand, +though small, is powerful; what it once holds it holds +long—money excepted.” He could not “haud +a guid grip o’ the gear.” Neither Scott nor +Dumas could shut his ears to a prayer or his pockets to a beggar, +or his doors on whoever knocked at them.</p> +<p>“I might at least have asked him to dinner,” Scott +was heard murmuring, when some insufferable bore at last left +Abbotsford, after wasting his time and nearly wearing out his +patience. Neither man <i>preached</i> socialism; both +practised it on the Aristotelian principle: the goods of friends +are common, and men are our friends.</p> +<p style="text-align: center">* * * * *</p> +<p>The death of Dumas’ father, while the son was a child, +left Madame Dumas in great poverty at Villers Cotterets. +Dumas’ education was sadly to seek. Like most +children destined to be bookish, he taught himself to read very +young: in Buffon, the Bible, and books of mythology. He +knew all about Jupiter—like David Copperfield’s Tom +Jones, “a child’s Jupiter, an innocent +creature”—all about every god, goddess, fawn, dryad, +nymph—and he never forgot this useful information. +Dear Lemprière, thou art superseded; but how much more +delightful thou art than the fastidious Smith or the learned +Preller! Dumas had one volume of the “Arabian +Nights,” with Aladdin’s lamp therein, the sacred lamp +which he was to keep burning with a flame so brilliant and so +steady. It is pleasant to know that, in his boyhood, this +great romancer loved Virgil. “Little as is my Latin, +I have ever adored Virgil: his tenderness for exiles, his +melancholy vision of death, his foreboding of an unknown God, +have always moved me; the melody of his verses charmed me most, +and they lull me still between asleep and awake.” +School days did not last long: Madame Dumas got a little +post—a licence to sell tobacco—and at fifteen Dumas +entered a notary’s office, like his great Scotch +forerunner. He was ignorant of his vocation for the +stage—Racine and Corneille fatigued him +prodigiously—till he saw <i>Hamlet</i>: <i>Hamlet</i> +diluted by Ducis. He had never heard of Shakespeare, but +here was something he could appreciate. Here was “a +profound impression, full of inexplicable emotion, vague desires, +fleeting lights, that, so far, lit up only a chaos.”</p> +<p>Oddly enough, his earliest literary essay was the translation +of Bürger’s “Lenore.” Here, again, +he encounters Scott; but Scott translated the ballad, and Dumas +failed. <i>Les mortes vont vite</i>! the same refrain woke +poetry in both the Frenchman and the Scotchman.</p> +<blockquote><p>“Ha! ha! the Dead can ride with speed:<br /> + Dost fear to ride with me?”</p> +</blockquote> +<p>So Dumas’ literary career began with a defeat, but it +was always a beginning. He had just failed with +“Lenore,” when Leuven asked him to collaborate in a +play. He was utterly ignorant, he says; he had not +succeeded in gallant efforts to read through “Gil +Blas” and “Don Quixote.” “To my +shame,” he writes, “the man has not been more +fortunate with those masterpieces than the boy.” He +had not yet heard of Scott, Cooper, Goethe; he had heard of +Shakespeare only as a barbarian. Other plays the boy +wrote—failures, of course—and then Dumas poached his +way to Paris, shooting partridges on the road, and paying the +hotel expenses by his success in the chase. He was +introduced to the great Talma: what a moment for Talma, had he +known it! He saw the theatres. He went home, but +returned to Paris, drew a small prize in a lottery, and sat next +a gentleman at the play, a gentleman who read the rarest of +Elzevirs, “Le Pastissier Français,” and gave +him a little lecture on Elzevirs in general. Soon this +gentleman began to hiss the piece, and was turned out. He +was Charles Nodier, and one of the anonymous authors of the play +he was hissing! I own that this amusing chapter lacks +verisimilitude. It reads as if Dumas had chanced to +“get up” the subject of Elzevirs, and had fashioned +his new knowledge into a little story. He could make a +story out of anything—he “turned all to favour and to +prettiness.” Could I translate the whole passage, and +print it here, it would be longer than this article; but, ah, how +much more entertaining! For whatever Dumas did he did with +such life, spirit, wit, he told it with such vivacity, that his +whole career is one long romance of the highest quality. +Lassagne told him he must read—must read Goethe, Scott, +Cooper, Froissart, Joinville, Brantôme. He read them +to some purpose. He entered the service of the Duc +d’Orléans as a clerk, for he wrote a clear hand, +and, happily, wrote at astonishing speed. He is said to +have written a short play in a cottage where he went to rest for +an hour or two after shooting all the morning. The practice +in a notary’s office stood him, as it stood Scott, in good +stead. When a dog bit his hand he managed to write a volume +without using his thumb. I have tried it, but +forbear—in mercy to the printers. He performed wild +feats of rapid caligraphy when a clerk under the Duc +d’Orléans, and he wrote his plays in one +“hand,” his novels in another. The +“hand” used in his dramas he acquired when, in days +of poverty, he used to write in bed. To this habit he also +attributed the <i>brutalité</i> of his earlier pieces, but +there seems to be no good reason why a man should write like a +brute because it is in bed that he writes.</p> +<p>In those days of small things he fought his first duel, and +made a study of Fear and Courage. His earliest impulse was +to rush at danger; if he had to wait, he felt his courage oozing +out at the tips of his fingers, like Bob Acres, but in the moment +of peril he was himself again. In dreams he was a coward, +because, as he argues, the natural man <i>is</i> a poltroon, and +conscience, honour, all the spiritual and commanding part of our +nature, goes to sleep in dreams. The animal terror asserts +itself unchecked. It is a theory not without +exceptions. In dreams one has plenty of conscience (at +least that is my experience), though it usually takes the form of +remorse. And in dreams one often affronts dangers which, in +waking hours, one might probably avoid if one could.</p> +<p style="text-align: center">* * * * *</p> +<p>Dumas’ first play, an unimportant vaudeville, was acted +in 1825. His first novels were also published then; he took +part of the risk, and only four copies were sold. He +afterward used the ideas in more mature works, as Mr. Sheridan Le +Fanu employed three or four times (with perfect candour and +fairness) the most curious incident in “Uncle +Silas.” Like Mr. Arthur Pendennis, Dumas at this time +wrote poetry “up to” pictures and +illustrations. It is easy, but seldom lucrative work. +He translated a play of Schiller’s into French verse, +chiefly to gain command of that vehicle, for his heart was fixed +on dramatic success. Then came the visit of Kean and other +English actors to Paris. He saw the true <i>Hamlet</i>, +and, for the first time on any stage, “the play of real +passions.” Emulation woke in him: a casual work of +art led him to the story of Christina of Sweden, he wrote his +play <i>Christine</i> (afterward reconstructed); he read it to +Baron Taylor, who applauded; the Comédie Française +accepted it, but a series of intrigues disappointed him, after +all. His energy at this moment was extraordinary, for he +was very poor, his mother had a stroke of paralysis, his bureau +was always bullying and interfering with him. But nothing +could snub this “force of nature,” and he immediately +produced his <i>Henri Trois</i>, the first romantic drama of +France. This had an instant and noisy success, and the +first night of the play he spent at the theatre, and at the +bedside of his unconscious mother. The poor lady could not +even understand whence the flowers came that he laid on her +couch, the flowers thrown to the young man—yesterday +unknown, and to-day the most famous of contemporary names. +All this tale of triumph, checkered by enmities and diversified +by duels, Dumas tells with the vigour and wit of his +novels. He is his own hero, and loses nothing in the +process; but the other characters—Taylor, Nodier, the Duc +d’Orléans, the spiteful press-men, the crabbed old +officials—all live like the best of the persons in his +tales. They call Dumas vain: he had reason to be vain, and +no candid or generous reader will be shocked by his pleasant, +frank, and artless enjoyment of himself and of his +adventures. Oddly enough, they are small-minded and +small-hearted people who are most shocked by what they call +“vanity” in the great. Dumas’ delight in +himself and his doings is only the flower of his vigorous +existence, and in his “Mémoires,” at least, it +is as happy and encouraging as his laugh, or the laugh of +Porthos; it is a kind of radiance, in which others, too, may bask +and enjoy themselves. And yet it is resented by tiny +scribblers, frozen in their own chill self-conceit.</p> +<p>There is nothing incredible (if modern researches are +accurate) in the stories he tells of his own success in +Hypnotism, as it is called now, Mesmerism or Magnetism as it was +called then. Who was likely to possess these powers, if not +this good-humoured natural force? “I believe that, by +aid of magnetism, a bad man might do much mischief. I doubt +whether, by help of magnetism, a good man can do the slightest +good,” he says, probably with perfect justice. His +dramatic success fired Victor Hugo, and very pleasant it is to +read Dumas’ warm-hearted praise of that great poet. +Dumas had no jealousy—no more than Scott. As he +believed in no success without talent, so he disbelieved in +genius which wins no success. “Je ne crois pas au +talent ignoré, au génie inconnu, moi.” +Genius he saluted wherever he met it, but was incredulous about +invisible and inaudible genius; and I own to sharing his +scepticism. People who complain of Dumas’ vanity may +be requested to observe that he seems just as “vain” +of Hugo’s successes, or of Scribe’s, as of his own, +and just as much delighted by them.</p> +<p>He was now struck, as he walked on the boulevard one day, by +the first idea of <i>Antony</i>—an idea which, to be fair, +seems rather absurd than tragic, to some tastes. “A +lover, caught with a married woman, kills her to save her +character, and dies on the scaffold.” Here is indeed +a part to tear a cat in!</p> +<p style="text-align: center">* * * * *</p> +<p>The performances of M. Dumas during the Revolution of 1830, +are they not written in the Book of the Chronicles of Alexandre +the Great? But they were not literary excellences which he +then displayed, and we may leave this king-maker to hover, +“like an eagle, above the storms of anarchy.”</p> +<p>Even to sketch his later biography is beyond our +province. In 1830 he had forty years to run, and he filled +the cup of the Hours to the brim with activity and +adventure. His career was one of unparalleled production, +punctuated by revolutions, voyages, exiles, and other intervals +of repose. The tales he tells of his prowess in 1830, and +with Garibaldi, seem credible to me, and are borne out, so far, +by the narrative of M. Maxime Ducamp, who met him at Naples, in +the Garibaldian camp. Like Mr. Jingle, in +“Pickwick,” he “banged the field-piece, twanged +the lyre,” and was potting at the foes of the republic with +a double-barrelled gun, when he was not composing plays, +romances, memoirs, criticisms. He has told the tale of his +adventures with the Comédie Française, where the +actors laughed at his <i>Antony</i>, and where Madame Mars and he +quarrelled and made it up again. His plays often won an +extravagant success; his novels—his great novels, that +is—made all Europe his friend. He gained large sums +of money, which flowed out of his fingers, though it is said by +some that his Abbotsford, Monte Cristo, was no more a palace than +the villa which a retired tradesman builds to shelter his old +age. But the money disappeared as fast as if Monte Cristo +had really been palatial, and worthy of the fantasy of a +Nero. He got into debt, fled to Belgium, returned, founded +the <i>Mousquetaire</i>, a literary paper of the strangest and +most shiftless kind. In “Alexandre Dumas à la +Maison d’Or,” M. Philibert Audebrand tells the tale +of this Micawber of newspapers. Everything went into it, +good or bad, and the name of Dumas was expected to make all +current coin. For Dumas, unluckily, was as prodigal of his +name as of his gold, and no reputation could bear the drafts he +made on his celebrity. His son says, in the preface to +<i>Le Fils Naturel</i>: “Tragedy, dramas, history, romance, +comedy, travel, you cast all of them in the furnace and the mould +of your brain, and you peopled the world of fiction with new +creations. The newspaper, the book, the theatre, burst +asunder, too narrow for your puissant shoulders; you fed France, +Europe, America with your works; you made the wealth of +publishers, translators, plagiarists; printers and copyists +toiled after you in vain. In the fever of production you +did not always try and prove the metal which you employed, and +sometimes you tossed into the furnace whatever came to your +hand. The fire made the selection: what was your own is +bronze, what was not yours vanished in smoke.”</p> +<p>The simile is noble and worthy of the Cyclopean craftsman, +Dumas. His great works endured; the plays which renewed the +youth of the French stage, the novels which Thackeray loved to +praise, these remain, and we trust they may always remain, to the +delight of mankind and for the sorrow of prigs.</p> +<p style="text-align: center">* * * * *</p> +<p>So much has been written of Dumas’ novels that criticism +can hardly hope to say more that is both new and true about +them. It is acknowledged that, in such a character as Henri +III., Dumas made history live, as magically as Scott revived the +past in his Louis XI., or Balfour of Burley. It is admitted +that Dumas’ good tales are told with a vigour and life +which rejoice the heart; that his narrative is never dull, never +stands still, but moves with a freedom of adventure which perhaps +has no parallel. He may fall short of the humour, the +kindly wisdom, the genial greatness of Sir Walter at his best, +and he has not that supernatural touch, that tragic grandeur, +which Scott inherits from Homer and from Shakespeare. In +another Homeric quality, χαρyη, as Homer +himself calls it, in the “delight of battle” and the +spirit of the fray, Scott and Dumas are alike masters. +Their fights and the fights in the Icelandic sagas are the best +that have ever been drawn by mortal man. When swords are +aloft, in siege or on the greensward, or in the midnight chamber +where an ambush is laid, Scott and Dumas are indeed +themselves. The steel rings, the bucklers clash, the parry +and lunge pass and answer too swift for the sight. If Dumas +has not, as he certainly has not, the noble philosophy and kindly +knowledge of the heart which are Scott’s, he is far more +swift, more witty, more diverting. He is not prolix, his +style is not involved, his dialogue is as rapid and keen as an +assault at arms. His favourite virtues and graces, we +repeat it, are loyalty, friendship, gaiety, generosity, courage, +beauty, and strength. He is himself the friend of the big, +stupid, excellent Porthos; of Athos, the noble and melancholy +swordsman of sorrow; of D’Artagnan, the indomitable, the +trusty, the inexhaustible in resource; but his heart is never on +the side of the shifty Aramis, with all his beauty, dexterity, +bravery, and brilliance. The brave Bussy, and the +chivalrous, the doomed La Mole, are more dear to him; and if he +embellishes their characters, giving them charms and virtues that +never were theirs, history loses nothing, and romance and we are +the gainers. In all he does, at his best, as in the +“Chevalier d’Harmenthal,” he has movement, +kindness, courage, and gaiety. His philosophy of life is +that old philosophy of the sagas and of Homer. Let us enjoy +the movement of the fray, the faces of fair women, the taste of +good wine; let us welcome life like a mistress, let us welcome +death like a friend, and with a jest—if death comes with +honour.</p> +<p>Dumas is no pessimist. “Heaven has made but one +drama for man—the world,” he writes, “and +during these three thousand years mankind has been hissing +it.” It is certain that, if a moral censorship could +have prevented it, this great drama of mortal passions would +never have been licensed, at all, never performed. But +Dumas, for one, will not hiss it, but applauds with all his +might—a charmed spectator, a fortunate actor in the eternal +piece, where all the men and women are only players. You +hear his manly laughter, you hear his mighty hands approving, you +see the tears he sheds when he had “slain +Porthos”—great tears like those of Pantagruel.</p> +<p style="text-align: center">* * * * *</p> +<p>His may not be the best, nor the ultimate philosophy, but it +<i>is</i> a philosophy, and one of which we may some day feel the +want. I read the stilted criticisms, the pedantic carpings +of some modern men who cannot write their own language, and I +gather that Dumas is out of date. There is a new philosophy +of doubts and delicacies, of dallyings and refinements, of +half-hearted lookers-on, desiring and fearing some new order of +the world. Dumas does not dally nor doubt: he takes his +side, he rushes into the smoke, he strikes his foe; but there is +never an unkind word on his lip, nor a grudging thought in his +heart.</p> +<p>It may be said that Dumas is not a master of words and +phrases, that he is not a <i>raffiné</i> of expression, +nor a jeweller of style. When I read the maunderings, the +stilted and staggering sentences, the hesitating phrases, the +far-sought and dear-bought and worthless word-juggles; the sham +scientific verbiage, the native pedantries of many modern +so-called “stylists,” I rejoice that Dumas was not +one of these. He told a plain tale, in the language suited +to a plain tale, with abundance of wit and gaiety, as in the +reflections of his Chicot, as in all his dialogues. But he +did not gnaw the end of his pen in search of some word that +nobody had ever used in this or that connection before. The +right word came to him, the simple straightforward phrase. +Epithet-hunting may be a pretty sport, and the bag of the +epithet-hunter may contain some agreeable epigrams and rare +specimens of style; but a plain tale of adventure, of love and +war, needs none of this industry, and is even spoiled by +inopportune diligence. Speed, directness, lucidity are the +characteristics of Dumas’ style, and they are exactly the +characteristics which his novels required. Scott often +failed, his most loyal admirers may admit, in these essentials; +but it is rarely that Dumas fails, when he is himself and at his +best.</p> +<p style="text-align: center">* * * * *</p> +<p>In spite of his heedless education, Dumas had true critical +qualities, and most admired the best things. We have +already seen how he writes about Shakespeare, Virgil, Goethe, +Scott. But it may be less familiarly known that this burly +man-of-all-work, ignorant as he was of Greek, had a true and keen +appreciation of Homer. Dumas declares that he only thrice +criticised his contemporaries in an unfavourable sense, and as +one wishful to find fault. The victims were Casimir +Delavigne, Scribe, and Ponsard. On each occasion Dumas +declares that, after reflecting, he saw that he was moved by a +little personal pique, not by a disinterested love of art. +He makes his confession with a rare nobility of candour; and yet +his review of Ponsard is worthy of him. M. Ponsard, who, +like Dumas, was no scholar, wrote a play styled <i>Ulysse</i>, +and borrowed from the Odyssey. Dumas follows Ponsard, +Odyssey in hand, and while he proves that the dramatist failed to +understand Homer, proves that he himself was, in essentials, a +capable Homeric critic. Dumas understands that far-off +heroic age. He lives in its life and sympathises with its +temper. Homer and he are congenial; across the great gulf +of time they exchange smiles and a salute.</p> +<p>“Oh! ancient Homer, dear and good and noble, I am minded +now and again to leave all and translate thee—I, who have +never a word of Greek—so empty and so dismal are the +versions men make of thee, in verse or in prose.”</p> +<p>How Dumas came to divine Homer, as it were, through a language +he knew not, who shall say? He <i>did</i> divine him by a +natural sympathy of excellence, and his chapters on the +“Ulysse” of Ponsard are worth a wilderness of notes +by learned and most un-Homeric men. For, indeed, who can be +less like the heroic minstrel than the academic philologist?</p> +<p>This universality deserves note. The Homeric student who +takes up a volume of Dumas at random finds that he is not only +Homeric naturally, but that he really knows his Homer. What +did he nor know? His rapidity in reading must have been as +remarkable as his pace with the pen. As M. Blaze de Bury +says: “Instinct, experience, memory were all his; he sees +at a glance, he compares in a flash, he understands without +conscious effort, he forgets nothing that he has +read.” The past and present are photographed +imperishably on his brain, he knows the manners of all ages and +all countries, the names of all the arms that men have used, all +the garments they have worn, all the dishes they have tasted, all +the terms of all professions, from swordsmanship to +coach-building. Other authors have to wait, and hunt for +facts; nothing stops Dumas: he knows and remembers +everything. Hence his rapidity, his facility, his positive +delight in labour: hence it came that he might be heard, like +Dickens, laughing while he worked.</p> +<p style="text-align: center">* * * * *</p> +<p>This is rather a eulogy than a criticism of Dumas. His +faults are on the surface, visible to all men. He was not +only rapid, he was hasty, he was inconsistent; his need of money +as well as his love of work made him put his hand to dozens of +perishable things. A beginner, entering the forest of +Dumas’ books, may fail to see the trees for the wood. +He may be counselled to select first the cycle of +d’Artagnan—the “Musketeers,” +“Twenty Years After,” and the “Vicomte de +Bragelonne.” Mr. Stevenson’s delightful essay +on the last may have sent many readers to it; I confess to +preferring the youth of the “Musketeers” to their old +age. Then there is the cycle of the Valois, whereof the +“Dame de Monsereau” is the best—perhaps the +best thing Dumas ever wrote. The “Tulipe Noire” +is a novel girls may read, as Thackeray said, with +confidence. The “Chevalier d’Harmenthal” +is nearly (not quite) as good as “Quentin +Durward.” “Monte Cristo” has the best +beginning—and loses itself in the sands. The novels +on the Revolution are not among the most alluring: the famed +device “L. P. D.” (<i>lilia pedibus destrue</i>) has +the bad luck to suggest “London Parcels +Delivery.” That is an accident, but the Revolution is +in itself too terrible and pitiful, and too near us (on both +sides!) for fiction.</p> +<p>On Dumas’ faults it has been no pleasure to dwell. +In a recent work I find the Jesuit Le Moyne quoted, saying about +Charles V.: “What need that future ages should be made +acquainted so religious an Emperor was not always +chaste!” The same reticence allures one in regard to +so delightful an author as Dumas. He who had enriched so +many died poor; he who had told of conquering France, died during +the Terrible Year. But he could forgive, could appreciate, +the valour of an enemy. Of the Scotch at Waterloo he +writes: “It was not enough to kill them: we had to push +them down.” Dead, they still stood “shoulder to +shoulder.” In the same generous temper an English +cavalry officer wrote home, after Waterloo, that he would gladly +have given the rest of his life to have served, on that day, in +our infantry or in the French cavalry. These are the +spirits that warm the heart, that make us all friends; and to the +great, the brave, the generous Dumas we cry, across the years and +across the tomb, our <i>Ave atque vale</i>!</p> +<h2>MR. STEVENSON’S WORKS</h2> +<p>Perhaps the first quality in Mr. Stevenson’s works, now +so many and so various, which strikes a reader, is the buoyancy, +the survival of the child in him. He has told the world +often, in prose and verse, how vivid are his memories of his own +infancy. This retention of childish recollections he +shares, no doubt, with other people of genius: for example, with +George Sand, whose legend of her own infancy is much more +entertaining, and perhaps will endure longer, than her +novels. Her youth, like Scott’s and like Mr. +Stevenson’s, was passed all in fantasy: in playing at being +some one else, in the invention of imaginary characters, who were +living to her, in the fabrication of endless unwritten +romances. Many persons, who do not astonish the world by +their genius, have lived thus in their earliest youth. But, +at a given moment, the fancy dies out of them: this often befalls +imaginative boys in their first year at school. “Many +are called, few chosen”; but it may be said with probable +truth, that there has never been a man of genius in letters, +whose boyhood was not thus fantastic, “an isle of +dreams.” We know how Scott and De Quincey inhabited +airy castles; and Gillies tells us, though Lockhart does not, +that Scott, in manhood, was occasionally so lost in thought, that +he knew not where he was nor what he was doing.</p> +<p>The peculiarity of Mr. Stevenson is not only to have been a +fantastic child, and to retain, in maturity, that fantasy ripened +into imagination: he has also kept up the habit of dramatising +everything, of playing, half consciously, many parts, of making +the world “an unsubstantial fairy place.” This +turn of mind it is that causes his work occasionally to seem +somewhat freakish. Thus, in the fogs and horrors of London, +he plays at being an Arabian tale-teller, and his “New +Arabian Nights” are a new kind of +romanticism—Oriental, freakish, like the work of a +changeling. Indeed, this curious genius, springing from a +family of Scottish engineers, resembles nothing so much as one of +the fairy children, whom the ladies of Queen Proserpina’s +court used to leave in the cradles of Border keeps or of +peasants’ cottages. Of the Scot he has little but the +power of touching us with a sense of the supernatural, and a +decided habit of moralising; for no Scot of genius has been more +austere with Robert Burns. On the other hand, one element +of Mr. Stevenson’s ethical disquisitions is derived from +his dramatic habit. His optimism, his gay courage, his +habit of accepting the world as very well worth living in and +looking at, persuaded one of his critics that he was a +hard-hearted young athlete of iron frame. Now, of the +athlete he has nothing but his love of the open air: it is the +eternal child that drives him to seek adventures and to sojourn +among beach-combers and savages. Thus, an admiring but far +from optimistic critic may doubt whether Mr. Stevenson’s +content with the world is not “only his fun,” as Lamb +said of Coleridge’s preaching; whether he is but playing at +being the happy warrior in life; whether he is not acting that +part, himself to himself. At least, it is a part +fortunately conceived and admirably sustained: a difficult part +too, whereas that of the pessimist is as easy as whining.</p> +<p>Mr. Stevenson’s work has been very much written about, +as it has engaged and delighted readers of every age, station, +and character. Boys, of course, have been specially +addressed in the books of adventure, children in “A +Child’s Garden of Verse,” young men and maidens in +“Virginibus Puerisque,”—all ages in all the +curiously varied series of volumes. “Kidnapped” +was one of the last books which the late Lord Iddesleigh read; +and I trust there is no harm in mentioning the pleasure which Mr. +Matthew Arnold took in the same story. Critics of every +sort have been kind to Mr. Stevenson, in spite of the fact that +the few who first became acquainted with his genius praised it +with all the warmth of which they were masters. Thus he has +become a kind of classic in his own day, for an undisputed +reputation makes a classic while it lasts. But was ever so +much fame won by writings which might be called scrappy and +desultory by the <i>advocatus diaboli</i>? It is a most +miscellaneous literary baggage that Mr. Stevenson carries. +First, a few magazine articles; then two little books of +sentimental journeyings, which convince the reader that Mr. +Stevenson is as good company to himself as his books are to +others. Then came a volume or two of essays, literary and +social, on books and life. By this time there could be no +doubt that Mr. Stevenson had a style of his own, modelled to some +extent on the essayists of the last century, but with touches of +Thackeray; with original breaks and turns, with a delicate +freakishness, in short, and a determined love of saying things as +the newspapers do not say them. All this work undoubtedly +smelt a trifle of the lamp, and was therefore dear to some, and +an offence to others. For my part, I had delighted in the +essays, from the first that appeared in <i>Macmillan’s +Magazine</i>, shortly after the Franco-German war. In this +little study, “Ordered South,” Mr. Stevenson was +employing himself in extracting all the melancholy pleasure which +the Riviera can give to a wearied body and a mind resisting the +clouds of early malady,</p> +<blockquote><p>“Alas, the worn and broken board,<br /> + How can it bear the painter’s dye!<br /> +The harp of strained and tuneless chord,<br /> + How to the minstrel’s skill reply!<br /> +To aching eyes each landscape lowers,<br /> + To feverish pulse each gale blows chill,<br /> +And Araby’s or Eden’s bowers<br /> + Were barren as this moorland hill,”—</p> +</blockquote> +<p>wrote Scott, in an hour of malady and depression. But +this was not the spirit of “Ordered South”: the +younger soul rose against the tyranny of the body; and that +familiar glamour which, in illness, robs Tintoretto of his glow, +did not spoil the midland sea to Mr. Stevenson. His gallant +and cheery stoicism were already with him; and so perfect, if a +trifle overstudied, was his style, that one already foresaw a new +and charming essayist.</p> +<p>But none of those early works, nor the delightful book on +Edinburgh, prophesied of the story teller. Mr. +Stevenson’s first published tales, the “New Arabian +Nights,” originally appeared in a quaintly edited weekly +paper, which nobody read, or nobody but the writers in its +columns. They welcomed the strange romances with +rejoicings: but perhaps there was only one of them who foresaw +that Mr. Stevenson’s <i>forte</i> was to be fiction, not +essay writing; that he was to appeal with success to the large +public, and not to the tiny circle who surround the +essayist. It did not seem likely that our incalculable +public would make themselves at home in those fantastic purlieus +which Mr. Stevenson’s fancy discovered near the +Strand. The impossible Young Man with the Cream Tarts, the +ghastly revels of the Suicide Club, the Oriental caprices of the +Hansom Cabs—who could foresee that the public would taste +them! It is true that Mr. Stevenson’s imagination +made the President of the Club, and the cowardly member, Mr. +Malthus, as real as they were terrible. His romance always +goes hand in hand with reality; and Mr. Malthus is as much an +actual man of skin and bone, as Silas Lapham is a man of flesh +and blood. The world saw this, and applauded the +“Noctes of Prince Floristan,” in a fairy London.</p> +<p>Yet, excellent and unique as these things were, Mr. Stevenson +had not yet “found himself.” It would be more +true to say that he had only discovered outlying skirts of his +dominions. Has he ever hit on the road to the capital yet? +and will he ever enter it laurelled, and in triumph? That +is precisely what one may doubt, not as without hope. He is +always making discoveries in his realm; it is less certain that +he will enter its chief city in state. His next work was +rather in the nature of annexation and invasion than a settling +of his own realms. “Prince Otto” is not, to my +mind, a ruler in his proper soil. The provinces of George +Sand and of Mr. George Meredith have been taken captive. +“Prince Otto” is fantastic indeed, but neither the +fantasy nor the style is quite Mr. Stevenson’s. There +are excellent passages, and the Scotch soldier of fortune is +welcome, and the ladies abound in subtlety and wit. But the +book, at least to myself, seems an extremely elaborate and +skilful <i>pastiche</i>. I cannot believe in the +persons. I vaguely smell a moral allegory (as in +“Will of the Mill”). I do not clearly +understand what it is all about. The scene is fairyland; +but it is not the fairyland of Perrault. The ladies are +beautiful and witty; but they are escaped from a novel of Mr. +Meredith’s, and have no business here. The book is no +more Mr. Stevenson’s than “The Tale of Two +Cities” was Mr. Dickens’s.</p> +<p>It was probably by way of mere diversion and child’s +play that Mr. Stevenson began “Treasure +Island.” He is an amateur of boyish pleasures of +masterpieces at a penny plain and twopence coloured. +Probably he had looked at the stories of adventure in penny +papers which only boys read, and he determined sportively to +compete with their unknown authors. “Treasure +Island” came out in such a periodical, with the emphatic +woodcuts which adorn them. It is said that the puerile +public was not greatly stirred. A story is a story, and +they rather preferred the regular purveyors. The very faint +archaism of the style may have alienated them. But, when +“Treasure Island” appeared as a real book, then every +one who had a smack of youth left was a boy again for some happy +hours. Mr. Stevenson had entered into another province of +his realm: the king had come to his own again.</p> +<p>They say the seamanship is inaccurate; I care no more than I +do for the year 30. They say too many people are +killed. They all died in fair fight, except a victim of +John Silver’s. The conclusion is a little too like +part of Poe’s most celebrated tale, but nobody has bellowed +“Plagiarist!” Some people may not look over a +fence: Mr. Stevenson, if he liked, might steal a horse,—the +animal in this case is only a skeleton. A very sober +student might add that the hero is impossibly clever; but, then, +the hero is a boy, and this is a boy’s book. For the +rest, the characters live. Only genius could have invented +John Silver, that terribly smooth-spoken mariner. Nothing +but genius could have drawn that simple yokel on the island, with +his craving for cheese as a Christian dainty. The +blustering Billy Bones is a little masterpiece: the blind Pew, +with his tapping stick (there are three such blind tappers in Mr. +Stevenson’s books), strikes terror into the boldest. +Then, the treasure is thoroughly satisfactory in kind, and there +is plenty of it. The landscape, as in the feverish, +fog-smothered flat, is gallantly painted. And there are no +interfering petticoats in the story.</p> +<p>As for the “Black Arrow,” I confess to sharing the +disabilities of the “Critic on the Hearth,” to whom +it is dedicated. “Kidnapped” is less a story +than a fragment; but it is a noble fragment. Setting aside +the wicked old uncle, who in his later behaviour is of the house +of Ralph Nickleby, “Kidnapped” is all +excellent—perhaps Mr. Stevenson’s masterpiece. +Perhaps, too, only a Scotchman knows how good it is, and only a +Lowland Scot knows how admirable a character is the dour, brave, +conceited David Balfour. It is like being in Scotland again +to come on “the green drive-road running wide through the +heather,” where David “took his last look of Kirk +Essendean, the trees about the manse, and the big rowans in the +kirkyard, where his father and mother lay.” Perfectly +Scotch, too, is the mouldering, empty house of the Miser, with +the stamped leather on the walls. And the Miser is as good +as a Scotch Trapbois, till he becomes homicidal, and then one +fails to recognise him unless he is a little mad, like that other +frantic uncle in “The Merry Men.” The scenes on +the ship, with the boy who is murdered, are better—I think +more real—than the scenes of piratical life in “The +Master of Ballantrae.” The fight in the Round House, +even if it were exaggerated, would be redeemed by the “Song +of the Sword of Alan.” As to Alan Breck himself, with +his valour and vanity, his good heart, his good conceit of +himself, his fantastic loyalty, he is absolutely worthy of the +hand that drew Callum Bey and the Dougal creature. It is +just possible that we see, in “Kidnapped,” more signs +of determined labour, more evidence of touches and retouches, +than in “Rob Roy.” In nothing else which it +attempts is it inferior; in mastery of landscape, as in the scene +of the lonely rock in a dry and thirsty land, it is +unsurpassed. If there are signs of laboured handling on +Alan, there are none in the sketches of Cluny and of Rob +Roy’s son, the piper. What a generous artist is +Alan! “Robin Oig,” he said, when it was done, +“ye are a great piper. I am not fit to blow in the +same kingdom with you. Body of me! ye have mair music in +your sporran than I have in my head.”</p> +<p>“Kidnapped,” we said, is a fragment. It ends +anywhere, or nowhere, as if the pen had dropped from a weary +hand. Thus, and for other reasons, one cannot pretend to +set what is not really a whole against such a rounded whole as +“Rob Roy,” or against “The Legend of +Montrose.” Again, “Kidnapped” is a novel +without a woman in it: not here is Di Vernon, not here is Helen +McGregor. David Balfour is the pragmatic Lowlander; he does +not bear comparison, excellent as he is, with Baillie Nicol +Jarvie, the humorous Lowlander: he does not live in the memory +like the immortal Baillie. It is as a series of scenes and +sketches that “Kidnapped” is unmatched among Mr. +Stevenson’s works.</p> +<p>In “The Master of Ballantrae” Mr. Stevenson makes +a gallant effort to enter what I have ventured to call the +capital of his kingdom. He does introduce a woman, and +confronts the problems of love as well as of fraternal +hatred. The “Master” is studied, is polished +<i>ad unguem</i>; it is a whole in itself, it is a remarkably +daring attempt to write the tragedy, as, in +“Waverley,” Scott wrote the romance, of Scotland +about the time of the Forty-Five. With such a predecessor +and rival, Mr. Stevenson wisely leaves the pomps and battles of +the Forty-Five, its chivalry and gallantry, alone. He shows +us the seamy side: the intrigues, domestic and political; the +needy Irish adventurer with the Prince, a person whom Scott had +not studied. The book, if completely successful, would be +Mr. Stevenson’s “Bride of Lammermoor.” To +be frank, I do not think it completely successful—a victory +all along the line. The obvious weak point is Secundra +Dass, that Indian of unknown nationality; for surely his name +marks him as no Hindoo. The Master could not have brought +him, shivering like Jos Sedley’s black servant, to +Scotland. As in America, this alien would have found it +“too dam cold.” My power of belief (which +verges on credulity) is staggered by the ghastly attempt to +reanimate the buried Master. Here, at least to my taste, +the freakish changeling has got the better of Mr. Stevenson, and +has brought in an element out of keeping with the steady lurid +tragedy of fraternal hatred. For all the rest, it were a +hard judge that had anything but praise. The brilliant +blackguardism of the Master; his touch of sentiment as he leaves +Durisdeer for the last time, with a sad old song on his lips; his +fascination; his ruthlessness; his irony;—all are +perfect. It is not very easy to understand the Chevalier +Bourke, that Barry Lyndon, with no head and with a good heart, +that creature of a bewildered kindly conscience; but it is easy +to like him. How admirable is his undeflected belief in and +affection for the Master! How excellent and how Irish he +is, when he buffoons himself out of his perils with the +pirates! The scenes are brilliant and living, as when the +Master throws the guinea through the Hall window, or as in the +darkling duel in the garden. It needed an austere artistic +conscience to make Henry, the younger brother, so unlovable with +all his excellence, and to keep the lady so true, yet so much in +shadow. This is the best woman among Mr. Stevenson’s +few women; but even she is almost always reserved, veiled as it +were.</p> +<p>The old Lord, again, is a portrait as lifelike as Scott could +have drawn, and more delicately touched than Scott would have +cared to draw it: a French companion picture to the Baron +Bradwardine. The whole piece reads as if Mr. Stevenson had +engaged in a struggle with himself as he wrote. The sky is +never blue, the sun never shines: we weary for a “westland +wind.” There is something “thrawn,” as +the Scotch say, about the story; there is often a touch of this +sinister kind in the author’s work. The language is +extraordinarily artful, as in the mad lord’s words, +“I have felt the hilt dirl on his breast-bone.” +And yet, one is hardly thrilled as one expects to be, when, as +Mackellar says, “the week-old corpse looked me for a moment +in the face.”</p> +<p>Probably none of Mr. Stevenson’s many books has made his +name so familiar as “Dr. Jekyll and Mr Hyde.” I +read it first in manuscript, alone, at night; and, when the +Butler and Mr. Urmson came to the Doctor’s door, I confess +that I threw it down, and went hastily to bed. It is the +most gruesome of all his writings, and so perfect that one can +complain only of the slightly too obvious moral; and, again, that +really Mr. Hyde was more of a gentleman than the unctuous Dr. +Jekyll, with his “bedside manner.”</p> +<p>So here, not to speak of some admirable short stories like +“Thrawn Janet,” is a brief catalogue—little +more—of Mr. Stevenson’s literary baggage. It is +all good, though variously good; yet the wise world asks for the +masterpiece. It is said that Mr. Stevenson has not ventured +on the delicate and dangerous ground of the novel, because he has +not written a modern love story. But who has? There +are love affairs in Dickens, but do we remember or care for +them? Is it the love affairs that we remember in +Scott? Thackeray may touch us with Clive’s and Jack +Belsize’s misfortunes, with Esmond’s melancholy +passion, and amuse us with Pen in so many toils, and interest us +in the little heroine of the “Shabby Genteel +Story.” But it is not by virtue of those episodes +that Thackeray is so great. Love stories are best done by +women, as in “Mr. Gilfil’s Love Story”; and, +perhaps, in an ordinary way, by writers like Trollope. One +may defy critics to name a great English author in fiction whose +chief and distinguishing merit is in his pictures of the passion +of Love. Still, they all give Love his due stroke in the +battle, and perhaps Mr. Stevenson will do so some day. But +I confess that, if he ever excels himself, I do not expect it to +be in a love story.</p> +<p>Possibly it may be in a play. If he again attempt the +drama, he has this in his favour, that he will not deal in +supernumeraries. In his tales his minor characters are as +carefully drawn as his chief personages. Consider, for +example, the minister, Henderland, the man who is so fond of +snuff, in “Kidnapped,” and, in the “Master of +Ballantrae,” Sir William Johnson, the English +Governor. They are the work of a mind as attentive to +details, as ready to subordinate or obliterate details which are +unessential. Thus Mr. Stevenson’s writings breathe +equally of work in the study and of inspiration from adventure in +the open air, and thus he wins every vote, and pleases every +class of reader.</p> +<h2>THOMAS HAYNES BAYLY</h2> +<p>I cannot sing the old songs, nor indeed any others, but I can +read them, in the neglected works of Thomas Haynes Bayly. +The name of Bayly may be unfamiliar, but every one almost has +heard his ditties chanted—every one much over forty, at all +events. “I’ll hang my Harp on a Willow +Tree,” and “I’d be a Butterfly,” and +“Oh, no! we never mention Her,” are dimly dear to +every friend of Mr. Richard Swiveller. If to be sung +everywhere, to hear your verses uttered in harmony with all +pianos and quoted by the world at large, be fame, Bayly had +it. He was an unaffected poet. He wrote words to +airs, and he is almost absolutely forgotten. To read him is +to be carried back on the wings of music to the bowers of youth; +and to the bowers of youth I have been wafted, and to the old +booksellers. You do not find on every stall the poems of +Bayly; but a copy in two volumes has been discovered, edited by +Mr. Bayly’s widow (Bentley, 1844). They saw the light +in the same year as the present critic, and perhaps they ceased +to be very popular before he was breeched. Mr. Bayly, +according to Mrs. Bayly, “ably penetrated the sources of +the human heart,” like Shakespeare and Mr. Howells. +He also “gave to minstrelsy the attributes of intellect and +wit,” and “reclaimed even festive song from +vulgarity,” in which, since the age of Anacreon, festive +song has notoriously wallowed. The poet who did all this +was born at Bath in Oct. 1797. His father was a genteel +solicitor, and his great-grandmother was sister to Lord Delamere, +while he had a remote baronet on the mother’s side. +To trace the ancestral source of his genius was difficult, as in +the case of Gifted Hopkins; but it was believed to flow from his +maternal grandfather, Mr. Freeman, whom his friend, Lord +Lavington, regarded as “one of the finest poets of his +age.” Bayly was at school at Winchester, where he +conducted a weekly college newspaper. His father, like +Scott’s, would have made him a lawyer; but “the youth +took a great dislike to it, for his ideas loved to dwell in the +regions of fancy,” which are closed to attorneys. So +he thought of being a clergyman, and was sent to St. Mary’s +Hall, Oxford. There “he did not apply himself to the +pursuit of academical honours,” but fell in love with a +young lady whose brother he had tended in a fatal illness. +But “they were both too wise to think of living upon love, +and, after mutual tears and sighs, they parted never to meet +again. The lady, though grieved, was not heartbroken, and +soon became the wife of another.” They usually +do. Mr. Bayly’s regret was more profound, and +expressed itself in the touching ditty:</p> +<blockquote><p>“Oh, no, we never mention her,<br /> + Her name is never heard,<br /> +My lips are now forbid to speak<br /> + That once familiar word;<br /> +From sport to sport they hurry me<br /> + To banish my regret,<br /> +And when they only worry me—</p> +</blockquote> +<p>[I beg Mr. Bayly’s pardon]</p> +<blockquote><p>“And when they win a smile from me,<br /> + They fancy I forget.</p> +<p>“They bid me seek in change of scene<br /> + The charms that others see,<br /> +But were I in a foreign land<br /> + They’d find no change in me.<br /> +’Tis true that I behold no more<br /> + The valley where we met;<br /> +I do not see the hawthorn tree,<br /> + But how can I forget?”</p> +<p style="text-align: center">* * * * *</p> +<p>“They tell me she is happy now,</p> +</blockquote> +<p>[And so she was, in fact.]</p> +<blockquote><p> The gayest of the gay;<br /> +They hint that she’s forgotten me;<br /> + But heed not what they say.<br /> +Like me, perhaps, she struggles with<br /> + Each feeling of regret:<br /> +’Tis true she’s married Mr. Smith,<br /> + But, ah, does she forget!”</p> +</blockquote> +<p>The temptation to parody is really too strong; the last lines, +actually and in an authentic text, are:</p> +<blockquote><p>“But if she loves as I have loved,<br /> + She never can forget.”</p> +</blockquote> +<p>Bayly had now struck the note, the sweet, sentimental note, of +the early, innocent, Victorian age. Jeames imitated +him:</p> +<blockquote><p>“R. Hangeline, R. Lady mine,<br /> +Dost thou remember Jeames!”</p> +</blockquote> +<p>We should do the trick quite differently now, more like +this:</p> +<blockquote><p>“Love spake to me and said:<br /> + ‘Oh, lips, be mute;<br /> +Let that one name be dead,<br /> +That memory flown and fled,<br /> + Untouched that lute!<br /> +Go forth,’ said Love, ‘with willow in thy hand,<br /> + And in thy hair<br /> + Dead blossoms wear,<br /> +Blown from the sunless land.</p> +<p>“‘Go forth,’ said Love; ‘thou never +more shalt see<br /> +Her shadow glimmer by the trysting tree;<br /> + But <i>she</i> is glad,<br /> + With roses crowned and clad,<br /> +Who hath forgotten thee!’<br /> + But I made answer: ‘Love!<br /> + Tell me no more thereof,<br /> +For she has drunk of that same cup as I.<br /> +Yea, though her eyes be dry,<br /> + She garners there for me<br /> + Tears salter than the sea,<br /> +Even till the day she die.’<br /> +So gave I Love the lie.”</p> +</blockquote> +<p>I declare I nearly weep over these lines; for, though they are +only Bayly’s sentiment hastily recast in a modern manner, +there is something so very affecting, mouldy, and unwholesome +about them, that they sound as if they had been “written up +to” a sketch by a disciple of Mr. Rossetti’s.</p> +<p>In a mood much more manly and moral, Mr. Bayly wrote another +poem to the young lady:</p> +<blockquote><p>“May thy lot in life be happy, undisturbed +by thoughts of me,<br /> +The God who shelters innocence thy guard and guide will be.<br /> +Thy heart will lose the chilling sense of hopeless love at +last,<br /> +And the sunshine of the future chase the shadows of the +past.”</p> +</blockquote> +<p>It is as easy as prose to sing in this manner. For +example:</p> +<blockquote><p>“In fact, we need not be concerned; +‘at last’ comes very soon, and our Emilia quite +forgets the memory of the moon, the moon that shone on her and +us, the woods that heard our vows, the moaning of the waters, and +the murmur of the boughs. She is happy with another, and by +her we’re quite forgot; she never lets a thought of us +bring shadow on her lot; and if we meet at dinner she’s too +clever to repine, and mentions us to Mr. Smith as ‘An old +flame of mine.’ And shall I grieve that it is thus? +and would I have her weep, and lose her healthy appetite and +break her healthy sleep? Not so, she’s not poetical, +though ne’er shall I forget the fairy of my fancy whom I +once thought I had met. The fairy of my fancy! It was +fancy, most things are; her emotions were not steadfast as the +shining of a star; but, ah, I love her image yet, as once it +shone on me, and swayed me as the low moon sways the surging of +the sea.”</p> +</blockquote> +<p>Among other sports his anxious friends hurried the lovelorn +Bayly to Scotland, where he wrote much verse, and then to Dublin, +which completed his cure. “He seemed in the midst of +the crowd the gayest of all, his laughter rang merry and loud at +banquet and hall.” He thought no more of studying for +the Church, but went back to Bath, met a Miss Hayes, was +fascinated by Miss Hayes, “came, saw, but did <i>not</i> +conquer at once,” says Mrs. Haynes Bayly (<i>née</i> +Hayes) with widow’s pride. Her lovely name was +Helena; and I deeply regret to add that, after an education at +Oxford, Mr. Bayly, in his poems, accentuated the penultimate, +which, of course, is short.</p> +<blockquote><p>“Oh, think not, Helena, of leaving us +yet,”</p> +</blockquote> +<p>he carolled, when it would have been just as easy, and a +hundred times more correct, to sing—</p> +<blockquote><p>“Oh, Helena, think not of leaving us +yet.”</p> +</blockquote> +<p>Miss Hayes had lands in Ireland, alas! and Mr. Bayly +insinuated that, like King Easter and King Wester in the ballad, +her lovers courted her for her lands and her fee; but he, like +King Honour,</p> +<blockquote><p>“For her bonny face<br /> +And for her fair bodie.”</p> +</blockquote> +<p>In 1825 (after being elected to the Athenæum) Mr. Bayly +“at last found favour in the eyes of Miss +Hayes.” He presented her with a little ruby heart, +which she accepted, and they were married, and at first were +well-to-do, Miss Hayes being the heiress of Benjamin Hayes, Esq., +of Marble Hill, in county Cork. A friend of Mr. +Bayly’s described him thus:</p> +<blockquote><p>“I never have met on this chilling earth<br +/> + So merry, so kind, so frank a youth,<br /> +In moments of pleasure a smile all mirth,<br /> + In moments of sorrow a heart of truth.<br /> +I have heard thee praised, I have seen thee led<br /> + By Fashion along her gay career;<br /> +While beautiful lips have often shed<br /> + Their flattering poison in thine ear.”</p> +</blockquote> +<p>Yet he says that the poet was unspoiled. On his +honeymoon, at Lord Ashdown’s, Mr. Bayly, flying from some +fair sirens, retreated to a bower, and there wrote his +world-famous “I’d be a Butterfly.”</p> +<blockquote><p>“I’d be a butterfly, living a +rover,<br /> +Dying when fair things are fading away.”</p> +</blockquote> +<p>The place in which the deathless strains welled from the +singer’s heart was henceforth known as “Butterfly +Bower.” He now wrote a novel, “The +Aylmers,” which has gone where the old moons go, and he +became rather a literary lion, and made the acquaintance of +Theodore Hook. The loss of a son caused him to write some +devotional verses, which were not what he did best; and now he +began to try comedies. One of them, <i>Sold for a Song</i>, +succeeded very well. In the stage-coach between Wycombe +Abbey and London he wrote a successful little <i>lever de +rideau</i> called <i>Perfection</i>; and it was lucky that he +opened this vein, for his wife’s Irish property got into an +Irish bog of dishonesty and difficulty. Thirty-five pieces +were contributed by him to the British stage. After a long +illness, he died on April 22nd, 1829. He did not live, this +butterfly minstrel, into the winter of human age.</p> +<p>Of his poems the inevitable criticism must be that he was a +Tom Moore of much lower accomplishments. His business was +to carol of the most vapid and obvious sentiment, and to string +flowers, fruits, trees, breeze, sorrow, to-morrow, knights, +coal-black steeds, regret, deception, and so forth, into fervid +anapæstics. Perhaps his success lay in knowing +exactly how little sense in poetry composers will endure and +singers will accept. Why, “words for music” are +almost invariably trash now, though the words of Elizabethan +songs are better than any music, is a gloomy and difficult +question. Like most poets, I myself detest the sister art, +and don’t know anything about it. But any one can see +that words like Bayly’s are and have long been much more +popular with musical people than words like Shelley’s, +Keats’s, Shakespeare’s, Fletcher’s, +Lovelace’s, or Carew’s. The natural explanation +is not flattering to musical people: at all events, the singing +world doted on Bayly.</p> +<blockquote><p>“She never blamed him—never,<br /> + But received him when he came<br /> +With a welcome sort of shiver,<br /> + And she tried to look the same.</p> +<p>“But vainly she dissembled,<br /> + For whene’er she tried to smile,<br /> +A tear unbidden trembled<br /> + In her blue eye all the while.”</p> +</blockquote> +<p>This was pleasant for “him”; but the point is that +these are lines to an Indian air. Shelley, also, about the +same time, wrote Lines to an Indian air; but we may “swear, +and save our oath,” that the singers preferred +Bayly’s. Tennyson and Coleridge could never equal the +popularity of what follows. I shall ask the persevering +reader to tell me where Bayly ends, and where parody begins:</p> +<blockquote><p>“When the eye of beauty closes,<br /> + When the weary are at rest,<br /> +When the shade the sunset throws is<br /> + But a vapour in the west;<br /> +When the moonlight tips the billow<br /> + With a wreath of silver foam,<br /> +And the whisper of the willow<br /> + Breaks the slumber of the gnome,—<br /> +Night may come, but sleep will linger,<br /> + When the spirit, all forlorn,<br /> +Shuts its ear against the singer,<br /> + And the rustle of the corn<br /> +Round the sad old mansion sobbing<br /> + Bids the wakeful maid recall<br /> +Who it was that caused the throbbing<br /> + Of her bosom at the ball.”</p> +</blockquote> +<p>Will this not do to sing just as well as the original? and is +it not true that “almost any man you please could reel it +off for days together”? Anything will do that speaks +of forgetting people, and of being forsaken, and about the +sunset, and the ivy, and the rose.</p> +<blockquote><p>“Tell me no more that the tide of thine +anguish<br /> + Is red as the heart’s blood and salt as the +sea;<br /> +That the stars in their courses command thee to languish,<br /> + That the hand of enjoyment is loosened from +thee!</p> +<p>“Tell me no more that, forgotten, forsaken,<br /> + Thou roamest the wild wood, thou sigh’st on +the shore.<br /> +Nay, rent is the pledge that of old we had taken,<br /> + And the words that have bound me, they bind thee no +more!</p> +<p>“Ere the sun had gone down on thy sorrow, the maidens<br +/> + Were wreathing the orange’s bud in thy +hair,<br /> +And the trumpets were tuning the musical cadence<br /> + That gave thee, a bride, to the baronet’s +heir.</p> +<p>“Farewell, may no thought pierce thy breast of thy +treason;<br /> + Farewell, and be happy in Hubert’s embrace.<br +/> +Be the belle of the ball, be the bride of the season,<br /> + With diamonds bedizened and languid in +lace.”</p> +</blockquote> +<p>This is mine, and I say, with modest pride, that it is quite +as good as—</p> +<blockquote><p>“Go, may’st thou be happy,<br /> + Though sadly we part,<br /> +In life’s early summer<br /> + Grief breaks not the heart.</p> +<p>“The ills that assail us<br /> + As speedily pass<br /> +As shades o’er a mirror,<br /> + Which stain not the glass.”</p> +</blockquote> +<p>Anybody could do it, we say, in what Edgar Poe calls +“the mad pride of intellectuality,” and it certainly +looks as if it could be done by anybody. For example, take +Bayly as a moralist. His ideas are out of the centre. +This is about his standard:</p> +<blockquote><p style="text-align: center">“CRUELTY.</p> +<p>“‘Break not the thread the spider<br /> + Is labouring to weave.’<br /> +I said, nor as I eyed her<br /> + Could dream she would deceive.</p> +<p>“Her brow was pure and candid,<br /> + Her tender eyes above;<br /> +And I, if ever man did,<br /> + Fell hopelessly in love.</p> +<p>“For who could deem that cruel<br /> + So fair a face might be?<br /> +That eyes so like a jewel<br /> + Were only paste for me?</p> +<p>“I wove my thread, aspiring<br /> + Within her heart to climb;<br /> +I wove with zeal untiring<br /> + For ever such a time!</p> +<p>“But, ah! that thread was broken<br /> + All by her fingers fair,<br /> +The vows and prayers I’ve spoken<br /> + Are vanished into air!”</p> +</blockquote> +<p>Did Bayly write that ditty or did I? Upon my word, I can +hardly tell. I am being hypnotised by Bayly. I lisp +in numbers, and the numbers come like mad. I can hardly ask +for a light without abounding in his artless vein. Easy, +easy it seems; and yet it was Bayly after all, not you nor I, who +wrote the classic—</p> +<blockquote><p>“I’ll hang my harp on a willow +tree,<br /> + And I’ll go to the war again,<br /> +For a peaceful home has no charm for me,<br /> + A battlefield no pain;<br /> +The lady I love will soon be a bride,<br /> + With a diadem on her brow.<br /> +Ah, why did she flatter my boyish pride?<br /> + She is going to leave me now!”</p> +</blockquote> +<p>It is like listening, in the sad yellow evening, to the +strains of a barrel organ, faint and sweet, and far away. A +world of memories come jigging back—foolish fancies, +dreams, desires, all beckoning and bobbing to the old tune:</p> +<blockquote><p>“Oh had I but loved with a boyish love,<br +/> +It would have been well for me.”</p> +</blockquote> +<p>How does Bayly manage it? What is the trick of it, the +obvious, simple, meretricious trick, which somehow, after all, +let us mock as we will, Bayly could do, and we cannot? He +really had a slim, serviceable, smirking, and sighing little +talent of his own; and—well, we have not even that. +Nobody forgets</p> +<blockquote><p>“The lady I love will soon be a +bride.”</p> +</blockquote> +<p>Nobody remembers our cultivated epics and esoteric sonnets, oh +brother minor poet, <i>mon semblable</i>, <i>mon +frère</i>! Nor can we rival, though we publish our +books on the largest paper, the buried popularity of</p> +<blockquote><p>“Gaily the troubadour<br /> + Touched his guitar<br /> +When he was hastening<br /> + Home from the war,<br /> +Singing, “From Palestine<br /> + Hither I come,<br /> +Lady love! Lady love!<br /> + Welcome me home!”</p> +</blockquote> +<p>Of course this is, historically, a very incorrect rendering of +a Languedoc crusader; and the impression is not mediæval, +but of the comic opera. Any one of us could get in more +local colour for the money, and give the crusader a cithern or +citole instead of a guitar. This is how we should do +“Gaily the Troubadour” nowadays:—</p> +<blockquote><p>“Sir Ralph he is hardy and mickle of +might,<br /> + <i>Ha</i>, <i>la belle blanche +aubépine</i>!<br /> +Soldans seven hath he slain in fight,<br /> + <i>Honneur à la belle Isoline</i>!</p> +<p>“Sir Ralph he rideth in riven mail,<br /> + <i>Ha</i>, <i>la belle blanche +aubépine</i>!<br /> +Beneath his nasal is his dark face pale,<br /> + <i>Honneur à la belle Isoline</i>!</p> +<p>“His eyes they blaze as the burning coal,<br /> + <i>Ha</i>, <i>la belle blanche +aubépine</i>!<br /> +He smiteth a stave on his gold citole,<br /> + <i>Honneur à la belle Isoline</i>!</p> +<p>“From her mangonel she looketh forth,<br /> + <i>Ha</i>, <i>la belle blanche +aubépine</i>!<br /> +‘Who is he spurreth so late to the north?’<br /> + <i>Honneur à la belle Isoline</i>!</p> +<p>“Hark! for he speaketh a knightly name,<br /> + <i>Ha</i>, <i>la belle blanche +aubépine</i>!<br /> +And her wan cheek glows as a burning flame,<br /> + <i>Honneur à la belle Isoline</i>!</p> +<p>“For Sir Ralph he is hardy and mickle of might,<br /> + <i>Ha</i>, <i>la belle blanche +aubépine</i>!<br /> +And his love shall ungirdle his sword to-night,<br /> + <i>Honneur à la belle Isoline</i>!”</p> +</blockquote> +<p>Such is the romantic, esoteric, old French way of +saying—</p> +<blockquote><p>“Hark, ’tis the troubadour<br /> + Breathing her name<br /> +Under the battlement<br /> + Softly he came,<br /> +Singing, “From Palestine<br /> + Hither I come.<br /> +Lady love! Lady love!<br /> + Welcome me home!”</p> +</blockquote> +<p>The moral of all this is that minor poetry has its fashions, +and that the butterfly Bayly could versify very successfully in +the fashion of a time simpler and less pedantic than our +own. On the whole, minor poetry for minor poetry, this +artless singer, piping his native drawing-room notes, gave a +great deal of perfectly harmless, if highly uncultivated, +enjoyment.</p> +<p>It must not be fancied that Mr. Bayly had only one string to +his bow—or, rather, to his lyre. He wrote a great +deal, to be sure, about the passion of love, which Count +Tolstoï thinks we make too much of. He did not dream +that the affairs of the heart should be regulated by the +State—by the Permanent Secretary of the Marriage +Office. That is what we are coming to, of course, unless +the enthusiasts of “free love” and “go away as +you please” failed with their little programme. No +doubt there would be poetry if the State regulated or left wholly +unregulated the affections of the future. Mr. Bayly, living +in other times, among other manners, piped of the hard tyranny of +a mother:</p> +<blockquote><p>“We met, ’twas in a crowd, and I +thought he would shun me.<br /> +He came, I could not breathe, for his eye was upon me.<br /> +He spoke, his words were cold, and his smile was unaltered,<br /> +I knew how much he felt, for his deep-toned voice faltered.<br /> +I wore my bridal robe, and I rivalled its whiteness;<br /> +Bright gems were in my hair,—how I hated their +brightness!<br /> +He called me by my name as the bride of another.<br /> +Oh, thou hast been the cause of this anguish, my +mother!”</p> +</blockquote> +<p>In future, when the reformers of marriage have had their way, +we shall read:</p> +<blockquote><p>“The world may think me gay, for I bow to my +fate;<br /> +But thou hast been the cause of my anguish, O State!”</p> +</blockquote> +<p>For even when true love is regulated by the County Council or +the village community, it will still persist in not running +smooth.</p> +<p>Of these passions, then, Mr. Bayly could chant; but let us +remember that he could also dally with old romance, that he +wrote:</p> +<blockquote><p>“The mistletoe hung in the castle hall,<br +/> +The holly branch shone on the old oak wall.”</p> +</blockquote> +<p>When the bride unluckily got into the ancient chest,</p> +<blockquote><p>“It closed with a spring. And, +dreadful doom,<br /> +The bride lay clasped in her living tomb,”</p> +</blockquote> +<p>so that her lover “mourned for his fairy bride,” +and never found out her premature casket. This was true +romance as understood when Peel was consul. Mr. Bayly was +rarely political; but he commemorated the heroes of Waterloo, our +last victory worth mentioning:</p> +<blockquote><p>“Yet mourn not for them, for in future +tradition<br /> + Their fame shall abide as our tutelar star,<br /> +<i>To instil by example the glorious ambition</i><br /> + <i>Of falling</i>, <i>like them</i>, <i>in a +glorious war</i>.<br /> +Though tears may be seen in the bright eyes of beauty,<br /> + One consolation must ever remain:<br /> +Undaunted they trod in the pathway of duty,<br /> + Which led them to glory on Waterloo’s +plain.”</p> +</blockquote> +<p>Could there be a more simple Tyrtæus? and who that reads +him will not be ambitious of falling in a glorious war? +Bayly, indeed, is always simple. He is “simple, +sensuous, and passionate,” and Milton asked no more from a +poet.</p> +<blockquote><p>“A wreath of orange blossoms,<br /> +When next we met, she wore.<br /> +<i>The expression of her features</i><br /> +<i>Was more thoughtful than before</i>.”</p> +</blockquote> +<p>On his own principles Wordsworth should have admired this +unaffected statement; but Wordsworth rarely praised his +contemporaries, and said that “Guy Mannering” was a +respectable effort in the style of Mrs. Radcliffe. Nor did +he even extol, though it is more in his own line,</p> +<blockquote><p>“Of what is the old man thinking,<br /> +As he leans on his oaken staff?”</p> +</blockquote> +<p>My own favourite among Mr. Bayly’s effusions is not a +sentimental ode, but the following gush of true natural +feeling:—</p> +<blockquote><p>“Oh, give me new faces, new faces, new +faces,<br /> + I’ve seen those around me a fortnight and +more.<br /> +Some people grow weary of things or of places,<br /> + But persons to me are a much greater bore.<br /> +I care not for features, I’m sure to discover<br /> + Some exquisite trait in the first that you send.<br +/> +My fondness falls off when the novelty’s over;<br /> + I want a new face for an intimate friend.”</p> +</blockquote> +<p>This is perfectly candid: we should all prefer a new face, if +pretty, every fortnight:</p> +<blockquote><p>“Come, I pray you, and tell me this,<br /> + All good fellows whose beards are grey,<br /> +Did not the fairest of the fair<br /> +Common grow and wearisome ere<br /> + Ever a month had passed away?”</p> +</blockquote> +<p>For once Mr. Bayly uttered in his “New Faces” a +sentiment not usually expressed, but universally felt; and now he +suffers, as a poet, because he is no longer a new face, because +we have welcomed his juniors. To Bayly we shall not return; +but he has one rare merit,—he is always perfectly +plain-spoken and intelligible.</p> +<blockquote><p>“Farewell to my Bayly, farewell to the +singer<br /> + Whose tender effusions my aunts used to sing;<br /> +Farewell, for the fame of the bard does not linger,<br /> + My favourite minstrel’s no longer the +thing.<br /> +But though on his temples has faded the laurel,<br /> + Though broken the lute, and though veiled is the +crest,<br /> +My Bayly, at worst, is uncommonly moral,<br /> + Which is more than some new poets are, at their +best.”</p> +</blockquote> +<p>Farewell to our Bayly, about whose songs we may say, with Mr. +Thackeray in “Vanity Fair,” that “they contain +numberless good-natured, simple appeals to the +affections.” We are no longer affectionate, +good-natured, simple. We are cleverer than Bayly’s +audience; but are we better fellows?</p> +<h2>THÉODORE DE BANVILLE</h2> +<p>There are literary reputations in France and England which +seem, like the fairies, to be unable to cross running +water. Dean Swift, according to M. Paul de Saint-Victor, is +a great man at Dover, a pigmy at Calais—“Son talent, +qui enthousiasme l’Angleterre, n’inspire ailleurs +qu’un morne étonnement.” M. Paul De +Saint-Victor was a fair example of the French critic, and what he +says about Swift was possibly true,—for him. There is +not much resemblance between the Dean and M. Théodore de +Banville, except that the latter too is a poet who has little +honour out of his own country. He is a charming singer at +Calais; at Dover he inspires <i>un morne étonnement</i> (a +bleak perplexity). One has never seen an English attempt to +describe or estimate his genius. His unpopularity in +England is illustrated by the fact that the London Library, that +respectable institution, does not, or did not, possess a single +copy of any one of his books. He is but feebly represented +even in the collection of the British Museum. It is not +hard to account for our indifference to M. De Banville. He +is a poet not only intensely French, but intensely +Parisian. He is careful of form, rather than abundant in +manner. He has no story to tell, and his sketches in prose, +his attempts at criticism, are not very weighty or +instructive. With all his limitations, however, he +represents, in company with M. Leconte de Lisle, the second of +the three generations of poets over whom Victor Hugo reigned.</p> +<p>M. De Banville has been called, by people who do not like, and +who apparently have not read him, <i>un saltimbanque +littéraire</i> (a literary rope-dancer). Other +critics, who do like him, but who have limited their study to a +certain portion of his books, compare him to a worker in gold, +who carefully chases or embosses dainty processions of fauns and +mænads. He is, in point of fact, something more +estimable than a literary rope-dancer, something more serious +than a working jeweller in rhymes. He calls himself <i>un +raffiné</i>; but he is not, like many persons who are +proud of that title, <i>un indifférent</i> in matters of +human fortune. His earlier poems, of course, are much +concerned with the matter of most early poems—with Lydia +and Cynthia and their light loves. The verses of his second +period often deal with the most evanescent subjects, and they now +retain but a slight petulance and sparkle, as of champagne that +has been too long drawn. In a prefatory plea for M. De +Banville’s poetry one may add that he “has loved our +people,” and that no poet, no critic, has honoured +Shakespeare with brighter words of praise.</p> +<p>Théodore de Banville was born at Moulin, on March 14th +1823, and he is therefore three years younger than the +dictionaries of biography would make the world believe. He +is the son of a naval officer, and, according to M. Charles +Baudelaire, a descendant of the Crusaders. He came much too +late into the world to distinguish himself in the noisy exploits +of 1830, and the chief event of his youth was the publication of +“Les Cariatides” in 1842. This first volume +contained a selection from the countless verses which the poet +produced between his sixteenth and his nineteenth year. +Whatever other merits the songs of minors may possess, they have +seldom that of permitting themselves to be read. “Les +Cariatides” are exceptional here. They are, above all +things, readable. “On peut les lire à peu de +frais,” M. De Banville says himself. He admits that +his lighter works, the poems called (in England) <i>vers de +société</i>, are a sort of intellectual +cigarette. M. Emile de Girardin said, in the later days of +the Empire, that there were too many cigarettes in the air. +Their stale perfume clings to the literature of that time, as the +odour of pastilles yet hangs about the verse of Dorat, the +designs of Eisen, the work of the Pompadour period. There +is more than smoke in M. De Banville’s ruling inspiration, +his lifelong devotion to letters and to great men of +letters—Shakespeare, Molière, Homer, Victor +Hugo. These are his gods; the memory of them is his +muse. His enthusiasm is worthy of one who, though born too +late to see and know the noble wildness of 1830, yet lives on the +recollections, and is strengthened by the example, of that +revival of letters. Whatever one may say of the +<i>renouveau</i>, of romanticism, with its affectations, the +young men of 1830 were sincere in their devotion to liberty, to +poetry, to knowledge. One can hardly find a more brilliant +and touching belief in these great causes than that of Edgar +Quinet, as displayed in the letters of his youth. De +Banville fell on more evil times.</p> +<p>When “Les Cariatides” was published poets had +begun to keep an eye on the Bourse, and artists dabbled in +finance. The new volume of song in the sordid age was a +November primrose, and not unlike the flower of Spring. +There was a singular freshness and hopefulness in the verse, a +wonderful “certitude dans l’expression +lyrique,” as Sainte-Beuve said. The mastery of +musical speech and of various forms of song was already to be +recognised as the basis and the note of the talent of De +Banville. He had style, without which a man may write very +nice verses about heaven and hell and other matters, and may +please thousands of excellent people, but will write +poetry—never. Comparing De Banville’s +boy’s work with the boy’s work of Mr. Tennyson, one +observes in each—“Les Cariatides” as in +“The Hesperides”—the <i>timbre</i> of a new +voice. Poetry so fresh seems to make us aware of some want +which we had hardly recognised, but now are sensible of, at the +moment we find it satisfied.</p> +<p>It is hardly necessary to say that this gratifying and welcome +strangeness, this lyric originality, is nearly all that M. De +Banville has in common with the English poet whose two priceless +volumes were published in the same year as “Les +Cariatides?” The melody of Mr. Tennyson’s +lines, the cloudy palaces of his imagination, rose</p> +<blockquote><p>“As Ilion, like a mist rose into +towers,”</p> +</blockquote> +<p>when Apollo sang. The architecture was floating at +first, and confused; while the little theatre of M. De +Banville’s poetry, where he sat piping to a dance of +nixies, was brilliantly lit and elegant with fresh paint and +gilding. “The Cariatides” support the pediment +and roof of a theatre or temple in the Graeco-French style. +The poet proposed to himself</p> +<blockquote><p>“A côté de Vénus et du +fils de Latone<br /> +Peindre la fée et la péri.”</p> +</blockquote> +<p>The longest poem in the book, and the most serious, “La +Voie Lactée,” reminds one of the “Palace of +Art,” written before the after-thought, before the +“white-eyed corpses” were found lurking in +corners. Beginning with Homer, “the Ionian father of +the rest,”—</p> +<blockquote><p>“Ce dieu, père des dieux +qu’adore Ionie,”—</p> +</blockquote> +<p>the poet glorifies all the chief names of song. There is +a long procession of illustrious shadows before Shakespeare +comes—Shakespeare, whose genius includes them all.</p> +<blockquote><p>“Toute création à laquelle on +aspire,<br /> +Tout rêve, toute chose, émanent de +Shakespeare.”</p> +</blockquote> +<p>His mind has lent colour to the flowers and the sky, to</p> +<blockquote><p>“La fleur qui brode un point sur les manteau +des plaines,<br /> +Les nénuphars penchés, et les pâles +roseaux<br /> +Qui disent leur chant sombre au murmure des eaux.”</p> +</blockquote> +<p>One recognises more sincerity in this hymn to all poets, from +Orpheus to Heine, than in “Les Baisers de +Pierre”—a clever imitation of De Musset’s +stories in verse. Love of art and of the masters of art, a +passion for the figures of old mythology, which had returned +again after their exile in 1830, gaiety, and a revival of the +dexterity of Villon and Marot,—these things are the +characteristics of M. De Banville’s genius, and all these +were displayed in “Les Cariatides.” Already, +too, his preoccupation with the lighter and more fantastic sort +of theatrical amusements shows itself in lines like these:</p> +<blockquote><p>“De son lit à baldaquin<br /> + Le soleil de son beau globe<br /> +Avait l’air d’un arlequin<br /> + Etalant sa garde-robe;</p> +<p>“Et sa soeur au front changeant<br /> + Mademoiselle la Lune<br /> +Avec ses grands yeux d’argent<br /> + Regardait la terre brune.”</p> +</blockquote> +<p>The verse about “the sun in bed,” unconsciously +Miltonic, is in a vein of bad taste which has always had +seductions for M. De Banville. He mars a fine later poem on +Roncevaux and Roland by a similar absurdity. The angel +Michael is made to stride down the steps of heaven four at a +time, and M. De Banville fancies that this sort of thing is like +the simplicity of the ages of faith.</p> +<p>In “Les Cariatides,” especially in the poems +styled “En Habit Zinzolin,” M. De Banville revived +old measures—the <i>rondeau</i> and the “poor little +triolet.” These are forms of verse which it is easy +to write badly, and hard indeed to write well. They have +knocked at the door of the English muse’s garden—a +runaway knock. In “Les Cariatides” they took a +subordinate place, and played their pranks in the shadow of the +grave figures of mythology, or at the close of the procession of +Dionysus and his Mænads. De Banville often recalls +Keats in his choice of classical themes. “Les +Exilés,” a poem of his maturity, is a French +“Hyperion.” “Le Triomphe de +Bacchus” reminds one of the song of the Bassarids in +“Endymion”—</p> +<blockquote><p>“So many, and so many, and so +gay.”</p> +</blockquote> +<p>There is a pretty touch of the pedant (who exists, says M. De +Banville, in the heart of the poet) in this verse:</p> +<blockquote><p>“Il rêve à Cama, l’amour +aux cinq flèches fleuries,<br /> +Qui, lorsque soupire au milieu des roses prairies<br /> +La douce Vasanta, parmi les bosquets de santal,<br /> +Envoie aux cinq sens les flèches du carquois +fatal.”</p> +</blockquote> +<p>The Bacchus of Titian has none of this Oriental languor, no +memories of perfumed places where “the throne of Indian +Cama slowly sails.” One cannot help admiring the +fancy which saw the conquering god still steeped in Asiatic ease, +still unawakened to more vigorous passion by the fresh wind +blowing from Thrace. Of all the Olympians, Diana has been +most often hymned by M. De Banville: his imagination is haunted +by the figure of the goddess. Now she is manifest in her +Hellenic aspect, as Homer beheld her, “taking her pastime +in the chase of boars and swift deer; and with her the wild +wood-nymphs are sporting the daughters of Zeus; and Leto is glad +at heart, for her child towers over them all, and is easy to be +known where all are fair” (Odyssey, vi.). Again, +Artemis appears more thoughtful, as in the sculpture of Jean +Goujon, touched with the sadness of moonlight. Yet again, +she is the weary and exiled spirit that haunts the forest of +Fontainebleau, and is a stranger among the woodland folk, the +<i>fades</i> and nixies. To this goddess, “being +triple in her divided deity,” M. De Banville has written +his hymn in the characteristic form of the old French +<i>ballade</i>. The translator may borrow Chaucer’s +apology—</p> +<blockquote><p>“And eke to me it is a grete penaunce,<br /> +Syth rhyme in English hath such scarsete<br /> +To folowe, word by word, the curiosite<br /> +Of <i>Banville</i>, flower of them that make in +France.”</p> +<p style="text-align: center">“BALLADE SUR LES HÔTES +MYSTÉRIEUX DE LA FORÊT</p> +<p>“Still sing the mocking fairies, as of old,<br /> + Beneath the shade of thorn and holly tree;<br /> +The west wind breathes upon them pure and cold,<br /> + And still wolves dread Diana roving free,<br /> + In secret woodland with her +company.<br /> +Tis thought the peasants’ hovels know her rite<br /> +When now the wolds are bathed in silver light,<br /> + And first the moonrise breaks the dusky grey,<br /> +Then down the dells, with blown soft hair and bright,<br /> + And through the dim wood Dian thrids her way.</p> +<p>“With water-weeds twined in their locks of gold<br /> + The strange cold forest-fairies dance in glee;<br /> +Sylphs over-timorous and over-bold<br /> + Haunt the dark hollows where the dwarf may be,<br /> + The wild red dwarf, the +nixies’ enemy;<br /> +Then, ’mid their mirth, and laughter, and affright,<br /> + The sudden goddess enters, tall and white,<br /> + With one long sigh for summers +passed away;<br /> +The swift feet tear the ivy nets outright,<br /> + And through the dim wood Dian thrids her way.</p> +<p>“She gleans her sylvan trophies; down the wold<br /> + She hears the sobbing of the stags that flee,<br /> +Mixed with the music of the hunting rolled,<br /> + But her delight is all in archery,<br /> +And nought of ruth and pity wotteth she<br /> + More than the hounds that follow on the flight;<br +/> +The tall nymph draws a golden bow of might,<br /> + And thick she rains the gentle shafts that slay,<br +/> +She tosses loose her locks upon the night,<br /> + And Dian through the dim wood thrids her way.</p> +<p style="text-align: center"><span +class="smcap">Envoi</span>.</p> +<p>“Prince, let us leave the din, the dust, the spite,<br +/> +The gloom and glare of towns, the plague, the blight;<br /> + Amid the forest leaves and fountain spray<br /> +There is the mystic home of our delight,<br /> + And through the dim wood Dian thrids her +way.”</p> +</blockquote> +<p>The piece is characteristic of M. De Banville’s +genius. Through his throng of operatic nixies and sylphs of +the ballet the cold Muse sometimes passes, strange, but not +unfriendly. He, for his part, has never degraded the +beautiful forms of old religion to make the laughing-stock of +fools. His little play, <i>Diane au Bois</i>, has grace, +and gravity, and tenderness like the tenderness of Keats, for the +failings of immortals. “The gods are jealous +exceedingly if any goddess takes a mortal man to her paramour, as +Demeter chose Iasion.” The least that mortal poets +can do is to show the Olympians an example of toleration.</p> +<p>“Les Cariatides” have delayed us too long. +They are wonderfully varied, vigorous, and rich, and full of +promise in many ways. The promise has hardly been +kept. There is more seriousness in “Les +Stalactites” (1846), it is true, but then there is less +daring. There is one morsel that must be quoted,—a +fragment fashioned on the air and the simple words that used to +waken the musings of George Sand when she was a child, dancing +with the peasant children:</p> +<blockquote><p>“Nous n’irons plus an bois: les +lauries sont coupés,<br /> + Les amours des bassins, les naïades en +groupe<br /> +Voient reluire au soleil, en cristaux découpés<br +/> + Les flots silencieux qui coulaient de leur coupe,<br +/> +Les lauriers sont coupés et le cerf aux abois<br /> + Tressaille au son du cor: nous n’irons plus au +bois!<br /> +Où des enfants joueurs riait la folle troupe<br /> + Parmi les lys d’argent aux pleurs du ciel +trempés,<br /> +Voici l’herbe qu’on fauche et les lauriers +qu’on coupe;<br /> + Nous n’irons plus au bois; les lauriers sont +coupés.”</p> +</blockquote> +<p>In these days Banville, like Gérard de Nerval in +earlier times, <span class="smcap">ronsardised</span>. The +poem ‘À la Font Georges,’ full of the memories +of childhood, sweet and rich with the air and the hour of sunset, +is written in a favourite metre of Ronsard’s. Thus +Ronsard says in his lyrical version of five famous lines of +Homer—</p> +<blockquote><p>“La gresle ni la neige<br /> + N’ont tels lieux pour leur siége<br /> + Ne la foudre oncques là<br +/> + Ne +dévala.”</p> +<p>(The snow, and wind, and hail<br /> + May never there prevail,<br /> + Nor thunderbolt doth fall,<br /> + Nor rain at +all.)</p> +</blockquote> +<p>De Banville chose this metre, rapid yet melancholy, with its +sad emphatic cadence in the fourth line, as the vehicle of his +childish memories:</p> +<blockquote><p>“O champs pleins de silence,<br /> +Où mon heureuse enfance<br /> + Avait des jours encor<br /> + Tout filés +d’or!”</p> +<p>O ma vieille Font Georges,<br /> +Vers qui les rouges-gorges<br /> + Et le doux rossignol<br /> + Prenaient leur vol!</p> +</blockquote> +<p>So this poem of the fountain of youth begins, “tout +filé d’or,” and closes when the dusk is washed +with silver—</p> +<blockquote><p>“À l’heure où sous leurs +voiles<br /> + Les tremblantes étoiles<br /> + Brodent le ciel changeant<br /> + De fleurs +d’argent.”</p> +</blockquote> +<p>The “Stalactites” might detain one long, but we +must pass on after noticing an unnamed poem which is the French +counterpart of Keats’ “Ode to a Greek Urn”:</p> +<blockquote><p>“Qu’autour du vase pur, trop beau pour +la Bacchante,<br /> + La verveine, mêlée à des +feuilles d’acanthe,<br /> +Fleurisse, et que plus bas des vierges lentement<br /> + S’avancent deux à deux, d’un pas +sur et charmant,<br /> +Les bras pendants le long de leurs tuniques droites<br /> + Et les cheyeux tressés sur leurs têtes +étroites.”</p> +</blockquote> +<p>In the same volume of the definite series of poems come +“Les Odelettes,” charming lyrics, one of which, +addressed to Théophile Gautier, was answered in the +well-known verses called “L’Art.” If +there had been any rivalry between the writers, M. De Banville +would hardly have cared to print Gautier’s +“Odelette” beside his own. The tone of it is +infinitely more manly: one seems to hear a deep, decisive voice +replying to tones far less sweet and serious. M. De +Banville revenged himself nobly in later verses addressed to +Gautier, verses which criticise the genius of that workman +better, we think, than anything else that has been written of him +in prose or rhyme.</p> +<p>The less serious poems of De Banville are, perhaps, the better +known in this country. His feats of graceful metrical +gymnastics have been admired by every one who cares for skill +pure and simple. “Les Odes Funambulesques” and +“Les Occidentales” are like ornamental skating. +The author moves in many circles and cuts a hundred fantastic +figures with a perfect ease and smoothness. At the same +time, naturally, he does not advance nor carry his readers with +him in any direction. “Les Odes Funambulesques” +were at first unsigned. They appeared in journals and +magazines, and, as M. de Banville applied the utmost lyrical +skill to light topics of the moment, they were the most popular +of “Articles de Paris.” One must admit that +they bore the English reader, and by this time long +<i>scholia</i> are necessary for the enlightenment even of the +Parisian student. The verses are, perhaps, the +“bird-chorus” of French life, but they have not the +permanent truth and delightfulness of the +“bird-chorus” in Aristophanes. One has easily +too much of the Carnival, the masked ball, the +<i>débardeurs</i>, and the <i>pierrots</i>. The +people at whom M. De Banville laughed are dead and +forgotten. There was a certain M. Paul Limayrac of those +days, who barked at the heels of Balzac, and other great men, in +the <i>Revue des Deux Mondes</i>. In his honour De Banville +wrote a song which parodied all popular aspirations to be a +flower. M. Limayrac was supposed to have become a +blossom:</p> +<blockquote><p>“Sur les côteaux et dans les landes<br +/> + Voltigeant comme un oiseleur<br /> +Buloz en ferait des guirlandes<br /> + Si Limayrac devenait fleur!”</p> +</blockquote> +<p>There is more of high spirits than of wit in the lyric, which +became as popular as our modern invocation of Jingo, the god of +battles. It chanced one night that M. Limayrac appeared at +a masked ball in the opera-house. He was recognised by some +one in the crowd. The turbulent waltz stood still, the +music was silent, and the dancers of every hue howled at the +critic</p> +<blockquote><p>“Si Paul Limayrac devenait fleur!”</p> +</blockquote> +<p>Fancy a British reviewer, known as such to the British public, +and imagine that public taking a lively interest in the feuds of +men of letters! Paris, to be sure, was more or less of a +university town thirty years ago, and the students were certain +to be largely represented at the ball.</p> +<p>The “Odes Funambulesques” contain many examples of +M. De Banville’s skill in reviving old forms of +verse—<i>triolets</i>, <i>rondeaux</i>, <i>chants +royaux</i>, and <i>ballades</i>. Most of these were +composed for the special annoyance of M. Buloz, M. Limayrac, and +a M. Jacquot who called himself De Mirecourt. The +<i>rondeaux</i> are full of puns in the refrain: “Houssaye +ou c’est; lyre, l’ire, lire,” and so on, not +very exhilarating. The <i>pantoum</i>, where lines recur +alternately, was borrowed from the distant Malay; but primitive +<i>pantoum</i>, in which the last two lines of each stanza are +the first two of the next, occur in old French folk-song. +The popular trick of repetition, affording a rest to the memory +of the singer, is perhaps the origin of all refrains. De +Banville’s later satires are directed against permanent +objects of human indignation—the little French +debauchée, the hypocritical friend of reaction, the +bloodthirsty <i>chauviniste</i>. Tired of the flashy luxury +of the Empire, his memory goes back to his youth—</p> +<blockquote><p>“Lorsque la lèvre de +l’aurore<br /> + Baisait nos yeux soulevés,<br /> +Et que nous n’étions pas encore<br /> + La France des petits crevés.”</p> +</blockquote> +<p>The poem “Et Tartufe” prolongs the note of a +satire always popular in France—the satire of Scarron, +Molière, La Bruyère, against the clerical curse of +the nation. The Roman Question was Tartufe’s +stronghold at the moment. “French interests” +demanded that Italy should be headless.</p> +<blockquote><p>“Et Tartufe? Il nous dit entre deux +crémus<br /> + Que pour tout bon Français l’empire est +à Rome,<br /> +Et qu’ayant pour aïeux Romulus et Rémus<br /> + Nous tetterons la louve à jamais—le +pauvre homme.”</p> +</blockquote> +<p>The new Tartufe worships St. Chassepot, who once, it will not +be forgotten, “wrought miracles”; but he has his +doubts as to the morality of explosive bullets. The nymph +of modern warfare is addressed as she hovers above the Geneva +Convention,—</p> +<blockquote><p>“Quoi, nymphe du canon rayé,<br /> + Tu montres ces pudeurs risibles<br /> +Et ce petit air effrayé<br /> + Devant les balles exploisibles?”</p> +</blockquote> +<p>De Banville was for long almost alone among poets in his +freedom from <i>Weltschmerz</i>, from regret and desire for +worlds lost or impossible. In the later and stupider +corruption of the Empire, sadness and anger began to vex even his +careless muse. She had piped in her time to much wild +dancing, but could not sing to a waltz of mushroom speculators +and decorated capitalists. “Le Sang de la +Coupe” contains a very powerful poem, “The Curse of +Venus,” pronounced on Paris, the city of pleasure, which +has become the city of greed. This verse is appropriate to +our own commercial enterprise:</p> +<blockquote><p>“Vends les bois où dormaient Viviane +et Merlin!<br /> + L’Aigle de mont n’est fait que pour ta +gibecière;<br /> + La neige vierge est là pour fournir ta +glacière;<br /> +Le torrent qui bondit sur le roc sybillin,<br /> + Et vole, diamant, neige, écume et +poussière,<br /> + N’est plus bon qu’à tourner tes +meules de moulin!”</p> +</blockquote> +<p>In the burning indignation of this poem, M. De Banville +reaches his highest mark of attainment. “Les +Exilés” is scarcely less impressive. The +outcast gods of Hellas, wandering in a forest of ancient Gaul, +remind one at once of the fallen deities of Heine, the decrepit +Olympians of Bruno, and the large utterance of Keats’s +“Hyperion.” Among great exiles, Victor Hugo, +“le père là-bas dans +l’île,” is not forgotten:</p> +<blockquote><p>“Et toi qui l’accueillis, sol libre et +verdoyant,<br /> + Qui prodigues les fleurs sur tes côteaux +fertiles,<br /> +Et qui sembles sourire à l’océan bruyant,<br +/> + Sois bénie, île verte, entre toutes les +îles.”</p> +</blockquote> +<p>The hoarsest note of M. De Banville’s lyre is that +discordant one struck in the “Idylles +Prussiennes.” One would not linger over poetry or +prose composed during the siege, in hours of shame and impotent +scorn. The poet sings how the sword, the flashing Durendal, +is rusted and broken, how victory is to him—</p> +<blockquote><p> “ . . . qui se cela<br /> +Dans un trou, sous la terre noire.”</p> +</blockquote> +<p>He can spare a tender lyric to the memory of a Prussian +officer, a lad of eighteen, shot dead through a volume of Pindar +which he carried in his tunic.</p> +<p>It is impossible to leave the poet of gaiety and good-humour +in the mood of the prisoner in besieged Paris. His +“Trente Six Ballades Joyeuses” make a far more +pleasant subject for a last word. There is scarcely a more +delightful little volume in the French language than this +collection of verses in the most difficult of forms, which pour +forth, with absolute ease and fluency, notes of mirth, banter, +joy in the spring, in letters, art, and good-fellowship.</p> +<blockquote><p>“L’oiselet retourne aux +forêts;<br /> + Je suis un poëte lyrique,”—</p> +</blockquote> +<p>he cries, with a note like a bird’s song. Among +the thirty-six every one will have his favourites. We +venture to translate the “Ballad de Banville”:</p> +<blockquote><p style="text-align: center">“AUX ENFANTS +PERDUS</p> +<p>“I know Cythera long is desolate;<br /> + I know the winds have stripped the garden green.<br +/> +Alas, my friends! beneath the fierce sun’s weight<br /> + A barren reef lies where Love’s flowers have +been,<br /> + Nor ever lover on that coast is seen!<br /> +So be it, for we seek a fabled shore,<br /> +To lull our vague desires with mystic lore,<br /> + To wander where Love’s labyrinths, beguile;<br +/> +There let us land, there dream for evermore:<br /> + ‘It may be we shall touch the happy +isle.’</p> +<p>“The sea may be our sepulchre. If Fate,<br /> + If tempests wreak their wrath on us, serene<br /> +We watch the bolt of Heaven, and scorn the hate<br /> + Of angry gods that smite us in their spleen.<br /> + Perchance the jealous mists are but the screen<br /> +That veils the fairy coast we would explore.<br /> +Come, though the sea be vexed, and breakers roar,<br /> + Come, for the breath of this old world is vile,<br +/> +Haste we, and toil, and faint not at the oar;<br /> + ‘It may be we shall touch the happy +isle.’</p> +<p>“Grey serpents trail in temples desecrate<br /> + Where Cypris smiled, the golden maid, the queen,<br +/> +And ruined is the palace of our state;<br /> + But happy loves flit round the mast, and keen<br /> + The shrill wind sings the silken cords between.<br +/> +Heroes are we, with wearied hearts and sore,<br /> +Whose flower is faded and whose locks are hoar.<br /> + Haste, ye light skiffs, where myrtle thickets +smile;<br /> +Love’s panthers sleep ’mid roses, as of yore:<br /> + ‘It may be we shall touch the happy +isle.’</p> +<p style="text-align: center"><span +class="smcap">Envoi</span>.</p> +<p>“Sad eyes! the blue sea laughs, as heretofore.<br /> +All, singing birds, your happy music pour;<br /> + Ah, poets, leave the sordid earth awhile;<br /> +Flit to these ancient gods we still adore:<br /> + ‘It may be we shall touch the happy +isle.’”</p> +</blockquote> +<p>Alas! the mists that veil the shore of our Cythera are not the +summer haze of Watteau, but the smoke and steam of a commercial +time.</p> +<p>It is as a lyric poet that we have studied M. De +Banville. “Je ne m’entends qu’à la +méurique,” he says in his ballad on himself; but he +can write prose when he pleases.</p> +<p>It is in his drama of <i>Gringoire</i> acted at the +Théâtre Français, and familiar in the version +of Messrs. Pollock and Besant, that M. De Banville’s prose +shows to the best advantage. Louis XI. is supping with his +bourgeois friends and with the terrible Olivier le Daim. +Two beautiful girls are of the company, friends of Pierre +Gringoire, the strolling poet. Presently Gringoire himself +appears. He is dying of hunger; he does not recognise the +king, and he is promised a good supper if he will recite the new +satirical “Ballade des Pendus,” which he has made at +the monarch’s expense. Hunger overcomes his timidity, +and, addressing himself especially to the king, he enters on this +goodly matter:</p> +<blockquote><p>“Where wide the forest boughs are spread,<br +/> + Where Flora wakes with sylph and fay,<br /> +Are crowns and garlands of men dead,<br /> + All golden in the morning gay;<br /> +Within this ancient garden grey<br /> + Are clusters such as no mail knows,<br /> +Where Moor and Soldan bear the sway:<br /> + <i>This is King Louis’ orchard close</i>!</p> +<p>“These wretched folk wave overhead,<br /> + With such strange thoughts as none may say;<br /> +A moment still, then sudden sped,<br /> + They swing in a ring and waste away.<br /> +The morning smites them with her ray;<br /> + They toss with every breeze that blows,<br /> +They dance where fires of dawning play:<br /> + <i>This is King Louis’ orchard close</i>!</p> +<p>“All hanged and dead, they’ve summonèd<br +/> + (With Hell to aid, that hears them pray)<br /> +New legions of an army dread,<br /> + Now down the blue sky flames the day;<br /> +The dew dies off; the foul array<br /> + Of obscene ravens gathers and goes,<br /> +With wings that flap and beaks that flay:<br /> + <i>This is King Louis’ orchard close</i>!</p> +<p style="text-align: center"><span +class="smcap">Envoi</span>.</p> +<p>“Prince, where leaves murmur of the May,<br /> + A tree of bitter clusters grows;<br /> +The bodies of men dead are they!<br /> + <i>This is King Louis’ orchard close</i>!</p> +</blockquote> +<p>Poor Gringoire has no sooner committed himself, than he is +made to recognise the terrible king. He pleads that, if he +must join the ghastly army of the dead, he ought, at least, to be +allowed to finish his supper. This the king grants, and in +the end, after Gringoire has won the heart of the heroine, he +receives his life and a fair bride with a full dowry.</p> +<p><i>Gringoire</i> is a play very different from M. De +Banville’s other dramas, and it is not included in the +pretty volume of “Comédies” which closes the +Lemerre series of his poems. The poet has often declared, +with an iteration which has been parodied by M. Richepin, that +“comedy is the child of the ode,” and that a drama +without the “lyric” element is scarcely a drama at +all. While comedy retains either the choral ode in its +strict form, or its representative in the shape of lyric +enthusiasm (<i>le lyrisme</i>), comedy is complete and +living. <i>Gringoire</i>, to our mind, has plenty of lyric +enthusiasm; but M. De Banville seems to be of a different +opinion. His republished “Comédies” are +more remote from experience than <i>Gringoire</i>, his characters +are ideal creatures, familiar types of the stage, like Scapin and +“le beau Léandre,” or ethereal persons, or +figures of old mythology, like Diana in <i>Diane au Bois</i>, and +Deidamia in the piece which shows Achilles among women. M. +De Banville’s dramas have scarcely prose enough in them to +suit the modern taste. They are masques for the delicate +diversion of an hour, and it is not in the nature of things that +they should rival the success of blatant buffooneries. His +earliest pieces—<i>Le Feuilleton d’Aristophane</i> +(acted at the Odéon, Dec. 26th, 1852), and <i>Le Cousin du +Roi</i> (Odéon, April 4th, 1857)—were written in +collaboration with Philoxène Boyer, a generous but +indiscreet patron of singers.</p> +<blockquote><p>“Dans les salons de Philoxène<br /> + Nous étions quatre-vingt rimeurs,”</p> +</blockquote> +<p>M. De Banville wrote, parodying the “quatre-vingt +ramuers” of Victor Hugo. The memory of M. +Boyer’s enthusiasm for poetry and his amiable hospitality +are not unlikely to survive both his compositions and those in +which M. De Banville aided him. The latter poet began to +walk alone as a playwright in <i>Le Beau Léandre</i> +(Vaudeville, 1856)—a piece with scarcely more substance +than the French scenes in the old Franco-Italian drama +possess. We are taken into an impossible world of gay +non-morality, where a wicked old bourgeois, Orgon, his daughter +Colombine, a pretty flirt, and her lover Léandre, a +light-hearted scamp, bustle through their little hour. +Léandre, who has no notion of being married, says, +“Le ciel n’est pas plus pur que mes +intentions.” And the artless Colombine replies, +“Alors marions-nous!” To marry Colombine +without a dowry forms, as a modern novelist says, “no part +of Léandre’s profligate scheme of +pleasure.” There is a sort of treble intrigue. +Orgon wants to give away Colombine dowerless, Léandre to +escape from the whole transaction, and Colombine to secure her +<i>dot</i> and her husband. The strength of the piece is +the brisk action in the scene when Léandre protests that +he can’t rob Orgon of his only daughter, and Orgon insists +that he can refuse nothing except his ducats to so charming a +son-in-law. The play is redeemed from sordidness by the +costumes. Léandre is dressed in the attire of +Watteau’s “L’Indifférent” in the +Louvre, and wears a diamond-hilted sword. The lady who +plays the part of Colombine may select (delightful privilege!) +the prettiest dress in Watteau’s collection.</p> +<p>This love of the glitter of the stage is very characteristic +of De Banville. In his <i>Déidamie</i> +(Odéon, Nov. 18th, 1876) the players who took the roles of +Thetis, Achilles, Odysseus, Deidamia, and the rest, were +accoutred in semi-barbaric raiment and armour of the period +immediately preceding the Graeco-Phoenician (about the eighth +century B.C.). Again we notice the touch of pedantry in the +poet. As for the play, the sombre thread in it is lent by +the certainty of Achilles’ early death, the fate which +drives him from Déidamie’s arms, and from the sea +king’s isle to the leagues under the fatal walls of +Ilion. Of comic effect there is plenty, for the sisters of +Déidamie imitate all the acts by which Achilles is likely +to betray himself—grasp the sword among the insidious +presents of Odysseus, when he seizes the spear, and drink each +one of them a huge beaker of wine to the confusion of the +Trojans. <a name="citation70"></a><a href="#footnote70" +class="citation">[70]</a> On a Parisian audience the +imitations of the tone of the Odyssey must have been thrown +away. For example, here is a passage which is as near being +Homeric as French verse can be. Déidamie is speaking +in a melancholy mood:</p> +<blockquote><p>“Heureux les époux rois assis dans +leur maison,<br /> +Qui voient tranquillement s’enfuir chaque saison—<br +/> +L’époux tenant son sceptre, environné de +gloire,<br /> +Et l’épouse filant sa quenouille d’ivoire!<br +/> +Mais le jeune héros que, la glaive à son franc!<br +/> +Court dans le noir combat, les mains teintes de sang,<br /> +Laisse sa femme en pleurs dans sa haute demeure.”</p> +</blockquote> +<p>With the accustomed pedantry, M. De Banville, in the scene of +the banquet, makes the cup-bearer go round dealing out a little +wine, with which libation is made, and then the feast goes on in +proper Homeric fashion. These overwrought details are +forgotten in the parting scenes, where Déidamie takes what +she knows to be her last farewell of Achilles, and girds him with +his sword:</p> +<blockquote><p>“La lame de l’épée, en +sa forme divine<br /> +Est pareille à la feuille austère du +laurier!”</p> +</blockquote> +<p>Let it be noted that each of M. De Banville’s more +serious plays ends with the same scene, with slight +differences. In <i>Florise</i> (never put on the stage) the +wandering actress of Hardy’s troupe leaves her lover, the +young noble, and the shelter of his castle, to follow where art +and her genius beckon her. In <i>Diane au Bois</i> the +goddess “that leads the precise life” turns her back +on Eros, who has subdued even her, and passes from the scene as +she waves her hand in sign of a farewell ineffably +mournful. Nearer tragedy than this M. De Banville does not +care to go; and if there is any deeper tragedy in scenes of blood +and in stages strewn with corpses, from that he abstains. +His <i>Florise</i> is perhaps too long, perhaps too learned; and +certainly we are asked to believe too much when a kind of +etherealised Consuelo is set before us as the <i>prima donna</i> +of old Hardy’s troupe:</p> +<blockquote><p>“Mais Florise n’est pas une +femme. Je suis<br /> +L’harmonieuse voix que berce vos ennuis;<br /> +Je suis la lyre aux sons divers que le poëte<br /> +Fait résonner et qui sans lui serait muette—<br /> +Une comédienne enfin. Je ne suis pas<br /> +Une femme.”</p> +</blockquote> +<p>An actress who was not a woman had little to do in the company +of Scarron’s Angélique and Mademoiselle de +l’Estoile. Florise, in short, is somewhat too +allegorical and haughty a creature; while Colombine and +Nérine (Vaudeville, June 1864) are rather tricksy imps +than women of flesh and blood. M. De Banville’s +stage, on the whole, is one of glitter and fantasy; yet he is too +much a Greek for the age that appreciates “la belle +Hélène,” too much a lyric dramatist to please +the contemporaries of Sardou; he lends too much sentiment and +dainty refinement to characters as flimsy as those of +Offenbach’s drama.</p> +<p>Like other French poets, M. De Banville has occasionally +deigned to write <i>feuilletons</i> and criticisms. Not +many of these scattered leaves are collected, but one volume, +“La Mer de Nice” (Poulet-Malassis et De Broise, +Paris, 1861), may be read with pleasure even by jealous admirers +of Gautier’s success as a chronicler of the impressions +made by southern scenery.</p> +<p>To De Banville (he does not conceal it) a journey to a place +so far from Paris as the Riviera was no slight labour. Even +from the roses, the palms, the siren sea, the wells of water +under the fronds of maiden-hair fern, his mind travels back +wistfully to the city of his love.</p> +<p>“I am, I have always been, one of those devotees of +Paris who visit Greece only when they gaze on the face, so fair +and so terrible, of the twice-victorious Venus of the +Louvre. One of those obstinate adorers of my town am I, who +will never see Italy, save in the glass that reflects the tawny +hair of Titian’s Violante, or in that dread isle of +Alcinous where Lionardo shows you the mountain peaks that waver +in the blue behind the mysterious Monna Lisa. But the +Faculty of Physicians, which has, I own, the right to be +sceptical, does not believe that neuralgia can be healed by the +high sun which Titian and Veronese have fixed on the +canvas. To me the Faculty prescribes the real sun of nature +and of life; and here am I, condemned to learn in suffering all +that passes in the mind of a poet of Paris exiled from that +blessed place where he finds the Cyclades and the islands +blossoming, the vale of Avalon, and all the heavenly homes of the +fairies of experience and desire.”</p> +<p>Nice is Tomi to this Ovid, but he makes the best of it, and +sends to the editor of the <i>Moniteur</i> letters much more +diverting than the “Tristia.” To tell the +truth, he never overcomes his amazement at being out of Paris +streets, and in a glade of the lower Alps he loves to be reminded +of his dear city of pleasure. Only under the olives of +Monaco, those solemn and ancient trees, he feels what surely all +men feel who walk at sunset through their shadow—the memory +of a mysterious twilight of agony in an olive garden.</p> +<p>“Et ceux-ci, les pâles oliviers, n’est-ce +pas de ces heures désolées où, comme torture +suprême, le Sauveur acceptait en son âme +l’irrêparable misère du doute, n’est-ce +pas alors qu’il ont appris de lui à courber le front +sous le poids impérieux des souvenirs?”</p> +<p>The pages which M. De Banville consecrates to the Villa +Sardou, where Rachel died, may disenchant, perhaps, some readers +of Mr. Matthew Arnold’s sonnet. The scene of +Rachel’s death has been spoiled by +“improvements” in too theatrical taste. All +these notes, however, were made many years ago; and visitors of +the Riviera, though they will find the little book charming where +it speaks of seas and hills, will learn that France has greatly +changed the city which she has annexed. As a practical man +and a Parisian, De Banville has printed (pp. 179-81) a recipe for +the concoction of the Marseilles dish, <i>bouillabaisse</i>, the +mess that Thackeray’s ballad made so famous. It takes +genius, however, to cook <i>bouillabaisse</i>; and, to parody +what De Banville says about his own recipe for making a +mechanical “ballade,” “en employment ce moyen, +on est sûr de faire une mauvaise, +irrémédiablement mauvaise +<i>bouillabaisse</i>.” The poet adds the remark that +“une bouillabaisse réussie vaut un sonnet sans +défaut.”</p> +<p>There remains one field of M. De Banville’s activity to +be shortly described. Of his “Emaux Parisiens,” +short studies of celebrated writers, we need say no more than +that they are written in careful prose. M. De Banville is +not only a poet, but in his “Petit Traité de +Poésie Française” (Bibliothèque de +l’Echo de la Sorbonne, s.d.) a teacher of the mechanical +part of poetry. He does not, of course, advance a paradox +like that of Baudelaire, “that poetry can be taught in +thirty lessons.” He merely instructs his pupil in the +material part—the scansion, metres, and so on—of +French poetry. In this little work he introduces these +“traditional forms of verse,” which once caused some +talk in England: the <i>rondel</i>, <i>rondeau</i>, +<i>ballade,</i> <i>villanelle</i>, and <i>chant royal</i>. +It may be worth while to quote his testimony as to the merit of +these modes of expression. “This cluster of forms is +one of our most precious treasures, for each of them forms a +rhythmic whole, complete and perfect, while at the same time they +all possess the fresh and unconscious grace which marks the +productions of primitive times.” Now, there is some +truth in this criticism; for it is a mark of man’s early +ingenuity, in many arts, to seek complexity (where you would +expect simplicity), and yet to lend to that complexity an +infantine naturalness. One can see this phenomenon in early +decorative art, and in early law and custom, and even in the +complicated structure of primitive languages. Now, just as +early, and even savage, races are our masters in the decorative +use of colour and of carving, so the nameless master-singers of +ancient France may be our teachers in decorative poetry, the +poetry some call <i>vers de société</i>. +Whether it is possible to go beyond this, and adapt the old +French forms to serious modern poetry, it is not for any one but +time to decide. In this matter, as in greater affairs, +<i>securus judicat orbis terrarum</i>. For my own part I +scarcely believe that the revival would serve the nobler ends of +English poetry. Now let us listen again to De Banville.</p> +<p>“In the <i>rondel</i>, as in the <i>rondeau</i> and the +<i>ballade</i>, all the art is to bring in the refrain without +effort, naturally, gaily, and each time with novel effect and +with fresh light cast on the central idea.” Now, you +can <i>teach</i> no one to do that, and M. De Banville never +pretends to give any recipes for cooking <i>rondels</i> or +<i>ballades</i> worth reading. “Without poetic +<i>vision</i> all is mere marquetery and cabinet-maker’s +work: that is, so far as poetry is +concerned—nothing.” It is because he was a +poet, not a mere craftsman, that Villon was and remains the king, +the absolute master, of ballad-land.” About the +<i>rondeau</i>, M. De Banville avers that it possesses +“nimble movement, speed, grace, lightness of touch, and, as +it were, an ancient fragrance of the soil, that must charm all +who love our country and our country’s poetry, in its every +age.” As for the <i>villanelle</i>, M. De Banville +declares that it is the fairest jewel in the casket of the muse +Erato; while the <i>chant royal</i> is a kind of fossil poem, a +relic of an age when kings and allegories flourished. +“The kings and the gods are dead,” like Pan; or at +least we no longer find them able, by touch royal or divine, to +reanimate the magnificent <i>chant royal</i>.</p> +<p>This is M. De Banville’s apology in <i>pro lyrâ +suâ</i>, that light lyre of many tones, in whose jingle the +eternal note of modern sadness is heard so rarely. If he +has a lesson to teach English versifiers, surely it is a lesson +of gaiety. They are only too fond of rue and rosemary, and +now and then prefer the cypress to the bay. M. De +Banville’s muse is content to wear roses in her locks, and +perhaps may retain, for many years, a laurel leaf from the +ancient laurel tree which once sheltered the poet at Turbia.</p> +<h2>HOMER AND THE STUDY OF GREEK</h2> +<p>The Greek language is being ousted from education, here, in +France, and in America. The speech of the earliest +democracies is not democratic enough for modern anarchy. +There is nothing to be gained, it is said, by a knowledge of +Greek. We have not to fight the battle of life with +Hellenic waiters; and, even if we had, Romaic, or modern Greek, +is much more easily learned than the old classical tongue. +The reason of this comparative ease will be plain to any one who, +retaining a vague memory of his Greek grammar, takes up a modern +Greek newspaper. He will find that the idioms of the modern +newspaper are the idioms of all newspapers, that the grammar is +the grammar of modern languages, that the opinions are expressed +in barbarous translations of barbarous French and English +journalistic <i>clichés</i> or commonplaces. This +ugly and undignified mixture of the ancient Greek characters, and +of ancient Greek words with modern grammar and idioms, and +stereotyped phrases, is extremely distasteful to the +scholar. Modern Greek, as it is at present printed, is not +the natural spoken language of the peasants. You can read a +Greek leading article, though you can hardly make sense of a +Greek rural ballad. The peasant speech is a thing of slow +development; there is a basis of ancient Greek in it, with large +elements of Slavonic, Turkish, Italian, and other imposed or +imported languages. Modern literary Greek is a hybrid of +revived classical words, blended with the idioms of the speeches +which have arisen since the fall of the Roman Empire. Thus, +thanks to the modern and familiar element in it, modern Greek +“as she is writ” is much more easily learned than +ancient Greek. Consequently, if any one has need for the +speech in business or travel, he can acquire as much of it as +most of us have of French, with considerable ease. People +therefore argue that ancient Greek is particularly superfluous in +schools. Why waste time on it, they ask, which could be +expended on science, on modern languages, or any other branch of +education? There is a great deal of justice in this +position. The generation of men who are now middle-aged +bestowed much time and labour on Greek; and in what, it may be +asked, are they better for it? Very few of them “keep +up their Greek.” Say, for example, that one was in a +form with fifty boys who began the study—it is odds against +five of the survivors still reading Greek books. The +worldly advantages of the study are slight: it may lead three of +the fifty to a good degree, and one to a fellowship; but good +degrees may be taken in other subjects, and fellowships may be +abolished, or “nationalised,” with all other forms of +property.</p> +<p>Then, why maintain Greek in schools? Only a very minute +percentage of the boys who are tormented with it really learn +it. Only a still smaller percentage can read it after they +are thirty. Only one or two gain any material advantage by +it. In very truth, most minds are not framed by nature to +excel and to delight in literature, and only to such minds and to +schoolmasters is Greek valuable.</p> +<p>This is the case against Greek put as powerfully as one can +state it. On the other side, we may say, though the remark +may seem absurd at first sight, that to have mastered Greek, even +if you forget it, is not to have wasted time. It really is +an educational and mental discipline. The study is so +severe that it needs the earnest application of the mind. +The study is averse to indolent intellectual ways; it will not +put up with a “there or thereabouts,” any more than +mathematical ideas admit of being made to seem “extremely +plausible.” He who writes, and who may venture to +offer himself as an example, is naturally of a most slovenly and +slatternly mental habit. It is his constant temptation to +“scamp” every kind of work, and to say “it will +do well enough.” He hates taking trouble and +verifying references. And he can honestly confess that +nothing in his experience has so helped, in a certain degree, to +counteract those tendencies—as the labour of thoroughly +learning certain Greek texts—the dramatists, Thucydides, +some of the books of Aristotle. Experience has satisfied +him that Greek is of real educational value, and, apart from the +acknowledged and unsurpassed merit of its literature, is a severe +and logical training of the mind. The mental constitution +is strengthened and braced by the labour, even if the language is +forgotten in later life.</p> +<p>It is manifest, however, that this part of education is not +for everybody. The real educational problem is to discover +what boys Greek will be good for, and what boys will only waste +time and dawdle over it. Certainly to men of a literary +turn (a very minute percentage), Greek is of an inestimable +value. Great poets, even, may be ignorant of it, as +Shakespeare probably was, as Keats and Scott certainly were, as +Alexandre Dumas was. But Dumas regretted his ignorance; +Scott regretted it. We know not how much Scott’s +admitted laxity of style and hurried careless habit might have +been modified by a knowledge of Greek; how much of grace, +permanence, and generally of art, his genius might have gained +from the language and literature of Hellas. The most +Homeric of modern men could not read Homer. As for Keats, +he was born a Greek, it has been said; but had he been born with +a knowledge of Greek, he never, probably, would have been guilty +of his chief literary faults. This is not certain, for some +modern men of letters deeply read in Greek have all the qualities +of fustian and effusiveness which Longinus most despised. +Greek will not make a luxuriously Asiatic mind Hellenic, it is +certain; but it may, at least, help to restrain effusive and +rhetorical gabble. Our Asiatic rhetoricians might perhaps +be even more barbarous than they are if Greek were a sealed book +to them. However this may be, it is, at least, well to find +out in a school what boys are worth instructing in the Greek +language. Now, of their worthiness, of their chances of +success in the study, Homer seems the best touchstone; and he is +certainly the most attractive guide to the study.</p> +<p>At present boys are introduced to the language of the Muses by +pedantically written grammars, full of the queerest and most arid +metaphysical and philological verbiage. The very English in +which these deplorable books are composed may be scientific, may +be comprehensible by and useful to philologists, but is utterly +heart-breaking to boys.</p> +<p>Philology might be made fascinating; the history of a word, +and of the processes by which its different forms, in different +senses, were developed, might be made as interesting as any other +story of events. But grammar is not taught thus: boys are +introduced to a jargon about matters meaningless, and they are +naturally as much enchanted as if they were listening to a +<i>chimæra bombinans in vacuo</i>. The grammar, to +them, is a mere buzz in a chaos of nonsense. They have to +learn the buzz by rote; and a pleasant process that is—a +seductive initiation into the mysteries. When they struggle +so far as to be allowed to try to read a piece of Greek prose, +they are only like the Marchioness in her experience of beer: she +once had a sip of it. Ten lines of Xenophon, narrating how +he marched so many parasangs and took breakfast, do not amount to +more than a very unrefreshing sip of Greek. Nobody even +tells the boys who Xenophon was, what he did there, and what it +was all about. Nobody gives a brief and interesting sketch +of the great march, of its history and objects. The boys +straggle along with Xenophon, knowing not whence or whither:</p> +<blockquote><p>“They stray through a desolate region,<br /> + And often are faint on the march.”</p> +</blockquote> +<p>One by one they fall out of the ranks; they mutiny against +Xenophon; they murmur against that commander; they desert his +flag. They determine that anything is better than Greek, +that nothing can be worse than Greek, and they move the tender +hearts of their parents. They are put to learn German; +which they do not learn, unluckily, but which they find it +comparatively easy to shirk. In brief, they leave school +without having learned anything whatever.</p> +<p>Up to a certain age my experiences at school were precisely +those which I have described. Our grammar was not so +philological, abstruse and arid as the instruments of torture +employed at present. But I hated Greek with a deadly and +sickening hatred; I hated it like a bully and a thief of +time. The verbs in μυ completed my intellectual +discomfiture, and Xenophon routed me with horrible carnage. +I could have run away to sea, but for a strong impression that a +life on the ocean wave “did not set my genius,” as +Alan Breck says. Then we began to read Homer; and from the +very first words, in which the Muse is asked to sing the wrath of +Achilles, Peleus’ son, my mind was altered, and I was the +devoted friend of Greek. Here was something worth reading +about; here one knew where one was; here was the music of words, +here were poetry, pleasure, and life. We fortunately had a +teacher (Dr. Hodson) who was not wildly enthusiastic about +grammar. He would set us long pieces of the Iliad or +Odyssey to learn, and, when the day’s task was done, would +make us read on, adventuring ourselves in “the +unseen,” and construing as gallantly as we might, without +grammar or dictionary. On the following day we surveyed +more carefully the ground we had pioneered or skirmished over, +and then advanced again. Thus, to change the metaphor, we +took Homer in large draughts, not in sips: in sips no epic can be +enjoyed. We now revelled in Homer like Keats in Spenser, +like young horses let loose in a pasture. The result was +not the making of many accurate scholars, though a few were made; +others got nothing better than enjoyment in their work, and the +firm belief, opposed to that of most schoolboys, that the +ancients did not write nonsense. To love Homer, as Steele +said about loving a fair lady of quality, “is a liberal +education.”</p> +<p>Judging from this example, I venture very humbly to think that +any one who, even at the age of Cato, wants to learn Greek, +should begin where Greek literature, where all profane literature +begins—with Homer himself. It was thus, not with +grammars <i>in vacuo</i>, that the great scholars of the +Renaissance began. It was thus that Ascham and Rabelais +began, by jumping into Greek and splashing about till they +learned to swim. First, of course, a person must learn the +Greek characters. Then his or her tutor may make him read a +dozen lines of Homer, marking the cadence, the surge and thunder +of the hexameters—a music which, like that of the Sirens, +few can hear without being lured to the seas and isles of +song. Then the tutor might translate a passage of moving +interest, like Priam’s appeal to Achilles; first, of +course, explaining the situation. Then the teacher might go +over some lines, minutely pointing out how the Greek words are +etymologically connected with many words in English. Next, +he might take a substantive and a verb, showing roughly how their +inflections arose and were developed, and how they retain forms +in Homer which do not occur in later Greek. There is no +reason why even this part of the lesson should be +uninteresting. By this time a pupil would know, more or +less, where he was, what Greek is, and what the Homeric poems are +like. He might thus believe from the first that there are +good reasons for knowing Greek; that it is the key to many worlds +of life, of action, of beauty, of contemplation, of +knowledge. Then, after a few more exercises in Homer, the +grammar being judiciously worked in along with the literature of +the epic, a teacher might discern whether it was worth while for +his pupils to continue in the study of Greek. Homer would +be their guide into the “realms of gold.”</p> +<p>It is clear enough that Homer is the best guide. His is +the oldest extant Greek, his matter is the most various and +delightful, and most appeals to the young, who are wearied by +scraps of Xenophon, and who cannot be expected to understand the +Tragedians. But Homer is a poet for all ages, all races, +and all moods. To the Greeks the epics were not only the +best of romances, the richest of poetry; not only their oldest +documents about their own history,—they were also their +Bible, their treasury of religious traditions and moral +teaching. With the Bible and Shakespeare, the Homeric poems +are the best training for life. There is no good quality +that they lack: manliness, courage, reverence for old age and for +the hospitable hearth; justice, piety, pity, a brave attitude +towards life and death, are all conspicuous in Homer. He +has to write of battles; and he delights in the joy of battle, +and in all the movement of war. Yet he delights not less, +but more, in peace: in prosperous cities, hearths secure, in the +tender beauty of children, in the love of wedded wives, in the +frank nobility of maidens, in the beauty of earth and sky and +sea, and seaward murmuring river, in sun and snow, frost and mist +and rain, in the whispered talk of boy and girl beneath oak and +pine tree.</p> +<p>Living in an age where every man was a warrior, where every +city might know the worst of sack and fire, where the noblest +ladies might be led away for slaves, to light the fire and make +the bed of a foreign master, Homer inevitably regards life as a +battle. To each man on earth comes “the wicked day of +destiny,” as Malory unconsciously translates it, and each +man must face it as hardily as he may.</p> +<p>Homer encourages them by all the maxims of chivalry and +honour. His heart is with the brave of either +side—with Glaucus and Sarpedon of Lycia no less than with +Achilles and Patroclus. “Ah, friend,” cries +Sarpedon, “if once escaped from this battle we were for +ever to be ageless and immortal, neither would I myself fight now +in the foremost ranks, nor would I urge thee into the wars that +give renown; but now—for assuredly ten thousand fates of +death on every side beset us, and these may no man shun, nor none +avoid—forward now let us go, whether we are to give glory +or to win it!” And forth they go, to give and take +renown and death, all the shields and helms of Lycia shining +behind them, through the dust of battle, the singing of the +arrows, the hurtling of spears, the rain of stones from the +Locrian slings. And shields are smitten, and chariot-horses +run wild with no man to drive them, and Sarpedon drags down a +portion of the Achæan battlement, and Aias leaps into the +trench with his deadly spear, and the whole battle shifts and +shines beneath the sun. Yet he who sings of the war, and +sees it with his sightless eyes, sees also the Trojan women +working at the loom, cheating their anxious hearts with broidery +work of gold and scarlet, or raising the song to Athene, or +heating the bath for Hector, who never again may pass within the +gates of Troy. He sees the poor weaving woman, weighing the +wool, that she may not defraud her employers, and yet may win +bread for her children. He sees the children, the golden +head of Astyanax, his shrinking from the splendour of the +hero’s helm. He sees the child Odysseus, going with +his father through the orchard, and choosing out some apple trees +“for his very own.” It is in the mouth of the +ruthless Achilles, the fatal, the fated, the swift-footed hero +with the hands of death, that Homer places the tenderest of his +similes. “Wherefore weepest thou, Patroclus, like a +fond little maid, that runs by her mother’s side, praying +her mother to take her up, snatching at her gown, and hindering +her as she walks, and tearfully looking at her till her mother +takes her up?—like her, Patroclus, dost thou softly +weep.”</p> +<p>This is what Chesterfield calls “the porter-like +language of Homer’s heroes.” Such are the moods +of Homer, so full of love of life and all things living, so rich +in all human sympathies, so readily moved when the great hound +Argus welcomes his master, whom none knew after twenty years, but +the hound knew him, and died in that welcome. With all this +love of the real, which makes him dwell so fondly on every detail +of armour, of implement, of art; on the divers-coloured gold-work +of the shield, on the making of tires for chariot-wheels, on the +forging of iron, on the rose-tinted ivory of the Sidonians, on +cooking and eating and sacrificing, on pet dogs, on wasps and +their ways, on fishing, on the boar hunt, on scenes in baths +where fair maidens lave water over the heroes, on undiscovered +isles with good harbours and rich land, on ploughing, mowing, and +sowing, on the furniture of houses, on the golden vases wherein +the white dust of the dead is laid,—with all this delight +in the real, Homer is the most romantic of poets. He walks +with the surest foot in the darkling realm of dread Persephone, +beneath the poplars on the solemn last beach of Ocean. He +has heard the Siren’s music, and the song of Circe, +chanting as she walks to and fro, casting the golden shuttle +through the loom of gold. He enters the cave of the Man +Eater; he knows the unsunned land of the Cimmerians; in the +summer of the North he has looked, from the fiord of the +Laestrygons, on the Midnight Sun. He has dwelt on the +floating isle of Æolus, with its wall of bronze unbroken, +and has sailed on those Phæacian barks that need no help of +helm or oar, that fear no stress either of wind or tide, that +come and go and return obedient to a thought and silent as a +dream. He has seen the four maidens of Circe, daughters of +wells and woods, and of sacred streams. He is the +second-sighted man, and beholds the shroud that wraps the living +who are doomed, and the mystic dripping from the walls of blood +yet unshed. He has walked in the garden closes of +Phæacia, and looked on the face of gods who fare thither, +and watch the weaving of the dance. He has eaten the +honey-sweet fruit of the lotus, and from the hand of Helen he +brings us that Egyptian nepenthe which puts all sorrow out of +mind. His real world is as real as that in <i>Henry V.</i>, +his enchanted isles are charmed with the magic of the +<i>Tempest</i>. His young wooers are as insolent as +Claudio, as flushed with youth; his beggar-men are brethren of +Edie Ochiltree; his Nausicaa is sister to Rosalind, with a +different charm of stately purity in love. His +enchantresses hold us yet with their sorceries; his Helen is very +Beauty: she has all the sweetness of ideal womanhood, and her +repentance is without remorse. His Achilles is youth +itself, glorious, cruel, pitiful, splendid, and sad, ardent and +loving, and conscious of its doom. Homer, in truth, is to +be matched only with Shakespeare, and of Shakespeare he has not +the occasional wilfulness, freakishness, and modish +obscurity. He is a poet all of gold, universal as humanity, +simple as childhood, musical now as the flow of his own rivers, +now as the heavy plunging wave of his own Ocean.</p> +<p>Such, then, as far as weak words can speak of him, is the +first and greatest of poets. This is he whom English boys +are to be ignorant of, if Greek be ousted from our schools, or +are to know only in the distorting mirror of a versified, or in +the pale shadow of a prose translation. Translations are +good only as teachers to bring men to Homer. English verse +has no measure which even remotely suggests the various flow of +the hexameter. Translators who employ verse give us a +feeble Homer, dashed with their own conceits, and moulded to +their own style. Translators who employ prose “tell +the story without the song,” but, at least, they add no +twopenny “beauties” and cheap conceits of their +own.</p> +<p>I venture to offer a few examples of original translation, in +which the mannerisms of poets who have, or have not, translated +Homer, are parodied, and, of course (except in the case of Pope), +exaggerated. The passage is the speech of the +Second-sighted Man, before the slaying of the wooers in the +hall:—</p> +<blockquote><p>“Ah! wretched men, what ill is this ye +suffer? In night are swathed your heads, your faces, your +knees; and the voice of wailing is kindled, and cheeks are wet +with tears, and with blood drip the walls, and the fair main +beams of the roof, and the porch is full of shadows, and full is +the courtyard, of ghosts that hasten hellward below the darkness, +and the sun has perished out of heaven, and an evil mist sweeps +up over all.”</p> +</blockquote> +<p>So much for Homer. The first attempt at metric +translation here given is meant to be in the manner of Pope:</p> +<blockquote><p>“Caitiffs!” he cried, “what +heaven-directed blight<br /> +Involves each countenance with clouds of night!<br /> +What pearly drop the ashen cheek bedews!<br /> +Why do the walls with gouts ensanguined ooze?<br /> +The court is thronged with ghosts that ’neath the gloom<br +/> +Seek Pluto’s realm, and Dis’s awful doom;<br /> +In ebon curtains Phoebus hides his head,<br /> +And sable mist creeps upward from the dead.”</p> +</blockquote> +<p>This appears pretty bad, and nearly as un-Homeric as a +translation could possibly be. But Pope, aided by Broome +and Fenton, managed to be much less Homeric, much more absurd, +and infinitely more “classical” in the sense in which +Pope is classical:</p> +<blockquote><p>“O race to death devote! with Stygian +shade<br /> +Each destined peer impending fates invade;<br /> +With tears your wan distorted cheeks are drowned;<br /> +With sanguine drops the walls are rubied round:<br /> +Thick swarms the spacious hall with howling ghosts,<br /> +To people Orcus and the burning coasts!<br /> +Nor gives the sun his golden orb to roll,<br /> +But universal night usurps the pole.”</p> +</blockquote> +<p>Who could have conjectured that even Pope would wander away so +far from his matchless original? “Wretches!” +cries Theoclymenus, the seer; and that becomes, “O race to +death devote!” “Your heads are swathed in +night,” turns into “With Stygian shade each destined +peer” (peer is good!) “impending fates invade,” +where Homer says nothing about Styx nor peers. The Latin +Orcus takes the place of Erebus, and “the burning +coasts” are derived from modern popular theology. The +very grammar detains or defies the reader; is it the sun that +does not give his golden orb to roll, or who, or what?</p> +<p>The only place where the latter-day Broome or Fenton can +flatter himself that he rivals Pope at his own game is—</p> +<blockquote><p>“What pearly drop the ashen cheek +bedews!”</p> +</blockquote> +<p>This is, if possible, <i>more</i> classical than Pope’s +own—</p> +<blockquote><p>“With tears your wan distorted cheeks are +drowned.”</p> +</blockquote> +<p>But Pope nobly revindicates his unparalleled power of +translating funnily, when, in place of “the walls drip with +blood,” he writes—</p> +<blockquote><p>“With sanguine drops the walls are rubied +round.”</p> +</blockquote> +<p>Homer does not appear to have been acquainted with rubies; but +what of that? And how noble, how eminently worthy of Pope +it is to add that the ghosts “howl”! I tried to +make them gibber, but ghosts <i>do</i> gibber in Homer (though +not in this passage), so Pope, Fenton, Broome, and Co., make them +howl.</p> +<p>No, Pope is not lightly to be rivalled by a modern +translator. The following example, a far-off following of a +noted contemporary poet, may be left unsigned—</p> +<blockquote><p>“Wretches, the bane hath befallen, the night +and the blight of your sin<br /> +Sweeps like a shroud o’er the faces and limbs that were +gladsome therein;<br /> +And the dirge of the dead breaketh forth, and the faces of all +men are wet,<br /> +And the walls are besprinkled with blood, and the ghosts in the +gateway are met,<br /> +Ghosts in the court and the gateway are gathered, Hell opens her +lips,<br /> +And the sun in his splendour is shrouded, and sickens in spasm of +eclipse.”</p> +</blockquote> +<p>The next is longer and slower: the poet has a difficulty in +telling his story:</p> +<blockquote><p>“Wretches,” he cried, “what doom +is this? what night<br /> +Clings like a face-cloth to the face of each,—<br /> +Sweeps like a shroud o’er knees and head? for lo!<br /> +The windy wail of death is up, and tears<br /> +On every cheek are wet; each shining wall<br /> +And beauteous interspace of beam and beam<br /> +Weeps tears of blood, and shadows in the door<br /> +Flicker, and fill the portals and the court—<br /> +Shadows of men that hellwards yearn—and now<br /> +The sun himself hath perished out of heaven,<br /> +And all the land is darkened with a mist.”</p> +</blockquote> +<p>That could never be mistaken for a version by the Laureate, as +perhaps any contemporary hack’s works might have been taken +for Pope’s. The difficulty, perhaps, lies here: any +one knows where to have Pope, any one knows that he will evade +the <i>mot propre</i>, though the precise evasion he may select +is hard to guess. But the Laureate would keep close to his +text, and yet would write like himself, very beautifully, but not +with an Homeric swiftness and strength. Who is to imitate +him? As to Mr. William Morris, he might be fabled to render +Α δειλοί +“niddering wights,” but beyond that, conjecture is +baffled. <a name="citation91"></a><a href="#footnote91" +class="citation">[91]</a> Or is <i>this</i> the kind of +thing?—</p> +<blockquote><p>“Niddering wights, what a bane do ye bear, +for your knees in the night,<br /> +And your heads and your faces, are shrouded, and clamour that +knows not delight<br /> +Rings, and your cheeks are begrutten, and blood is besprent on +the walls,<br /> +Blood on the tapestry fair woven, and barrow-wights walk in the +halls.<br /> +Fetches and wraiths of the chosen of the Norns, and the sun from +the lift<br /> +Shudders, and over the midgarth and swan’s bath the +cloud-shadows drift.”</p> +</blockquote> +<p>It may be argued that, though this is perhaps a translation, +it is not English, never was, and never will be. But it is +quite as like Homer as the performance of Pope.</p> +<p>Such as these, or not so very much better than these as might +be wished, are our efforts to translate Homer. From Chapman +to Avia, or Mr. William Morris, they are all eminently +conscientious, and erroneous, and futile. Chapman makes +Homer a fanciful, euphuistic, obscure, and garrulous Elizabethan, +but Chapman has fire. Pope makes him a wit, spirited, +occasionally noble, full of points, and epigrams, and queer +rococo conventionalisms. Cowper makes him slow, lumbering, +a Milton without the music. Maginn makes him pipe an Irish +jig:—</p> +<blockquote><p>“Scarcely had she begun to wash<br /> +When she was aware of the grisly gash!”</p> +</blockquote> +<p>Lord Derby makes him respectable and ponderous. Lord +Tennyson makes him not less, but certainly not more, than +Tennysonian. Homer, in the Laureate’s few fragments +of experiment, is still a poet, but he is not Homer. Mr. +Morris, and Avia, make him Icelandic, and archaistic, and hard to +scan, though vigorous in his fetters for all that. Bohn +makes him a crib; and of other translators in prose it has been +said, with a humour which one of them appreciates, that they +render Homer into a likeness of the Book of Mormon.</p> +<p>Homer is untranslatable. None of us can bend the bow of +Eurytus, and make the bow-string “ring sweetly at the +touch, like the swallow’s song.” The adventure +is never to be achieved; and, if Greek is to be dismissed from +education, not the least of the sorrows that will ensue is +English ignorance of Homer.</p> +<h2>THE LAST FASHIONABLE NOVEL</h2> +<p>The editor of a great American newspaper once offered the +author of these lines a commission to explore a lost country, the +seat of a fallen and forgotten civilisation. It was not in +Yucatan, or Central Africa, or Thibet, or Kafiristan, this +desolate region, once so popular, so gaudy, so much frequented +and desired. It was only the fashionable novels of the +Forties, say from 1835 to 1850, that I was requested to examine +and report upon. But I shrank from the colossal task. +I am no Mr. Stanley; and the length, the difficulties, the +arduousness of the labour appalled me. Besides, I do not +know where that land lies, the land of the old Fashionable Novel, +the Kôr of which Thackeray’s Lady Fanny Flummery is +the Ayesha. What were the names of the old novels, and who +were the authors, and in the circulating library of what +undiscoverable watering-place are they to be found? We have +heard of Mrs. Gore, we have heard of <i>Tremayne</i>, <i>and +Emilia Wyndham</i>, and the <i>Bachelor of the Albany</i>; and +many of us have read <i>Pelham</i>, or know him out of +Carlyle’s art, and those great curses which he spoke. +But who was the original, or who were the originals, that sat for +the portrait of the “Fashionable Authoress,” Lady +Fanny Flummery? and of what work is <i>Lords and Liveries</i> a +parody? The author is also credited with <i>Dukes and +Dejeûners</i>, <i>Marchionesses and Milliners</i>, +etc. Could, any candidate in a literary examination name +the prototypes? “Let mantua-makers puff her, but not +men,” says Thackeray, speaking of Lady Fanny Flummery, +“and the Fashionable Authoress is no more. Blessed, +blessed thought! No more fiddle-faddle novels! When +will you arrive, O happy Golden Age!”</p> +<p>Well, it has arrived, though we are none the happier for all +that. The Fashionable Novel has ceased to exist, and the +place of the fashionable authoress knows her no more. +Thackeray plainly detested Lady Fanny. He writes about her, +her books, her critics, her successes, with a certain +bitterness. Can it be possible that a world which rather +neglected <i>Barry Lyndon</i> was devoted to <i>Marchionesses and +Milliners</i>? Lady Fanny is represented as having editors +and reviewers at her feet; she sits among the flowers, like the +Sirens, and around her are the bones of critics corrupt in +death. She is puffed for the sake of her bouquets, her +dinners, her affabilities and condescensions. She gives a +reviewer a great garnet pin, adorned wherewith he paces the +town. Her adorers compare her to “him who sleeps by +Avon.” In one of Mr. Black’s novels there is a +lady of this kind, who captivates the tribe of “Log +Rollers,” as Mr. Black calls them. This lady appears +to myself to be a quite impossible She. One has never met +her with her wiles, nor come across her track, even, and seen the +bodies and the bones of those who perished in puffing her. +Some persons of rank and fashion have a taste for the society of +some men of letters, but nothing in the way of literary puffery +seems to come of it. Of course many critics like to give +their friends and acquaintances an applausive hand, and among +their acquaintances may be ladies of fashion who write novels; +but we read nowhere such extraordinary adulations as Augustus +Timson bestowed on Lady Fanny. The fashionable authoress is +nearly extinct, though some persons write well albeit they are +fashionable. The fashionable novel is as dead as a door +nail: <i>Lothair</i> was nearly the last of the species. +There are novelists who write about “Society,” to be +sure, like Mr. Norris; but their tone is quite different. +They do not speak as if Dukes and Earls were some strange +superior kind of beings; their manner is that of men accustomed +to and undazzled by Earls, writing for readers who do not care +whether the hero is a lord or a commoner. They are +“at ease,” though not terribly “in +Zion.” Thackeray himself introduces plenty of the +peerage, but it cannot be said that he is always at ease in their +society. He remembers that they are lords, and is on his +guard, very often, and suspicious and sarcastic, except, perhaps +when he deals with a gentleman like Lord Kew. He examines +them like curious wild animals in the Jardin des Plantes. +He is an accomplished naturalist, and not afraid of the lion; but +he remembers that the animal is royal, and has a title. Mr. +Norris, for instance, shows nothing of this mood. Mr. +Trollope was not afraid of his Dukes: he thought none the worse +of a man because he was the high and puissant prince of +Omnium. As for most novelists, they no longer paint +fashionable society with enthusiasm. Mr. Henry James has +remarked that young British peers favour the word +“beastly,”—a point which does not always +impress itself into other people so keenly as into Mr. Henry +James. In reading him you do not forget that his Tufts are +Tufts. But then Tufts are really strange animals to the +denizens of the Great Republic. Perhaps the modern realism +has made novelists desert the world where Dukes and Dowagers +abound. Novelists do not know very much about it; they are +not wont to haunt the gilded saloons, and they prefer to write +about the manners which they know. A very good novel, in +these strange ruinous times, might be written with a Duke for +hero; but nobody writes it, and, if anybody did write it in the +modern manner, it would not in the least resemble the old +fashionable novel.</p> +<p>Here a curious point arises. We have all studied the +ingenious lady who calls herself Ouida. Now, is Ouida, or +rather was Ouida in her early state sublime, the last of the old +fashionable novelists, or did Thackeray unconsciously prophesy of +her when he wrote his burlesque <i>Lords and Liveries</i>? +Think of the young earl of Bagnigge, “who was never heard +to admire anything except a <i>coulis de dindonneau à la +St. Menéhould</i>, . . . or the bouquet of a flask of +Médoc, of Carbonnell’s best quality, or a +<i>goutte</i> of Marasquin, from the cellars of Briggs and +Hobson.” We have met such young patricians in +<i>Under Two Flags</i> and <i>Idalia</i>. But then there is +a difference: Ouida never tells us that her hero was “blest +with a mother of excellent principles, who had imbued his young +mind with that morality which is so superior to all the vain +pomps of the world.” But a hero of Ouida’s +might easily have had a father who “was struck down by the +side of the gallant Collingwood in the Bay of Fundy.” +The heroes themselves may have “looked at the Pyramids +without awe, at the Alps without reverence.” They do +say “<i>Corpo di Bacco</i>,” and the Duca de +Montepulciano does reply, “<i>E’ bellissima +certamente</i>.” And their creator might conceivably +remark “Non cuivis contigit.” But Lady Fanny +Flummery’s ladies could not dress as Ouida’s ladies +do: they could not quote Petronius Arbiter; they had never heard +of Suetonius. No age reproduces itself. There is much +of our old fashionable authoress in Ouida’s earlier tales; +there is plenty of the Peerage, plenty of queer French in old +novels and Latin yet more queer; but where is the +<i>élan</i> which takes archæology with a rush, +which sticks at no adventure, however nobly incredible? where is +the pathos, the simplicity, the purple splendour of Ouida’s +manner, or manners? No, the spirit of the world, mirroring +itself in the minds of individuals, simpered, and that simper was +Lady Fanny Flummery. But it did many things more portentous +than simpering, when it reflected itself in Ouida.</p> +<p>Is it that we do no longer gape on the aristocracy admiringly, +and write of them curiously, as if they were creatures in a +Paradise? Is it that Thackeray has converted us? In +part, surely, we are just as snobbish as ever, though the gods of +our adoration totter to their fall, and “a hideous +hum” from the mob outside thrills through the +temples. In fiction, on the other hand, the world of +fashion is “played out.” Nobody cares to read +or write about the dear duchess. If a peer comes into a +novel he comes in, not as a coroneted curiosity, but as a man, +just as if he were a dentist, or a stockbroker. His rank is +an accident; it used to be the essence of his luminous +apparition. I scarce remember a lord in all the many works +of Mr. Besant, nor do they people the romances of Mr. +Black. Mr. Kipling does not deal in them, nor Mr. George +Meredith much; Mr. Haggard hardly gets beyond a baronet, and +<i>he</i> wears chain mail in Central Africa, and tools with an +axe. Mrs. Oliphant has a Scotch peer, but he is less +interesting and prominent than his family ghost. No, we +have only Ouida left, and Mr. Norris—who writes about +people of fashion, indeed, but who has nothing in him of the old +fashionable novelist.</p> +<p>Is it to a Republic, to France, that we must look for our +fashionable novels—to France and to America. Every +third person in M. Guy de Maupassant’s tales has a +“de,” and is a Marquis or a Vicomte. As for M. +Paul Bourget, one really can be happy with him in the fearless +old fashion. With him we meet Lord Henry Bohun, and M. De +Casal (a Vicomte), and all the Marquises and <i>Marquises</i>; +and all the pale blue boudoirs, and sentimental Duchesses, whose +hearts are only too good, and who get into the most complicated +amorous scrapes. That young Republican, M. Bourget, +sincerely loves a <i>blason</i>, a pedigree, diamonds, lace, +silver dressing cases, silver baths, essences, pomatums, <i>le +grand luxe</i>. So does Gyp: apart from her wit, Gyp is +delightful to read, introducing us to the very best of bad +company. Even M. Fortune du Boisgobey likes a Vicomte, and +is partial to the <i>noblesse</i>, while M. Georges Ohnet is +accused of entering the golden world of rank, like a man without +a wedding garment, and of being lost and at sea among his +aristocrats. They order these things better in France: they +still appeal to the fine old natural taste for rank and luxury, +splendour and refinement. What is Gyp but a Lady Fanny +Flummery <i>réussie</i>,—Lady Fanny with the +trifling additional qualities of wit and daring? Observe +her noble scorn of M. George Ohnet: it is a fashionable +arrogance.</p> +<p>To my mind, I confess, the decay of the British fashionable +novel seems one of the most threatening signs of the times. +Even in France institutions are much more permanent than +here. In France they have fashionable novels, and very good +novels too: no man of sense will deny that they are far better +than our dilettantism of the slums, or our religious and social +tracts in the disguise of romance. If there is no new tale +of treasure and bandits and fights and lions handy, may I have a +fashionable novel in French to fall back upon! Even Count +Tolstoï does not disdain the <i>genre</i>. There is +some uncommonly high life in <i>Anna Karénine</i>. +He adds a great deal of psychology, to be sure; so does M. Paul +Bourget. But he takes you among smart people, who have +everything handsome about them—titles, and lands, and +rents. Is it not a hard thing that an honest British snob, +if he wants to move in the highest circles of fiction, must turn +to French novelists, or Russian, or American? As to the +American novels of the <i>élite</i> and the <i>beau +monde</i>, their elegance is obscured to English eyes, because +that which makes one New Yorker better than another, that which +creates the Upper Ten Thousand (dear phrase!) of New York, is so +inconspicuous. For example, the scientific inquirer may +venture himself among the novels of two young American +authors. Few English students make this voyage of +exploration. But the romances of these ingenious writers +are really, or really try to be, a kind of fashionable +novels. It is a queer domain of fashion, to be sure, +peopled by the strangest aborigines, who talk and are talked +about in a language most interesting to the philologist. +Here poor Lady Fanny Flummery would have been sadly to seek, for +her characters, though noble, were moral, and her pen was wielded +on the side of Church and State. But these western +fashionables have morals and a lingo of their own, made in equal +parts of the American idioms and of expressions transferred from +the jargon of Decadence and the <i>Parnassiculet +Contemporain</i>. As one peruses these novels one thinks of +a new tale to be told—<i>The Last of the Fashionables</i>, +who died away, like the buffalo and the grisly bear, in some +cañon or forest of the Wild West. I think this +distinguished being, <i>Ultimus hominum venustiorum</i>, will +find the last remnants of the Gentlemanly Party in some Indian +tribe, Apaches or Sioux. I see him raised to the rank of +chief, and leading the red-skinned and painted cavaliers on the +war-path against the Vulgarians of the ultimate Democracy. +To depict this dandy chief would require the art at once of a +Cooper and a Ouida. Let me attempt—</p> +<h3>THE LAST FIGHT OF FOUR HAIR-BRUSHES</h3> +<p>By this time the Sioux were flying in all directions, mowed +down by the fire of Gatling and Maxim guns. The scrub of +Little Big Horn Creek was strewn with the bodies of writhing +braves. On the livid and volcanic heights of Mount +Buncombe, the painted tents were blazing merrily. But on a +mound above the creek, an ancient fortress of some long-forgotten +people, a small group of Indian horsemen, might be observed, +steady as rocks in the refluent tide of war. The fire from +their Winchester repeaters blazed out like the streamers of the +Northern Lights. Again and again the flower of the United +States army had charged up the mound, only to recoil in flight, +or to line the cliff with their corpses. The First Irish +Cuirassiers had been annihilated: Parnell’s own, alas! in +the heat of the combat had turned their fratricidal black-thorns +on M’Carthy’s brigade, and these two gallant +squadrons were mixed and broken, falling beneath the blows of +brothers estranged.</p> +<p>But at last the fire from the Redmen on the bluff slackened +and grew silent. The ammunition was exhausted. There +was a movement in the group of braves. Crazy Horse and Bald +Coyote turned to Four Hair-Brushes, who sat his steed Atalanta, +last winner of the last Grand National, with all the old careless +elegance of the Row.</p> +<p>“Four Hair-Brushes,” said Crazy Horse (and a tear +rolled down his painted cheek), “nought is left but +flight.”</p> +<p>“Then fly,” said Four Hair-Brushes, languidly, +lighting a cigarette, which he took from a diamond-studded gold +<i>étui</i>, the gift of the Kaiser in old days.</p> +<p>“Nay, not without the White Chief,” said Bald +Coyote; and he seized the reins of Four Hair-Brushes, to lead him +from that stricken field.</p> +<p>“Vous êtes trop vieux jeu, mon ami,” +murmured Four Hair-Brushes, “je ne suis ni Edouard II., ni +Charles Edouard à Culloden. Quatre-brosses meurt, +mais il ne se rend pas.”</p> +<p>The Indian released his hold, baffled by the erudition and the +calm courage of his captain.</p> +<p>“I make tracks,” he said; and, swinging round so +that his horse concealed his body, he galloped down the bluff, +and through the American cavalry, scattering death from the +arrows which he loosed under his horse’s neck.</p> +<p>Four Hair-Brushes was alone.</p> +<p>Unarmed, as ever, he sat, save for the hunting-whip in his +right hand.</p> +<p>“Scalp him!” yelled the Friendly Crows.</p> +<p>“Nay, take him alive: a seemlier knight never backed +steed!” cried the gallant Americans.</p> +<p>From their midst rode a courteous cavalier, Captain John +Barry, the scholar, the hero of sword and pen.</p> +<p>“Yield thee, Sir Knight!” he said, doffing his +<i>képi</i> in martial courtesy.</p> +<p>Four Hair-Brushes replied to his salute, and was opening his +curved and delicate lips to speak, when a chance bullet struck +him full in the breast. He threw up his arms, reeled, and +fell. The gallant American, leaping from saddle to ground, +rushed to raise his head.</p> +<p>Through the war-paint he recognised him.</p> +<p>“Great Heaven!” he cried, “it +is—”</p> +<p>“Hush!” whispered Four Hair-Brushes, with a weary +smile: “let Annesley de Vere of the Blues die +unnamed. Tell them that I fell in harness.”</p> +<p>He did, indeed. Under his feathered and painted cloak +Barry found that Annesley, ever careful of his figure, ever loyal +in love, the last of the Dandies, yet wore the corset of Madame +de Tellière. It was wet with his life-blood.</p> +<p>“So dies,” said Barry, “the last English +gentleman.”</p> +<h2>THACKERAY</h2> +<p>“I thought how some people’s towering intellects +and splendid cultivated geniuses rise upon simple, beautiful +foundations hidden out of sight.” Thus, in his +Letters to Mrs. Brookfield, Mr. Thackeray wrote, after visiting +the crypt of Canterbury Cathedral, with its “charming, +harmonious, powerful combination of arches and shafts, beautiful +whichever way you see them developed, like a fine +music.” The simile applies to his own character and +genius, to his own and perhaps to that of most great authors, +whose works are our pleasure and comfort in this troublesome +world. There are critics who profess a desire to hear +nothing, or as little as may be, of the lives of great artists, +whether their instrument of art was the pen, or the brush, or the +chisel, or the strings and reeds of music. With those +critics perhaps most of us agree, when we read books that gossip +about Shelley, or Coleridge, or Byron. “Give us their +poetry,” we say, “and leave their characters alone: +we do not want tattle about Claire and chatter about Harriet; we +want to be happy with ‘The Skylark’ or ‘The +Cloud.’” Possibly this instinct is correct, +where such a poet as Shelley is concerned, whose life, like his +poetry, was as “the life of winds and tides,” whose +genius, unlike the skylark’s, was more true to the point of +heaven than the point of home. But reflection shows us that +on the whole, as Mr. Thackeray says, a man’s genius must be +builded on the foundations of his character. Where that +genius deals with the mingled stuff of human life—sorrow, +desire, love, hatred, kindness, meanness—then the +foundation of character is especially important. People are +sometimes glad that we know so little of Shakespeare the man; yet +who can doubt that a true revelation of his character would be +not less worthy, noble and charming than the general effect of +his poems? In him, it is certain, we should always find an +example of nobility, of generosity, of charity and kindness and +self-forgetfulness. Indeed, we find these qualities, as a +rule, in the biographies of the great sympathetic poets and men +of genius of the pen—I do not say in the lives of rebels of +genius, “meteoric poets” like Byron. The same +basis, the same foundations of rectitude, of honour, of goodness, +of melancholy, and of mirth, underlie the art of Molière, +of Scott, of Fielding, and as his correspondence shows, of +Thackeray.</p> +<p>It seems probable that a complete biography of Thackeray will +never be written. It was his wish to live in his works +alone: that wish his descendants respect; and we must probably +regard the Letters to Mr. and Mrs. Brookfield as the last private +and authentic record of the man which will be given, at least to +this generation. In these Letters all sympathetic readers +will find the man they have long known from his +writings—the man with a heart so tender that the world +often drove him back into a bitterness of opposition, into an +assumed hardness and defensive cynicism. There are readers +so unluckily constituted that they can see nothing in Thackeray +but this bitterness, this cruel sense of meanness and power of +analysing shabby emotions, sneaking vanities, contemptible +ambitions. All of us must often feel with regret that he +allowed himself to be made too unhappy by the spectacle of +failings so common in the world he knew best, that he dwelt on +them too long and lashed them too complacently. One hopes +never to read “Lovel the Widower” again, and one +gladly skips some of the speeches of the Old Campaigner in +“The Newcomes.” They are terrible, but not more +terrible than life. Yet it is hard to understand how Mr. +Ruskin, for example, can let such scenes and characters hide from +his view the kindness, gentleness, and pity of Thackeray’s +nature. The Letters must open all eyes that are not +wilfully closed, and should at last overcome every prejudice.</p> +<p>In the Letters we see a man literally hungering and thirsting +after affection, after love—a man cut off by a cruel stroke +of fate from his natural solace, from the centre of a home.</p> +<blockquote><p>“God took from me a lady dear,”</p> +</blockquote> +<p>he says, in the most touching medley of doggerel and poetry, +made “instead of writing my <i>Punch</i> this +morning.” Losing “a lady dear,” he takes +refuge as he may, he finds comfort as he can, in all the +affections within his reach, in the society of an old college +friend and of his wife, in the love of all children, beginning +with his own; in a generous liking for all good work and for all +good fellows.</p> +<p>Did any man of letters except Scott ever write of his rivals +as Thackeray wrote of Dickens? Artists are a jealous +race. “Potter hates potter, and poet hates +poet,” as Hesiod said so long ago. This jealousy is +not mere envy, it is really a strong sense of how things ought to +be done, in any art, touched with a natural preference for a +man’s own way of doing them. Now, what could be more +unlike than the “ways” of Dickens and +Thackeray? The subjects chosen by these great authors are +not more diverse than their styles. Thackeray writes like a +scholar, not in the narrow sense, but rather as a student and a +master of all the refinements and resources of language. +Dickens copies the chaff of the street, or he roams into +melodramatics, “drops into poetry”—blank verse +at least—and touches all with peculiarities, we might say +mannerisms, of his own. I have often thought, and even +tried to act on the thought, that some amusing imaginary letters +might be written, from characters of Dickens about characters of +Thackeray, from characters of Thackeray about characters of +Dickens. They might be supposed to meet each other in +society, and describe each other. Can you not fancy Captain +Costigan on Dick Swiveller, Blanche Amory on Agnes, Pen on David +Copperfield, and that “tiger” Steerforth? What +would the family solicitor of “The Newcomes” have to +say of Mr. Tulkinghorn? How would George Warrington +appreciate Mr. Pickwick? Yes, the two great novelists were +as opposed as two men could be—in manner, in style, in +knowledge of books, and of the world. And yet how admirably +Thackeray writes about Dickens, in his letters as in his +books! How he delights in him! How manly is that +emulation which enables an author to see all the points in his +rival, and not to carp at them, but to praise, and be stimulated +to keener effort!</p> +<p>Consider this passage. “Have you read +Dickens? O! it is charming! Brave Dickens! It +has some of his very prettiest touches—those inimitable +Dickens touches which make such a great man of him, and the +reading of the book has done another author a great deal of +good.”</p> +<p>Thackeray is just as generous, and perhaps more critical, in +writing of Kingsley. “A fine, honest, go-a-head +fellow, who charges a subject heartily, impetuously, with the +greatest courage and simplicity; but with narrow eyes (his are +extraordinarily brave, blue and honest), and with little +knowledge of the world, I think. But he is superior to us +worldlings in many ways, and I wish I had some of his honest +pluck.”</p> +<p>I have often wished that great authors, when their days of +creation were over, when “their minds grow grey and +bald,” would condescend to tell us the history of their +books. Sir Walter Scott did something of this kind in the +prefaces to the last edition of the Waverley Novels published +during his life. What can be more interesting than his +account, in the introduction to the “Fortunes of +Nigel,” of how he worked, how he planned, and found all his +plots and plans overridden by the demon at the end of his +pen! But Sir Walter was failing when he began those +literary confessions; good as they are, he came to them too +late. Yet these are not confessions which an author can +make early. The pagan Aztecs only confessed once in a +lifetime—in old age, when they had fewer temptations to +fall to their old loves: then they made a clean breast of it once +for all. So it might be with an author. While he is +in his creative vigour, we want to hear about his fancied +persons, about Pendennis, Beatrix, Becky, not about himself, and +how he invented them. But when he has passed his best, then +it is he who becomes of interest; it is about himself that we +wish him to speak, as far as he modestly may. Who would not +give “Lovel the Widower” and “Philip” for +some autobiographical and literary prefaces to the older +novels? They need not have been more egotistic than the +“Roundabout Papers.” They would have had far +more charm. Some things cannot be confessed. We do +not ask who was the original Sir Pitt Crawley, or the original +Blanche Amory. But we might learn in what mood, in what +circumstances the author wrote this passage or that.</p> +<p>The Letters contain a few notes of this kind, a few literary +confessions. We hear that Emmy Sedley was partly suggested +by Mrs. Brookfield, partly by Thackeray’s mother, much by +his own wife. There scarce seems room for so many elements +in Emmy’s personality. For some reason ladies love +her not, nor do men adore her. I have been her faithful +knight ever since I was ten years old and read “Vanity +Fair” somewhat stealthily. Why does one like her +except because she is such a thorough woman? She is not +clever, she is not very beautiful, she is unhappy, and she can be +jealous. One pities her, and that is akin to a more tender +sentiment; one pities her while she sits in the corner, and +Becky’s green eyes flatter her oaf of a husband; one pities +her in the poverty of her father’s house, in the famous +battle over Daffy’s Elixir, in the separation from the +younger George. You begin to wish some great joy to come to +her: it does not come unalloyed; you know that Dobbin had bad +quarters of an hour with this lady, and had to disguise a little +of his tenderness for his own daughter. Yes, Emmy is more +complex than she seems, and perhaps it needed three ladies to +contribute the various elements of her person and her +character. One of them, the jealous one, lent a touch to +Helen Pendennis, to Laura, to Lady Castlewood. Probably +this may be the reason why some persons dislike Thackeray +so. His very best women are not angels. <a +name="citation109"></a><a href="#footnote109" +class="citation">[109]</a> Are the very best women +angels? It is a pious opinion—that borders on +heresy.</p> +<p>When the Letters began to be written, in 1847, Thackeray had +his worst years, in a worldly sense, behind him. They were +past: the times when he wrote in <i>Galignani</i> for ten francs +a day. Has any literary ghoul disinterred his old ten-franc +articles in <i>Galignani</i>? The time of “Barry +Lyndon,” too, was over. He says nothing of that +masterpiece, and only a word about “The Great Hoggarty +Diamond.” “I have been re-reading it. +Upon my word and honour, if it doesn’t make you cry, I +shall have a mean opinion of you. It was written at a time +of great affliction, when my heart was very soft and +humble. Amen. Ich habe auch viel +geliebt.” Of “Pendennis,” as it goes on, +he writes that it is “awfully stupid,” which has not +been the verdict of the ages. He picks up materials as he +passes. He dines with some officers, and perhaps he +stations them at Chatteris. He meets Miss G---, and her +converse suggests a love passage between Pen and Blanche. +Why did he dislike fair women so? It runs all through his +novels. Becky is fair. Blanche is fair. Outside +the old yellow covers of “Pendennis,” you see the +blonde mermaid, “amusing, and clever, and depraved,” +dragging the lover to the sea, and the nut-brown maid holding him +back. Angelina, of the “Rose and the Ring,” is +the Becky of childhood; she is fair, and the good Rosalba is +<i>brune</i>. In writing “Pendennis” he had a +singular experience. He looked over his own “back +numbers,” and found “a passage which I had utterly +forgotten as if I had never read or written it.” In +Lockhart’s “Life of Scott,” James Ballantyne +says that “when the ‘Bride of Lammermoor’ was +first put into his hands in a complete shape, he did not +recollect one single incident, character, or conversation it +contained.” That is to say, he remembered nothing of +his own invention, though his memory of the traditional parts was +as clear as ever. Ballantyne remarks, “The history of +the human mind contains nothing more wonderful.” The +experience of Thackeray is a parallel to that of Scott. +“Pendennis,” it must be noted, was interrupted by a +severe illness, and “The Bride of Lammermoor” was +dictated by Sir Walter when in great physical pain. On one +occasion Thackeray “lit upon a very stupid part of +‘Pendennis,’ I am sorry to say; and yet how well +written it is! What a shame the author don’t write a +complete good story! Will he die before doing so? or come +back from America and do it?”</p> +<p>Did he ever write “a complete, good story”? +Did any one ever do such a thing as write a three-volume, novel, +or a novel of equal length, which was “a complete, good +story”? Probably not; or if any mortal ever succeeded +in the task, it was the great Alexander Dumas. “The +Three Musketeers,” I take leave to think, and “Twenty +Years After,” are complete good stories, good from +beginning to end, stories from beginning to end without a break, +without needless episode. Perhaps one may say as much for +“Old Mortality,” and for “Quentin +Durward.” But Scott and Dumas were born +story-tellers; narrative was the essence of their genius at its +best; the current of romance rolls fleetly on, bearing with it +persons and events, mirroring scenes, but never ceasing to be the +main thing—the central interest. Perhaps narrative +like this is the chief success of the novelist. He is +triumphant when he carries us on, as Wolf, the famous critic, was +carried on by the tide of the Iliad, “in that pure and +rapid current of action.” Nobody would claim this +especial merit for Thackeray. He is one of the greatest of +novelists; he displays human nature and human conduct so that we +forget ourselves in his persons, but he does not make us forget +ourselves in their fortunes. Whether Clive does or does not +marry Ethel, or Esmond, Beatrix, does not very greatly excite our +curiosity. We cannot ring the bells for Clive’s +second wedding as the villagers celebrated the bridal of +Pamela. It is the development of character, it is the +author’s comments, it is his own personality and his +unmatched and inimitable style, that win our admiration and +affection. We can take up “Vanity Fair,” or +“Pendennis,” or “The Newcomes,” just +where the book opens by chance, and read them with delight, as we +may read Montaigne. When one says one can take up a book +anywhere, it generally means that one can also lay it down +anywhere. But it is not so with Thackeray. Whenever +we meet him he holds us with his charm, his humour, his +eloquence, his tenderness. If he has not, in the highest +degree, the narrative power, he does possess, in a degree perhaps +beyond any other writer of English, that kind of poetic quality +which is not incompatible with prose writing.</p> +<p>A great deal has been said about prose poetry. As a +rule, it is very poor stuff. As prose it has a tendency to +run into blank verse; as poetry it is highly rhetorical and +self-conscious. It would be invidious and might be +irritating to select examples from modern masters of +prose-poetry. They have never been poets. But the +prose of a poet like Milton may be, and is, poetical in the true +sense; and so, upon occasions, was the prose of Thackeray. +Some examples linger always in the memory, and dwell with their +music in the hearing. One I have quoted elsewhere; the +passage in “The Newcomes” where Clive, at the lecture +on the Poetry of the Domestic Affections, given by Sir Barnes +Newcome, sees Ethel, whom he has lost.</p> +<p>“And the past, and its dear histories, and youth and its +hopes and passions, and tones and looks, for ever echoing in the +heart and present in the memory—those, no doubt, poor Clive +saw and heard as he looked across the great gulf of time and +parting and grief, and beheld the woman he had loved for many +years.” “The great gulf of time, and parting, +and grief,”—some of us are on the farther side of it, +and our old selves, and our old happiness, and our old affections +beyond, grow near, grow clear, now and then, at the sight of a +face met by chance in the world, at the chance sound of a +voice. Such are human fortunes, and human sorrows; not the +worst, not the greatest, for these old loves do not +die—they live in exile, and are the better parts of our +souls. Not the greatest, nor the worst of sorrows, for +shame is worse, and hopeless hunger, and a life all of barren +toil without distractions, without joy, must be far worse. +But of those myriad tragedies of the life of the poor, Thackeray +does not write. How far he was aware of them, how deeply he +felt them, we are not informed. His highest tragedy is that +of the hunger of the heart; his most noble prose sounds in that +meeting of Harry Esmond with Lady Castlewood, in the immortal +speech which has the burden, “bringing your sheaves with +you!” All that scene appears to me no less unique, no +less unsurpassable, no less perfect, than the “Ode to the +Nightingale” of Keats, or the <i>Lycidas</i> of +Milton. It were superfluous to linger over the humour of +Thackeray. Only Shakespeare and Dickens have graced the +language with so many happy memories of queer, pleasant people, +with so many quaint phrases, each of which has a kind of +freemasonry, and when uttered, or recalled, makes all friends of +Thackeray into family friends of each other. The sayings of +Mr. Harry Foker, of Captain Costigan, of Gumbo, are all like old +dear family phrases, they live imperishable and always new, like +the words of Sir John, the fat knight, or of Sancho Panza, or of +Dick Swiveller, or that other Sancho, Sam Weller. They have +that Shakespearian gift of being ever appropriate, and undyingly +fresh.</p> +<p>These are among the graces of Thackeray, these and that +inimitable style, which always tempts and always baffles the +admiring and despairing copyist. Where did he find the +trick of it, of the words which are invariably the best words, +and invariably fall exactly in the best places? “The +best words in the best places,” is part of +Coleridge’s definition of poetry; it is also the essence of +Thackeray’s prose. In these Letters to Mrs. +Brookfield the style is precisely the style of the novels and +essays. The style, with Thackeray, was the man. He +could not write otherwise. But probably, to the last, this +perfection was not mechanical, was not attained without labour +and care. In Dr. John Brown’s works, in his essay on +Thackeray, there is an example of a proof-sheet on which the +master has made corrections, and those corrections bring the +passage up to his accustomed level, to the originality of his +rhythm. Here is the piece:—</p> +<blockquote><p>“Another Finis, another slice of life which +<i>Tempus edax</i> has devoured! And I may have to write +the word once or twice, perhaps, and then an end of Ends. +[Finite is ever and Infinite beginning.] Oh, the troubles, +the cares, the <i>ennui</i>, [the complications,] the +repetitions, the old conversations over and over again, and here +and there all the delightful passages, the dear, the brief, the +forever-remembered!</p> +<p>“[And then] A few chapters more, and then the +last, and behold Finis itself coming to an end, and the Infinite +beginning.”</p> +<p>“How like music this,” writes Dr. John +Brown—“like one trying the same air in different +ways, as it were, searching out and sounding all its +depths!” The words were almost the last that +Thackeray wrote, perhaps the very last. They reply, as it +were, to other words which he had written long before to Mrs. +Brookfield.</p> +<p>“I don’t pity anybody who leaves the world; not +even a fair young girl in her prime; I pity those +remaining. On her journey, if it pleases God to send her, +depend on it there’s no cause for grief, that’s but +an earthly condition. Out of our stormy life, and brought +nearer the Divine light and warmth, there must be a serene +climate. Can’t you fancy sailing into the +calm?”</p> +</blockquote> +<p>Ah! nowhere else shall we find the Golden Bride, +“passionless bride, divine Tranquillity.”</p> +<p>As human nature persistently demands a moral, and, as, to say +truth, Thackeray was constantly meeting the demand, what is the +lesson of his life and his writings? So people may ask, and +yet how futile is the answer! Life has a different meaning, +a different riddle, a different reply for each of us. There +is not one sphinx, but many sphinxes—as many as there are +women and men. We must all answer for ourselves. +Pascal has one answer, “Believe!” +Molière has another, “Observe!” +Thackeray’s answer is, “Be good and enjoy!” but +a melancholy enjoyment was his. Dr. John Brown says:</p> +<p>“His persistent state, especially for the later half of +his life, was profoundly <i>morne</i>, there is no other word for +it. This arose in part from temperament, from a quick sense +of the littleness and wretchedness of mankind . . . This feeling, +acting on a harsh and savage nature, ended in the <i>sæva +indignatio</i> of Swift; acting on the kindly and sensitive +nature of Mr. Thackeray, it led only to compassionate +sadness.”</p> +<p>A great part of his life, and most of his happiness, lay in +love. “Ich habe auch viel geliebt,” he says, +and it is a hazardous kind of happiness that attends great +affection. Your capital is always at the mercy of failures, +of death, of jealousy, of estrangement. But he had so much +love to give that he could not but trust those perilous +investments.</p> +<p>Other troubles he had that may have been diversions from +those. He did not always keep that manly common sense in +regard to criticism, which he shows in a letter to Mrs. +Brookfield. “Did you read the +<i>Spectator’s</i> sarcastic notice of ‘Vanity +Fair’? I don’t think it is just, but think +Kintoul (Rintoul?) is a very honest man, and rather inclined to +deal severely with his private friends lest he should fall into +the other extreme: to be sure he keeps out of it, I mean the +other extreme, very well.”</p> +<p>That is the way to take unfavourable criticisms—not to +go declaring that a man is your enemy because he does not like +your book, your ballads, your idyls, your sermons, what you +please. Why cannot people keep literature and liking +apart? Am I bound to think Jones a bad citizen, a bad man, +a bad householder, because his poetry leaves me cold? Need +he regard me as a malevolent green-eyed monster, because I +don’t want to read him? Thackeray was not always true +in his later years to these excellent principles. He was +troubled about trifles of criticisms and gossip, +<i>bagatelles</i> not worth noticing, still less worth +remembering and recording. Do not let us record them, +then.</p> +<p>We cannot expect for Thackeray, we cannot even desire for him, +a popularity like that of Dickens. If ever any man wrote +for the people, it was Dickens. Where can we find such a +benefactor, and who has lightened so many lives with such +merriment as he? But Thackeray wrote, like the mass of +authors, for the literary class—for all who have the sense +of style, the delight in the best language. He will endure +while English literature endures, while English civilisation +lasts. We cannot expect all the world to share our +affection for this humourist whose mirth springs from his +melancholy. His religion, his education, his life in this +unsatisfying world, are not the life, the education, the religion +of the great majority of human kind. He cannot reach so +many ears and hearts as Shakespeare or Dickens, and some of those +whom he reaches will always and inevitably misjudge him. +<i>Mais c’est mon homme</i>, one may say, as La Fontaine +said of Molière. Of modern writers, putting Scott +aside, he is to me the most friendly and sympathetic. Great +genius as he was, he was also a penman, a journalist; and +journalists and penmen will always look to him as their big +brother, the man in their own line of whom they are +proudest. As devout Catholics did not always worship the +greatest saints, but the friendliest saints, their own, so we +scribes burn our cheap incense to St. William Makepeace. He +could do all that any of us could do, and he did it infinitely +better. A piece of verse for <i>Punch</i>, a paragraph, a +caricature, were not beneath the dignity of the author of +“Esmond.” He had the kindness and helpfulness +which I, for one, have never met a journalist who lacked. +He was a good Englishman; the boy within him never died; he loved +children, and boys, and a little slang, and a boxing match. +If he had failings, who knew them better than he? How often +he is at once the boy at the swishing block and Dr. Birch who +does not spare the rod! Let us believe with that beloved +physician, our old friend Dr. John Brown, that “Mr. +Thackeray was much greater, much nobler than his works, great and +noble as they are.” Let us part with him, remembering +his own words:</p> +<blockquote><p>“Come wealth or want, come good or ill,<br +/> + Let young and old accept their part,<br /> +And bow before the awful Will,<br /> + And bear it with an honest heart.”</p> +</blockquote> +<h2>DICKENS</h2> +<p>“I cannot read Dickens!” How many people +make this confession, with a front of brass, and do not seem to +know how poor a figure they cut! George Eliot says that a +difference of taste in jokes is a great cause of domestic +discomfort. A difference of taste in books, when it is +decided and vigorous, breaks many a possible friendship, and nips +many a young liking in the bud. I would not willingly seem +intolerant. A man may not like Sophocles, may speak +disrespectfully of Virgil, and even sneer at Herodotus, and yet +may be endured. But he or she (it is usually she) who +contemns Scott, and “cannot read Dickens,” is a +person with whom I would fain have no further converse. If +she be a lady, and if one meets her at dinner, she must of course +be borne with, and “suffered gladly.” But she +has dug a gulf that nothing can bridge; she may be fair, clever +and popular, but she is Anathema. I feel towards her (or +him if he wears a beard) as Bucklaw did towards the person who +should make inquiries about that bridal night of Lammermoor.</p> +<p>But this admission does not mean that one is sealed of the +tribe of Charles—that one is a Dickensite pure and simple, +convinced and devout—any more than Mr. Matthew Arnold was a +Wordsworthian. Dickens has many such worshippers, +especially (and this is an argument in favour of the faith) among +those who knew him in his life. He must have had a +wonderful charm; for his friends in life are his literary +partisans, his uncompromising partisans, even to this day. +They will have no half-hearted admiration, and scout him who +tries to speak of Dickens as of an artist not flawless, no less +than they scorn him who cannot read Dickens at all. At one +time this honourable enthusiasm (as among the Wordsworthians) +took the shape of “endless imitation.” That is +over; only here and there is an imitator of the master left in +the land. All his own genius was needed to carry his +mannerisms; the mannerisms without the genius were an armour that +no devoted David had proved, that none could wear with +success.</p> +<p>Of all great writers since Scott, Dickens is probably the man +to whom the world owes most gratitude. No other has caused +so many sad hearts to be lifted up in laughter; no other has +added so much mirth to the toilsome and perplexed life of men, of +poor and rich, of learned and unlearned. “A vast hope +has passed across the world,” says Alfred de Musset; we may +say that with Dickens a happy smile, a joyous laugh, went round +this earth. To have made us laugh so frequently, so +inextinguishably, so kindly—that is his great good +deed. It will be said, and with a great deal of truth, that +he has purged us with pity and terror as well as with +laughter. But it is becoming plain that his command of +tears is less assured than of old, and I cannot honestly regret +that some of his pathos—not all, by any means—is +losing its charm and its certainty of appeal. +Dickens’s humour was rarely too obvious; it was essentially +personal, original, quaint, unexpected, and his own. His +pathos was not infrequently derived from sources open to all the +world, and capable of being drawn from by very commonplace +writers. Little Nells and Dombeys, children unhappy, +overthrown early in the <i>mêlée</i> of the world, +and dying among weeping readers, no longer affect us as they +affected another generation. Mrs. Beecher Stowe and the +author of “Misunderstood,” once made some people weep +like anything by these simple means. Ouida can do it; +plenty of people can do it. Dickens lives by virtue of what +none but he can do: by virtue of Sairey Gamp, and Sam Weller, and +Dick Swiveller, and Mr. Squeers, with a thousand other old +friends, of whom we can never weary. No more than +Cleopatra’s can custom stale <i>their</i> infinite +variety.</p> +<p>I do not say that Dickens’ pathos is always of the too +facile sort, which plays round children’s death-beds. +Other pathos he has, more fine and not less genuine. It may +be morbid and contemptible to feel “a great inclination to +cry” over David Copperfield’s boyish infatuation for +Steerforth; but I feel it. Steerforth was a +“tiger,”—as Major Pendennis would have said, a +tiger with his curly hair and his ambrosial whiskers. But +when a little boy loses his heart to a big boy he does not think +of this. Traddles thought of it. “Shame, J. +Steerforth!” cried Traddles, when Steerforth bullied the +usher. Traddles had not lost his heart, nor set up the big +boy as a god in the shrine thereof. But boys do these +things; most of us have had our Steerforths—tall, strong, +handsome, brave, good-humoured. Far off across the years I +see the face of such an one, and remember that emotion which is +described in “David Copperfield,” chap. xix., towards +the end of the chapter. I don’t know any other +novelist who has touched this young and absolutely disinterested +belief of a little boy in a big one—touched it so kindly +and seriously, that is there is a hint of it in “Dr. +Birch’s School Days.”</p> +<p>But Dickens is always excellent in his boys, of whom he has +drawn dozens of types—all capital. There is Tommy +Traddles, for example. And how can people say that Dickens +could not draw a gentleman? The boy who shouted, +“Shame, J. Steerforth!” was a gentleman, if one may +pretend to have an opinion about a theme so difficult. The +Dodger and Charley Bates are delightful boys—especially +Bates. Pip, in the good old days, when he was the prowling +boy, and fought Herbert Pocket, was not less attractive, and +Herbert himself, with his theory and practice of the art of +self-defence—could Nelson have been more brave, or Shelley +(as in Mr. Matthew Arnold’s opinion) more +“ineffectual”? Even the boys at Dotheboys Hall +are each of them quite distinct. Dickens’s boys are +almost as dear to me as Thackeray’s—as little Rawdon +himself. There is one exception. I cannot interest +myself in Little Dombey. Little David Copperfield is a +jewel of a boy with a turn for books. Doubtless he is +created out of Dickens’s memories of himself as a +child. That is true pathos again, and not overwrought, when +David is sent to Creakle’s, and his poor troubled mother +dare hardly say farewell to him.</p> +<p>And this brings us back to that debatable thing—the +pathos of Dickens—from which one has been withdrawn by the +attractions of his boys. Little Dombey is a prize example +of his pathos. Little Nell is another. Jeffrey, of +the <i>Edinburgh Review</i>, who criticised “Marmion” +and the “Lady of the Lake” so vindictively, shed +tears over Little Nell. It is a matter of taste, or, as +Science might say, of the lachrymal glands as developed in each +individual. But the lachrymal glands of this amateur are +not developed in that direction. Little Dombey and Little +Nell leave me with a pair of dry eyes. I do not “melt +visibly” over Little Dombey, like the weak-eyed young man +who took out his books and trunk to the coach. The poor +little chap was feeble and feverish, and had dreams of trying to +stop a river with his childish hands, or to choke it with +sand. It may be very good pathology, but I cannot see that +it is at all right pathos. One does not like copy to be +made out of the sufferings of children or of animals. +One’s heart hardens: the object is too manifest, the trick +is too easy. Conceive a child of Dombey’s age +remarking, with his latest breath, “Tell them that the +picture on the stairs at school is not Divine +enough!” That is not the delirium of infancy, that is +art-criticism: it is the <i>Athenæum</i> on Mr. Holman +Hunt. It is not true to nature; it is not good in art: it +is the kind of thing that appears in Sunday-school books about +the virtuous little boy who died. There is more true pathos +in many a page of “Huckleberry Finn.” Yet this +is what Jeffrey gushed over. “There has been nothing +like the actual dying of that sweet Paul.” So much +can age enfeeble the intellect, that he who had known Scott, and +yet nibbled at his fame, descended to admiring the feeblest of +false sentiment. As for Little Nell, who also has caused +floods of tears to be shed, her case is sufficiently illustrated +by the picture in the first edition (“Master +Humphrey’s Clock,”, 1840, p. 210):</p> + +<blockquote><p> “‘When +I die<br /> +Put near me something that has loved the light,<br /> +And had the sky above it always.’ Those<br /> +Were her words.”</p> +<p>“Dear, gentle, patient, noble Nell was dead!”</p> +</blockquote> +<p>The pathos is about as good as the prose, and <i>that</i> is +blank verse. Are the words in the former quotation in the +least like anything that a little girl would say? A German +sentimentalist might have said them; Obermann might have murmured +them in his weaker moments. Let us try a piece of domestic +pathos by another hand. It is the dawn of Waterloo.</p> +<p>“Heart-stained and shame-stricken, he stood at the +bed’s foot, and looked at the sleeping girl. How +dared he—who was he—to pray for one so +spotless! God bless her! God bless her! He came +to the bedside, and looked at the hand, the little soft hand, +lying asleep, and he bent over the pillow noiselessly towards the +gentle pale face. Two fair arms closed tenderly round his +neck as he stooped down. ‘I am awake, George,’ +the poor child said, with a sob.”</p> +<p>I know I am making enemies of a large proportion of the +readers of this page. “Odious, sneering beast!” +is the quotation which they will apply, perhaps unconscious of +its origin, to a critic who is humble but would fain be honest, +to a critic who thinks that Dickens has his weak places, and that +his pathos is one of these. It cannot be helped. Each +of us has his author who is a favourite, a friend, an idol, whose +immaculate perfection he maintains against all comers. For +example, things are urged against Scott; I receive them in the +attitude of the deaf adder of St. Augustine, who stops one ear +with his tail and presses the other against the dust. The +same with Molière: M. Scherer utters complaints against +Molière! He would not convince me, even if I were +convinced. So, with regard to Dickens, the true believer +will not listen, he will not be persuaded. But if any one +feels a little shaken, let him try it another way. There is +a character in M. Alphonse Daudet’s “Froment Jeune et +Rissler Aîné”—a character who, people +say, is taken bodily from Dickens. This is +Désirée Delobelle, the deformed girl, the daughter +of <i>un raté</i>, a pretentious imbecile actor. She +is poor, stunted, laborious, toiling at a small industry; she is +in love, is rejected, she tries to drown herself, she dies. +The sequence of ideas is in Dickens’s vein; but read the +tale, and I think you will see how little the thing is overdone, +how simple and unforced it is, compared with analogous persons +and scenes in the work of the English master. The idiotic +yell of “plagiarism” has been raised, of course, by +critical <i>crétins</i>. M. Daudet, as I understand +what he says in “Trente Ans de Paris,” had not read +Dickens at all, when he wrote “Froment +Jeune”—certainly had not read “Our Mutual +Friend.” But there is something of Dickens’s +genius in M. Daudet’s, and that something is kept much +better in hand by the Frenchman, is more subordinated to the +principles of taste and of truth.</p> +<p>On the other hand, to be done with this point, look at +Delobelle, the father of Désirée, and compare him +with Dickens’s splendid strollers, with Mr. Vincent +Crummles, and Mr. Lenville, and the rest. As in +Désirée so in Delobelle, M. Daudet’s picture +is much the more truthful. But it is truthful with a bitter +kind of truth. Now, there is nothing not genial and +delightful in Crummles and Mrs. Crummles and the Infant +Phenomenon. Here Dickens has got into a region unlike the +region of the pathetic, into a world that welcomes <i>charge</i> +or caricature, the world of humour. We do not know, we +never meet Crummleses quite so unsophisticated as Vincent, who is +“not a Prussian,” who “can’t think who +puts these things into the papers.” But we do meet +stage people who come very near to this +<i>naïveté</i> of self-advertisement, and some of +whom are just as dismal as Crummles is delightful.</p> +<p>Here, no doubt, is Dickens’s <i>forte</i>. Here +his genius is all pure gold, in his successful studies or +inventions of the humorous, of character parts. One +literally does not know where to begin or end in one’s +admiration for this creative power that peopled our fancies with +such troops of dear and impossible friends. +“Pickwick” comes practically first, and he never +surpassed “Pickwick.” He was a poor +story-teller, and in “Pickwick” he had no story to +tell; he merely wandered at adventure in that merrier England +which was before railways were. “Pickwick” is +the last of the stories of the road that begin in the wandering, +aimless, adventurous romances of Greece, or in Petronius Arbiter, +and that live with the life of “Gil Blas” and +“Don Quixote,” of “Le Roman Comique,” of +“Tom Jones” and “Joseph Andrews.” +These tales are progresses along highways bristling with +adventure, and among inns full of confusion, Mr. Pickwick’s +affair with the lady with yellow curl-papers being a mild +example. Though “Tom Jones” has a plot so +excellent, no plot is needed here, and no consecutive story is +required. Detached experiences, vagrants of every rank that +come and go, as in real life, are all the material of the +artist. With such materials Dickens was exactly suited; he +was at home on high-road and lane, street and field-path, in inns +and yeomen’s warm hospitable houses. Never a humour +escaped him, and he had such a wealth of fun and high spirits in +these glad days as never any other possessed before. He was +not in the least a bookish man, not in any degree a scholar; but +Nature taught him, and while he wrote with Nature for his +teacher, with men and women for his matter, with diversion for +his aim, he was unsurpassable—nay, he was +unapproachable.</p> +<p>He could not rest here; he was, after all, a child of an age +that grew sad, and earnest, and thoughtful. He saw abuses +round him—injustice, and oppression, and cruelty. He +had a heart to which those things were not only abhorrent, but, +as it were, maddening. He knew how great an influence he +wielded, and who can blame him for using it in any cause he +thought good? Very possibly he might have been a greater +artist if he had been less of a man, if he had been quite +disinterested, and had never written “with a +purpose.” That is common, and even rather obsolete +critical talk. But when we remember that Fielding, too, +very often wrote “with a purpose,” and that purpose +the protection of the poor and unfriended; and when we remember +what an artist Fielding was, I do not see how we can blame +Dickens. Occasionally he made his art and his purpose blend +so happily that his work was all the better for his benevolent +intentions. We owe Mr. Squeers, Mrs. Squeers, Fanny +Squeers, Wackford and all, to Dickens’s indignation against +the nefarious school pirates of his time. If he is less +successful in attacking the Court of Chancery, and very much less +successful still with the Red Tape and Circumlocution Office +affairs, that may be merely because he was less in the humour, +and not because he had a purpose in his mind. Every one of +a man’s books cannot be his masterpiece. There is +nothing in literary talk so annoying as the spiteful joy with +which many people declare that an author is “worked +out,” because his last book is less happy than some that +went before. There came a time in Dickens’ career +when his works, to my own taste and that of many people, seemed +laboured, artificial—in fact, more or less failures. +These books range from “Dombey and Son,” through +“Little Dorrit,” I dare not say to “Our Mutual +Friend.” One is afraid that “Edwin +Drood,” too, suggests the malady which Sir Walter already +detected in his own “Peveril of the Peak.” The +intense strain on the faculties of Dickens—as author, +editor, reader, and man of the world—could not but tell on +him; and years must tell. “Philip” is not +worthy of the author of “Esmond,” nor “Daniel +Deronda” of the author of “Silas Marner.” +At that time—the time of the Dorrits and +Dombeys—<i>Blackwood’s Magazine</i> published a +“Remonstrance with Boz”; nor was it quite +superfluous. But Dickens had abundance of talent still to +display—above all in “Great Expectations” and +“A Tale of Two Cities.” The former is, after +“Pickwick,” “Copperfield,” “Martin +Chuzzlewit,” and “Nicholas +Nickleby”—after the classics, in fact—the most +delightful of Dickens’s books. The story is +embroiled, no doubt. What are we to think of Estelle? +Has the minx any purpose? Is she a kind of Ethel Newcome of +odd life? It is not easy to say; still, for a story of +Dickens’s the plot is comparatively clear and +intelligible. For a study of a child’s life, of the +nature Dickens drew best—the river and the +marshes—and for plenty of honest explosive fun, there is no +later book of Dickens’s like “Great +Expectations.” Miss Havisham, too, in her mouldy +bridal splendour, is really impressive; not like Ralph Nickleby +and Monk in “Oliver Twist”—a book of which the +plot remains to me a mystery. <a name="citation128"></a><a +href="#footnote128" class="citation">[128]</a> Pip and +Pumblechook and Mr. Wopsle and Jo are all immortal, and cause +laughter inextinguishable. The rarity of this book, by the +way, in its first edition—the usual library three +volumes—is rather difficult to explain. One very +seldom sees it come into the market, and then it is highly +priced.</p> +<p>I have mentioned more than once the obscurity of +Dickens’s plots. This difficulty may be accounted for +in a very flattering manner. Where do we lose +ourselves? Not in the bare high-road, but among lanes, +between hedges hung with roses, blackberries, morning glories, +where all about us is so full of pleasure that our attention is +distracted and we miss our way. Now, in Dickens—in +“Oliver Twist,” in “Martin Chuzzlewit,” +in “Nicholas Nickleby”—there is, as in the +lanes, so much to divert and beguile, that we cease to care very +much where the road leads—a road so full of happy +marvels. The dark, plotting villains—like the tramp +who frightened Sir Walter Scott so terribly, as he came from Miss +Baillie’s at Hampstead—peer out from behind the +hedges now and then. But we are too much amused by the +light hearts that go all the way, by the Dodger and Crummles and +Mrs. Gamp, to care much for what Ralph, and Monk, and Jonas +Chuzzlewit are plotting. It may not be that the plot is so +confused, but that we are too much diverted to care for the plot, +for the incredible machinations of Uriah Heap, to choose another +example. Mr. Micawber cleared these up; but it is Mr. +Micawber that hinders us from heeding them.</p> +<p>This, at least, is a not unfriendly explanation. Yet I +cannot but believe that, though Dickens took great pains with his +plots, he was not a great plotter. He was not, any more +than Thackeray, a story-teller first and foremost. We can +hold in our minds every thread of Mr. Wilkie Collins’ web, +or of M. Fortuné du Boisgobey’s, or of M. +Gaboriau’s—all great weavers of intrigues. But +Dickens goes about darkening his intrigue, giving it an extra +knot, an extra twist, hinting here, ominously laughing there, +till we get mystified and bored, and give ourselves up to the fun +of the humours, indifferent to the destinies of villains and +victims. Look at “Edwin Drood.” A +constant war about the plot rages in the magazines. I +believe, for one, that Edwin Drood was resuscitated; but it gives +me no pleasure. He was too uninteresting. +Dickens’s hints, nods, mutterings, forebodings, do not at +all impress one like that deepening and darkening of the awful +omens in “The Bride of Lammermoor.” Here +Scott—unconsciously, no doubt—used the very manner of +Homer in the Odyssey, and nowhere was his genius more +Homeric. That was romance.</p> +<p>The “Tale of Two Cities” is a great test of the +faith—that is in Dickensites. Of all his works it is +the favourite with the wrong sort! Ladies prefer it. +Many people can read it who cannot otherwise read Dickens at +all. This in itself proves that it is not a good example of +Dickens, that it is not central, that it is an outlying province +which he conquered. It is not a favourite of mine. +The humour of the humorous characters rings false—for +example, the fun of the resurrection-man with the wife who +“flops.” But Sidney Carton has drawn many tears +down cheeks not accustomed to what Mr. B. in “Pamela” +calls “pearly fugitives.”</p> +<p>It sometimes strikes one that certain weaknesses in our great +novelists, in Thackeray as well as Dickens, were caused by their +method of publication. The green and yellow leaves +flourished on the trees for two whole years. Who (except +Alexandre the Great) could write so much, and yet all good? +Do we not all feel that “David Copperfield” should +have been compressed? As to “Pendennis,” Mr. +Thackeray’s bad health when he wrote it might well cause a +certain languor in the later pages. Moreover, he frankly +did not care for the story, and bluffly says, in the preface, +that he respited Colonel Altamont almost at the foot of the +gallows. Dickens took himself more in earnest, and, having +so many pages to fill, conscientiously made Uriah Heap wind and +wriggle through them all.</p> +<p>To try to see blots in the sun, and to pick holes in Dickens, +seems ungrateful, and is indeed an ungrateful task; to no mortal +man have more people owed mirth, pleasure, forgetfulness of care, +knowledge of life in strange places. There never was such +another as Charles Dickens, nor shall we see his like sooner than +the like of Shakespeare. And he owed all to native genius +and hard work; he owed almost nothing to literature, and that +little we regret. He was influenced by Carlyle, he adopted +his method of nicknames, and of hammering with wearisome +iteration on some peculiarity—for example, on +Carker’s teeth, and the patriarch’s white hair. +By the way, how incredible is all the Carker episode in +“Dombey”! Surely Dickens can never have +intended Edith, from the first, to behave as she did! +People may have influenced him, as they influenced Scott about +“St. Ronan’s Well.” It has been said +that, save for Carlyle, Dickens was in letters a self-taught +artist, that he was no man’s pupil, and borrowed from +none. No doubt this makes him less acceptable to the +literary class than a man of letters, like Thackeray—than a +man in whose treasure chamber of memory all the wealth of the +Middle Ages was stored, like Scott. But the native naked +genius of Dickens,—his heart, his mirth, his observation, +his delightful high spirits, his intrepid loathing of wrong, his +chivalrous desire to right it,—these things will make him +for ever, we hope and believe, the darling of the English +people.</p> +<h2>ADVENTURES OF BUCCANEERS</h2> +<p>Most of us, as boys, have envied the buccaneers. The +greatest of all boys, Canon Kingsley, once wrote a pleasing and +regretful poem in which the Last Buccaneer represents himself as +a kind of picturesque philanthropist:—</p> +<blockquote><p>“There were forty craft in Aves that were +both swift and stout,<br /> +All furnished well with small arms, and cannons round about;<br +/> +And a thousand men in Aves made laws so fair and free,<br /> +To choose their valiant captains and obey them loyally.<br /> +Thence we sailed against the Spaniard with his hoards of plate +and gold,<br /> +Which he wrung with cruel tortures from Indian folk of old;<br /> +Likewise the merchant captains, with hearts as hard as stone,<br +/> +Who flog men and keel-haul them, and starve them to the +bone.”</p> +</blockquote> +<p>The buccaneer is “a gallant sailor,” according to +Kingsley’s poem—a Robin Hood of the waters, who preys +only on the wicked rich, or the cruel and Popish Spaniard, and +the extortionate shipowner. For his own part, when he is +not rescuing poor Indians, the buccaneer lives mainly “for +climate and the affections”:—</p> +<blockquote><p>“Oh, sweet it was in Aves to hear the +landward breeze,<br /> +A swing with good tobacco in a net between the trees,<br /> +With a negro lass to fan you, while you listened to the roar<br +/> +Of the breakers on the reef outside that never touched the +shore.”</p> +</blockquote> +<p>This is delightfully idyllic, like the lives of the Tahitian +shepherds in the Anti-Jacobin—the shepherds whose +occupation was a sinecure, as there were no sheep in Tahiti.</p> +<p>Yet the vocation was not really so touchingly chivalrous as +the poet would have us deem. One Joseph Esquemeling, +himself a buccaneer, has written the history and described the +exploits of his companions in plain prose, warning eager youths +that “pieces-of-eight do not grow on every tree,” as +many raw recruits have believed. Mr. Esquemeling’s +account of these matters may be purchased, with a great deal else +that is instructive and entertaining, in “The History of +the Buccaneers in America.” My edition (of 1810) is a +dumpy little book, in very small type, and quite a crowd of +publishers took part in the venture. The older editions are +difficult to procure if your pockets are not stuffed with +pieces-of-eight. You do not often find even this volume, +but “when found make a note of,” and you have a reply +to Canon Kingsley.</p> +<p>A charitable old Scotch lady, who heard our ghostly foe evil +spoken of, remarked that, “If we were all as diligent and +conscientious as the Devil, it would be better for +us.” Now, the buccaneers were certainly models of +diligence and conscientiousness in their own industry, which was +to torture people till they gave up their goods, and then to run +them through the body, and spend the spoils over drink and +dice. Except Dampier, who was a clever man, but a poor +buccaneer (Mr. Clark Russell has written his life), they were the +most hideously ruthless miscreants that ever disgraced the earth +and the sea. But their courage and endurance were no less +notable than their greed and cruelty, so that a moral can be +squeezed even out of these abandoned miscreants. The +soldiers and sailors who made their way within gunshot of +Khartoum, overcoming thirst, hunger, heat, the desert, and the +gallant children of the desert, did not fight, march, and suffer +more bravely than the scoundrels who sacked Mairaibo and burned +Panama. Their good qualities were no less astounding and +exemplary than their almost incredible wickedness. They did +not lie about in hammocks much, listening to the landward wind +among the woods—the true buccaneers. To tell the +truth, most of them had no particular cause to love the human +species. They were often Europeans who had been sold into +slavery on the West Indian plantations, where they learned +lessons of cruelty by suffering it. Thus Mr. Joseph +Esquemeling, our historian, was beaten, tortured, and nearly +starved to death in Tortuga, “so I determined, not knowing +how to get any living, to enter into the order of the pirates or +robbers of the sea.” The poor Indians of the isles, +much pitied by Kingsley’s buccaneer, had a habit of +sticking their prisoners all over with thorns, wrapped in oily +cotton, whereto they then set fire. “These cruelties +many Christians have seen while they lived among these +barbarians.” Mr. Esquemeling was to see, and inflict, +plenty of this kind of torment, which was not out of the way nor +unusual. One planter alone had killed over a hundred of his +servants—“the English did the same with +theirs.”</p> +<p>A buccaneer voyage began in stealing a ship, collecting +desperadoes, and torturing the local herdsmen till they gave up +their masters’ flocks, which were salted as +provisions. Articles of service were then drawn up, on the +principle “no prey, no pay.” The spoils, when +taken, were loyally divided as a rule, though Captain Morgan, of +Wales, made no more scruple about robbing his crew than about +barbecuing a Spanish priest. “They are very civil and +charitable to each other, so that if any one wants what another +has, with great willingness they give it to one +another.” In other matters they did not in the least +resemble the early Christians. A fellow nick-named The +Portuguese may be taken as our first example of their commendable +qualities.</p> +<p>With a small ship of four guns he had taken a great one of +twenty guns, with 70,000 pieces-of-eight . . . He himself, +however, was presently captured by a larger vessel, and +imprisoned on board. Being carelessly watched, he escaped +on two earthen jars (for he could not swim), reached the woods in +Campechy, and walked for a hundred and twenty miles through the +bush. His only food was a few shell-fish, and by way of a +knife he had a large nail, which he whetted to an edge on a +stone. Having made a kind of raft, he struck a river, and +paddled to Golpho Triste, where he found congenial pirates. +With twenty of these, and a boat, he returned to Campechy, where +he had been a prisoner, and actually captured the large ship in +which he had lain captive! Bad luck pursued him, however: +his prize was lost in a storm; he reached Jamaica in a canoe, and +never afterwards was concerned as leader in any affair of +distinction. Not even Odysseus had more resource, nor was +more long-enduring; but Fortune was The Portuguese’s +foe.</p> +<p>Braziliano, another buccaneer, served as a pirate before the +mast, and “was beloved and respected by all.” +Being raised to command, he took a plate ship; but this success +was of indifferent service to his otherwise amiable +character. “He would often appear foolish and brutish +when in drink,” and has been known to roast Spaniards alive +on wooden spits “for not showing him hog yards where he +might steal swine.” One can hardly suppose that +Kingsley would have regretted <i>this</i> buccaneer, even if he +had been the last, which unluckily he was not. His habit of +sitting in the street beside a barrel of beer, and shooting all +passers-by who would not drink with him, provoked remark, and was +an act detestable to all friends of temperance principles.</p> +<p>François L’Olonnois, from southern France, had +been kidnapped, and sold as a slave in the Caribbee +Islands. Recovering his freedom, he plundered the Spanish, +says my buccaneer author, “till his unfortunate +death.” With two canoes he captured a ship which had +been sent after him, carrying ten guns and a hangman for his +express benefit. This hangman, much to the fellow’s +chagrin, L’Olonnois put to death like the rest of his +prisoners. His great achievements were in the Gulf of +Venezuela or Bay of Maracaibo. The gulf is a strong place; +the mouth, no wider than a gun-shot, is guarded by two +islands. Far up the inlet is Maracaibo, a town of three +thousand people, fortified and surrounded by woods. Yet +farther up is the town of Gibraltar. To attack these was a +desperate enterprise; but L’Olonnois stole past the forts, +and frightened the townsfolk into the woods. As a rule the +Spaniards made the poorest resistance; there were examples of +courage, but none of conduct. With strong forts, heavy +guns, many men, provisions, and ammunition, they quailed before +the desperate valour of the pirates. The towns were sacked, +the fugitives hunted out in the woods, and the most abominable +tortures were applied to make them betray their friends and +reveal their treasures. When they were silent, or had no +treasures to declare, they were hacked, twisted, burned, and +starved to death.</p> +<p>Such were the manners of L’Olonnois; and Captain Morgan, +of Wales, was even more ruthless.</p> +<p>Gibraltar was well fortified and strengthened after Maracaibo +fell; new batteries were raised, the way through the woods was +barricaded, and no fewer than eight hundred men were under arms +to resist a small pirate force, exhausted by debauch, and having +its retreat cut off by the forts at the mouth of the great +salt-water loch. But L’Olonnois did not blench: he +told the men that audacity was their one hope, also that he would +pistol the first who gave ground. The men cheered +enthusiastically, and a party of three hundred and fifty +landed. The barricaded way they could not force, and in a +newly cut path they met a strong battery which fired grape. +But L’Olonnois was invincible. He tried that old +trick which rarely fails, a sham retreat, and this lured the +Spaniards from their earthwork on the path. The pirates +then turned, sword in hand, slew two hundred of the enemy, and +captured eight guns. The town yielded, the people fled to +the woods, and then began the wonted sport of torturing the +prisoners. Maracaibo they ransomed afresh, obtained a +pilot, passed the forts with ease, and returned after sacking a +small province. On a dividend being declared, they parted +260,000 pieces-of-eight among the band, and spent the pillage in +a revel of three weeks.</p> +<p>L’Olonnois “got great repute” by this +conduct, but I rejoice to add that in a raid on Nicaragua he +“miserably perished,” and met what Mr. Esquemeling +calls “his unfortunate death.” For +L’Olonnois was really an ungentlemanly character. He +would hack a Spaniard to pieces, tear out his heart, and +“gnaw it with his teeth like a ravenous wolf, saying to the +rest, ‘I will serve you all alike if you show me not +another way’” (to a town which he designed +attacking). In Nicaragua he was taken by the Indians, who, +being entirely on the Spanish side, tore him to pieces and burned +him. Thus we really must not be deluded by the professions +of Mr. Kingsley’s sentimental buccaneer, with his pity for +“the Indian folk of old.”</p> +<p>Except Denis Scott, a worthy bandit in his day, Captain Henry +Morgan is the first renowned British buccaneer. He was a +young Welshman, who, after having been sold as a slave in +Barbadoes, became a sailor of fortune. With about four +hundred men he assailed Puerto Bello. “If our number +is small,” he said, “our hearts are great,” and +so he assailed the third city and place of arms which Spain then +possessed in the West Indies. The entrance of the harbour +was protected by two strong castles, judged as “almost +impregnable,” while Morgan had no artillery of any avail +against fortresses. Morgan had the luck to capture a +Spanish soldier, whom he compelled to parley with the garrison of +the castle. This he stormed and blew up, massacring all its +defenders, while with its guns he disarmed the sister +fortress. When all but defeated in a new assault, the sight +of the English colours animated him afresh. He made the +captive monks and nuns carry the scaling ladders; in this +unwonted exploit the poor religious folk lost many of their +numbers. The wall was mounted, the soldiers were defeated, +though the Governor fought like a Spaniard of the old school, +slew many pirates with his own hand, and pistolled some of his +own men for cowardice. He died at his post, refusing +quarter, and falling like a gentleman of Spain. Morgan, +too, was not wanting in fortitude: he extorted 100,000 +pieces-of-eight from the Governor of Panama, and sent him a +pistol as a sample of the gun wherewith he took so great a +city. He added that he would return and take this pistol +out of Panama; nor was he less good than his word. In Cuba +he divided 250,000 pieces-of-eight, and a great booty in other +treasure. A few weeks saw it all in the hands of the +tavern-keepers and women of the place.</p> +<p>Morgan’s next performance was a new sack of Maracaibo, +now much stronger than L’Olonnois had found it. After +the most appalling cruelties, not fit to be told, he returned, +passing the castles at the mouth of the port by an ingenious +stratagem. Running boatload after boatload of men to the +land side, he brought them back by stealth, leading the garrison +to expect an attack from that quarter. The guns were massed +to landward, and no sooner was this done than Morgan sailed up +through the channel with but little loss. Why the Spaniards +did not close the passage with a boom does not appear. +Probably they were glad to be quit of Morgan on any terms.</p> +<p>A great Spanish fleet he routed by the ingenious employment of +a fire-ship. In a later expedition a strong place was taken +by a curious accident. One of the buccaneers was shot +through the body with an arrow. He drew it out, wrapped it +in cotton, fired it from his musket, and so set light to a roof +and burned the town.</p> +<p>His raid on Panama was extraordinary for the endurance of his +men. For days they lived on the leather of bottles and +belts. “Some, who were never out of their +mothers’ kitchens, may ask how these pirates could eat and +digest these pieces of leather, so hard and dry? Whom I +answer—that could they once experience what hunger, or +rather famine is, they would find the way, as the pirates +did.” It was at the close of this march that the +Indians drove wild bulls among them; but they cared very little +for these new allies of the Spaniards: beef, in any form, was +only too welcome.</p> +<p>Morgan burned the fair cedar houses of Panama, but lost the +plate ship with all the gold and silver out of the +churches. How he tortured a poor wretch who chanced to wear +a pair of taffety trousers belonging to his master, with a small +silver key hanging out, it is better not to repeat. The men +only got two hundred pieces-of-eight each, after all their toil, +for their Welshman was indeed a thief, and bilked his crews, no +less than he plundered the Spaniards, without remorse. +Finally, he sneaked away from the fleet with a ship or two; and +it is to be feared that Captain Morgan made rather a good thing +by dint of his incredible cruelty and villainy.</p> +<p>And so we leave Mr. Esquemeling, whom Captain Morgan also +deserted; for who would linger long when there is not even honour +among thieves? Alluring as the pirate’s profession +is, we must not forget that it had a seamy side, and was by no +means all rum and pieces-of-eight. And there is something +repulsive to a generous nature in roasting men because they will +not show you where to steal hogs.</p> +<h2>THE SAGAS</h2> +<p>“The general reader,” says a frank critic, +“hates the very name of a Saga.” The general +reader, in that case, is to be pitied, and, if possible, +converted. But, just as Pascal admits that the sceptic can +only become religious by living as if he <i>were</i> +religious—by stupefying himself, as Pascal plainly puts it, +with holy water—so it is to be feared that there is but a +single way of winning over the general reader to the Sagas. +Preaching and example, as in this brief essay, will not avail +with him. He must take Pascal’s advice, and live for +an hour or two as if he were a lover of Sagas. He must, in +brief, give that old literature a fair chance. He has now +his opportunity: Mr. William Morris and Mr. Eirikr Magnusson are +publishing a series of cheap translations—cheap only in +coin of the realm—a <i>Saga Library</i>. If a general +reader tries the first tale in the first volume, story of +“Howard the Halt,”—if he tries it honestly, and +still can make no way with it, then let him take comfort in the +doctrine of Invincible Ignorance. Let him go back to his +favourite literature of gossiping reminiscence, or of realistic +novels. We have all, probably, a drop of the +Northmen’s blood in us, but in that general reader the +blood is dormant.</p> +<p>What is a Saga? It is neither quite a piece of history +nor wholly a romance. It is a very old story of things and +adventures that really happened, but happened so long ago, and in +times so superstitious, that marvels and miracles found their way +into the legend. The best Sagas are those of Iceland, and +those, in translations, are the finest reading that the natural +man can desire. If you want true pictures of life and +character, which are always the same at bottom, or true pictures +of manners, which are always changing, and of strange customs and +lost beliefs, in the Sagas they are to be found. Or if you +like tales of enterprise, of fighting by land and sea, fighting +with men and beasts, with storms and ghosts and fiends, the Sagas +are full of this entertainment.</p> +<p>The stories of which we are speaking were first told in +Iceland, perhaps from 950 to 1100 B.C. When Norway and +Sweden were still heathen, a thousand years ago, they were +possessed by families of noble birth, owning no master, and often +at war with each other, when the men were not sailing the seas, +to rob and kill in Scotland, England, France, Italy, and away +east as far as Constantinople, or farther. Though they were +wild sea robbers and warriors, they were sturdy farmers, great +shipbuilders; every man of them, however wealthy, could be his +own carpenter, smith, shipwright, and ploughman. They +forged their own good short swords, hammered their own armour, +ploughed their own fields. In short, they lived like +Odysseus, the hero of Homer, and were equally skilled in the arts +of war and peace. They were mighty lawyers, too, and had a +most curious and minute system of laws on all +subjects—land, marriage, murder, trade, and so forth. +These laws were not written, though the people had a kind of +letters called runes. But they did not use them much for +documents, but merely for carving a name on a sword-blade, or a +tombstone, or on great gold rings such as they wore on their +arms. Thus the laws existed in the memory and judgment of +the oldest and wisest and most righteous men of the +country. The most important was the law of murder. If +one man slew another, he was not tried by a jury, but any +relation of the dead killed him “at sight,” wherever +he found him. Even in an Earl’s hall, Kari struck the +head off one of his friend Njal’s Burners, and the head +bounded on the board, among the trenchers of meat and the cups of +mead or ale. But it was possible, if the relations of a +slain man consented, for the slayer to pay his price—every +man was valued at so much—and then revenge was not +taken. But, as a rule, one revenge called for +another. Say Hrut slew Hrap, then Atli slew Hrut, and Gisli +slew Atli, and Kari slew Gisli, and so on till perhaps two whole +families were extinct and there was peace. The gods were +not offended by manslaughter openly done, but were angry with +treachery, cowardice, meanness, theft, perjury, and every kind of +shabbiness.</p> +<p>This was the state of affairs in Norway when a king arose, +Harold Fair-Hair, who tried to bring all these proud people under +him, and to make them pay taxes and live more regularly and +quietly. They revolted at this, and when they were too weak +to defy the king they set sail and fled to Iceland. There +in the lonely north, between the snow and fire, the hot-water +springs, the volcano of Hecla, the great rivers full of salmon +that rush down such falls as Golden Foot, there they lived their +old-fashioned life, cruising as pirates and merchants, taking +foreign service at Mickle Garth, or in England or Egypt, filling +the world with the sound of their swords and the sky with the +smoke of their burnings. For they feared neither God nor +man nor ghost, and were no less cruel than brave; the best of +soldiers, laughing at death and torture, like the Zulus, who are +a kind of black Vikings of Africa. On some of them +“Bersark’s gang” would fall—that is, they +would become in a way mad, slaying all and sundry, biting their +shields, and possessed with a furious strength beyond that of +men, which left them as weak as children when it passed +away. These Bersarks were outlaws, all men’s enemies, +and to kill them was reckoned a great adventure, and a good +deed. The women were worthy of the men—bold, +quarrelsome, revengeful. Some were loyal, like Bergthora, +who foresaw how all her sons and her husband were to be burned; +but who would not leave them, and perished in the burning without +a cry. Some were as brave as Howard’s wife, who +enabled her husband, old and childless, to overthrow the wealthy +bully, the slayer of his only son. Some were treacherous, +as Halgerda the Fair. Three husbands she had, and was the +death of every man of them. Her last lord was Gunnar of +Lithend, the bravest and most peaceful of men. Once she did +a mean thing, and he slapped her face. She never forgave +him. At last enemies besieged him in his house. The +doors were locked—all was quiet within. One of the +enemies climbed up to a window slit, and Gunnar thrust him +through with his lance. “Is Gunnar at home?” +said the besiegers. “I know not—but his lance +is,” said the wounded man, and died with that last jest on +his lips. For long Gunnar kept them at bay with his arrows, +but at last one of them cut the arrow string. “Twist +me a string with thy hair,” he said to his wife, Halgerda, +whose yellow hair was very long and beautiful. “Is it +a matter of thy life or death?” she asked. +“Ay,” he said. “Then I remember that blow +thou gavest me, and I will see thy death.” So Gunnar +died, overcome by numbers, and they killed Samr, his hound, but +not before Samr had killed a man.</p> +<p>So they lived always with sword or axe in hand—so they +lived, and fought, and died.</p> +<p>Then Christianity was brought to them from Norway by +Thangbrand, and if any man said he did not believe a word of it, +Thangbrand had the schoolboy argument, “Will you +fight?” So they fought a duel on a <i>holm</i> or +island, that nobody might interfere—holm-gang they called +it—and Thangbrand usually killed his man. In Norway, +Saint Olaf did the like, killing and torturing those who held by +the old gods—Thor, Odin, and Freya, and the rest. So, +partly by force and partly because they were somewhat tired of +bloodshed, horsefights, and the rest, they received the word of +the white Christ and were baptised, and lived by written law, and +did not avenge themselves by their own hands.</p> +<p>They were Christians now, but they did not forget the old +times, the old feuds and fightings and Bersarks, and dealings +with ghosts, and with dead bodies that arose and wrought horrible +things, haunting houses and strangling men. The Icelandic +ghosts were able-bodied, well “materialised,” and +Grettir and Olaf Howard’s son fought them with strength of +arm and edge of steel. <i>True</i> stories of the ancient +days were told at the fireside in the endless winter nights by +story tellers or Scalds. It was thought a sin for any one +to alter these old stories, but as generations passed more and +more wonderful matters came into the legend. It was +believed that the dead Gunnar, the famed archer, sang within his +cairn or “Howe,” the mound wherein he was buried, and +his famous bill or cutting spear was said to have been made by +magic, and to sing in the night before the wounding of men and +the waking of war. People were thought to be +“second-sighted”—that is, to have prophetic +vision. The night when Njal’s house was burned his +wife saw all the meat on the table “one gore of +blood,” just as in Homer the prophet Theoclymenus beheld +blood falling in gouts from the walls, before the slaying of the +Wooers. The Valkyries, the Choosers of the slain, and the +Norns who wove the fates of men at a ghastly loom were seen by +living eyes. In the graves where treasures were hoarded the +Barrowwights dwelt, ghosts that were sentinels over the gold: +witchwives changed themselves into wolves and other monstrous +animals, and for many weeks the heroes Signy and Sinfjotli ran +wild in the guise of wolves.</p> +<p>These and many other marvels crept into the Sagas, and made +the listeners feel a shudder of cold beside the great fire that +burned in the centre of the skali or hall where the chief sat, +giving meat and drink to all who came, where the women span and +the Saga man told the tales of long ago. Finally, at the +end of the middle ages, these Sagas were written down in +Icelandic, and in Latin occasionally, and many of them have been +translated into English.</p> +<p>Unluckily, these translations have hitherto been expensive to +buy, and were not always to be had easily. For the wise +world, which reads newspapers all day and half the night, does +not care much for books, still less for good books, least of all +for old books. You can make no money out of reading Sagas: +they have nothing to say about stocks and shares, nor about Prime +Ministers and politics. Nor will they amuse a man, if +nothing amuses him but accounts of races and murders, or gossip +about Mrs. Nokes’s new novel, Mrs. Stokes’s new +dresses, or Lady Jones’s diamonds. The Sagas only +tell how brave men—of our own blood very +likely—lived, and loved, and fought, and voyaged, and died, +before there was much reading or writing, when they sailed +without steam, travelled without railways, and warred +hand-to-hand, not with hidden dynamite and sunk torpedoes. +But, for stories of gallant life and honest purpose, the Sagas +are among the best in the world.</p> +<p>Of Sagas in English one of the best is the +“Volsunga,” the story of the Niflungs and +Volsungs. This book, thanks to Mr. William Morris, can be +bought for a shilling. It is a strange tale in which gods +have their parts, the tale of that oldest Treasure Hunt, the Hunt +for the gold of the dwarf Andvari. This was guarded by the +serpent, Fafnir, who had once been a man, and who was killed by +the hero Sigurd. But Andvari had cursed the gold, because +his enemies robbed him of it to the very last ring, and had no +pity. Then the brave Sigurd was involved in the evil +luck. He it was who rode through the fire, and woke the +fair enchanted Brynhild, the Shield-maiden. And she loved +him, and he her, with all their hearts, always to the +death. But by ill fate she was married to another man, +Sigurd’s chief friend, and Sigurd to another woman. +And the women fell to jealousy and quarrelling as women will, and +they dragged the friends into the feud, and one manslaying after +another befell, till that great murder of men in the Hall of +Atli, the King. The curse came on one and all of +them—a curse of blood, and of evil loves, and of witchwork +destroying good and bad, all fearless, and all fallen in one red +ruin.</p> +<p>The “Volsunga Saga” has this unique and +unparalleled interest, that it gives the spectacle of the highest +epic genius, struggling out of savagery into complete and free +and conscious humanity. It is a mark of the savage +intellect not to discriminate abruptly between man and the lower +animals. In the tales of the lower peoples, the characters +are just as often beasts as men and women. Now, in the +earlier and wilder parts of the “Volsunga Saga,” +otters and dragons play human parts. Signy and his son, and +the mother of their enemy, put on the skins of wolves, become +wolves, and pass through hideous adventures. The story +reeks with blood, and ravins with lust of blood. But when +Sigurd arrives at full years of manhood, the barbarism yields +place, the Saga becomes human and conscious.</p> +<p>These legends deal little with love. But in the +“Volsunga Saga” the permanent interest is the true +and deathless love of Sigurd and Brynhild: their separation by +magic arts, the revival of their passion too late, the +man’s resigned and heroic acquiescence, the fiercer passion +of the woman, who will neither bear her fate nor accept her bliss +at the price of honour and her plighted word.</p> +<p>The situation, the <i>nodus</i>, is neither ancient merely nor +modern merely, but of all time. Sigurd, having at last +discovered the net in which he was trapped, was content to make +the best of marriage and of friendship. Brynhild was +not. “The hearts of women are the hearts of +wolves,” says the ancient Sanskrit commentary on the Rig +Veda. But the she-wolf’s heart broke, like a +woman’s, when she had caused Sigurd’s slaying. +Both man and woman face life, as they conceive it, with eyes +perfectly clear.</p> +<p>The magic and the supernatural wiles are accidental, the human +heart is essential and eternal. There is no scene like this +in the epics of Greece. This is a passion that Homer did +not dwell upon. In the Iliad and Odyssey the repentance of +Helen is facile; she takes life easily. Clytemnestra is not +brought on the stage to speak for herself. In this respect +the epic of the North, without the charm and the delightfulness +of the Southern epic, excels it; in this and in a certain bare +veracity, but in nothing else. We cannot put the Germanic +legend on the level of the Greek, for variety, for many-sided +wisdom, for changing beauty of a thousand colours. But in +this one passion of love the “Volsunga Saga” excels +the Iliad.</p> +<p>The Greek and the Northern stories are alike in one +thing. Fate is all-powerful over gods and men. Odin +cannot save Balder; nor Thetis, Achilles; nor Zeus, +Sarpedon. But in the Sagas fate is more constantly present +to the mind. Much is thought of being “lucky,” +or “unlucky.” Howard’s “good +luck” is to be read in his face by the wise, even when, to +the common gaze, he seems a half-paralytic dotard, dying of grief +and age.</p> +<p>Fate and evil luck dog the heroes of the Sagas. They +seldom “end well,” as people say,—unless, when +a brave man lies down to die on the bed he has strewn of the +bodies of his foes, you call <i>that</i> ending well. So +died Grettir the Strong. Even from a boy he was strong and +passionate, short of temper, quick of stroke, but loyal, brave, +and always unlucky. His worst luck began after he slew +Glam. This Glam was a wicked heathen herdsman, who would +not fast on Christmas Eve. So on the hills his dead body +was found, swollen as great as an ox, and as blue as death.</p> +<p>What killed him they did not know. But he haunted the +farmhouse, riding the roof, kicking the sides with his heels, +killing cattle and destroying all things. Then Grettir came +that way, and he slept in the hall. At night the dead Glam +came in, and Grettir arose, and to it they went, struggling and +dashing the furniture to bits. Glam even dragged Grettir to +the door, that he might slay him under the sky, and for all his +force Grettir yielded ground. Then on the very threshold he +suddenly gave way when Glam was pulling hardest, and they fell, +Glam undermost. Then Grettir drew the short sword, +“Kari’s loom,” that he had taken from a haunted +grave, and stabbed the dead thing that had lived again. +But, as Glam lay a-dying in the second death, the moon fell on +his awful eyes, and Grettir saw the horror of them, and from that +hour he could not endure to be in the dark, and he never dared to +go alone. This was his death, for he had an evil companion +who betrayed him to his enemies; but when they set on Grettir, +though he was tired and sick of a wound, many died with +him. No man died like Grettir the Strong, nor slew so many +in his death.</p> +<p>Besides those Sagas, there is the best of all, but the +longest, “Njala” (pronounced “Nyoula”), +the story of Burnt Njal. That is too long to sketch here, +but it tells how, through the hard hearts and jealousy of women, +ruin came at last on the gentle Gunnar, and the reckless +Skarphedin of the axe, “The Ogress of War,” and how +Njal, the wisest, the most peaceful, the most righteous of men, +was burned with all his house, and how that evil deed was avenged +on the Burners of Kari.</p> +<p>The site of Njal’s house is yet to be seen, after these +nine hundred years, and the little glen where Kari hid when he +leaped through the smoke and the flame that made his sword-blade +blue. Yes, the very black sand that Bergthora and her maids +threw on the fire lies there yet, and remnants of the whey they +cast on the flames, when water failed them. They were still +there beneath the earth when an English traveller dug up some of +the ground last year, and it is said that an American gentleman +found a gold ring in the house of Njal. The story of him +and of his brave sons, and of his slaves, and of his kindred, and +of Queens and Kings of Norway, and of the coming of the white +Christ, are all in the “Njala.” That and the +other Sagas would bear being shortened for general readers; once +they were all that the people had by way of books, and they liked +them long. But, shortened or not, they are brave books for +men, for the world is a place of battle still, and life is +war. These old heroes knew it, and did not shirk it, but +fought it out, and left honourable names and a glory that widens +year by year. For the story of Njal and Gunnar and +Skarphedin was told by Captain Speedy to the guards of Theodore, +King of Abyssinia. They liked it well; and with queer +altered names and changes of the tale, that Saga will be told in +Abyssinia, and thence carried all through Africa where white men +have never wandered. So wide, so long-enduring a renown +could be given by a nameless Sagaman.</p> +<h2>CHARLES KINGSLEY</h2> +<p>When I was very young, a distinguished <i>Review</i> was still +younger. I remember reading one of the earliest numbers, +being then myself a boy of ten, and coming on a review of a +novel. Never, as it seemed to me, or seems to my memory, +was a poor novel more heavily handled: and yet I felt that the +book must be a book to read on the very earliest +opportunity. It was “Westward Ho!” the most +famous, and perhaps the best novel, of Charles Kingsley. +Often one has read it since, and it is an example of those large, +rich, well-fed romances, at which you can cut and come again, as +it were, laying it down, and taking it up on occasion, with the +certainty of being excited, amused—and preached at.</p> +<p>Lately I have re-read “Westward Ho!” and some of +Kingsley’s other books, “Hypatia,” +“Hereward the Wake,” and the poems, over again. +The old pleasure in them is not gone indeed, but it is +modified. One must be a boy to think Kingsley a +humourist. At the age of twelve or ten you take the comic +passages which he conscientiously provides, without being vexed +or offended; you take them merely in the way of business. +Better things are coming: struggles with the Inquisition, storms +at sea, duels, the Armada, wanderings in the Lotus land of the +tropical west; and for the sake of all this a boy puts up +good-naturedly with Kingsley’s humour. Perhaps he +even grins over Amyas “burying alternately his face in the +pasty and the pasty in his face,” or he tries to feel +diverted by the Elizabethan waggeries of Frank. But there +is no fun in them—they are mechanical; they are worse than +the humours of Scott’s Sir Percy Shafto, which are not +fine.</p> +<p>The same sense of everything not being quite so excellent as +one remembered it haunts one in “Hereward the Wake, the +Last of the English.” Kingsley calls him “the +Last of the English,” but he is really the first of the +literary Vikings. In the essay on the Sagas here I have +tried to show, very imperfectly, what the Norsemen were actually +like. They caught Kingsley’s fancy, and his +“Hereward,” though born on English soil, is really +Norse—not English. But Kingsley did not write about +the Vikings, nor about his Elizabethan heroes in “Westward +Ho!” in a perfectly simple, straightforward way. He +was always thinking of our own times and referring to them. +That is why even the rather ruffianly Hereward is so great an +enemy of saints and monks. That is why, in +“Hypatia” (which opens so well), we have those +prodigiously dull, stupid, pedantic, and conceited reflections of +Raphael Ben Ezra. That is why, in all Kingsley’s +novels, he is perpetually exciting himself in defence of marriage +and the family life, as if any monkish ideas about the +blessedness of bachelorhood were ever likely to drive the great +Anglo-Saxon race into convents and monasteries. That is the +very last thing we have to be afraid of; but Kingsley was afraid +of it, and was eternally attacking everything Popish and +monkish.</p> +<p>Boys and young people, then, can read “Westward +Ho!” and “Hypatia,” and “Hereward the +Wake,” with far more pleasure than their elders. They +hurry on with the adventures, and do not stop to ask what the +moralisings mean. They forgive the humour of Kingsley +because it is well meant. They get, in short, the real good +of this really great and noble and manly and blundering +genius. They take pleasure in his love of strong men, +gallant fights, desperate encounters with human foes, with raging +seas, with pestilence, or in haunted forests. For in all +that is good of his talent—in his courage, his frank +speech, his love of sport, his clear eyes, his devotion to field +and wood, river, moor, sea, and storms—Kingsley is a +boy. He has the brave, rather hasty, and not over +well-informed enthusiasm of sixteen, for persons and for +causes. He saw an opponent (it might be Father Newman): his +heart lusted for a fight; he called his opponent names, he threw +his cap into the ring, he took his coat off, he fought, he got a +terrible scientific drubbing. It was like a sixth-form boy +matching himself against the champion. And then he bore no +malice. He took his defeat bravely. Nay, are we not +left with a confused feeling that he was not far in the wrong, +though he had so much the worse of the fight?</p> +<p>Such was Kingsley: a man with a boy’s heart; a hater of +cruelty and injustice, and also with a brave, indomitable belief +that his own country and his own cause were generally in the +right, whatever the quarrel. He loved England like a +mistress, and hated her enemies, Spain and the Pope, though even +in them he saw the good. He is for ever scolding the +Spanish for their cruelties to the Indians, but he defends our +doings to the Irish, which (at that time) were neither more nor +less oppressive than the Spanish performances in America. +“Go it, our side!” you always hear this good Kingsley +crying; and one’s heart goes out to him for it, in an age +when everybody often proves his own country to be in the +wrong.</p> +<p>Simple, brave, resolute, manly, a little given to +“robustiousness,” Kingsley transfigured all these +qualities by possessing the soul and the heart of a poet. +He was not a very great poet, indeed, but a true poet—one +of the very small band who are cut off, by a gulf that can never +be passed, from mere writers of verse, however clever, educated, +melodious, ingenious, amiable, and refined. He had the real +spark of fire, the true note; though the spark might seldom break +into flame, and the note was not always clear. Never let us +confuse true poets with writers of verse, still less with writers +of “poetic prose.” Kingsley wrote a great deal +of that-perhaps too much: his descriptions of scenes are not +always as good as in Hereward’s ride round the Fens, or +when the tall, Spanish galleon staggers from the revenge of man +to the vengeance of God, to her doom through the mist, to her +rest in the sea. Perhaps only a poet could have written +that prose; it is certain no writer of “poetic prose” +could have written Kingsley’s poems.</p> +<p>His songs are his best things; they really are songs, not +merely lyric poems. They have the merit of being truly +popular, whether they are romantic, like “The Sands +o’ Dee,” which actually reproduces the best qualities +of the old ballad; or whether they are pathetic, like the +“Doll’s Song,” in “Water Babies”; +or whether they attack an abuse, as in the song of “The +Merry Brown Hares”; or whether they soar higher, as in +“Deep, deep Love, within thine own abyss abiding”; or +whether they are mere noble nonsense, as in “Lorraine +Loree”:—</p> +<blockquote><p>“She mastered young Vindictive; oh, the +gallant lass was she,<br /> +And kept him straight and won the race, as near as near could +be;<br /> +But he killed her at the brook against a pollard willow tree;<br +/> +Oh, he killed her at the brook, the brute, for all the world to +see,<br /> +And no one but the baby cried for poor Lorraine Loree.”</p> +</blockquote> +<p>The truth about Charles Kingsley seems to be that he rather +made a brave and cheery noise in this night-battle of modern +life, than that he directed any movement of forces. He kept +cheering, as it were, and waving his sword with a contagious +enthusiasm. Being a poet, and a man both of heart and of +sentiment, he was equally attached to the best things of the old +world and to the best of the new world, as far as one can +forecast what it is to be. He loved the stately homes of +England, the ancient graduated order of society, the sports of +the past, the military triumphs, the patriotic glories. But +he was also on the side of the poor: as “Parson Lot” +he attempted to be a Christian Socialist.</p> +<p>Now, the Socialists are the people who want to take +everything; the Christians are the persons who do not want to +give more than they find convenient. Kingsley himself was +ready to give, and did give, his time, his labour, his health, +and probably his money, to the poor. But he was by no means +minded that they should swallow up the old England with church +and castle, manor-house and tower, wealth, beauty, learning, +refinement. The man who wrote “Alton Locke,” +the story of the starved tailor-poet, was the man who nearly wept +when he heard a fox bark, and reflected that the days of +fox-hunting were numbered. He had a poet’s politics, +Colonel Newcome’s politics. He was for England, for +the poor, for the rich, for the storied houses of the chivalrous +past, for the cottage, for the hall; and was dead against the +ideas of Manchester, and of Mr. John Bright. “My +father,” he says in a letter, “would have put his +hand to a spade or an axe with any man, and so could I pretty +well, too, when I was in my prime; and my eldest son is now +working with his own hands at farming, previous to emigrating to +South America, where he will do the drudgery of his own +cattle-pens and sheepfolds; and if I were twenty-four and +unmarried I would go out there too, and work like an Englishman, +and live by the sweat of my brow.”</p> +<p>This was the right side of his love of the Vikings; it was +thus <i>they</i> lived, when not at war—thus that every +gentleman who has youth and health should work, winning new +worlds for his class, in place of this miserable, over-crowded, +brawling England. This, I think, was, or should have been, +the real lesson and message of Kingsley for the generations to +come. Like Scott the scion of an old knightly line, he had +that drop of wild blood which drives men from town into the air +and the desert, wherever there are savage lands to conquer, +beasts to hunt, and a hardy life to be lived. But he was +the son of a clergyman, and a clergyman himself. The spirit +that should have gone into action went into talking, preaching, +writing—all sources of great pleasure to thousands of +people, and so not wasted. Yet these were not the natural +outlets of Kingsley’s life: he should have been a soldier, +or an explorer; at least, we may believe that he would have +preferred such fortune. He did his best, the best he knew, +and it is all on the side of manliness, courage, kindness. +Perhaps he tried too many things—science, history, fairy +tales, religious and political discussions, romance, +poetry. Poetry was what he did best, romance next; his +science and his history are entertaining, but without +authority.</p> +<p>This, when one reads it again, seems a cold, unfriendly +estimate of a man so ardent and so genuine, a writer so vivacious +and courageous as Kingsley. Even the elderly reviewer bears +to him, and to his brother Henry, a debt he owes to few of their +generation. The truth is we should <i>read</i> Kingsley; we +must not criticise him. We must accept him and be glad of +him, as we accept a windy, sunny autumn day—beautiful and +blusterous—to be enjoyed and struggled with. If once +we stop and reflect, and hesitate, he seems to preach too much, +and with a confidence which his knowledge of the world and of +history does not justify. To be at one with Kingsley we +must be boys again, and that momentary change cannot but be good +for us. Soon enough—too soon—we shall drop back +on manhood, and on all the difficulties and dragons that Kingsley +drove away by a blast on his chivalrous and cheery horn.</p> +<h2>CHARLES LEVER: HIS BOOKS, ADVENTURES AND MISFORTUNES</h2> +<p>Surely it is a pleasant thing that there are books, like other +enjoyments, for all ages. You would not have a boy prefer +whist to fives, nor tobacco to toffee, nor Tolstoï to +Charles Lever. The ancients reckoned Tyrtæcus a fine +poet, not that he was particularly melodious or reflective, but +that he gave men heart to fight for their country. Charles +Lever has done as much. In his biography, by Mr. +Fitzpatrick, it is told that a widow lady had but one son, and +for him she obtained an appointment at Woolwich. The boy +was timid and nervous, and she fancied that she must find for him +some other profession—perhaps that of literature. But +he one day chanced on Lever’s novels, and they put so much +heart into him that his character quite altered, and he became +the bravest of the brave.</p> +<p>Lever may not do as much for every one, but he does teach +contempt of danger, or rather, delight in it: a gay, spontaneous, +boyish kind of courage—Irish courage at its best. We +may get more good from that than harm from all his tales of much +punch and many drinking bouts. These are no longer in +fashion and are not very gay reading, perhaps, but his stories +and songs, his duels and battles and hunting scenes are as merry +and as good as ever. Wild as they seem in the reading, they +are not far from the truth, as may be gathered out of +“Barrington’s Memoirs,” and their tales of the +reckless Irish life some eighty years ago.</p> +<p>There were two men in Charles Lever—a glad man and a sad +man. The gaiety was for his youth, when he poured out his +“Lorrequers” and “O’Malleys,” all +the mirth and memories of his boyhood, all the tales of fighting +and feasting he gleaned from battered, seasoned old warriors, +like Major Monsoon. Even then, Mr. Thackeray, who knew him, +and liked and laughed at him, recognised through his merriment +“the fund of sadness beneath.” “The +author’s character is <i>not</i> humour, but sentiment . . +. extreme delicacy, sweetness and kindliness of heart. The +spirits are mostly artificial, the <i>fond</i> is sadness, as +appears to me to be that of most Irish writing and +people.” Even in “Charles +O’Malley,” what a true, dark picture that is of the +duel beside the broad, angry river on the level waste under the +wide grey sky! Charles has shot his opponent, Bodkin, and +with Considine, his second, is making his escape. +“Considine cried out suddenly, ‘Too infamous, by +Jove: we are murdered men!’”</p> +<p>“‘What do you mean?’ said I.</p> +<p>“‘Don’t you see that?’ said he, +pointing to something black which floated from a pole at the +opposite side of the river.</p> +<p>“‘Yes; what is it?’</p> +<p>“‘It’s his coat they’ve put upon an +oar, to show the people he’s killed—that’s +all. Every man here’s his tenant; and look there! +they’re not giving us much doubt as to their +intentions.’</p> +<p>“Here a tremendous yell burst forth from the mass of +people along the shore, which, rising to a terrific cry, sank +gradually down to a low wailing, then rose and fell several +times, as the Irish death-cry filled the air, and rose to heaven, +as if imploring vengeance on a murderer.”</p> +<p>Passages like this, and that which follows—the dangerous +voyage through the storm on the flooded Shannon, and through the +reefs—are what Mr. Thackeray may have had in his mind when +he spoke of Lever’s underlying melancholy. Like other +men with very high spirits, he had hours of gloom, and the +sadness and the thoughtfulness that were in him came forth then +and informed his later books. These are far more carefully +written, far more cunningly constructed, than the old chapters +written from month to month as the fit took him, with no more +plan or premeditation than “Pickwick.” But it +is the early stories that we remember, and that he lives +by—the pages thrown off at a heat, when he was a lively +doctor with few patients, and was not over-attentive to +them. These were the days of Harry Lorrequer and Tom Burke; +characters that ran away with him, and took their own path +through a merry world of diversion. Like the knights in Sir +Thomas Malory, these heroes “ride at adventure,” ride +amazing horses that dread no leap, be it an Irish stone wall on a +mountain crest, or be it the bayonets of a French square.</p> +<p>Mr. Lever’s biographer has not been wholly successful in +pleasing the critics, and he does not seem to affect very +critical airs himself, but he tells a straightforward tale. +The life of Charles Lever is the natural commentary on his +novels. He was born at Dublin in 1806, the son of a builder +or architect. At school he was very much flogged, and the +odds are that he deserved these attentions, for he had high +spirits beyond the patience of dominies. Handsome, merry +and clever, he read novels in school hours, wore a ring, and set +up as a dandy. Even then he was in love with the young lady +whom he married in the end. At a fight with boys of another +school, he and a friend placed a mine under the ground occupied +by the enemy, and blew them, more or less, into the air. +Many an eyebrow was singed off on that fatal day, when, for the +only time, this romancer of the wars “smelled +powder.” He afterwards pleaded for his party before +the worthy police magistrate, and showed great promise as a +barrister. At Trinity College, Dublin, he was full of his +fun, made ballads, sang them through the streets in disguise +(like Fergusson, the Scottish poet), and one night collected +thirty shillings in coppers.</p> +<p>The original of Frank Webber, in “Charles +O’Malley,” was a chum of his, and he took part in the +wonderful practical jokes which he has made immortal in that +novel.</p> +<p>From Trinity College, Dublin, Lever went to Göttingen, +where he found fun and fighting enough among the German +students. From that hour he became a citizen of the world, +or, at least, of Europe, and perhaps, like the prophets, was most +honoured when out of his own country. He returned to Dublin +and took his degree in medicine, after playing a famous practical +joke. A certain medical professor was wont to lecture in +bed. One night he left town unexpectedly. Lever, by +chance, came early to lecture, found the Professor absent, +slipped into his bed, put on his nightcap, and took the class +himself. On another day he was standing outside the +Foundling Hospital with a friend, a small man. Now, a kind +of stone cradle for foundlings was built outside the door, and, +when a baby was placed therein, a bell rang. Lever lifted +up his friend, popped him into the cradle, and had the joy of +seeing the promising infant picked out by the porter.</p> +<p>It seems a queer education for a man of letters; but, like Sir +Walter Scott when revelling in Liddesdale, he “was making +himself all the time.” He was collecting myriads of +odd experiences and treasures of anecdotes; he was learning to +know men of all sorts; and later, as a country doctor, he had +experiences of mess tables, of hunting, and of all the ways of +his remarkable countrymen. When cholera visited his +district he stuck to his work like a man of heart and +courage. But the usual tasks of a country doctor wearied +him; he neglected them, he became unpopular with the authorities, +he married his first love and returned to Brussels, where he +practised as a physician. He had already begun his first +notable book, “Harry Lorrequer,” in the <i>University +Magazine</i>. It is merely a string of Irish and other +stories, good, bad, and indifferent—a picture gallery full +of portraits of priests, soldiers, peasants and odd +characters. The plot is of no importance; we are not +interested in Harry’s love affairs, but in his scrapes, +adventures, duels at home and abroad. He fights people by +mistake whom he does not know by sight, he appears on parade with +his face blackened, he wins large piles at <i>trente et +quarante</i>, he disposes of coopers of claret and bowls of +punch, and the sheep on a thousand hills provide him with +devilled kidneys. The critics and the authors thought +little of the merry medley, but the public enjoyed it, and defied +the reviewers. One paper preferred the book to a wilderness +of “Pickwicks”; and as this opinion was advertised +everywhere by M’Glashan, the publisher, Mr. Dickens was +very much annoyed indeed. Authors are easily annoyed. +But Lever writes <i>ut placeat pueris</i>, and there was a +tremendous fight at Rugby between two boys, the “Slogger +Williams” and “Tom Brown” of the period, for +the possession of “Harry Lorrequer.” When an +author has the boys of England on his side, he can laugh at the +critics. Not that Lever laughed: he, too, was easily vexed, +and much depressed, when the reviews assailed him. Next he +began “Charles O’Malley”; and if any man reads +this essay who has not read the “Irish Dragoon,” let +him begin at once. “O’Malley” is what you +can recommend to a friend. Here is every species of +diversion: duels and steeplechases, practical jokes at college +(good practical jokes, not booby traps and apple-pie beds); here +is fighting in the Peninsula. If any student is in doubt, +let him try chapter xiv.—the battle on the Douro. +This is, indeed, excellent military writing, and need not fear +comparison as art with Napier’s famous history. Lever +has warmed to his work; his heart is in it; he had the best +information from an eye-witness; and the brief beginning, on the +peace of nature before the strife of men, is admirably +poetical.</p> +<p>To reach the French, under Soult, Wellesley had to cross the +deep and rapid Douro, in face of their fire, and without regular +transport. “He dared the deed. What must have +been his confidence in the men he commanded! what must have been +his reliance on his own genius!”</p> +<p>You hold your breath as you read, while English and Germans +charge, till at last the field is won, and the dust of the French +columns retreating in the distance blows down the road to +Spain.</p> +<p>The Great Duke read this passage, and marvelled how Lever knew +certain things that he tells. He learned this, and much +more, the humours of war, from the original of Major +Monsoon. Falstaff is alone in the literature of the world, +but if ever there came a later Falstaff, Monsoon was the +man. And where have you such an Irish Sancho Panza as Micky +Free, that independent minstrel, or such an Irish Di Vernon as +Baby Blake? The critics may praise Lever’s thoughtful +and careful later novels as they will, but “Charles +O’Malley” will always be the pattern of a military +romance. The anecdote of “a virtuous weakness” +in O’Shaughnessy’s father’s character would +alone make the fortune of many a story. The truth is, it is +not easy to lay down “Charles O’Malley,” to +leave off reading it, and get on with the account of Lever.</p> +<p>His excellent and delightful novel scarcely received one +favourable notice from the press. This may have been +because it was so popular; but Lever became so nervous that he +did not like to look at the papers. When he went back to +Dublin and edited a magazine there, he was more fiercely assailed +than ever. It is difficult for an Irishman to write about +the Irish, or for a Scot to write about the Scottish, without +hurting the feelings of his countrymen. While their +literary brethren are alive they are not very dear to the +newspaper scribes of these gallant nations; and thus Jeffrey was +more severe to Scott than he need have been, while the Irish +press, it appears, made an onslaught on Lever. Mr. +Thackeray met Lever in Dublin, and he mentions this unkind +behaviour. “Lorrequer’s military propensities +have been objected to strongly by his squeamish Hibernian +brethren . . . But is Lorrequer the only man in Ireland who is +fond of military spectacles? Why does the <i>Nation</i> +publish these edifying and Christian war songs? . . . And who is +it that prates about the Irish at Waterloo, and the Irish at +Fontenoy, and the Irish at Seringapatam, and the Irish at +Timbuctoo? If Mr. O’Connell, like a wise rhetorician, +chooses, and very properly, to flatter the national military +passion, why not Harry Lorrequer?”</p> +<p>Why not, indeed? But Mr. Lever was a successful Irishman +of letters, and a good many other Irish gentlemen of letters, +honest Doolan and his friends, were not successful. That is +the humour of it.</p> +<p>Though you, my youthful reader, if I have one, do not detest +Jones because he is in the Eleven, nor Brown because he has +“got his cap,” nor Smith because he does Greek +Iambics like Sophocles; though you rather admire and applaud +these champions, you may feel very differently when you come to +thirty years or more, and see other men doing what you cannot do, +and gaining prizes beyond your grasp. And then, if you are +a reviewer, you “will find fault with a book for what it +does not give,” as thus, to take Mr. Thackeray’s +example:—</p> +<p>“Lady Smigsmag’s novel is amusing, but lamentably +deficient in geological information.” “Mr. +Lever’s novels are trashy and worthless, for his facts are +not borne out by any authority, and he gives us no information +about the political state of Ireland. ‘Oh! our +country, our green and beloved, our beautiful and +oppressed?’” and so forth.</p> +<p>It was not altogether a happy time that Lever passed at +home. Not only did his native critics belabour him most +ungrudgingly for “Tom Burke,” that vivid and +chivalrous romance, but he made enemies of authors. He +edited a magazine! Is not that enough? He wearied of +wading through waggon-loads of that pure unmitigated rubbish +which people are permitted to “shoot” at editorial +doors. How much dust there is in it to how few +pearls! He did not return MSS. punctually and +politely. The office cat could edit the volunteered +contributions of many a magazine, but Lever was even more casual +and careless than an experienced office cat. He grew +crabbed, and tried to quarrel with Mr. Thackeray for that +delightful parody “Phil Fogarty,” nearly as good as a +genuine story by Lever.</p> +<p>Beset by critics, burlesqued by his friend, he changed his +style (Mr. Fitzpatrick tells us) and became more sober—and +not so entertaining. He actually published a criticism of +Beyle, of Stendhal, that psychological prig, the darling of +culture and of M. Paul Bourget. Harry Lorrequer on +Stendhal!—it beggars belief. He nearly fought a duel +with the gentleman who is said to have suggested Mr. Pecksniff to +Dickens! Yet they call his early novels improbable. +Nothing could be less plausible than a combat between Harry +Lorrequer and a gentleman who, even remotely, resembled the +father of Cherry and Merry.</p> +<p>Lever went abroad again, and in Florence or the Baths of +Lucca, in Trieste or Spezia, he passed the rest of his +life. He saw the Italian revolution of 1848, and it added +to his melancholy. This is plain from one of his novels +with a curious history—“Con Cregan.” He +wrote it at the same time as “The Daltons,” and he +did not sign it. The reviewers praised “Con +Cregan” at the expense of the signed work, rejoicing that +Lever, as “The Daltons” proved, was exhausted, and +that a new Irish author, the author of “Con Cregan,” +was coming to eclipse him. In short, he eclipsed himself, +and he did not like it. His right hand was jealous of what +his left hand did. It seems odd that any human being, +however dull and envious, failed to detect Lever in the rapid and +vivacious adventures of his Irish “Gil Blas,” hero of +one of the very best among his books, a piece not unworthy of +Dumas. “Con” was written after midnight, +“The Daltons” in the morning; and there can be no +doubt which set of hours was more favourable to Lever’s +genius. Of course he liked “The Daltons” best; +of all people, authors appear to be their own worst critics.</p> +<p>It is not possible even to catalogue Lever’s later books +here. Again he drove a pair of novels +abreast—“The Dodds” and “Sir Jasper +Carew”—which contain some of his most powerful +situations. When almost an old man, sad, outworn in body, +straitened in circumstances, he still produced excellent tales in +this later manner—“Lord Kilgobbin,” “That +Boy of Norcott’s,” “A Day’s Ride,” +and many more. These are the thoughts of a tired man of the +world, who has done and seen everything that such men see and +do. He says that he grew fat, and bald, and grave; he wrote +for the grave and the bald, not for the happier world which is +young, and curly, and merry. He died at last, it is said, +in his sleep; and it is added that he did what Harry Lorrequer +would not have done—he left his affairs in perfect +order.</p> +<p>Lever lived in an age so full of great novelists that, +perhaps, he is not prized as he should be. Dickens, Bulwer, +Thackeray, Trollope, George Eliot, were his contemporaries. +But when we turn back and read him once more, we see that Lever, +too, was a worthy member of that famous company—a romancer +for boys and men.</p> +<h2>THE POEMS OF SIR WALTER SCOTT</h2> +<p>Yesterday, as the sun was very bright, and there was no wind, +I took a fishing-rod on chance and Scott’s poems, and rowed +into the middle of St. Mary’s Loch. Every hill, every +tuft of heather was reflected in the lake, as in a silver +mirror. There was no sound but the lapping of the water +against the boat, the cry of the blackcock from the hill, and the +pleasant plash of a trout rising here and there. So I read +“The Lay of the Last Minstrel” over again, here, in +the middle of the scenes where the story is laid and where the +fights were fought. For when the Baron went on +pilgrimage,</p> +<blockquote><p>“And took with him this elvish page<br /> +To Mary’s Chapel of the Lowes,”</p> +</blockquote> +<p>it was to the ruined chapel <i>here</i> that he came,</p> +<blockquote><p>“For there, beside our Ladye’s +lake,<br /> +An offering he had sworn to make,<br /> + And he would pay his vows.”</p> +</blockquote> +<p>But his enemy, the Lady of Branksome, gathered a band,</p> +<blockquote><p>“Of the best that would ride at her +command,”</p> +</blockquote> +<p>and they all came from the country round. Branksome, +where the lady lived, is twenty miles off, towards the south, +across the ranges of lonely green hills. Harden, where her +ally, Wat of Harden, abode, is within twelve miles; and +Deloraine, where William dwelt, is nearer still; and John of +Thirlestane had his square tower in the heather, “where +victual never grew,” on Ettrick Water, within ten +miles. These gentlemen, and their kinsfolk and retainers, +being at feud with the Kers, tried to slay the Baron, in the +Chapel of “Lone St. Mary of the Waves.”</p> +<blockquote><p>“They were three hundred spears and +three.<br /> +Through Douglas burn, up Yarrow stream,<br /> +Their horses prance, their lances gleam.<br /> +They came to St. Mary’s Lake ere day;<br /> +But the chapel was void, and the Baron away.<br /> +They burned the chapel for very rage,<br /> +And cursed Lord Cranstoun’s goblin-page.”</p> +</blockquote> +<p>The Scotts were a rough clan enough to burn a holy chapel +because they failed to kill their enemy within the sacred +walls. But, as I read again, for the twentieth time, Sir +Walter’s poem, floating on the lonely breast of the lake, +in the heart of the hills where Yarrow flows, among the little +green mounds that cover the ruins of chapel and castle and +lady’s bower, I asked myself whether Sir Walter was indeed +a great and delightful poet, or whether he pleases me so much +because I was born in his own country, and have one drop of the +blood of his Border robbers in my own veins?</p> +<p>It is not always pleasant to go back to places, or to meet +people, whom we have loved well, long ago. If they have +changed little, we have changed much. The little boy, whose +first book of poetry was “The Lady of the Lake,” and +who naturally believed that there was no poet like Sir Walter, is +sadly changed into the man who has read most of the world’s +poets, and who hears, on many sides, that Scott is outworn and +doomed to deserved oblivion. Are they right or wrong, the +critics who tell us, occasionally, that Scott’s good novels +make up for his bad verse, or that verse and prose, all must +go? <i>Pro captu lectoris</i>, by the reader’s taste, +they stand or fall; yet even pessimism can scarcely believe that +the Waverley Novels are mortal. They were once the joy of +every class of minds; they cannot cease to be the joy of those +who cling to the permanently good, and can understand and forgive +lapses, carelessnesses, and the leisurely literary fashion of a +former age. But, as to the poems, many give them up who +cling to the novels. It does not follow that the poems are +bad. In the first place, they are of two kinds—lyric +and narrative. Now, the fashion of narrative in poetry has +passed away for the present. The true Greek epics are read +by a few in Greek; by perhaps fewer still in translations. +But so determined are we not to read tales in verse, that prose +renderings, even of the epics, nay, even of the Attic dramas, +have come more or less into vogue. This accounts for the +comparative neglect of Sir Walter’s lays. They are +spoken of as Waverley Novels spoiled. This must always be +the opinion of readers who will not submit to stories in verse; +it by no means follows that the verse is bad. If we make an +exception, which we must, in favour of Chaucer, where is there +better verse in story telling in the whole of English +literature? The readers who despise “Marmion,” +or “The Lady of the Lake,” do so because they dislike +stories told in poetry. From poetry they expect other +things, especially a lingering charm and magic of style, a +reflective turn, “criticism of life.” These +things, except so far as life can be criticised in action, are +alien to the Muse of narrative. Stories and pictures are +all she offers: Scott’s pictures, certainly, are fresh +enough, his tales are excellent enough, his manner is +sufficiently direct. To take examples: every one who wants +to read Scott’s poetry should begin with the +“Lay.” From opening to close it never +falters:—</p> +<blockquote><p>“Nine and twenty knights of fame<br /> +Hung their shields in Branksome Hall;<br /> +Nine and twenty squires of name<br /> +Brought their steeds to bower from stall,<br /> +Nine and twenty yeomen tall<br /> +Waited, duteous, on them all . . .<br /> +Ten of them were sheathed in steel,<br /> +With belted sword, and spur on heel;<br /> +They quitted not their harness bright<br /> +Neither by day nor yet by night:<br /> + They lay down to rest<br /> + With corslet laced,<br /> +Pillowed on buckler cold and hard;<br /> + They carved at the meal<br /> + With gloves of steel,<br /> +And they drank the red wine through the helmet barred.”</p> +</blockquote> +<p>Now, is not that a brave beginning? Does not the verse +clank and chime like sword sheath on spur, like the bits of +champing horses? Then, when William of Deloraine is sent on +his lonely midnight ride across the haunted moors and wolds, does +the verse not gallop like the heavy armoured horse?</p> +<blockquote><p>“Unchallenged, thence passed Deloraine,<br +/> +To ancient Riddell’s fair domain,<br /> +Where Aill, from mountains freed,<br /> +Down from the lakes did raving come;<br /> +Each wave was crested with tawny foam,<br /> +Like the mane of a chestnut steed,<br /> +In vain! no torrent, deep or broad,<br /> +Might bar the bold moss-trooper’s road;<br /> +At the first plunge the horse sunk low,<br /> +And the water broke o’er the saddle-bow.”</p> +</blockquote> +<p>These last two lines have the very movement and note, the deep +heavy plunge, the still swirl of the water. Well I know the +lochs whence Aill comes red in flood; many a trout have I taken +in Aill, long ago. This, of course, causes a favourable +prejudice, a personal bias towards admiration. But I think +the poetry itself is good, and stirs the spirit, even of those +who know not Ailmoor, the mother of Aill, that lies dark among +the melancholy hills.</p> +<p>The spirit is stirred throughout by the chivalry and the +courage of Scott’s men and of his women. Thus the +Lady of Branksome addresses the English invaders who have taken +her boy prisoner:—</p> +<blockquote><p>“For the young heir of Branksome’s +line,<br /> +God be his aid, and God be mine;<br /> +Through me no friend shall meet his doom;<br /> +Here, while I live, no foe finds room.<br /> +Then if thy Lords their purpose urge,<br /> +Take our defiance loud and high;<br /> +Our slogan is their lyke-wake dirge,<br /> +Our moat, the grave where they shall lie.”</p> +</blockquote> +<p>Ay, and though the minstrel says he is no love poet, and +though, indeed, he shines more in war than in lady’s bower, +is not this a noble stanza on true love, and worthy of what old +Malory writes in his “Mort d’Arthur”? +Because here Scott speaks for himself, and of his own unhappy and +immortal affection:—</p> +<blockquote><p>“True love’s the gift which God has +given<br /> +To man alone beneath the Heaven.<br /> +It is not Fantasy’s hot fire,<br /> +Whose wishes, soon as granted, fly;<br /> +<i>It liveth not in fierce desire</i>,<br /> +<i>With dead desire it dock not die</i>:<br /> +It is the secret sympathy,<br /> +The silver link, the silken tie,<br /> +Which heart to heart and mind to mind,<br /> +In body and in soul can bind.”</p> +</blockquote> +<p>Truth and faith, courage and chivalry, a free life in the +hills and by the streams, a shrewd brain, an open heart, a kind +word for friend or foeman, these are what you learn from the +“Lay,” if you want to learn lessons from +poetry. It is a rude legend, perhaps, as the critics said +at once, when critics were disdainful of wizard priests and +ladies magical. But it is a deathless legend, I hope; it +appeals to every young heart that is not early spoiled by low +cunning, and cynicism, and love of gain. The +minstrel’s own prophecy is true, and still, and always,</p> +<blockquote><p>“Yarrow, as he rolls along,<br /> +Bears burden to the minstrel’s song.”</p> +</blockquote> +<p>After the “Lay” came “Marmion, a Tale of +Flodden Field.” It is far more ambitious and +complicated than the “Lay,” and is not much worse +written. Sir Walter was ever a rapid and careless poet, and +as he took more pains with his plot, he took less with his +verse. His friends reproved him, but he answered to one of +them—</p> +<blockquote><p>“Since oft thy judgment could refine<br /> +My flattened thought and cumbrous line,<br /> +Still kind, as is thy wont, attend,<br /> +And in the minstrel spare the friend:<br /> +<i>Though wild as cloud</i>, <i>as stream</i>, <i>as gale</i>,<br +/> +<i>Flow forth</i>, <i>flow unrestrained</i>, <i>my +tale</i>!”</p> +</blockquote> +<p>Any one who knows Scott’s country knows how cloud and +stream and gale all sweep at once down the valley of Ettrick or +of Tweed. West wind, wild cloud, red river, they pour forth +as by one impulse—forth from the far-off hills. He +let his verse sweep out in the same stormy sort, and many a +“cumbrous line,” many a “flattened +thought,” you may note, if you will, in +“Marmion.” For example—</p> +<blockquote><p>“And think what he must next have felt,<br +/> +At buckling of the falchion belt.”</p> +</blockquote> +<p>The “Lay” is a tale that only verse could tell; +much of “Marmion” might have been told in prose, and +most of “Rokeby.” But prose could never give +the picture of Edinburgh, nor tell the tale of Flodden Fight in +“Marmion,” which I verily believe is the best +battle-piece in all the poetry of all time, better even than the +stand of Aias by the ships in the Iliad, better than the slaying +of the Wooers in the Odyssey. Nor could prose give us the +hunting of the deer and the long gallop over hillside and down +valley, with which the “Lady of the Lake” begins, +opening thereby the enchanted gates of the Highlands to the +world. “The Lady of the Lake,” except in the +battle-piece, is told in a less rapid metre than that of the +“Lay,” less varied than that of +“Marmion.” “Rokeby” lives only by +its songs; the “Lord of the Isles” by Bannockburn, +the “Field of Waterloo” by the repulse of the +Cuirassiers. But all the poems are interspersed with songs +and ballads, as the beautiful ballad of “Alice +Brand”; and Scott’s fame rests on <i>these</i> far +more than on his later versified romances. Coming +immediately after the very tamest poets who ever lived, like +Hayley, Scott wrote songs and ballads as wild and free, as +melancholy or gay, as ever shepherd sang, or gipsy carolled, or +witch-wife moaned, or old forgotten minstrel left to the world, +music with no maker’s name. For example, take the +Outlaw’s rhyme—</p> +<blockquote><p>“With burnished brand and musketoon,<br /> + So gallantly you come,<br /> +I read you for a bold dragoon<br /> + That lists the tuck of drum.<br /> +I list no more the tuck of drum,<br /> + No more the trumpet hear;<br /> +But when the beetle sounds his hum,<br /> + My comrades take the spear.<br /> +And, oh, though Brignal banks be fair,<br /> + And Greta woods be gay,<br /> +Yet mickle must the maiden dare,<br /> + Would reign my Queen of May!”</p> +</blockquote> +<p>How musical, again, is this!—</p> +<blockquote><p>“This morn is merry June, I trow,<br /> + The rose is budding fain;<br /> +But she shall bloom in winter snow,<br /> + Ere we two meet again.<br /> +He turned his charger as he spake,<br /> + Upon the river shore,<br /> +He gave his bridle-reins a shake,<br /> + Said, ‘Adieu for evermore,<br /> + + +My love!<br /> + Adieu for evermore!’”</p> +</blockquote> +<p>Turning from the legends in verse, let it not be forgotten +that Scott was a great lyrical poet. Mr. Palgrave is not +too lenient a judge, and his “Golden Treasury” is a +touchstone, as well as a treasure, of poetic gold. In this +volume Wordsworth contributes more lyrics than any other poet: +Shelley and Shakespeare come next; then Sir Walter. For my +part I would gladly sacrifice a few of Wordsworth’s for a +few more of Scott’s. But this may be prejudice. +Mr. Palgrave is not prejudiced, and we see how high is his value +for Sir Walter.</p> +<p>There are scores of songs in his works, touching and sad, or +gay as a hunter’s waking, that tell of lovely things lost +by tradition, and found by him on the moors: all these—not +prized by Sir Walter himself—are in his gift, and in that +of no other man. For example, his “Eve of St. +John” is simply a masterpiece, a ballad among +ballads. Nothing but an old song moves us like—</p> +<blockquote><p>“Are these the links o’ Forth, she +said,<br /> +Are these the bends o’ Dee!”</p> +</blockquote> +<p>He might have done more of the best, had he very greatly +cared. Alone among poets, he had neither vanity nor +jealousy; he thought little of his own verse and his own fame: +would that he had thought more! would that he had been more +careful of what was so precious! But he turned to prose; +bade poetry farewell.</p> +<blockquote><p>“Yet, once again, farewell, thou Minstrel +Harp,<br /> +Yet, once again, forgive my feeble sway.<br /> +<i>And little reck I of the censure sharp<br /> +May idly cavil at an idle lay</i>.”</p> +</blockquote> +<p>People still cavil idly, complaining that Scott did not +finish, or did not polish his pieces; that he was not Keats, or +was not Wordsworth. He was himself; he was the Last +Minstrel, the latest, the greatest, the noblest of natural poets +concerned with natural things. He sang of free, fierce, and +warlike life, of streams yet rich in salmon, and moors not yet +occupied by brewers; of lonely places haunted in the long grey +twilights of the North; of crumbling towers where once dwelt the +Lady of Branksome or the Flower of Yarrow. Nature summed up +in him many a past age a world of ancient faiths; and before the +great time of Britain wholly died, to Britain, as to Greece, she +gave her Homer. When he was old, and tired, and near his +death—so worn with trouble and labour that he actually +signed his own name wrong—he wrote his latest verse, for a +lady. It ends—</p> +<blockquote><p>“My country, be thou glorious +still!”</p> +</blockquote> +<p>and so he died, within the sound of the whisper of Tweed, +foreseeing the years when his country would no more be glorious, +thinking of his country only, forgetting quite the private sorrow +of his own later days.</p> +<p>People will tell you that Scott was not a great poet; that his +bolt is shot, his fame perishing. Little he cared for his +fame! But for my part I think and hope that Scott can never +die, till men grow up into manhood without ever having been +boys—till they forget that</p> +<blockquote><p>“One glorious hour of crowded life<br /> +Is worth an age without a name!”</p> +</blockquote> +<p>Thus, the charges against Sir Walter’s poetry are, on +the whole, little more than the old critical fallacy of blaming a +thing for not being something else. “It takes all +sorts to make a world,” in poetry as in life. Sir +Walter’s sort is a very good sort, and in English +literature its place was empty, and waiting for him. Think +of what he did. English poetry had long been very tame and +commonplace, written in couplets like Pope’s, very +artificial and smart, or sensible and slow. He came with +poems of which the music seemed to gallop, like thundering hoofs +and ringing bridles of a rushing border troop. Here were +goblin, ghost, and fairy, fight and foray, fair ladies and true +lovers, gallant knights and hard blows, blazing beacons on every +hill crest and on the bartisan of every tower. Here was a +world made alive again that had been dead for three hundred +years—a world of men and women.</p> +<p>They say that the archæology is not good. +Archæology is a science; in its application to poetry, +Scott was its discoverer. Others can name the plates of a +coat of armour more learnedly than he, but he made men wear +them. They call his Gothic art false, his armour +pasteboard; but he put living men under his castled roofs, living +men into his breastplates and taslets. Science advances, +old knowledge becomes ignorance; it is poetry that does not die, +and that will not die, while—</p> +<blockquote><p>“The triple pride<br /> +Of Eildon looks over Strathclyde.”</p> +</blockquote> +<h2>JOHN BUNYAN</h2> +<p>Dr. Johnson once took Bishop Percy’s little daughter on +his knee, and asked her what she thought of the +“Pilgrim’s Progress.” The child answered +that she had not read it. “No?” replied the +Doctor; “then I would not give one farthing for you,” +and he set her down and took no further notice of her.</p> +<p>This story, if true, proves that the Doctor was rather +intolerant. We must not excommunicate people because they +have not our taste in books. The majority of people do not +care for books at all.</p> +<p>There is a descendant of John Bunyan’s alive now, or +there was lately, who never read the “Pilgrim’s +Progress.” Books are not in his line. Nay, +Bunyan himself, who wrote sixty works, was no great reader. +An Oxford scholar who visited him in his study found no books at +all, except some of Bunyan’s own and Foxe’s +“Book of Martyrs.”</p> +<p>Yet, little as the world in general cares for reading, it has +read Bunyan more than most. One hundred thousand copies of +the “Pilgrim” are believed to have been sold in his +own day, and the story has been done into the most savage +languages, as well as into those of the civilised world.</p> +<p>Dr. Johnson, who did not like Dissenters, praises the +“invention, imagination, and conduct of the story,” +and knew no other book he wished longer except “Robinson +Crusoe” and “Don Quixote.” Well, Dr. +Johnson would not have given a farthing for <i>me</i>, as I am +quite contented with the present length of these +masterpieces. What books do <i>you</i> wish longer? I +wish Homer had written a continuation of the Odyssey, and told us +what Odysseus did among the far-off men who never tasted salt nor +heard of the sea. A land epic after the sea epic, how good +it would have been—from Homer! But it would have +taxed the imagination of Dante to continue the adventures of +Christian and his wife after they had once crossed the river and +reached the city.</p> +<p>John Bunyan has been more fortunate than most authors in one +of his biographies.</p> +<p>His life has been written by the Rev. Dr. Brown, who is now +minister of his old congregation at Bedford; and an excellent +life it is. Dr. Brown is neither Roundhead nor Cavalier; +for though he is, of course, on Bunyan’s side, he does not +throw stones at the beautiful Church of England.</p> +<p>Probably most of us are on Bunyan’s side now. It +might be a good thing that we should all dwell together in +religious unity, but history shows that people cannot be bribed +into brotherhood. They tried to bully Bunyan; they arrested +and imprisoned him—unfairly even in law, according to Dr. +Brown, not unfairly, Mr. Froude thinks—and he would not be +bullied.</p> +<p>What was much more extraordinary, he would not be +embittered. In spite of all, he still called Charles II. +“a gracious Prince.” When a subject is in +conscience at variance with the law, Bunyan said, he has but one +course—to accept peaceably the punishment which the law +awards. He was never soured, never angered by twelve years +of durance, not exactly in a loathsome dungeon, but in very +uncomfortable quarters. When there came a brief interval of +toleration, he did not occupy himself in brawling, but in +preaching, and looking after the manners and morals of the little +“church,” including one woman who brought +disagreeable charges against “Brother +Honeylove.” The church decided that there was nothing +in the charges, but somehow the name of Brother Honeylove does +not inspire confidence.</p> +<p>Almost everybody knows the main facts of Bunyan’s +life. They may not know that he was of Norman descent (as +Dr. Brown seems to succeed in proving), nor that the Bunyans came +over with the Conqueror, nor that he was a gipsy, as others +hold. On Dr. Brown’s showing, Bunyan’s +ancestors lost their lands in process of time and change, and +Bunyan’s father was a tinker. He preferred to call +himself a brazier—his was the rather unexpected trade to +which Mr. Dick proposed apprenticing David Copperfield.</p> +<p>Bunyan himself, “the wondrous babe,” as Dr. Brown +enthusiastically styles him, was christened on November 30th, +1628. He was born in a cottage, long fallen, and hard by +was a marshy place, “a veritable slough of +despond.” Bunyan may have had it in mind when he +wrote of the slough where Christian had so much trouble. He +was not a travelled man: all his knowledge of people and places +he found at his doors. He had some schooling, +“according to the rate of other poor men’s +children,” and assuredly it was enough.</p> +<p>The great civil war broke out, and Bunyan was a soldier; he +tells us not on which side. Dr. Brown and Mr. Lewis Morris +think he was on that of the Parliament, but his old father, the +tinker, stood for the King. Mr. Froude is rather more +inclined to hold that he was among the “gay gallants who +struck for the crown.” He does not seem to have been +much under fire, but he got that knowledge of the appearance of +war which he used in his siege of the City of Mansoul. One +can hardly think that Bunyan liked war—certainly not from +cowardice, but from goodness of heart.</p> +<p>In 1646 the army was disbanded, and Bunyan went back to Elstow +village and his tinkering, his bell-ringing, his dancing with the +girls, his playing at “cat” on a Sunday after +service.</p> +<p>He married very young and poor. He married a pious wife, +and read all her library—“The Plain Man’s +Pathway to Heaven,” and “The Practice of +Piety.” He became very devout in the spirit of the +Church of England, and he gave up his amusements. Then he +fell into the Slough of Despond, then he went through the Valley +of the Shadow, and battled with Apollyon.</p> +<p>People have wondered <i>why</i> he fancied himself such a +sinner? He confesses to having been a liar and a +blasphemer. If I may guess, I fancy that this was merely +the literary genius of Bunyan seeking for expression. His +lies, I would go bail, were tremendous romances, wild fictions +told for fun, never lies of cowardice or for gain. As to +his blasphemies, he had an extraordinary power of language, and +that was how he gave it play. “Fancy swearing” +was his only literary safety-valve, in those early days, when he +played cat on Elstow Green.</p> +<p>Then he heard a voice dart from heaven into his soul, which +said, “Wilt thou leave thy sins and go to heaven, or have +thy sins and go to hell?” So he fell on repentance, +and passed those awful years of mental torture, when all nature +seemed to tempt him to the Unknown Sin.</p> +<p>What did all this mean? It meant that Bunyan was within +an ace of madness.</p> +<p>It happens to a certain proportion of men, religiously brought +up, to suffer like Bunyan. They hear voices, they are +afraid of that awful unknown iniquity, and of eternal death, as +Bunyan and Cowper were afraid.</p> +<p>Was it not De Quincey who was at school with a bully who +believed he had been guilty of the unpardonable offence? +Bullying is an offence much less pardonable than most men are +guilty of. Their best plan (in Bunyan’s misery) is to +tell Apollyon that the Devil is an ass, to do their work and +speak the truth.</p> +<p>Bunyan got quit of his terror at last, briefly by believing in +the goodness of God. He did not say, like Mr. Carlyle, +“Well, if all my fears are true, what then?” +His was a Christian, not a stoical deliverance.</p> +<p>The “church” in which Bunyan found shelter had for +minister a converted major in a Royalist regiment. It was a +quaint little community, the members living like the early +disciples, correcting each other’s faults, and keeping a +severe eye on each other’s lives. Bunyan became a +minister in it; but, Puritan as he was, he lets his Pilgrims +dance on joyful occasions, and even Mr. Ready-to-Halt waltzes +with a young lady of the Pilgrim company.</p> +<p>As a minister and teacher Bunyan began to write books of +controversy with Quakers and clergymen. The points debated +are no longer important to us; the main thing was that he got a +pen into his hand, and found a proper outlet for his genius, a +better way than fancy swearing.</p> +<p>If he had not been cast into Bedford jail for preaching in a +cottage, he might never have dreamed his immortal dream, nor +become all that he was. The leisures of gaol were +long. In that “den” the Muse came to him, the +fair kind Muse of the Home Beautiful. He saw all that +company of his, so like and so unlike Chaucer’s: Faithful, +and Hopeful, and Christian, the fellowship of fiends, the +truculent Cavaliers of Vanity Fair, and Giant Despair, with his +grievous crabtree cudgel; and other people he saw who are with us +always,—the handsome Madam Bubble, and the young woman +whose name was Dull, and Mr. Worldly Wiseman, and Mr. Facing +Bothways, and Byends, all the persons of the comedy of human +life.</p> +<p>He hears the angelic songs of the City beyond the river; he +hears them, but repeat them to us he cannot, “for I’m +no poet,” as he says himself. He beheld the country +of Beulah, and the Delectable Mountains, that earthly Paradise of +nature where we might be happy yet, and wander no farther, if the +world would let us—fair mountains in whose streams Izaak +Walton was then even casting angle.</p> +<p>It is pleasant to fancy how Walton and Bunyan might have met +and talked, under a plane tree by the Ouse, while the May showers +were falling. Surely Bunyan would not have likened the good +old man to Formalist; and certainly Walton would have enjoyed +travelling with Christian, though the book was by none of his +dear bishops, but by a Non-conformist. They were made to +like but not to convert each other; in matters ecclesiastical +they saw the opposite sides of the shield. Each wrote a +masterpiece. It is too late to praise “The Complete +Angler” or the “Pilgrim’s +Progress.” You may put ingenuity on the rack, but she +can say nothing new that is true about the best romance that ever +was wedded to allegory, nor about the best idyl of old English +life.</p> +<p>The people are living now—all the people: the noisy +bullying judges, as of the French Revolutionary Courts, or the +Hanging Courts after Monmouth’s war; the demure, grave +Puritan girls; and Matthew, who had the gripes; and lazy, +feckless Ignorance, who came to so ill an end, poor fellow; and +sturdy Old Honest, and timid Mr. Fearing; not single persons, but +dozens, arise on the memory.</p> +<p>They come, as fresh, as vivid, as if they were out of Scott or +Molière; the Tinker is as great a master of character and +fiction as the greatest, almost; his style is pure, and plain, +and sound, full of old idioms, and even of something like old +slang. But even his slang is classical.</p> +<p>Bunyan is everybody’s author. The very Catholics +have their own edition of the Pilgrim: they have cut out Giant +Pope, but have been too good-natured to insert Giant Protestant +in his place. Unheralded, unannounced, though not +uncriticised (they accused the Tinker of being a plagiarist, of +course), Bunyan outshone the Court wits, the learned, the poets +of the Restoration, and even the great theologians.</p> +<p>His other books, except “Grace Abounding” (an +autobiography), “The Holy War,” and “Mr. +Badman,” are only known to students, nor much read by +them. The fashion of his theology, as of all theology, +passed away; it is by virtue of his imagination, of his romance, +that he lives.</p> +<p>The allegory, of course, is full of flaws. It would not +have been manly of Christian to run off and save his own soul, +leaving his wife and family. But Bunyan shrank from showing +us how difficult, if not impossible, it is for a married man to +be a saint. Christiana was really with him all through that +pilgrimage; and how he must have been hampered by that woman of +the world! But had the allegory clung more closely to the +skirts of truth, it would have changed from a romance to a +satire, from “The Pilgrim’s Progress” to +“Vanity Fair.” There was too much love in +Bunyan for a satirist of that kind; he had just enough for a +humourist.</p> +<p>Born in another class, he might have been, he would have been, +a writer more refined in his strength, more uniformly excellent, +but never so universal nor so popular in the best sense of the +term.</p> +<p>In the change of times and belief it is not impossible that +Bunyan will live among the class whom he least thought of +addressing—scholars, lovers of worldly literature—for +devotion and poverty are parting company, while art endures till +civilisation perishes.</p> +<p>Are we better or worse for no longer believing as Bunyan +believed, no longer seeing that Abyss of Pascal’s open +beside our armchairs? The question is only a form of that +wide riddle, Does any theological or philosophical opinion make +us better or worse? The vast majority of men and women are +little affected by schemes and theories of this life and the +next. They who even ask for a reply to the riddle are the +few: most of us take the easy-going morality of our world for a +guide, as we take Bradshaw for a railway journey. It is the +few who must find out an answer: on that answer their lives +depend, and the lives of others are insensibly raised towards +their level. Bunyan would not have been a worse man if he +had shared the faith of Izaak Walton. Izaak had his reply +to all questions in the Church Catechism and the Articles. +Bunyan found his in the theology of his sect, appealing more +strongly than orthodoxy to a nature more bellicose than +Izaak’s. Men like him, with his indomitable courage, +will never lack a solution of the puzzle of the earth. At +worst they will live by law, whether they dare to speak of it as +God’s law, or dare not. They will always be our +leaders, our Captain Greathearts, in the pilgrimage to the city +where, led or unled, we must all at last arrive. They will +not fail us, while loyalty and valour are human qualities. +The day may conceivably come when we have no Christian to march +before us, but we shall never lack the company of Greatheart.</p> +<h2>TO A YOUNG JOURNALIST</h2> +<p>Dear Smith,—</p> +<p>You inform me that you desire to be a journalist, and you are +kind enough to ask my advice. Well, be a journalist, by all +means, in any honest and honourable branch of the +profession. But do not be an eavesdropper and a spy. +You may fly into a passion when you receive this very plainly +worded advice. I hope you will; but, for several reasons, +which I now go on to state, I fear that you won’t. I +fear that, either by natural gift or by acquired habit, you +already possess the imperturbable temper which will be so useful +to you if you do join the army of spies and eavesdroppers. +If I am right, you have made up your mind to refuse to take +offence, as long as by not taking offence you can wriggle +yourself forward in the band of journalistic reptiles. You +will be revenged on me, in that case, some day; you will lie in +wait for me with a dirty bludgeon, and steal on me out of a +sewer. If you do, permit me to assure you that I +don’t care. But if you are already in a rage, if you +are about tearing up this epistle, and are starting to assault me +personally, or at least to answer me furiously, then there is +every hope for you and for your future. I therefore venture +to state my reasons for supposing that you are inclined to begin +a course which your father, if he were alive, would deplore, as +all honourable men in their hearts must deplore it. When +you were at the University (let me congratulate you on your +degree) you edited, or helped to edit, <i>The Bull-dog</i>. +It was not a very brilliant nor a very witty, but it was an +extremely “racy” periodical. It spoke of all +men and dons by their nicknames. It was full of second-hand +slang. It contained many personal anecdotes, to the +detriment of many people. It printed garbled and spiteful +versions of private conversations on private affairs. It +did not even spare to make comments on ladies, and on the details +of domestic life in the town and in the University. The +copies which you sent me I glanced at with extreme disgust.</p> +<p>In my time, more than a score of years ago, a similar +periodical, but a much more clever periodical, was put forth by +members of the University. It contained a novel which, even +now, would be worth several ill-gotten guineas to the makers of +the <i>chronique scandaleuse</i>. But nobody bought it, and +it died an early death. Times have altered, I am a fogey; +but the ideas of honour and decency which fogies hold now were +held by young men in the sixties of our century. I know +very well that these ideas are obsolete. I am not preaching +to the world, nor hoping to convert society, but to <i>you</i>, +and purely in your own private, spiritual interest. If you +enter on this path of tattle, mendacity, and malice, and if, with +your cleverness and light hand, you are successful, society will +not turn its back on you. You will be feared in many +quarters, and welcomed in others. Of your paragraphs people +will say that “it is a shame, of course, but it is very +amusing.” There are so many shames in the world, +shames not at all amusing, that you may see no harm in adding to +the number. “If I don’t do it,” you may +argue, “some one else will.” Undoubtedly; but +<i>why should you do it</i>?</p> +<p>You are not a starving scribbler; if you determine to write, +you can write well, though not so easily, on many topics. +You have not that last sad excuse of hunger, which drives poor +women to the streets, and makes unhappy men act as public blabs +and spies. If <i>you</i> take to this <i>métier</i>, +it must be because you like it, which means that you enjoy being +a listener to and reporter of talk that was never meant for any +ears except those in which it was uttered. It means that +the hospitable board is not sacred for <i>you</i>; it means that, +with you, friendship, honour, all that makes human life better +than a low smoking-room, are only valuable for what their +betrayal will bring. It means that not even the welfare of +your country will prevent you from running to the Press with any +secret which you may have been entrusted with, or which you may +have surprised. It means, this peculiar kind of profession, +that all things open and excellent, and conspicuous to all men, +are with you of no account. Art, literature, politics, are +to cease to interest you. You are to scheme to surprise +gossip about the private lives, dress, and talk of artists, men +of letters, politicians. Your professional work will sink +below the level of servants’ gossip in a public-house +parlour. If you happen to meet a man of known name, you +will watch him, will listen to him, will try to sneak into his +confidence, and you will blab, for money, about him, and your +blab will inevitably be mendacious. In short, like the most +pitiable outcasts of womankind, and, without their excuse, you +will live by selling your honour. You will not suffer much, +nor suffer long. Your conscience will very speedily be +seared with a red-hot iron. You will be on the road which +leads from mere dishonour to crime; and you may find yourself +actually practising <i>chantage</i>, and extorting money as the +price of your silence. This is the lowest deep: the vast +majority, even of social <i>mouchards</i>, do not sink so low as +this.</p> +<p>The profession of the critic, even in honourable and open +criticism, is beset with dangers. It is often hard to avoid +saying an unkind thing, a cruel thing, which is smart, and which +may even be deserved. Who can say that he has escaped this +temptation, and what man of heart can think of his own fall +without a sense of shame? There are, I admit, authors so +antipathetic to me, that I cannot trust myself to review +them. Would that I had never reviewed them! They +cannot be so bad as they seem to me: they must have qualities +which escape my observation. Then there is the temptation +to hit back. Some one writes, unjustly or unkindly as you +think, of you or of your friends. You wait till your enemy +has written a book, and then you have your innings. It is +not in nature that your review should be fair: you must +inevitably be more on the look-out for faults than merits. +The <i>éreintage</i>, the “smashing” of a +literary foe is very delightful at the moment, but it does not +look well in the light of reflection. But these deeds are +mere peccadilloes compared with the confirmed habit of regarding +all men and women as fair game for personal tattle and the sating +of private spite. Nobody, perhaps, begins with this +intention. Most men and women can find ready +sophistries. If a report about any one reaches their ears, +they say that they are doing him a service by publishing it and +enabling him to contradict it. As if any mortal ever +listened to a contradiction! And there are +charges—that of plagiarism, for example—which can +never be disproved, even if contradictions were listened to by +the public. The accusation goes everywhere, is copied into +every printed rag; the contradiction dies with the daily death of +a single newspaper. You may reply that a man of sense will +be indifferent to false accusations. He may, or may not +be,—that is not the question for you; the question for you +is whether you will circulate news that is false, probably, and +spiteful, certainly.</p> +<p>In short, the whole affair regards yourself more than it +regards the world. Plenty of poison is sold: is it well for +you to be one of the merchants? Is it the business of an +educated gentleman to live by the trade of an eavesdropper and a +blab? In the Memoirs of M. Blowitz he tells you how he +began his illustrious career by procuring the publication of +remarks which M. Thiers had made to him. He then +“went to see M. Thiers, not without some +apprehension.” Is that the kind of emotion which you +wish to be habitual in your experience? Do you think it +agreeable to become shame-faced when you meet people who have +conversed with you frankly? Do you enjoy being a sneak, and +feeling like a sneak? Do you find blushing pleasant? +Of course you will soon lose the power of blushing; but is that +an agreeable prospect? Depend on it, there are discomforts +in the progress to the brazen, in the journey to the +shameless. You may, if your tattle is political, become +serviceable to men engaged in great affairs. They may even +ask you to their houses, if that is your ambition. You may +urge that they condone your deeds, and are even art and part in +them. But you must also be aware that they call you, and +think you, a reptile. You are not one of those who will do +the devil’s work without the devil’s wages; but do +you seriously think that the wages are worth the degradation?</p> +<p>Many men think so, and are not in other respects bad +men. They may even be kindly and genial. Gentlemen +they cannot be, nor men of delicacy, nor men of honour. +They have sold themselves and their self-respect, some with ease +(they are the least blamable), some with a struggle. They +have seen better things, and perhaps vainly long to return to +them. These are “St. Satan’s Penitents,” +and their remorse is vain:</p> +<blockquote><p><i>Virtutem videant</i>, <i>intabescantque +relicta</i>.</p> +</blockquote> +<p>If you don’t wish to be of this dismal company, there is +only one course open to you. Never write for publication +one line of personal tattle. Let all men’s persons +and private lives be as sacred to you as your +father’s,—though there are tattlers who would sell +paragraphs about their own mothers if there were a market for the +ware. There is no half-way house on this road. Once +begin to print private conversation, and you are lost—lost, +that is, to delicacy and gradually, to many other things +excellent and of good report. The whole question for you +is, Do you mind incurring this damnation? If there is +nothing in it which appals and revolts you, if your conscience is +satisfied with a few ready sophisms, or if you don’t care a +pin for your conscience, fall to!</p> +<p><i>Vous irez loin</i>! You will prattle in print about +men’s private lives their hidden motives, their waistcoats, +their wives, their boots, their businesses, their incomes. +Most of your prattle will inevitably be lies. But go on! +nobody will kick you, I deeply regret to say. You will earn +money. You will be welcomed in society. You will live +and die content, and without remorse. I do not suppose that +any particular <i>inferno</i> will await you in the future +life. Whoever watches this world “with larger other +eyes than ours” will doubtless make allowance for you, as +for us all. I am not pretending to be a whit better than +you; probably I am worse in many ways, but not in your way. +Putting it merely as a matter of taste, I don’t like the +way. It makes me sick—that is all. It is a sin +which I can comfortably damn, as I am not inclined to it. +You may put it in that light; and I have no way of converting +you, nor, if I have not dissuaded you, of dissuading you, from +continuing, on a larger scale, your practices in <i>The +Bull-dog</i>.</p> +<h2>MR. KIPLING’S STORIES</h2> +<p>The wind bloweth where it listeth. But the wind of +literary inspiration has rarely shaken the bungalows of India, +as, in the tales of the old Jesuit missionaries, the magical air +shook the frail “medicine tents,” where Huron +conjurors practised their mysteries. With a world of +romance and of character at their doors, Englishmen in India have +seen as if they saw it not. They have been busy in +governing, in making war, making peace, building bridges, laying +down roads, and writing official reports. Our literature +from that continent of our conquest has been sparse indeed, +except in the way of biographies, of histories, and of rather +local and unintelligible <i>facetiæ</i>. Except the +novels by the author of “Tara,” and Sir Henry +Cunningham’s brilliant sketches, such as +“Dustypore,” and Sir Alfred Lyall’s poems, we +might almost say that India has contributed nothing to our finer +literature. That old haunt of history, the wealth of +character brought out in that confusion of races, of religions, +and the old and new, has been wealth untouched, a treasure-house +sealed: those pagoda trees have never been shaken. At last +there comes an Englishman with eyes, with a pen extraordinarily +deft, an observation marvellously rapid and keen; and, by good +luck, this Englishman has no official duties: he is neither a +soldier, nor a judge; he is merely a man of letters. He has +leisure to look around him, he has the power of making us see +what he sees; and, when we have lost India, when some new power +is ruling where we ruled, when our empire has followed that of +the Moguls, future generations will learn from Mr. +Kipling’s works what India was under English sway.</p> +<p>It is one of the surprises of literature that these tiny +masterpieces in prose and verse were poured, “as rich men +give that care not for their gifts,” into the columns of +Anglo-Indian journals. There they were thought clever and +ephemeral—part of the chatter of the week. The +subjects, no doubt, seemed so familiar, that the strength of the +handling, the brilliance of the colour, were scarcely +recognised. But Mr. Kipling’s volumes no sooner +reached England than the people into whose hands they fell were +certain that here were the beginnings of a new literary +force. The books had the strangeness, the colour, the +variety, the perfume of the East. Thus it is no wonder that +Mr. Kipling’s repute grew up as rapidly as the mysterious +mango tree of the conjurors. There were critics, of course, +ready to say that the thing was merely a trick, and had nothing +of the supernatural. That opinion is not likely to hold its +ground. Perhaps the most severe of the critics has been a +young Scotch gentleman, writing French, and writing it +wonderfully well, in a Parisian review. He chose to regard +Mr. Kipling as little but an imitator of Bret Harte, deriving his +popularity mainly from the novel and exotic character of his +subjects. No doubt, if Mr. Kipling has a literary +progenitor, it is Mr. Bret Harte. Among his earlier verses +a few are what an imitator of the American might have written in +India. But it is a wild judgment which traces Mr. +Kipling’s success to his use, for example, of Anglo-Indian +phrases and scraps of native dialects. The presence of +these elements is among the causes which have made Englishmen +think Anglo-Indian literature tediously provincial, and India a +bore. Mr. Kipling, on the other hand, makes us regard the +continent which was a bore an enchanted land, full of marvels and +magic which are real. There has, indeed, arisen a taste for +exotic literature: people have become alive to the strangeness +and fascination of the world beyond the bounds of Europe and the +United States. But that is only because men of imagination +and literary skill have been the new conquerors—the +Corteses and Balboas of India, Africa, Australia, Japan, and the +isles of the southern seas. All such conquerors, whether +they write with the polish of M. Pierre Loti, or with the +carelessness of Mr. Boldrewood, have, at least, seen new worlds +for themselves; have gone out of the streets of the +over-populated lands into the open air; have sailed and ridden, +walked and hunted; have escaped from the fog and smoke of +towns. New strength has come from fresher air into their +brains and blood; hence the novelty and buoyancy of the stories +which they tell. Hence, too, they are rather to be counted +among romanticists than realists, however real is the essential +truth of their books. They have found so much to see and to +record, that they are not tempted to use the microscope, and pore +for ever on the minute in character. A great deal of +realism, especially in France, attracts because it is novel, +because M. Zola and others have also found new worlds to +conquer. But certain provinces in those worlds were not +unknown to, but were voluntarily neglected by, earlier +explorers. They were the “Bad Lands” of life +and character: surely it is wiser to seek quite new realms than +to build mud huts and dunghills on the “Bad +Lands.”</p> +<p>Mr. Kipling’s work, like all good work, is both real and +romantic. It is real because he sees and feels very swiftly +and keenly; it is romantic, again, because he has a sharp eye for +the reality of romance, for the attraction and possibility of +adventure, and because he is young. If a reader wants to +see petty characters displayed in all their meannesses, if this +be realism, surely certain of Mr. Kipling’s painted and +frisky matrons are realistic enough. The seamy side of +Anglo-Indian life: the intrigues, amorous or +semi-political—the slang of people who describe dining as +“mangling garbage” the “games of tennis with +the seventh commandment”—he has not neglected any of +these. Probably the sketches are true enough, and pity +’tis true: for example, the sketches in “Under the +Deodars” and in “The Gadsbys.” That +worthy pair, with their friends, are to myself as unsympathetic, +almost, as the characters in “La Conquête de +Plassans.” But Mr. Kipling is too much a true realist +to make their selfishness and pettiness unbroken, +unceasing. We know that “Gaddy” is a brave, +modest, and hard-working soldier; and, when his little silly +bride (who prefers being kissed by a man with waxed moustaches) +lies near to death, certainly I am nearer to tears than when I am +obliged to attend the bed of Little Dombey or of Little +Nell. Probably there is a great deal of slangy and +unrefined Anglo-Indian society; and, no doubt, to sketch it in +its true colours is not beyond the province of art. At +worst it is redeemed, in part, by its constancy in the presence +of various perils—from disease, and from “the bullet +flying down the pass.” Mr. Kipling may not be, and +very probably is not, a reader of “Gyp”; but +“The Gadsbys,” especially, reads like the work of an +Anglo-Indian disciple, trammelled by certain English +conventions. The more Pharisaic realists—those of the +strictest sect—would probably welcome Mr. Kipling as a +younger brother, so far as “Under the Deodars” and +“The Gadsbys” are concerned, if he were not +occasionally witty and even flippant, as well as realistic. +But, very fortunately, he has not confined his observation to the +leisures and pleasures of Simla; he has looked out also on war +and on sport, on the life of all native tribes and castes; and +has even glanced across the borders of “The Undiscovered +Country.”</p> +<p>Among Mr. Kipling’s discoveries of new kinds of +characters, probably the most popular is his invention of the +British soldier in India. He avers that he “loves +that very strong man, Thomas Atkins”; but his affection has +not blinded him to the faults of the beloved. Mr. Atkins +drinks too much, is too careless a gallant in love, has been +educated either too much or too little, and has other faults, +partly due, apparently, to recent military organisation, partly +to the feverish and unsettled state of the civilised world. +But he is still brave, when he is well led; still loyal, above +all, to his “trusty chum.” Every Englishman +must hope that, if Terence Mulvaney did not take the city of +Lungtung Pen as described, yet he is ready, and willing so to +take it. Mr. Mulvaney is as humorous as Micky Free, but +more melancholy and more truculent. He has, perhaps, +“won his way to the mythical” already, and is not so +much a soldier, as an incarnation, not of Krishna, but of many +soldierly qualities. On the other hand, Private Ortheris, +especially in his frenzy, seems to shew all the truth, and much +more than the life of, a photograph. Such, we presume, is +the soldier, and such are his experiences and temptations and +repentance. But nobody ever dreamed of telling us all this, +till Mr. Kipling came. As for the soldier in action, the +“Taking of Lungtung Pen,” and the “Drums of the +Fore and Aft,” and that other tale of the battle with the +Pathans in the gorge, are among the good fights of fiction. +They stir the spirit, and they should be distributed (in +addition, of course, to the “Soldier’s Pocket +Book”) in the ranks of the British army. Mr. Kipling +is as well informed about the soldier’s women-kind as about +the soldier: about Dinah Shadd as about Terence Mulvaney. +Lever never instructed us on these matters: Micky Free, if he +loves, rides away; but Terence Mulvaney is true to his old +woman. Gallant, loyal, reckless, vain, swaggering, and +tender-hearted, Terence Mulvaney, if there were enough of him, +“would take St. Petersburg in his drawers.” Can +we be too grateful to an author who has extended, as Mr. Kipling +in his military sketches has extended, the frontiers of our +knowledge and sympathy?</p> +<p>It is a mere question of individual taste; but, for my own +part, had I to make a small selection from Mr. Kipling’s +tales, I would include more of his studies in Black than in +White, and many of his excursions beyond the probable and +natural. It is difficult to have one special favourite in +this kind; but perhaps the story of the two English adventurers +among the freemasons of unknown Kafiristan (in the “Phantom +Rickshaw”) would take a very high place. The +gas-heated air of the Indian newspaper office is so real, and +into it comes a wanderer who has seen new faces of death, and who +carries with him a head that has worn a royal crown. The +contrasts are of brutal force; the legend is among the best of +such strange fancies. Then there is, in the same volume, +“The Strange Ride of Morrowbie Jukes,” the most +dreadful nightmare of the most awful Bunker in the realms of +fancy. This is a very early work; if nothing else of Mr. +Kipling’s existed, his memory might live by it, as does the +memory of the American Irishman by the “Diamond +Lens.” The sham magic of “In the House of +Suddhu” is as terrible as true necromancy could be, and I +have a <i>faiblesse</i> for the “Bisara of +Pooree.” “The Gate of the Hundred +Sorrows” is a realistic version of “The English Opium +Eater,” and more powerful by dint of less rhetoric. +As for the sketches of native life—for example, “On +the City Wall”—to English readers they are no less +than revelations. They testify, more even than the military +stories, to the author’s swift and certain vision, his +certainty in his effects. In brief, Mr. Kipling has +conquered worlds, of which, as it were, we knew not the +existence.</p> +<p>His faults are so conspicuous, so much on the surface, that +they hardly need to be named. They are curiously visible to +some readers who are blind to his merits. There is a false +air of hardness (quite in contradiction to the sentiment in his +tales of childish life); there is a knowing air; there are +mannerisms, such as “But that is another story”; +there is a display of slang; there is the too obtrusive knocking +of the nail on the head. Everybody can mark these errors; a +few cannot overcome their antipathy, and so lose a great deal of +pleasure.</p> +<p>It is impossible to guess how Mr. Kipling will fare if he +ventures on one of the usual novels, of the orthodox +length. Few men have succeeded both in the <i>conte</i> and +the novel. Mr. Bret Harte is limited to the <i>conte</i>; +M. Guy de Maupassant is probably at his best in it. Scott +wrote but three or four short tales, and only one of these is a +masterpiece. Poe never attempted a novel. Hawthorne +is almost alone in his command of both kinds. We can live +only in the hope that Mr. Kipling, so skilled in so many species +of the <i>conte</i>, so vigorous in so many kinds of verse, will +also be triumphant in the novel: though it seems unlikely that +its scene can be in England, and though it is certain that a +writer who so cuts to the quick will not be happy with the +novel’s almost inevitable “padding.” Mr. +Kipling’s longest effort, “The Light which +Failed,” can, perhaps, hardly be considered a test or +touchstone of his powers as a novelist. The central +interest is not powerful enough; the characters are not so +sympathetic, as are the interest and the characters of his short +pieces. Many of these persons we have met so often that +they are not mere passing acquaintances, but already find in us +the loyalty due to old friends.</p> +<h2>FOOTNOTES:</h2> +<p><a name="footnote70"></a><a href="#citation70" +class="footnote">[70]</a> The subject has been much more +gravely treated in Mr. Robert Bridges’s “Achilles in +Scyros.”</p> +<p><a name="footnote91"></a><a href="#citation91" +class="footnote">[91]</a> Conjecture may cease, as Mr. +Morris has translated the Odyssey.</p> +<p><a name="footnote109"></a><a href="#citation109" +class="footnote">[109]</a> For Helen Pendennis, see the +“Letters,” p. 97.</p> +<p><a name="footnote128"></a><a href="#citation128" +class="footnote">[128]</a> Mr. Henley has lately, as a +loyal Dickensite, been defending the plots of Dickens, and his +tragedy. <i>Pro captu lectoris</i>; if the reader likes +them, then they are good for the reader: “good absolute, +not for me though,” perhaps. The plot of +“Martin Chuzzlewit” may be good, but the conduct of +old Martin would strike me as improbable if I met it in the +“Arabian Nights.” That the creator of Pecksniff +should have taken his misdeeds seriously, as if Mr. Pecksniff had +been a Tartuffe, not a delight, seems curious.</p> +<p>***END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK ESSAYS IN LITTLE***</p> +<pre> + + +***** This file should be named 1594-h.htm or 1594-h.zip****** + + +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: +http://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/1/5/9/1594 + + + +Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions +will be renamed. + +Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no +one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation +(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without +permission and without paying copyright royalties. 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H. Davenport Adams + + +This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with +almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + + + + + +Title: Essays in Little + + +Author: Andrew Lang + +Editor: W. H. Davenport Adams + +Release Date: December 29, 2007 [eBook #1594] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ISO-646-US (US-ASCII) + + +***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK ESSAYS IN LITTLE*** + + +Transcribed from the 1891 Henry and Co. edition by David Price, email +ccx074@pglaf.org + + + + + +ESSAYS IN LITTLE. + + +by +ANDREW LANG. + +_WITH PORTRAIT OF THE AUTHOR_. + +LONDON: +HENRY AND CO., BOUVERIE STREET, E.C. +1891. + +_Printed by Hazell_, _Watson_, _& Vincy_, _Ld._, _London and Aylesbury_. + +CONTENTS. + +Preface +Alexandre Dumas +Mr. Stevenson's works +Thomas Haynes Bayly +Theodore de Banville +Homer and the Study of Greek +The Last Fashionable Novel +Thackeray +Dickens +Adventures of Buccaneers +The Sagas +Charles Kingsley +Charles Lever: His books, adventures and misfortunes +The poems of Sir Walter Scott +John Bunyan +To a Young Journalist +Mr. Kipling's stories + +{Portrait of Andrew Lang: p0.jpg} + + + + +PREFACE + + +Of the following essays, five are new, and were written for this volume. +They are the paper on Mr. R. L. Stevenson, the "Letter to a Young +Journalist," the study of Mr. Kipling, the note on Homer, and "The Last +Fashionable Novel." The article on the author of "Oh, no! we never +mention Her," appeared in the New York _Sun_, and was suggested by Mr. +Dana, the editor of that journal. The papers on Thackeray and Dickens +were published in _Good Words_, that on Dumas appeared in _Scribner's +Magazine_, that on M. Theodore de Banville in _The New Quarterly Review_. +The other essays were originally written for a newspaper "Syndicate." +They have been re-cast, augmented, and, to a great extent, re-written. + +A. L. + + + + +ALEXANDRE DUMAS + + +Alexandre Dumas is a writer, and his life is a topic, of which his +devotees never weary. Indeed, one lifetime is not long enough wherein to +tire of them. The long days and years of Hilpa and Shalum, in +Addison--the antediluvian age, when a picnic lasted for half a century +and a courtship for two hundred years, might have sufficed for an +exhaustive study of Dumas. No such study have I to offer, in the brief +seasons of our perishable days. I own that I have not read, and do not, +in the circumstances, expect to read, all of Dumas, nor even the greater +part of his thousand volumes. We only dip a cup in that sparkling +spring, and drink, and go on,--we cannot hope to exhaust the fountain, +nor to carry away with us the well itself. It is but a word of gratitude +and delight that we can say to the heroic and indomitable master, only an +_ave_ of friendship that we can call across the bourne to the shade of +the Porthos of fiction. That his works (his best works) should be even +still more widely circulated than they are; that the young should read +them, and learn frankness, kindness, generosity--should esteem the tender +heart, and the gay, invincible wit; that the old should read them again, +and find forgetfulness of trouble, and taste the anodyne of dreams, that +is what we desire. + +Dumas said of himself ("Memoires," v. 13) that when he was young he tried +several times to read forbidden books--books that are sold _sous le +manteau_. But he never got farther than the tenth page, in the + + "scrofulous French novel + On gray paper with blunt type;" + +he never made his way so far as + + "the woful sixteenth print." + +"I had, thank God, a natural sentiment of delicacy; and thus, out of my +six hundred volumes (in 1852) there are not four which the most +scrupulous mother may not give to her daughter." Much later, in 1864, +when the _Censure_ threatened one of his plays, he wrote to the Emperor: +"Of my twelve hundred volumes there is not one which a girl in our most +modest quarter, the Faubourg Saint-Germain, may not be allowed to read." +The mothers of the Faubourg, and mothers in general, may not take Dumas +exactly at his word. There is a passage, for example, in the story of +Miladi ("Les Trois Mousquetaires") which a parent or guardian may well +think undesirable reading for youth. But compare it with the original +passage in the "Memoires" of D'Artagnan! It has passed through a medium, +as Dumas himself declared, of natural delicacy and good taste. His +enormous popularity, the widest in the world of letters, owes absolutely +nothing to prurience or curiosity. The air which he breathes is a +healthy air, is the open air; and that by his own choice, for he had +every temptation to seek another kind of vogue, and every opportunity. + +Two anecdotes are told of Dumas' books, one by M. Edmond About, the other +by his own son, which show, in brief space, why this novelist is so +beloved, and why he deserves our affection and esteem. M. Villaud, a +railway engineer who had lived much in Italy, Russia, and Spain, was the +person whose enthusiasm finally secured a statue for Dumas. He felt so +much gratitude to the unknown friend of lonely nights in long exiles, +that he could not be happy till his gratitude found a permanent +expression. On returning to France he went to consult M. Victor Borie, +who told him this tale about George Sand. M. Borie chanced to visit the +famous novelist just before her death, and found Dumas' novel, "Les +Quarante Cinq" (one of the cycle about the Valois kings) lying on her +table. He expressed his wonder that she was reading it for the first +time. + +"For the first time!--why, this is the fifth or sixth time I have read +'Les Quarante Cinq,' and the others. When I am ill, anxious, melancholy, +tired, discouraged, nothing helps me against moral or physical troubles +like a book of Dumas." Again, M. About says that M. Sarcey was in the +same class at school with a little Spanish boy. The child was homesick; +he could not eat, he could not sleep; he was almost in a decline. + +"You want to see your mother?" said young Sarcey. + +"No: she is dead." + +"Your father, then?" + +"No: he used to beat me." + +"Your brothers and sisters?" + +"I have none." + +"Then why are you so eager to be back in Spain?" + +"To finish a book I began in the holidays." + +"And what was its name?" + +"'Los Tres Mosqueteros'!" + +He was homesick for "The Three Musketeers," and they cured him easily. + +That is what Dumas does. He gives courage and life to old age, he charms +away the half-conscious _nostalgie_, the _Heimweh_, of childhood. We are +all homesick, in the dark days and black towns, for the land of blue +skies and brave adventures in forests, and in lonely inns, on the battle- +field, in the prison, on the desert isle. And then Dumas comes, and, +like Argive Helen, in Homer, he casts a drug into the wine, the drug +nepenthe, "that puts all evil out of mind." Does any one suppose that +when George Sand was old and tired, and near her death, she would have +found this anodyne, and this stimulant, in the novels of M. Tolstoi, M. +Dostoiefsky, M. Zola, or any of the "scientific" observers whom we are +actually requested to hail as the masters of a new art, the art of the +future? Would they make her laugh, as Chicot does? make her forget, as +Porthos, Athos, and Aramis do? take her away from the heavy, familiar +time, as the enchanter Dumas takes us? No; let it be enough for these +new authors to be industrious, keen, accurate, _precieux_, pitiful, +charitable, veracious; but give us high spirits now and then, a light +heart, a sharp sword, a fair wench, a good horse, or even that old Gascon +rouncy of D'Artagnan's. Like the good Lord James Douglas, we had liefer +hear the lark sing over moor and down, with Chicot, than listen to the +starved-mouse squeak in the _bouge_ of Therese Raquin, with M. Zola. Not +that there is not a place and an hour for him, and others like him; but +they are not, if you please, to have the whole world to themselves, and +all the time, and all the praise; they are not to turn the world into a +dissecting-room, time into tedium, and the laurels of Scott and Dumas +into crowns of nettles. + +There is no complete life of Alexandre Dumas. The age has not produced +the intellectual athlete who can gird himself up for that labour. One of +the worst books that ever was written, if it can be said to be written, +is, I think, the English attempt at a biography of Dumas. Style, +grammar, taste, feeling, are all bad. The author does not so much write +a life as draw up an indictment. The spirit of his work is grudging, +sneering, contemptuous, and pitifully peddling. The great charge is that +Dumas was a humbug, that he was not the author of his own books, that his +books were written by "collaborators"--above all, by M. Maquet. There is +no doubt that Dumas had a regular system of collaboration, which he never +concealed. But whereas Dumas could turn out books that _live_, whoever +his assistants were, could any of his assistants write books that live, +without Dumas? One might as well call any barrister in good practice a +thief and an impostor because he has juniors to "devil" for him, as make +charges of this kind against Dumas. He once asked his son to help him; +the younger Alexandre declined. "It is worth a thousand a year, and you +have only to make objections," the sire urged; but the son was not to be +tempted. Some excellent novelists of to-day would be much better if they +employed a friend to make objections. But, as a rule, the collaborator +did much more. Dumas' method, apparently, was first to talk the subject +over with his _aide-de-camp_. This is an excellent practice, as ideas +are knocked out, like sparks (an elderly illustration!), by the contact +of minds. Then the young man probably made researches, put a rough +sketch on paper, and supplied Dumas, as it were, with his "brief." Then +Dumas took the "brief" and wrote the novel. He gave it life, he gave it +the spark (_l'etincelle_); and the story lived and moved. + +It is true that he "took his own where he found it," like Molere and that +he took a good deal. In the gallery of an old country-house, on a wet +day, I came once on the "Memoires" of D'Artagnan, where they had lain +since the family bought them in Queen Anne's time. There were our old +friends the Musketeers, and there were many of their adventures, told at +great length and breadth. But how much more vivacious they are in Dumas! +M. About repeats a story of Dumas and his ways of work. He met the great +man at Marseilles, where, indeed, Alexandre chanced to be "on with the +new love" before being completely "off with the old." Dumas picked up M. +About, literally lifted him in his embrace, and carried him off to see a +play which he had written in three days. The play was a success; the +supper was prolonged till three in the morning; M. About was almost +asleep as he walked home, but Dumas was as fresh as if he had just got +out of bed. "Go to sleep, old man," he said: "I, who am only fifty-five, +have three _feuilletons_ to write, which must be posted to-morrow. If I +have time I shall knock up a little piece for Montigny--the idea is +running in my head." So next morning M. About saw the three +_feuilletons_ made up for the post, and another packet addressed to M. +Montigny: it was the play _L'Invitation a la Valse_, a chef-d'oeuvre! +Well, the material had been prepared for Dumas. M. About saw one of his +novels at Marseilles in the chrysalis. It was a stout copy-book full of +paper, composed by a practised hand, on the master's design. Dumas +copied out each little leaf on a big leaf of paper, _en y semant l'esprit +a pleines mains_. This was his method. As a rule, in collaboration, one +man does the work while the other looks on. Is it likely that Dumas +looked on? That was not the manner of Dumas. "Mirecourt and others," M. +About says, "have wept crocodile tears for the collaborators, the victims +of his glory and his talent. But it is difficult to lament over the +survivors (1884). The master neither took their money--for they are +rich, nor their fame--for they are celebrated, nor their merit--for they +had and still have plenty. And they never bewailed their fate: the +reverse! The proudest congratulate themselves on having been at so good +a school; and M. Auguste Maquet, the chief of them, speaks with real +reverence and affection of his great friend." And M. About writes "as +one who had taken the master red-handed, and in the act of +collaboration." Dumas has a curious note on collaboration in his +"Souvenirs Dramatiques." Of the two men at work together, "one is always +the dupe, and _he_ is the man of talent." + +There is no biography of Dumas, but the small change of a biography +exists in abundance. There are the many volumes of his "Memoires," there +are all the tomes he wrote on his travels and adventures in Africa, +Spain, Italy, Russia; the book he wrote on his beasts; the romance of +_Ange Pitou_, partly autobiographical; and there are plenty of little +studies by people who knew him. As to his "Memoires," as to all he wrote +about himself, of course his imagination entered into the narrative. Like +Scott, when he had a good story he liked to dress it up with a cocked hat +and a sword. Did he perform all those astonishing and innumerable feats +of strength, skill, courage, address, in revolutions, in voyages, in +love, in war, in cookery? The narrative need not be taken "at the foot +of the letter"; great as was his force and his courage, his fancy was +greater still. There is no room for a biography of him here. His +descent was noble on one side, with or without the bend sinister, which +he said he would never have disclaimed, had it been his, but which he did +not happen to inherit. On the other side he _may_ have descended from +kings; but, as in the case of "The Fair Cuban," he must have added, +"African, unfortunately." Did his father perform these mythical feats of +strength? did he lift up a horse between his legs while clutching a +rafter with his hands? did he throw his regiment before him over a wall, +as Guy Heavistone threw the mare which refused the leap ("Memoires," i. +122)? No doubt Dumas believed what he heard about this ancestor--in +whom, perhaps, one may see a hint of the giant Porthos. In the +Revolution and in the wars his father won the name of Monsieur de +l'Humanite, because he made a bonfire of a guillotine; and of Horatius +Cocles, because he held a pass as bravely as the Roman "in the brave days +of old." + +This was a father to be proud of; and pluck, tenderness, generosity, +strength, remained the favourite virtues of Dumas. These he preached and +practised. They say he was generous before he was just; it is to be +feared this was true, but he gave even more freely than he received. A +regiment of seedy people sponged on him always; he could not listen to a +tale of misery but he gave what he had, and sometimes left himself short +of a dinner. He could not even turn a dog out of doors. At his +Abbotsford, "Monte Cristo," the gates were open to everybody but +bailiffs. His dog asked other dogs to come and stay: twelve came, making +thirteen in all. The old butler wanted to turn them adrift, and Dumas +consented, and repented. + +"Michel," he said, "there are some expenses which a man's social position +and the character which he has had the ill-luck to receive from heaven +force upon him. I don't believe these dogs ruin me. Let them bide! But, +in the interests of their own good luck, see they are not thirteen, an +unfortunate number!" + +"Monsieur, I'll drive one of them away." + +"No, no, Michel; let a fourteenth come. These dogs cost me some three +pounds a month," said Dumas. "A dinner to five or six friends would cost +thrice as much, and, when they went home, they would say my wine was +good, but certainly that my books were bad." In this fashion Dumas fared +royally "to the dogs," and his Abbotsford ruined him as certainly as that +other unhappy palace ruined Sir Walter. He, too, had his miscellaneous +kennel; he, too, gave while he had anything to give, and, when he had +nothing else, gave the work of his pen. Dumas tells how his big dog, +Mouton once flew at him and bit one of his hands, while the other held +the throat of the brute. "Luckily my hand, though small, is powerful; +what it once holds it holds long--money excepted." He could not "haud a +guid grip o' the gear." Neither Scott nor Dumas could shut his ears to a +prayer or his pockets to a beggar, or his doors on whoever knocked at +them. + +"I might at least have asked him to dinner," Scott was heard murmuring, +when some insufferable bore at last left Abbotsford, after wasting his +time and nearly wearing out his patience. Neither man _preached_ +socialism; both practised it on the Aristotelian principle: the goods of +friends are common, and men are our friends. + +* * * * * + +The death of Dumas' father, while the son was a child, left Madame Dumas +in great poverty at Villers Cotterets. Dumas' education was sadly to +seek. Like most children destined to be bookish, he taught himself to +read very young: in Buffon, the Bible, and books of mythology. He knew +all about Jupiter--like David Copperfield's Tom Jones, "a child's +Jupiter, an innocent creature"--all about every god, goddess, fawn, +dryad, nymph--and he never forgot this useful information. Dear +Lempriere, thou art superseded; but how much more delightful thou art +than the fastidious Smith or the learned Preller! Dumas had one volume +of the "Arabian Nights," with Aladdin's lamp therein, the sacred lamp +which he was to keep burning with a flame so brilliant and so steady. It +is pleasant to know that, in his boyhood, this great romancer loved +Virgil. "Little as is my Latin, I have ever adored Virgil: his +tenderness for exiles, his melancholy vision of death, his foreboding of +an unknown God, have always moved me; the melody of his verses charmed me +most, and they lull me still between asleep and awake." School days did +not last long: Madame Dumas got a little post--a licence to sell +tobacco--and at fifteen Dumas entered a notary's office, like his great +Scotch forerunner. He was ignorant of his vocation for the stage--Racine +and Corneille fatigued him prodigiously--till he saw _Hamlet_: _Hamlet_ +diluted by Ducis. He had never heard of Shakespeare, but here was +something he could appreciate. Here was "a profound impression, full of +inexplicable emotion, vague desires, fleeting lights, that, so far, lit +up only a chaos." + +Oddly enough, his earliest literary essay was the translation of Burger's +"Lenore." Here, again, he encounters Scott; but Scott translated the +ballad, and Dumas failed. _Les mortes vont vite_! the same refrain woke +poetry in both the Frenchman and the Scotchman. + + "Ha! ha! the Dead can ride with speed: + Dost fear to ride with me?" + +So Dumas' literary career began with a defeat, but it was always a +beginning. He had just failed with "Lenore," when Leuven asked him to +collaborate in a play. He was utterly ignorant, he says; he had not +succeeded in gallant efforts to read through "Gil Blas" and "Don +Quixote." "To my shame," he writes, "the man has not been more fortunate +with those masterpieces than the boy." He had not yet heard of Scott, +Cooper, Goethe; he had heard of Shakespeare only as a barbarian. Other +plays the boy wrote--failures, of course--and then Dumas poached his way +to Paris, shooting partridges on the road, and paying the hotel expenses +by his success in the chase. He was introduced to the great Talma: what +a moment for Talma, had he known it! He saw the theatres. He went home, +but returned to Paris, drew a small prize in a lottery, and sat next a +gentleman at the play, a gentleman who read the rarest of Elzevirs, "Le +Pastissier Francais," and gave him a little lecture on Elzevirs in +general. Soon this gentleman began to hiss the piece, and was turned +out. He was Charles Nodier, and one of the anonymous authors of the play +he was hissing! I own that this amusing chapter lacks verisimilitude. It +reads as if Dumas had chanced to "get up" the subject of Elzevirs, and +had fashioned his new knowledge into a little story. He could make a +story out of anything--he "turned all to favour and to prettiness." Could +I translate the whole passage, and print it here, it would be longer than +this article; but, ah, how much more entertaining! For whatever Dumas +did he did with such life, spirit, wit, he told it with such vivacity, +that his whole career is one long romance of the highest quality. +Lassagne told him he must read--must read Goethe, Scott, Cooper, +Froissart, Joinville, Brantome. He read them to some purpose. He +entered the service of the Duc d'Orleans as a clerk, for he wrote a clear +hand, and, happily, wrote at astonishing speed. He is said to have +written a short play in a cottage where he went to rest for an hour or +two after shooting all the morning. The practice in a notary's office +stood him, as it stood Scott, in good stead. When a dog bit his hand he +managed to write a volume without using his thumb. I have tried it, but +forbear--in mercy to the printers. He performed wild feats of rapid +caligraphy when a clerk under the Duc d'Orleans, and he wrote his plays +in one "hand," his novels in another. The "hand" used in his dramas he +acquired when, in days of poverty, he used to write in bed. To this +habit he also attributed the _brutalite_ of his earlier pieces, but there +seems to be no good reason why a man should write like a brute because it +is in bed that he writes. + +In those days of small things he fought his first duel, and made a study +of Fear and Courage. His earliest impulse was to rush at danger; if he +had to wait, he felt his courage oozing out at the tips of his fingers, +like Bob Acres, but in the moment of peril he was himself again. In +dreams he was a coward, because, as he argues, the natural man _is_ a +poltroon, and conscience, honour, all the spiritual and commanding part +of our nature, goes to sleep in dreams. The animal terror asserts itself +unchecked. It is a theory not without exceptions. In dreams one has +plenty of conscience (at least that is my experience), though it usually +takes the form of remorse. And in dreams one often affronts dangers +which, in waking hours, one might probably avoid if one could. + +* * * * * + +Dumas' first play, an unimportant vaudeville, was acted in 1825. His +first novels were also published then; he took part of the risk, and only +four copies were sold. He afterward used the ideas in more mature works, +as Mr. Sheridan Le Fanu employed three or four times (with perfect +candour and fairness) the most curious incident in "Uncle Silas." Like +Mr. Arthur Pendennis, Dumas at this time wrote poetry "up to" pictures +and illustrations. It is easy, but seldom lucrative work. He translated +a play of Schiller's into French verse, chiefly to gain command of that +vehicle, for his heart was fixed on dramatic success. Then came the +visit of Kean and other English actors to Paris. He saw the true +_Hamlet_, and, for the first time on any stage, "the play of real +passions." Emulation woke in him: a casual work of art led him to the +story of Christina of Sweden, he wrote his play _Christine_ (afterward +reconstructed); he read it to Baron Taylor, who applauded; the Comedie +Francaise accepted it, but a series of intrigues disappointed him, after +all. His energy at this moment was extraordinary, for he was very poor, +his mother had a stroke of paralysis, his bureau was always bullying and +interfering with him. But nothing could snub this "force of nature," and +he immediately produced his _Henri Trois_, the first romantic drama of +France. This had an instant and noisy success, and the first night of +the play he spent at the theatre, and at the bedside of his unconscious +mother. The poor lady could not even understand whence the flowers came +that he laid on her couch, the flowers thrown to the young man--yesterday +unknown, and to-day the most famous of contemporary names. All this tale +of triumph, checkered by enmities and diversified by duels, Dumas tells +with the vigour and wit of his novels. He is his own hero, and loses +nothing in the process; but the other characters--Taylor, Nodier, the Duc +d'Orleans, the spiteful press-men, the crabbed old officials--all live +like the best of the persons in his tales. They call Dumas vain: he had +reason to be vain, and no candid or generous reader will be shocked by +his pleasant, frank, and artless enjoyment of himself and of his +adventures. Oddly enough, they are small-minded and small-hearted people +who are most shocked by what they call "vanity" in the great. Dumas' +delight in himself and his doings is only the flower of his vigorous +existence, and in his "Memoires," at least, it is as happy and +encouraging as his laugh, or the laugh of Porthos; it is a kind of +radiance, in which others, too, may bask and enjoy themselves. And yet +it is resented by tiny scribblers, frozen in their own chill +self-conceit. + +There is nothing incredible (if modern researches are accurate) in the +stories he tells of his own success in Hypnotism, as it is called now, +Mesmerism or Magnetism as it was called then. Who was likely to possess +these powers, if not this good-humoured natural force? "I believe that, +by aid of magnetism, a bad man might do much mischief. I doubt whether, +by help of magnetism, a good man can do the slightest good," he says, +probably with perfect justice. His dramatic success fired Victor Hugo, +and very pleasant it is to read Dumas' warm-hearted praise of that great +poet. Dumas had no jealousy--no more than Scott. As he believed in no +success without talent, so he disbelieved in genius which wins no +success. "Je ne crois pas au talent ignore, au genie inconnu, moi." +Genius he saluted wherever he met it, but was incredulous about invisible +and inaudible genius; and I own to sharing his scepticism. People who +complain of Dumas' vanity may be requested to observe that he seems just +as "vain" of Hugo's successes, or of Scribe's, as of his own, and just as +much delighted by them. + +He was now struck, as he walked on the boulevard one day, by the first +idea of _Antony_--an idea which, to be fair, seems rather absurd than +tragic, to some tastes. "A lover, caught with a married woman, kills her +to save her character, and dies on the scaffold." Here is indeed a part +to tear a cat in! + +* * * * * + +The performances of M. Dumas during the Revolution of 1830, are they not +written in the Book of the Chronicles of Alexandre the Great? But they +were not literary excellences which he then displayed, and we may leave +this king-maker to hover, "like an eagle, above the storms of anarchy." + +Even to sketch his later biography is beyond our province. In 1830 he +had forty years to run, and he filled the cup of the Hours to the brim +with activity and adventure. His career was one of unparalleled +production, punctuated by revolutions, voyages, exiles, and other +intervals of repose. The tales he tells of his prowess in 1830, and with +Garibaldi, seem credible to me, and are borne out, so far, by the +narrative of M. Maxime Ducamp, who met him at Naples, in the Garibaldian +camp. Like Mr. Jingle, in "Pickwick," he "banged the field-piece, +twanged the lyre," and was potting at the foes of the republic with a +double-barrelled gun, when he was not composing plays, romances, memoirs, +criticisms. He has told the tale of his adventures with the Comedie +Francaise, where the actors laughed at his _Antony_, and where Madame +Mars and he quarrelled and made it up again. His plays often won an +extravagant success; his novels--his great novels, that is--made all +Europe his friend. He gained large sums of money, which flowed out of +his fingers, though it is said by some that his Abbotsford, Monte Cristo, +was no more a palace than the villa which a retired tradesman builds to +shelter his old age. But the money disappeared as fast as if Monte +Cristo had really been palatial, and worthy of the fantasy of a Nero. He +got into debt, fled to Belgium, returned, founded the _Mousquetaire_, a +literary paper of the strangest and most shiftless kind. In "Alexandre +Dumas a la Maison d'Or," M. Philibert Audebrand tells the tale of this +Micawber of newspapers. Everything went into it, good or bad, and the +name of Dumas was expected to make all current coin. For Dumas, +unluckily, was as prodigal of his name as of his gold, and no reputation +could bear the drafts he made on his celebrity. His son says, in the +preface to _Le Fils Naturel_: "Tragedy, dramas, history, romance, comedy, +travel, you cast all of them in the furnace and the mould of your brain, +and you peopled the world of fiction with new creations. The newspaper, +the book, the theatre, burst asunder, too narrow for your puissant +shoulders; you fed France, Europe, America with your works; you made the +wealth of publishers, translators, plagiarists; printers and copyists +toiled after you in vain. In the fever of production you did not always +try and prove the metal which you employed, and sometimes you tossed into +the furnace whatever came to your hand. The fire made the selection: +what was your own is bronze, what was not yours vanished in smoke." + +The simile is noble and worthy of the Cyclopean craftsman, Dumas. His +great works endured; the plays which renewed the youth of the French +stage, the novels which Thackeray loved to praise, these remain, and we +trust they may always remain, to the delight of mankind and for the +sorrow of prigs. + +* * * * * + +So much has been written of Dumas' novels that criticism can hardly hope +to say more that is both new and true about them. It is acknowledged +that, in such a character as Henri III., Dumas made history live, as +magically as Scott revived the past in his Louis XI., or Balfour of +Burley. It is admitted that Dumas' good tales are told with a vigour and +life which rejoice the heart; that his narrative is never dull, never +stands still, but moves with a freedom of adventure which perhaps has no +parallel. He may fall short of the humour, the kindly wisdom, the genial +greatness of Sir Walter at his best, and he has not that supernatural +touch, that tragic grandeur, which Scott inherits from Homer and from +Shakespeare. In another Homeric quality, [Greek text], as Homer himself +calls it, in the "delight of battle" and the spirit of the fray, Scott +and Dumas are alike masters. Their fights and the fights in the +Icelandic sagas are the best that have ever been drawn by mortal man. +When swords are aloft, in siege or on the greensward, or in the midnight +chamber where an ambush is laid, Scott and Dumas are indeed themselves. +The steel rings, the bucklers clash, the parry and lunge pass and answer +too swift for the sight. If Dumas has not, as he certainly has not, the +noble philosophy and kindly knowledge of the heart which are Scott's, he +is far more swift, more witty, more diverting. He is not prolix, his +style is not involved, his dialogue is as rapid and keen as an assault at +arms. His favourite virtues and graces, we repeat it, are loyalty, +friendship, gaiety, generosity, courage, beauty, and strength. He is +himself the friend of the big, stupid, excellent Porthos; of Athos, the +noble and melancholy swordsman of sorrow; of D'Artagnan, the indomitable, +the trusty, the inexhaustible in resource; but his heart is never on the +side of the shifty Aramis, with all his beauty, dexterity, bravery, and +brilliance. The brave Bussy, and the chivalrous, the doomed La Mole, are +more dear to him; and if he embellishes their characters, giving them +charms and virtues that never were theirs, history loses nothing, and +romance and we are the gainers. In all he does, at his best, as in the +"Chevalier d'Harmenthal," he has movement, kindness, courage, and gaiety. +His philosophy of life is that old philosophy of the sagas and of Homer. +Let us enjoy the movement of the fray, the faces of fair women, the taste +of good wine; let us welcome life like a mistress, let us welcome death +like a friend, and with a jest--if death comes with honour. + +Dumas is no pessimist. "Heaven has made but one drama for man--the +world," he writes, "and during these three thousand years mankind has +been hissing it." It is certain that, if a moral censorship could have +prevented it, this great drama of mortal passions would never have been +licensed, at all, never performed. But Dumas, for one, will not hiss it, +but applauds with all his might--a charmed spectator, a fortunate actor +in the eternal piece, where all the men and women are only players. You +hear his manly laughter, you hear his mighty hands approving, you see the +tears he sheds when he had "slain Porthos"--great tears like those of +Pantagruel. + +* * * * * + +His may not be the best, nor the ultimate philosophy, but it _is_ a +philosophy, and one of which we may some day feel the want. I read the +stilted criticisms, the pedantic carpings of some modern men who cannot +write their own language, and I gather that Dumas is out of date. There +is a new philosophy of doubts and delicacies, of dallyings and +refinements, of half-hearted lookers-on, desiring and fearing some new +order of the world. Dumas does not dally nor doubt: he takes his side, +he rushes into the smoke, he strikes his foe; but there is never an +unkind word on his lip, nor a grudging thought in his heart. + +It may be said that Dumas is not a master of words and phrases, that he +is not a _raffine_ of expression, nor a jeweller of style. When I read +the maunderings, the stilted and staggering sentences, the hesitating +phrases, the far-sought and dear-bought and worthless word-juggles; the +sham scientific verbiage, the native pedantries of many modern so-called +"stylists," I rejoice that Dumas was not one of these. He told a plain +tale, in the language suited to a plain tale, with abundance of wit and +gaiety, as in the reflections of his Chicot, as in all his dialogues. But +he did not gnaw the end of his pen in search of some word that nobody had +ever used in this or that connection before. The right word came to him, +the simple straightforward phrase. Epithet-hunting may be a pretty +sport, and the bag of the epithet-hunter may contain some agreeable +epigrams and rare specimens of style; but a plain tale of adventure, of +love and war, needs none of this industry, and is even spoiled by +inopportune diligence. Speed, directness, lucidity are the +characteristics of Dumas' style, and they are exactly the characteristics +which his novels required. Scott often failed, his most loyal admirers +may admit, in these essentials; but it is rarely that Dumas fails, when +he is himself and at his best. + +* * * * * + +In spite of his heedless education, Dumas had true critical qualities, +and most admired the best things. We have already seen how he writes +about Shakespeare, Virgil, Goethe, Scott. But it may be less familiarly +known that this burly man-of-all-work, ignorant as he was of Greek, had a +true and keen appreciation of Homer. Dumas declares that he only thrice +criticised his contemporaries in an unfavourable sense, and as one +wishful to find fault. The victims were Casimir Delavigne, Scribe, and +Ponsard. On each occasion Dumas declares that, after reflecting, he saw +that he was moved by a little personal pique, not by a disinterested love +of art. He makes his confession with a rare nobility of candour; and yet +his review of Ponsard is worthy of him. M. Ponsard, who, like Dumas, was +no scholar, wrote a play styled _Ulysse_, and borrowed from the Odyssey. +Dumas follows Ponsard, Odyssey in hand, and while he proves that the +dramatist failed to understand Homer, proves that he himself was, in +essentials, a capable Homeric critic. Dumas understands that far-off +heroic age. He lives in its life and sympathises with its temper. Homer +and he are congenial; across the great gulf of time they exchange smiles +and a salute. + +"Oh! ancient Homer, dear and good and noble, I am minded now and again to +leave all and translate thee--I, who have never a word of Greek--so empty +and so dismal are the versions men make of thee, in verse or in prose." + +How Dumas came to divine Homer, as it were, through a language he knew +not, who shall say? He _did_ divine him by a natural sympathy of +excellence, and his chapters on the "Ulysse" of Ponsard are worth a +wilderness of notes by learned and most un-Homeric men. For, indeed, who +can be less like the heroic minstrel than the academic philologist? + +This universality deserves note. The Homeric student who takes up a +volume of Dumas at random finds that he is not only Homeric naturally, +but that he really knows his Homer. What did he nor know? His rapidity +in reading must have been as remarkable as his pace with the pen. As M. +Blaze de Bury says: "Instinct, experience, memory were all his; he sees +at a glance, he compares in a flash, he understands without conscious +effort, he forgets nothing that he has read." The past and present are +photographed imperishably on his brain, he knows the manners of all ages +and all countries, the names of all the arms that men have used, all the +garments they have worn, all the dishes they have tasted, all the terms +of all professions, from swordsmanship to coach-building. Other authors +have to wait, and hunt for facts; nothing stops Dumas: he knows and +remembers everything. Hence his rapidity, his facility, his positive +delight in labour: hence it came that he might be heard, like Dickens, +laughing while he worked. + +* * * * * + +This is rather a eulogy than a criticism of Dumas. His faults are on the +surface, visible to all men. He was not only rapid, he was hasty, he was +inconsistent; his need of money as well as his love of work made him put +his hand to dozens of perishable things. A beginner, entering the forest +of Dumas' books, may fail to see the trees for the wood. He may be +counselled to select first the cycle of d'Artagnan--the "Musketeers," +"Twenty Years After," and the "Vicomte de Bragelonne." Mr. Stevenson's +delightful essay on the last may have sent many readers to it; I confess +to preferring the youth of the "Musketeers" to their old age. Then there +is the cycle of the Valois, whereof the "Dame de Monsereau" is the +best--perhaps the best thing Dumas ever wrote. The "Tulipe Noire" is a +novel girls may read, as Thackeray said, with confidence. The "Chevalier +d'Harmenthal" is nearly (not quite) as good as "Quentin Durward." "Monte +Cristo" has the best beginning--and loses itself in the sands. The +novels on the Revolution are not among the most alluring: the famed +device "L. P. D." (_lilia pedibus destrue_) has the bad luck to suggest +"London Parcels Delivery." That is an accident, but the Revolution is in +itself too terrible and pitiful, and too near us (on both sides!) for +fiction. + +On Dumas' faults it has been no pleasure to dwell. In a recent work I +find the Jesuit Le Moyne quoted, saying about Charles V.: "What need that +future ages should be made acquainted so religious an Emperor was not +always chaste!" The same reticence allures one in regard to so +delightful an author as Dumas. He who had enriched so many died poor; he +who had told of conquering France, died during the Terrible Year. But he +could forgive, could appreciate, the valour of an enemy. Of the Scotch +at Waterloo he writes: "It was not enough to kill them: we had to push +them down." Dead, they still stood "shoulder to shoulder." In the same +generous temper an English cavalry officer wrote home, after Waterloo, +that he would gladly have given the rest of his life to have served, on +that day, in our infantry or in the French cavalry. These are the +spirits that warm the heart, that make us all friends; and to the great, +the brave, the generous Dumas we cry, across the years and across the +tomb, our _Ave atque vale_! + + + + +MR. STEVENSON'S WORKS + + +Perhaps the first quality in Mr. Stevenson's works, now so many and so +various, which strikes a reader, is the buoyancy, the survival of the +child in him. He has told the world often, in prose and verse, how vivid +are his memories of his own infancy. This retention of childish +recollections he shares, no doubt, with other people of genius: for +example, with George Sand, whose legend of her own infancy is much more +entertaining, and perhaps will endure longer, than her novels. Her +youth, like Scott's and like Mr. Stevenson's, was passed all in fantasy: +in playing at being some one else, in the invention of imaginary +characters, who were living to her, in the fabrication of endless +unwritten romances. Many persons, who do not astonish the world by their +genius, have lived thus in their earliest youth. But, at a given moment, +the fancy dies out of them: this often befalls imaginative boys in their +first year at school. "Many are called, few chosen"; but it may be said +with probable truth, that there has never been a man of genius in +letters, whose boyhood was not thus fantastic, "an isle of dreams." We +know how Scott and De Quincey inhabited airy castles; and Gillies tells +us, though Lockhart does not, that Scott, in manhood, was occasionally so +lost in thought, that he knew not where he was nor what he was doing. + +The peculiarity of Mr. Stevenson is not only to have been a fantastic +child, and to retain, in maturity, that fantasy ripened into imagination: +he has also kept up the habit of dramatising everything, of playing, half +consciously, many parts, of making the world "an unsubstantial fairy +place." This turn of mind it is that causes his work occasionally to +seem somewhat freakish. Thus, in the fogs and horrors of London, he +plays at being an Arabian tale-teller, and his "New Arabian Nights" are a +new kind of romanticism--Oriental, freakish, like the work of a +changeling. Indeed, this curious genius, springing from a family of +Scottish engineers, resembles nothing so much as one of the fairy +children, whom the ladies of Queen Proserpina's court used to leave in +the cradles of Border keeps or of peasants' cottages. Of the Scot he has +little but the power of touching us with a sense of the supernatural, and +a decided habit of moralising; for no Scot of genius has been more +austere with Robert Burns. On the other hand, one element of Mr. +Stevenson's ethical disquisitions is derived from his dramatic habit. His +optimism, his gay courage, his habit of accepting the world as very well +worth living in and looking at, persuaded one of his critics that he was +a hard-hearted young athlete of iron frame. Now, of the athlete he has +nothing but his love of the open air: it is the eternal child that drives +him to seek adventures and to sojourn among beach-combers and savages. +Thus, an admiring but far from optimistic critic may doubt whether Mr. +Stevenson's content with the world is not "only his fun," as Lamb said of +Coleridge's preaching; whether he is but playing at being the happy +warrior in life; whether he is not acting that part, himself to himself. +At least, it is a part fortunately conceived and admirably sustained: a +difficult part too, whereas that of the pessimist is as easy as whining. + +Mr. Stevenson's work has been very much written about, as it has engaged +and delighted readers of every age, station, and character. Boys, of +course, have been specially addressed in the books of adventure, children +in "A Child's Garden of Verse," young men and maidens in "Virginibus +Puerisque,"--all ages in all the curiously varied series of volumes. +"Kidnapped" was one of the last books which the late Lord Iddesleigh +read; and I trust there is no harm in mentioning the pleasure which Mr. +Matthew Arnold took in the same story. Critics of every sort have been +kind to Mr. Stevenson, in spite of the fact that the few who first became +acquainted with his genius praised it with all the warmth of which they +were masters. Thus he has become a kind of classic in his own day, for +an undisputed reputation makes a classic while it lasts. But was ever so +much fame won by writings which might be called scrappy and desultory by +the _advocatus diaboli_? It is a most miscellaneous literary baggage +that Mr. Stevenson carries. First, a few magazine articles; then two +little books of sentimental journeyings, which convince the reader that +Mr. Stevenson is as good company to himself as his books are to others. +Then came a volume or two of essays, literary and social, on books and +life. By this time there could be no doubt that Mr. Stevenson had a +style of his own, modelled to some extent on the essayists of the last +century, but with touches of Thackeray; with original breaks and turns, +with a delicate freakishness, in short, and a determined love of saying +things as the newspapers do not say them. All this work undoubtedly +smelt a trifle of the lamp, and was therefore dear to some, and an +offence to others. For my part, I had delighted in the essays, from the +first that appeared in _Macmillan's Magazine_, shortly after the Franco- +German war. In this little study, "Ordered South," Mr. Stevenson was +employing himself in extracting all the melancholy pleasure which the +Riviera can give to a wearied body and a mind resisting the clouds of +early malady, + + "Alas, the worn and broken board, + How can it bear the painter's dye! + The harp of strained and tuneless chord, + How to the minstrel's skill reply! + To aching eyes each landscape lowers, + To feverish pulse each gale blows chill, + And Araby's or Eden's bowers + Were barren as this moorland hill,"-- + +wrote Scott, in an hour of malady and depression. But this was not the +spirit of "Ordered South": the younger soul rose against the tyranny of +the body; and that familiar glamour which, in illness, robs Tintoretto of +his glow, did not spoil the midland sea to Mr. Stevenson. His gallant +and cheery stoicism were already with him; and so perfect, if a trifle +overstudied, was his style, that one already foresaw a new and charming +essayist. + +But none of those early works, nor the delightful book on Edinburgh, +prophesied of the story teller. Mr. Stevenson's first published tales, +the "New Arabian Nights," originally appeared in a quaintly edited weekly +paper, which nobody read, or nobody but the writers in its columns. They +welcomed the strange romances with rejoicings: but perhaps there was only +one of them who foresaw that Mr. Stevenson's _forte_ was to be fiction, +not essay writing; that he was to appeal with success to the large +public, and not to the tiny circle who surround the essayist. It did not +seem likely that our incalculable public would make themselves at home in +those fantastic purlieus which Mr. Stevenson's fancy discovered near the +Strand. The impossible Young Man with the Cream Tarts, the ghastly +revels of the Suicide Club, the Oriental caprices of the Hansom Cabs--who +could foresee that the public would taste them! It is true that Mr. +Stevenson's imagination made the President of the Club, and the cowardly +member, Mr. Malthus, as real as they were terrible. His romance always +goes hand in hand with reality; and Mr. Malthus is as much an actual man +of skin and bone, as Silas Lapham is a man of flesh and blood. The world +saw this, and applauded the "Noctes of Prince Floristan," in a fairy +London. + +Yet, excellent and unique as these things were, Mr. Stevenson had not yet +"found himself." It would be more true to say that he had only +discovered outlying skirts of his dominions. Has he ever hit on the road +to the capital yet? and will he ever enter it laurelled, and in triumph? +That is precisely what one may doubt, not as without hope. He is always +making discoveries in his realm; it is less certain that he will enter +its chief city in state. His next work was rather in the nature of +annexation and invasion than a settling of his own realms. "Prince Otto" +is not, to my mind, a ruler in his proper soil. The provinces of George +Sand and of Mr. George Meredith have been taken captive. "Prince Otto" +is fantastic indeed, but neither the fantasy nor the style is quite Mr. +Stevenson's. There are excellent passages, and the Scotch soldier of +fortune is welcome, and the ladies abound in subtlety and wit. But the +book, at least to myself, seems an extremely elaborate and skilful +_pastiche_. I cannot believe in the persons. I vaguely smell a moral +allegory (as in "Will of the Mill"). I do not clearly understand what it +is all about. The scene is fairyland; but it is not the fairyland of +Perrault. The ladies are beautiful and witty; but they are escaped from +a novel of Mr. Meredith's, and have no business here. The book is no +more Mr. Stevenson's than "The Tale of Two Cities" was Mr. Dickens's. + +It was probably by way of mere diversion and child's play that Mr. +Stevenson began "Treasure Island." He is an amateur of boyish pleasures +of masterpieces at a penny plain and twopence coloured. Probably he had +looked at the stories of adventure in penny papers which only boys read, +and he determined sportively to compete with their unknown authors. +"Treasure Island" came out in such a periodical, with the emphatic +woodcuts which adorn them. It is said that the puerile public was not +greatly stirred. A story is a story, and they rather preferred the +regular purveyors. The very faint archaism of the style may have +alienated them. But, when "Treasure Island" appeared as a real book, +then every one who had a smack of youth left was a boy again for some +happy hours. Mr. Stevenson had entered into another province of his +realm: the king had come to his own again. + +They say the seamanship is inaccurate; I care no more than I do for the +year 30. They say too many people are killed. They all died in fair +fight, except a victim of John Silver's. The conclusion is a little too +like part of Poe's most celebrated tale, but nobody has bellowed +"Plagiarist!" Some people may not look over a fence: Mr. Stevenson, if +he liked, might steal a horse,--the animal in this case is only a +skeleton. A very sober student might add that the hero is impossibly +clever; but, then, the hero is a boy, and this is a boy's book. For the +rest, the characters live. Only genius could have invented John Silver, +that terribly smooth-spoken mariner. Nothing but genius could have drawn +that simple yokel on the island, with his craving for cheese as a +Christian dainty. The blustering Billy Bones is a little masterpiece: +the blind Pew, with his tapping stick (there are three such blind tappers +in Mr. Stevenson's books), strikes terror into the boldest. Then, the +treasure is thoroughly satisfactory in kind, and there is plenty of it. +The landscape, as in the feverish, fog-smothered flat, is gallantly +painted. And there are no interfering petticoats in the story. + +As for the "Black Arrow," I confess to sharing the disabilities of the +"Critic on the Hearth," to whom it is dedicated. "Kidnapped" is less a +story than a fragment; but it is a noble fragment. Setting aside the +wicked old uncle, who in his later behaviour is of the house of Ralph +Nickleby, "Kidnapped" is all excellent--perhaps Mr. Stevenson's +masterpiece. Perhaps, too, only a Scotchman knows how good it is, and +only a Lowland Scot knows how admirable a character is the dour, brave, +conceited David Balfour. It is like being in Scotland again to come on +"the green drive-road running wide through the heather," where David +"took his last look of Kirk Essendean, the trees about the manse, and the +big rowans in the kirkyard, where his father and mother lay." Perfectly +Scotch, too, is the mouldering, empty house of the Miser, with the +stamped leather on the walls. And the Miser is as good as a Scotch +Trapbois, till he becomes homicidal, and then one fails to recognise him +unless he is a little mad, like that other frantic uncle in "The Merry +Men." The scenes on the ship, with the boy who is murdered, are better--I +think more real--than the scenes of piratical life in "The Master of +Ballantrae." The fight in the Round House, even if it were exaggerated, +would be redeemed by the "Song of the Sword of Alan." As to Alan Breck +himself, with his valour and vanity, his good heart, his good conceit of +himself, his fantastic loyalty, he is absolutely worthy of the hand that +drew Callum Bey and the Dougal creature. It is just possible that we +see, in "Kidnapped," more signs of determined labour, more evidence of +touches and retouches, than in "Rob Roy." In nothing else which it +attempts is it inferior; in mastery of landscape, as in the scene of the +lonely rock in a dry and thirsty land, it is unsurpassed. If there are +signs of laboured handling on Alan, there are none in the sketches of +Cluny and of Rob Roy's son, the piper. What a generous artist is Alan! +"Robin Oig," he said, when it was done, "ye are a great piper. I am not +fit to blow in the same kingdom with you. Body of me! ye have mair music +in your sporran than I have in my head." + +"Kidnapped," we said, is a fragment. It ends anywhere, or nowhere, as if +the pen had dropped from a weary hand. Thus, and for other reasons, one +cannot pretend to set what is not really a whole against such a rounded +whole as "Rob Roy," or against "The Legend of Montrose." Again, +"Kidnapped" is a novel without a woman in it: not here is Di Vernon, not +here is Helen McGregor. David Balfour is the pragmatic Lowlander; he +does not bear comparison, excellent as he is, with Baillie Nicol Jarvie, +the humorous Lowlander: he does not live in the memory like the immortal +Baillie. It is as a series of scenes and sketches that "Kidnapped" is +unmatched among Mr. Stevenson's works. + +In "The Master of Ballantrae" Mr. Stevenson makes a gallant effort to +enter what I have ventured to call the capital of his kingdom. He does +introduce a woman, and confronts the problems of love as well as of +fraternal hatred. The "Master" is studied, is polished _ad unguem_; it +is a whole in itself, it is a remarkably daring attempt to write the +tragedy, as, in "Waverley," Scott wrote the romance, of Scotland about +the time of the Forty-Five. With such a predecessor and rival, Mr. +Stevenson wisely leaves the pomps and battles of the Forty-Five, its +chivalry and gallantry, alone. He shows us the seamy side: the +intrigues, domestic and political; the needy Irish adventurer with the +Prince, a person whom Scott had not studied. The book, if completely +successful, would be Mr. Stevenson's "Bride of Lammermoor." To be frank, +I do not think it completely successful--a victory all along the line. +The obvious weak point is Secundra Dass, that Indian of unknown +nationality; for surely his name marks him as no Hindoo. The Master +could not have brought him, shivering like Jos Sedley's black servant, to +Scotland. As in America, this alien would have found it "too dam cold." +My power of belief (which verges on credulity) is staggered by the +ghastly attempt to reanimate the buried Master. Here, at least to my +taste, the freakish changeling has got the better of Mr. Stevenson, and +has brought in an element out of keeping with the steady lurid tragedy of +fraternal hatred. For all the rest, it were a hard judge that had +anything but praise. The brilliant blackguardism of the Master; his +touch of sentiment as he leaves Durisdeer for the last time, with a sad +old song on his lips; his fascination; his ruthlessness; his irony;--all +are perfect. It is not very easy to understand the Chevalier Bourke, +that Barry Lyndon, with no head and with a good heart, that creature of a +bewildered kindly conscience; but it is easy to like him. How admirable +is his undeflected belief in and affection for the Master! How excellent +and how Irish he is, when he buffoons himself out of his perils with the +pirates! The scenes are brilliant and living, as when the Master throws +the guinea through the Hall window, or as in the darkling duel in the +garden. It needed an austere artistic conscience to make Henry, the +younger brother, so unlovable with all his excellence, and to keep the +lady so true, yet so much in shadow. This is the best woman among Mr. +Stevenson's few women; but even she is almost always reserved, veiled as +it were. + +The old Lord, again, is a portrait as lifelike as Scott could have drawn, +and more delicately touched than Scott would have cared to draw it: a +French companion picture to the Baron Bradwardine. The whole piece reads +as if Mr. Stevenson had engaged in a struggle with himself as he wrote. +The sky is never blue, the sun never shines: we weary for a "westland +wind." There is something "thrawn," as the Scotch say, about the story; +there is often a touch of this sinister kind in the author's work. The +language is extraordinarily artful, as in the mad lord's words, "I have +felt the hilt dirl on his breast-bone." And yet, one is hardly thrilled +as one expects to be, when, as Mackellar says, "the week-old corpse +looked me for a moment in the face." + +Probably none of Mr. Stevenson's many books has made his name so familiar +as "Dr. Jekyll and Mr Hyde." I read it first in manuscript, alone, at +night; and, when the Butler and Mr. Urmson came to the Doctor's door, I +confess that I threw it down, and went hastily to bed. It is the most +gruesome of all his writings, and so perfect that one can complain only +of the slightly too obvious moral; and, again, that really Mr. Hyde was +more of a gentleman than the unctuous Dr. Jekyll, with his "bedside +manner." + +So here, not to speak of some admirable short stories like "Thrawn +Janet," is a brief catalogue--little more--of Mr. Stevenson's literary +baggage. It is all good, though variously good; yet the wise world asks +for the masterpiece. It is said that Mr. Stevenson has not ventured on +the delicate and dangerous ground of the novel, because he has not +written a modern love story. But who has? There are love affairs in +Dickens, but do we remember or care for them? Is it the love affairs +that we remember in Scott? Thackeray may touch us with Clive's and Jack +Belsize's misfortunes, with Esmond's melancholy passion, and amuse us +with Pen in so many toils, and interest us in the little heroine of the +"Shabby Genteel Story." But it is not by virtue of those episodes that +Thackeray is so great. Love stories are best done by women, as in "Mr. +Gilfil's Love Story"; and, perhaps, in an ordinary way, by writers like +Trollope. One may defy critics to name a great English author in fiction +whose chief and distinguishing merit is in his pictures of the passion of +Love. Still, they all give Love his due stroke in the battle, and +perhaps Mr. Stevenson will do so some day. But I confess that, if he +ever excels himself, I do not expect it to be in a love story. + +Possibly it may be in a play. If he again attempt the drama, he has this +in his favour, that he will not deal in supernumeraries. In his tales +his minor characters are as carefully drawn as his chief personages. +Consider, for example, the minister, Henderland, the man who is so fond +of snuff, in "Kidnapped," and, in the "Master of Ballantrae," Sir William +Johnson, the English Governor. They are the work of a mind as attentive +to details, as ready to subordinate or obliterate details which are +unessential. Thus Mr. Stevenson's writings breathe equally of work in +the study and of inspiration from adventure in the open air, and thus he +wins every vote, and pleases every class of reader. + + + + +THOMAS HAYNES BAYLY + + +I cannot sing the old songs, nor indeed any others, but I can read them, +in the neglected works of Thomas Haynes Bayly. The name of Bayly may be +unfamiliar, but every one almost has heard his ditties chanted--every one +much over forty, at all events. "I'll hang my Harp on a Willow Tree," +and "I'd be a Butterfly," and "Oh, no! we never mention Her," are dimly +dear to every friend of Mr. Richard Swiveller. If to be sung everywhere, +to hear your verses uttered in harmony with all pianos and quoted by the +world at large, be fame, Bayly had it. He was an unaffected poet. He +wrote words to airs, and he is almost absolutely forgotten. To read him +is to be carried back on the wings of music to the bowers of youth; and +to the bowers of youth I have been wafted, and to the old booksellers. +You do not find on every stall the poems of Bayly; but a copy in two +volumes has been discovered, edited by Mr. Bayly's widow (Bentley, 1844). +They saw the light in the same year as the present critic, and perhaps +they ceased to be very popular before he was breeched. Mr. Bayly, +according to Mrs. Bayly, "ably penetrated the sources of the human +heart," like Shakespeare and Mr. Howells. He also "gave to minstrelsy +the attributes of intellect and wit," and "reclaimed even festive song +from vulgarity," in which, since the age of Anacreon, festive song has +notoriously wallowed. The poet who did all this was born at Bath in Oct. +1797. His father was a genteel solicitor, and his great-grandmother was +sister to Lord Delamere, while he had a remote baronet on the mother's +side. To trace the ancestral source of his genius was difficult, as in +the case of Gifted Hopkins; but it was believed to flow from his maternal +grandfather, Mr. Freeman, whom his friend, Lord Lavington, regarded as +"one of the finest poets of his age." Bayly was at school at Winchester, +where he conducted a weekly college newspaper. His father, like Scott's, +would have made him a lawyer; but "the youth took a great dislike to it, +for his ideas loved to dwell in the regions of fancy," which are closed +to attorneys. So he thought of being a clergyman, and was sent to St. +Mary's Hall, Oxford. There "he did not apply himself to the pursuit of +academical honours," but fell in love with a young lady whose brother he +had tended in a fatal illness. But "they were both too wise to think of +living upon love, and, after mutual tears and sighs, they parted never to +meet again. The lady, though grieved, was not heartbroken, and soon +became the wife of another." They usually do. Mr. Bayly's regret was +more profound, and expressed itself in the touching ditty: + + "Oh, no, we never mention her, + Her name is never heard, + My lips are now forbid to speak + That once familiar word; + From sport to sport they hurry me + To banish my regret, + And when they only worry me-- + +[I beg Mr. Bayly's pardon] + + "And when they win a smile from me, + They fancy I forget. + + "They bid me seek in change of scene + The charms that others see, + But were I in a foreign land + They'd find no change in me. + 'Tis true that I behold no more + The valley where we met; + I do not see the hawthorn tree, + But how can I forget?" + + * * * * * + + "They tell me she is happy now, + +[And so she was, in fact.] + + The gayest of the gay; + They hint that she's forgotten me; + But heed not what they say. + Like me, perhaps, she struggles with + Each feeling of regret: + 'Tis true she's married Mr. Smith, + But, ah, does she forget!" + +The temptation to parody is really too strong; the last lines, actually +and in an authentic text, are: + + "But if she loves as I have loved, + She never can forget." + +Bayly had now struck the note, the sweet, sentimental note, of the early, +innocent, Victorian age. Jeames imitated him: + + "R. Hangeline, R. Lady mine, + Dost thou remember Jeames!" + +We should do the trick quite differently now, more like this: + + "Love spake to me and said: + 'Oh, lips, be mute; + Let that one name be dead, + That memory flown and fled, + Untouched that lute! + Go forth,' said Love, 'with willow in thy hand, + And in thy hair + Dead blossoms wear, + Blown from the sunless land. + + "'Go forth,' said Love; 'thou never more shalt see + Her shadow glimmer by the trysting tree; + But _she_ is glad, + With roses crowned and clad, + Who hath forgotten thee!' + But I made answer: 'Love! + Tell me no more thereof, + For she has drunk of that same cup as I. + Yea, though her eyes be dry, + She garners there for me + Tears salter than the sea, + Even till the day she die.' + So gave I Love the lie." + +I declare I nearly weep over these lines; for, though they are only +Bayly's sentiment hastily recast in a modern manner, there is something +so very affecting, mouldy, and unwholesome about them, that they sound as +if they had been "written up to" a sketch by a disciple of Mr. +Rossetti's. + +In a mood much more manly and moral, Mr. Bayly wrote another poem to the +young lady: + + "May thy lot in life be happy, undisturbed by thoughts of me, + The God who shelters innocence thy guard and guide will be. + Thy heart will lose the chilling sense of hopeless love at last, + And the sunshine of the future chase the shadows of the past." + +It is as easy as prose to sing in this manner. For example: + + "In fact, we need not be concerned; 'at last' comes very soon, and our + Emilia quite forgets the memory of the moon, the moon that shone on + her and us, the woods that heard our vows, the moaning of the waters, + and the murmur of the boughs. She is happy with another, and by her + we're quite forgot; she never lets a thought of us bring shadow on her + lot; and if we meet at dinner she's too clever to repine, and mentions + us to Mr. Smith as 'An old flame of mine.' And shall I grieve that it + is thus? and would I have her weep, and lose her healthy appetite and + break her healthy sleep? Not so, she's not poetical, though ne'er + shall I forget the fairy of my fancy whom I once thought I had met. + The fairy of my fancy! It was fancy, most things are; her emotions + were not steadfast as the shining of a star; but, ah, I love her image + yet, as once it shone on me, and swayed me as the low moon sways the + surging of the sea." + +Among other sports his anxious friends hurried the lovelorn Bayly to +Scotland, where he wrote much verse, and then to Dublin, which completed +his cure. "He seemed in the midst of the crowd the gayest of all, his +laughter rang merry and loud at banquet and hall." He thought no more of +studying for the Church, but went back to Bath, met a Miss Hayes, was +fascinated by Miss Hayes, "came, saw, but did _not_ conquer at once," +says Mrs. Haynes Bayly (_nee_ Hayes) with widow's pride. Her lovely name +was Helena; and I deeply regret to add that, after an education at +Oxford, Mr. Bayly, in his poems, accentuated the penultimate, which, of +course, is short. + + "Oh, think not, Helena, of leaving us yet," + +he carolled, when it would have been just as easy, and a hundred times +more correct, to sing-- + + "Oh, Helena, think not of leaving us yet." + +Miss Hayes had lands in Ireland, alas! and Mr. Bayly insinuated that, +like King Easter and King Wester in the ballad, her lovers courted her +for her lands and her fee; but he, like King Honour, + + "For her bonny face + And for her fair bodie." + +In 1825 (after being elected to the Athenaeum) Mr. Bayly "at last found +favour in the eyes of Miss Hayes." He presented her with a little ruby +heart, which she accepted, and they were married, and at first were well- +to-do, Miss Hayes being the heiress of Benjamin Hayes, Esq., of Marble +Hill, in county Cork. A friend of Mr. Bayly's described him thus: + + "I never have met on this chilling earth + So merry, so kind, so frank a youth, + In moments of pleasure a smile all mirth, + In moments of sorrow a heart of truth. + I have heard thee praised, I have seen thee led + By Fashion along her gay career; + While beautiful lips have often shed + Their flattering poison in thine ear." + +Yet he says that the poet was unspoiled. On his honeymoon, at Lord +Ashdown's, Mr. Bayly, flying from some fair sirens, retreated to a bower, +and there wrote his world-famous "I'd be a Butterfly." + + "I'd be a butterfly, living a rover, + Dying when fair things are fading away." + +The place in which the deathless strains welled from the singer's heart +was henceforth known as "Butterfly Bower." He now wrote a novel, "The +Aylmers," which has gone where the old moons go, and he became rather a +literary lion, and made the acquaintance of Theodore Hook. The loss of a +son caused him to write some devotional verses, which were not what he +did best; and now he began to try comedies. One of them, _Sold for a +Song_, succeeded very well. In the stage-coach between Wycombe Abbey and +London he wrote a successful little _lever de rideau_ called +_Perfection_; and it was lucky that he opened this vein, for his wife's +Irish property got into an Irish bog of dishonesty and difficulty. Thirty- +five pieces were contributed by him to the British stage. After a long +illness, he died on April 22nd, 1829. He did not live, this butterfly +minstrel, into the winter of human age. + +Of his poems the inevitable criticism must be that he was a Tom Moore of +much lower accomplishments. His business was to carol of the most vapid +and obvious sentiment, and to string flowers, fruits, trees, breeze, +sorrow, to-morrow, knights, coal-black steeds, regret, deception, and so +forth, into fervid anapaestics. Perhaps his success lay in knowing +exactly how little sense in poetry composers will endure and singers will +accept. Why, "words for music" are almost invariably trash now, though +the words of Elizabethan songs are better than any music, is a gloomy and +difficult question. Like most poets, I myself detest the sister art, and +don't know anything about it. But any one can see that words like +Bayly's are and have long been much more popular with musical people than +words like Shelley's, Keats's, Shakespeare's, Fletcher's, Lovelace's, or +Carew's. The natural explanation is not flattering to musical people: at +all events, the singing world doted on Bayly. + + "She never blamed him--never, + But received him when he came + With a welcome sort of shiver, + And she tried to look the same. + + "But vainly she dissembled, + For whene'er she tried to smile, + A tear unbidden trembled + In her blue eye all the while." + +This was pleasant for "him"; but the point is that these are lines to an +Indian air. Shelley, also, about the same time, wrote Lines to an Indian +air; but we may "swear, and save our oath," that the singers preferred +Bayly's. Tennyson and Coleridge could never equal the popularity of what +follows. I shall ask the persevering reader to tell me where Bayly ends, +and where parody begins: + + "When the eye of beauty closes, + When the weary are at rest, + When the shade the sunset throws is + But a vapour in the west; + When the moonlight tips the billow + With a wreath of silver foam, + And the whisper of the willow + Breaks the slumber of the gnome,-- + Night may come, but sleep will linger, + When the spirit, all forlorn, + Shuts its ear against the singer, + And the rustle of the corn + Round the sad old mansion sobbing + Bids the wakeful maid recall + Who it was that caused the throbbing + Of her bosom at the ball." + +Will this not do to sing just as well as the original? and is it not true +that "almost any man you please could reel it off for days together"? +Anything will do that speaks of forgetting people, and of being forsaken, +and about the sunset, and the ivy, and the rose. + + "Tell me no more that the tide of thine anguish + Is red as the heart's blood and salt as the sea; + That the stars in their courses command thee to languish, + That the hand of enjoyment is loosened from thee! + + "Tell me no more that, forgotten, forsaken, + Thou roamest the wild wood, thou sigh'st on the shore. + Nay, rent is the pledge that of old we had taken, + And the words that have bound me, they bind thee no more! + + "Ere the sun had gone down on thy sorrow, the maidens + Were wreathing the orange's bud in thy hair, + And the trumpets were tuning the musical cadence + That gave thee, a bride, to the baronet's heir. + + "Farewell, may no thought pierce thy breast of thy treason; + Farewell, and be happy in Hubert's embrace. + Be the belle of the ball, be the bride of the season, + With diamonds bedizened and languid in lace." + +This is mine, and I say, with modest pride, that it is quite as good as-- + + "Go, may'st thou be happy, + Though sadly we part, + In life's early summer + Grief breaks not the heart. + + "The ills that assail us + As speedily pass + As shades o'er a mirror, + Which stain not the glass." + +Anybody could do it, we say, in what Edgar Poe calls "the mad pride of +intellectuality," and it certainly looks as if it could be done by +anybody. For example, take Bayly as a moralist. His ideas are out of +the centre. This is about his standard: + + "CRUELTY. + + "'Break not the thread the spider + Is labouring to weave.' + I said, nor as I eyed her + Could dream she would deceive. + + "Her brow was pure and candid, + Her tender eyes above; + And I, if ever man did, + Fell hopelessly in love. + + "For who could deem that cruel + So fair a face might be? + That eyes so like a jewel + Were only paste for me? + + "I wove my thread, aspiring + Within her heart to climb; + I wove with zeal untiring + For ever such a time! + + "But, ah! that thread was broken + All by her fingers fair, + The vows and prayers I've spoken + Are vanished into air!" + +Did Bayly write that ditty or did I? Upon my word, I can hardly tell. I +am being hypnotised by Bayly. I lisp in numbers, and the numbers come +like mad. I can hardly ask for a light without abounding in his artless +vein. Easy, easy it seems; and yet it was Bayly after all, not you nor +I, who wrote the classic-- + + "I'll hang my harp on a willow tree, + And I'll go to the war again, + For a peaceful home has no charm for me, + A battlefield no pain; + The lady I love will soon be a bride, + With a diadem on her brow. + Ah, why did she flatter my boyish pride? + She is going to leave me now!" + +It is like listening, in the sad yellow evening, to the strains of a +barrel organ, faint and sweet, and far away. A world of memories come +jigging back--foolish fancies, dreams, desires, all beckoning and bobbing +to the old tune: + + "Oh had I but loved with a boyish love, + It would have been well for me." + +How does Bayly manage it? What is the trick of it, the obvious, simple, +meretricious trick, which somehow, after all, let us mock as we will, +Bayly could do, and we cannot? He really had a slim, serviceable, +smirking, and sighing little talent of his own; and--well, we have not +even that. Nobody forgets + + "The lady I love will soon be a bride." + +Nobody remembers our cultivated epics and esoteric sonnets, oh brother +minor poet, _mon semblable_, _mon frere_! Nor can we rival, though we +publish our books on the largest paper, the buried popularity of + + "Gaily the troubadour + Touched his guitar + When he was hastening + Home from the war, + Singing, "From Palestine + Hither I come, + Lady love! Lady love! + Welcome me home!" + +Of course this is, historically, a very incorrect rendering of a +Languedoc crusader; and the impression is not mediaeval, but of the comic +opera. Any one of us could get in more local colour for the money, and +give the crusader a cithern or citole instead of a guitar. This is how +we should do "Gaily the Troubadour" nowadays:-- + + "Sir Ralph he is hardy and mickle of might, + _Ha_, _la belle blanche aubepine_! + Soldans seven hath he slain in fight, + _Honneur a la belle Isoline_! + + "Sir Ralph he rideth in riven mail, + _Ha_, _la belle blanche aubepine_! + Beneath his nasal is his dark face pale, + _Honneur a la belle Isoline_! + + "His eyes they blaze as the burning coal, + _Ha_, _la belle blanche aubepine_! + He smiteth a stave on his gold citole, + _Honneur a la belle Isoline_! + + "From her mangonel she looketh forth, + _Ha_, _la belle blanche aubepine_! + 'Who is he spurreth so late to the north?' + _Honneur a la belle Isoline_! + + "Hark! for he speaketh a knightly name, + _Ha_, _la belle blanche aubepine_! + And her wan cheek glows as a burning flame, + _Honneur a la belle Isoline_! + + "For Sir Ralph he is hardy and mickle of might, + _Ha_, _la belle blanche aubepine_! + And his love shall ungirdle his sword to-night, + _Honneur a la belle Isoline_!" + +Such is the romantic, esoteric, old French way of saying-- + + "Hark, 'tis the troubadour + Breathing her name + Under the battlement + Softly he came, + Singing, "From Palestine + Hither I come. + Lady love! Lady love! + Welcome me home!" + +The moral of all this is that minor poetry has its fashions, and that the +butterfly Bayly could versify very successfully in the fashion of a time +simpler and less pedantic than our own. On the whole, minor poetry for +minor poetry, this artless singer, piping his native drawing-room notes, +gave a great deal of perfectly harmless, if highly uncultivated, +enjoyment. + +It must not be fancied that Mr. Bayly had only one string to his bow--or, +rather, to his lyre. He wrote a great deal, to be sure, about the +passion of love, which Count Tolstoi thinks we make too much of. He did +not dream that the affairs of the heart should be regulated by the +State--by the Permanent Secretary of the Marriage Office. That is what +we are coming to, of course, unless the enthusiasts of "free love" and +"go away as you please" failed with their little programme. No doubt +there would be poetry if the State regulated or left wholly unregulated +the affections of the future. Mr. Bayly, living in other times, among +other manners, piped of the hard tyranny of a mother: + + "We met, 'twas in a crowd, and I thought he would shun me. + He came, I could not breathe, for his eye was upon me. + He spoke, his words were cold, and his smile was unaltered, + I knew how much he felt, for his deep-toned voice faltered. + I wore my bridal robe, and I rivalled its whiteness; + Bright gems were in my hair,--how I hated their brightness! + He called me by my name as the bride of another. + Oh, thou hast been the cause of this anguish, my mother!" + +In future, when the reformers of marriage have had their way, we shall +read: + + "The world may think me gay, for I bow to my fate; + But thou hast been the cause of my anguish, O State!" + +For even when true love is regulated by the County Council or the village +community, it will still persist in not running smooth. + +Of these passions, then, Mr. Bayly could chant; but let us remember that +he could also dally with old romance, that he wrote: + + "The mistletoe hung in the castle hall, + The holly branch shone on the old oak wall." + +When the bride unluckily got into the ancient chest, + + "It closed with a spring. And, dreadful doom, + The bride lay clasped in her living tomb," + +so that her lover "mourned for his fairy bride," and never found out her +premature casket. This was true romance as understood when Peel was +consul. Mr. Bayly was rarely political; but he commemorated the heroes +of Waterloo, our last victory worth mentioning: + + "Yet mourn not for them, for in future tradition + Their fame shall abide as our tutelar star, + _To instil by example the glorious ambition_ + _Of falling_, _like them_, _in a glorious war_. + Though tears may be seen in the bright eyes of beauty, + One consolation must ever remain: + Undaunted they trod in the pathway of duty, + Which led them to glory on Waterloo's plain." + +Could there be a more simple Tyrtaeus? and who that reads him will not be +ambitious of falling in a glorious war? Bayly, indeed, is always simple. +He is "simple, sensuous, and passionate," and Milton asked no more from a +poet. + + "A wreath of orange blossoms, + When next we met, she wore. + _The expression of her features_ + _Was more thoughtful than before_." + +On his own principles Wordsworth should have admired this unaffected +statement; but Wordsworth rarely praised his contemporaries, and said +that "Guy Mannering" was a respectable effort in the style of Mrs. +Radcliffe. Nor did he even extol, though it is more in his own line, + + "Of what is the old man thinking, + As he leans on his oaken staff?" + +My own favourite among Mr. Bayly's effusions is not a sentimental ode, +but the following gush of true natural feeling:-- + + "Oh, give me new faces, new faces, new faces, + I've seen those around me a fortnight and more. + Some people grow weary of things or of places, + But persons to me are a much greater bore. + I care not for features, I'm sure to discover + Some exquisite trait in the first that you send. + My fondness falls off when the novelty's over; + I want a new face for an intimate friend." + +This is perfectly candid: we should all prefer a new face, if pretty, +every fortnight: + + "Come, I pray you, and tell me this, + All good fellows whose beards are grey, + Did not the fairest of the fair + Common grow and wearisome ere + Ever a month had passed away?" + +For once Mr. Bayly uttered in his "New Faces" a sentiment not usually +expressed, but universally felt; and now he suffers, as a poet, because +he is no longer a new face, because we have welcomed his juniors. To +Bayly we shall not return; but he has one rare merit,--he is always +perfectly plain-spoken and intelligible. + + "Farewell to my Bayly, farewell to the singer + Whose tender effusions my aunts used to sing; + Farewell, for the fame of the bard does not linger, + My favourite minstrel's no longer the thing. + But though on his temples has faded the laurel, + Though broken the lute, and though veiled is the crest, + My Bayly, at worst, is uncommonly moral, + Which is more than some new poets are, at their best." + +Farewell to our Bayly, about whose songs we may say, with Mr. Thackeray +in "Vanity Fair," that "they contain numberless good-natured, simple +appeals to the affections." We are no longer affectionate, good-natured, +simple. We are cleverer than Bayly's audience; but are we better +fellows? + + + + +THEODORE DE BANVILLE + + +There are literary reputations in France and England which seem, like the +fairies, to be unable to cross running water. Dean Swift, according to +M. Paul de Saint-Victor, is a great man at Dover, a pigmy at Calais--"Son +talent, qui enthousiasme l'Angleterre, n'inspire ailleurs qu'un morne +etonnement." M. Paul De Saint-Victor was a fair example of the French +critic, and what he says about Swift was possibly true,--for him. There +is not much resemblance between the Dean and M. Theodore de Banville, +except that the latter too is a poet who has little honour out of his own +country. He is a charming singer at Calais; at Dover he inspires _un +morne etonnement_ (a bleak perplexity). One has never seen an English +attempt to describe or estimate his genius. His unpopularity in England +is illustrated by the fact that the London Library, that respectable +institution, does not, or did not, possess a single copy of any one of +his books. He is but feebly represented even in the collection of the +British Museum. It is not hard to account for our indifference to M. De +Banville. He is a poet not only intensely French, but intensely +Parisian. He is careful of form, rather than abundant in manner. He has +no story to tell, and his sketches in prose, his attempts at criticism, +are not very weighty or instructive. With all his limitations, however, +he represents, in company with M. Leconte de Lisle, the second of the +three generations of poets over whom Victor Hugo reigned. + +M. De Banville has been called, by people who do not like, and who +apparently have not read him, _un saltimbanque litteraire_ (a literary +rope-dancer). Other critics, who do like him, but who have limited their +study to a certain portion of his books, compare him to a worker in gold, +who carefully chases or embosses dainty processions of fauns and maenads. +He is, in point of fact, something more estimable than a literary rope- +dancer, something more serious than a working jeweller in rhymes. He +calls himself _un raffine_; but he is not, like many persons who are +proud of that title, _un indifferent_ in matters of human fortune. His +earlier poems, of course, are much concerned with the matter of most +early poems--with Lydia and Cynthia and their light loves. The verses of +his second period often deal with the most evanescent subjects, and they +now retain but a slight petulance and sparkle, as of champagne that has +been too long drawn. In a prefatory plea for M. De Banville's poetry one +may add that he "has loved our people," and that no poet, no critic, has +honoured Shakespeare with brighter words of praise. + +Theodore de Banville was born at Moulin, on March 14th 1823, and he is +therefore three years younger than the dictionaries of biography would +make the world believe. He is the son of a naval officer, and, according +to M. Charles Baudelaire, a descendant of the Crusaders. He came much +too late into the world to distinguish himself in the noisy exploits of +1830, and the chief event of his youth was the publication of "Les +Cariatides" in 1842. This first volume contained a selection from the +countless verses which the poet produced between his sixteenth and his +nineteenth year. Whatever other merits the songs of minors may possess, +they have seldom that of permitting themselves to be read. "Les +Cariatides" are exceptional here. They are, above all things, readable. +"On peut les lire a peu de frais," M. De Banville says himself. He +admits that his lighter works, the poems called (in England) _vers de +societe_, are a sort of intellectual cigarette. M. Emile de Girardin +said, in the later days of the Empire, that there were too many +cigarettes in the air. Their stale perfume clings to the literature of +that time, as the odour of pastilles yet hangs about the verse of Dorat, +the designs of Eisen, the work of the Pompadour period. There is more +than smoke in M. De Banville's ruling inspiration, his lifelong devotion +to letters and to great men of letters--Shakespeare, Moliere, Homer, +Victor Hugo. These are his gods; the memory of them is his muse. His +enthusiasm is worthy of one who, though born too late to see and know the +noble wildness of 1830, yet lives on the recollections, and is +strengthened by the example, of that revival of letters. Whatever one +may say of the _renouveau_, of romanticism, with its affectations, the +young men of 1830 were sincere in their devotion to liberty, to poetry, +to knowledge. One can hardly find a more brilliant and touching belief +in these great causes than that of Edgar Quinet, as displayed in the +letters of his youth. De Banville fell on more evil times. + +When "Les Cariatides" was published poets had begun to keep an eye on the +Bourse, and artists dabbled in finance. The new volume of song in the +sordid age was a November primrose, and not unlike the flower of Spring. +There was a singular freshness and hopefulness in the verse, a wonderful +"certitude dans l'expression lyrique," as Sainte-Beuve said. The mastery +of musical speech and of various forms of song was already to be +recognised as the basis and the note of the talent of De Banville. He +had style, without which a man may write very nice verses about heaven +and hell and other matters, and may please thousands of excellent people, +but will write poetry--never. Comparing De Banville's boy's work with +the boy's work of Mr. Tennyson, one observes in each--"Les Cariatides" as +in "The Hesperides"--the _timbre_ of a new voice. Poetry so fresh seems +to make us aware of some want which we had hardly recognised, but now are +sensible of, at the moment we find it satisfied. + +It is hardly necessary to say that this gratifying and welcome +strangeness, this lyric originality, is nearly all that M. De Banville +has in common with the English poet whose two priceless volumes were +published in the same year as "Les Cariatides?" The melody of Mr. +Tennyson's lines, the cloudy palaces of his imagination, rose + + "As Ilion, like a mist rose into towers," + +when Apollo sang. The architecture was floating at first, and confused; +while the little theatre of M. De Banville's poetry, where he sat piping +to a dance of nixies, was brilliantly lit and elegant with fresh paint +and gilding. "The Cariatides" support the pediment and roof of a theatre +or temple in the Graeco-French style. The poet proposed to himself + + "A cote de Venus et du fils de Latone + Peindre la fee et la peri." + +The longest poem in the book, and the most serious, "La Voie Lactee," +reminds one of the "Palace of Art," written before the after-thought, +before the "white-eyed corpses" were found lurking in corners. Beginning +with Homer, "the Ionian father of the rest,"-- + + "Ce dieu, pere des dieux qu'adore Ionie,"-- + +the poet glorifies all the chief names of song. There is a long +procession of illustrious shadows before Shakespeare comes--Shakespeare, +whose genius includes them all. + + "Toute creation a laquelle on aspire, + Tout reve, toute chose, emanent de Shakespeare." + +His mind has lent colour to the flowers and the sky, to + + "La fleur qui brode un point sur les manteau des plaines, + Les nenuphars penches, et les pales roseaux + Qui disent leur chant sombre au murmure des eaux." + +One recognises more sincerity in this hymn to all poets, from Orpheus to +Heine, than in "Les Baisers de Pierre"--a clever imitation of De Musset's +stories in verse. Love of art and of the masters of art, a passion for +the figures of old mythology, which had returned again after their exile +in 1830, gaiety, and a revival of the dexterity of Villon and +Marot,--these things are the characteristics of M. De Banville's genius, +and all these were displayed in "Les Cariatides." Already, too, his +preoccupation with the lighter and more fantastic sort of theatrical +amusements shows itself in lines like these: + + "De son lit a baldaquin + Le soleil de son beau globe + Avait l'air d'un arlequin + Etalant sa garde-robe; + + "Et sa soeur au front changeant + Mademoiselle la Lune + Avec ses grands yeux d'argent + Regardait la terre brune." + +The verse about "the sun in bed," unconsciously Miltonic, is in a vein of +bad taste which has always had seductions for M. De Banville. He mars a +fine later poem on Roncevaux and Roland by a similar absurdity. The +angel Michael is made to stride down the steps of heaven four at a time, +and M. De Banville fancies that this sort of thing is like the simplicity +of the ages of faith. + +In "Les Cariatides," especially in the poems styled "En Habit Zinzolin," +M. De Banville revived old measures--the _rondeau_ and the "poor little +triolet." These are forms of verse which it is easy to write badly, and +hard indeed to write well. They have knocked at the door of the English +muse's garden--a runaway knock. In "Les Cariatides" they took a +subordinate place, and played their pranks in the shadow of the grave +figures of mythology, or at the close of the procession of Dionysus and +his Maenads. De Banville often recalls Keats in his choice of classical +themes. "Les Exiles," a poem of his maturity, is a French "Hyperion." +"Le Triomphe de Bacchus" reminds one of the song of the Bassarids in +"Endymion"-- + + "So many, and so many, and so gay." + +There is a pretty touch of the pedant (who exists, says M. De Banville, +in the heart of the poet) in this verse: + + "Il reve a Cama, l'amour aux cinq fleches fleuries, + Qui, lorsque soupire au milieu des roses prairies + La douce Vasanta, parmi les bosquets de santal, + Envoie aux cinq sens les fleches du carquois fatal." + +The Bacchus of Titian has none of this Oriental languor, no memories of +perfumed places where "the throne of Indian Cama slowly sails." One +cannot help admiring the fancy which saw the conquering god still steeped +in Asiatic ease, still unawakened to more vigorous passion by the fresh +wind blowing from Thrace. Of all the Olympians, Diana has been most +often hymned by M. De Banville: his imagination is haunted by the figure +of the goddess. Now she is manifest in her Hellenic aspect, as Homer +beheld her, "taking her pastime in the chase of boars and swift deer; and +with her the wild wood-nymphs are sporting the daughters of Zeus; and +Leto is glad at heart, for her child towers over them all, and is easy to +be known where all are fair" (Odyssey, vi.). Again, Artemis appears more +thoughtful, as in the sculpture of Jean Goujon, touched with the sadness +of moonlight. Yet again, she is the weary and exiled spirit that haunts +the forest of Fontainebleau, and is a stranger among the woodland folk, +the _fades_ and nixies. To this goddess, "being triple in her divided +deity," M. De Banville has written his hymn in the characteristic form of +the old French _ballade_. The translator may borrow Chaucer's apology-- + + "And eke to me it is a grete penaunce, + Syth rhyme in English hath such scarsete + To folowe, word by word, the curiosite + Of _Banville_, flower of them that make in France." + + "BALLADE SUR LES HOTES MYSTERIEUX DE LA FORET + + "Still sing the mocking fairies, as of old, + Beneath the shade of thorn and holly tree; + The west wind breathes upon them pure and cold, + And still wolves dread Diana roving free, + In secret woodland with her company. + Tis thought the peasants' hovels know her rite + When now the wolds are bathed in silver light, + And first the moonrise breaks the dusky grey, + Then down the dells, with blown soft hair and bright, + And through the dim wood Dian thrids her way. + + "With water-weeds twined in their locks of gold + The strange cold forest-fairies dance in glee; + Sylphs over-timorous and over-bold + Haunt the dark hollows where the dwarf may be, + The wild red dwarf, the nixies' enemy; + Then, 'mid their mirth, and laughter, and affright, + The sudden goddess enters, tall and white, + With one long sigh for summers passed away; + The swift feet tear the ivy nets outright, + And through the dim wood Dian thrids her way. + + "She gleans her sylvan trophies; down the wold + She hears the sobbing of the stags that flee, + Mixed with the music of the hunting rolled, + But her delight is all in archery, + And nought of ruth and pity wotteth she + More than the hounds that follow on the flight; + The tall nymph draws a golden bow of might, + And thick she rains the gentle shafts that slay, + She tosses loose her locks upon the night, + And Dian through the dim wood thrids her way. + + ENVOI. + + "Prince, let us leave the din, the dust, the spite, + The gloom and glare of towns, the plague, the blight; + Amid the forest leaves and fountain spray + There is the mystic home of our delight, + And through the dim wood Dian thrids her way." + +The piece is characteristic of M. De Banville's genius. Through his +throng of operatic nixies and sylphs of the ballet the cold Muse +sometimes passes, strange, but not unfriendly. He, for his part, has +never degraded the beautiful forms of old religion to make the laughing- +stock of fools. His little play, _Diane au Bois_, has grace, and +gravity, and tenderness like the tenderness of Keats, for the failings of +immortals. "The gods are jealous exceedingly if any goddess takes a +mortal man to her paramour, as Demeter chose Iasion." The least that +mortal poets can do is to show the Olympians an example of toleration. + +"Les Cariatides" have delayed us too long. They are wonderfully varied, +vigorous, and rich, and full of promise in many ways. The promise has +hardly been kept. There is more seriousness in "Les Stalactites" (1846), +it is true, but then there is less daring. There is one morsel that must +be quoted,--a fragment fashioned on the air and the simple words that +used to waken the musings of George Sand when she was a child, dancing +with the peasant children: + + "Nous n'irons plus an bois: les lauries sont coupes, + Les amours des bassins, les naiades en groupe + Voient reluire au soleil, en cristaux decoupes + Les flots silencieux qui coulaient de leur coupe, + Les lauriers sont coupes et le cerf aux abois + Tressaille au son du cor: nous n'irons plus au bois! + Ou des enfants joueurs riait la folle troupe + Parmi les lys d'argent aux pleurs du ciel trempes, + Voici l'herbe qu'on fauche et les lauriers qu'on coupe; + Nous n'irons plus au bois; les lauriers sont coupes." + +In these days Banville, like Gerard de Nerval in earlier times, +RONSARDISED. The poem 'A la Font Georges,' full of the memories of +childhood, sweet and rich with the air and the hour of sunset, is written +in a favourite metre of Ronsard's. Thus Ronsard says in his lyrical +version of five famous lines of Homer-- + + "La gresle ni la neige + N'ont tels lieux pour leur siege + Ne la foudre oncques la + Ne devala." + + (The snow, and wind, and hail + May never there prevail, + Nor thunderbolt doth fall, + Nor rain at all.) + +De Banville chose this metre, rapid yet melancholy, with its sad emphatic +cadence in the fourth line, as the vehicle of his childish memories: + + "O champs pleins de silence, + Ou mon heureuse enfance + Avait des jours encor + Tout files d'or!" + + O ma vieille Font Georges, + Vers qui les rouges-gorges + Et le doux rossignol + Prenaient leur vol! + +So this poem of the fountain of youth begins, "tout file d'or," and +closes when the dusk is washed with silver-- + + "A l'heure ou sous leurs voiles + Les tremblantes etoiles + Brodent le ciel changeant + De fleurs d'argent." + +The "Stalactites" might detain one long, but we must pass on after +noticing an unnamed poem which is the French counterpart of Keats' "Ode +to a Greek Urn": + + "Qu'autour du vase pur, trop beau pour la Bacchante, + La verveine, melee a des feuilles d'acanthe, + Fleurisse, et que plus bas des vierges lentement + S'avancent deux a deux, d'un pas sur et charmant, + Les bras pendants le long de leurs tuniques droites + Et les cheyeux tresses sur leurs tetes etroites." + +In the same volume of the definite series of poems come "Les Odelettes," +charming lyrics, one of which, addressed to Theophile Gautier, was +answered in the well-known verses called "L'Art." If there had been any +rivalry between the writers, M. De Banville would hardly have cared to +print Gautier's "Odelette" beside his own. The tone of it is infinitely +more manly: one seems to hear a deep, decisive voice replying to tones +far less sweet and serious. M. De Banville revenged himself nobly in +later verses addressed to Gautier, verses which criticise the genius of +that workman better, we think, than anything else that has been written +of him in prose or rhyme. + +The less serious poems of De Banville are, perhaps, the better known in +this country. His feats of graceful metrical gymnastics have been +admired by every one who cares for skill pure and simple. "Les Odes +Funambulesques" and "Les Occidentales" are like ornamental skating. The +author moves in many circles and cuts a hundred fantastic figures with a +perfect ease and smoothness. At the same time, naturally, he does not +advance nor carry his readers with him in any direction. "Les Odes +Funambulesques" were at first unsigned. They appeared in journals and +magazines, and, as M. de Banville applied the utmost lyrical skill to +light topics of the moment, they were the most popular of "Articles de +Paris." One must admit that they bore the English reader, and by this +time long _scholia_ are necessary for the enlightenment even of the +Parisian student. The verses are, perhaps, the "bird-chorus" of French +life, but they have not the permanent truth and delightfulness of the +"bird-chorus" in Aristophanes. One has easily too much of the Carnival, +the masked ball, the _debardeurs_, and the _pierrots_. The people at +whom M. De Banville laughed are dead and forgotten. There was a certain +M. Paul Limayrac of those days, who barked at the heels of Balzac, and +other great men, in the _Revue des Deux Mondes_. In his honour De +Banville wrote a song which parodied all popular aspirations to be a +flower. M. Limayrac was supposed to have become a blossom: + + "Sur les coteaux et dans les landes + Voltigeant comme un oiseleur + Buloz en ferait des guirlandes + Si Limayrac devenait fleur!" + +There is more of high spirits than of wit in the lyric, which became as +popular as our modern invocation of Jingo, the god of battles. It +chanced one night that M. Limayrac appeared at a masked ball in the opera- +house. He was recognised by some one in the crowd. The turbulent waltz +stood still, the music was silent, and the dancers of every hue howled at +the critic + + "Si Paul Limayrac devenait fleur!" + +Fancy a British reviewer, known as such to the British public, and +imagine that public taking a lively interest in the feuds of men of +letters! Paris, to be sure, was more or less of a university town thirty +years ago, and the students were certain to be largely represented at the +ball. + +The "Odes Funambulesques" contain many examples of M. De Banville's skill +in reviving old forms of verse--_triolets_, _rondeaux_, _chants royaux_, +and _ballades_. Most of these were composed for the special annoyance of +M. Buloz, M. Limayrac, and a M. Jacquot who called himself De Mirecourt. +The _rondeaux_ are full of puns in the refrain: "Houssaye ou c'est; lyre, +l'ire, lire," and so on, not very exhilarating. The _pantoum_, where +lines recur alternately, was borrowed from the distant Malay; but +primitive _pantoum_, in which the last two lines of each stanza are the +first two of the next, occur in old French folk-song. The popular trick +of repetition, affording a rest to the memory of the singer, is perhaps +the origin of all refrains. De Banville's later satires are directed +against permanent objects of human indignation--the little French +debauchee, the hypocritical friend of reaction, the bloodthirsty +_chauviniste_. Tired of the flashy luxury of the Empire, his memory goes +back to his youth-- + + "Lorsque la levre de l'aurore + Baisait nos yeux souleves, + Et que nous n'etions pas encore + La France des petits creves." + +The poem "Et Tartufe" prolongs the note of a satire always popular in +France--the satire of Scarron, Moliere, La Bruyere, against the clerical +curse of the nation. The Roman Question was Tartufe's stronghold at the +moment. "French interests" demanded that Italy should be headless. + + "Et Tartufe? Il nous dit entre deux cremus + Que pour tout bon Francais l'empire est a Rome, + Et qu'ayant pour aieux Romulus et Remus + Nous tetterons la louve a jamais--le pauvre homme." + +The new Tartufe worships St. Chassepot, who once, it will not be +forgotten, "wrought miracles"; but he has his doubts as to the morality +of explosive bullets. The nymph of modern warfare is addressed as she +hovers above the Geneva Convention,-- + + "Quoi, nymphe du canon raye, + Tu montres ces pudeurs risibles + Et ce petit air effraye + Devant les balles exploisibles?" + +De Banville was for long almost alone among poets in his freedom from +_Weltschmerz_, from regret and desire for worlds lost or impossible. In +the later and stupider corruption of the Empire, sadness and anger began +to vex even his careless muse. She had piped in her time to much wild +dancing, but could not sing to a waltz of mushroom speculators and +decorated capitalists. "Le Sang de la Coupe" contains a very powerful +poem, "The Curse of Venus," pronounced on Paris, the city of pleasure, +which has become the city of greed. This verse is appropriate to our own +commercial enterprise: + + "Vends les bois ou dormaient Viviane et Merlin! + L'Aigle de mont n'est fait que pour ta gibeciere; + La neige vierge est la pour fournir ta glaciere; + Le torrent qui bondit sur le roc sybillin, + Et vole, diamant, neige, ecume et poussiere, + N'est plus bon qu'a tourner tes meules de moulin!" + +In the burning indignation of this poem, M. De Banville reaches his +highest mark of attainment. "Les Exiles" is scarcely less impressive. +The outcast gods of Hellas, wandering in a forest of ancient Gaul, remind +one at once of the fallen deities of Heine, the decrepit Olympians of +Bruno, and the large utterance of Keats's "Hyperion." Among great +exiles, Victor Hugo, "le pere la-bas dans l'ile," is not forgotten: + + "Et toi qui l'accueillis, sol libre et verdoyant, + Qui prodigues les fleurs sur tes coteaux fertiles, + Et qui sembles sourire a l'ocean bruyant, + Sois benie, ile verte, entre toutes les iles." + +The hoarsest note of M. De Banville's lyre is that discordant one struck +in the "Idylles Prussiennes." One would not linger over poetry or prose +composed during the siege, in hours of shame and impotent scorn. The +poet sings how the sword, the flashing Durendal, is rusted and broken, +how victory is to him-- + + " . . . qui se cela + Dans un trou, sous la terre noire." + +He can spare a tender lyric to the memory of a Prussian officer, a lad of +eighteen, shot dead through a volume of Pindar which he carried in his +tunic. + +It is impossible to leave the poet of gaiety and good-humour in the mood +of the prisoner in besieged Paris. His "Trente Six Ballades Joyeuses" +make a far more pleasant subject for a last word. There is scarcely a +more delightful little volume in the French language than this collection +of verses in the most difficult of forms, which pour forth, with absolute +ease and fluency, notes of mirth, banter, joy in the spring, in letters, +art, and good-fellowship. + + "L'oiselet retourne aux forets; + Je suis un poete lyrique,"-- + +he cries, with a note like a bird's song. Among the thirty-six every one +will have his favourites. We venture to translate the "Ballad de +Banville": + + "AUX ENFANTS PERDUS + + "I know Cythera long is desolate; + I know the winds have stripped the garden green. + Alas, my friends! beneath the fierce sun's weight + A barren reef lies where Love's flowers have been, + Nor ever lover on that coast is seen! + So be it, for we seek a fabled shore, + To lull our vague desires with mystic lore, + To wander where Love's labyrinths, beguile; + There let us land, there dream for evermore: + 'It may be we shall touch the happy isle.' + + "The sea may be our sepulchre. If Fate, + If tempests wreak their wrath on us, serene + We watch the bolt of Heaven, and scorn the hate + Of angry gods that smite us in their spleen. + Perchance the jealous mists are but the screen + That veils the fairy coast we would explore. + Come, though the sea be vexed, and breakers roar, + Come, for the breath of this old world is vile, + Haste we, and toil, and faint not at the oar; + 'It may be we shall touch the happy isle.' + + "Grey serpents trail in temples desecrate + Where Cypris smiled, the golden maid, the queen, + And ruined is the palace of our state; + But happy loves flit round the mast, and keen + The shrill wind sings the silken cords between. + Heroes are we, with wearied hearts and sore, + Whose flower is faded and whose locks are hoar. + Haste, ye light skiffs, where myrtle thickets smile; + Love's panthers sleep 'mid roses, as of yore: + 'It may be we shall touch the happy isle.' + + ENVOI. + + "Sad eyes! the blue sea laughs, as heretofore. + All, singing birds, your happy music pour; + Ah, poets, leave the sordid earth awhile; + Flit to these ancient gods we still adore: + 'It may be we shall touch the happy isle.'" + +Alas! the mists that veil the shore of our Cythera are not the summer +haze of Watteau, but the smoke and steam of a commercial time. + +It is as a lyric poet that we have studied M. De Banville. "Je ne +m'entends qu'a la meurique," he says in his ballad on himself; but he can +write prose when he pleases. + +It is in his drama of _Gringoire_ acted at the Theatre Francais, and +familiar in the version of Messrs. Pollock and Besant, that M. De +Banville's prose shows to the best advantage. Louis XI. is supping with +his bourgeois friends and with the terrible Olivier le Daim. Two +beautiful girls are of the company, friends of Pierre Gringoire, the +strolling poet. Presently Gringoire himself appears. He is dying of +hunger; he does not recognise the king, and he is promised a good supper +if he will recite the new satirical "Ballade des Pendus," which he has +made at the monarch's expense. Hunger overcomes his timidity, and, +addressing himself especially to the king, he enters on this goodly +matter: + + "Where wide the forest boughs are spread, + Where Flora wakes with sylph and fay, + Are crowns and garlands of men dead, + All golden in the morning gay; + Within this ancient garden grey + Are clusters such as no mail knows, + Where Moor and Soldan bear the sway: + _This is King Louis' orchard close_! + + "These wretched folk wave overhead, + With such strange thoughts as none may say; + A moment still, then sudden sped, + They swing in a ring and waste away. + The morning smites them with her ray; + They toss with every breeze that blows, + They dance where fires of dawning play: + _This is King Louis' orchard close_! + + "All hanged and dead, they've summoned + (With Hell to aid, that hears them pray) + New legions of an army dread, + Now down the blue sky flames the day; + The dew dies off; the foul array + Of obscene ravens gathers and goes, + With wings that flap and beaks that flay: + _This is King Louis' orchard close_! + + ENVOI. + + "Prince, where leaves murmur of the May, + A tree of bitter clusters grows; + The bodies of men dead are they! + _This is King Louis' orchard close_! + +Poor Gringoire has no sooner committed himself, than he is made to +recognise the terrible king. He pleads that, if he must join the ghastly +army of the dead, he ought, at least, to be allowed to finish his supper. +This the king grants, and in the end, after Gringoire has won the heart +of the heroine, he receives his life and a fair bride with a full dowry. + +_Gringoire_ is a play very different from M. De Banville's other dramas, +and it is not included in the pretty volume of "Comedies" which closes +the Lemerre series of his poems. The poet has often declared, with an +iteration which has been parodied by M. Richepin, that "comedy is the +child of the ode," and that a drama without the "lyric" element is +scarcely a drama at all. While comedy retains either the choral ode in +its strict form, or its representative in the shape of lyric enthusiasm +(_le lyrisme_), comedy is complete and living. _Gringoire_, to our mind, +has plenty of lyric enthusiasm; but M. De Banville seems to be of a +different opinion. His republished "Comedies" are more remote from +experience than _Gringoire_, his characters are ideal creatures, familiar +types of the stage, like Scapin and "le beau Leandre," or ethereal +persons, or figures of old mythology, like Diana in _Diane au Bois_, and +Deidamia in the piece which shows Achilles among women. M. De Banville's +dramas have scarcely prose enough in them to suit the modern taste. They +are masques for the delicate diversion of an hour, and it is not in the +nature of things that they should rival the success of blatant +buffooneries. His earliest pieces--_Le Feuilleton d'Aristophane_ (acted +at the Odeon, Dec. 26th, 1852), and _Le Cousin du Roi_ (Odeon, April 4th, +1857)--were written in collaboration with Philoxene Boyer, a generous but +indiscreet patron of singers. + + "Dans les salons de Philoxene + Nous etions quatre-vingt rimeurs," + +M. De Banville wrote, parodying the "quatre-vingt ramuers" of Victor +Hugo. The memory of M. Boyer's enthusiasm for poetry and his amiable +hospitality are not unlikely to survive both his compositions and those +in which M. De Banville aided him. The latter poet began to walk alone +as a playwright in _Le Beau Leandre_ (Vaudeville, 1856)--a piece with +scarcely more substance than the French scenes in the old Franco-Italian +drama possess. We are taken into an impossible world of gay +non-morality, where a wicked old bourgeois, Orgon, his daughter +Colombine, a pretty flirt, and her lover Leandre, a light-hearted scamp, +bustle through their little hour. Leandre, who has no notion of being +married, says, "Le ciel n'est pas plus pur que mes intentions." And the +artless Colombine replies, "Alors marions-nous!" To marry Colombine +without a dowry forms, as a modern novelist says, "no part of Leandre's +profligate scheme of pleasure." There is a sort of treble intrigue. +Orgon wants to give away Colombine dowerless, Leandre to escape from the +whole transaction, and Colombine to secure her _dot_ and her husband. The +strength of the piece is the brisk action in the scene when Leandre +protests that he can't rob Orgon of his only daughter, and Orgon insists +that he can refuse nothing except his ducats to so charming a son-in-law. +The play is redeemed from sordidness by the costumes. Leandre is dressed +in the attire of Watteau's "L'Indifferent" in the Louvre, and wears a +diamond-hilted sword. The lady who plays the part of Colombine may +select (delightful privilege!) the prettiest dress in Watteau's +collection. + +This love of the glitter of the stage is very characteristic of De +Banville. In his _Deidamie_ (Odeon, Nov. 18th, 1876) the players who +took the roles of Thetis, Achilles, Odysseus, Deidamia, and the rest, +were accoutred in semi-barbaric raiment and armour of the period +immediately preceding the Graeco-Phoenician (about the eighth century +B.C.). Again we notice the touch of pedantry in the poet. As for the +play, the sombre thread in it is lent by the certainty of Achilles' early +death, the fate which drives him from Deidamie's arms, and from the sea +king's isle to the leagues under the fatal walls of Ilion. Of comic +effect there is plenty, for the sisters of Deidamie imitate all the acts +by which Achilles is likely to betray himself--grasp the sword among the +insidious presents of Odysseus, when he seizes the spear, and drink each +one of them a huge beaker of wine to the confusion of the Trojans. {70} +On a Parisian audience the imitations of the tone of the Odyssey must +have been thrown away. For example, here is a passage which is as near +being Homeric as French verse can be. Deidamie is speaking in a +melancholy mood: + + "Heureux les epoux rois assis dans leur maison, + Qui voient tranquillement s'enfuir chaque saison-- + L'epoux tenant son sceptre, environne de gloire, + Et l'epouse filant sa quenouille d'ivoire! + Mais le jeune heros que, la glaive a son franc! + Court dans le noir combat, les mains teintes de sang, + Laisse sa femme en pleurs dans sa haute demeure." + +With the accustomed pedantry, M. De Banville, in the scene of the +banquet, makes the cup-bearer go round dealing out a little wine, with +which libation is made, and then the feast goes on in proper Homeric +fashion. These overwrought details are forgotten in the parting scenes, +where Deidamie takes what she knows to be her last farewell of Achilles, +and girds him with his sword: + + "La lame de l'epee, en sa forme divine + Est pareille a la feuille austere du laurier!" + +Let it be noted that each of M. De Banville's more serious plays ends +with the same scene, with slight differences. In _Florise_ (never put on +the stage) the wandering actress of Hardy's troupe leaves her lover, the +young noble, and the shelter of his castle, to follow where art and her +genius beckon her. In _Diane au Bois_ the goddess "that leads the +precise life" turns her back on Eros, who has subdued even her, and +passes from the scene as she waves her hand in sign of a farewell +ineffably mournful. Nearer tragedy than this M. De Banville does not +care to go; and if there is any deeper tragedy in scenes of blood and in +stages strewn with corpses, from that he abstains. His _Florise_ is +perhaps too long, perhaps too learned; and certainly we are asked to +believe too much when a kind of etherealised Consuelo is set before us as +the _prima donna_ of old Hardy's troupe: + + "Mais Florise n'est pas une femme. Je suis + L'harmonieuse voix que berce vos ennuis; + Je suis la lyre aux sons divers que le poete + Fait resonner et qui sans lui serait muette-- + Une comedienne enfin. Je ne suis pas + Une femme." + +An actress who was not a woman had little to do in the company of +Scarron's Angelique and Mademoiselle de l'Estoile. Florise, in short, is +somewhat too allegorical and haughty a creature; while Colombine and +Nerine (Vaudeville, June 1864) are rather tricksy imps than women of +flesh and blood. M. De Banville's stage, on the whole, is one of glitter +and fantasy; yet he is too much a Greek for the age that appreciates "la +belle Helene," too much a lyric dramatist to please the contemporaries of +Sardou; he lends too much sentiment and dainty refinement to characters +as flimsy as those of Offenbach's drama. + +Like other French poets, M. De Banville has occasionally deigned to write +_feuilletons_ and criticisms. Not many of these scattered leaves are +collected, but one volume, "La Mer de Nice" (Poulet-Malassis et De +Broise, Paris, 1861), may be read with pleasure even by jealous admirers +of Gautier's success as a chronicler of the impressions made by southern +scenery. + +To De Banville (he does not conceal it) a journey to a place so far from +Paris as the Riviera was no slight labour. Even from the roses, the +palms, the siren sea, the wells of water under the fronds of maiden-hair +fern, his mind travels back wistfully to the city of his love. + +"I am, I have always been, one of those devotees of Paris who visit +Greece only when they gaze on the face, so fair and so terrible, of the +twice-victorious Venus of the Louvre. One of those obstinate adorers of +my town am I, who will never see Italy, save in the glass that reflects +the tawny hair of Titian's Violante, or in that dread isle of Alcinous +where Lionardo shows you the mountain peaks that waver in the blue behind +the mysterious Monna Lisa. But the Faculty of Physicians, which has, I +own, the right to be sceptical, does not believe that neuralgia can be +healed by the high sun which Titian and Veronese have fixed on the +canvas. To me the Faculty prescribes the real sun of nature and of life; +and here am I, condemned to learn in suffering all that passes in the +mind of a poet of Paris exiled from that blessed place where he finds the +Cyclades and the islands blossoming, the vale of Avalon, and all the +heavenly homes of the fairies of experience and desire." + +Nice is Tomi to this Ovid, but he makes the best of it, and sends to the +editor of the _Moniteur_ letters much more diverting than the "Tristia." +To tell the truth, he never overcomes his amazement at being out of Paris +streets, and in a glade of the lower Alps he loves to be reminded of his +dear city of pleasure. Only under the olives of Monaco, those solemn and +ancient trees, he feels what surely all men feel who walk at sunset +through their shadow--the memory of a mysterious twilight of agony in an +olive garden. + +"Et ceux-ci, les pales oliviers, n'est-ce pas de ces heures desolees ou, +comme torture supreme, le Sauveur acceptait en son ame l'irreparable +misere du doute, n'est-ce pas alors qu'il ont appris de lui a courber le +front sous le poids imperieux des souvenirs?" + +The pages which M. De Banville consecrates to the Villa Sardou, where +Rachel died, may disenchant, perhaps, some readers of Mr. Matthew +Arnold's sonnet. The scene of Rachel's death has been spoiled by +"improvements" in too theatrical taste. All these notes, however, were +made many years ago; and visitors of the Riviera, though they will find +the little book charming where it speaks of seas and hills, will learn +that France has greatly changed the city which she has annexed. As a +practical man and a Parisian, De Banville has printed (pp. 179-81) a +recipe for the concoction of the Marseilles dish, _bouillabaisse_, the +mess that Thackeray's ballad made so famous. It takes genius, however, +to cook _bouillabaisse_; and, to parody what De Banville says about his +own recipe for making a mechanical "ballade," "en employment ce moyen, on +est sur de faire une mauvaise, irremediablement mauvaise +_bouillabaisse_." The poet adds the remark that "une bouillabaisse +reussie vaut un sonnet sans defaut." + +There remains one field of M. De Banville's activity to be shortly +described. Of his "Emaux Parisiens," short studies of celebrated +writers, we need say no more than that they are written in careful prose. +M. De Banville is not only a poet, but in his "Petit Traite de Poesie +Francaise" (Bibliotheque de l'Echo de la Sorbonne, s.d.) a teacher of the +mechanical part of poetry. He does not, of course, advance a paradox +like that of Baudelaire, "that poetry can be taught in thirty lessons." +He merely instructs his pupil in the material part--the scansion, metres, +and so on--of French poetry. In this little work he introduces these +"traditional forms of verse," which once caused some talk in England: the +_rondel_, _rondeau_, _ballade,_ _villanelle_, and _chant royal_. It may +be worth while to quote his testimony as to the merit of these modes of +expression. "This cluster of forms is one of our most precious +treasures, for each of them forms a rhythmic whole, complete and perfect, +while at the same time they all possess the fresh and unconscious grace +which marks the productions of primitive times." Now, there is some +truth in this criticism; for it is a mark of man's early ingenuity, in +many arts, to seek complexity (where you would expect simplicity), and +yet to lend to that complexity an infantine naturalness. One can see +this phenomenon in early decorative art, and in early law and custom, and +even in the complicated structure of primitive languages. Now, just as +early, and even savage, races are our masters in the decorative use of +colour and of carving, so the nameless master-singers of ancient France +may be our teachers in decorative poetry, the poetry some call _vers de +societe_. Whether it is possible to go beyond this, and adapt the old +French forms to serious modern poetry, it is not for any one but time to +decide. In this matter, as in greater affairs, _securus judicat orbis +terrarum_. For my own part I scarcely believe that the revival would +serve the nobler ends of English poetry. Now let us listen again to De +Banville. + +"In the _rondel_, as in the _rondeau_ and the _ballade_, all the art is +to bring in the refrain without effort, naturally, gaily, and each time +with novel effect and with fresh light cast on the central idea." Now, +you can _teach_ no one to do that, and M. De Banville never pretends to +give any recipes for cooking _rondels_ or _ballades_ worth reading. +"Without poetic _vision_ all is mere marquetery and cabinet-maker's work: +that is, so far as poetry is concerned--nothing." It is because he was a +poet, not a mere craftsman, that Villon was and remains the king, the +absolute master, of ballad-land." About the _rondeau_, M. De Banville +avers that it possesses "nimble movement, speed, grace, lightness of +touch, and, as it were, an ancient fragrance of the soil, that must charm +all who love our country and our country's poetry, in its every age." As +for the _villanelle_, M. De Banville declares that it is the fairest +jewel in the casket of the muse Erato; while the _chant royal_ is a kind +of fossil poem, a relic of an age when kings and allegories flourished. +"The kings and the gods are dead," like Pan; or at least we no longer +find them able, by touch royal or divine, to reanimate the magnificent +_chant royal_. + +This is M. De Banville's apology in _pro lyra sua_, that light lyre of +many tones, in whose jingle the eternal note of modern sadness is heard +so rarely. If he has a lesson to teach English versifiers, surely it is +a lesson of gaiety. They are only too fond of rue and rosemary, and now +and then prefer the cypress to the bay. M. De Banville's muse is content +to wear roses in her locks, and perhaps may retain, for many years, a +laurel leaf from the ancient laurel tree which once sheltered the poet at +Turbia. + + + + +HOMER AND THE STUDY OF GREEK + + +The Greek language is being ousted from education, here, in France, and +in America. The speech of the earliest democracies is not democratic +enough for modern anarchy. There is nothing to be gained, it is said, by +a knowledge of Greek. We have not to fight the battle of life with +Hellenic waiters; and, even if we had, Romaic, or modern Greek, is much +more easily learned than the old classical tongue. The reason of this +comparative ease will be plain to any one who, retaining a vague memory +of his Greek grammar, takes up a modern Greek newspaper. He will find +that the idioms of the modern newspaper are the idioms of all newspapers, +that the grammar is the grammar of modern languages, that the opinions +are expressed in barbarous translations of barbarous French and English +journalistic _cliches_ or commonplaces. This ugly and undignified +mixture of the ancient Greek characters, and of ancient Greek words with +modern grammar and idioms, and stereotyped phrases, is extremely +distasteful to the scholar. Modern Greek, as it is at present printed, +is not the natural spoken language of the peasants. You can read a Greek +leading article, though you can hardly make sense of a Greek rural +ballad. The peasant speech is a thing of slow development; there is a +basis of ancient Greek in it, with large elements of Slavonic, Turkish, +Italian, and other imposed or imported languages. Modern literary Greek +is a hybrid of revived classical words, blended with the idioms of the +speeches which have arisen since the fall of the Roman Empire. Thus, +thanks to the modern and familiar element in it, modern Greek "as she is +writ" is much more easily learned than ancient Greek. Consequently, if +any one has need for the speech in business or travel, he can acquire as +much of it as most of us have of French, with considerable ease. People +therefore argue that ancient Greek is particularly superfluous in +schools. Why waste time on it, they ask, which could be expended on +science, on modern languages, or any other branch of education? There is +a great deal of justice in this position. The generation of men who are +now middle-aged bestowed much time and labour on Greek; and in what, it +may be asked, are they better for it? Very few of them "keep up their +Greek." Say, for example, that one was in a form with fifty boys who +began the study--it is odds against five of the survivors still reading +Greek books. The worldly advantages of the study are slight: it may lead +three of the fifty to a good degree, and one to a fellowship; but good +degrees may be taken in other subjects, and fellowships may be abolished, +or "nationalised," with all other forms of property. + +Then, why maintain Greek in schools? Only a very minute percentage of +the boys who are tormented with it really learn it. Only a still smaller +percentage can read it after they are thirty. Only one or two gain any +material advantage by it. In very truth, most minds are not framed by +nature to excel and to delight in literature, and only to such minds and +to schoolmasters is Greek valuable. + +This is the case against Greek put as powerfully as one can state it. On +the other side, we may say, though the remark may seem absurd at first +sight, that to have mastered Greek, even if you forget it, is not to have +wasted time. It really is an educational and mental discipline. The +study is so severe that it needs the earnest application of the mind. The +study is averse to indolent intellectual ways; it will not put up with a +"there or thereabouts," any more than mathematical ideas admit of being +made to seem "extremely plausible." He who writes, and who may venture +to offer himself as an example, is naturally of a most slovenly and +slatternly mental habit. It is his constant temptation to "scamp" every +kind of work, and to say "it will do well enough." He hates taking +trouble and verifying references. And he can honestly confess that +nothing in his experience has so helped, in a certain degree, to +counteract those tendencies--as the labour of thoroughly learning certain +Greek texts--the dramatists, Thucydides, some of the books of Aristotle. +Experience has satisfied him that Greek is of real educational value, +and, apart from the acknowledged and unsurpassed merit of its literature, +is a severe and logical training of the mind. The mental constitution is +strengthened and braced by the labour, even if the language is forgotten +in later life. + +It is manifest, however, that this part of education is not for +everybody. The real educational problem is to discover what boys Greek +will be good for, and what boys will only waste time and dawdle over it. +Certainly to men of a literary turn (a very minute percentage), Greek is +of an inestimable value. Great poets, even, may be ignorant of it, as +Shakespeare probably was, as Keats and Scott certainly were, as Alexandre +Dumas was. But Dumas regretted his ignorance; Scott regretted it. We +know not how much Scott's admitted laxity of style and hurried careless +habit might have been modified by a knowledge of Greek; how much of +grace, permanence, and generally of art, his genius might have gained +from the language and literature of Hellas. The most Homeric of modern +men could not read Homer. As for Keats, he was born a Greek, it has been +said; but had he been born with a knowledge of Greek, he never, probably, +would have been guilty of his chief literary faults. This is not +certain, for some modern men of letters deeply read in Greek have all the +qualities of fustian and effusiveness which Longinus most despised. Greek +will not make a luxuriously Asiatic mind Hellenic, it is certain; but it +may, at least, help to restrain effusive and rhetorical gabble. Our +Asiatic rhetoricians might perhaps be even more barbarous than they are +if Greek were a sealed book to them. However this may be, it is, at +least, well to find out in a school what boys are worth instructing in +the Greek language. Now, of their worthiness, of their chances of +success in the study, Homer seems the best touchstone; and he is +certainly the most attractive guide to the study. + +At present boys are introduced to the language of the Muses by +pedantically written grammars, full of the queerest and most arid +metaphysical and philological verbiage. The very English in which these +deplorable books are composed may be scientific, may be comprehensible by +and useful to philologists, but is utterly heart-breaking to boys. + +Philology might be made fascinating; the history of a word, and of the +processes by which its different forms, in different senses, were +developed, might be made as interesting as any other story of events. But +grammar is not taught thus: boys are introduced to a jargon about matters +meaningless, and they are naturally as much enchanted as if they were +listening to a _chimaera bombinans in vacuo_. The grammar, to them, is a +mere buzz in a chaos of nonsense. They have to learn the buzz by rote; +and a pleasant process that is--a seductive initiation into the +mysteries. When they struggle so far as to be allowed to try to read a +piece of Greek prose, they are only like the Marchioness in her +experience of beer: she once had a sip of it. Ten lines of Xenophon, +narrating how he marched so many parasangs and took breakfast, do not +amount to more than a very unrefreshing sip of Greek. Nobody even tells +the boys who Xenophon was, what he did there, and what it was all about. +Nobody gives a brief and interesting sketch of the great march, of its +history and objects. The boys straggle along with Xenophon, knowing not +whence or whither: + + "They stray through a desolate region, + And often are faint on the march." + +One by one they fall out of the ranks; they mutiny against Xenophon; they +murmur against that commander; they desert his flag. They determine that +anything is better than Greek, that nothing can be worse than Greek, and +they move the tender hearts of their parents. They are put to learn +German; which they do not learn, unluckily, but which they find it +comparatively easy to shirk. In brief, they leave school without having +learned anything whatever. + +Up to a certain age my experiences at school were precisely those which I +have described. Our grammar was not so philological, abstruse and arid +as the instruments of torture employed at present. But I hated Greek +with a deadly and sickening hatred; I hated it like a bully and a thief +of time. The verbs in [Greek text] completed my intellectual +discomfiture, and Xenophon routed me with horrible carnage. I could have +run away to sea, but for a strong impression that a life on the ocean +wave "did not set my genius," as Alan Breck says. Then we began to read +Homer; and from the very first words, in which the Muse is asked to sing +the wrath of Achilles, Peleus' son, my mind was altered, and I was the +devoted friend of Greek. Here was something worth reading about; here +one knew where one was; here was the music of words, here were poetry, +pleasure, and life. We fortunately had a teacher (Dr. Hodson) who was +not wildly enthusiastic about grammar. He would set us long pieces of +the Iliad or Odyssey to learn, and, when the day's task was done, would +make us read on, adventuring ourselves in "the unseen," and construing as +gallantly as we might, without grammar or dictionary. On the following +day we surveyed more carefully the ground we had pioneered or skirmished +over, and then advanced again. Thus, to change the metaphor, we took +Homer in large draughts, not in sips: in sips no epic can be enjoyed. We +now revelled in Homer like Keats in Spenser, like young horses let loose +in a pasture. The result was not the making of many accurate scholars, +though a few were made; others got nothing better than enjoyment in their +work, and the firm belief, opposed to that of most schoolboys, that the +ancients did not write nonsense. To love Homer, as Steele said about +loving a fair lady of quality, "is a liberal education." + +Judging from this example, I venture very humbly to think that any one +who, even at the age of Cato, wants to learn Greek, should begin where +Greek literature, where all profane literature begins--with Homer +himself. It was thus, not with grammars _in vacuo_, that the great +scholars of the Renaissance began. It was thus that Ascham and Rabelais +began, by jumping into Greek and splashing about till they learned to +swim. First, of course, a person must learn the Greek characters. Then +his or her tutor may make him read a dozen lines of Homer, marking the +cadence, the surge and thunder of the hexameters--a music which, like +that of the Sirens, few can hear without being lured to the seas and +isles of song. Then the tutor might translate a passage of moving +interest, like Priam's appeal to Achilles; first, of course, explaining +the situation. Then the teacher might go over some lines, minutely +pointing out how the Greek words are etymologically connected with many +words in English. Next, he might take a substantive and a verb, showing +roughly how their inflections arose and were developed, and how they +retain forms in Homer which do not occur in later Greek. There is no +reason why even this part of the lesson should be uninteresting. By this +time a pupil would know, more or less, where he was, what Greek is, and +what the Homeric poems are like. He might thus believe from the first +that there are good reasons for knowing Greek; that it is the key to many +worlds of life, of action, of beauty, of contemplation, of knowledge. +Then, after a few more exercises in Homer, the grammar being judiciously +worked in along with the literature of the epic, a teacher might discern +whether it was worth while for his pupils to continue in the study of +Greek. Homer would be their guide into the "realms of gold." + +It is clear enough that Homer is the best guide. His is the oldest +extant Greek, his matter is the most various and delightful, and most +appeals to the young, who are wearied by scraps of Xenophon, and who +cannot be expected to understand the Tragedians. But Homer is a poet for +all ages, all races, and all moods. To the Greeks the epics were not +only the best of romances, the richest of poetry; not only their oldest +documents about their own history,--they were also their Bible, their +treasury of religious traditions and moral teaching. With the Bible and +Shakespeare, the Homeric poems are the best training for life. There is +no good quality that they lack: manliness, courage, reverence for old age +and for the hospitable hearth; justice, piety, pity, a brave attitude +towards life and death, are all conspicuous in Homer. He has to write of +battles; and he delights in the joy of battle, and in all the movement of +war. Yet he delights not less, but more, in peace: in prosperous cities, +hearths secure, in the tender beauty of children, in the love of wedded +wives, in the frank nobility of maidens, in the beauty of earth and sky +and sea, and seaward murmuring river, in sun and snow, frost and mist and +rain, in the whispered talk of boy and girl beneath oak and pine tree. + +Living in an age where every man was a warrior, where every city might +know the worst of sack and fire, where the noblest ladies might be led +away for slaves, to light the fire and make the bed of a foreign master, +Homer inevitably regards life as a battle. To each man on earth comes +"the wicked day of destiny," as Malory unconsciously translates it, and +each man must face it as hardily as he may. + +Homer encourages them by all the maxims of chivalry and honour. His +heart is with the brave of either side--with Glaucus and Sarpedon of +Lycia no less than with Achilles and Patroclus. "Ah, friend," cries +Sarpedon, "if once escaped from this battle we were for ever to be +ageless and immortal, neither would I myself fight now in the foremost +ranks, nor would I urge thee into the wars that give renown; but now--for +assuredly ten thousand fates of death on every side beset us, and these +may no man shun, nor none avoid--forward now let us go, whether we are to +give glory or to win it!" And forth they go, to give and take renown and +death, all the shields and helms of Lycia shining behind them, through +the dust of battle, the singing of the arrows, the hurtling of spears, +the rain of stones from the Locrian slings. And shields are smitten, and +chariot-horses run wild with no man to drive them, and Sarpedon drags +down a portion of the Achaean battlement, and Aias leaps into the trench +with his deadly spear, and the whole battle shifts and shines beneath the +sun. Yet he who sings of the war, and sees it with his sightless eyes, +sees also the Trojan women working at the loom, cheating their anxious +hearts with broidery work of gold and scarlet, or raising the song to +Athene, or heating the bath for Hector, who never again may pass within +the gates of Troy. He sees the poor weaving woman, weighing the wool, +that she may not defraud her employers, and yet may win bread for her +children. He sees the children, the golden head of Astyanax, his +shrinking from the splendour of the hero's helm. He sees the child +Odysseus, going with his father through the orchard, and choosing out +some apple trees "for his very own." It is in the mouth of the ruthless +Achilles, the fatal, the fated, the swift-footed hero with the hands of +death, that Homer places the tenderest of his similes. "Wherefore +weepest thou, Patroclus, like a fond little maid, that runs by her +mother's side, praying her mother to take her up, snatching at her gown, +and hindering her as she walks, and tearfully looking at her till her +mother takes her up?--like her, Patroclus, dost thou softly weep." + +This is what Chesterfield calls "the porter-like language of Homer's +heroes." Such are the moods of Homer, so full of love of life and all +things living, so rich in all human sympathies, so readily moved when the +great hound Argus welcomes his master, whom none knew after twenty years, +but the hound knew him, and died in that welcome. With all this love of +the real, which makes him dwell so fondly on every detail of armour, of +implement, of art; on the divers-coloured gold-work of the shield, on the +making of tires for chariot-wheels, on the forging of iron, on the rose- +tinted ivory of the Sidonians, on cooking and eating and sacrificing, on +pet dogs, on wasps and their ways, on fishing, on the boar hunt, on +scenes in baths where fair maidens lave water over the heroes, on +undiscovered isles with good harbours and rich land, on ploughing, +mowing, and sowing, on the furniture of houses, on the golden vases +wherein the white dust of the dead is laid,--with all this delight in the +real, Homer is the most romantic of poets. He walks with the surest foot +in the darkling realm of dread Persephone, beneath the poplars on the +solemn last beach of Ocean. He has heard the Siren's music, and the song +of Circe, chanting as she walks to and fro, casting the golden shuttle +through the loom of gold. He enters the cave of the Man Eater; he knows +the unsunned land of the Cimmerians; in the summer of the North he has +looked, from the fiord of the Laestrygons, on the Midnight Sun. He has +dwelt on the floating isle of AEolus, with its wall of bronze unbroken, +and has sailed on those Phaeacian barks that need no help of helm or oar, +that fear no stress either of wind or tide, that come and go and return +obedient to a thought and silent as a dream. He has seen the four +maidens of Circe, daughters of wells and woods, and of sacred streams. He +is the second-sighted man, and beholds the shroud that wraps the living +who are doomed, and the mystic dripping from the walls of blood yet +unshed. He has walked in the garden closes of Phaeacia, and looked on +the face of gods who fare thither, and watch the weaving of the dance. He +has eaten the honey-sweet fruit of the lotus, and from the hand of Helen +he brings us that Egyptian nepenthe which puts all sorrow out of mind. +His real world is as real as that in _Henry V._, his enchanted isles are +charmed with the magic of the _Tempest_. His young wooers are as +insolent as Claudio, as flushed with youth; his beggar-men are brethren +of Edie Ochiltree; his Nausicaa is sister to Rosalind, with a different +charm of stately purity in love. His enchantresses hold us yet with +their sorceries; his Helen is very Beauty: she has all the sweetness of +ideal womanhood, and her repentance is without remorse. His Achilles is +youth itself, glorious, cruel, pitiful, splendid, and sad, ardent and +loving, and conscious of its doom. Homer, in truth, is to be matched +only with Shakespeare, and of Shakespeare he has not the occasional +wilfulness, freakishness, and modish obscurity. He is a poet all of +gold, universal as humanity, simple as childhood, musical now as the flow +of his own rivers, now as the heavy plunging wave of his own Ocean. + +Such, then, as far as weak words can speak of him, is the first and +greatest of poets. This is he whom English boys are to be ignorant of, +if Greek be ousted from our schools, or are to know only in the +distorting mirror of a versified, or in the pale shadow of a prose +translation. Translations are good only as teachers to bring men to +Homer. English verse has no measure which even remotely suggests the +various flow of the hexameter. Translators who employ verse give us a +feeble Homer, dashed with their own conceits, and moulded to their own +style. Translators who employ prose "tell the story without the song," +but, at least, they add no twopenny "beauties" and cheap conceits of +their own. + +I venture to offer a few examples of original translation, in which the +mannerisms of poets who have, or have not, translated Homer, are +parodied, and, of course (except in the case of Pope), exaggerated. The +passage is the speech of the Second-sighted Man, before the slaying of +the wooers in the hall:-- + + "Ah! wretched men, what ill is this ye suffer? In night are swathed + your heads, your faces, your knees; and the voice of wailing is + kindled, and cheeks are wet with tears, and with blood drip the walls, + and the fair main beams of the roof, and the porch is full of shadows, + and full is the courtyard, of ghosts that hasten hellward below the + darkness, and the sun has perished out of heaven, and an evil mist + sweeps up over all." + +So much for Homer. The first attempt at metric translation here given is +meant to be in the manner of Pope: + + "Caitiffs!" he cried, "what heaven-directed blight + Involves each countenance with clouds of night! + What pearly drop the ashen cheek bedews! + Why do the walls with gouts ensanguined ooze? + The court is thronged with ghosts that 'neath the gloom + Seek Pluto's realm, and Dis's awful doom; + In ebon curtains Phoebus hides his head, + And sable mist creeps upward from the dead." + +This appears pretty bad, and nearly as un-Homeric as a translation could +possibly be. But Pope, aided by Broome and Fenton, managed to be much +less Homeric, much more absurd, and infinitely more "classical" in the +sense in which Pope is classical: + + "O race to death devote! with Stygian shade + Each destined peer impending fates invade; + With tears your wan distorted cheeks are drowned; + With sanguine drops the walls are rubied round: + Thick swarms the spacious hall with howling ghosts, + To people Orcus and the burning coasts! + Nor gives the sun his golden orb to roll, + But universal night usurps the pole." + +Who could have conjectured that even Pope would wander away so far from +his matchless original? "Wretches!" cries Theoclymenus, the seer; and +that becomes, "O race to death devote!" "Your heads are swathed in +night," turns into "With Stygian shade each destined peer" (peer is +good!) "impending fates invade," where Homer says nothing about Styx nor +peers. The Latin Orcus takes the place of Erebus, and "the burning +coasts" are derived from modern popular theology. The very grammar +detains or defies the reader; is it the sun that does not give his golden +orb to roll, or who, or what? + +The only place where the latter-day Broome or Fenton can flatter himself +that he rivals Pope at his own game is-- + + "What pearly drop the ashen cheek bedews!" + +This is, if possible, _more_ classical than Pope's own-- + + "With tears your wan distorted cheeks are drowned." + +But Pope nobly revindicates his unparalleled power of translating +funnily, when, in place of "the walls drip with blood," he writes-- + + "With sanguine drops the walls are rubied round." + +Homer does not appear to have been acquainted with rubies; but what of +that? And how noble, how eminently worthy of Pope it is to add that the +ghosts "howl"! I tried to make them gibber, but ghosts _do_ gibber in +Homer (though not in this passage), so Pope, Fenton, Broome, and Co., +make them howl. + +No, Pope is not lightly to be rivalled by a modern translator. The +following example, a far-off following of a noted contemporary poet, may +be left unsigned-- + + "Wretches, the bane hath befallen, the night and the blight of your + sin + Sweeps like a shroud o'er the faces and limbs that were gladsome + therein; + And the dirge of the dead breaketh forth, and the faces of all men are + wet, + And the walls are besprinkled with blood, and the ghosts in the + gateway are met, + Ghosts in the court and the gateway are gathered, Hell opens her lips, + And the sun in his splendour is shrouded, and sickens in spasm of + eclipse." + +The next is longer and slower: the poet has a difficulty in telling his +story: + + "Wretches," he cried, "what doom is this? what night + Clings like a face-cloth to the face of each,-- + Sweeps like a shroud o'er knees and head? for lo! + The windy wail of death is up, and tears + On every cheek are wet; each shining wall + And beauteous interspace of beam and beam + Weeps tears of blood, and shadows in the door + Flicker, and fill the portals and the court-- + Shadows of men that hellwards yearn--and now + The sun himself hath perished out of heaven, + And all the land is darkened with a mist." + +That could never be mistaken for a version by the Laureate, as perhaps +any contemporary hack's works might have been taken for Pope's. The +difficulty, perhaps, lies here: any one knows where to have Pope, any one +knows that he will evade the _mot propre_, though the precise evasion he +may select is hard to guess. But the Laureate would keep close to his +text, and yet would write like himself, very beautifully, but not with an +Homeric swiftness and strength. Who is to imitate him? As to Mr. +William Morris, he might be fabled to render [Greek text] "niddering +wights," but beyond that, conjecture is baffled. {91} Or is _this_ the +kind of thing?-- + + "Niddering wights, what a bane do ye bear, for your knees in the + night, + And your heads and your faces, are shrouded, and clamour that knows + not delight + Rings, and your cheeks are begrutten, and blood is besprent on the + walls, + Blood on the tapestry fair woven, and barrow-wights walk in the halls. + Fetches and wraiths of the chosen of the Norns, and the sun from the + lift + Shudders, and over the midgarth and swan's bath the cloud-shadows + drift." + +It may be argued that, though this is perhaps a translation, it is not +English, never was, and never will be. But it is quite as like Homer as +the performance of Pope. + +Such as these, or not so very much better than these as might be wished, +are our efforts to translate Homer. From Chapman to Avia, or Mr. William +Morris, they are all eminently conscientious, and erroneous, and futile. +Chapman makes Homer a fanciful, euphuistic, obscure, and garrulous +Elizabethan, but Chapman has fire. Pope makes him a wit, spirited, +occasionally noble, full of points, and epigrams, and queer rococo +conventionalisms. Cowper makes him slow, lumbering, a Milton without the +music. Maginn makes him pipe an Irish jig:-- + + "Scarcely had she begun to wash + When she was aware of the grisly gash!" + +Lord Derby makes him respectable and ponderous. Lord Tennyson makes him +not less, but certainly not more, than Tennysonian. Homer, in the +Laureate's few fragments of experiment, is still a poet, but he is not +Homer. Mr. Morris, and Avia, make him Icelandic, and archaistic, and +hard to scan, though vigorous in his fetters for all that. Bohn makes +him a crib; and of other translators in prose it has been said, with a +humour which one of them appreciates, that they render Homer into a +likeness of the Book of Mormon. + +Homer is untranslatable. None of us can bend the bow of Eurytus, and +make the bow-string "ring sweetly at the touch, like the swallow's song." +The adventure is never to be achieved; and, if Greek is to be dismissed +from education, not the least of the sorrows that will ensue is English +ignorance of Homer. + + + + +THE LAST FASHIONABLE NOVEL + + +The editor of a great American newspaper once offered the author of these +lines a commission to explore a lost country, the seat of a fallen and +forgotten civilisation. It was not in Yucatan, or Central Africa, or +Thibet, or Kafiristan, this desolate region, once so popular, so gaudy, +so much frequented and desired. It was only the fashionable novels of +the Forties, say from 1835 to 1850, that I was requested to examine and +report upon. But I shrank from the colossal task. I am no Mr. Stanley; +and the length, the difficulties, the arduousness of the labour appalled +me. Besides, I do not know where that land lies, the land of the old +Fashionable Novel, the Kor of which Thackeray's Lady Fanny Flummery is +the Ayesha. What were the names of the old novels, and who were the +authors, and in the circulating library of what undiscoverable watering- +place are they to be found? We have heard of Mrs. Gore, we have heard of +_Tremayne_, _and Emilia Wyndham_, and the _Bachelor of the Albany_; and +many of us have read _Pelham_, or know him out of Carlyle's art, and +those great curses which he spoke. But who was the original, or who were +the originals, that sat for the portrait of the "Fashionable Authoress," +Lady Fanny Flummery? and of what work is _Lords and Liveries_ a parody? +The author is also credited with _Dukes and Dejeuners_, _Marchionesses +and Milliners_, etc. Could, any candidate in a literary examination name +the prototypes? "Let mantua-makers puff her, but not men," says +Thackeray, speaking of Lady Fanny Flummery, "and the Fashionable +Authoress is no more. Blessed, blessed thought! No more fiddle-faddle +novels! When will you arrive, O happy Golden Age!" + +Well, it has arrived, though we are none the happier for all that. The +Fashionable Novel has ceased to exist, and the place of the fashionable +authoress knows her no more. Thackeray plainly detested Lady Fanny. He +writes about her, her books, her critics, her successes, with a certain +bitterness. Can it be possible that a world which rather neglected +_Barry Lyndon_ was devoted to _Marchionesses and Milliners_? Lady Fanny +is represented as having editors and reviewers at her feet; she sits +among the flowers, like the Sirens, and around her are the bones of +critics corrupt in death. She is puffed for the sake of her bouquets, +her dinners, her affabilities and condescensions. She gives a reviewer a +great garnet pin, adorned wherewith he paces the town. Her adorers +compare her to "him who sleeps by Avon." In one of Mr. Black's novels +there is a lady of this kind, who captivates the tribe of "Log Rollers," +as Mr. Black calls them. This lady appears to myself to be a quite +impossible She. One has never met her with her wiles, nor come across +her track, even, and seen the bodies and the bones of those who perished +in puffing her. Some persons of rank and fashion have a taste for the +society of some men of letters, but nothing in the way of literary +puffery seems to come of it. Of course many critics like to give their +friends and acquaintances an applausive hand, and among their +acquaintances may be ladies of fashion who write novels; but we read +nowhere such extraordinary adulations as Augustus Timson bestowed on Lady +Fanny. The fashionable authoress is nearly extinct, though some persons +write well albeit they are fashionable. The fashionable novel is as dead +as a door nail: _Lothair_ was nearly the last of the species. There are +novelists who write about "Society," to be sure, like Mr. Norris; but +their tone is quite different. They do not speak as if Dukes and Earls +were some strange superior kind of beings; their manner is that of men +accustomed to and undazzled by Earls, writing for readers who do not care +whether the hero is a lord or a commoner. They are "at ease," though not +terribly "in Zion." Thackeray himself introduces plenty of the peerage, +but it cannot be said that he is always at ease in their society. He +remembers that they are lords, and is on his guard, very often, and +suspicious and sarcastic, except, perhaps when he deals with a gentleman +like Lord Kew. He examines them like curious wild animals in the Jardin +des Plantes. He is an accomplished naturalist, and not afraid of the +lion; but he remembers that the animal is royal, and has a title. Mr. +Norris, for instance, shows nothing of this mood. Mr. Trollope was not +afraid of his Dukes: he thought none the worse of a man because he was +the high and puissant prince of Omnium. As for most novelists, they no +longer paint fashionable society with enthusiasm. Mr. Henry James has +remarked that young British peers favour the word "beastly,"--a point +which does not always impress itself into other people so keenly as into +Mr. Henry James. In reading him you do not forget that his Tufts are +Tufts. But then Tufts are really strange animals to the denizens of the +Great Republic. Perhaps the modern realism has made novelists desert the +world where Dukes and Dowagers abound. Novelists do not know very much +about it; they are not wont to haunt the gilded saloons, and they prefer +to write about the manners which they know. A very good novel, in these +strange ruinous times, might be written with a Duke for hero; but nobody +writes it, and, if anybody did write it in the modern manner, it would +not in the least resemble the old fashionable novel. + +Here a curious point arises. We have all studied the ingenious lady who +calls herself Ouida. Now, is Ouida, or rather was Ouida in her early +state sublime, the last of the old fashionable novelists, or did +Thackeray unconsciously prophesy of her when he wrote his burlesque +_Lords and Liveries_? Think of the young earl of Bagnigge, "who was +never heard to admire anything except a _coulis de dindonneau a la St. +Menehould_, . . . or the bouquet of a flask of Medoc, of Carbonnell's +best quality, or a _goutte_ of Marasquin, from the cellars of Briggs and +Hobson." We have met such young patricians in _Under Two Flags_ and +_Idalia_. But then there is a difference: Ouida never tells us that her +hero was "blest with a mother of excellent principles, who had imbued his +young mind with that morality which is so superior to all the vain pomps +of the world." But a hero of Ouida's might easily have had a father who +"was struck down by the side of the gallant Collingwood in the Bay of +Fundy." The heroes themselves may have "looked at the Pyramids without +awe, at the Alps without reverence." They do say "_Corpo di Bacco_," and +the Duca de Montepulciano does reply, "_E' bellissima certamente_." And +their creator might conceivably remark "Non cuivis contigit." But Lady +Fanny Flummery's ladies could not dress as Ouida's ladies do: they could +not quote Petronius Arbiter; they had never heard of Suetonius. No age +reproduces itself. There is much of our old fashionable authoress in +Ouida's earlier tales; there is plenty of the Peerage, plenty of queer +French in old novels and Latin yet more queer; but where is the _elan_ +which takes archaeology with a rush, which sticks at no adventure, +however nobly incredible? where is the pathos, the simplicity, the purple +splendour of Ouida's manner, or manners? No, the spirit of the world, +mirroring itself in the minds of individuals, simpered, and that simper +was Lady Fanny Flummery. But it did many things more portentous than +simpering, when it reflected itself in Ouida. + +Is it that we do no longer gape on the aristocracy admiringly, and write +of them curiously, as if they were creatures in a Paradise? Is it that +Thackeray has converted us? In part, surely, we are just as snobbish as +ever, though the gods of our adoration totter to their fall, and "a +hideous hum" from the mob outside thrills through the temples. In +fiction, on the other hand, the world of fashion is "played out." Nobody +cares to read or write about the dear duchess. If a peer comes into a +novel he comes in, not as a coroneted curiosity, but as a man, just as if +he were a dentist, or a stockbroker. His rank is an accident; it used to +be the essence of his luminous apparition. I scarce remember a lord in +all the many works of Mr. Besant, nor do they people the romances of Mr. +Black. Mr. Kipling does not deal in them, nor Mr. George Meredith much; +Mr. Haggard hardly gets beyond a baronet, and _he_ wears chain mail in +Central Africa, and tools with an axe. Mrs. Oliphant has a Scotch peer, +but he is less interesting and prominent than his family ghost. No, we +have only Ouida left, and Mr. Norris--who writes about people of fashion, +indeed, but who has nothing in him of the old fashionable novelist. + +Is it to a Republic, to France, that we must look for our fashionable +novels--to France and to America. Every third person in M. Guy de +Maupassant's tales has a "de," and is a Marquis or a Vicomte. As for M. +Paul Bourget, one really can be happy with him in the fearless old +fashion. With him we meet Lord Henry Bohun, and M. De Casal (a Vicomte), +and all the Marquises and _Marquises_; and all the pale blue boudoirs, +and sentimental Duchesses, whose hearts are only too good, and who get +into the most complicated amorous scrapes. That young Republican, M. +Bourget, sincerely loves a _blason_, a pedigree, diamonds, lace, silver +dressing cases, silver baths, essences, pomatums, _le grand luxe_. So +does Gyp: apart from her wit, Gyp is delightful to read, introducing us +to the very best of bad company. Even M. Fortune du Boisgobey likes a +Vicomte, and is partial to the _noblesse_, while M. Georges Ohnet is +accused of entering the golden world of rank, like a man without a +wedding garment, and of being lost and at sea among his aristocrats. They +order these things better in France: they still appeal to the fine old +natural taste for rank and luxury, splendour and refinement. What is Gyp +but a Lady Fanny Flummery _reussie_,--Lady Fanny with the trifling +additional qualities of wit and daring? Observe her noble scorn of M. +George Ohnet: it is a fashionable arrogance. + +To my mind, I confess, the decay of the British fashionable novel seems +one of the most threatening signs of the times. Even in France +institutions are much more permanent than here. In France they have +fashionable novels, and very good novels too: no man of sense will deny +that they are far better than our dilettantism of the slums, or our +religious and social tracts in the disguise of romance. If there is no +new tale of treasure and bandits and fights and lions handy, may I have a +fashionable novel in French to fall back upon! Even Count Tolstoi does +not disdain the _genre_. There is some uncommonly high life in _Anna +Karenine_. He adds a great deal of psychology, to be sure; so does M. +Paul Bourget. But he takes you among smart people, who have everything +handsome about them--titles, and lands, and rents. Is it not a hard +thing that an honest British snob, if he wants to move in the highest +circles of fiction, must turn to French novelists, or Russian, or +American? As to the American novels of the _elite_ and the _beau monde_, +their elegance is obscured to English eyes, because that which makes one +New Yorker better than another, that which creates the Upper Ten Thousand +(dear phrase!) of New York, is so inconspicuous. For example, the +scientific inquirer may venture himself among the novels of two young +American authors. Few English students make this voyage of exploration. +But the romances of these ingenious writers are really, or really try to +be, a kind of fashionable novels. It is a queer domain of fashion, to be +sure, peopled by the strangest aborigines, who talk and are talked about +in a language most interesting to the philologist. Here poor Lady Fanny +Flummery would have been sadly to seek, for her characters, though noble, +were moral, and her pen was wielded on the side of Church and State. But +these western fashionables have morals and a lingo of their own, made in +equal parts of the American idioms and of expressions transferred from +the jargon of Decadence and the _Parnassiculet Contemporain_. As one +peruses these novels one thinks of a new tale to be told--_The Last of +the Fashionables_, who died away, like the buffalo and the grisly bear, +in some canon or forest of the Wild West. I think this distinguished +being, _Ultimus hominum venustiorum_, will find the last remnants of the +Gentlemanly Party in some Indian tribe, Apaches or Sioux. I see him +raised to the rank of chief, and leading the red-skinned and painted +cavaliers on the war-path against the Vulgarians of the ultimate +Democracy. To depict this dandy chief would require the art at once of a +Cooper and a Ouida. Let me attempt-- + + + +THE LAST FIGHT OF FOUR HAIR-BRUSHES + + +By this time the Sioux were flying in all directions, mowed down by the +fire of Gatling and Maxim guns. The scrub of Little Big Horn Creek was +strewn with the bodies of writhing braves. On the livid and volcanic +heights of Mount Buncombe, the painted tents were blazing merrily. But +on a mound above the creek, an ancient fortress of some long-forgotten +people, a small group of Indian horsemen, might be observed, steady as +rocks in the refluent tide of war. The fire from their Winchester +repeaters blazed out like the streamers of the Northern Lights. Again +and again the flower of the United States army had charged up the mound, +only to recoil in flight, or to line the cliff with their corpses. The +First Irish Cuirassiers had been annihilated: Parnell's own, alas! in the +heat of the combat had turned their fratricidal black-thorns on +M'Carthy's brigade, and these two gallant squadrons were mixed and +broken, falling beneath the blows of brothers estranged. + +But at last the fire from the Redmen on the bluff slackened and grew +silent. The ammunition was exhausted. There was a movement in the group +of braves. Crazy Horse and Bald Coyote turned to Four Hair-Brushes, who +sat his steed Atalanta, last winner of the last Grand National, with all +the old careless elegance of the Row. + +"Four Hair-Brushes," said Crazy Horse (and a tear rolled down his painted +cheek), "nought is left but flight." + +"Then fly," said Four Hair-Brushes, languidly, lighting a cigarette, +which he took from a diamond-studded gold _etui_, the gift of the Kaiser +in old days. + +"Nay, not without the White Chief," said Bald Coyote; and he seized the +reins of Four Hair-Brushes, to lead him from that stricken field. + +"Vous etes trop vieux jeu, mon ami," murmured Four Hair-Brushes, "je ne +suis ni Edouard II., ni Charles Edouard a Culloden. Quatre-brosses +meurt, mais il ne se rend pas." + +The Indian released his hold, baffled by the erudition and the calm +courage of his captain. + +"I make tracks," he said; and, swinging round so that his horse concealed +his body, he galloped down the bluff, and through the American cavalry, +scattering death from the arrows which he loosed under his horse's neck. + +Four Hair-Brushes was alone. + +Unarmed, as ever, he sat, save for the hunting-whip in his right hand. + +"Scalp him!" yelled the Friendly Crows. + +"Nay, take him alive: a seemlier knight never backed steed!" cried the +gallant Americans. + +From their midst rode a courteous cavalier, Captain John Barry, the +scholar, the hero of sword and pen. + +"Yield thee, Sir Knight!" he said, doffing his _kepi_ in martial +courtesy. + +Four Hair-Brushes replied to his salute, and was opening his curved and +delicate lips to speak, when a chance bullet struck him full in the +breast. He threw up his arms, reeled, and fell. The gallant American, +leaping from saddle to ground, rushed to raise his head. + +Through the war-paint he recognised him. + +"Great Heaven!" he cried, "it is--" + +"Hush!" whispered Four Hair-Brushes, with a weary smile: "let Annesley de +Vere of the Blues die unnamed. Tell them that I fell in harness." + +He did, indeed. Under his feathered and painted cloak Barry found that +Annesley, ever careful of his figure, ever loyal in love, the last of the +Dandies, yet wore the corset of Madame de Telliere. It was wet with his +life-blood. + +"So dies," said Barry, "the last English gentleman." + + + + +THACKERAY + + +"I thought how some people's towering intellects and splendid cultivated +geniuses rise upon simple, beautiful foundations hidden out of sight." +Thus, in his Letters to Mrs. Brookfield, Mr. Thackeray wrote, after +visiting the crypt of Canterbury Cathedral, with its "charming, +harmonious, powerful combination of arches and shafts, beautiful +whichever way you see them developed, like a fine music." The simile +applies to his own character and genius, to his own and perhaps to that +of most great authors, whose works are our pleasure and comfort in this +troublesome world. There are critics who profess a desire to hear +nothing, or as little as may be, of the lives of great artists, whether +their instrument of art was the pen, or the brush, or the chisel, or the +strings and reeds of music. With those critics perhaps most of us agree, +when we read books that gossip about Shelley, or Coleridge, or Byron. +"Give us their poetry," we say, "and leave their characters alone: we do +not want tattle about Claire and chatter about Harriet; we want to be +happy with 'The Skylark' or 'The Cloud.'" Possibly this instinct is +correct, where such a poet as Shelley is concerned, whose life, like his +poetry, was as "the life of winds and tides," whose genius, unlike the +skylark's, was more true to the point of heaven than the point of home. +But reflection shows us that on the whole, as Mr. Thackeray says, a man's +genius must be builded on the foundations of his character. Where that +genius deals with the mingled stuff of human life--sorrow, desire, love, +hatred, kindness, meanness--then the foundation of character is +especially important. People are sometimes glad that we know so little +of Shakespeare the man; yet who can doubt that a true revelation of his +character would be not less worthy, noble and charming than the general +effect of his poems? In him, it is certain, we should always find an +example of nobility, of generosity, of charity and kindness and +self-forgetfulness. Indeed, we find these qualities, as a rule, in the +biographies of the great sympathetic poets and men of genius of the pen--I +do not say in the lives of rebels of genius, "meteoric poets" like Byron. +The same basis, the same foundations of rectitude, of honour, of +goodness, of melancholy, and of mirth, underlie the art of Moliere, of +Scott, of Fielding, and as his correspondence shows, of Thackeray. + +It seems probable that a complete biography of Thackeray will never be +written. It was his wish to live in his works alone: that wish his +descendants respect; and we must probably regard the Letters to Mr. and +Mrs. Brookfield as the last private and authentic record of the man which +will be given, at least to this generation. In these Letters all +sympathetic readers will find the man they have long known from his +writings--the man with a heart so tender that the world often drove him +back into a bitterness of opposition, into an assumed hardness and +defensive cynicism. There are readers so unluckily constituted that they +can see nothing in Thackeray but this bitterness, this cruel sense of +meanness and power of analysing shabby emotions, sneaking vanities, +contemptible ambitions. All of us must often feel with regret that he +allowed himself to be made too unhappy by the spectacle of failings so +common in the world he knew best, that he dwelt on them too long and +lashed them too complacently. One hopes never to read "Lovel the +Widower" again, and one gladly skips some of the speeches of the Old +Campaigner in "The Newcomes." They are terrible, but not more terrible +than life. Yet it is hard to understand how Mr. Ruskin, for example, can +let such scenes and characters hide from his view the kindness, +gentleness, and pity of Thackeray's nature. The Letters must open all +eyes that are not wilfully closed, and should at last overcome every +prejudice. + +In the Letters we see a man literally hungering and thirsting after +affection, after love--a man cut off by a cruel stroke of fate from his +natural solace, from the centre of a home. + + "God took from me a lady dear," + +he says, in the most touching medley of doggerel and poetry, made +"instead of writing my _Punch_ this morning." Losing "a lady dear," he +takes refuge as he may, he finds comfort as he can, in all the affections +within his reach, in the society of an old college friend and of his +wife, in the love of all children, beginning with his own; in a generous +liking for all good work and for all good fellows. + +Did any man of letters except Scott ever write of his rivals as Thackeray +wrote of Dickens? Artists are a jealous race. "Potter hates potter, and +poet hates poet," as Hesiod said so long ago. This jealousy is not mere +envy, it is really a strong sense of how things ought to be done, in any +art, touched with a natural preference for a man's own way of doing them. +Now, what could be more unlike than the "ways" of Dickens and Thackeray? +The subjects chosen by these great authors are not more diverse than +their styles. Thackeray writes like a scholar, not in the narrow sense, +but rather as a student and a master of all the refinements and resources +of language. Dickens copies the chaff of the street, or he roams into +melodramatics, "drops into poetry"--blank verse at least--and touches all +with peculiarities, we might say mannerisms, of his own. I have often +thought, and even tried to act on the thought, that some amusing +imaginary letters might be written, from characters of Dickens about +characters of Thackeray, from characters of Thackeray about characters of +Dickens. They might be supposed to meet each other in society, and +describe each other. Can you not fancy Captain Costigan on Dick +Swiveller, Blanche Amory on Agnes, Pen on David Copperfield, and that +"tiger" Steerforth? What would the family solicitor of "The Newcomes" +have to say of Mr. Tulkinghorn? How would George Warrington appreciate +Mr. Pickwick? Yes, the two great novelists were as opposed as two men +could be--in manner, in style, in knowledge of books, and of the world. +And yet how admirably Thackeray writes about Dickens, in his letters as +in his books! How he delights in him! How manly is that emulation which +enables an author to see all the points in his rival, and not to carp at +them, but to praise, and be stimulated to keener effort! + +Consider this passage. "Have you read Dickens? O! it is charming! Brave +Dickens! It has some of his very prettiest touches--those inimitable +Dickens touches which make such a great man of him, and the reading of +the book has done another author a great deal of good." + +Thackeray is just as generous, and perhaps more critical, in writing of +Kingsley. "A fine, honest, go-a-head fellow, who charges a subject +heartily, impetuously, with the greatest courage and simplicity; but with +narrow eyes (his are extraordinarily brave, blue and honest), and with +little knowledge of the world, I think. But he is superior to us +worldlings in many ways, and I wish I had some of his honest pluck." + +I have often wished that great authors, when their days of creation were +over, when "their minds grow grey and bald," would condescend to tell us +the history of their books. Sir Walter Scott did something of this kind +in the prefaces to the last edition of the Waverley Novels published +during his life. What can be more interesting than his account, in the +introduction to the "Fortunes of Nigel," of how he worked, how he +planned, and found all his plots and plans overridden by the demon at the +end of his pen! But Sir Walter was failing when he began those literary +confessions; good as they are, he came to them too late. Yet these are +not confessions which an author can make early. The pagan Aztecs only +confessed once in a lifetime--in old age, when they had fewer temptations +to fall to their old loves: then they made a clean breast of it once for +all. So it might be with an author. While he is in his creative vigour, +we want to hear about his fancied persons, about Pendennis, Beatrix, +Becky, not about himself, and how he invented them. But when he has +passed his best, then it is he who becomes of interest; it is about +himself that we wish him to speak, as far as he modestly may. Who would +not give "Lovel the Widower" and "Philip" for some autobiographical and +literary prefaces to the older novels? They need not have been more +egotistic than the "Roundabout Papers." They would have had far more +charm. Some things cannot be confessed. We do not ask who was the +original Sir Pitt Crawley, or the original Blanche Amory. But we might +learn in what mood, in what circumstances the author wrote this passage +or that. + +The Letters contain a few notes of this kind, a few literary confessions. +We hear that Emmy Sedley was partly suggested by Mrs. Brookfield, partly +by Thackeray's mother, much by his own wife. There scarce seems room for +so many elements in Emmy's personality. For some reason ladies love her +not, nor do men adore her. I have been her faithful knight ever since I +was ten years old and read "Vanity Fair" somewhat stealthily. Why does +one like her except because she is such a thorough woman? She is not +clever, she is not very beautiful, she is unhappy, and she can be +jealous. One pities her, and that is akin to a more tender sentiment; +one pities her while she sits in the corner, and Becky's green eyes +flatter her oaf of a husband; one pities her in the poverty of her +father's house, in the famous battle over Daffy's Elixir, in the +separation from the younger George. You begin to wish some great joy to +come to her: it does not come unalloyed; you know that Dobbin had bad +quarters of an hour with this lady, and had to disguise a little of his +tenderness for his own daughter. Yes, Emmy is more complex than she +seems, and perhaps it needed three ladies to contribute the various +elements of her person and her character. One of them, the jealous one, +lent a touch to Helen Pendennis, to Laura, to Lady Castlewood. Probably +this may be the reason why some persons dislike Thackeray so. His very +best women are not angels. {109} Are the very best women angels? It is +a pious opinion--that borders on heresy. + +When the Letters began to be written, in 1847, Thackeray had his worst +years, in a worldly sense, behind him. They were past: the times when he +wrote in _Galignani_ for ten francs a day. Has any literary ghoul +disinterred his old ten-franc articles in _Galignani_? The time of +"Barry Lyndon," too, was over. He says nothing of that masterpiece, and +only a word about "The Great Hoggarty Diamond." "I have been re-reading +it. Upon my word and honour, if it doesn't make you cry, I shall have a +mean opinion of you. It was written at a time of great affliction, when +my heart was very soft and humble. Amen. Ich habe auch viel geliebt." +Of "Pendennis," as it goes on, he writes that it is "awfully stupid," +which has not been the verdict of the ages. He picks up materials as he +passes. He dines with some officers, and perhaps he stations them at +Chatteris. He meets Miss G---, and her converse suggests a love passage +between Pen and Blanche. Why did he dislike fair women so? It runs all +through his novels. Becky is fair. Blanche is fair. Outside the old +yellow covers of "Pendennis," you see the blonde mermaid, "amusing, and +clever, and depraved," dragging the lover to the sea, and the nut-brown +maid holding him back. Angelina, of the "Rose and the Ring," is the +Becky of childhood; she is fair, and the good Rosalba is _brune_. In +writing "Pendennis" he had a singular experience. He looked over his own +"back numbers," and found "a passage which I had utterly forgotten as if +I had never read or written it." In Lockhart's "Life of Scott," James +Ballantyne says that "when the 'Bride of Lammermoor' was first put into +his hands in a complete shape, he did not recollect one single incident, +character, or conversation it contained." That is to say, he remembered +nothing of his own invention, though his memory of the traditional parts +was as clear as ever. Ballantyne remarks, "The history of the human mind +contains nothing more wonderful." The experience of Thackeray is a +parallel to that of Scott. "Pendennis," it must be noted, was +interrupted by a severe illness, and "The Bride of Lammermoor" was +dictated by Sir Walter when in great physical pain. On one occasion +Thackeray "lit upon a very stupid part of 'Pendennis,' I am sorry to say; +and yet how well written it is! What a shame the author don't write a +complete good story! Will he die before doing so? or come back from +America and do it?" + +Did he ever write "a complete, good story"? Did any one ever do such a +thing as write a three-volume, novel, or a novel of equal length, which +was "a complete, good story"? Probably not; or if any mortal ever +succeeded in the task, it was the great Alexander Dumas. "The Three +Musketeers," I take leave to think, and "Twenty Years After," are +complete good stories, good from beginning to end, stories from beginning +to end without a break, without needless episode. Perhaps one may say as +much for "Old Mortality," and for "Quentin Durward." But Scott and Dumas +were born story-tellers; narrative was the essence of their genius at its +best; the current of romance rolls fleetly on, bearing with it persons +and events, mirroring scenes, but never ceasing to be the main thing--the +central interest. Perhaps narrative like this is the chief success of +the novelist. He is triumphant when he carries us on, as Wolf, the +famous critic, was carried on by the tide of the Iliad, "in that pure and +rapid current of action." Nobody would claim this especial merit for +Thackeray. He is one of the greatest of novelists; he displays human +nature and human conduct so that we forget ourselves in his persons, but +he does not make us forget ourselves in their fortunes. Whether Clive +does or does not marry Ethel, or Esmond, Beatrix, does not very greatly +excite our curiosity. We cannot ring the bells for Clive's second +wedding as the villagers celebrated the bridal of Pamela. It is the +development of character, it is the author's comments, it is his own +personality and his unmatched and inimitable style, that win our +admiration and affection. We can take up "Vanity Fair," or "Pendennis," +or "The Newcomes," just where the book opens by chance, and read them +with delight, as we may read Montaigne. When one says one can take up a +book anywhere, it generally means that one can also lay it down anywhere. +But it is not so with Thackeray. Whenever we meet him he holds us with +his charm, his humour, his eloquence, his tenderness. If he has not, in +the highest degree, the narrative power, he does possess, in a degree +perhaps beyond any other writer of English, that kind of poetic quality +which is not incompatible with prose writing. + +A great deal has been said about prose poetry. As a rule, it is very +poor stuff. As prose it has a tendency to run into blank verse; as +poetry it is highly rhetorical and self-conscious. It would be invidious +and might be irritating to select examples from modern masters of prose- +poetry. They have never been poets. But the prose of a poet like Milton +may be, and is, poetical in the true sense; and so, upon occasions, was +the prose of Thackeray. Some examples linger always in the memory, and +dwell with their music in the hearing. One I have quoted elsewhere; the +passage in "The Newcomes" where Clive, at the lecture on the Poetry of +the Domestic Affections, given by Sir Barnes Newcome, sees Ethel, whom he +has lost. + +"And the past, and its dear histories, and youth and its hopes and +passions, and tones and looks, for ever echoing in the heart and present +in the memory--those, no doubt, poor Clive saw and heard as he looked +across the great gulf of time and parting and grief, and beheld the woman +he had loved for many years." "The great gulf of time, and parting, and +grief,"--some of us are on the farther side of it, and our old selves, +and our old happiness, and our old affections beyond, grow near, grow +clear, now and then, at the sight of a face met by chance in the world, +at the chance sound of a voice. Such are human fortunes, and human +sorrows; not the worst, not the greatest, for these old loves do not +die--they live in exile, and are the better parts of our souls. Not the +greatest, nor the worst of sorrows, for shame is worse, and hopeless +hunger, and a life all of barren toil without distractions, without joy, +must be far worse. But of those myriad tragedies of the life of the +poor, Thackeray does not write. How far he was aware of them, how deeply +he felt them, we are not informed. His highest tragedy is that of the +hunger of the heart; his most noble prose sounds in that meeting of Harry +Esmond with Lady Castlewood, in the immortal speech which has the burden, +"bringing your sheaves with you!" All that scene appears to me no less +unique, no less unsurpassable, no less perfect, than the "Ode to the +Nightingale" of Keats, or the _Lycidas_ of Milton. It were superfluous +to linger over the humour of Thackeray. Only Shakespeare and Dickens +have graced the language with so many happy memories of queer, pleasant +people, with so many quaint phrases, each of which has a kind of +freemasonry, and when uttered, or recalled, makes all friends of +Thackeray into family friends of each other. The sayings of Mr. Harry +Foker, of Captain Costigan, of Gumbo, are all like old dear family +phrases, they live imperishable and always new, like the words of Sir +John, the fat knight, or of Sancho Panza, or of Dick Swiveller, or that +other Sancho, Sam Weller. They have that Shakespearian gift of being +ever appropriate, and undyingly fresh. + +These are among the graces of Thackeray, these and that inimitable style, +which always tempts and always baffles the admiring and despairing +copyist. Where did he find the trick of it, of the words which are +invariably the best words, and invariably fall exactly in the best +places? "The best words in the best places," is part of Coleridge's +definition of poetry; it is also the essence of Thackeray's prose. In +these Letters to Mrs. Brookfield the style is precisely the style of the +novels and essays. The style, with Thackeray, was the man. He could not +write otherwise. But probably, to the last, this perfection was not +mechanical, was not attained without labour and care. In Dr. John +Brown's works, in his essay on Thackeray, there is an example of a proof- +sheet on which the master has made corrections, and those corrections +bring the passage up to his accustomed level, to the originality of his +rhythm. Here is the piece:-- + + "Another Finis, another slice of life which _Tempus edax_ has + devoured! And I may have to write the word once or twice, perhaps, + and then an end of Ends. [Finite is ever and Infinite beginning.] Oh, + the troubles, the cares, the _ennui_, [the complications,] the + repetitions, the old conversations over and over again, and here and + there all the delightful passages, the dear, the brief, the forever- + remembered! + + "[And then] A few chapters more, and then the last, and behold Finis + itself coming to an end, and the Infinite beginning." + + "How like music this," writes Dr. John Brown--"like one trying the + same air in different ways, as it were, searching out and sounding all + its depths!" The words were almost the last that Thackeray wrote, + perhaps the very last. They reply, as it were, to other words which + he had written long before to Mrs. Brookfield. + + "I don't pity anybody who leaves the world; not even a fair young girl + in her prime; I pity those remaining. On her journey, if it pleases + God to send her, depend on it there's no cause for grief, that's but + an earthly condition. Out of our stormy life, and brought nearer the + Divine light and warmth, there must be a serene climate. Can't you + fancy sailing into the calm?" + +Ah! nowhere else shall we find the Golden Bride, "passionless bride, +divine Tranquillity." + +As human nature persistently demands a moral, and, as, to say truth, +Thackeray was constantly meeting the demand, what is the lesson of his +life and his writings? So people may ask, and yet how futile is the +answer! Life has a different meaning, a different riddle, a different +reply for each of us. There is not one sphinx, but many sphinxes--as +many as there are women and men. We must all answer for ourselves. +Pascal has one answer, "Believe!" Moliere has another, "Observe!" +Thackeray's answer is, "Be good and enjoy!" but a melancholy enjoyment +was his. Dr. John Brown says: + +"His persistent state, especially for the later half of his life, was +profoundly _morne_, there is no other word for it. This arose in part +from temperament, from a quick sense of the littleness and wretchedness +of mankind . . . This feeling, acting on a harsh and savage nature, ended +in the _saeva indignatio_ of Swift; acting on the kindly and sensitive +nature of Mr. Thackeray, it led only to compassionate sadness." + +A great part of his life, and most of his happiness, lay in love. "Ich +habe auch viel geliebt," he says, and it is a hazardous kind of happiness +that attends great affection. Your capital is always at the mercy of +failures, of death, of jealousy, of estrangement. But he had so much +love to give that he could not but trust those perilous investments. + +Other troubles he had that may have been diversions from those. He did +not always keep that manly common sense in regard to criticism, which he +shows in a letter to Mrs. Brookfield. "Did you read the _Spectator's_ +sarcastic notice of 'Vanity Fair'? I don't think it is just, but think +Kintoul (Rintoul?) is a very honest man, and rather inclined to deal +severely with his private friends lest he should fall into the other +extreme: to be sure he keeps out of it, I mean the other extreme, very +well." + +That is the way to take unfavourable criticisms--not to go declaring that +a man is your enemy because he does not like your book, your ballads, +your idyls, your sermons, what you please. Why cannot people keep +literature and liking apart? Am I bound to think Jones a bad citizen, a +bad man, a bad householder, because his poetry leaves me cold? Need he +regard me as a malevolent green-eyed monster, because I don't want to +read him? Thackeray was not always true in his later years to these +excellent principles. He was troubled about trifles of criticisms and +gossip, _bagatelles_ not worth noticing, still less worth remembering and +recording. Do not let us record them, then. + +We cannot expect for Thackeray, we cannot even desire for him, a +popularity like that of Dickens. If ever any man wrote for the people, +it was Dickens. Where can we find such a benefactor, and who has +lightened so many lives with such merriment as he? But Thackeray wrote, +like the mass of authors, for the literary class--for all who have the +sense of style, the delight in the best language. He will endure while +English literature endures, while English civilisation lasts. We cannot +expect all the world to share our affection for this humourist whose +mirth springs from his melancholy. His religion, his education, his life +in this unsatisfying world, are not the life, the education, the religion +of the great majority of human kind. He cannot reach so many ears and +hearts as Shakespeare or Dickens, and some of those whom he reaches will +always and inevitably misjudge him. _Mais c'est mon homme_, one may say, +as La Fontaine said of Moliere. Of modern writers, putting Scott aside, +he is to me the most friendly and sympathetic. Great genius as he was, +he was also a penman, a journalist; and journalists and penmen will +always look to him as their big brother, the man in their own line of +whom they are proudest. As devout Catholics did not always worship the +greatest saints, but the friendliest saints, their own, so we scribes +burn our cheap incense to St. William Makepeace. He could do all that +any of us could do, and he did it infinitely better. A piece of verse +for _Punch_, a paragraph, a caricature, were not beneath the dignity of +the author of "Esmond." He had the kindness and helpfulness which I, for +one, have never met a journalist who lacked. He was a good Englishman; +the boy within him never died; he loved children, and boys, and a little +slang, and a boxing match. If he had failings, who knew them better than +he? How often he is at once the boy at the swishing block and Dr. Birch +who does not spare the rod! Let us believe with that beloved physician, +our old friend Dr. John Brown, that "Mr. Thackeray was much greater, much +nobler than his works, great and noble as they are." Let us part with +him, remembering his own words: + + "Come wealth or want, come good or ill, + Let young and old accept their part, + And bow before the awful Will, + And bear it with an honest heart." + + + + +DICKENS + + +"I cannot read Dickens!" How many people make this confession, with a +front of brass, and do not seem to know how poor a figure they cut! +George Eliot says that a difference of taste in jokes is a great cause of +domestic discomfort. A difference of taste in books, when it is decided +and vigorous, breaks many a possible friendship, and nips many a young +liking in the bud. I would not willingly seem intolerant. A man may not +like Sophocles, may speak disrespectfully of Virgil, and even sneer at +Herodotus, and yet may be endured. But he or she (it is usually she) who +contemns Scott, and "cannot read Dickens," is a person with whom I would +fain have no further converse. If she be a lady, and if one meets her at +dinner, she must of course be borne with, and "suffered gladly." But she +has dug a gulf that nothing can bridge; she may be fair, clever and +popular, but she is Anathema. I feel towards her (or him if he wears a +beard) as Bucklaw did towards the person who should make inquiries about +that bridal night of Lammermoor. + +But this admission does not mean that one is sealed of the tribe of +Charles--that one is a Dickensite pure and simple, convinced and +devout--any more than Mr. Matthew Arnold was a Wordsworthian. Dickens +has many such worshippers, especially (and this is an argument in favour +of the faith) among those who knew him in his life. He must have had a +wonderful charm; for his friends in life are his literary partisans, his +uncompromising partisans, even to this day. They will have no +half-hearted admiration, and scout him who tries to speak of Dickens as +of an artist not flawless, no less than they scorn him who cannot read +Dickens at all. At one time this honourable enthusiasm (as among the +Wordsworthians) took the shape of "endless imitation." That is over; +only here and there is an imitator of the master left in the land. All +his own genius was needed to carry his mannerisms; the mannerisms without +the genius were an armour that no devoted David had proved, that none +could wear with success. + +Of all great writers since Scott, Dickens is probably the man to whom the +world owes most gratitude. No other has caused so many sad hearts to be +lifted up in laughter; no other has added so much mirth to the toilsome +and perplexed life of men, of poor and rich, of learned and unlearned. "A +vast hope has passed across the world," says Alfred de Musset; we may say +that with Dickens a happy smile, a joyous laugh, went round this earth. +To have made us laugh so frequently, so inextinguishably, so kindly--that +is his great good deed. It will be said, and with a great deal of truth, +that he has purged us with pity and terror as well as with laughter. But +it is becoming plain that his command of tears is less assured than of +old, and I cannot honestly regret that some of his pathos--not all, by +any means--is losing its charm and its certainty of appeal. Dickens's +humour was rarely too obvious; it was essentially personal, original, +quaint, unexpected, and his own. His pathos was not infrequently derived +from sources open to all the world, and capable of being drawn from by +very commonplace writers. Little Nells and Dombeys, children unhappy, +overthrown early in the _melee_ of the world, and dying among weeping +readers, no longer affect us as they affected another generation. Mrs. +Beecher Stowe and the author of "Misunderstood," once made some people +weep like anything by these simple means. Ouida can do it; plenty of +people can do it. Dickens lives by virtue of what none but he can do: by +virtue of Sairey Gamp, and Sam Weller, and Dick Swiveller, and Mr. +Squeers, with a thousand other old friends, of whom we can never weary. +No more than Cleopatra's can custom stale _their_ infinite variety. + +I do not say that Dickens' pathos is always of the too facile sort, which +plays round children's death-beds. Other pathos he has, more fine and +not less genuine. It may be morbid and contemptible to feel "a great +inclination to cry" over David Copperfield's boyish infatuation for +Steerforth; but I feel it. Steerforth was a "tiger,"--as Major Pendennis +would have said, a tiger with his curly hair and his ambrosial whiskers. +But when a little boy loses his heart to a big boy he does not think of +this. Traddles thought of it. "Shame, J. Steerforth!" cried Traddles, +when Steerforth bullied the usher. Traddles had not lost his heart, nor +set up the big boy as a god in the shrine thereof. But boys do these +things; most of us have had our Steerforths--tall, strong, handsome, +brave, good-humoured. Far off across the years I see the face of such an +one, and remember that emotion which is described in "David Copperfield," +chap. xix., towards the end of the chapter. I don't know any other +novelist who has touched this young and absolutely disinterested belief +of a little boy in a big one--touched it so kindly and seriously, that is +there is a hint of it in "Dr. Birch's School Days." + +But Dickens is always excellent in his boys, of whom he has drawn dozens +of types--all capital. There is Tommy Traddles, for example. And how +can people say that Dickens could not draw a gentleman? The boy who +shouted, "Shame, J. Steerforth!" was a gentleman, if one may pretend to +have an opinion about a theme so difficult. The Dodger and Charley Bates +are delightful boys--especially Bates. Pip, in the good old days, when +he was the prowling boy, and fought Herbert Pocket, was not less +attractive, and Herbert himself, with his theory and practice of the art +of self-defence--could Nelson have been more brave, or Shelley (as in Mr. +Matthew Arnold's opinion) more "ineffectual"? Even the boys at Dotheboys +Hall are each of them quite distinct. Dickens's boys are almost as dear +to me as Thackeray's--as little Rawdon himself. There is one exception. +I cannot interest myself in Little Dombey. Little David Copperfield is a +jewel of a boy with a turn for books. Doubtless he is created out of +Dickens's memories of himself as a child. That is true pathos again, and +not overwrought, when David is sent to Creakle's, and his poor troubled +mother dare hardly say farewell to him. + +And this brings us back to that debatable thing--the pathos of +Dickens--from which one has been withdrawn by the attractions of his +boys. Little Dombey is a prize example of his pathos. Little Nell is +another. Jeffrey, of the _Edinburgh Review_, who criticised "Marmion" +and the "Lady of the Lake" so vindictively, shed tears over Little Nell. +It is a matter of taste, or, as Science might say, of the lachrymal +glands as developed in each individual. But the lachrymal glands of this +amateur are not developed in that direction. Little Dombey and Little +Nell leave me with a pair of dry eyes. I do not "melt visibly" over +Little Dombey, like the weak-eyed young man who took out his books and +trunk to the coach. The poor little chap was feeble and feverish, and +had dreams of trying to stop a river with his childish hands, or to choke +it with sand. It may be very good pathology, but I cannot see that it is +at all right pathos. One does not like copy to be made out of the +sufferings of children or of animals. One's heart hardens: the object is +too manifest, the trick is too easy. Conceive a child of Dombey's age +remarking, with his latest breath, "Tell them that the picture on the +stairs at school is not Divine enough!" That is not the delirium of +infancy, that is art-criticism: it is the _Athenaeum_ on Mr. Holman Hunt. +It is not true to nature; it is not good in art: it is the kind of thing +that appears in Sunday-school books about the virtuous little boy who +died. There is more true pathos in many a page of "Huckleberry Finn." +Yet this is what Jeffrey gushed over. "There has been nothing like the +actual dying of that sweet Paul." So much can age enfeeble the +intellect, that he who had known Scott, and yet nibbled at his fame, +descended to admiring the feeblest of false sentiment. As for Little +Nell, who also has caused floods of tears to be shed, her case is +sufficiently illustrated by the picture in the first edition ("Master +Humphrey's Clock,", 1840, p. 210): + + "'When I die + Put near me something that has loved the light, + And had the sky above it always.' Those + Were her words." + + "Dear, gentle, patient, noble Nell was dead!" + +The pathos is about as good as the prose, and _that_ is blank verse. Are +the words in the former quotation in the least like anything that a +little girl would say? A German sentimentalist might have said them; +Obermann might have murmured them in his weaker moments. Let us try a +piece of domestic pathos by another hand. It is the dawn of Waterloo. + +"Heart-stained and shame-stricken, he stood at the bed's foot, and looked +at the sleeping girl. How dared he--who was he--to pray for one so +spotless! God bless her! God bless her! He came to the bedside, and +looked at the hand, the little soft hand, lying asleep, and he bent over +the pillow noiselessly towards the gentle pale face. Two fair arms +closed tenderly round his neck as he stooped down. 'I am awake, George,' +the poor child said, with a sob." + +I know I am making enemies of a large proportion of the readers of this +page. "Odious, sneering beast!" is the quotation which they will apply, +perhaps unconscious of its origin, to a critic who is humble but would +fain be honest, to a critic who thinks that Dickens has his weak places, +and that his pathos is one of these. It cannot be helped. Each of us +has his author who is a favourite, a friend, an idol, whose immaculate +perfection he maintains against all comers. For example, things are +urged against Scott; I receive them in the attitude of the deaf adder of +St. Augustine, who stops one ear with his tail and presses the other +against the dust. The same with Moliere: M. Scherer utters complaints +against Moliere! He would not convince me, even if I were convinced. So, +with regard to Dickens, the true believer will not listen, he will not be +persuaded. But if any one feels a little shaken, let him try it another +way. There is a character in M. Alphonse Daudet's "Froment Jeune et +Rissler Aine"--a character who, people say, is taken bodily from Dickens. +This is Desiree Delobelle, the deformed girl, the daughter of _un rate_, +a pretentious imbecile actor. She is poor, stunted, laborious, toiling +at a small industry; she is in love, is rejected, she tries to drown +herself, she dies. The sequence of ideas is in Dickens's vein; but read +the tale, and I think you will see how little the thing is overdone, how +simple and unforced it is, compared with analogous persons and scenes in +the work of the English master. The idiotic yell of "plagiarism" has +been raised, of course, by critical _cretins_. M. Daudet, as I +understand what he says in "Trente Ans de Paris," had not read Dickens at +all, when he wrote "Froment Jeune"--certainly had not read "Our Mutual +Friend." But there is something of Dickens's genius in M. Daudet's, and +that something is kept much better in hand by the Frenchman, is more +subordinated to the principles of taste and of truth. + +On the other hand, to be done with this point, look at Delobelle, the +father of Desiree, and compare him with Dickens's splendid strollers, +with Mr. Vincent Crummles, and Mr. Lenville, and the rest. As in Desiree +so in Delobelle, M. Daudet's picture is much the more truthful. But it +is truthful with a bitter kind of truth. Now, there is nothing not +genial and delightful in Crummles and Mrs. Crummles and the Infant +Phenomenon. Here Dickens has got into a region unlike the region of the +pathetic, into a world that welcomes _charge_ or caricature, the world of +humour. We do not know, we never meet Crummleses quite so +unsophisticated as Vincent, who is "not a Prussian," who "can't think who +puts these things into the papers." But we do meet stage people who come +very near to this _naivete_ of self-advertisement, and some of whom are +just as dismal as Crummles is delightful. + +Here, no doubt, is Dickens's _forte_. Here his genius is all pure gold, +in his successful studies or inventions of the humorous, of character +parts. One literally does not know where to begin or end in one's +admiration for this creative power that peopled our fancies with such +troops of dear and impossible friends. "Pickwick" comes practically +first, and he never surpassed "Pickwick." He was a poor story-teller, +and in "Pickwick" he had no story to tell; he merely wandered at +adventure in that merrier England which was before railways were. +"Pickwick" is the last of the stories of the road that begin in the +wandering, aimless, adventurous romances of Greece, or in Petronius +Arbiter, and that live with the life of "Gil Blas" and "Don Quixote," of +"Le Roman Comique," of "Tom Jones" and "Joseph Andrews." These tales are +progresses along highways bristling with adventure, and among inns full +of confusion, Mr. Pickwick's affair with the lady with yellow curl-papers +being a mild example. Though "Tom Jones" has a plot so excellent, no +plot is needed here, and no consecutive story is required. Detached +experiences, vagrants of every rank that come and go, as in real life, +are all the material of the artist. With such materials Dickens was +exactly suited; he was at home on high-road and lane, street and field- +path, in inns and yeomen's warm hospitable houses. Never a humour +escaped him, and he had such a wealth of fun and high spirits in these +glad days as never any other possessed before. He was not in the least a +bookish man, not in any degree a scholar; but Nature taught him, and +while he wrote with Nature for his teacher, with men and women for his +matter, with diversion for his aim, he was unsurpassable--nay, he was +unapproachable. + +He could not rest here; he was, after all, a child of an age that grew +sad, and earnest, and thoughtful. He saw abuses round him--injustice, +and oppression, and cruelty. He had a heart to which those things were +not only abhorrent, but, as it were, maddening. He knew how great an +influence he wielded, and who can blame him for using it in any cause he +thought good? Very possibly he might have been a greater artist if he +had been less of a man, if he had been quite disinterested, and had never +written "with a purpose." That is common, and even rather obsolete +critical talk. But when we remember that Fielding, too, very often wrote +"with a purpose," and that purpose the protection of the poor and +unfriended; and when we remember what an artist Fielding was, I do not +see how we can blame Dickens. Occasionally he made his art and his +purpose blend so happily that his work was all the better for his +benevolent intentions. We owe Mr. Squeers, Mrs. Squeers, Fanny Squeers, +Wackford and all, to Dickens's indignation against the nefarious school +pirates of his time. If he is less successful in attacking the Court of +Chancery, and very much less successful still with the Red Tape and +Circumlocution Office affairs, that may be merely because he was less in +the humour, and not because he had a purpose in his mind. Every one of a +man's books cannot be his masterpiece. There is nothing in literary talk +so annoying as the spiteful joy with which many people declare that an +author is "worked out," because his last book is less happy than some +that went before. There came a time in Dickens' career when his works, +to my own taste and that of many people, seemed laboured, artificial--in +fact, more or less failures. These books range from "Dombey and Son," +through "Little Dorrit," I dare not say to "Our Mutual Friend." One is +afraid that "Edwin Drood," too, suggests the malady which Sir Walter +already detected in his own "Peveril of the Peak." The intense strain on +the faculties of Dickens--as author, editor, reader, and man of the +world--could not but tell on him; and years must tell. "Philip" is not +worthy of the author of "Esmond," nor "Daniel Deronda" of the author of +"Silas Marner." At that time--the time of the Dorrits and +Dombeys--_Blackwood's Magazine_ published a "Remonstrance with Boz"; nor +was it quite superfluous. But Dickens had abundance of talent still to +display--above all in "Great Expectations" and "A Tale of Two Cities." +The former is, after "Pickwick," "Copperfield," "Martin Chuzzlewit," and +"Nicholas Nickleby"--after the classics, in fact--the most delightful of +Dickens's books. The story is embroiled, no doubt. What are we to think +of Estelle? Has the minx any purpose? Is she a kind of Ethel Newcome of +odd life? It is not easy to say; still, for a story of Dickens's the +plot is comparatively clear and intelligible. For a study of a child's +life, of the nature Dickens drew best--the river and the marshes--and for +plenty of honest explosive fun, there is no later book of Dickens's like +"Great Expectations." Miss Havisham, too, in her mouldy bridal +splendour, is really impressive; not like Ralph Nickleby and Monk in +"Oliver Twist"--a book of which the plot remains to me a mystery. {128} +Pip and Pumblechook and Mr. Wopsle and Jo are all immortal, and cause +laughter inextinguishable. The rarity of this book, by the way, in its +first edition--the usual library three volumes--is rather difficult to +explain. One very seldom sees it come into the market, and then it is +highly priced. + +I have mentioned more than once the obscurity of Dickens's plots. This +difficulty may be accounted for in a very flattering manner. Where do we +lose ourselves? Not in the bare high-road, but among lanes, between +hedges hung with roses, blackberries, morning glories, where all about us +is so full of pleasure that our attention is distracted and we miss our +way. Now, in Dickens--in "Oliver Twist," in "Martin Chuzzlewit," in +"Nicholas Nickleby"--there is, as in the lanes, so much to divert and +beguile, that we cease to care very much where the road leads--a road so +full of happy marvels. The dark, plotting villains--like the tramp who +frightened Sir Walter Scott so terribly, as he came from Miss Baillie's +at Hampstead--peer out from behind the hedges now and then. But we are +too much amused by the light hearts that go all the way, by the Dodger +and Crummles and Mrs. Gamp, to care much for what Ralph, and Monk, and +Jonas Chuzzlewit are plotting. It may not be that the plot is so +confused, but that we are too much diverted to care for the plot, for the +incredible machinations of Uriah Heap, to choose another example. Mr. +Micawber cleared these up; but it is Mr. Micawber that hinders us from +heeding them. + +This, at least, is a not unfriendly explanation. Yet I cannot but +believe that, though Dickens took great pains with his plots, he was not +a great plotter. He was not, any more than Thackeray, a story-teller +first and foremost. We can hold in our minds every thread of Mr. Wilkie +Collins' web, or of M. Fortune du Boisgobey's, or of M. Gaboriau's--all +great weavers of intrigues. But Dickens goes about darkening his +intrigue, giving it an extra knot, an extra twist, hinting here, +ominously laughing there, till we get mystified and bored, and give +ourselves up to the fun of the humours, indifferent to the destinies of +villains and victims. Look at "Edwin Drood." A constant war about the +plot rages in the magazines. I believe, for one, that Edwin Drood was +resuscitated; but it gives me no pleasure. He was too uninteresting. +Dickens's hints, nods, mutterings, forebodings, do not at all impress one +like that deepening and darkening of the awful omens in "The Bride of +Lammermoor." Here Scott--unconsciously, no doubt--used the very manner +of Homer in the Odyssey, and nowhere was his genius more Homeric. That +was romance. + +The "Tale of Two Cities" is a great test of the faith--that is in +Dickensites. Of all his works it is the favourite with the wrong sort! +Ladies prefer it. Many people can read it who cannot otherwise read +Dickens at all. This in itself proves that it is not a good example of +Dickens, that it is not central, that it is an outlying province which he +conquered. It is not a favourite of mine. The humour of the humorous +characters rings false--for example, the fun of the resurrection-man with +the wife who "flops." But Sidney Carton has drawn many tears down cheeks +not accustomed to what Mr. B. in "Pamela" calls "pearly fugitives." + +It sometimes strikes one that certain weaknesses in our great novelists, +in Thackeray as well as Dickens, were caused by their method of +publication. The green and yellow leaves flourished on the trees for two +whole years. Who (except Alexandre the Great) could write so much, and +yet all good? Do we not all feel that "David Copperfield" should have +been compressed? As to "Pendennis," Mr. Thackeray's bad health when he +wrote it might well cause a certain languor in the later pages. Moreover, +he frankly did not care for the story, and bluffly says, in the preface, +that he respited Colonel Altamont almost at the foot of the gallows. +Dickens took himself more in earnest, and, having so many pages to fill, +conscientiously made Uriah Heap wind and wriggle through them all. + +To try to see blots in the sun, and to pick holes in Dickens, seems +ungrateful, and is indeed an ungrateful task; to no mortal man have more +people owed mirth, pleasure, forgetfulness of care, knowledge of life in +strange places. There never was such another as Charles Dickens, nor +shall we see his like sooner than the like of Shakespeare. And he owed +all to native genius and hard work; he owed almost nothing to literature, +and that little we regret. He was influenced by Carlyle, he adopted his +method of nicknames, and of hammering with wearisome iteration on some +peculiarity--for example, on Carker's teeth, and the patriarch's white +hair. By the way, how incredible is all the Carker episode in "Dombey"! +Surely Dickens can never have intended Edith, from the first, to behave +as she did! People may have influenced him, as they influenced Scott +about "St. Ronan's Well." It has been said that, save for Carlyle, +Dickens was in letters a self-taught artist, that he was no man's pupil, +and borrowed from none. No doubt this makes him less acceptable to the +literary class than a man of letters, like Thackeray--than a man in whose +treasure chamber of memory all the wealth of the Middle Ages was stored, +like Scott. But the native naked genius of Dickens,--his heart, his +mirth, his observation, his delightful high spirits, his intrepid +loathing of wrong, his chivalrous desire to right it,--these things will +make him for ever, we hope and believe, the darling of the English +people. + + + + +ADVENTURES OF BUCCANEERS + + +Most of us, as boys, have envied the buccaneers. The greatest of all +boys, Canon Kingsley, once wrote a pleasing and regretful poem in which +the Last Buccaneer represents himself as a kind of picturesque +philanthropist:-- + + "There were forty craft in Aves that were both swift and stout, + All furnished well with small arms, and cannons round about; + And a thousand men in Aves made laws so fair and free, + To choose their valiant captains and obey them loyally. + Thence we sailed against the Spaniard with his hoards of plate and + gold, + Which he wrung with cruel tortures from Indian folk of old; + Likewise the merchant captains, with hearts as hard as stone, + Who flog men and keel-haul them, and starve them to the bone." + +The buccaneer is "a gallant sailor," according to Kingsley's poem--a +Robin Hood of the waters, who preys only on the wicked rich, or the cruel +and Popish Spaniard, and the extortionate shipowner. For his own part, +when he is not rescuing poor Indians, the buccaneer lives mainly "for +climate and the affections":-- + + "Oh, sweet it was in Aves to hear the landward breeze, + A swing with good tobacco in a net between the trees, + With a negro lass to fan you, while you listened to the roar + Of the breakers on the reef outside that never touched the shore." + +This is delightfully idyllic, like the lives of the Tahitian shepherds in +the Anti-Jacobin--the shepherds whose occupation was a sinecure, as there +were no sheep in Tahiti. + +Yet the vocation was not really so touchingly chivalrous as the poet +would have us deem. One Joseph Esquemeling, himself a buccaneer, has +written the history and described the exploits of his companions in plain +prose, warning eager youths that "pieces-of-eight do not grow on every +tree," as many raw recruits have believed. Mr. Esquemeling's account of +these matters may be purchased, with a great deal else that is +instructive and entertaining, in "The History of the Buccaneers in +America." My edition (of 1810) is a dumpy little book, in very small +type, and quite a crowd of publishers took part in the venture. The +older editions are difficult to procure if your pockets are not stuffed +with pieces-of-eight. You do not often find even this volume, but "when +found make a note of," and you have a reply to Canon Kingsley. + +A charitable old Scotch lady, who heard our ghostly foe evil spoken of, +remarked that, "If we were all as diligent and conscientious as the +Devil, it would be better for us." Now, the buccaneers were certainly +models of diligence and conscientiousness in their own industry, which +was to torture people till they gave up their goods, and then to run them +through the body, and spend the spoils over drink and dice. Except +Dampier, who was a clever man, but a poor buccaneer (Mr. Clark Russell +has written his life), they were the most hideously ruthless miscreants +that ever disgraced the earth and the sea. But their courage and +endurance were no less notable than their greed and cruelty, so that a +moral can be squeezed even out of these abandoned miscreants. The +soldiers and sailors who made their way within gunshot of Khartoum, +overcoming thirst, hunger, heat, the desert, and the gallant children of +the desert, did not fight, march, and suffer more bravely than the +scoundrels who sacked Mairaibo and burned Panama. Their good qualities +were no less astounding and exemplary than their almost incredible +wickedness. They did not lie about in hammocks much, listening to the +landward wind among the woods--the true buccaneers. To tell the truth, +most of them had no particular cause to love the human species. They +were often Europeans who had been sold into slavery on the West Indian +plantations, where they learned lessons of cruelty by suffering it. Thus +Mr. Joseph Esquemeling, our historian, was beaten, tortured, and nearly +starved to death in Tortuga, "so I determined, not knowing how to get any +living, to enter into the order of the pirates or robbers of the sea." +The poor Indians of the isles, much pitied by Kingsley's buccaneer, had a +habit of sticking their prisoners all over with thorns, wrapped in oily +cotton, whereto they then set fire. "These cruelties many Christians +have seen while they lived among these barbarians." Mr. Esquemeling was +to see, and inflict, plenty of this kind of torment, which was not out of +the way nor unusual. One planter alone had killed over a hundred of his +servants--"the English did the same with theirs." + +A buccaneer voyage began in stealing a ship, collecting desperadoes, and +torturing the local herdsmen till they gave up their masters' flocks, +which were salted as provisions. Articles of service were then drawn up, +on the principle "no prey, no pay." The spoils, when taken, were loyally +divided as a rule, though Captain Morgan, of Wales, made no more scruple +about robbing his crew than about barbecuing a Spanish priest. "They are +very civil and charitable to each other, so that if any one wants what +another has, with great willingness they give it to one another." In +other matters they did not in the least resemble the early Christians. A +fellow nick-named The Portuguese may be taken as our first example of +their commendable qualities. + +With a small ship of four guns he had taken a great one of twenty guns, +with 70,000 pieces-of-eight . . . He himself, however, was presently +captured by a larger vessel, and imprisoned on board. Being carelessly +watched, he escaped on two earthen jars (for he could not swim), reached +the woods in Campechy, and walked for a hundred and twenty miles through +the bush. His only food was a few shell-fish, and by way of a knife he +had a large nail, which he whetted to an edge on a stone. Having made a +kind of raft, he struck a river, and paddled to Golpho Triste, where he +found congenial pirates. With twenty of these, and a boat, he returned +to Campechy, where he had been a prisoner, and actually captured the +large ship in which he had lain captive! Bad luck pursued him, however: +his prize was lost in a storm; he reached Jamaica in a canoe, and never +afterwards was concerned as leader in any affair of distinction. Not +even Odysseus had more resource, nor was more long-enduring; but Fortune +was The Portuguese's foe. + +Braziliano, another buccaneer, served as a pirate before the mast, and +"was beloved and respected by all." Being raised to command, he took a +plate ship; but this success was of indifferent service to his otherwise +amiable character. "He would often appear foolish and brutish when in +drink," and has been known to roast Spaniards alive on wooden spits "for +not showing him hog yards where he might steal swine." One can hardly +suppose that Kingsley would have regretted _this_ buccaneer, even if he +had been the last, which unluckily he was not. His habit of sitting in +the street beside a barrel of beer, and shooting all passers-by who would +not drink with him, provoked remark, and was an act detestable to all +friends of temperance principles. + +Francois L'Olonnois, from southern France, had been kidnapped, and sold +as a slave in the Caribbee Islands. Recovering his freedom, he plundered +the Spanish, says my buccaneer author, "till his unfortunate death." With +two canoes he captured a ship which had been sent after him, carrying ten +guns and a hangman for his express benefit. This hangman, much to the +fellow's chagrin, L'Olonnois put to death like the rest of his prisoners. +His great achievements were in the Gulf of Venezuela or Bay of Maracaibo. +The gulf is a strong place; the mouth, no wider than a gun-shot, is +guarded by two islands. Far up the inlet is Maracaibo, a town of three +thousand people, fortified and surrounded by woods. Yet farther up is +the town of Gibraltar. To attack these was a desperate enterprise; but +L'Olonnois stole past the forts, and frightened the townsfolk into the +woods. As a rule the Spaniards made the poorest resistance; there were +examples of courage, but none of conduct. With strong forts, heavy guns, +many men, provisions, and ammunition, they quailed before the desperate +valour of the pirates. The towns were sacked, the fugitives hunted out +in the woods, and the most abominable tortures were applied to make them +betray their friends and reveal their treasures. When they were silent, +or had no treasures to declare, they were hacked, twisted, burned, and +starved to death. + +Such were the manners of L'Olonnois; and Captain Morgan, of Wales, was +even more ruthless. + +Gibraltar was well fortified and strengthened after Maracaibo fell; new +batteries were raised, the way through the woods was barricaded, and no +fewer than eight hundred men were under arms to resist a small pirate +force, exhausted by debauch, and having its retreat cut off by the forts +at the mouth of the great salt-water loch. But L'Olonnois did not +blench: he told the men that audacity was their one hope, also that he +would pistol the first who gave ground. The men cheered +enthusiastically, and a party of three hundred and fifty landed. The +barricaded way they could not force, and in a newly cut path they met a +strong battery which fired grape. But L'Olonnois was invincible. He +tried that old trick which rarely fails, a sham retreat, and this lured +the Spaniards from their earthwork on the path. The pirates then turned, +sword in hand, slew two hundred of the enemy, and captured eight guns. +The town yielded, the people fled to the woods, and then began the wonted +sport of torturing the prisoners. Maracaibo they ransomed afresh, +obtained a pilot, passed the forts with ease, and returned after sacking +a small province. On a dividend being declared, they parted 260,000 +pieces-of-eight among the band, and spent the pillage in a revel of three +weeks. + +L'Olonnois "got great repute" by this conduct, but I rejoice to add that +in a raid on Nicaragua he "miserably perished," and met what Mr. +Esquemeling calls "his unfortunate death." For L'Olonnois was really an +ungentlemanly character. He would hack a Spaniard to pieces, tear out +his heart, and "gnaw it with his teeth like a ravenous wolf, saying to +the rest, 'I will serve you all alike if you show me not another way'" +(to a town which he designed attacking). In Nicaragua he was taken by +the Indians, who, being entirely on the Spanish side, tore him to pieces +and burned him. Thus we really must not be deluded by the professions of +Mr. Kingsley's sentimental buccaneer, with his pity for "the Indian folk +of old." + +Except Denis Scott, a worthy bandit in his day, Captain Henry Morgan is +the first renowned British buccaneer. He was a young Welshman, who, +after having been sold as a slave in Barbadoes, became a sailor of +fortune. With about four hundred men he assailed Puerto Bello. "If our +number is small," he said, "our hearts are great," and so he assailed the +third city and place of arms which Spain then possessed in the West +Indies. The entrance of the harbour was protected by two strong castles, +judged as "almost impregnable," while Morgan had no artillery of any +avail against fortresses. Morgan had the luck to capture a Spanish +soldier, whom he compelled to parley with the garrison of the castle. +This he stormed and blew up, massacring all its defenders, while with its +guns he disarmed the sister fortress. When all but defeated in a new +assault, the sight of the English colours animated him afresh. He made +the captive monks and nuns carry the scaling ladders; in this unwonted +exploit the poor religious folk lost many of their numbers. The wall was +mounted, the soldiers were defeated, though the Governor fought like a +Spaniard of the old school, slew many pirates with his own hand, and +pistolled some of his own men for cowardice. He died at his post, +refusing quarter, and falling like a gentleman of Spain. Morgan, too, +was not wanting in fortitude: he extorted 100,000 pieces-of-eight from +the Governor of Panama, and sent him a pistol as a sample of the gun +wherewith he took so great a city. He added that he would return and +take this pistol out of Panama; nor was he less good than his word. In +Cuba he divided 250,000 pieces-of-eight, and a great booty in other +treasure. A few weeks saw it all in the hands of the tavern-keepers and +women of the place. + +Morgan's next performance was a new sack of Maracaibo, now much stronger +than L'Olonnois had found it. After the most appalling cruelties, not +fit to be told, he returned, passing the castles at the mouth of the port +by an ingenious stratagem. Running boatload after boatload of men to the +land side, he brought them back by stealth, leading the garrison to +expect an attack from that quarter. The guns were massed to landward, +and no sooner was this done than Morgan sailed up through the channel +with but little loss. Why the Spaniards did not close the passage with a +boom does not appear. Probably they were glad to be quit of Morgan on +any terms. + +A great Spanish fleet he routed by the ingenious employment of a fire- +ship. In a later expedition a strong place was taken by a curious +accident. One of the buccaneers was shot through the body with an arrow. +He drew it out, wrapped it in cotton, fired it from his musket, and so +set light to a roof and burned the town. + +His raid on Panama was extraordinary for the endurance of his men. For +days they lived on the leather of bottles and belts. "Some, who were +never out of their mothers' kitchens, may ask how these pirates could eat +and digest these pieces of leather, so hard and dry? Whom I answer--that +could they once experience what hunger, or rather famine is, they would +find the way, as the pirates did." It was at the close of this march +that the Indians drove wild bulls among them; but they cared very little +for these new allies of the Spaniards: beef, in any form, was only too +welcome. + +Morgan burned the fair cedar houses of Panama, but lost the plate ship +with all the gold and silver out of the churches. How he tortured a poor +wretch who chanced to wear a pair of taffety trousers belonging to his +master, with a small silver key hanging out, it is better not to repeat. +The men only got two hundred pieces-of-eight each, after all their toil, +for their Welshman was indeed a thief, and bilked his crews, no less than +he plundered the Spaniards, without remorse. Finally, he sneaked away +from the fleet with a ship or two; and it is to be feared that Captain +Morgan made rather a good thing by dint of his incredible cruelty and +villainy. + +And so we leave Mr. Esquemeling, whom Captain Morgan also deserted; for +who would linger long when there is not even honour among thieves? +Alluring as the pirate's profession is, we must not forget that it had a +seamy side, and was by no means all rum and pieces-of-eight. And there +is something repulsive to a generous nature in roasting men because they +will not show you where to steal hogs. + + + + +THE SAGAS + + +"The general reader," says a frank critic, "hates the very name of a +Saga." The general reader, in that case, is to be pitied, and, if +possible, converted. But, just as Pascal admits that the sceptic can +only become religious by living as if he _were_ religious--by stupefying +himself, as Pascal plainly puts it, with holy water--so it is to be +feared that there is but a single way of winning over the general reader +to the Sagas. Preaching and example, as in this brief essay, will not +avail with him. He must take Pascal's advice, and live for an hour or +two as if he were a lover of Sagas. He must, in brief, give that old +literature a fair chance. He has now his opportunity: Mr. William Morris +and Mr. Eirikr Magnusson are publishing a series of cheap +translations--cheap only in coin of the realm--a _Saga Library_. If a +general reader tries the first tale in the first volume, story of "Howard +the Halt,"--if he tries it honestly, and still can make no way with it, +then let him take comfort in the doctrine of Invincible Ignorance. Let +him go back to his favourite literature of gossiping reminiscence, or of +realistic novels. We have all, probably, a drop of the Northmen's blood +in us, but in that general reader the blood is dormant. + +What is a Saga? It is neither quite a piece of history nor wholly a +romance. It is a very old story of things and adventures that really +happened, but happened so long ago, and in times so superstitious, that +marvels and miracles found their way into the legend. The best Sagas are +those of Iceland, and those, in translations, are the finest reading that +the natural man can desire. If you want true pictures of life and +character, which are always the same at bottom, or true pictures of +manners, which are always changing, and of strange customs and lost +beliefs, in the Sagas they are to be found. Or if you like tales of +enterprise, of fighting by land and sea, fighting with men and beasts, +with storms and ghosts and fiends, the Sagas are full of this +entertainment. + +The stories of which we are speaking were first told in Iceland, perhaps +from 950 to 1100 B.C. When Norway and Sweden were still heathen, a +thousand years ago, they were possessed by families of noble birth, +owning no master, and often at war with each other, when the men were not +sailing the seas, to rob and kill in Scotland, England, France, Italy, +and away east as far as Constantinople, or farther. Though they were +wild sea robbers and warriors, they were sturdy farmers, great +shipbuilders; every man of them, however wealthy, could be his own +carpenter, smith, shipwright, and ploughman. They forged their own good +short swords, hammered their own armour, ploughed their own fields. In +short, they lived like Odysseus, the hero of Homer, and were equally +skilled in the arts of war and peace. They were mighty lawyers, too, and +had a most curious and minute system of laws on all subjects--land, +marriage, murder, trade, and so forth. These laws were not written, +though the people had a kind of letters called runes. But they did not +use them much for documents, but merely for carving a name on a sword- +blade, or a tombstone, or on great gold rings such as they wore on their +arms. Thus the laws existed in the memory and judgment of the oldest and +wisest and most righteous men of the country. The most important was the +law of murder. If one man slew another, he was not tried by a jury, but +any relation of the dead killed him "at sight," wherever he found him. +Even in an Earl's hall, Kari struck the head off one of his friend Njal's +Burners, and the head bounded on the board, among the trenchers of meat +and the cups of mead or ale. But it was possible, if the relations of a +slain man consented, for the slayer to pay his price--every man was +valued at so much--and then revenge was not taken. But, as a rule, one +revenge called for another. Say Hrut slew Hrap, then Atli slew Hrut, and +Gisli slew Atli, and Kari slew Gisli, and so on till perhaps two whole +families were extinct and there was peace. The gods were not offended by +manslaughter openly done, but were angry with treachery, cowardice, +meanness, theft, perjury, and every kind of shabbiness. + +This was the state of affairs in Norway when a king arose, Harold Fair- +Hair, who tried to bring all these proud people under him, and to make +them pay taxes and live more regularly and quietly. They revolted at +this, and when they were too weak to defy the king they set sail and fled +to Iceland. There in the lonely north, between the snow and fire, the +hot-water springs, the volcano of Hecla, the great rivers full of salmon +that rush down such falls as Golden Foot, there they lived their +old-fashioned life, cruising as pirates and merchants, taking foreign +service at Mickle Garth, or in England or Egypt, filling the world with +the sound of their swords and the sky with the smoke of their burnings. +For they feared neither God nor man nor ghost, and were no less cruel +than brave; the best of soldiers, laughing at death and torture, like the +Zulus, who are a kind of black Vikings of Africa. On some of them +"Bersark's gang" would fall--that is, they would become in a way mad, +slaying all and sundry, biting their shields, and possessed with a +furious strength beyond that of men, which left them as weak as children +when it passed away. These Bersarks were outlaws, all men's enemies, and +to kill them was reckoned a great adventure, and a good deed. The women +were worthy of the men--bold, quarrelsome, revengeful. Some were loyal, +like Bergthora, who foresaw how all her sons and her husband were to be +burned; but who would not leave them, and perished in the burning without +a cry. Some were as brave as Howard's wife, who enabled her husband, old +and childless, to overthrow the wealthy bully, the slayer of his only +son. Some were treacherous, as Halgerda the Fair. Three husbands she +had, and was the death of every man of them. Her last lord was Gunnar of +Lithend, the bravest and most peaceful of men. Once she did a mean +thing, and he slapped her face. She never forgave him. At last enemies +besieged him in his house. The doors were locked--all was quiet within. +One of the enemies climbed up to a window slit, and Gunnar thrust him +through with his lance. "Is Gunnar at home?" said the besiegers. "I +know not--but his lance is," said the wounded man, and died with that +last jest on his lips. For long Gunnar kept them at bay with his arrows, +but at last one of them cut the arrow string. "Twist me a string with +thy hair," he said to his wife, Halgerda, whose yellow hair was very long +and beautiful. "Is it a matter of thy life or death?" she asked. "Ay," +he said. "Then I remember that blow thou gavest me, and I will see thy +death." So Gunnar died, overcome by numbers, and they killed Samr, his +hound, but not before Samr had killed a man. + +So they lived always with sword or axe in hand--so they lived, and +fought, and died. + +Then Christianity was brought to them from Norway by Thangbrand, and if +any man said he did not believe a word of it, Thangbrand had the +schoolboy argument, "Will you fight?" So they fought a duel on a _holm_ +or island, that nobody might interfere--holm-gang they called it--and +Thangbrand usually killed his man. In Norway, Saint Olaf did the like, +killing and torturing those who held by the old gods--Thor, Odin, and +Freya, and the rest. So, partly by force and partly because they were +somewhat tired of bloodshed, horsefights, and the rest, they received the +word of the white Christ and were baptised, and lived by written law, and +did not avenge themselves by their own hands. + +They were Christians now, but they did not forget the old times, the old +feuds and fightings and Bersarks, and dealings with ghosts, and with dead +bodies that arose and wrought horrible things, haunting houses and +strangling men. The Icelandic ghosts were able-bodied, well +"materialised," and Grettir and Olaf Howard's son fought them with +strength of arm and edge of steel. _True_ stories of the ancient days +were told at the fireside in the endless winter nights by story tellers +or Scalds. It was thought a sin for any one to alter these old stories, +but as generations passed more and more wonderful matters came into the +legend. It was believed that the dead Gunnar, the famed archer, sang +within his cairn or "Howe," the mound wherein he was buried, and his +famous bill or cutting spear was said to have been made by magic, and to +sing in the night before the wounding of men and the waking of war. +People were thought to be "second-sighted"--that is, to have prophetic +vision. The night when Njal's house was burned his wife saw all the meat +on the table "one gore of blood," just as in Homer the prophet +Theoclymenus beheld blood falling in gouts from the walls, before the +slaying of the Wooers. The Valkyries, the Choosers of the slain, and the +Norns who wove the fates of men at a ghastly loom were seen by living +eyes. In the graves where treasures were hoarded the Barrowwights dwelt, +ghosts that were sentinels over the gold: witchwives changed themselves +into wolves and other monstrous animals, and for many weeks the heroes +Signy and Sinfjotli ran wild in the guise of wolves. + +These and many other marvels crept into the Sagas, and made the listeners +feel a shudder of cold beside the great fire that burned in the centre of +the skali or hall where the chief sat, giving meat and drink to all who +came, where the women span and the Saga man told the tales of long ago. +Finally, at the end of the middle ages, these Sagas were written down in +Icelandic, and in Latin occasionally, and many of them have been +translated into English. + +Unluckily, these translations have hitherto been expensive to buy, and +were not always to be had easily. For the wise world, which reads +newspapers all day and half the night, does not care much for books, +still less for good books, least of all for old books. You can make no +money out of reading Sagas: they have nothing to say about stocks and +shares, nor about Prime Ministers and politics. Nor will they amuse a +man, if nothing amuses him but accounts of races and murders, or gossip +about Mrs. Nokes's new novel, Mrs. Stokes's new dresses, or Lady Jones's +diamonds. The Sagas only tell how brave men--of our own blood very +likely--lived, and loved, and fought, and voyaged, and died, before there +was much reading or writing, when they sailed without steam, travelled +without railways, and warred hand-to-hand, not with hidden dynamite and +sunk torpedoes. But, for stories of gallant life and honest purpose, the +Sagas are among the best in the world. + +Of Sagas in English one of the best is the "Volsunga," the story of the +Niflungs and Volsungs. This book, thanks to Mr. William Morris, can be +bought for a shilling. It is a strange tale in which gods have their +parts, the tale of that oldest Treasure Hunt, the Hunt for the gold of +the dwarf Andvari. This was guarded by the serpent, Fafnir, who had once +been a man, and who was killed by the hero Sigurd. But Andvari had +cursed the gold, because his enemies robbed him of it to the very last +ring, and had no pity. Then the brave Sigurd was involved in the evil +luck. He it was who rode through the fire, and woke the fair enchanted +Brynhild, the Shield-maiden. And she loved him, and he her, with all +their hearts, always to the death. But by ill fate she was married to +another man, Sigurd's chief friend, and Sigurd to another woman. And the +women fell to jealousy and quarrelling as women will, and they dragged +the friends into the feud, and one manslaying after another befell, till +that great murder of men in the Hall of Atli, the King. The curse came +on one and all of them--a curse of blood, and of evil loves, and of +witchwork destroying good and bad, all fearless, and all fallen in one +red ruin. + +The "Volsunga Saga" has this unique and unparalleled interest, that it +gives the spectacle of the highest epic genius, struggling out of +savagery into complete and free and conscious humanity. It is a mark of +the savage intellect not to discriminate abruptly between man and the +lower animals. In the tales of the lower peoples, the characters are +just as often beasts as men and women. Now, in the earlier and wilder +parts of the "Volsunga Saga," otters and dragons play human parts. Signy +and his son, and the mother of their enemy, put on the skins of wolves, +become wolves, and pass through hideous adventures. The story reeks with +blood, and ravins with lust of blood. But when Sigurd arrives at full +years of manhood, the barbarism yields place, the Saga becomes human and +conscious. + +These legends deal little with love. But in the "Volsunga Saga" the +permanent interest is the true and deathless love of Sigurd and Brynhild: +their separation by magic arts, the revival of their passion too late, +the man's resigned and heroic acquiescence, the fiercer passion of the +woman, who will neither bear her fate nor accept her bliss at the price +of honour and her plighted word. + +The situation, the _nodus_, is neither ancient merely nor modern merely, +but of all time. Sigurd, having at last discovered the net in which he +was trapped, was content to make the best of marriage and of friendship. +Brynhild was not. "The hearts of women are the hearts of wolves," says +the ancient Sanskrit commentary on the Rig Veda. But the she-wolf's +heart broke, like a woman's, when she had caused Sigurd's slaying. Both +man and woman face life, as they conceive it, with eyes perfectly clear. + +The magic and the supernatural wiles are accidental, the human heart is +essential and eternal. There is no scene like this in the epics of +Greece. This is a passion that Homer did not dwell upon. In the Iliad +and Odyssey the repentance of Helen is facile; she takes life easily. +Clytemnestra is not brought on the stage to speak for herself. In this +respect the epic of the North, without the charm and the delightfulness +of the Southern epic, excels it; in this and in a certain bare veracity, +but in nothing else. We cannot put the Germanic legend on the level of +the Greek, for variety, for many-sided wisdom, for changing beauty of a +thousand colours. But in this one passion of love the "Volsunga Saga" +excels the Iliad. + +The Greek and the Northern stories are alike in one thing. Fate is all- +powerful over gods and men. Odin cannot save Balder; nor Thetis, +Achilles; nor Zeus, Sarpedon. But in the Sagas fate is more constantly +present to the mind. Much is thought of being "lucky," or "unlucky." +Howard's "good luck" is to be read in his face by the wise, even when, to +the common gaze, he seems a half-paralytic dotard, dying of grief and +age. + +Fate and evil luck dog the heroes of the Sagas. They seldom "end well," +as people say,--unless, when a brave man lies down to die on the bed he +has strewn of the bodies of his foes, you call _that_ ending well. So +died Grettir the Strong. Even from a boy he was strong and passionate, +short of temper, quick of stroke, but loyal, brave, and always unlucky. +His worst luck began after he slew Glam. This Glam was a wicked heathen +herdsman, who would not fast on Christmas Eve. So on the hills his dead +body was found, swollen as great as an ox, and as blue as death. + +What killed him they did not know. But he haunted the farmhouse, riding +the roof, kicking the sides with his heels, killing cattle and destroying +all things. Then Grettir came that way, and he slept in the hall. At +night the dead Glam came in, and Grettir arose, and to it they went, +struggling and dashing the furniture to bits. Glam even dragged Grettir +to the door, that he might slay him under the sky, and for all his force +Grettir yielded ground. Then on the very threshold he suddenly gave way +when Glam was pulling hardest, and they fell, Glam undermost. Then +Grettir drew the short sword, "Kari's loom," that he had taken from a +haunted grave, and stabbed the dead thing that had lived again. But, as +Glam lay a-dying in the second death, the moon fell on his awful eyes, +and Grettir saw the horror of them, and from that hour he could not +endure to be in the dark, and he never dared to go alone. This was his +death, for he had an evil companion who betrayed him to his enemies; but +when they set on Grettir, though he was tired and sick of a wound, many +died with him. No man died like Grettir the Strong, nor slew so many in +his death. + +Besides those Sagas, there is the best of all, but the longest, "Njala" +(pronounced "Nyoula"), the story of Burnt Njal. That is too long to +sketch here, but it tells how, through the hard hearts and jealousy of +women, ruin came at last on the gentle Gunnar, and the reckless +Skarphedin of the axe, "The Ogress of War," and how Njal, the wisest, the +most peaceful, the most righteous of men, was burned with all his house, +and how that evil deed was avenged on the Burners of Kari. + +The site of Njal's house is yet to be seen, after these nine hundred +years, and the little glen where Kari hid when he leaped through the +smoke and the flame that made his sword-blade blue. Yes, the very black +sand that Bergthora and her maids threw on the fire lies there yet, and +remnants of the whey they cast on the flames, when water failed them. +They were still there beneath the earth when an English traveller dug up +some of the ground last year, and it is said that an American gentleman +found a gold ring in the house of Njal. The story of him and of his +brave sons, and of his slaves, and of his kindred, and of Queens and +Kings of Norway, and of the coming of the white Christ, are all in the +"Njala." That and the other Sagas would bear being shortened for general +readers; once they were all that the people had by way of books, and they +liked them long. But, shortened or not, they are brave books for men, +for the world is a place of battle still, and life is war. These old +heroes knew it, and did not shirk it, but fought it out, and left +honourable names and a glory that widens year by year. For the story of +Njal and Gunnar and Skarphedin was told by Captain Speedy to the guards +of Theodore, King of Abyssinia. They liked it well; and with queer +altered names and changes of the tale, that Saga will be told in +Abyssinia, and thence carried all through Africa where white men have +never wandered. So wide, so long-enduring a renown could be given by a +nameless Sagaman. + + + + +CHARLES KINGSLEY + + +When I was very young, a distinguished _Review_ was still younger. I +remember reading one of the earliest numbers, being then myself a boy of +ten, and coming on a review of a novel. Never, as it seemed to me, or +seems to my memory, was a poor novel more heavily handled: and yet I felt +that the book must be a book to read on the very earliest opportunity. It +was "Westward Ho!" the most famous, and perhaps the best novel, of +Charles Kingsley. Often one has read it since, and it is an example of +those large, rich, well-fed romances, at which you can cut and come +again, as it were, laying it down, and taking it up on occasion, with the +certainty of being excited, amused--and preached at. + +Lately I have re-read "Westward Ho!" and some of Kingsley's other books, +"Hypatia," "Hereward the Wake," and the poems, over again. The old +pleasure in them is not gone indeed, but it is modified. One must be a +boy to think Kingsley a humourist. At the age of twelve or ten you take +the comic passages which he conscientiously provides, without being vexed +or offended; you take them merely in the way of business. Better things +are coming: struggles with the Inquisition, storms at sea, duels, the +Armada, wanderings in the Lotus land of the tropical west; and for the +sake of all this a boy puts up good-naturedly with Kingsley's humour. +Perhaps he even grins over Amyas "burying alternately his face in the +pasty and the pasty in his face," or he tries to feel diverted by the +Elizabethan waggeries of Frank. But there is no fun in them--they are +mechanical; they are worse than the humours of Scott's Sir Percy Shafto, +which are not fine. + +The same sense of everything not being quite so excellent as one +remembered it haunts one in "Hereward the Wake, the Last of the English." +Kingsley calls him "the Last of the English," but he is really the first +of the literary Vikings. In the essay on the Sagas here I have tried to +show, very imperfectly, what the Norsemen were actually like. They +caught Kingsley's fancy, and his "Hereward," though born on English soil, +is really Norse--not English. But Kingsley did not write about the +Vikings, nor about his Elizabethan heroes in "Westward Ho!" in a +perfectly simple, straightforward way. He was always thinking of our own +times and referring to them. That is why even the rather ruffianly +Hereward is so great an enemy of saints and monks. That is why, in +"Hypatia" (which opens so well), we have those prodigiously dull, stupid, +pedantic, and conceited reflections of Raphael Ben Ezra. That is why, in +all Kingsley's novels, he is perpetually exciting himself in defence of +marriage and the family life, as if any monkish ideas about the +blessedness of bachelorhood were ever likely to drive the great Anglo- +Saxon race into convents and monasteries. That is the very last thing we +have to be afraid of; but Kingsley was afraid of it, and was eternally +attacking everything Popish and monkish. + +Boys and young people, then, can read "Westward Ho!" and "Hypatia," and +"Hereward the Wake," with far more pleasure than their elders. They +hurry on with the adventures, and do not stop to ask what the moralisings +mean. They forgive the humour of Kingsley because it is well meant. They +get, in short, the real good of this really great and noble and manly and +blundering genius. They take pleasure in his love of strong men, gallant +fights, desperate encounters with human foes, with raging seas, with +pestilence, or in haunted forests. For in all that is good of his +talent--in his courage, his frank speech, his love of sport, his clear +eyes, his devotion to field and wood, river, moor, sea, and +storms--Kingsley is a boy. He has the brave, rather hasty, and not over +well-informed enthusiasm of sixteen, for persons and for causes. He saw +an opponent (it might be Father Newman): his heart lusted for a fight; he +called his opponent names, he threw his cap into the ring, he took his +coat off, he fought, he got a terrible scientific drubbing. It was like +a sixth-form boy matching himself against the champion. And then he bore +no malice. He took his defeat bravely. Nay, are we not left with a +confused feeling that he was not far in the wrong, though he had so much +the worse of the fight? + +Such was Kingsley: a man with a boy's heart; a hater of cruelty and +injustice, and also with a brave, indomitable belief that his own country +and his own cause were generally in the right, whatever the quarrel. He +loved England like a mistress, and hated her enemies, Spain and the Pope, +though even in them he saw the good. He is for ever scolding the Spanish +for their cruelties to the Indians, but he defends our doings to the +Irish, which (at that time) were neither more nor less oppressive than +the Spanish performances in America. "Go it, our side!" you always hear +this good Kingsley crying; and one's heart goes out to him for it, in an +age when everybody often proves his own country to be in the wrong. + +Simple, brave, resolute, manly, a little given to "robustiousness," +Kingsley transfigured all these qualities by possessing the soul and the +heart of a poet. He was not a very great poet, indeed, but a true +poet--one of the very small band who are cut off, by a gulf that can +never be passed, from mere writers of verse, however clever, educated, +melodious, ingenious, amiable, and refined. He had the real spark of +fire, the true note; though the spark might seldom break into flame, and +the note was not always clear. Never let us confuse true poets with +writers of verse, still less with writers of "poetic prose." Kingsley +wrote a great deal of that-perhaps too much: his descriptions of scenes +are not always as good as in Hereward's ride round the Fens, or when the +tall, Spanish galleon staggers from the revenge of man to the vengeance +of God, to her doom through the mist, to her rest in the sea. Perhaps +only a poet could have written that prose; it is certain no writer of +"poetic prose" could have written Kingsley's poems. + +His songs are his best things; they really are songs, not merely lyric +poems. They have the merit of being truly popular, whether they are +romantic, like "The Sands o' Dee," which actually reproduces the best +qualities of the old ballad; or whether they are pathetic, like the +"Doll's Song," in "Water Babies"; or whether they attack an abuse, as in +the song of "The Merry Brown Hares"; or whether they soar higher, as in +"Deep, deep Love, within thine own abyss abiding"; or whether they are +mere noble nonsense, as in "Lorraine Loree":-- + + "She mastered young Vindictive; oh, the gallant lass was she, + And kept him straight and won the race, as near as near could be; + But he killed her at the brook against a pollard willow tree; + Oh, he killed her at the brook, the brute, for all the world to see, + And no one but the baby cried for poor Lorraine Loree." + +The truth about Charles Kingsley seems to be that he rather made a brave +and cheery noise in this night-battle of modern life, than that he +directed any movement of forces. He kept cheering, as it were, and +waving his sword with a contagious enthusiasm. Being a poet, and a man +both of heart and of sentiment, he was equally attached to the best +things of the old world and to the best of the new world, as far as one +can forecast what it is to be. He loved the stately homes of England, +the ancient graduated order of society, the sports of the past, the +military triumphs, the patriotic glories. But he was also on the side of +the poor: as "Parson Lot" he attempted to be a Christian Socialist. + +Now, the Socialists are the people who want to take everything; the +Christians are the persons who do not want to give more than they find +convenient. Kingsley himself was ready to give, and did give, his time, +his labour, his health, and probably his money, to the poor. But he was +by no means minded that they should swallow up the old England with +church and castle, manor-house and tower, wealth, beauty, learning, +refinement. The man who wrote "Alton Locke," the story of the starved +tailor-poet, was the man who nearly wept when he heard a fox bark, and +reflected that the days of fox-hunting were numbered. He had a poet's +politics, Colonel Newcome's politics. He was for England, for the poor, +for the rich, for the storied houses of the chivalrous past, for the +cottage, for the hall; and was dead against the ideas of Manchester, and +of Mr. John Bright. "My father," he says in a letter, "would have put +his hand to a spade or an axe with any man, and so could I pretty well, +too, when I was in my prime; and my eldest son is now working with his +own hands at farming, previous to emigrating to South America, where he +will do the drudgery of his own cattle-pens and sheepfolds; and if I were +twenty-four and unmarried I would go out there too, and work like an +Englishman, and live by the sweat of my brow." + +This was the right side of his love of the Vikings; it was thus _they_ +lived, when not at war--thus that every gentleman who has youth and +health should work, winning new worlds for his class, in place of this +miserable, over-crowded, brawling England. This, I think, was, or should +have been, the real lesson and message of Kingsley for the generations to +come. Like Scott the scion of an old knightly line, he had that drop of +wild blood which drives men from town into the air and the desert, +wherever there are savage lands to conquer, beasts to hunt, and a hardy +life to be lived. But he was the son of a clergyman, and a clergyman +himself. The spirit that should have gone into action went into talking, +preaching, writing--all sources of great pleasure to thousands of people, +and so not wasted. Yet these were not the natural outlets of Kingsley's +life: he should have been a soldier, or an explorer; at least, we may +believe that he would have preferred such fortune. He did his best, the +best he knew, and it is all on the side of manliness, courage, kindness. +Perhaps he tried too many things--science, history, fairy tales, +religious and political discussions, romance, poetry. Poetry was what he +did best, romance next; his science and his history are entertaining, but +without authority. + +This, when one reads it again, seems a cold, unfriendly estimate of a man +so ardent and so genuine, a writer so vivacious and courageous as +Kingsley. Even the elderly reviewer bears to him, and to his brother +Henry, a debt he owes to few of their generation. The truth is we should +_read_ Kingsley; we must not criticise him. We must accept him and be +glad of him, as we accept a windy, sunny autumn day--beautiful and +blusterous--to be enjoyed and struggled with. If once we stop and +reflect, and hesitate, he seems to preach too much, and with a confidence +which his knowledge of the world and of history does not justify. To be +at one with Kingsley we must be boys again, and that momentary change +cannot but be good for us. Soon enough--too soon--we shall drop back on +manhood, and on all the difficulties and dragons that Kingsley drove away +by a blast on his chivalrous and cheery horn. + + + + +CHARLES LEVER: HIS BOOKS, ADVENTURES AND MISFORTUNES + + +Surely it is a pleasant thing that there are books, like other +enjoyments, for all ages. You would not have a boy prefer whist to +fives, nor tobacco to toffee, nor Tolstoi to Charles Lever. The ancients +reckoned Tyrtaecus a fine poet, not that he was particularly melodious or +reflective, but that he gave men heart to fight for their country. +Charles Lever has done as much. In his biography, by Mr. Fitzpatrick, it +is told that a widow lady had but one son, and for him she obtained an +appointment at Woolwich. The boy was timid and nervous, and she fancied +that she must find for him some other profession--perhaps that of +literature. But he one day chanced on Lever's novels, and they put so +much heart into him that his character quite altered, and he became the +bravest of the brave. + +Lever may not do as much for every one, but he does teach contempt of +danger, or rather, delight in it: a gay, spontaneous, boyish kind of +courage--Irish courage at its best. We may get more good from that than +harm from all his tales of much punch and many drinking bouts. These are +no longer in fashion and are not very gay reading, perhaps, but his +stories and songs, his duels and battles and hunting scenes are as merry +and as good as ever. Wild as they seem in the reading, they are not far +from the truth, as may be gathered out of "Barrington's Memoirs," and +their tales of the reckless Irish life some eighty years ago. + +There were two men in Charles Lever--a glad man and a sad man. The +gaiety was for his youth, when he poured out his "Lorrequers" and +"O'Malleys," all the mirth and memories of his boyhood, all the tales of +fighting and feasting he gleaned from battered, seasoned old warriors, +like Major Monsoon. Even then, Mr. Thackeray, who knew him, and liked +and laughed at him, recognised through his merriment "the fund of sadness +beneath." "The author's character is _not_ humour, but sentiment . . . +extreme delicacy, sweetness and kindliness of heart. The spirits are +mostly artificial, the _fond_ is sadness, as appears to me to be that of +most Irish writing and people." Even in "Charles O'Malley," what a +true, dark picture that is of the duel beside the broad, angry river on +the level waste under the wide grey sky! Charles has shot his opponent, +Bodkin, and with Considine, his second, is making his escape. "Considine +cried out suddenly, 'Too infamous, by Jove: we are murdered men!'" + +"'What do you mean?' said I. + +"'Don't you see that?' said he, pointing to something black which floated +from a pole at the opposite side of the river. + +"'Yes; what is it?' + +"'It's his coat they've put upon an oar, to show the people he's +killed--that's all. Every man here's his tenant; and look there! they're +not giving us much doubt as to their intentions.' + +"Here a tremendous yell burst forth from the mass of people along the +shore, which, rising to a terrific cry, sank gradually down to a low +wailing, then rose and fell several times, as the Irish death-cry filled +the air, and rose to heaven, as if imploring vengeance on a murderer." + +Passages like this, and that which follows--the dangerous voyage through +the storm on the flooded Shannon, and through the reefs--are what Mr. +Thackeray may have had in his mind when he spoke of Lever's underlying +melancholy. Like other men with very high spirits, he had hours of +gloom, and the sadness and the thoughtfulness that were in him came forth +then and informed his later books. These are far more carefully written, +far more cunningly constructed, than the old chapters written from month +to month as the fit took him, with no more plan or premeditation than +"Pickwick." But it is the early stories that we remember, and that he +lives by--the pages thrown off at a heat, when he was a lively doctor +with few patients, and was not over-attentive to them. These were the +days of Harry Lorrequer and Tom Burke; characters that ran away with him, +and took their own path through a merry world of diversion. Like the +knights in Sir Thomas Malory, these heroes "ride at adventure," ride +amazing horses that dread no leap, be it an Irish stone wall on a +mountain crest, or be it the bayonets of a French square. + +Mr. Lever's biographer has not been wholly successful in pleasing the +critics, and he does not seem to affect very critical airs himself, but +he tells a straightforward tale. The life of Charles Lever is the +natural commentary on his novels. He was born at Dublin in 1806, the son +of a builder or architect. At school he was very much flogged, and the +odds are that he deserved these attentions, for he had high spirits +beyond the patience of dominies. Handsome, merry and clever, he read +novels in school hours, wore a ring, and set up as a dandy. Even then he +was in love with the young lady whom he married in the end. At a fight +with boys of another school, he and a friend placed a mine under the +ground occupied by the enemy, and blew them, more or less, into the air. +Many an eyebrow was singed off on that fatal day, when, for the only +time, this romancer of the wars "smelled powder." He afterwards pleaded +for his party before the worthy police magistrate, and showed great +promise as a barrister. At Trinity College, Dublin, he was full of his +fun, made ballads, sang them through the streets in disguise (like +Fergusson, the Scottish poet), and one night collected thirty shillings +in coppers. + +The original of Frank Webber, in "Charles O'Malley," was a chum of his, +and he took part in the wonderful practical jokes which he has made +immortal in that novel. + +From Trinity College, Dublin, Lever went to Gottingen, where he found fun +and fighting enough among the German students. From that hour he became +a citizen of the world, or, at least, of Europe, and perhaps, like the +prophets, was most honoured when out of his own country. He returned to +Dublin and took his degree in medicine, after playing a famous practical +joke. A certain medical professor was wont to lecture in bed. One night +he left town unexpectedly. Lever, by chance, came early to lecture, +found the Professor absent, slipped into his bed, put on his nightcap, +and took the class himself. On another day he was standing outside the +Foundling Hospital with a friend, a small man. Now, a kind of stone +cradle for foundlings was built outside the door, and, when a baby was +placed therein, a bell rang. Lever lifted up his friend, popped him into +the cradle, and had the joy of seeing the promising infant picked out by +the porter. + +It seems a queer education for a man of letters; but, like Sir Walter +Scott when revelling in Liddesdale, he "was making himself all the time." +He was collecting myriads of odd experiences and treasures of anecdotes; +he was learning to know men of all sorts; and later, as a country doctor, +he had experiences of mess tables, of hunting, and of all the ways of his +remarkable countrymen. When cholera visited his district he stuck to his +work like a man of heart and courage. But the usual tasks of a country +doctor wearied him; he neglected them, he became unpopular with the +authorities, he married his first love and returned to Brussels, where he +practised as a physician. He had already begun his first notable book, +"Harry Lorrequer," in the _University Magazine_. It is merely a string +of Irish and other stories, good, bad, and indifferent--a picture gallery +full of portraits of priests, soldiers, peasants and odd characters. The +plot is of no importance; we are not interested in Harry's love affairs, +but in his scrapes, adventures, duels at home and abroad. He fights +people by mistake whom he does not know by sight, he appears on parade +with his face blackened, he wins large piles at _trente et quarante_, he +disposes of coopers of claret and bowls of punch, and the sheep on a +thousand hills provide him with devilled kidneys. The critics and the +authors thought little of the merry medley, but the public enjoyed it, +and defied the reviewers. One paper preferred the book to a wilderness +of "Pickwicks"; and as this opinion was advertised everywhere by +M'Glashan, the publisher, Mr. Dickens was very much annoyed indeed. +Authors are easily annoyed. But Lever writes _ut placeat pueris_, and +there was a tremendous fight at Rugby between two boys, the "Slogger +Williams" and "Tom Brown" of the period, for the possession of "Harry +Lorrequer." When an author has the boys of England on his side, he can +laugh at the critics. Not that Lever laughed: he, too, was easily vexed, +and much depressed, when the reviews assailed him. Next he began +"Charles O'Malley"; and if any man reads this essay who has not read the +"Irish Dragoon," let him begin at once. "O'Malley" is what you can +recommend to a friend. Here is every species of diversion: duels and +steeplechases, practical jokes at college (good practical jokes, not +booby traps and apple-pie beds); here is fighting in the Peninsula. If +any student is in doubt, let him try chapter xiv.--the battle on the +Douro. This is, indeed, excellent military writing, and need not fear +comparison as art with Napier's famous history. Lever has warmed to his +work; his heart is in it; he had the best information from an +eye-witness; and the brief beginning, on the peace of nature before the +strife of men, is admirably poetical. + +To reach the French, under Soult, Wellesley had to cross the deep and +rapid Douro, in face of their fire, and without regular transport. "He +dared the deed. What must have been his confidence in the men he +commanded! what must have been his reliance on his own genius!" + +You hold your breath as you read, while English and Germans charge, till +at last the field is won, and the dust of the French columns retreating +in the distance blows down the road to Spain. + +The Great Duke read this passage, and marvelled how Lever knew certain +things that he tells. He learned this, and much more, the humours of +war, from the original of Major Monsoon. Falstaff is alone in the +literature of the world, but if ever there came a later Falstaff, Monsoon +was the man. And where have you such an Irish Sancho Panza as Micky +Free, that independent minstrel, or such an Irish Di Vernon as Baby +Blake? The critics may praise Lever's thoughtful and careful later +novels as they will, but "Charles O'Malley" will always be the pattern of +a military romance. The anecdote of "a virtuous weakness" in +O'Shaughnessy's father's character would alone make the fortune of many a +story. The truth is, it is not easy to lay down "Charles O'Malley," to +leave off reading it, and get on with the account of Lever. + +His excellent and delightful novel scarcely received one favourable +notice from the press. This may have been because it was so popular; but +Lever became so nervous that he did not like to look at the papers. When +he went back to Dublin and edited a magazine there, he was more fiercely +assailed than ever. It is difficult for an Irishman to write about the +Irish, or for a Scot to write about the Scottish, without hurting the +feelings of his countrymen. While their literary brethren are alive they +are not very dear to the newspaper scribes of these gallant nations; and +thus Jeffrey was more severe to Scott than he need have been, while the +Irish press, it appears, made an onslaught on Lever. Mr. Thackeray met +Lever in Dublin, and he mentions this unkind behaviour. "Lorrequer's +military propensities have been objected to strongly by his squeamish +Hibernian brethren . . . But is Lorrequer the only man in Ireland who is +fond of military spectacles? Why does the _Nation_ publish these +edifying and Christian war songs? . . . And who is it that prates about +the Irish at Waterloo, and the Irish at Fontenoy, and the Irish at +Seringapatam, and the Irish at Timbuctoo? If Mr. O'Connell, like a wise +rhetorician, chooses, and very properly, to flatter the national military +passion, why not Harry Lorrequer?" + +Why not, indeed? But Mr. Lever was a successful Irishman of letters, and +a good many other Irish gentlemen of letters, honest Doolan and his +friends, were not successful. That is the humour of it. + +Though you, my youthful reader, if I have one, do not detest Jones +because he is in the Eleven, nor Brown because he has "got his cap," nor +Smith because he does Greek Iambics like Sophocles; though you rather +admire and applaud these champions, you may feel very differently when +you come to thirty years or more, and see other men doing what you cannot +do, and gaining prizes beyond your grasp. And then, if you are a +reviewer, you "will find fault with a book for what it does not give," as +thus, to take Mr. Thackeray's example:-- + +"Lady Smigsmag's novel is amusing, but lamentably deficient in geological +information." "Mr. Lever's novels are trashy and worthless, for his +facts are not borne out by any authority, and he gives us no information +about the political state of Ireland. 'Oh! our country, our green and +beloved, our beautiful and oppressed?'" and so forth. + +It was not altogether a happy time that Lever passed at home. Not only +did his native critics belabour him most ungrudgingly for "Tom Burke," +that vivid and chivalrous romance, but he made enemies of authors. He +edited a magazine! Is not that enough? He wearied of wading through +waggon-loads of that pure unmitigated rubbish which people are permitted +to "shoot" at editorial doors. How much dust there is in it to how few +pearls! He did not return MSS. punctually and politely. The office cat +could edit the volunteered contributions of many a magazine, but Lever +was even more casual and careless than an experienced office cat. He +grew crabbed, and tried to quarrel with Mr. Thackeray for that delightful +parody "Phil Fogarty," nearly as good as a genuine story by Lever. + +Beset by critics, burlesqued by his friend, he changed his style (Mr. +Fitzpatrick tells us) and became more sober--and not so entertaining. He +actually published a criticism of Beyle, of Stendhal, that psychological +prig, the darling of culture and of M. Paul Bourget. Harry Lorrequer on +Stendhal!--it beggars belief. He nearly fought a duel with the gentleman +who is said to have suggested Mr. Pecksniff to Dickens! Yet they call +his early novels improbable. Nothing could be less plausible than a +combat between Harry Lorrequer and a gentleman who, even remotely, +resembled the father of Cherry and Merry. + +Lever went abroad again, and in Florence or the Baths of Lucca, in +Trieste or Spezia, he passed the rest of his life. He saw the Italian +revolution of 1848, and it added to his melancholy. This is plain from +one of his novels with a curious history--"Con Cregan." He wrote it at +the same time as "The Daltons," and he did not sign it. The reviewers +praised "Con Cregan" at the expense of the signed work, rejoicing that +Lever, as "The Daltons" proved, was exhausted, and that a new Irish +author, the author of "Con Cregan," was coming to eclipse him. In short, +he eclipsed himself, and he did not like it. His right hand was jealous +of what his left hand did. It seems odd that any human being, however +dull and envious, failed to detect Lever in the rapid and vivacious +adventures of his Irish "Gil Blas," hero of one of the very best among +his books, a piece not unworthy of Dumas. "Con" was written after +midnight, "The Daltons" in the morning; and there can be no doubt which +set of hours was more favourable to Lever's genius. Of course he liked +"The Daltons" best; of all people, authors appear to be their own worst +critics. + +It is not possible even to catalogue Lever's later books here. Again he +drove a pair of novels abreast--"The Dodds" and "Sir Jasper Carew"--which +contain some of his most powerful situations. When almost an old man, +sad, outworn in body, straitened in circumstances, he still produced +excellent tales in this later manner--"Lord Kilgobbin," "That Boy of +Norcott's," "A Day's Ride," and many more. These are the thoughts of a +tired man of the world, who has done and seen everything that such men +see and do. He says that he grew fat, and bald, and grave; he wrote for +the grave and the bald, not for the happier world which is young, and +curly, and merry. He died at last, it is said, in his sleep; and it is +added that he did what Harry Lorrequer would not have done--he left his +affairs in perfect order. + +Lever lived in an age so full of great novelists that, perhaps, he is not +prized as he should be. Dickens, Bulwer, Thackeray, Trollope, George +Eliot, were his contemporaries. But when we turn back and read him once +more, we see that Lever, too, was a worthy member of that famous +company--a romancer for boys and men. + + + + +THE POEMS OF SIR WALTER SCOTT + + +Yesterday, as the sun was very bright, and there was no wind, I took a +fishing-rod on chance and Scott's poems, and rowed into the middle of St. +Mary's Loch. Every hill, every tuft of heather was reflected in the +lake, as in a silver mirror. There was no sound but the lapping of the +water against the boat, the cry of the blackcock from the hill, and the +pleasant plash of a trout rising here and there. So I read "The Lay of +the Last Minstrel" over again, here, in the middle of the scenes where +the story is laid and where the fights were fought. For when the Baron +went on pilgrimage, + + "And took with him this elvish page + To Mary's Chapel of the Lowes," + +it was to the ruined chapel _here_ that he came, + + "For there, beside our Ladye's lake, + An offering he had sworn to make, + And he would pay his vows." + +But his enemy, the Lady of Branksome, gathered a band, + + "Of the best that would ride at her command," + +and they all came from the country round. Branksome, where the lady +lived, is twenty miles off, towards the south, across the ranges of +lonely green hills. Harden, where her ally, Wat of Harden, abode, is +within twelve miles; and Deloraine, where William dwelt, is nearer still; +and John of Thirlestane had his square tower in the heather, "where +victual never grew," on Ettrick Water, within ten miles. These +gentlemen, and their kinsfolk and retainers, being at feud with the Kers, +tried to slay the Baron, in the Chapel of "Lone St. Mary of the Waves." + + "They were three hundred spears and three. + Through Douglas burn, up Yarrow stream, + Their horses prance, their lances gleam. + They came to St. Mary's Lake ere day; + But the chapel was void, and the Baron away. + They burned the chapel for very rage, + And cursed Lord Cranstoun's goblin-page." + +The Scotts were a rough clan enough to burn a holy chapel because they +failed to kill their enemy within the sacred walls. But, as I read +again, for the twentieth time, Sir Walter's poem, floating on the lonely +breast of the lake, in the heart of the hills where Yarrow flows, among +the little green mounds that cover the ruins of chapel and castle and +lady's bower, I asked myself whether Sir Walter was indeed a great and +delightful poet, or whether he pleases me so much because I was born in +his own country, and have one drop of the blood of his Border robbers in +my own veins? + +It is not always pleasant to go back to places, or to meet people, whom +we have loved well, long ago. If they have changed little, we have +changed much. The little boy, whose first book of poetry was "The Lady +of the Lake," and who naturally believed that there was no poet like Sir +Walter, is sadly changed into the man who has read most of the world's +poets, and who hears, on many sides, that Scott is outworn and doomed to +deserved oblivion. Are they right or wrong, the critics who tell us, +occasionally, that Scott's good novels make up for his bad verse, or that +verse and prose, all must go? _Pro captu lectoris_, by the reader's +taste, they stand or fall; yet even pessimism can scarcely believe that +the Waverley Novels are mortal. They were once the joy of every class of +minds; they cannot cease to be the joy of those who cling to the +permanently good, and can understand and forgive lapses, carelessnesses, +and the leisurely literary fashion of a former age. But, as to the +poems, many give them up who cling to the novels. It does not follow +that the poems are bad. In the first place, they are of two kinds--lyric +and narrative. Now, the fashion of narrative in poetry has passed away +for the present. The true Greek epics are read by a few in Greek; by +perhaps fewer still in translations. But so determined are we not to +read tales in verse, that prose renderings, even of the epics, nay, even +of the Attic dramas, have come more or less into vogue. This accounts +for the comparative neglect of Sir Walter's lays. They are spoken of as +Waverley Novels spoiled. This must always be the opinion of readers who +will not submit to stories in verse; it by no means follows that the +verse is bad. If we make an exception, which we must, in favour of +Chaucer, where is there better verse in story telling in the whole of +English literature? The readers who despise "Marmion," or "The Lady of +the Lake," do so because they dislike stories told in poetry. From +poetry they expect other things, especially a lingering charm and magic +of style, a reflective turn, "criticism of life." These things, except +so far as life can be criticised in action, are alien to the Muse of +narrative. Stories and pictures are all she offers: Scott's pictures, +certainly, are fresh enough, his tales are excellent enough, his manner +is sufficiently direct. To take examples: every one who wants to read +Scott's poetry should begin with the "Lay." From opening to close it +never falters:-- + + "Nine and twenty knights of fame + Hung their shields in Branksome Hall; + Nine and twenty squires of name + Brought their steeds to bower from stall, + Nine and twenty yeomen tall + Waited, duteous, on them all . . . + Ten of them were sheathed in steel, + With belted sword, and spur on heel; + They quitted not their harness bright + Neither by day nor yet by night: + They lay down to rest + With corslet laced, + Pillowed on buckler cold and hard; + They carved at the meal + With gloves of steel, + And they drank the red wine through the helmet barred." + +Now, is not that a brave beginning? Does not the verse clank and chime +like sword sheath on spur, like the bits of champing horses? Then, when +William of Deloraine is sent on his lonely midnight ride across the +haunted moors and wolds, does the verse not gallop like the heavy +armoured horse? + + "Unchallenged, thence passed Deloraine, + To ancient Riddell's fair domain, + Where Aill, from mountains freed, + Down from the lakes did raving come; + Each wave was crested with tawny foam, + Like the mane of a chestnut steed, + In vain! no torrent, deep or broad, + Might bar the bold moss-trooper's road; + At the first plunge the horse sunk low, + And the water broke o'er the saddle-bow." + +These last two lines have the very movement and note, the deep heavy +plunge, the still swirl of the water. Well I know the lochs whence Aill +comes red in flood; many a trout have I taken in Aill, long ago. This, +of course, causes a favourable prejudice, a personal bias towards +admiration. But I think the poetry itself is good, and stirs the spirit, +even of those who know not Ailmoor, the mother of Aill, that lies dark +among the melancholy hills. + +The spirit is stirred throughout by the chivalry and the courage of +Scott's men and of his women. Thus the Lady of Branksome addresses the +English invaders who have taken her boy prisoner:-- + + "For the young heir of Branksome's line, + God be his aid, and God be mine; + Through me no friend shall meet his doom; + Here, while I live, no foe finds room. + Then if thy Lords their purpose urge, + Take our defiance loud and high; + Our slogan is their lyke-wake dirge, + Our moat, the grave where they shall lie." + +Ay, and though the minstrel says he is no love poet, and though, indeed, +he shines more in war than in lady's bower, is not this a noble stanza on +true love, and worthy of what old Malory writes in his "Mort d'Arthur"? +Because here Scott speaks for himself, and of his own unhappy and +immortal affection:-- + + "True love's the gift which God has given + To man alone beneath the Heaven. + It is not Fantasy's hot fire, + Whose wishes, soon as granted, fly; + _It liveth not in fierce desire_, + _With dead desire it dock not die_: + It is the secret sympathy, + The silver link, the silken tie, + Which heart to heart and mind to mind, + In body and in soul can bind." + +Truth and faith, courage and chivalry, a free life in the hills and by +the streams, a shrewd brain, an open heart, a kind word for friend or +foeman, these are what you learn from the "Lay," if you want to learn +lessons from poetry. It is a rude legend, perhaps, as the critics said +at once, when critics were disdainful of wizard priests and ladies +magical. But it is a deathless legend, I hope; it appeals to every young +heart that is not early spoiled by low cunning, and cynicism, and love of +gain. The minstrel's own prophecy is true, and still, and always, + + "Yarrow, as he rolls along, + Bears burden to the minstrel's song." + +After the "Lay" came "Marmion, a Tale of Flodden Field." It is far more +ambitious and complicated than the "Lay," and is not much worse written. +Sir Walter was ever a rapid and careless poet, and as he took more pains +with his plot, he took less with his verse. His friends reproved him, +but he answered to one of them-- + + "Since oft thy judgment could refine + My flattened thought and cumbrous line, + Still kind, as is thy wont, attend, + And in the minstrel spare the friend: + _Though wild as cloud_, _as stream_, _as gale_, + _Flow forth_, _flow unrestrained_, _my tale_!" + +Any one who knows Scott's country knows how cloud and stream and gale all +sweep at once down the valley of Ettrick or of Tweed. West wind, wild +cloud, red river, they pour forth as by one impulse--forth from the far- +off hills. He let his verse sweep out in the same stormy sort, and many +a "cumbrous line," many a "flattened thought," you may note, if you will, +in "Marmion." For example-- + + "And think what he must next have felt, + At buckling of the falchion belt." + +The "Lay" is a tale that only verse could tell; much of "Marmion" might +have been told in prose, and most of "Rokeby." But prose could never +give the picture of Edinburgh, nor tell the tale of Flodden Fight in +"Marmion," which I verily believe is the best battle-piece in all the +poetry of all time, better even than the stand of Aias by the ships in +the Iliad, better than the slaying of the Wooers in the Odyssey. Nor +could prose give us the hunting of the deer and the long gallop over +hillside and down valley, with which the "Lady of the Lake" begins, +opening thereby the enchanted gates of the Highlands to the world. "The +Lady of the Lake," except in the battle-piece, is told in a less rapid +metre than that of the "Lay," less varied than that of "Marmion." +"Rokeby" lives only by its songs; the "Lord of the Isles" by Bannockburn, +the "Field of Waterloo" by the repulse of the Cuirassiers. But all the +poems are interspersed with songs and ballads, as the beautiful ballad of +"Alice Brand"; and Scott's fame rests on _these_ far more than on his +later versified romances. Coming immediately after the very tamest poets +who ever lived, like Hayley, Scott wrote songs and ballads as wild and +free, as melancholy or gay, as ever shepherd sang, or gipsy carolled, or +witch-wife moaned, or old forgotten minstrel left to the world, music +with no maker's name. For example, take the Outlaw's rhyme-- + + "With burnished brand and musketoon, + So gallantly you come, + I read you for a bold dragoon + That lists the tuck of drum. + I list no more the tuck of drum, + No more the trumpet hear; + But when the beetle sounds his hum, + My comrades take the spear. + And, oh, though Brignal banks be fair, + And Greta woods be gay, + Yet mickle must the maiden dare, + Would reign my Queen of May!" + +How musical, again, is this!-- + + "This morn is merry June, I trow, + The rose is budding fain; + But she shall bloom in winter snow, + Ere we two meet again. + He turned his charger as he spake, + Upon the river shore, + He gave his bridle-reins a shake, + Said, 'Adieu for evermore, + My love! + Adieu for evermore!'" + +Turning from the legends in verse, let it not be forgotten that Scott was +a great lyrical poet. Mr. Palgrave is not too lenient a judge, and his +"Golden Treasury" is a touchstone, as well as a treasure, of poetic gold. +In this volume Wordsworth contributes more lyrics than any other poet: +Shelley and Shakespeare come next; then Sir Walter. For my part I would +gladly sacrifice a few of Wordsworth's for a few more of Scott's. But +this may be prejudice. Mr. Palgrave is not prejudiced, and we see how +high is his value for Sir Walter. + +There are scores of songs in his works, touching and sad, or gay as a +hunter's waking, that tell of lovely things lost by tradition, and found +by him on the moors: all these--not prized by Sir Walter himself--are in +his gift, and in that of no other man. For example, his "Eve of St. +John" is simply a masterpiece, a ballad among ballads. Nothing but an +old song moves us like-- + + "Are these the links o' Forth, she said, + Are these the bends o' Dee!" + +He might have done more of the best, had he very greatly cared. Alone +among poets, he had neither vanity nor jealousy; he thought little of his +own verse and his own fame: would that he had thought more! would that he +had been more careful of what was so precious! But he turned to prose; +bade poetry farewell. + + "Yet, once again, farewell, thou Minstrel Harp, + Yet, once again, forgive my feeble sway. + _And little reck I of the censure sharp_ + _May idly cavil at an idle lay_." + +People still cavil idly, complaining that Scott did not finish, or did +not polish his pieces; that he was not Keats, or was not Wordsworth. He +was himself; he was the Last Minstrel, the latest, the greatest, the +noblest of natural poets concerned with natural things. He sang of free, +fierce, and warlike life, of streams yet rich in salmon, and moors not +yet occupied by brewers; of lonely places haunted in the long grey +twilights of the North; of crumbling towers where once dwelt the Lady of +Branksome or the Flower of Yarrow. Nature summed up in him many a past +age a world of ancient faiths; and before the great time of Britain +wholly died, to Britain, as to Greece, she gave her Homer. When he was +old, and tired, and near his death--so worn with trouble and labour that +he actually signed his own name wrong--he wrote his latest verse, for a +lady. It ends-- + + "My country, be thou glorious still!" + +and so he died, within the sound of the whisper of Tweed, foreseeing the +years when his country would no more be glorious, thinking of his country +only, forgetting quite the private sorrow of his own later days. + +People will tell you that Scott was not a great poet; that his bolt is +shot, his fame perishing. Little he cared for his fame! But for my part +I think and hope that Scott can never die, till men grow up into manhood +without ever having been boys--till they forget that + + "One glorious hour of crowded life + Is worth an age without a name!" + +Thus, the charges against Sir Walter's poetry are, on the whole, little +more than the old critical fallacy of blaming a thing for not being +something else. "It takes all sorts to make a world," in poetry as in +life. Sir Walter's sort is a very good sort, and in English literature +its place was empty, and waiting for him. Think of what he did. English +poetry had long been very tame and commonplace, written in couplets like +Pope's, very artificial and smart, or sensible and slow. He came with +poems of which the music seemed to gallop, like thundering hoofs and +ringing bridles of a rushing border troop. Here were goblin, ghost, and +fairy, fight and foray, fair ladies and true lovers, gallant knights and +hard blows, blazing beacons on every hill crest and on the bartisan of +every tower. Here was a world made alive again that had been dead for +three hundred years--a world of men and women. + +They say that the archaeology is not good. Archaeology is a science; in +its application to poetry, Scott was its discoverer. Others can name the +plates of a coat of armour more learnedly than he, but he made men wear +them. They call his Gothic art false, his armour pasteboard; but he put +living men under his castled roofs, living men into his breastplates and +taslets. Science advances, old knowledge becomes ignorance; it is poetry +that does not die, and that will not die, while-- + + "The triple pride + Of Eildon looks over Strathclyde." + + + + +JOHN BUNYAN + + +Dr. Johnson once took Bishop Percy's little daughter on his knee, and +asked her what she thought of the "Pilgrim's Progress." The child +answered that she had not read it. "No?" replied the Doctor; "then I +would not give one farthing for you," and he set her down and took no +further notice of her. + +This story, if true, proves that the Doctor was rather intolerant. We +must not excommunicate people because they have not our taste in books. +The majority of people do not care for books at all. + +There is a descendant of John Bunyan's alive now, or there was lately, +who never read the "Pilgrim's Progress." Books are not in his line. Nay, +Bunyan himself, who wrote sixty works, was no great reader. An Oxford +scholar who visited him in his study found no books at all, except some +of Bunyan's own and Foxe's "Book of Martyrs." + +Yet, little as the world in general cares for reading, it has read Bunyan +more than most. One hundred thousand copies of the "Pilgrim" are +believed to have been sold in his own day, and the story has been done +into the most savage languages, as well as into those of the civilised +world. + +Dr. Johnson, who did not like Dissenters, praises the "invention, +imagination, and conduct of the story," and knew no other book he wished +longer except "Robinson Crusoe" and "Don Quixote." Well, Dr. Johnson +would not have given a farthing for _me_, as I am quite contented with +the present length of these masterpieces. What books do _you_ wish +longer? I wish Homer had written a continuation of the Odyssey, and told +us what Odysseus did among the far-off men who never tasted salt nor +heard of the sea. A land epic after the sea epic, how good it would have +been--from Homer! But it would have taxed the imagination of Dante to +continue the adventures of Christian and his wife after they had once +crossed the river and reached the city. + +John Bunyan has been more fortunate than most authors in one of his +biographies. + +His life has been written by the Rev. Dr. Brown, who is now minister of +his old congregation at Bedford; and an excellent life it is. Dr. Brown +is neither Roundhead nor Cavalier; for though he is, of course, on +Bunyan's side, he does not throw stones at the beautiful Church of +England. + +Probably most of us are on Bunyan's side now. It might be a good thing +that we should all dwell together in religious unity, but history shows +that people cannot be bribed into brotherhood. They tried to bully +Bunyan; they arrested and imprisoned him--unfairly even in law, according +to Dr. Brown, not unfairly, Mr. Froude thinks--and he would not be +bullied. + +What was much more extraordinary, he would not be embittered. In spite +of all, he still called Charles II. "a gracious Prince." When a subject +is in conscience at variance with the law, Bunyan said, he has but one +course--to accept peaceably the punishment which the law awards. He was +never soured, never angered by twelve years of durance, not exactly in a +loathsome dungeon, but in very uncomfortable quarters. When there came a +brief interval of toleration, he did not occupy himself in brawling, but +in preaching, and looking after the manners and morals of the little +"church," including one woman who brought disagreeable charges against +"Brother Honeylove." The church decided that there was nothing in the +charges, but somehow the name of Brother Honeylove does not inspire +confidence. + +Almost everybody knows the main facts of Bunyan's life. They may not +know that he was of Norman descent (as Dr. Brown seems to succeed in +proving), nor that the Bunyans came over with the Conqueror, nor that he +was a gipsy, as others hold. On Dr. Brown's showing, Bunyan's ancestors +lost their lands in process of time and change, and Bunyan's father was a +tinker. He preferred to call himself a brazier--his was the rather +unexpected trade to which Mr. Dick proposed apprenticing David +Copperfield. + +Bunyan himself, "the wondrous babe," as Dr. Brown enthusiastically styles +him, was christened on November 30th, 1628. He was born in a cottage, +long fallen, and hard by was a marshy place, "a veritable slough of +despond." Bunyan may have had it in mind when he wrote of the slough +where Christian had so much trouble. He was not a travelled man: all his +knowledge of people and places he found at his doors. He had some +schooling, "according to the rate of other poor men's children," and +assuredly it was enough. + +The great civil war broke out, and Bunyan was a soldier; he tells us not +on which side. Dr. Brown and Mr. Lewis Morris think he was on that of +the Parliament, but his old father, the tinker, stood for the King. Mr. +Froude is rather more inclined to hold that he was among the "gay +gallants who struck for the crown." He does not seem to have been much +under fire, but he got that knowledge of the appearance of war which he +used in his siege of the City of Mansoul. One can hardly think that +Bunyan liked war--certainly not from cowardice, but from goodness of +heart. + +In 1646 the army was disbanded, and Bunyan went back to Elstow village +and his tinkering, his bell-ringing, his dancing with the girls, his +playing at "cat" on a Sunday after service. + +He married very young and poor. He married a pious wife, and read all +her library--"The Plain Man's Pathway to Heaven," and "The Practice of +Piety." He became very devout in the spirit of the Church of England, +and he gave up his amusements. Then he fell into the Slough of Despond, +then he went through the Valley of the Shadow, and battled with Apollyon. + +People have wondered _why_ he fancied himself such a sinner? He +confesses to having been a liar and a blasphemer. If I may guess, I +fancy that this was merely the literary genius of Bunyan seeking for +expression. His lies, I would go bail, were tremendous romances, wild +fictions told for fun, never lies of cowardice or for gain. As to his +blasphemies, he had an extraordinary power of language, and that was how +he gave it play. "Fancy swearing" was his only literary safety-valve, in +those early days, when he played cat on Elstow Green. + +Then he heard a voice dart from heaven into his soul, which said, "Wilt +thou leave thy sins and go to heaven, or have thy sins and go to hell?" +So he fell on repentance, and passed those awful years of mental torture, +when all nature seemed to tempt him to the Unknown Sin. + +What did all this mean? It meant that Bunyan was within an ace of +madness. + +It happens to a certain proportion of men, religiously brought up, to +suffer like Bunyan. They hear voices, they are afraid of that awful +unknown iniquity, and of eternal death, as Bunyan and Cowper were afraid. + +Was it not De Quincey who was at school with a bully who believed he had +been guilty of the unpardonable offence? Bullying is an offence much +less pardonable than most men are guilty of. Their best plan (in +Bunyan's misery) is to tell Apollyon that the Devil is an ass, to do +their work and speak the truth. + +Bunyan got quit of his terror at last, briefly by believing in the +goodness of God. He did not say, like Mr. Carlyle, "Well, if all my +fears are true, what then?" His was a Christian, not a stoical +deliverance. + +The "church" in which Bunyan found shelter had for minister a converted +major in a Royalist regiment. It was a quaint little community, the +members living like the early disciples, correcting each other's faults, +and keeping a severe eye on each other's lives. Bunyan became a minister +in it; but, Puritan as he was, he lets his Pilgrims dance on joyful +occasions, and even Mr. Ready-to-Halt waltzes with a young lady of the +Pilgrim company. + +As a minister and teacher Bunyan began to write books of controversy with +Quakers and clergymen. The points debated are no longer important to us; +the main thing was that he got a pen into his hand, and found a proper +outlet for his genius, a better way than fancy swearing. + +If he had not been cast into Bedford jail for preaching in a cottage, he +might never have dreamed his immortal dream, nor become all that he was. +The leisures of gaol were long. In that "den" the Muse came to him, the +fair kind Muse of the Home Beautiful. He saw all that company of his, so +like and so unlike Chaucer's: Faithful, and Hopeful, and Christian, the +fellowship of fiends, the truculent Cavaliers of Vanity Fair, and Giant +Despair, with his grievous crabtree cudgel; and other people he saw who +are with us always,--the handsome Madam Bubble, and the young woman whose +name was Dull, and Mr. Worldly Wiseman, and Mr. Facing Bothways, and +Byends, all the persons of the comedy of human life. + +He hears the angelic songs of the City beyond the river; he hears them, +but repeat them to us he cannot, "for I'm no poet," as he says himself. +He beheld the country of Beulah, and the Delectable Mountains, that +earthly Paradise of nature where we might be happy yet, and wander no +farther, if the world would let us--fair mountains in whose streams Izaak +Walton was then even casting angle. + +It is pleasant to fancy how Walton and Bunyan might have met and talked, +under a plane tree by the Ouse, while the May showers were falling. +Surely Bunyan would not have likened the good old man to Formalist; and +certainly Walton would have enjoyed travelling with Christian, though the +book was by none of his dear bishops, but by a Non-conformist. They were +made to like but not to convert each other; in matters ecclesiastical +they saw the opposite sides of the shield. Each wrote a masterpiece. It +is too late to praise "The Complete Angler" or the "Pilgrim's Progress." +You may put ingenuity on the rack, but she can say nothing new that is +true about the best romance that ever was wedded to allegory, nor about +the best idyl of old English life. + +The people are living now--all the people: the noisy bullying judges, as +of the French Revolutionary Courts, or the Hanging Courts after +Monmouth's war; the demure, grave Puritan girls; and Matthew, who had the +gripes; and lazy, feckless Ignorance, who came to so ill an end, poor +fellow; and sturdy Old Honest, and timid Mr. Fearing; not single persons, +but dozens, arise on the memory. + +They come, as fresh, as vivid, as if they were out of Scott or Moliere; +the Tinker is as great a master of character and fiction as the greatest, +almost; his style is pure, and plain, and sound, full of old idioms, and +even of something like old slang. But even his slang is classical. + +Bunyan is everybody's author. The very Catholics have their own edition +of the Pilgrim: they have cut out Giant Pope, but have been too +good-natured to insert Giant Protestant in his place. Unheralded, +unannounced, though not uncriticised (they accused the Tinker of being a +plagiarist, of course), Bunyan outshone the Court wits, the learned, the +poets of the Restoration, and even the great theologians. + +His other books, except "Grace Abounding" (an autobiography), "The Holy +War," and "Mr. Badman," are only known to students, nor much read by +them. The fashion of his theology, as of all theology, passed away; it +is by virtue of his imagination, of his romance, that he lives. + +The allegory, of course, is full of flaws. It would not have been manly +of Christian to run off and save his own soul, leaving his wife and +family. But Bunyan shrank from showing us how difficult, if not +impossible, it is for a married man to be a saint. Christiana was really +with him all through that pilgrimage; and how he must have been hampered +by that woman of the world! But had the allegory clung more closely to +the skirts of truth, it would have changed from a romance to a satire, +from "The Pilgrim's Progress" to "Vanity Fair." There was too much love +in Bunyan for a satirist of that kind; he had just enough for a +humourist. + +Born in another class, he might have been, he would have been, a writer +more refined in his strength, more uniformly excellent, but never so +universal nor so popular in the best sense of the term. + +In the change of times and belief it is not impossible that Bunyan will +live among the class whom he least thought of addressing--scholars, +lovers of worldly literature--for devotion and poverty are parting +company, while art endures till civilisation perishes. + +Are we better or worse for no longer believing as Bunyan believed, no +longer seeing that Abyss of Pascal's open beside our armchairs? The +question is only a form of that wide riddle, Does any theological or +philosophical opinion make us better or worse? The vast majority of men +and women are little affected by schemes and theories of this life and +the next. They who even ask for a reply to the riddle are the few: most +of us take the easy-going morality of our world for a guide, as we take +Bradshaw for a railway journey. It is the few who must find out an +answer: on that answer their lives depend, and the lives of others are +insensibly raised towards their level. Bunyan would not have been a +worse man if he had shared the faith of Izaak Walton. Izaak had his +reply to all questions in the Church Catechism and the Articles. Bunyan +found his in the theology of his sect, appealing more strongly than +orthodoxy to a nature more bellicose than Izaak's. Men like him, with +his indomitable courage, will never lack a solution of the puzzle of the +earth. At worst they will live by law, whether they dare to speak of it +as God's law, or dare not. They will always be our leaders, our Captain +Greathearts, in the pilgrimage to the city where, led or unled, we must +all at last arrive. They will not fail us, while loyalty and valour are +human qualities. The day may conceivably come when we have no Christian +to march before us, but we shall never lack the company of Greatheart. + + + + +TO A YOUNG JOURNALIST + + +Dear Smith,-- + +You inform me that you desire to be a journalist, and you are kind enough +to ask my advice. Well, be a journalist, by all means, in any honest and +honourable branch of the profession. But do not be an eavesdropper and a +spy. You may fly into a passion when you receive this very plainly +worded advice. I hope you will; but, for several reasons, which I now go +on to state, I fear that you won't. I fear that, either by natural gift +or by acquired habit, you already possess the imperturbable temper which +will be so useful to you if you do join the army of spies and +eavesdroppers. If I am right, you have made up your mind to refuse to +take offence, as long as by not taking offence you can wriggle yourself +forward in the band of journalistic reptiles. You will be revenged on +me, in that case, some day; you will lie in wait for me with a dirty +bludgeon, and steal on me out of a sewer. If you do, permit me to assure +you that I don't care. But if you are already in a rage, if you are +about tearing up this epistle, and are starting to assault me personally, +or at least to answer me furiously, then there is every hope for you and +for your future. I therefore venture to state my reasons for supposing +that you are inclined to begin a course which your father, if he were +alive, would deplore, as all honourable men in their hearts must deplore +it. When you were at the University (let me congratulate you on your +degree) you edited, or helped to edit, _The Bull-dog_. It was not a very +brilliant nor a very witty, but it was an extremely "racy" periodical. It +spoke of all men and dons by their nicknames. It was full of second-hand +slang. It contained many personal anecdotes, to the detriment of many +people. It printed garbled and spiteful versions of private +conversations on private affairs. It did not even spare to make comments +on ladies, and on the details of domestic life in the town and in the +University. The copies which you sent me I glanced at with extreme +disgust. + +In my time, more than a score of years ago, a similar periodical, but a +much more clever periodical, was put forth by members of the University. +It contained a novel which, even now, would be worth several ill-gotten +guineas to the makers of the _chronique scandaleuse_. But nobody bought +it, and it died an early death. Times have altered, I am a fogey; but +the ideas of honour and decency which fogies hold now were held by young +men in the sixties of our century. I know very well that these ideas are +obsolete. I am not preaching to the world, nor hoping to convert +society, but to _you_, and purely in your own private, spiritual +interest. If you enter on this path of tattle, mendacity, and malice, +and if, with your cleverness and light hand, you are successful, society +will not turn its back on you. You will be feared in many quarters, and +welcomed in others. Of your paragraphs people will say that "it is a +shame, of course, but it is very amusing." There are so many shames in +the world, shames not at all amusing, that you may see no harm in adding +to the number. "If I don't do it," you may argue, "some one else will." +Undoubtedly; but _why should you do it_? + +You are not a starving scribbler; if you determine to write, you can +write well, though not so easily, on many topics. You have not that last +sad excuse of hunger, which drives poor women to the streets, and makes +unhappy men act as public blabs and spies. If _you_ take to this +_metier_, it must be because you like it, which means that you enjoy +being a listener to and reporter of talk that was never meant for any +ears except those in which it was uttered. It means that the hospitable +board is not sacred for _you_; it means that, with you, friendship, +honour, all that makes human life better than a low smoking-room, are +only valuable for what their betrayal will bring. It means that not even +the welfare of your country will prevent you from running to the Press +with any secret which you may have been entrusted with, or which you may +have surprised. It means, this peculiar kind of profession, that all +things open and excellent, and conspicuous to all men, are with you of no +account. Art, literature, politics, are to cease to interest you. You +are to scheme to surprise gossip about the private lives, dress, and talk +of artists, men of letters, politicians. Your professional work will +sink below the level of servants' gossip in a public-house parlour. If +you happen to meet a man of known name, you will watch him, will listen +to him, will try to sneak into his confidence, and you will blab, for +money, about him, and your blab will inevitably be mendacious. In short, +like the most pitiable outcasts of womankind, and, without their excuse, +you will live by selling your honour. You will not suffer much, nor +suffer long. Your conscience will very speedily be seared with a red-hot +iron. You will be on the road which leads from mere dishonour to crime; +and you may find yourself actually practising _chantage_, and extorting +money as the price of your silence. This is the lowest deep: the vast +majority, even of social _mouchards_, do not sink so low as this. + +The profession of the critic, even in honourable and open criticism, is +beset with dangers. It is often hard to avoid saying an unkind thing, a +cruel thing, which is smart, and which may even be deserved. Who can say +that he has escaped this temptation, and what man of heart can think of +his own fall without a sense of shame? There are, I admit, authors so +antipathetic to me, that I cannot trust myself to review them. Would +that I had never reviewed them! They cannot be so bad as they seem to +me: they must have qualities which escape my observation. Then there is +the temptation to hit back. Some one writes, unjustly or unkindly as you +think, of you or of your friends. You wait till your enemy has written a +book, and then you have your innings. It is not in nature that your +review should be fair: you must inevitably be more on the look-out for +faults than merits. The _ereintage_, the "smashing" of a literary foe is +very delightful at the moment, but it does not look well in the light of +reflection. But these deeds are mere peccadilloes compared with the +confirmed habit of regarding all men and women as fair game for personal +tattle and the sating of private spite. Nobody, perhaps, begins with +this intention. Most men and women can find ready sophistries. If a +report about any one reaches their ears, they say that they are doing him +a service by publishing it and enabling him to contradict it. As if any +mortal ever listened to a contradiction! And there are charges--that of +plagiarism, for example--which can never be disproved, even if +contradictions were listened to by the public. The accusation goes +everywhere, is copied into every printed rag; the contradiction dies with +the daily death of a single newspaper. You may reply that a man of sense +will be indifferent to false accusations. He may, or may not be,--that +is not the question for you; the question for you is whether you will +circulate news that is false, probably, and spiteful, certainly. + +In short, the whole affair regards yourself more than it regards the +world. Plenty of poison is sold: is it well for you to be one of the +merchants? Is it the business of an educated gentleman to live by the +trade of an eavesdropper and a blab? In the Memoirs of M. Blowitz he +tells you how he began his illustrious career by procuring the +publication of remarks which M. Thiers had made to him. He then "went to +see M. Thiers, not without some apprehension." Is that the kind of +emotion which you wish to be habitual in your experience? Do you think +it agreeable to become shame-faced when you meet people who have +conversed with you frankly? Do you enjoy being a sneak, and feeling like +a sneak? Do you find blushing pleasant? Of course you will soon lose +the power of blushing; but is that an agreeable prospect? Depend on it, +there are discomforts in the progress to the brazen, in the journey to +the shameless. You may, if your tattle is political, become serviceable +to men engaged in great affairs. They may even ask you to their houses, +if that is your ambition. You may urge that they condone your deeds, and +are even art and part in them. But you must also be aware that they call +you, and think you, a reptile. You are not one of those who will do the +devil's work without the devil's wages; but do you seriously think that +the wages are worth the degradation? + +Many men think so, and are not in other respects bad men. They may even +be kindly and genial. Gentlemen they cannot be, nor men of delicacy, nor +men of honour. They have sold themselves and their self-respect, some +with ease (they are the least blamable), some with a struggle. They have +seen better things, and perhaps vainly long to return to them. These are +"St. Satan's Penitents," and their remorse is vain: + + _Virtutem videant_, _intabescantque relicta_. + +If you don't wish to be of this dismal company, there is only one course +open to you. Never write for publication one line of personal tattle. +Let all men's persons and private lives be as sacred to you as your +father's,--though there are tattlers who would sell paragraphs about +their own mothers if there were a market for the ware. There is no half- +way house on this road. Once begin to print private conversation, and +you are lost--lost, that is, to delicacy and gradually, to many other +things excellent and of good report. The whole question for you is, Do +you mind incurring this damnation? If there is nothing in it which +appals and revolts you, if your conscience is satisfied with a few ready +sophisms, or if you don't care a pin for your conscience, fall to! + +_Vous irez loin_! You will prattle in print about men's private lives +their hidden motives, their waistcoats, their wives, their boots, their +businesses, their incomes. Most of your prattle will inevitably be lies. +But go on! nobody will kick you, I deeply regret to say. You will earn +money. You will be welcomed in society. You will live and die content, +and without remorse. I do not suppose that any particular _inferno_ will +await you in the future life. Whoever watches this world "with larger +other eyes than ours" will doubtless make allowance for you, as for us +all. I am not pretending to be a whit better than you; probably I am +worse in many ways, but not in your way. Putting it merely as a matter +of taste, I don't like the way. It makes me sick--that is all. It is a +sin which I can comfortably damn, as I am not inclined to it. You may +put it in that light; and I have no way of converting you, nor, if I have +not dissuaded you, of dissuading you, from continuing, on a larger scale, +your practices in _The Bull-dog_. + + + + +MR. KIPLING'S STORIES + + +The wind bloweth where it listeth. But the wind of literary inspiration +has rarely shaken the bungalows of India, as, in the tales of the old +Jesuit missionaries, the magical air shook the frail "medicine tents," +where Huron conjurors practised their mysteries. With a world of romance +and of character at their doors, Englishmen in India have seen as if they +saw it not. They have been busy in governing, in making war, making +peace, building bridges, laying down roads, and writing official reports. +Our literature from that continent of our conquest has been sparse +indeed, except in the way of biographies, of histories, and of rather +local and unintelligible _facetiae_. Except the novels by the author of +"Tara," and Sir Henry Cunningham's brilliant sketches, such as +"Dustypore," and Sir Alfred Lyall's poems, we might almost say that India +has contributed nothing to our finer literature. That old haunt of +history, the wealth of character brought out in that confusion of races, +of religions, and the old and new, has been wealth untouched, a treasure- +house sealed: those pagoda trees have never been shaken. At last there +comes an Englishman with eyes, with a pen extraordinarily deft, an +observation marvellously rapid and keen; and, by good luck, this +Englishman has no official duties: he is neither a soldier, nor a judge; +he is merely a man of letters. He has leisure to look around him, he has +the power of making us see what he sees; and, when we have lost India, +when some new power is ruling where we ruled, when our empire has +followed that of the Moguls, future generations will learn from Mr. +Kipling's works what India was under English sway. + +It is one of the surprises of literature that these tiny masterpieces in +prose and verse were poured, "as rich men give that care not for their +gifts," into the columns of Anglo-Indian journals. There they were +thought clever and ephemeral--part of the chatter of the week. The +subjects, no doubt, seemed so familiar, that the strength of the +handling, the brilliance of the colour, were scarcely recognised. But +Mr. Kipling's volumes no sooner reached England than the people into +whose hands they fell were certain that here were the beginnings of a new +literary force. The books had the strangeness, the colour, the variety, +the perfume of the East. Thus it is no wonder that Mr. Kipling's repute +grew up as rapidly as the mysterious mango tree of the conjurors. There +were critics, of course, ready to say that the thing was merely a trick, +and had nothing of the supernatural. That opinion is not likely to hold +its ground. Perhaps the most severe of the critics has been a young +Scotch gentleman, writing French, and writing it wonderfully well, in a +Parisian review. He chose to regard Mr. Kipling as little but an +imitator of Bret Harte, deriving his popularity mainly from the novel and +exotic character of his subjects. No doubt, if Mr. Kipling has a +literary progenitor, it is Mr. Bret Harte. Among his earlier verses a +few are what an imitator of the American might have written in India. But +it is a wild judgment which traces Mr. Kipling's success to his use, for +example, of Anglo-Indian phrases and scraps of native dialects. The +presence of these elements is among the causes which have made Englishmen +think Anglo-Indian literature tediously provincial, and India a bore. Mr. +Kipling, on the other hand, makes us regard the continent which was a +bore an enchanted land, full of marvels and magic which are real. There +has, indeed, arisen a taste for exotic literature: people have become +alive to the strangeness and fascination of the world beyond the bounds +of Europe and the United States. But that is only because men of +imagination and literary skill have been the new conquerors--the Corteses +and Balboas of India, Africa, Australia, Japan, and the isles of the +southern seas. All such conquerors, whether they write with the polish +of M. Pierre Loti, or with the carelessness of Mr. Boldrewood, have, at +least, seen new worlds for themselves; have gone out of the streets of +the over-populated lands into the open air; have sailed and ridden, +walked and hunted; have escaped from the fog and smoke of towns. New +strength has come from fresher air into their brains and blood; hence the +novelty and buoyancy of the stories which they tell. Hence, too, they +are rather to be counted among romanticists than realists, however real +is the essential truth of their books. They have found so much to see +and to record, that they are not tempted to use the microscope, and pore +for ever on the minute in character. A great deal of realism, especially +in France, attracts because it is novel, because M. Zola and others have +also found new worlds to conquer. But certain provinces in those worlds +were not unknown to, but were voluntarily neglected by, earlier +explorers. They were the "Bad Lands" of life and character: surely it is +wiser to seek quite new realms than to build mud huts and dunghills on +the "Bad Lands." + +Mr. Kipling's work, like all good work, is both real and romantic. It is +real because he sees and feels very swiftly and keenly; it is romantic, +again, because he has a sharp eye for the reality of romance, for the +attraction and possibility of adventure, and because he is young. If a +reader wants to see petty characters displayed in all their meannesses, +if this be realism, surely certain of Mr. Kipling's painted and frisky +matrons are realistic enough. The seamy side of Anglo-Indian life: the +intrigues, amorous or semi-political--the slang of people who describe +dining as "mangling garbage" the "games of tennis with the seventh +commandment"--he has not neglected any of these. Probably the sketches +are true enough, and pity 'tis true: for example, the sketches in "Under +the Deodars" and in "The Gadsbys." That worthy pair, with their friends, +are to myself as unsympathetic, almost, as the characters in "La Conquete +de Plassans." But Mr. Kipling is too much a true realist to make their +selfishness and pettiness unbroken, unceasing. We know that "Gaddy" is a +brave, modest, and hard-working soldier; and, when his little silly bride +(who prefers being kissed by a man with waxed moustaches) lies near to +death, certainly I am nearer to tears than when I am obliged to attend +the bed of Little Dombey or of Little Nell. Probably there is a great +deal of slangy and unrefined Anglo-Indian society; and, no doubt, to +sketch it in its true colours is not beyond the province of art. At +worst it is redeemed, in part, by its constancy in the presence of +various perils--from disease, and from "the bullet flying down the pass." +Mr. Kipling may not be, and very probably is not, a reader of "Gyp"; but +"The Gadsbys," especially, reads like the work of an Anglo-Indian +disciple, trammelled by certain English conventions. The more Pharisaic +realists--those of the strictest sect--would probably welcome Mr. Kipling +as a younger brother, so far as "Under the Deodars" and "The Gadsbys" are +concerned, if he were not occasionally witty and even flippant, as well +as realistic. But, very fortunately, he has not confined his observation +to the leisures and pleasures of Simla; he has looked out also on war and +on sport, on the life of all native tribes and castes; and has even +glanced across the borders of "The Undiscovered Country." + +Among Mr. Kipling's discoveries of new kinds of characters, probably the +most popular is his invention of the British soldier in India. He avers +that he "loves that very strong man, Thomas Atkins"; but his affection +has not blinded him to the faults of the beloved. Mr. Atkins drinks too +much, is too careless a gallant in love, has been educated either too +much or too little, and has other faults, partly due, apparently, to +recent military organisation, partly to the feverish and unsettled state +of the civilised world. But he is still brave, when he is well led; +still loyal, above all, to his "trusty chum." Every Englishman must hope +that, if Terence Mulvaney did not take the city of Lungtung Pen as +described, yet he is ready, and willing so to take it. Mr. Mulvaney is +as humorous as Micky Free, but more melancholy and more truculent. He +has, perhaps, "won his way to the mythical" already, and is not so much a +soldier, as an incarnation, not of Krishna, but of many soldierly +qualities. On the other hand, Private Ortheris, especially in his +frenzy, seems to shew all the truth, and much more than the life of, a +photograph. Such, we presume, is the soldier, and such are his +experiences and temptations and repentance. But nobody ever dreamed of +telling us all this, till Mr. Kipling came. As for the soldier in +action, the "Taking of Lungtung Pen," and the "Drums of the Fore and +Aft," and that other tale of the battle with the Pathans in the gorge, +are among the good fights of fiction. They stir the spirit, and they +should be distributed (in addition, of course, to the "Soldier's Pocket +Book") in the ranks of the British army. Mr. Kipling is as well informed +about the soldier's women-kind as about the soldier: about Dinah Shadd as +about Terence Mulvaney. Lever never instructed us on these matters: +Micky Free, if he loves, rides away; but Terence Mulvaney is true to his +old woman. Gallant, loyal, reckless, vain, swaggering, and +tender-hearted, Terence Mulvaney, if there were enough of him, "would +take St. Petersburg in his drawers." Can we be too grateful to an author +who has extended, as Mr. Kipling in his military sketches has extended, +the frontiers of our knowledge and sympathy? + +It is a mere question of individual taste; but, for my own part, had I to +make a small selection from Mr. Kipling's tales, I would include more of +his studies in Black than in White, and many of his excursions beyond the +probable and natural. It is difficult to have one special favourite in +this kind; but perhaps the story of the two English adventurers among the +freemasons of unknown Kafiristan (in the "Phantom Rickshaw") would take a +very high place. The gas-heated air of the Indian newspaper office is so +real, and into it comes a wanderer who has seen new faces of death, and +who carries with him a head that has worn a royal crown. The contrasts +are of brutal force; the legend is among the best of such strange +fancies. Then there is, in the same volume, "The Strange Ride of +Morrowbie Jukes," the most dreadful nightmare of the most awful Bunker in +the realms of fancy. This is a very early work; if nothing else of Mr. +Kipling's existed, his memory might live by it, as does the memory of the +American Irishman by the "Diamond Lens." The sham magic of "In the House +of Suddhu" is as terrible as true necromancy could be, and I have a +_faiblesse_ for the "Bisara of Pooree." "The Gate of the Hundred +Sorrows" is a realistic version of "The English Opium Eater," and more +powerful by dint of less rhetoric. As for the sketches of native +life--for example, "On the City Wall"--to English readers they are no +less than revelations. They testify, more even than the military +stories, to the author's swift and certain vision, his certainty in his +effects. In brief, Mr. Kipling has conquered worlds, of which, as it +were, we knew not the existence. + +His faults are so conspicuous, so much on the surface, that they hardly +need to be named. They are curiously visible to some readers who are +blind to his merits. There is a false air of hardness (quite in +contradiction to the sentiment in his tales of childish life); there is a +knowing air; there are mannerisms, such as "But that is another story"; +there is a display of slang; there is the too obtrusive knocking of the +nail on the head. Everybody can mark these errors; a few cannot overcome +their antipathy, and so lose a great deal of pleasure. + +It is impossible to guess how Mr. Kipling will fare if he ventures on one +of the usual novels, of the orthodox length. Few men have succeeded both +in the _conte_ and the novel. Mr. Bret Harte is limited to the _conte_; +M. Guy de Maupassant is probably at his best in it. Scott wrote but +three or four short tales, and only one of these is a masterpiece. Poe +never attempted a novel. Hawthorne is almost alone in his command of +both kinds. We can live only in the hope that Mr. Kipling, so skilled in +so many species of the _conte_, so vigorous in so many kinds of verse, +will also be triumphant in the novel: though it seems unlikely that its +scene can be in England, and though it is certain that a writer who so +cuts to the quick will not be happy with the novel's almost inevitable +"padding." Mr. Kipling's longest effort, "The Light which Failed," can, +perhaps, hardly be considered a test or touchstone of his powers as a +novelist. The central interest is not powerful enough; the characters +are not so sympathetic, as are the interest and the characters of his +short pieces. Many of these persons we have met so often that they are +not mere passing acquaintances, but already find in us the loyalty due to +old friends. + + + + +FOOTNOTES: + + +{70} The subject has been much more gravely treated in Mr. Robert +Bridges's "Achilles in Scyros." + +{91} Conjecture may cease, as Mr. Morris has translated the Odyssey. + +{109} For Helen Pendennis, see the "Letters," p. 97. + +{128} Mr. Henley has lately, as a loyal Dickensite, been defending the +plots of Dickens, and his tragedy. _Pro captu lectoris_; if the reader +likes them, then they are good for the reader: "good absolute, not for me +though," perhaps. The plot of "Martin Chuzzlewit" may be good, but the +conduct of old Martin would strike me as improbable if I met it in the +"Arabian Nights." That the creator of Pecksniff should have taken his +misdeeds seriously, as if Mr. Pecksniff had been a Tartuffe, not a +delight, seems curious. + + + +***END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK ESSAYS IN LITTLE*** + + +******* This file should be named 1594.txt or 1594.zip ******* + + +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: +http://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/1/5/9/1594 + + + +Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions +will be renamed. + +Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no +one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation +(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without +permission and without paying copyright royalties. Special rules, +set forth in the General Terms of Use part of this license, apply to +copying and distributing Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works to +protect the PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm concept and trademark. 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FOR PUBLIC DOMAIN ETEXTS*Ver.04.29.93*END* + + + + + +This etext was prepared from the 1891 Henry and Co. edition +by David Price, email ccx074@coventry.ac.uk + + + + + +Essays in Little + +by Andrew Lang + + + + +Contents: + +Preface +Alexandre Dumas +Mr. Stevenson's works +Thomas Haynes Bayly +Theodore de Banville +Homer and the Study of Greek +The Last Fashionable Novel +Thackeray +Dickens +Adventures of Buccaneers +The Sagas +Charles Kingsley +Charles Lever: His books, adventures and misfortunes +The poems of Sir Walter Scott +John Bunyan +To a Young Journalist +Mr. Kipling's stories + + + + +PREFACE + + +Of the following essays, five are new, and were written for this +volume. They are the paper on Mr. R. L. Stevenson, the "Letter to a +Young Journalist," the study of Mr. Kipling, the note on Homer, and +"The Last Fashionable Novel." The article on the author of "Oh, no! +we never mention Her," appeared in the New York Sun, and was +suggested by Mr. Dana, the editor of that journal. The papers on +Thackeray and Dickens were published in Good Words, that on Dumas +appeared in Scribner's Magazine, that on M. Theodore de Banville in +The New Quarterly Review. The other essays were originally written +for a newspaper "Syndicate." They have been re-cast, augmented, +and, to a great extent, re-written. + +A. L. + + + + +ALEXANDRE DUMAS + + + +Alexandre Dumas is a writer, and his life is a topic, of which his +devotees never weary. Indeed, one lifetime is not long enough +wherein to tire of them. The long days and years of Hilpa and +Shalum, in Addison--the antediluvian age, when a picnic lasted for +half a century and a courtship for two hundred years, might have +sufficed for an exhaustive study of Dumas. No such study have I to +offer, in the brief seasons of our perishable days. I own that I +have not read, and do not, in the circumstances, expect to read, all +of Dumas, nor even the greater part of his thousand volumes. We +only dip a cup in that sparkling spring, and drink, and go on,--we +cannot hope to exhaust the fountain, nor to carry away with us the +well itself. It is but a word of gratitude and delight that we can +say to the heroic and indomitable master, only an ave of friendship +that we can call across the bourne to the shade of the Porthos of +fiction. That his works (his best works) should be even still more +widely circulated than they are; that the young should read them, +and learn frankness, kindness, generosity--should esteem the tender +heart, and the gay, invincible wit; that the old should read them +again, and find forgetfulness of trouble, and taste the anodyne of +dreams, that is what we desire. + +Dumas said of himself ("Memoires," v. 13) that when he was young he +tried several times to read forbidden books--books that are sold +sous le manteau. But he never got farther than the tenth page, in +the + + +"scrofulous French novel +On gray paper with blunt type;" + + +he never made his way so far as + + +"the woful sixteenth print." + + +"I had, thank God, a natural sentiment of delicacy; and thus, out of +my six hundred volumes (in 1852) there are not four which the most +scrupulous mother may not give to her daughter." Much later, in +1864, when the Censure threatened one of his plays, he wrote to the +Emperor: "Of my twelve hundred volumes there is not one which a +girl in our most modest quarter, the Faubourg Saint-Germain, may not +be allowed to read." The mothers of the Faubourg, and mothers in +general, may not take Dumas exactly at his word. There is a +passage, for example, in the story of Miladi ("Les Trois +Mousquetaires") which a parent or guardian may well think +undesirable reading for youth. But compare it with the original +passage in the "Memoires" of D'Artagnan! It has passed through a +medium, as Dumas himself declared, of natural delicacy and good +taste. His enormous popularity, the widest in the world of letters, +owes absolutely nothing to prurience or curiosity. The air which he +breathes is a healthy air, is the open air; and that by his own +choice, for he had every temptation to seek another kind of vogue, +and every opportunity. + +Two anecdotes are told of Dumas' books, one by M. Edmond About, the +other by his own son, which show, in brief space, why this novelist +is so beloved, and why he deserves our affection and esteem. M. +Villaud, a railway engineer who had lived much in Italy, Russia, and +Spain, was the person whose enthusiasm finally secured a statue for +Dumas. He felt so much gratitude to the unknown friend of lonely +nights in long exiles, that he could not be happy till his gratitude +found a permanent expression. On returning to France he went to +consult M. Victor Borie, who told him this tale about George Sand. +M. Borie chanced to visit the famous novelist just before her death, +and found Dumas' novel, "Les Quarante Cinq" (one of the cycle about +the Valois kings) lying on her table. He expressed his wonder that +she was reading it for the first time. + +"For the first time!--why, this is the fifth or sixth time I have +read 'Les Quarante Cinq,' and the others. When I am ill, anxious, +melancholy, tired, discouraged, nothing helps me against moral or +physical troubles like a book of Dumas." Again, M. About says that +M. Sarcey was in the same class at school with a little Spanish boy. +The child was homesick; he could not eat, he could not sleep; he was +almost in a decline. + +"You want to see your mother?" said young Sarcey. + +"No: she is dead." + +"Your father, then?" + +" No: he used to beat me." + +"Your brothers and sisters?" + +"I have none." + +"Then why are you so eager to be back in Spain?" + +"To finish a book I began in the holidays." + +"And what was its name?" + +"'Los Tres Mosqueteros'!" + +He was homesick for "The Three Musketeers," and they cured him +easily. + +That is what Dumas does. He gives courage and life to old age, he +charms away the half-conscious nostalgie, the Heimweh, of childhood. +We are all homesick, in the dark days and black towns, for the land +of blue skies and brave adventures in forests, and in lonely inns, +on the battle-field, in the prison, on the desert isle. And then +Dumas comes, and, like Argive Helen, in Homer, he casts a drug into +the wine, the drug nepenthe, "that puts all evil out of mind." Does +any one suppose that when George Sand was old and tired, and near +her death, she would have found this anodyne, and this stimulant, in +the novels of M. Tolstoi, M. Dostoiefsky, M. Zola, or any of the +"scientific" observers whom we are actually requested to hail as the +masters of a new art, the art of the future? Would they make her +laugh, as Chicot does? make her forget, as Porthos, Athos, and +Aramis do? take her away from the heavy, familiar time, as the +enchanter Dumas takes us? No; let it be enough for these new +authors to be industrious, keen, accurate, precieux, pitiful, +charitable, veracious; but give us high spirits now and then, a +light heart, a sharp sword, a fair wench, a good horse, or even that +old Gascon rouncy of D'Artagnan's. Like the good Lord James +Douglas, we had liefer hear the lark sing over moor and down, with +Chicot, than listen to the starved-mouse squeak in the bouge of +Therese Raquin, with M. Zola. Not that there is not a place and an +hour for him, and others like him; but they are not, if you please, +to have the whole world to themselves, and all the time, and all the +praise; they are not to turn the world into a dissecting-room, time +into tedium, and the laurels of Scott and Dumas into crowns of +nettles. + +There is no complete life of Alexandre Dumas. The age has not +produced the intellectual athlete who can gird himself up for that +labour. One of the worst books that ever was written, if it can be +said to be written, is, I think, the English attempt at a biography +of Dumas. Style, grammar, taste, feeling, are all bad. The author +does not so much write a life as draw up an indictment. The spirit +of his work is grudging, sneering, contemptuous, and pitifully +peddling. The great charge is that Dumas was a humbug, that he was +not the author of his own books, that his books were written by +"collaborators"--above all, by M. Maquet. There is no doubt that +Dumas had a regular system of collaboration, which he never +concealed. But whereas Dumas could turn out books that live, +whoever his assistants were, could any of his assistants write books +that live, without Dumas? One might as well call any barrister in +good practice a thief and an impostor because he has juniors to +"devil" for him, as make charges of this kind against Dumas. He +once asked his son to help him; the younger Alexandre declined. "It +is worth a thousand a year, and you have only to make objections," +the sire urged; but the son was not to be tempted. Some excellent +novelists of to-day would be much better if they employed a friend +to make objections. But, as a rule, the collaborator did much more. +Dumas' method, apparently, was first to talk the subject over with +his aide-de-camp. This is an excellent practice, as ideas are +knocked out, like sparks (an elderly illustration!), by the contact +of minds. Then the young man probably made researches, put a rough +sketch on paper, and supplied Dumas, as it were, with his "brief." +Then Dumas took the "brief" and wrote the novel. He gave it life, +he gave it the spark (l'etincelle); and the story lived and moved. + +It is true that he "took his own where he found it," like Molere and +that he took a good deal. In the gallery of an old country-house, +on a wet day, I came once on the "Memoires" of D'Artagnan, where +they had lain since the family bought them in Queen Anne's time. +There were our old friends the Musketeers, and there were many of +their adventures, told at great length and breadth. But how much +more vivacious they are in Dumas! M. About repeats a story of +Dumas and his ways of work. He met the great man at Marseilles, +where, indeed, Alexandre chanced to be "on with the new love" before +being completely "off with the old." Dumas picked up M. About, +literally lifted him in his embrace, and carried him off to see a +play which he had written in three days. The play was a success; +the supper was prolonged till three in the morning; M. About was +almost asleep as he walked home, but Dumas was as fresh as if he had +just got out of bed. "Go to sleep, old man," he said: "I, who am +only fifty-five, have three feuilletons to write, which must be +posted to-morrow. If I have time I shall knock up a little piece +for Montigny--the idea is running in my head." So next morning M. +About saw the three feuilletons made up for the post, and another +packet addressed to M. Montigny: it was the play L'Invitation e la +Valse, a chef-d'oeuvre! Well, the material had been prepared for +Dumas. M. About saw one of his novels at Marseilles in the +chrysalis. It was a stout copy-book full of paper, composed by a +practised hand, on the master's design. Dumas copied out each +little leaf on a big leaf of paper, en y semant l'esprit e pleines +mains. This was his method. As a rule, in collaboration, one man +does the work while the other looks on. Is it likely that Dumas +looked on? That was not the manner of Dumas. "Mirecourt and +others," M. About says, "have wept crocodile tears for the +collaborators, the victims of his glory and his talent. But it is +difficult to lament over the survivors (1884). The master neither +took their money--for they are rich, nor their fame--for they are +celebrated, nor their merit--for they had and still have plenty. +And they never bewailed their fate: the reverse! The proudest +congratulate themselves on having been at so good a school; and M. +Auguste Maquet, the chief of them, speaks with real reverence and +affection of his great friend." And M. About writes "as one who had +taken the master red-handed, and in the act of collaboration." +Dumas has a curious note on collaboration in his "Souvenirs +Dramatiques." Of the two men at work together, "one is always the +dupe, and HE is the man of talent." + +There is no biography of Dumas, but the small change of a biography +exists in abundance. There are the many volumes of his "Memoires," +there are all the tomes he wrote on his travels and adventures in +Africa, Spain, Italy, Russia; the book he wrote on his beasts; the +romance of Ange Pitou, partly autobiographical; and there are plenty +of little studies by people who knew him. As to his "Memoires," as +to all he wrote about himself, of course his imagination entered +into the narrative. Like Scott, when he had a good story he liked +to dress it up with a cocked hat and a sword. Did he perform all +those astonishing and innumerable feats of strength, skill, courage, +address, in revolutions, in voyages, in love, in war, in cookery? +The narrative need not be taken "at the foot of the letter"; great +as was his force and his courage, his fancy was greater still. +There is no room for a biography of him here. His descent was noble +on one side, with or without the bend sinister, which he said he +would never have disclaimed, had it been his, but which he did not +happen to inherit. On the other side he MAY have descended from +kings; but, as in the case of "The Fair Cuban," he must have added, +"African, unfortunately." Did his father perform these mythical +feats of strength? did he lift up a horse between his legs while +clutching a rafter with his hands? did he throw his regiment before +him over a wall, as Guy Heavistone threw the mare which refused the +leap ("Memoires," i. 122)? No doubt Dumas believed what he heard +about this ancestor--in whom, perhaps, one may see a hint of the +giant Porthos. In the Revolution and in the wars his father won the +name of Monsieur de l'Humanite, because he made a bonfire of a +guillotine; and of Horatius Cocles, because he held a pass as +bravely as the Roman "in the brave days of old." + +This was a father to be proud of; and pluck, tenderness, generosity, +strength, remained the favourite virtues of Dumas. These he +preached and practised. They say he was generous before he was +just; it is to be feared this was true, but he gave even more freely +than he received. A regiment of seedy people sponged on him always; +he could not listen to a tale of misery but he gave what he had, and +sometimes left himself short of a dinner. He could not even turn a +dog out of doors. At his Abbotsford, "Monte Cristo," the gates were +open to everybody but bailiffs. His dog asked other dogs to come +and stay: twelve came, making thirteen in all. The old butler +wanted to turn them adrift, and Dumas consented, and repented. + +"Michel," he said, "there are some expenses which a man's social +position and the character which he has had the ill-luck to receive +from heaven force upon him. I don't believe these dogs ruin me. +Let them bide! But, in the interests of their own good luck, see +they are not thirteen, an unfortunate number!" + +"Monsieur, I'll drive one of them away." + +"No, no, Michel; let a fourteenth come. These dogs cost me some +three pounds a month," said Dumas. "A dinner to five or six friends +would cost thrice as much, and, when they went home, they would say +my wine was good, but certainly that my books were bad." In this +fashion Dumas fared royally "to the dogs," and his Abbotsford ruined +him as certainly as that other unhappy palace ruined Sir Walter. +He, too, had his miscellaneous kennel; he, too, gave while he had +anything to give, and, when he had nothing else, gave the work of +his pen. Dumas tells how his big dog, Mouton once flew at him and +bit one of his hands, while the other held the throat of the brute. +"Luckily my hand, though small, is powerful; what it once holds it +holds long--money excepted." He could not "haud a guid grip o' the +gear." Neither Scott nor Dumas could shut his ears to a prayer or +his pockets to a beggar, or his doors on whoever knocked at them. + +"I might at least have asked him to dinner," Scott was heard +murmuring, when some insufferable bore at last left Abbotsford, +after wasting his time and nearly wearing out his patience. Neither +man PREACHED socialism; both practised it on the Aristotelian +principle: the goods of friends are common, and men are our +friends. + + +The death of Dumas' father, while the son was a child, left Madame +Dumas in great poverty at Villers Cotterets. Dumas' education was +sadly to seek. Like most children destined to be bookish, he taught +himself to read very young: in Buffon, the Bible, and books of +mythology. He knew all about Jupiter--like David Copperfield's Tom +Jones, "a child's Jupiter, an innocent creature"--all about every +god, goddess, fawn, dryad, nymph--and he never forgot this useful +information. Dear Lempriere, thou art superseded; but how much more +delightful thou art than the fastidious Smith or the learned +Preller! Dumas had one volume of the "Arabian Nights," with +Aladdin's lamp therein, the sacred lamp which he was to keep burning +with a flame so brilliant and so steady. It is pleasant to know +that, in his boyhood, this great romancer loved Virgil. "Little as +is my Latin, I have ever adored Virgil: his tenderness for exiles, +his melancholy vision of death, his foreboding of an unknown God, +have always moved me; the melody of his verses charmed me most, and +they lull me still between asleep and awake." School days did not +last long: Madame Dumas got a little post--a licence to sell +tobacco--and at fifteen Dumas entered a notary's office, like his +great Scotch forerunner. He was ignorant of his vocation for the +stage--Racine and Corneille fatigued him prodigiously--till he saw +Hamlet: Hamlet diluted by Ducis. He had never heard of +Shakespeare, but here was something he could appreciate. Here was +"a profound impression, full of inexplicable emotion, vague desires, +fleeting lights, that, so far, lit up only a chaos." + +Oddly enough, his earliest literary essay was the translation of +Burger's "Lenore." Here, again, he encounters Scott; but Scott +translated the ballad, and Dumas failed. Les mortes vont vite! the +same refrain woke poetry in both the Frenchman and the Scotchman. + + +"Ha! ha! the Dead can ride with speed: +Dost fear to ride with me?" + + +So Dumas' literary career began with a defeat, but it was always a +beginning. He had just failed with "Lenore," when Leuven asked him +to collaborate in a play. He was utterly ignorant, he says; he had +not succeeded in gallant efforts to read through "Gil Blas" and "Don +Quixote." "To my shame," he writes, "the man has not been more +fortunate with those masterpieces than the boy." He had not yet +heard of Scott, Cooper, Goethe; he had heard of Shakespeare only as +a barbarian. Other plays the boy wrote--failures, of course--and +then Dumas poached his way to Paris, shooting partridges on the +road, and paying the hotel expenses by his success in the chase. He +was introduced to the great Talma: what a moment for Talma, had he +known it! He saw the theatres. He went home, but returned to +Paris, drew a small prize in a lottery, and sat next a gentleman at +the play, a gentleman who read the rarest of Elzevirs, "Le +Pastissier Francais," and gave him a little lecture on Elzevirs in +general. Soon this gentleman began to hiss the piece, and was +turned out. He was Charles Nodier, and one of the anonymous authors +of the play he was hissing! I own that this amusing chapter lacks +verisimilitude. It reads as if Dumas had chanced to "get up" the +subject of Elzevirs, and had fashioned his new knowledge into a +little story. He could make a story out of anything--he "turned all +to favour and to prettiness." Could I translate the whole passage, +and print it here, it would be longer than this article; but, ah, +how much more entertaining! For whatever Dumas did he did with such +life, spirit, wit, he told it with such vivacity, that his whole +career is one long romance of the highest quality. Lassagne told +him he must read--must read Goethe, Scott, Cooper, Froissart, +Joinville, Brantome. He read them to some purpose. He entered the +service of the Duc d'Orleans as a clerk, for he wrote a clear hand, +and, happily, wrote at astonishing speed. He is said to have +written a short play in a cottage where he went to rest for an hour +or two after shooting all the morning. The practice in a notary's +office stood him, as it stood Scott, in good stead. When a dog bit +his hand he managed to write a volume without using his thumb. I +have tried it, but forbear--in mercy to the printers. He performed +wild feats of rapid caligraphy when a clerk under the Duc d'Orleans, +and he wrote his plays in one "hand," his novels in another. The +"hand" used in his dramas he acquired when, in days of poverty, he +used to write in bed. To this habit he also attributed the +brutalite of his earlier pieces, but there seems to be no good +reason why a man should write like a brute because it is in bed that +he writes. + +In those days of small things he fought his first duel, and made a +study of Fear and Courage. His earliest impulse was to rush at +danger; if he had to wait, he felt his courage oozing out at the +tips of his fingers, like Bob Acres, but in the moment of peril he +was himself again. In dreams he was a coward, because, as he +argues, the natural man IS a poltroon, and conscience, honour, all +the spiritual and commanding part of our nature, goes to sleep in +dreams. The animal terror asserts itself unchecked. It is a theory +not without exceptions. In dreams one has plenty of conscience (at +least that is my experience), though it usually takes the form of +remorse. And in dreams one often affronts dangers which, in waking +hours, one might probably avoid if one could. + + +Dumas' first play, an unimportant vaudeville, was acted in 1825. +His first novels were also published then; he took part of the risk, +and only four copies were sold. He afterward used the ideas in more +mature works, as Mr. Sheridan Le Fanu employed three or four times +(with perfect candour and fairness) the most curious incident in +"Uncle Silas." Like Mr. Arthur Pendennis, Dumas at this time wrote +poetry "up to" pictures and illustrations. It is easy, but seldom +lucrative work. He translated a play of Schiller's into French +verse, chiefly to gain command of that vehicle, for his heart was +fixed on dramatic success. Then came the visit of Kean and other +English actors to Paris. He saw the true Hamlet, and, for the first +time on any stage, "the play of real passions." Emulation woke in +him: a casual work of art led him to the story of Christina of +Sweden, he wrote his play Christine (afterward reconstructed); he +read it to Baron Taylor, who applauded; the Comedie Francaise +accepted it, but a series of intrigues disappointed him, after all. +His energy at this moment was extraordinary, for he was very poor, +his mother had a stroke of paralysis, his bureau was always bullying +and interfering with him. But nothing could snub this "force of +nature," and he immediately produced his Henri Trois, the first +romantic drama of France. This had an instant and noisy success, +and the first night of the play he spent at the theatre, and at the +bedside of his unconscious mother. The poor lady could not even +understand whence the flowers came that he laid on her couch, the +flowers thrown to the young man--yesterday unknown, and to-day the +most famous of contemporary names. All this tale of triumph, +checkered by enmities and diversified by duels, Dumas tells with the +vigour and wit of his novels. He is his own hero, and loses nothing +in the process; but the other characters--Taylor, Nodier, the Duc +d'Orleans, the spiteful press-men, the crabbed old officials--all +live like the best of the persons in his tales. They call Dumas +vain: he had reason to be vain, and no candid or generous reader +will be shocked by his pleasant, frank, and artless enjoyment of +himself and of his adventures. Oddly enough, they are small-minded +and small-hearted people who are most shocked by what they call +"vanity" in the great. Dumas' delight in himself and his doings is +only the flower of his vigorous existence, and in his "Memoires," at +least, it is as happy and encouraging as his laugh, or the laugh of +Porthos; it is a kind of radiance, in which others, too, may bask +and enjoy themselves. And yet it is resented by tiny scribblers, +frozen in their own chill self-conceit. + +There is nothing incredible (if modern researches are accurate) in +the stories he tells of his own success in Hypnotism, as it is +called now, Mesmerism or Magnetism as it was called then. Who was +likely to possess these powers, if not this good-humoured natural +force? "I believe that, by aid of magnetism, a bad man might do +much mischief. I doubt whether, by help of magnetism, a good man +can do the slightest good," he says, probably with perfect justice. +His dramatic success fired Victor Hugo, and very pleasant it is to +read Dumas' warm-hearted praise of that great poet. Dumas had no +jealousy--no more than Scott. As he believed in no success without +talent, so he disbelieved in genius which wins no success. "Je ne +crois pas au talent ignore, au genie inconnu, moi." Genius he +saluted wherever he met it, but was incredulous about invisible and +inaudible genius; and I own to sharing his scepticism. People who +complain of Dumas' vanity may be requested to observe that he seems +just as "vain" of Hugo's successes, or of Scribe's, as of his own, +and just as much delighted by them. + +He was now struck, as he walked on the boulevard one day, by the +first idea of Antony--an idea which, to be fair, seems rather absurd +than tragic, to some tastes. "A lover, caught with a married woman, +kills her to save her character, and dies on the scaffold." Here is +indeed a part to tear a cat in! + + +The performances of M. Dumas during the Revolution of 1830, are they +not written in the Book of the Chronicles of Alexandre the Great? +But they were not literary excellences which he then displayed, and +we may leave this king-maker to hover, "like an eagle, above the +storms of anarchy." + +Even to sketch his later biography is beyond our province. In 1830 +he had forty years to run, and he filled the cup of the Hours to the +brim with activity and adventure. His career was one of +unparalleled production, punctuated by revolutions, voyages, exiles, +and other intervals of repose. The tales he tells of his prowess in +1830, and with Garibaldi, seem credible to me, and are borne out, so +far, by the narrative of M. Maxime Ducamp, who met him at Naples, in +the Garibaldian camp. Like Mr. Jingle, in "Pickwick," he "banged +the field-piece, twanged the lyre," and was potting at the foes of +the republic with a double-barrelled gun, when he was not composing +plays, romances, memoirs, criticisms. He has told the tale of his +adventures with the Comedie Francaise, where the actors laughed at +his Antony, and where Madame Mars and he quarrelled and made it up +again. His plays often won an extravagant success; his novels--his +great novels, that is--made all Europe his friend. He gained large +sums of money, which flowed out of his fingers, though it is said by +some that his Abbotsford, Monte Cristo, was no more a palace than +the villa which a retired tradesman builds to shelter his old age. +But the money disappeared as fast as if Monte Cristo had really been +palatial, and worthy of the fantasy of a Nero. He got into debt, +fled to Belgium, returned, founded the Mousquetaire, a literary +paper of the strangest and most shiftless kind. In "Alexandre Dumas +e la Maison d'Or," M. Philibert Audebrand tells the tale of this +Micawber of newspapers. Everything went into it, good or bad, and +the name of Dumas was expected to make all current coin. For Dumas, +unluckily, was as prodigal of his name as of his gold, and no +reputation could bear the drafts he made on his celebrity. His son +says, in the preface to Le Fils Naturel: "Tragedy, dramas, history, +romance, comedy, travel, you cast all of them in the furnace and the +mould of your brain, and you peopled the world of fiction with new +creations. The newspaper, the book, the theatre, burst asunder, too +narrow for your puissant shoulders; you fed France, Europe, America +with your works; you made the wealth of publishers, translators, +plagiarists; printers and copyists toiled after you in vain. In the +fever of production you did not always try and prove the metal which +you employed, and sometimes you tossed into the furnace whatever +came to your hand. The fire made the selection: what was your own +is bronze, what was not yours vanished in smoke." + +The simile is noble and worthy of the Cyclopean craftsman, Dumas. +His great works endured; the plays which renewed the youth of the +French stage, the novels which Thackeray loved to praise, these +remain, and we trust they may always remain, to the delight of +mankind and for the sorrow of prigs. + + +So much has been written of Dumas' novels that criticism can hardly +hope to say more that is both new and true about them. It is +acknowledged that, in such a character as Henri III., Dumas made +history live, as magically as Scott revived the past in his Louis +XI., or Balfour of Burley. It is admitted that Dumas' good tales +are told with a vigour and life which rejoice the heart; that his +narrative is never dull, never stands still, but moves with a +freedom of adventure which perhaps has no parallel. He may fall +short of the humour, the kindly wisdom, the genial greatness of Sir +Walter at his best, and he has not that supernatural touch, that +tragic grandeur, which Scott inherits from Homer and from +Shakespeare. In another Homeric quality, [Greek text], as Homer +himself calls it, in the "delight of battle" and the spirit of the +fray, Scott and Dumas are alike masters. Their fights and the +fights in the Icelandic sagas are the best that have ever been drawn +by mortal man. When swords are aloft, in siege or on the +greensward, or in the midnight chamber where an ambush is laid, +Scott and Dumas are indeed themselves. The steel rings, the +bucklers clash, the parry and lunge pass and answer too swift for +the sight. If Dumas has not, as he certainly has not, the noble +philosophy and kindly knowledge of the heart which are Scott's, he +is far more swift, more witty, more diverting. He is not prolix, +his style is not involved, his dialogue is as rapid and keen as an +assault at arms. His favourite virtues and graces, we repeat it, +are loyalty, friendship, gaiety, generosity, courage, beauty, and +strength. He is himself the friend of the big, stupid, excellent +Porthos; of Athos, the noble and melancholy swordsman of sorrow; of +D'Artagnan, the indomitable, the trusty, the inexhaustible in +resource; but his heart is never on the side of the shifty Aramis, +with all his beauty, dexterity, bravery, and brilliance. The brave +Bussy, and the chivalrous, the doomed La Mole, are more dear to him; +and if he embellishes their characters, giving them charms and +virtues that never were theirs, history loses nothing, and romance +and we are the gainers. In all he does, at his best, as in the +"Chevalier d'Harmenthal," he has movement, kindness, courage, and +gaiety. His philosophy of life is that old philosophy of the sagas +and of Homer. Let us enjoy the movement of the fray, the faces of +fair women, the taste of good wine; let us welcome life like a +mistress, let us welcome death like a friend, and with a jest--if +death comes with honour. + +Dumas is no pessimist. "Heaven has made but one drama for man--the +world," he writes, "and during these three thousand years mankind +has been hissing it." It is certain that, if a moral censorship +could have prevented it, this great drama of mortal passions would +never have been licensed, at all, never performed. But Dumas, for +one, will not hiss it, but applauds with all his might--a charmed +spectator, a fortunate actor in the eternal piece, where all the men +and women are only players. You hear his manly laughter, you hear +his mighty hands approving, you see the tears he sheds when he had +"slain Porthos"--great tears like those of Pantagruel. + + +His may not be the best, nor the ultimate philosophy, but it IS a +philosophy, and one of which we may some day feel the want. I read +the stilted criticisms, the pedantic carpings of some modern men who +cannot write their own language, and I gather that Dumas is out of +date. There is a new philosophy of doubts and delicacies, of +dallyings and refinements, of half-hearted lookers-on, desiring and +fearing some new order of the world. Dumas does not dally nor +doubt: he takes his side, he rushes into the smoke, he strikes his +foe; but there is never an unkind word on his lip, nor a grudging +thought in his heart. + +It may be said that Dumas is not a master of words and phrases, that +he is not a raffine of expression, nor a jeweller of style. When I +read the maunderings, the stilted and staggering sentences, the +hesitating phrases, the far-sought and dear-bought and worthless +word-juggles; the sham scientific verbiage, the native pedantries of +many modern so-called "stylists," I rejoice that Dumas was not one +of these. He told a plain tale, in the language suited to a plain +tale, with abundance of wit and gaiety, as in the reflections of his +Chicot, as in all his dialogues. But he did not gnaw the end of his +pen in search of some word that nobody had ever used in this or that +connection before. The right word came to him, the simple +straightforward phrase. Epithet-hunting may be a pretty sport, and +the bag of the epithet-hunter may contain some agreeable epigrams +and rare specimens of style; but a plain tale of adventure, of love +and war, needs none of this industry, and is even spoiled by +inopportune diligence. Speed, directness, lucidity are the +characteristics of Dumas' style, and they are exactly the +characteristics which his novels required. Scott often failed, his +most loyal admirers may admit, in these essentials; but it is rarely +that Dumas fails, when he is himself and at his best. + +In spite of his heedless education, Dumas had true critical +qualities, and most admired the best things. We have already seen +how he writes about Shakespeare, Virgil, Goethe, Scott. But it may +be less familiarly known that this burly man-of-all-work, ignorant +as he was of Greek, had a true and keen appreciation of Homer. +Dumas declares that he only thrice criticised his contemporaries in +an unfavourable sense, and as one wishful to find fault. The +victims were Casimir Delavigne, Scribe, and Ponsard. On each +occasion Dumas declares that, after reflecting, he saw that he was +moved by a little personal pique, not by a disinterested love of +art. He makes his confession with a rare nobility of candour; and +yet his review of Ponsard is worthy of him. M. Ponsard, who, like +Dumas, was no scholar, wrote a play styled Ulysse, and borrowed from +the Odyssey. Dumas follows Ponsard, Odyssey in hand, and while he +proves that the dramatist failed to understand Homer, proves that he +himself was, in essentials, a capable Homeric critic. Dumas +understands that far-off heroic age. He lives in its life and +sympathises with its temper. Homer and he are congenial; across the +great gulf of time they exchange smiles and a salute. + +"Oh! ancient Homer, dear and good and noble, I am minded now and +again to leave all and translate thee--I, who have never a word of +Greek--so empty and so dismal are the versions men make of thee, in +verse or in prose." + +How Dumas came to divine Homer, as it were, through a language he +knew not, who shall say? He DID divine him by a natural sympathy of +excellence, and his chapters on the "Ulysse" of Ponsard are worth a +wilderness of notes by learned and most un-Homeric men. For, +indeed, who can be less like the heroic minstrel than the academic +philologist? + +This universality deserves note. The Homeric student who takes up a +volume of Dumas at random finds that he is not only Homeric +naturally, but that he really knows his Homer. What did he nor +know? His rapidity in reading must have been as remarkable as his +pace with the pen. As M. Blaze de Bury says: "Instinct, +experience, memory were all his; he sees at a glance, he compares in +a flash, he understands without conscious effort, he forgets nothing +that he has read." The past and present are photographed +imperishably on his brain, he knows the manners of all ages and all +countries, the names of all the arms that men have used, all the +garments they have worn, all the dishes they have tasted, all the +terms of all professions, from swordsmanship to coach-building. +Other authors have to wait, and hunt for facts; nothing stops Dumas: +he knows and remembers everything. Hence his rapidity, his +facility, his positive delight in labour: hence it came that he +might be heard, like Dickens, laughing while he worked. + + +This is rather a eulogy than a criticism of Dumas. His faults are +on the surface, visible to all men. He was not only rapid, he was +hasty, he was inconsistent; his need of money as well as his love of +work made him put his hand to dozens of perishable things. A +beginner, entering the forest of Dumas' books, may fail to see the +trees for the wood. He may be counselled to select first the cycle +of d'Artagnan--the "Musketeers," "Twenty Years After," and the +"Vicomte de Bragelonne." Mr. Stevenson's delightful essay on the +last may have sent many readers to it; I confess to preferring the +youth of the "Musketeers" to their old age. Then there is the cycle +of the Valois, whereof the "Dame de Monsereau" is the best--perhaps +the best thing Dumas ever wrote. The "Tulipe Noire" is a novel +girls may read, as Thackeray said, with confidence. The "Chevalier +d'Harmenthal" is nearly (not quite) as good as "Quentin Durward." +"Monte Cristo" has the best beginning--and loses itself in the +sands. The novels on the Revolution are not among the most +alluring: the famed device "L. P. D." (lilia pedibus destrue) has +the bad luck to suggest "London Parcels Delivery." That is an +accident, but the Revolution is in itself too terrible and pitiful, +and too near us (on both sides!) for fiction. + +On Dumas' faults it has been no pleasure to dwell. In a recent work +I find the Jesuit Le Moyne quoted, saying about Charles V.: "What +need that future ages should be made acquainted so religious an +Emperor was not always chaste!" The same reticence allures one in +regard to so delightful an author as Dumas. He who had enriched so +many died poor; he who had told of conquering France, died during +the Terrible Year. But he could forgive, could appreciate, the +valour of an enemy. Of the Scotch at Waterloo he writes: "It was +not enough to kill them: we had to push them down." Dead, they +still stood "shoulder to shoulder." In the same generous temper an +English cavalry officer wrote home, after Waterloo, that he would +gladly have given the rest of his life to have served, on that day, +in our infantry or in the French cavalry. These are the spirits +that warm the heart, that make us all friends; and to the great, the +brave, the generous Dumas we cry, across the years and across the +tomb, our Ave atque vale! + + + +MR. STEVENSON'S WORKS + + + +Perhaps the first quality in Mr. Stevenson's works, now so many and +so various, which strikes a reader, is the buoyancy, the survival of +the child in him. He has told the world often, in prose and verse, +how vivid are his memories of his own infancy. This retention of +childish recollections he shares, no doubt, with other people of +genius: for example, with George Sand, whose legend of her own +infancy is much more entertaining, and perhaps will endure longer, +than her novels. Her youth, like Scott's and like Mr. Stevenson's, +was passed all in fantasy: in playing at being some one else, in +the invention of imaginary characters, who were living to her, in +the fabrication of endless unwritten romances. Many persons, who do +not astonish the world by their genius, have lived thus in their +earliest youth. But, at a given moment, the fancy dies out of them: +this often befalls imaginative boys in their first year at school. +"Many are called, few chosen"; but it may be said with probable +truth, that there has never been a man of genius in letters, whose +boyhood was not thus fantastic, "an isle of dreams." We know how +Scott and De Quincey inhabited airy castles; and Gillies tells us, +though Lockhart does not, that Scott, in manhood, was occasionally +so lost in thought, that he knew not where he was nor what he was +doing. + +The peculiarity of Mr. Stevenson is not only to have been a +fantastic child, and to retain, in maturity, that fantasy ripened +into imagination: he has also kept up the habit of dramatising +everything, of playing, half consciously, many parts, of making the +world "an unsubstantial fairy place." This turn of mind it is that +causes his work occasionally to seem somewhat freakish. Thus, in +the fogs and horrors of London, he plays at being an Arabian tale- +teller, and his "New Arabian Nights" are a new kind of romanticism-- +Oriental, freakish, like the work of a changeling. Indeed, this +curious genius, springing from a family of Scottish engineers, +resembles nothing so much as one of the fairy children, whom the +ladies of Queen Proserpina's court used to leave in the cradles of +Border keeps or of peasants' cottages. Of the Scot he has little +but the power of touching us with a sense of the supernatural, and a +decided habit of moralising; for no Scot of genius has been more +austere with Robert Burns. On the other hand, one element of Mr. +Stevenson's ethical disquisitions is derived from his dramatic +habit. His optimism, his gay courage, his habit of accepting the +world as very well worth living in and looking at, persuaded one of +his critics that he was a hard-hearted young athlete of iron frame. +Now, of the athlete he has nothing but his love of the open air: it +is the eternal child that drives him to seek adventures and to +sojourn among beach-combers and savages. Thus, an admiring but far +from optimistic critic may doubt whether Mr. Stevenson's content +with the world is not "only his fun," as Lamb said of Coleridge's +preaching; whether he is but playing at being the happy warrior in +life; whether he is not acting that part, himself to himself. At +least, it is a part fortunately conceived and admirably sustained: +a difficult part too, whereas that of the pessimist is as easy as +whining. + +Mr. Stevenson's work has been very much written about, as it has +engaged and delighted readers of every age, station, and character. +Boys, of course, have been specially addressed in the books of +adventure, children in "A Child's Garden of Verse," young men and +maidens in "Virginibus Puerisque,"--all ages in all the curiously +varied series of volumes. "Kidnapped" was one of the last books +which the late Lord Iddesleigh read; and I trust there is no harm in +mentioning the pleasure which Mr. Matthew Arnold took in the same +story. Critics of every sort have been kind to Mr. Stevenson, in +spite of the fact that the few who first became acquainted with his +genius praised it with all the warmth of which they were masters. +Thus he has become a kind of classic in his own day, for an +undisputed reputation makes a classic while it lasts. But was ever +so much fame won by writings which might be called scrappy and +desultory by the advocatus diaboli? It is a most miscellaneous +literary baggage that Mr. Stevenson carries. First, a few magazine +articles; then two little books of sentimental journeyings, which +convince the reader that Mr. Stevenson is as good company to himself +as his books are to others. Then came a volume or two of essays, +literary and social, on books and life. By this time there could be +no doubt that Mr. Stevenson had a style of his own, modelled to some +extent on the essayists of the last century, but with touches of +Thackeray; with original breaks and turns, with a delicate +freakishness, in short, and a determined love of saying things as +the newspapers do not say them. All this work undoubtedly smelt a +trifle of the lamp, and was therefore dear to some, and an offence +to others. For my part, I had delighted in the essays, from the +first that appeared in Macmillan's Magazine, shortly after the +Franco-German war. In this little study, "Ordered South," Mr. +Stevenson was employing himself in extracting all the melancholy +pleasure which the Riviera can give to a wearied body and a mind +resisting the clouds of early malady, + + +"Alas, the worn and broken board, +How can it bear the painter's dye! +The harp of strained and tuneless chord, +How to the minstrel's skill reply! +To aching eyes each landscape lowers, +To feverish pulse each gale blows chill, +And Araby's or Eden's bowers +Were barren as this moorland hill," - + + +wrote Scott, in an hour of malady and depression. But this was not +the spirit of "Ordered South": the younger soul rose against the +tyranny of the body; and that familiar glamour which, in illness, +robs Tintoretto of his glow, did not spoil the midland sea to Mr. +Stevenson. His gallant and cheery stoicism were already with him; +and so perfect, if a trifle overstudied, was his style, that one +already foresaw a new and charming essayist. + +But none of those early works, nor the delightful book on Edinburgh, +prophesied of the story teller. Mr. Stevenson's first published +tales, the "New Arabian Nights," originally appeared in a quaintly +edited weekly paper, which nobody read, or nobody but the writers in +its columns. They welcomed the strange romances with rejoicings: +but perhaps there was only one of them who foresaw that Mr. +Stevenson's forte was to be fiction, not essay writing; that he was +to appeal with success to the large public, and not to the tiny +circle who surround the essayist. It did not seem likely that our +incalculable public would make themselves at home in those fantastic +purlieus which Mr. Stevenson's fancy discovered near the Strand. +The impossible Young Man with the Cream Tarts, the ghastly revels of +the Suicide Club, the Oriental caprices of the Hansom Cabs--who +could foresee that the public would taste them! It is true that Mr. +Stevenson's imagination made the President of the Club, and the +cowardly member, Mr. Malthus, as real as they were terrible. His +romance always goes hand in hand with reality; and Mr. Malthus is as +much an actual man of skin and bone, as Silas Lapham is a man of +flesh and blood. The world saw this, and applauded the "Noctes of +Prince Floristan," in a fairy London. + +Yet, excellent and unique as these things were, Mr. Stevenson had +not yet "found himself." It would be more true to say that he had +only discovered outlying skirts of his dominions. Has he ever hit +on the road to the capital yet? and will he ever enter it laurelled, +and in triumph? That is precisely what one may doubt, not as +without hope. He is always making discoveries in his realm; it is +less certain that he will enter its chief city in state. His next +work was rather in the nature of annexation and invasion than a +settling of his own realms. "Prince Otto" is not, to my mind, a +ruler in his proper soil. The provinces of George Sand and of Mr. +George Meredith have been taken captive. "Prince Otto" is fantastic +indeed, but neither the fantasy nor the style is quite Mr. +Stevenson's. There are excellent passages, and the Scotch soldier +of fortune is welcome, and the ladies abound in subtlety and wit. +But the book, at least to myself, seems an extremely elaborate and +skilful pastiche. I cannot believe in the persons. I vaguely smell +a moral allegory (as in "Will of the Mill"). I do not clearly +understand what it is all about. The scene is fairyland; but it is +not the fairyland of Perrault. The ladies are beautiful and witty; +but they are escaped from a novel of Mr. Meredith's, and have no +business here. The book is no more Mr. Stevenson's than "The Tale +of Two Cities" was Mr. Dickens's. + +It was probably by way of mere diversion and child's play that Mr. +Stevenson began "Treasure Island." He is an amateur of boyish +pleasures of masterpieces at a penny plain and twopence coloured. +Probably he had looked at the stories of adventure in penny papers +which only boys read, and he determined sportively to compete with +their unknown authors. "Treasure Island" came out in such a +periodical, with the emphatic woodcuts which adorn them. It is said +that the puerile public was not greatly stirred. A story is a +story, and they rather preferred the regular purveyors. The very +faint archaism of the style may have alienated them. But, when +"Treasure Island" appeared as a real book, then every one who had a +smack of youth left was a boy again for some happy hours. Mr. +Stevenson had entered into another province of his realm: the king +had come to his own again. + +They say the seamanship is inaccurate; I care no more than I do for +the year 30. They say too many people are killed. They all died in +fair fight, except a victim of John Silver's. The conclusion is a +little too like part of Poe's most celebrated tale, but nobody has +bellowed "Plagiarist!" Some people may not look over a fence: Mr. +Stevenson, if he liked, might steal a horse,--the animal in this +case is only a skeleton. A very sober student might add that the +hero is impossibly clever; but, then, the hero is a boy, and this is +a boy's book. For the rest, the characters live. Only genius could +have invented John Silver, that terribly smooth-spoken mariner. +Nothing but genius could have drawn that simple yokel on the island, +with his craving for cheese as a Christian dainty. The blustering +Billy Bones is a little masterpiece: the blind Pew, with his +tapping stick (there are three such blind tappers in Mr. Stevenson's +books), strikes terror into the boldest. Then, the treasure is +thoroughly satisfactory in kind, and there is plenty of it. The +landscape, as in the feverish, fog-smothered flat, is gallantly +painted. And there are no interfering petticoats in the story. + +As for the "Black Arrow," I confess to sharing the disabilities of +the "Critic on the Hearth," to whom it is dedicated. "Kidnapped" is +less a story than a fragment; but it is a noble fragment. Setting +aside the wicked old uncle, who in his later behaviour is of the +house of Ralph Nickleby, "Kidnapped" is all excellent--perhaps Mr. +Stevenson's masterpiece. Perhaps, too, only a Scotchman knows how +good it is, and only a Lowland Scot knows how admirable a character +is the dour, brave, conceited David Balfour. It is like being in +Scotland again to come on "the green drive-road running wide through +the heather," where David "took his last look of Kirk Essendean, the +trees about the manse, and the big rowans in the kirkyard, where his +father and mother lay." Perfectly Scotch, too, is the mouldering, +empty house of the Miser, with the stamped leather on the walls. +And the Miser is as good as a Scotch Trapbois, till he becomes +homicidal, and then one fails to recognise him unless he is a little +mad, like that other frantic uncle in "The Merry Men." The scenes +on the ship, with the boy who is murdered, are better--I think more +real--than the scenes of piratical life in "The Master of +Ballantrae." The fight in the Round House, even if it were +exaggerated, would be redeemed by the "Song of the Sword of Alan." +As to Alan Breck himself, with his valour and vanity, his good +heart, his good conceit of himself, his fantastic loyalty, he is +absolutely worthy of the hand that drew Callum Bey and the Dougal +creature. It is just possible that we see, in "Kidnapped," more +signs of determined labour, more evidence of touches and retouches, +than in "Rob Roy." In nothing else which it attempts is it +inferior; in mastery of landscape, as in the scene of the lonely +rock in a dry and thirsty land, it is unsurpassed. If there are +signs of laboured handling on Alan, there are none in the sketches +of Cluny and of Rob Roy's son, the piper. What a generous artist is +Alan! "Robin Oig," he said, when it was done, "ye are a great +piper. I am not fit to blow in the same kingdom with you. Body of +me! ye have mair music in your sporran than I have in my head." + +"Kidnapped," we said, is a fragment. It ends anywhere, or nowhere, +as if the pen had dropped from a weary hand. Thus, and for other +reasons, one cannot pretend to set what is not really a whole +against such a rounded whole as "Rob Roy," or against "The Legend of +Montrose." Again, "Kidnapped" is a novel without a woman in it: +not here is Di Vernon, not here is Helen McGregor. David Balfour is +the pragmatic Lowlander; he does not bear comparison, excellent as +he is, with Baillie Nicol Jarvie, the humorous Lowlander: he does +not live in the memory like the immortal Baillie. It is as a series +of scenes and sketches that "Kidnapped" is unmatched among Mr. +Stevenson's works. + +In "The Master of Ballantrae" Mr. Stevenson makes a gallant effort +to enter what I have ventured to call the capital of his kingdom. +He does introduce a woman, and confronts the problems of love as +well as of fraternal hatred. The "Master" is studied, is polished +ad unguem; it is a whole in itself, it is a remarkably daring +attempt to write the tragedy, as, in "Waverley," Scott wrote the +romance, of Scotland about the time of the Forty-Five. With such a +predecessor and rival, Mr. Stevenson wisely leaves the pomps and +battles of the Forty-Five, its chivalry and gallantry, alone. He +shows us the seamy side: the intrigues, domestic and political; the +needy Irish adventurer with the Prince, a person whom Scott had not +studied. The book, if completely successful, would be Mr. +Stevenson's "Bride of Lammermoor." To be frank, I do not think it +completely successful--a victory all along the line. The obvious +weak point is Secundra Dass, that Indian of unknown nationality; for +surely his name marks him as no Hindoo. The Master could not have +brought him, shivering like Jos Sedley's black servant, to Scotland. +As in America, this alien would have found it "too dam cold." My +power of belief (which verges on credulity) is staggered by the +ghastly attempt to reanimate the buried Master. Here, at least to +my taste, the freakish changeling has got the better of Mr. +Stevenson, and has brought in an element out of keeping with the +steady lurid tragedy of fraternal hatred. For all the rest, it were +a hard judge that had anything but praise. The brilliant +blackguardism of the Master; his touch of sentiment as he leaves +Durisdeer for the last time, with a sad old song on his lips; his +fascination; his ruthlessness; his irony;--all are perfect. It is +not very easy to understand the Chevalier Bourke, that Barry Lyndon, +with no head and with a good heart, that creature of a bewildered +kindly conscience; but it is easy to like him. How admirable is his +undeflected belief in and affection for the Master! How excellent +and how Irish he is, when he buffoons himself out of his perils with +the pirates! The scenes are brilliant and living, as when the +Master throws the guinea through the Hall window, or as in the +darkling duel in the garden. It needed an austere artistic +conscience to make Henry, the younger brother, so unlovable with all +his excellence, and to keep the lady so true, yet so much in shadow. +This is the best woman among Mr. Stevenson's few women; but even she +is almost always reserved, veiled as it were. + +The old Lord, again, is a portrait as lifelike as Scott could have +drawn, and more delicately touched than Scott would have cared to +draw it: a French companion picture to the Baron Bradwardine. The +whole piece reads as if Mr. Stevenson had engaged in a struggle with +himself as he wrote. The sky is never blue, the sun never shines: +we weary for a "westland wind." There is something "thrawn," as the +Scotch say, about the story; there is often a touch of this sinister +kind in the author's work. The language is extraordinarily artful, +as in the mad lord's words, "I have felt the hilt dirl on his +breast-bone." And yet, one is hardly thrilled as one expects to be, +when, as Mackellar says, "the week-old corpse looked me for a moment +in the face." + +Probably none of Mr. Stevenson's many books has made his name so +familiar as "Dr. Jekyll and Mr Hyde." I read it first in +manuscript, alone, at night; and, when the Butler and Mr. Urmson +came to the Doctor's door, I confess that I threw it down, and went +hastily to bed. It is the most gruesome of all his writings, and so +perfect that one can complain only of the slightly too obvious +moral; and, again, that really Mr. Hyde was more of a gentleman than +the unctuous Dr. Jekyll, with his "bedside manner." + +So here, not to speak of some admirable short stories like "Thrawn +Janet," is a brief catalogue--little more--of Mr. Stevenson's +literary baggage. It is all good, though variously good; yet the +wise world asks for the masterpiece. It is said that Mr. Stevenson +has not ventured on the delicate and dangerous ground of the novel, +because he has not written a modern love story. But who has? There +are love affairs in Dickens, but do we remember or care for them? +Is it the love affairs that we remember in Scott? Thackeray may +touch us with Clive's and Jack Belsize's misfortunes, with Esmond's +melancholy passion, and amuse us with Pen in so many toils, and +interest us in the little heroine of the "Shabby Genteel Story." +But it is not by virtue of those episodes that Thackeray is so +great. Love stories are best done by women, as in "Mr. Gilfil's +Love Story"; and, perhaps, in an ordinary way, by writers like +Trollope. One may defy critics to name a great English author in +fiction whose chief and distinguishing merit is in his pictures of +the passion of Love. Still, they all give Love his due stroke in +the battle, and perhaps Mr. Stevenson will do so some day. But I +confess that, if he ever excels himself, I do not expect it to be in +a love story. + +Possibly it may be in a play. If he again attempt the drama, he has +this in his favour, that he will not deal in supernumeraries. In +his tales his minor characters are as carefully drawn as his chief +personages. Consider, for example, the minister, Henderland, the +man who is so fond of snuff, in "Kidnapped," and, in the "Master of +Ballantrae," Sir William Johnson, the English Governor. They are +the work of a mind as attentive to details, as ready to subordinate +or obliterate details which are unessential. Thus Mr. Stevenson's +writings breathe equally of work in the study and of inspiration +from adventure in the open air, and thus he wins every vote, and +pleases every class of reader. + + + +THOMAS HAYNES BAYLY + + + +I cannot sing the old songs, nor indeed any others, but I can read +them, in the neglected works of Thomas Haynes Bayly. The name of +Bayly may be unfamiliar, but every one almost has heard his ditties +chanted--every one much over forty, at all events. "I'll hang my +Harp on a Willow Tree," and "I'd be a Butterfly," and "Oh, no! we +never mention Her," are dimly dear to every friend of Mr. Richard +Swiveller. If to be sung everywhere, to hear your verses uttered in +harmony with all pianos and quoted by the world at large, be fame, +Bayly had it. He was an unaffected poet. He wrote words to airs, +and he is almost absolutely forgotten. To read him is to be carried +back on the wings of music to the bowers of youth; and to the bowers +of youth I have been wafted, and to the old booksellers. You do not +find on every stall the poems of Bayly; but a copy in two volumes +has been discovered, edited by Mr. Bayly's widow (Bentley, 1844). +They saw the light in the same year as the present critic, and +perhaps they ceased to be very popular before he was breeched. Mr. +Bayly, according to Mrs. Bayly, "ably penetrated the sources of the +human heart," like Shakespeare and Mr. Howells. He also "gave to +minstrelsy the attributes of intellect and wit," and "reclaimed even +festive song from vulgarity," in which, since the age of Anacreon, +festive song has notoriously wallowed. The poet who did all this +was born at Bath in Oct. 1797. His father was a genteel solicitor, +and his great-grandmother was sister to Lord Delamere, while he had +a remote baronet on the mother's side. To trace the ancestral +source of his genius was difficult, as in the case of Gifted +Hopkins; but it was believed to flow from his maternal grandfather, +Mr. Freeman, whom his friend, Lord Lavington, regarded as "one of +the finest poets of his age." Bayly was at school at Winchester, +where he conducted a weekly college newspaper. His father, like +Scott's, would have made him a lawyer; but "the youth took a great +dislike to it, for his ideas loved to dwell in the regions of +fancy," which are closed to attorneys. So he thought of being a +clergyman, and was sent to St. Mary's Hall, Oxford. There "he did +not apply himself to the pursuit of academical honours," but fell in +love with a young lady whose brother he had tended in a fatal +illness. But "they were both too wise to think of living upon love, +and, after mutual tears and sighs, they parted never to meet again. +The lady, though grieved, was not heartbroken, and soon became the +wife of another." They usually do. Mr. Bayly's regret was more +profound, and expressed itself in the touching ditty: + + +"Oh, no, we never mention her, +Her name is never heard, +My lips are now forbid to speak +That once familiar word; +From sport to sport they hurry me +To banish my regret, +And when they only worry me - + +[I beg Mr. Bayly's pardon] + +"And when they win a smile from me, +They fancy I forget. + +"They bid me seek in change of scene +The charms that others see, +But were I in a foreign land +They'd find no change in me. +'Tis true that I behold no more +The valley where we met; +I do not see the hawthorn tree, +But how can I forget?" + +* * * + +"They tell me she is happy now, + +[And so she was, in fact.] + +The gayest of the gay; +They hint that she's forgotten me; +But heed not what they say. +Like me, perhaps, she struggles with +Each feeling of regret: +'Tis true she's married Mr. Smith, +But, ah, does she forget!" + + +The temptation to parody is really too strong; the last lines, +actually and in an authentic text, are: + + +"But if she loves as I have loved, +She never can forget." + + +Bayly had now struck the note, the sweet, sentimental note, of the +early, innocent, Victorian age. Jeames imitated him: + + +"R. Hangeline, R. Lady mine, +Dost thou remember Jeames!" + + +We should do the trick quite differently now, more like this: + + +"Love spake to me and said: +'Oh, lips, be mute; +Let that one name be dead, +That memory flown and fled, +Untouched that lute! +Go forth,' said Love, 'with willow in thy hand, +And in thy hair +Dead blossoms wear, +Blown from the sunless land. + +"'Go forth,' said Love; 'thou never more shalt see +Her shadow glimmer by the trysting tree; +But SHE is glad, +With roses crowned and clad, +Who hath forgotten thee!' +But I made answer: 'Love! +Tell me no more thereof, +For she has drunk of that same cup as I. +Yea, though her eyes be dry, +She garners there for me +Tears salter than the sea, +Even till the day she die.' +So gave I Love the lie." + + +I declare I nearly weep over these lines; for, though they are only +Bayly's sentiment hastily recast in a modern manner, there is +something so very affecting, mouldy, and unwholesome about them, +that they sound as if they had been "written up to" a sketch by a +disciple of Mr. Rossetti's. + +In a mood much more manly and moral, Mr. Bayly wrote another poem to +the young lady: + + +"May thy lot in life be happy, undisturbed by thoughts of me, +The God who shelters innocence thy guard and guide will be. +Thy heart will lose the chilling sense of hopeless love at last, +And the sunshine of the future chase the shadows of the past." + + +It is as easy as prose to sing in this manner. For example: + + +"In fact, we need not be concerned; 'at last' comes very soon, and +our Emilia quite forgets the memory of the moon, the moon that shone +on her and us, the woods that heard our vows, the moaning of the +waters, and the murmur of the boughs. She is happy with another, +and by her we're quite forgot; she never lets a thought of us bring +shadow on her lot; and if we meet at dinner she's too clever to +repine, and mentions us to Mr. Smith as 'An old flame of mine.' And +shall I grieve that it is thus? and would I have her weep, and lose +her healthy appetite and break her healthy sleep? Not so, she's not +poetical, though ne'er shall I forget the fairy of my fancy whom I +once thought I had met. The fairy of my fancy! It was fancy, most +things are; her emotions were not steadfast as the shining of a +star; but, ah, I love her image yet, as once it shone on me, and +swayed me as the low moon sways the surging of the sea." + + +Among other sports his anxious friends hurried the lovelorn Bayly to +Scotland, where he wrote much verse, and then to Dublin, which +completed his cure. "He seemed in the midst of the crowd the gayest +of all, his laughter rang merry and loud at banquet and hall." He +thought no more of studying for the Church, but went back to Bath, +met a Miss Hayes, was fascinated by Miss Hayes, "came, saw, but did +NOT conquer at once," says Mrs. Haynes Bayly (nee Hayes) with +widow's pride. Her lovely name was Helena; and I deeply regret to +add that, after an education at Oxford, Mr. Bayly, in his poems, +accentuated the penultimate, which, of course, is short. + + +"Oh, think not, Helena, of leaving us yet," + + +he carolled, when it would have been just as easy, and a hundred +times more correct, to sing - + + +"Oh, Helena, think not of leaving us yet." + + +Miss Hayes had lands in Ireland, alas! and Mr. Bayly insinuated +that, like King Easter and King Wester in the ballad, her lovers +courted her for her lands and her fee; but he, like King Honour, + + +"For her bonny face +And for her fair bodie." + + +In 1825 (after being elected to the Athenaeum) Mr. Bayly "at last +found favour in the eyes of Miss Hayes." He presented her with a +little ruby heart, which she accepted, and they were married, and at +first were well-to-do, Miss Hayes being the heiress of Benjamin +Hayes, Esq., of Marble Hill, in county Cork. A friend of Mr. +Bayly's described him thus: + + +"I never have met on this chilling earth +So merry, so kind, so frank a youth, +In moments of pleasure a smile all mirth, +In moments of sorrow a heart of truth. +I have heard thee praised, I have seen thee led +By Fashion along her gay career; +While beautiful lips have often shed +Their flattering poison in thine ear." + + +Yet he says that the poet was unspoiled. On his honeymoon, at Lord +Ashdown's, Mr. Bayly, flying from some fair sirens, retreated to a +bower, and there wrote his world-famous "I'd be a Butterfly." + + +"I'd be a butterfly, living a rover, +Dying when fair things are fading away." + + +The place in which the deathless strains welled from the singer's +heart was henceforth known as "Butterfly Bower." He now wrote a +novel, "The Aylmers," which has gone where the old moons go, and he +became rather a literary lion, and made the acquaintance of Theodore +Hook. The loss of a son caused him to write some devotional verses, +which were not what he did best; and now he began to try comedies. +One of them, Sold for a Song, succeeded very well. In the stage- +coach between Wycombe Abbey and London he wrote a successful little +lever de rideau called Perfection; and it was lucky that he opened +this vein, for his wife's Irish property got into an Irish bog of +dishonesty and difficulty. Thirty-five pieces were contributed by +him to the British stage. After a long illness, he died on April +22nd, 1829. He did not live, this butterfly minstrel, into the +winter of human age. + +Of his poems the inevitable criticism must be that he was a Tom +Moore of much lower accomplishments. His business was to carol of +the most vapid and obvious sentiment, and to string flowers, fruits, +trees, breeze, sorrow, to-morrow, knights, coal-black steeds, +regret, deception, and so forth, into fervid anapaestics. Perhaps +his success lay in knowing exactly how little sense in poetry +composers will endure and singers will accept. Why, "words for +music" are almost invariably trash now, though the words of +Elizabethan songs are better than any music, is a gloomy and +difficult question. Like most poets, I myself detest the sister +art, and don't know anything about it. But any one can see that +words like Bayly's are and have long been much more popular with +musical people than words like Shelley's, Keats's, Shakespeare's, +Fletcher's, Lovelace's, or Carew's. The natural explanation is not +flattering to musical people: at all events, the singing world +doted on Bayly. + + +"She never blamed him--never, +But received him when he came +With a welcome sort of shiver, +And she tried to look the same. + +"But vainly she dissembled, +For whene'er she tried to smile, +A tear unbidden trembled +In her blue eye all the while." + + +This was pleasant for "him"; but the point is that these are lines +to an Indian air. Shelley, also, about the same time, wrote Lines +to an Indian air; but we may "swear, and save our oath," that the +singers preferred Bayly's. Tennyson and Coleridge could never equal +the popularity of what follows. I shall ask the persevering reader +to tell me where Bayly ends, and where parody begins: + + +"When the eye of beauty closes, +When the weary are at rest, +When the shade the sunset throws is +But a vapour in the west; +When the moonlight tips the billow +With a wreath of silver foam, +And the whisper of the willow +Breaks the slumber of the gnome, - +Night may come, but sleep will linger, +When the spirit, all forlorn, +Shuts its ear against the singer, +And the rustle of the corn +Round the sad old mansion sobbing +Bids the wakeful maid recall +Who it was that caused the throbbing +Of her bosom at the ball." + + +Will this not do to sing just as well as the original? and is it not +true that "almost any man you please could reel it off for days +together"? Anything will do that speaks of forgetting people, and +of being forsaken, and about the sunset, and the ivy, and the rose. + + +"Tell me no more that the tide of thine anguish +Is red as the heart's blood and salt as the sea; +That the stars in their courses command thee to languish, +That the hand of enjoyment is loosened from thee! + +"Tell me no more that, forgotten, forsaken, +Thou roamest the wild wood, thou sigh'st on the shore. +Nay, rent is the pledge that of old we had taken, +And the words that have bound me, they bind thee no more! + +"Ere the sun had gone down on thy sorrow, the maidens +Were wreathing the orange's bud in thy hair, +And the trumpets were tuning the musical cadence +That gave thee, a bride, to the baronet's heir. + +"Farewell, may no thought pierce thy breast of thy treason; +Farewell, and be happy in Hubert's embrace. +Be the belle of the ball, be the bride of the season, +With diamonds bedizened and languid in lace." + + +This is mine, and I say, with modest pride, that it is quite as good +as - + + +"Go, may'st thou be happy, +Though sadly we part, +In life's early summer +Grief breaks not the heart. + +"The ills that assail us +As speedily pass +As shades o'er a mirror, +Which stain not the glass." + + +Anybody could do it, we say, in what Edgar Poe calls "the mad pride +of intellectuality," and it certainly looks as if it could be done +by anybody. For example, take Bayly as a moralist. His ideas are +out of the centre. This is about his standard: + + +"CRUELTY. + +"'Break not the thread the spider +Is labouring to weave.' +I said, nor as I eyed her +Could dream she would deceive. + +"Her brow was pure and candid, +Her tender eyes above; +And I, if ever man did, +Fell hopelessly in love. + +"For who could deem that cruel +So fair a face might be? +That eyes so like a jewel +Were only paste for me? + +"I wove my thread, aspiring +Within her heart to climb; +I wove with zeal untiring +For ever such a time! + +"But, ah! that thread was broken +All by her fingers fair, +The vows and prayers I've spoken +Are vanished into air!" + + +Did Bayly write that ditty or did I? Upon my word, I can hardly +tell. I am being hypnotised by Bayly. I lisp in numbers, and the +numbers come like mad. I can hardly ask for a light without +abounding in his artless vein. Easy, easy it seems; and yet it was +Bayly after all, not you nor I, who wrote the classic - + + +"I'll hang my harp on a willow tree, +And I'll go to the war again, +For a peaceful home has no charm for me, +A battlefield no pain; +The lady I love will soon be a bride, +With a diadem on her brow. +Ah, why did she flatter my boyish pride? +She is going to leave me now!" + + +It is like listening, in the sad yellow evening, to the strains of a +barrel organ, faint and sweet, and far away. A world of memories +come jigging back--foolish fancies, dreams, desires, all beckoning +and bobbing to the old tune: + + +"Oh had I but loved with a boyish love, +It would have been well for me." + + +How does Bayly manage it? What is the trick of it, the obvious, +simple, meretricious trick, which somehow, after all, let us mock as +we will, Bayly could do, and we cannot? He really had a slim, +serviceable, smirking, and sighing little talent of his own; and-- +well, we have not even that. Nobody forgets + + +"The lady I love will soon be a bride." + + +Nobody remembers our cultivated epics and esoteric sonnets, oh +brother minor poet, mon semblable, mon frere! Nor can we rival, +though we publish our books on the largest paper, the buried +popularity of + + +"Gaily the troubadour +Touched his guitar +When he was hastening +Home from the war, +Singing, "From Palestine +Hither I come, +Lady love! Lady love! +Welcome me home!" + + +Of course this is, historically, a very incorrect rendering of a +Languedoc crusader; and the impression is not mediaeval, but of the +comic opera. Any one of us could get in more local colour for the +money, and give the crusader a cithern or citole instead of a +guitar. This is how we should do "Gaily the Troubadour" nowadays:- + + +"Sir Ralph he is hardy and mickle of might, +Ha, la belle blanche aubepine! +Soldans seven hath he slain in fight, +Honneur e la belle Isoline! + +"Sir Ralph he rideth in riven mail, +Ha, la belle blanche aubepine! +Beneath his nasal is his dark face pale, +Honneur e la belle Isoline! + +"His eyes they blaze as the burning coal, +Ha, la belle blanche aubepine! +He smiteth a stave on his gold citole, +Honneur e la belle Isoline! + +"From her mangonel she looketh forth, +Ha, la belle blanche aubepine! +'Who is he spurreth so late to the north?' +Honneur e la belle Isoline! + +"Hark! for he speaketh a knightly name, +Ha, la belle blanche aubepine! +And her wan cheek glows as a burning flame, +Honneur e la belle Isoline! + +"For Sir Ralph he is hardy and mickle of might, +Ha, la belle blanche aubepine! +And his love shall ungirdle his sword to-night, +Honneur e la belle Isoline!" + +Such is the romantic, esoteric, old French way of saying - + + +"Hark, 'tis the troubadour +Breathing her name +Under the battlement +Softly he came, +Singing, "From Palestine +Hither I come. +Lady love! Lady love! +Welcome me home!" + + +The moral of all this is that minor poetry has its fashions, and +that the butterfly Bayly could versify very successfully in the +fashion of a time simpler and less pedantic than our own. On the +whole, minor poetry for minor poetry, this artless singer, piping +his native drawing-room notes, gave a great deal of perfectly +harmless, if highly uncultivated, enjoyment. + +It must not be fancied that Mr. Bayly had only one string to his +bow--or, rather, to his lyre. He wrote a great deal, to be sure, +about the passion of love, which Count Tolstoi thinks we make too +much of. He did not dream that the affairs of the heart should be +regulated by the State--by the Permanent Secretary of the Marriage +Office. That is what we are coming to, of course, unless the +enthusiasts of "free love" and "go away as you please" failed with +their little programme. No doubt there would be poetry if the State +regulated or left wholly unregulated the affections of the future. +Mr. Bayly, living in other times, among other manners, piped of the +hard tyranny of a mother: + + +"We met, 'twas in a crowd, and I thought he would shun me. +He came, I could not breathe, for his eye was upon me. +He spoke, his words were cold, and his smile was unaltered, +I knew how much he felt, for his deep-toned voice faltered. +I wore my bridal robe, and I rivalled its whiteness; +Bright gems were in my hair,--how I hated their brightness! +He called me by my name as the bride of another. +Oh, thou hast been the cause of this anguish, my mother!" + + +In future, when the reformers of marriage have had their way, we +shall read: + + +"The world may think me gay, for I bow to my fate; +But thou hast been the cause of my anguish, O State!" + + +For even when true love is regulated by the County Council or the +village community, it will still persist in not running smooth. + +Of these passions, then, Mr. Bayly could chant; but let us remember +that he could also dally with old romance, that he wrote: + + +"The mistletoe hung in the castle hall, +The holly branch shone on the old oak wall." + + +When the bride unluckily got into the ancient chest, + + +"It closed with a spring. And, dreadful doom, +The bride lay clasped in her living tomb," + + +so that her lover "mourned for his fairy bride," and never found out +her premature casket. This was true romance as understood when Peel +was consul. Mr. Bayly was rarely political; but he commemorated the +heroes of Waterloo, our last victory worth mentioning: + + +"Yet mourn not for them, for in future tradition +Their fame shall abide as our tutelar star, +To instil by example the glorious ambition +Of falling, like them, in a glorious war. +Though tears may be seen in the bright eyes of beauty, +One consolation must ever remain: +Undaunted they trod in the pathway of duty, +Which led them to glory on Waterloo's plain." + + +Could there be a more simple Tyrtaeus? and who that reads him will +not be ambitious of falling in a glorious war? Bayly, indeed, is +always simple. He is "simple, sensuous, and passionate," and Milton +asked no more from a poet. + + +"A wreath of orange blossoms, +When next we met, she wore. +The expression of her features +Was more thoughtful than before." + + +On his own principles Wordsworth should have admired this unaffected +statement; but Wordsworth rarely praised his contemporaries, and +said that "Guy Mannering" was a respectable effort in the style of +Mrs. Radcliffe. Nor did he even extol, though it is more in his own +line, + + +"Of what is the old man thinking, +As he leans on his oaken staff?" + + +My own favourite among Mr. Bayly's effusions is not a sentimental +ode, but the following gush of true natural feeling:- + + +"Oh, give me new faces, new faces, new faces, +I've seen those around me a fortnight and more. +Some people grow weary of things or of places, +But persons to me are a much greater bore. +I care not for features, I'm sure to discover +Some exquisite trait in the first that you send. +My fondness falls off when the novelty's over; +I want a new face for an intimate friend." + + +This is perfectly candid: we should all prefer a new face, if +pretty, every fortnight: + + +"Come, I pray you, and tell me this, +All good fellows whose beards are grey, +Did not the fairest of the fair +Common grow and wearisome ere +Ever a month had passed away?" + + +For once Mr. Bayly uttered in his "New Faces" a sentiment not +usually expressed, but universally felt; and now he suffers, as a +poet, because he is no longer a new face, because we have welcomed +his juniors. To Bayly we shall not return; but he has one rare +merit,--he is always perfectly plain-spoken and intelligible. + + +"Farewell to my Bayly, farewell to the singer +Whose tender effusions my aunts used to sing; +Farewell, for the fame of the bard does not linger, +My favourite minstrel's no longer the thing. +But though on his temples has faded the laurel, +Though broken the lute, and though veiled is the crest, +My Bayly, at worst, is uncommonly moral, +Which is more than some new poets are, at their best." + + +Farewell to our Bayly, about whose songs we may say, with Mr. +Thackeray in "Vanity Fair," that "they contain numberless good- +natured, simple appeals to the affections." We are no longer +affectionate, good-natured, simple. We are cleverer than Bayly's +audience; but are we better fellows? + + + +THEODORE DE BANVILLE + + + +There are literary reputations in France and England which seem, +like the fairies, to be unable to cross running water. Dean Swift, +according to M. Paul de Saint-Victor, is a great man at Dover, a +pigmy at Calais--"Son talent, qui enthousiasme l'Angleterre, +n'inspire ailleurs qu'un morne etonnement." M. Paul De Saint-Victor +was a fair example of the French critic, and what he says about +Swift was possibly true,--for him. There is not much resemblance +between the Dean and M. Theodore de Banville, except that the latter +too is a poet who has little honour out of his own country. He is a +charming singer at Calais; at Dover he inspires un morne etonnement +(a bleak perplexity). One has never seen an English attempt to +describe or estimate his genius. His unpopularity in England is +illustrated by the fact that the London Library, that respectable +institution, does not, or did not, possess a single copy of any one +of his books. He is but feebly represented even in the collection +of the British Museum. It is not hard to account for our +indifference to M. De Banville. He is a poet not only intensely +French, but intensely Parisian. He is careful of form, rather than +abundant in manner. He has no story to tell, and his sketches in +prose, his attempts at criticism, are not very weighty or +instructive. With all his limitations, however, he represents, in +company with M. Leconte de Lisle, the second of the three +generations of poets over whom Victor Hugo reigned. + +M. De Banville has been called, by people who do not like, and who +apparently have not read him, un saltimbanque litteraire (a literary +rope-dancer). Other critics, who do like him, but who have limited +their study to a certain portion of his books, compare him to a +worker in gold, who carefully chases or embosses dainty processions +of fauns and maenads. He is, in point of fact, something more +estimable than a literary rope-dancer, something more serious than a +working jeweller in rhymes. He calls himself un raffine; but he is +not, like many persons who are proud of that title, un indifferent +in matters of human fortune. His earlier poems, of course, are much +concerned with the matter of most early poems--with Lydia and +Cynthia and their light loves. The verses of his second period +often deal with the most evanescent subjects, and they now retain +but a slight petulance and sparkle, as of champagne that has been +too long drawn. In a prefatory plea for M. De Banville's poetry one +may add that he "has loved our people," and that no poet, no critic, +has honoured Shakespeare with brighter words of praise. + +Theodore de Banville was born at Moulin, on March 14th 1823, and he +is therefore three years younger than the dictionaries of biography +would make the world believe. He is the son of a naval officer, +and, according to M. Charles Baudelaire, a descendant of the +Crusaders. He came much too late into the world to distinguish +himself in the noisy exploits of 1830, and the chief event of his +youth was the publication of "Les Cariatides" in 1842. This first +volume contained a selection from the countless verses which the +poet produced between his sixteenth and his nineteenth year. +Whatever other merits the songs of minors may possess, they have +seldom that of permitting themselves to be read. "Les Cariatides" +are exceptional here. They are, above all things, readable. "On +peut les lire e peu de frais," M. De Banville says himself. He +admits that his lighter works, the poems called (in England) vers de +societe, are a sort of intellectual cigarette. M. Emile de Girardin +said, in the later days of the Empire, that there were too many +cigarettes in the air. Their stale perfume clings to the literature +of that time, as the odour of pastilles yet hangs about the verse of +Dorat, the designs of Eisen, the work of the Pompadour period. +There is more than smoke in M. De Banville's ruling inspiration, his +lifelong devotion to letters and to great men of letters-- +Shakespeare, Moliere, Homer, Victor Hugo. These are his gods; the +memory of them is his muse. His enthusiasm is worthy of one who, +though born too late to see and know the noble wildness of 1830, yet +lives on the recollections, and is strengthened by the example, of +that revival of letters. Whatever one may say of the renouveau, of +romanticism, with its affectations, the young men of 1830 were +sincere in their devotion to liberty, to poetry, to knowledge. One +can hardly find a more brilliant and touching belief in these great +causes than that of Edgar Quinet, as displayed in the letters of his +youth. De Banville fell on more evil times. + +When "Les Cariatides" was published poets had begun to keep an eye +on the Bourse, and artists dabbled in finance. The new volume of +song in the sordid age was a November primrose, and not unlike the +flower of Spring. There was a singular freshness and hopefulness in +the verse, a wonderful "certitude dans l'expression lyrique," as +Sainte-Beuve said. The mastery of musical speech and of various +forms of song was already to be recognised as the basis and the note +of the talent of De Banville. He had style, without which a man may +write very nice verses about heaven and hell and other matters, and +may please thousands of excellent people, but will write poetry-- +never. Comparing De Banville's boy's work with the boy's work of +Mr. Tennyson, one observes in each--"Les Cariatides" as in "The +Hesperides"--the timbre of a new voice. Poetry so fresh seems to +make us aware of some want which we had hardly recognised, but now +are sensible of, at the moment we find it satisfied. + +It is hardly necessary to say that this gratifying and welcome +strangeness, this lyric originality, is nearly all that M. De +Banville has in common with the English poet whose two priceless +volumes were published in the same year as "Les Cariatides?" The +melody of Mr. Tennyson's lines, the cloudy palaces of his +imagination, rose + + +"As Ilion, like a mist rose into towers," + + +when Apollo sang. The architecture was floating at first, and +confused; while the little theatre of M. De Banville's poetry, where +he sat piping to a dance of nixies, was brilliantly lit and elegant +with fresh paint and gilding. "The Cariatides" support the pediment +and roof of a theatre or temple in the Graeco-French style. The +poet proposed to himself + + +"A cote de Venus et du fils de Latone +Peindre la fee et la peri." + + +The longest poem in the book, and the most serious, "La Voie +Lactee," reminds one of the "Palace of Art," written before the +after-thought, before the "white-eyed corpses" were found lurking in +corners. Beginning with Homer, "the Ionian father of the rest," - + + +"Ce dieu, pere des dieux qu'adore Ionie," - + + +the poet glorifies all the chief names of song. There is a long +procession of illustrious shadows before Shakespeare comes-- +Shakespeare, whose genius includes them all. + + +"Toute creation e laquelle on aspire, +Tout reve, toute chose, emanent de Shakespeare." + + +His mind has lent colour to the flowers and the sky, to + + +"La fleur qui brode un point sur les manteau des plaines, +Les nenuphars penches, et les pales roseaux +Qui disent leur chant sombre au murmure des eaux." + + +One recognises more sincerity in this hymn to all poets, from +Orpheus to Heine, than in "Les Baisers de Pierre"--a clever +imitation of De Musset's stories in verse. Love of art and of the +masters of art, a passion for the figures of old mythology, which +had returned again after their exile in 1830, gaiety, and a revival +of the dexterity of Villon and Marot,--these things are the +characteristics of M. De Banville's genius, and all these were +displayed in "Les Cariatides." Already, too, his preoccupation with +the lighter and more fantastic sort of theatrical amusements shows +itself in lines like these: + + +"De son lit e baldaquin +Le soleil de son beau globe +Avait l'air d'un arlequin +Etalant sa garde-robe; + +"Et sa soeur au front changeant +Mademoiselle la Lune +Avec ses grands yeux d'argent +Regardait la terre brune." + + +The verse about "the sun in bed," unconsciously Miltonic, is in a +vein of bad taste which has always had seductions for M. De +Banville. He mars a fine later poem on Roncevaux and Roland by a +similar absurdity. The angel Michael is made to stride down the +steps of heaven four at a time, and M. De Banville fancies that this +sort of thing is like the simplicity of the ages of faith. + +In "Les Cariatides," especially in the poems styled "En Habit +Zinzolin," M. De Banville revived old measures--the rondeau and the +"poor little triolet." These are forms of verse which it is easy to +write badly, and hard indeed to write well. They have knocked at +the door of the English muse's garden--a runaway knock. In "Les +Cariatides" they took a subordinate place, and played their pranks +in the shadow of the grave figures of mythology, or at the close of +the procession of Dionysus and his Maenads. De Banville often +recalls Keats in his choice of classical themes. "Les Exiles," a +poem of his maturity, is a French "Hyperion." "Le Triomphe de +Bacchus" reminds one of the song of the Bassarids in "Endymion" - + + +"So many, and so many, and so gay." + + +There is a pretty touch of the pedant (who exists, says M. De +Banville, in the heart of the poet) in this verse: + + +"Il reve e Cama, l'amour aux cinq fleches fleuries, +Qui, lorsque soupire au milieu des roses prairies +La douce Vasanta, parmi les bosquets de santal, +Envoie aux cinq sens les fleches du carquois fatal." + + +The Bacchus of Titian has none of this Oriental languor, no memories +of perfumed places where "the throne of Indian Cama slowly sails." +One cannot help admiring the fancy which saw the conquering god +still steeped in Asiatic ease, still unawakened to more vigorous +passion by the fresh wind blowing from Thrace. Of all the +Olympians, Diana has been most often hymned by M. De Banville: his +imagination is haunted by the figure of the goddess. Now she is +manifest in her Hellenic aspect, as Homer beheld her, "taking her +pastime in the chase of boars and swift deer; and with her the wild +wood-nymphs are sporting the daughters of Zeus; and Leto is glad at +heart, for her child towers over them all, and is easy to be known +where all are fair" (Odyssey, vi.). Again, Artemis appears more +thoughtful, as in the sculpture of Jean Goujon, touched with the +sadness of moonlight. Yet again, she is the weary and exiled spirit +that haunts the forest of Fontainebleau, and is a stranger among the +woodland folk, the fades and nixies. To this goddess, "being triple +in her divided deity," M. De Banville has written his hymn in the +characteristic form of the old French ballade. The translator may +borrow Chaucer's apology - + + +"And eke to me it is a grete penaunce, +Syth rhyme in English hath such scarsete +To folowe, word by word, the curiosite +Of Banville, flower of them that make in France." + + +"BALLADE SUR LES HOTES MYSTERIEUX DE LA FORET + +"Still sing the mocking fairies, as of old, +Beneath the shade of thorn and holly tree; +The west wind breathes upon them pure and cold, +And still wolves dread Diana roving free, +In secret woodland with her company. +Tis thought the peasants' hovels know her rite +When now the wolds are bathed in silver light, +And first the moonrise breaks the dusky grey, +Then down the dells, with blown soft hair and bright, +And through the dim wood Dian thrids her way. + +"With water-weeds twined in their locks of gold +The strange cold forest-fairies dance in glee; +Sylphs over-timorous and over-bold +Haunt the dark hollows where the dwarf may be, +The wild red dwarf, the nixies' enemy; +Then, 'mid their mirth, and laughter, and affright, +The sudden goddess enters, tall and white, +With one long sigh for summers passed away; +The swift feet tear the ivy nets outright, +And through the dim wood Dian thrids her way. + +"She gleans her sylvan trophies; down the wold +She hears the sobbing of the stags that flee, +Mixed with the music of the hunting rolled, +But her delight is all in archery, +And nought of ruth and pity wotteth she +More than the hounds that follow on the flight; +The tall nymph draws a golden bow of might, +And thick she rains the gentle shafts that slay, +She tosses loose her locks upon the night, +And Dian through the dim wood thrids her way. + +ENVOI. + +"Prince, let us leave the din, the dust, the spite, +The gloom and glare of towns, the plague, the blight; +Amid the forest leaves and fountain spray +There is the mystic home of our delight, +And through the dim wood Dian thrids her way." + + +The piece is characteristic of M. De Banville's genius. Through his +throng of operatic nixies and sylphs of the ballet the cold Muse +sometimes passes, strange, but not unfriendly. He, for his part, +has never degraded the beautiful forms of old religion to make the +laughing-stock of fools. His little play, Diane au Bois, has grace, +and gravity, and tenderness like the tenderness of Keats, for the +failings of immortals. "The gods are jealous exceedingly if any +goddess takes a mortal man to her paramour, as Demeter chose +Iasion." The least that mortal poets can do is to show the +Olympians an example of toleration. + +"Les Cariatides" have delayed us too long. They are wonderfully +varied, vigorous, and rich, and full of promise in many ways. The +promise has hardly been kept. There is more seriousness in "Les +Stalactites" (1846), it is true, but then there is less daring. +There is one morsel that must be quoted,--a fragment fashioned on +the air and the simple words that used to waken the musings of +George Sand when she was a child, dancing with the peasant children: + + +"Nous n'irons plus an bois: les lauries sont coupes, +Les amours des bassins, les naiades en groupe +Voient reluire au soleil, en cristaux decoupes +Les flots silencieux qui coulaient de leur coupe, +Les lauriers sont coupes et le cerf aux abois +Tressaille au son du cor: nous n'irons plus au bois! +Ou des enfants joueurs riait la folle troupe +Parmi les lys d'argent aux pleurs du ciel trempes, +Voici l'herbe qu'on fauche et les lauriers qu'on coupe; +Nous n'irons plus au bois; les lauriers sont coupes." + + +In these days Banville, like Gerard de Nerval in earlier times, +RONSARDISED. The poem 'A la Font Georges,' full of the memories of +childhood, sweet and rich with the air and the hour of sunset, is +written in a favourite metre of Ronsard's. Thus Ronsard says in his +lyrical version of five famous lines of Homer - + + +"La gresle ni la neige +N'ont tels lieux pour leur siege +Ne la foudre oncques le +Ne devala." + +(The snow, and wind, and hail +May never there prevail, +Nor thunderbolt doth fall, +Nor rain at all.) + + +De Banville chose this metre, rapid yet melancholy, with its sad +emphatic cadence in the fourth line, as the vehicle of his childish +memories: + + +"O champs pleins de silence, +Ou mon heureuse enfance +Avait des jours encor +Tout files d'or!" + +O ma vieille Font Georges, +Vers qui les rouges-gorges +Et le doux rossignol +Prenaient leur vol! + + +So this poem of the fountain of youth begins, "tout file d'or," and +closes when the dusk is washed with silver - + + +"A l'heure ou sous leurs voiles +Les tremblantes etoiles +Brodent le ciel changeant +De fleurs d'argent." + + +The "Stalactites" might detain one long, but we must pass on after +noticing an unnamed poem which is the French counterpart of Keats' +"Ode to a Greek Urn": + + +"Qu'autour du vase pur, trop beau pour la Bacchante, +La verveine, melee e des feuilles d'acanthe, +Fleurisse, et que plus bas des vierges lentement +S'avancent deux e deux, d'un pas sur et charmant, +Les bras pendants le long de leurs tuniques droites +Et les cheyeux tresses sur leurs tetes etroites." + + +In the same volume of the definite series of poems come "Les +Odelettes," charming lyrics, one of which, addressed to Theophile +Gautier, was answered in the well-known verses called "L'Art." If +there had been any rivalry between the writers, M. De Banville would +hardly have cared to print Gautier's "Odelette" beside his own. The +tone of it is infinitely more manly: one seems to hear a deep, +decisive voice replying to tones far less sweet and serious. M. De +Banville revenged himself nobly in later verses addressed to +Gautier, verses which criticise the genius of that workman better, +we think, than anything else that has been written of him in prose +or rhyme. + +The less serious poems of De Banville are, perhaps, the better known +in this country. His feats of graceful metrical gymnastics have +been admired by every one who cares for skill pure and simple. "Les +Odes Funambulesques" and "Les Occidentales" are like ornamental +skating. The author moves in many circles and cuts a hundred +fantastic figures with a perfect ease and smoothness. At the same +time, naturally, he does not advance nor carry his readers with him +in any direction. "Les Odes Funambulesques" were at first unsigned. +They appeared in journals and magazines, and, as M. de Banville +applied the utmost lyrical skill to light topics of the moment, they +were the most popular of "Articles de Paris." One must admit that +they bore the English reader, and by this time long scholia are +necessary for the enlightenment even of the Parisian student. The +verses are, perhaps, the "bird-chorus" of French life, but they have +not the permanent truth and delightfulness of the "bird-chorus" in +Aristophanes. One has easily too much of the Carnival, the masked +ball, the debardeurs, and the pierrots. The people at whom M. De +Banville laughed are dead and forgotten. There was a certain M. +Paul Limayrac of those days, who barked at the heels of Balzac, and +other great men, in the Revue des Deux Mondes. In his honour De +Banville wrote a song which parodied all popular aspirations to be a +flower. M. Limayrac was supposed to have become a blossom: + + +"Sur les coteaux et dans les landes +Voltigeant comme un oiseleur +Buloz en ferait des guirlandes +Si Limayrac devenait fleur!" + + +There is more of high spirits than of wit in the lyric, which became +as popular as our modern invocation of Jingo, the god of battles. +It chanced one night that M. Limayrac appeared at a masked ball in +the opera-house. He was recognised by some one in the crowd. The +turbulent waltz stood still, the music was silent, and the dancers +of every hue howled at the critic + + +"Si Paul Limayrac devenait fleur!" + + +Fancy a British reviewer, known as such to the British public, and +imagine that public taking a lively interest in the feuds of men of +letters! Paris, to be sure, was more or less of a university town +thirty years ago, and the students were certain to be largely +represented at the ball. + +The "Odes Funambulesques" contain many examples of M. De Banville's +skill in reviving old forms of verse--triolets, rondeaux, chants +royaux, and ballades. Most of these were composed for the special +annoyance of M. Buloz, M. Limayrac, and a M. Jacquot who called +himself De Mirecourt. The rondeaux are full of puns in the refrain: +"Houssaye ou c'est; lyre, l'ire, lire," and so on, not very +exhilarating. The pantoum, where lines recur alternately, was +borrowed from the distant Malay; but primitive pantoum, in which the +last two lines of each stanza are the first two of the next, occur +in old French folk-song. The popular trick of repetition, affording +a rest to the memory of the singer, is perhaps the origin of all +refrains. De Banville's later satires are directed against +permanent objects of human indignation--the little French debauchee, +the hypocritical friend of reaction, the bloodthirsty chauviniste. +Tired of the flashy luxury of the Empire, his memory goes back to +his youth - + +"Lorsque la levre de l'aurore +Baisait nos yeux souleves, +Et que nous n'etions pas encore +La France des petits creves." + + +The poem "Et Tartufe" prolongs the note of a satire always popular +in France--the satire of Scarron, Moliere, La Bruyere, against the +clerical curse of the nation. The Roman Question was Tartufe's +stronghold at the moment. "French interests" demanded that Italy +should be headless. + + +"Et Tartufe? Il nous dit entre deux cremus +Que pour tout bon Francais l'empire est e Rome, +Et qu'ayant pour aieux Romulus et Remus +Nous tetterons la louve e jamais--le pauvre homme." + + +The new Tartufe worships St. Chassepot, who once, it will not be +forgotten, "wrought miracles"; but he has his doubts as to the +morality of explosive bullets. The nymph of modern warfare is +addressed as she hovers above the Geneva Convention, - + + +"Quoi, nymphe du canon raye, +Tu montres ces pudeurs risibles +Et ce petit air effraye +Devant les balles exploisibles?" + + +De Banville was for long almost alone among poets in his freedom +from Weltschmerz, from regret and desire for worlds lost or +impossible. In the later and stupider corruption of the Empire, +sadness and anger began to vex even his careless muse. She had +piped in her time to much wild dancing, but could not sing to a +waltz of mushroom speculators and decorated capitalists. "Le Sang +de la Coupe" contains a very powerful poem, "The Curse of Venus," +pronounced on Paris, the city of pleasure, which has become the city +of greed. This verse is appropriate to our own commercial +enterprise: + + +"Vends les bois ou dormaient Viviane et Merlin! +L'Aigle de mont n'est fait que pour ta gibeciere; +La neige vierge est le pour fournir ta glaciere; +Le torrent qui bondit sur le roc sybillin, +Et vole, diamant, neige, ecume et poussiere, +N'est plus bon qu'e tourner tes meules de moulin!" + + +In the burning indignation of this poem, M. De Banville reaches his +highest mark of attainment. "Les Exiles" is scarcely less +impressive. The outcast gods of Hellas, wandering in a forest of +ancient Gaul, remind one at once of the fallen deities of Heine, the +decrepit Olympians of Bruno, and the large utterance of Keats's +"Hyperion." Among great exiles, Victor Hugo, "le pere le-bas dans +l'ile," is not forgotten: + + +"Et toi qui l'accueillis, sol libre et verdoyant, +Qui prodigues les fleurs sur tes coteaux fertiles, +Et qui sembles sourire e l'ocean bruyant, +Sois benie, ile verte, entre toutes les iles." + + +The hoarsest note of M. De Banville's lyre is that discordant one +struck in the "Idylles Prussiennes." One would not linger over +poetry or prose composed during the siege, in hours of shame and +impotent scorn. The poet sings how the sword, the flashing +Durendal, is rusted and broken, how victory is to him - + + +" . . . qui se cela +Dans un trou, sous la terre noire." + + +He can spare a tender lyric to the memory of a Prussian officer, a +lad of eighteen, shot dead through a volume of Pindar which he +carried in his tunic. + +It is impossible to leave the poet of gaiety and good-humour in the +mood of the prisoner in besieged Paris. His "Trente Six Ballades +Joyeuses" make a far more pleasant subject for a last word. There +is scarcely a more delightful little volume in the French language +than this collection of verses in the most difficult of forms, which +pour forth, with absolute ease and fluency, notes of mirth, banter, +joy in the spring, in letters, art, and good-fellowship. + + +"L'oiselet retourne aux forets; +Je suis un poete lyrique," - + + +he cries, with a note like a bird's song. Among the thirty-six +every one will have his favourites. We venture to translate the +"Ballad de Banville": + + +"AUX ENFANTS PERDUS + +"I know Cythera long is desolate; +I know the winds have stripped the garden green. +Alas, my friends! beneath the fierce sun's weight +A barren reef lies where Love's flowers have been, +Nor ever lover on that coast is seen! +So be it, for we seek a fabled shore, +To lull our vague desires with mystic lore, +To wander where Love's labyrinths, beguile; +There let us land, there dream for evermore: +'It may be we shall touch the happy isle.' + +"The sea may be our sepulchre. If Fate, +If tempests wreak their wrath on us, serene +We watch the bolt of Heaven, and scorn the hate +Of angry gods that smite us in their spleen. +Perchance the jealous mists are but the screen +That veils the fairy coast we would explore. +Come, though the sea be vexed, and breakers roar, +Come, for the breath of this old world is vile, +Haste we, and toil, and faint not at the oar; +'It may be we shall touch the happy isle.' + +"Grey serpents trail in temples desecrate +Where Cypris smiled, the golden maid, the queen, +And ruined is the palace of our state; +But happy loves flit round the mast, and keen +The shrill wind sings the silken cords between. +Heroes are we, with wearied hearts and sore, +Whose flower is faded and whose locks are hoar. +Haste, ye light skiffs, where myrtle thickets smile; +Love's panthers sleep 'mid roses, as of yore: +'It may be we shall touch the happy isle.' + +ENVOI. + +"Sad eyes! the blue sea laughs, as heretofore. +All, singing birds, your happy music pour; +Ah, poets, leave the sordid earth awhile; +Flit to these ancient gods we still adore: +'It may be we shall touch the happy isle.'" + + +Alas! the mists that veil the shore of our Cythera are not the +summer haze of Watteau, but the smoke and steam of a commercial +time. + +It is as a lyric poet that we have studied M. De Banville. "Je ne +m'entends qu'e la meurique," he says in his ballad on himself; but +he can write prose when he pleases. + +It is in his drama of Gringoire acted at the Theatre Francais, and +familiar in the version of Messrs. Pollock and Besant, that M. De +Banville's prose shows to the best advantage. Louis XI. is supping +with his bourgeois friends and with the terrible Olivier le Daim. +Two beautiful girls are of the company, friends of Pierre Gringoire, +the strolling poet. Presently Gringoire himself appears. He is +dying of hunger; he does not recognise the king, and he is promised +a good supper if he will recite the new satirical "Ballade des +Pendus," which he has made at the monarch's expense. Hunger +overcomes his timidity, and, addressing himself especially to the +king, he enters on this goodly matter: + + +"Where wide the forest boughs are spread, +Where Flora wakes with sylph and fay, +Are crowns and garlands of men dead, +All golden in the morning gay; +Within this ancient garden grey +Are clusters such as no mail knows, +Where Moor and Soldan bear the sway: +This is King Louis' orchard close! + +"These wretched folk wave overhead, +With such strange thoughts as none may say; +A moment still, then sudden sped, +They swing in a ring and waste away. +The morning smites them with her ray; +They toss with every breeze that blows, +They dance where fires of dawning play: +This is King Louis' orchard close! + +"All hanged and dead, they've summoned +(With Hell to aid, that hears them pray) +New legions of an army dread, +Now down the blue sky flames the day; +The dew dies off; the foul array +Of obscene ravens gathers and goes, +With wings that flap and beaks that flay: +This is King Louis' orchard close! + +ENVOI. + +"Prince, where leaves murmur of the May, +A tree of bitter clusters grows; +The bodies of men dead are they! +This is King Louis' orchard close! + + +Poor Gringoire has no sooner committed himself, than he is made to +recognise the terrible king. He pleads that, if he must join the +ghastly army of the dead, he ought, at least, to be allowed to +finish his supper. This the king grants, and in the end, after +Gringoire has won the heart of the heroine, he receives his life and +a fair bride with a full dowry. + +Gringoire is a play very different from M. De Banville's other +dramas, and it is not included in the pretty volume of "Comedies" +which closes the Lemerre series of his poems. The poet has often +declared, with an iteration which has been parodied by M. Richepin, +that "comedy is the child of the ode," and that a drama without the +"lyric" element is scarcely a drama at all. While comedy retains +either the choral ode in its strict form, or its representative in +the shape of lyric enthusiasm (le lyrisme), comedy is complete and +living. Gringoire, to our mind, has plenty of lyric enthusiasm; but +M. De Banville seems to be of a different opinion. His republished +"Comedies" are more remote from experience than Gringoire, his +characters are ideal creatures, familiar types of the stage, like +Scapin and "le beau Leandre," or ethereal persons, or figures of old +mythology, like Diana in Diane au Bois, and Deidamia in the piece +which shows Achilles among women. M. De Banville's dramas have +scarcely prose enough in them to suit the modern taste. They are +masques for the delicate diversion of an hour, and it is not in the +nature of things that they should rival the success of blatant +buffooneries. His earliest pieces--Le Feuilleton d'Aristophane +(acted at the Odeon, Dec. 26th, 1852), and Le Cousin du Roi (Odeon, +April 4th, 1857)--were written in collaboration with Philoxene +Boyer, a generous but indiscreet patron of singers. + + +"Dans les salons de Philoxene +Nous etions quatre-vingt rimeurs," + + +M. De Banville wrote, parodying the "quatre-vingt ramuers" of Victor +Hugo. The memory of M. Boyer's enthusiasm for poetry and his +amiable hospitality are not unlikely to survive both his +compositions and those in which M. De Banville aided him. The +latter poet began to walk alone as a playwright in Le Beau Leandre +(Vaudeville, 1856)--a piece with scarcely more substance than the +French scenes in the old Franco-Italian drama possess. We are taken +into an impossible world of gay non-morality, where a wicked old +bourgeois, Orgon, his daughter Colombine, a pretty flirt, and her +lover Leandre, a light-hearted scamp, bustle through their little +hour. Leandre, who has no notion of being married, says, "Le ciel +n'est pas plus pur que mes intentions." And the artless Colombine +replies, "Alors marions-nous!" To marry Colombine without a dowry +forms, as a modern novelist says, "no part of Leandre's profligate +scheme of pleasure." There is a sort of treble intrigue. Orgon +wants to give away Colombine dowerless, Leandre to escape from the +whole transaction, and Colombine to secure her dot and her husband. +The strength of the piece is the brisk action in the scene when +Leandre protests that he can't rob Orgon of his only daughter, and +Orgon insists that he can refuse nothing except his ducats to so +charming a son-in-law. The play is redeemed from sordidness by the +costumes. Leandre is dressed in the attire of Watteau's +"L'Indifferent" in the Louvre, and wears a diamond-hilted sword. +The lady who plays the part of Colombine may select (delightful +privilege!) the prettiest dress in Watteau's collection. + +This love of the glitter of the stage is very characteristic of De +Banville. In his Deidamie (Odeon, Nov. 18th, 1876) the players who +took the roles of Thetis, Achilles, Odysseus, Deidamia, and the +rest, were accoutred in semi-barbaric raiment and armour of the +period immediately preceding the Graeco-Phoenician (about the eighth +century B.C.). Again we notice the touch of pedantry in the poet. +As for the play, the sombre thread in it is lent by the certainty of +Achilles' early death, the fate which drives him from Deidamie's +arms, and from the sea king's isle to the leagues under the fatal +walls of Ilion. Of comic effect there is plenty, for the sisters of +Deidamie imitate all the acts by which Achilles is likely to betray +himself--grasp the sword among the insidious presents of Odysseus, +when he seizes the spear, and drink each one of them a huge beaker +of wine to the confusion of the Trojans. {1} On a Parisian audience +the imitations of the tone of the Odyssey must have been thrown +away. For example, here is a passage which is as near being Homeric +as French verse can be. Deidamie is speaking in a melancholy mood: + +"Heureux les epoux rois assis dans leur maison, +Qui voient tranquillement s'enfuir chaque saison - +L'epoux tenant son sceptre, environne de gloire, +Et l'epouse filant sa quenouille d'ivoire! +Mais le jeune heros que, la glaive e son franc! +Court dans le noir combat, les mains teintes de sang, +Laisse sa femme en pleurs dans sa haute demeure." + + +With the accustomed pedantry, M. De Banville, in the scene of the +banquet, makes the cup-bearer go round dealing out a little wine, +with which libation is made, and then the feast goes on in proper +Homeric fashion. These overwrought details are forgotten in the +parting scenes, where Deidamie takes what she knows to be her last +farewell of Achilles, and girds him with his sword: + + +"La lame de l'epee, en sa forme divine +Est pareille e la feuille austere du laurier!" + + +Let it be noted that each of M. De Banville's more serious plays +ends with the same scene, with slight differences. In Florise +(never put on the stage) the wandering actress of Hardy's troupe +leaves her lover, the young noble, and the shelter of his castle, to +follow where art and her genius beckon her. In Diane au Bois the +goddess "that leads the precise life" turns her back on Eros, who +has subdued even her, and passes from the scene as she waves her +hand in sign of a farewell ineffably mournful. Nearer tragedy than +this M. De Banville does not care to go; and if there is any deeper +tragedy in scenes of blood and in stages strewn with corpses, from +that he abstains. His Florise is perhaps too long, perhaps too +learned; and certainly we are asked to believe too much when a kind +of etherealised Consuelo is set before us as the prima donna of old +Hardy's troupe: + + +"Mais Florise n'est pas une femme. Je suis +L'harmonieuse voix que berce vos ennuis; +Je suis la lyre aux sons divers que le poete +Fait resonner et qui sans lui serait muette - +Une comedienne enfin. Je ne suis pas +Une femme." + + +An actress who was not a woman had little to do in the company of +Scarron's Angelique and Mademoiselle de l'Estoile. Florise, in +short, is somewhat too allegorical and haughty a creature; while +Colombine and Nerine (Vaudeville, June 1864) are rather tricksy imps +than women of flesh and blood. M. De Banville's stage, on the +whole, is one of glitter and fantasy; yet he is too much a Greek for +the age that appreciates "la belle Helene," too much a lyric +dramatist to please the contemporaries of Sardou; he lends too much +sentiment and dainty refinement to characters as flimsy as those of +Offenbach's drama. + +Like other French poets, M. De Banville has occasionally deigned to +write feuilletons and criticisms. Not many of these scattered +leaves are collected, but one volume, "La Mer de Nice" (Poulet- +Malassis et De Broise, Paris, 1861), may be read with pleasure even +by jealous admirers of Gautier's success as a chronicler of the +impressions made by southern scenery. + +To De Banville (he does not conceal it) a journey to a place so far +from Paris as the Riviera was no slight labour. Even from the +roses, the palms, the siren sea, the wells of water under the fronds +of maiden-hair fern, his mind travels back wistfully to the city of +his love. + +"I am, I have always been, one of those devotees of Paris who visit +Greece only when they gaze on the face, so fair and so terrible, of +the twice-victorious Venus of the Louvre. One of those obstinate +adorers of my town am I, who will never see Italy, save in the glass +that reflects the tawny hair of Titian's Violante, or in that dread +isle of Alcinous where Lionardo shows you the mountain peaks that +waver in the blue behind the mysterious Monna Lisa. But the Faculty +of Physicians, which has, I own, the right to be sceptical, does not +believe that neuralgia can be healed by the high sun which Titian +and Veronese have fixed on the canvas. To me the Faculty prescribes +the real sun of nature and of life; and here am I, condemned to +learn in suffering all that passes in the mind of a poet of Paris +exiled from that blessed place where he finds the Cyclades and the +islands blossoming, the vale of Avalon, and all the heavenly homes +of the fairies of experience and desire." + +Nice is Tomi to this Ovid, but he makes the best of it, and sends to +the editor of the Moniteur letters much more diverting than the +"Tristia." To tell the truth, he never overcomes his amazement at +being out of Paris streets, and in a glade of the lower Alps he +loves to be reminded of his dear city of pleasure. Only under the +olives of Monaco, those solemn and ancient trees, he feels what +surely all men feel who walk at sunset through their shadow--the +memory of a mysterious twilight of agony in an olive garden. + +"Et ceux-ci, les pales oliviers, n'est-ce pas de ces heures desolees +ou, comme torture supreme, le Sauveur acceptait en son ame +l'irreparable misere du doute, n'est-ce pas alors qu'il ont appris +de lui e courber le front sous le poids imperieux des souvenirs?" + +The pages which M. De Banville consecrates to the Villa Sardou, +where Rachel died, may disenchant, perhaps, some readers of Mr. +Matthew Arnold's sonnet. The scene of Rachel's death has been +spoiled by "improvements" in too theatrical taste. All these notes, +however, were made many years ago; and visitors of the Riviera, +though they will find the little book charming where it speaks of +seas and hills, will learn that France has greatly changed the city +which she has annexed. As a practical man and a Parisian, De +Banville has printed (pp. 179-81) a recipe for the concoction of the +Marseilles dish, bouillabaisse, the mess that Thackeray's ballad +made so famous. It takes genius, however, to cook bouillabaisse; +and, to parody what De Banville says about his own recipe for making +a mechanical "ballade," "en employment ce moyen, on est sur de faire +une mauvaise, irremediablement mauvaise bouillabaisse." The poet +adds the remark that "une bouillabaisse reussie vaut un sonnet sans +defaut." + +There remains one field of M. De Banville's activity to be shortly +described. Of his "Emaux Parisiens," short studies of celebrated +writers, we need say no more than that they are written in careful +prose. M. De Banville is not only a poet, but in his "Petit Traite +de Poesie Francaise" (Bibliotheque de l'Echo de la Sorbonne, s.d.) a +teacher of the mechanical part of poetry. He does not, of course, +advance a paradox like that of Baudelaire, "that poetry can be +taught in thirty lessons." He merely instructs his pupil in the +material part--the scansion, metres, and so on--of French poetry. +In this little work he introduces these "traditional forms of +verse," which once caused some talk in England: the rondel, +rondeau, ballade, villanelle, and chant royal. It may be worth +while to quote his testimony as to the merit of these modes of +expression. "This cluster of forms is one of our most precious +treasures, for each of them forms a rhythmic whole, complete and +perfect, while at the same time they all possess the fresh and +unconscious grace which marks the productions of primitive times." +Now, there is some truth in this criticism; for it is a mark of +man's early ingenuity, in many arts, to seek complexity (where you +would expect simplicity), and yet to lend to that complexity an +infantine naturalness. One can see this phenomenon in early +decorative art, and in early law and custom, and even in the +complicated structure of primitive languages. Now, just as early, +and even savage, races are our masters in the decorative use of +colour and of carving, so the nameless master-singers of ancient +France may be our teachers in decorative poetry, the poetry some +call vers de societe. Whether it is possible to go beyond this, and +adapt the old French forms to serious modern poetry, it is not for +any one but time to decide. In this matter, as in greater affairs, +securus judicat orbis terrarum. For my own part I scarcely believe +that the revival would serve the nobler ends of English poetry. Now +let us listen again to De Banville. + +"In the rondel, as in the rondeau and the ballade, all the art is to +bring in the refrain without effort, naturally, gaily, and each time +with novel effect and with fresh light cast on the central idea." +Now, you can TEACH no one to do that, and M. De Banville never +pretends to give any recipes for cooking rondels or ballades worth +reading. "Without poetic VISION all is mere marquetery and cabinet- +maker's work: that is, so far as poetry is concerned--nothing." It +is because he was a poet, not a mere craftsman, that Villon was and +remains the king, the absolute master, of ballad-land." About the +rondeau, M. De Banville avers that it possesses "nimble movement, +speed, grace, lightness of touch, and, as it were, an ancient +fragrance of the soil, that must charm all who love our country and +our country's poetry, in its every age." As for the villanelle, M. +De Banville declares that it is the fairest jewel in the casket of +the muse Erato; while the chant royal is a kind of fossil poem, a +relic of an age when kings and allegories flourished. "The kings +and the gods are dead," like Pan; or at least we no longer find them +able, by touch royal or divine, to reanimate the magnificent chant +royal. + +This is M. De Banville's apology in pro lyra sua, that light lyre of +many tones, in whose jingle the eternal note of modern sadness is +heard so rarely. If he has a lesson to teach English versifiers, +surely it is a lesson of gaiety. They are only too fond of rue and +rosemary, and now and then prefer the cypress to the bay. M. De +Banville's muse is content to wear roses in her locks, and perhaps +may retain, for many years, a laurel leaf from the ancient laurel +tree which once sheltered the poet at Turbia. + + + +HOMER AND THE STUDY OF GREEK + + + +The Greek language is being ousted from education, here, in France, +and in America. The speech of the earliest democracies is not +democratic enough for modern anarchy. There is nothing to be +gained, it is said, by a knowledge of Greek. We have not to fight +the battle of life with Hellenic waiters; and, even if we had, +Romaic, or modern Greek, is much more easily learned than the old +classical tongue. The reason of this comparative ease will be plain +to any one who, retaining a vague memory of his Greek grammar, takes +up a modern Greek newspaper. He will find that the idioms of the +modern newspaper are the idioms of all newspapers, that the grammar +is the grammar of modern languages, that the opinions are expressed +in barbarous translations of barbarous French and English +journalistic cliches or commonplaces. This ugly and undignified +mixture of the ancient Greek characters, and of ancient Greek words +with modern grammar and idioms, and stereotyped phrases, is +extremely distasteful to the scholar. Modern Greek, as it is at +present printed, is not the natural spoken language of the peasants. +You can read a Greek leading article, though you can hardly make +sense of a Greek rural ballad. The peasant speech is a thing of +slow development; there is a basis of ancient Greek in it, with +large elements of Slavonic, Turkish, Italian, and other imposed or +imported languages. Modern literary Greek is a hybrid of revived +classical words, blended with the idioms of the speeches which have +arisen since the fall of the Roman Empire. Thus, thanks to the +modern and familiar element in it, modern Greek "as she is writ" is +much more easily learned than ancient Greek. Consequently, if any +one has need for the speech in business or travel, he can acquire as +much of it as most of us have of French, with considerable ease. +People therefore argue that ancient Greek is particularly +superfluous in schools. Why waste time on it, they ask, which could +be expended on science, on modern languages, or any other branch of +education? There is a great deal of justice in this position. The +generation of men who are now middle-aged bestowed much time and +labour on Greek; and in what, it may be asked, are they better for +it? Very few of them "keep up their Greek." Say, for example, that +one was in a form with fifty boys who began the study--it is odds +against five of the survivors still reading Greek books. The +worldly advantages of the study are slight: it may lead three of +the fifty to a good degree, and one to a fellowship; but good +degrees may be taken in other subjects, and fellowships may be +abolished, or "nationalised," with all other forms of property. + +Then, why maintain Greek in schools? Only a very minute percentage +of the boys who are tormented with it really learn it. Only a still +smaller percentage can read it after they are thirty. Only one or +two gain any material advantage by it. In very truth, most minds +are not framed by nature to excel and to delight in literature, and +only to such minds and to schoolmasters is Greek valuable. + +This is the case against Greek put as powerfully as one can state +it. On the other side, we may say, though the remark may seem +absurd at first sight, that to have mastered Greek, even if you +forget it, is not to have wasted time. It really is an educational +and mental discipline. The study is so severe that it needs the +earnest application of the mind. The study is averse to indolent +intellectual ways; it will not put up with a "there or thereabouts," +any more than mathematical ideas admit of being made to seem +"extremely plausible." He who writes, and who may venture to offer +himself as an example, is naturally of a most slovenly and +slatternly mental habit. It is his constant temptation to "scamp" +every kind of work, and to say "it will do well enough." He hates +taking trouble and verifying references. And he can honestly +confess that nothing in his experience has so helped, in a certain +degree, to counteract those tendencies--as the labour of thoroughly +learning certain Greek texts--the dramatists, Thucydides, some of +the books of Aristotle. Experience has satisfied him that Greek is +of real educational value, and, apart from the acknowledged and +unsurpassed merit of its literature, is a severe and logical +training of the mind. The mental constitution is strengthened and +braced by the labour, even if the language is forgotten in later +life. + +It is manifest, however, that this part of education is not for +everybody. The real educational problem is to discover what boys +Greek will be good for, and what boys will only waste time and +dawdle over it. Certainly to men of a literary turn (a very minute +percentage), Greek is of an inestimable value. Great poets, even, +may be ignorant of it, as Shakespeare probably was, as Keats and +Scott certainly were, as Alexandre Dumas was. But Dumas regretted +his ignorance; Scott regretted it. We know not how much Scott's +admitted laxity of style and hurried careless habit might have been +modified by a knowledge of Greek; how much of grace, permanence, and +generally of art, his genius might have gained from the language and +literature of Hellas. The most Homeric of modern men could not read +Homer. As for Keats, he was born a Greek, it has been said; but had +he been born with a knowledge of Greek, he never, probably, would +have been guilty of his chief literary faults. This is not certain, +for some modern men of letters deeply read in Greek have all the +qualities of fustian and effusiveness which Longinus most despised. +Greek will not make a luxuriously Asiatic mind Hellenic, it is +certain; but it may, at least, help to restrain effusive and +rhetorical gabble. Our Asiatic rhetoricians might perhaps be even +more barbarous than they are if Greek were a sealed book to them. +However this may be, it is, at least, well to find out in a school +what boys are worth instructing in the Greek language. Now, of +their worthiness, of their chances of success in the study, Homer +seems the best touchstone; and he is certainly the most attractive +guide to the study. + +At present boys are introduced to the language of the Muses by +pedantically written grammars, full of the queerest and most arid +metaphysical and philological verbiage. The very English in which +these deplorable books are composed may be scientific, may be +comprehensible by and useful to philologists, but is utterly heart- +breaking to boys. + +Philology might be made fascinating; the history of a word, and of +the processes by which its different forms, in different senses, +were developed, might be made as interesting as any other story of +events. But grammar is not taught thus: boys are introduced to a +jargon about matters meaningless, and they are naturally as much +enchanted as if they were listening to a chimaera bombinans in +vacuo. The grammar, to them, is a mere buzz in a chaos of nonsense. +They have to learn the buzz by rote; and a pleasant process that is- +-a seductive initiation into the mysteries. When they struggle so +far as to be allowed to try to read a piece of Greek prose, they are +only like the Marchioness in her experience of beer: she once had a +sip of it. Ten lines of Xenophon, narrating how he marched so many +parasangs and took breakfast, do not amount to more than a very +unrefreshing sip of Greek. Nobody even tells the boys who Xenophon +was, what he did there, and what it was all about. Nobody gives a +brief and interesting sketch of the great march, of its history and +objects. The boys straggle along with Xenophon, knowing not whence +or whither: + + +"They stray through a desolate region, +And often are faint on the march." + + +One by one they fall out of the ranks; they mutiny against Xenophon; +they murmur against that commander; they desert his flag. They +determine that anything is better than Greek, that nothing can be +worse than Greek, and they move the tender hearts of their parents. +They are put to learn German; which they do not learn, unluckily, +but which they find it comparatively easy to shirk. In brief, they +leave school without having learned anything whatever. + +Up to a certain age my experiences at school were precisely those +which I have described. Our grammar was not so philological, +abstruse and arid as the instruments of torture employed at present. +But I hated Greek with a deadly and sickening hatred; I hated it +like a bully and a thief of time. The verbs in [Greek text] +completed my intellectual discomfiture, and Xenophon routed me with +horrible carnage. I could have run away to sea, but for a strong +impression that a life on the ocean wave "did not set my genius," as +Alan Breck says. Then we began to read Homer; and from the very +first words, in which the Muse is asked to sing the wrath of +Achilles, Peleus' son, my mind was altered, and I was the devoted +friend of Greek. Here was something worth reading about; here one +knew where one was; here was the music of words, here were poetry, +pleasure, and life. We fortunately had a teacher (Dr. Hodson) who +was not wildly enthusiastic about grammar. He would set us long +pieces of the Iliad or Odyssey to learn, and, when the day's task +was done, would make us read on, adventuring ourselves in "the +unseen," and construing as gallantly as we might, without grammar or +dictionary. On the following day we surveyed more carefully the +ground we had pioneered or skirmished over, and then advanced again. +Thus, to change the metaphor, we took Homer in large draughts, not +in sips: in sips no epic can be enjoyed. We now revelled in Homer +like Keats in Spenser, like young horses let loose in a pasture. +The result was not the making of many accurate scholars, though a +few were made; others got nothing better than enjoyment in their +work, and the firm belief, opposed to that of most schoolboys, that +the ancients did not write nonsense. To love Homer, as Steele said +about loving a fair lady of quality, "is a liberal education." + +Judging from this example, I venture very humbly to think that any +one who, even at the age of Cato, wants to learn Greek, should begin +where Greek literature, where all profane literature begins--with +Homer himself. It was thus, not with grammars in vacuo, that the +great scholars of the Renaissance began. It was thus that Ascham +and Rabelais began, by jumping into Greek and splashing about till +they learned to swim. First, of course, a person must learn the +Greek characters. Then his or her tutor may make him read a dozen +lines of Homer, marking the cadence, the surge and thunder of the +hexameters--a music which, like that of the Sirens, few can hear +without being lured to the seas and isles of song. Then the tutor +might translate a passage of moving interest, like Priam's appeal to +Achilles; first, of course, explaining the situation. Then the +teacher might go over some lines, minutely pointing out how the +Greek words are etymologically connected with many words in English. +Next, he might take a substantive and a verb, showing roughly how +their inflections arose and were developed, and how they retain +forms in Homer which do not occur in later Greek. There is no +reason why even this part of the lesson should be uninteresting. By +this time a pupil would know, more or less, where he was, what Greek +is, and what the Homeric poems are like. He might thus believe from +the first that there are good reasons for knowing Greek; that it is +the key to many worlds of life, of action, of beauty, of +contemplation, of knowledge. Then, after a few more exercises in +Homer, the grammar being judiciously worked in along with the +literature of the epic, a teacher might discern whether it was worth +while for his pupils to continue in the study of Greek. Homer would +be their guide into the "realms of gold." + +It is clear enough that Homer is the best guide. His is the oldest +extant Greek, his matter is the most various and delightful, and +most appeals to the young, who are wearied by scraps of Xenophon, +and who cannot be expected to understand the Tragedians. But Homer +is a poet for all ages, all races, and all moods. To the Greeks the +epics were not only the best of romances, the richest of poetry; not +only their oldest documents about their own history,--they were also +their Bible, their treasury of religious traditions and moral +teaching. With the Bible and Shakespeare, the Homeric poems are the +best training for life. There is no good quality that they lack: +manliness, courage, reverence for old age and for the hospitable +hearth; justice, piety, pity, a brave attitude towards life and +death, are all conspicuous in Homer. He has to write of battles; +and he delights in the joy of battle, and in all the movement of +war. Yet he delights not less, but more, in peace: in prosperous +cities, hearths secure, in the tender beauty of children, in the +love of wedded wives, in the frank nobility of maidens, in the +beauty of earth and sky and sea, and seaward murmuring river, in sun +and snow, frost and mist and rain, in the whispered talk of boy and +girl beneath oak and pine tree. + +Living in an age where every man was a warrior, where every city +might know the worst of sack and fire, where the noblest ladies +might be led away for slaves, to light the fire and make the bed of +a foreign master, Homer inevitably regards life as a battle. To +each man on earth comes "the wicked day of destiny," as Malory +unconsciously translates it, and each man must face it as hardily as +he may. + +Homer encourages them by all the maxims of chivalry and honour. His +heart is with the brave of either side--with Glaucus and Sarpedon of +Lycia no less than with Achilles and Patroclus. "Ah, friend," cries +Sarpedon, "if once escaped from this battle we were for ever to be +ageless and immortal, neither would I myself fight now in the +foremost ranks, nor would I urge thee into the wars that give +renown; but now--for assuredly ten thousand fates of death on every +side beset us, and these may no man shun, nor none avoid--forward +now let us go, whether we are to give glory or to win it!" And +forth they go, to give and take renown and death, all the shields +and helms of Lycia shining behind them, through the dust of battle, +the singing of the arrows, the hurtling of spears, the rain of +stones from the Locrian slings. And shields are smitten, and +chariot-horses run wild with no man to drive them, and Sarpedon +drags down a portion of the Achaean battlement, and Aias leaps into +the trench with his deadly spear, and the whole battle shifts and +shines beneath the sun. Yet he who sings of the war, and sees it +with his sightless eyes, sees also the Trojan women working at the +loom, cheating their anxious hearts with broidery work of gold and +scarlet, or raising the song to Athene, or heating the bath for +Hector, who never again may pass within the gates of Troy. He sees +the poor weaving woman, weighing the wool, that she may not defraud +her employers, and yet may win bread for her children. He sees the +children, the golden head of Astyanax, his shrinking from the +splendour of the hero's helm. He sees the child Odysseus, going +with his father through the orchard, and choosing out some apple +trees "for his very own." It is in the mouth of the ruthless +Achilles, the fatal, the fated, the swift-footed hero with the hands +of death, that Homer places the tenderest of his similes. +"Wherefore weepest thou, Patroclus, like a fond little maid, that +runs by her mother's side, praying her mother to take her up, +snatching at her gown, and hindering her as she walks, and tearfully +looking at her till her mother takes her up?--like her, Patroclus, +dost thou softly weep." + +This is what Chesterfield calls "the porter-like language of Homer's +heroes." Such are the moods of Homer, so full of love of life and +all things living, so rich in all human sympathies, so readily moved +when the great hound Argus welcomes his master, whom none knew after +twenty years, but the hound knew him, and died in that welcome. +With all this love of the real, which makes him dwell so fondly on +every detail of armour, of implement, of art; on the divers-coloured +gold-work of the shield, on the making of tires for chariot-wheels, +on the forging of iron, on the rose-tinted ivory of the Sidonians, +on cooking and eating and sacrificing, on pet dogs, on wasps and +their ways, on fishing, on the boar hunt, on scenes in baths where +fair maidens lave water over the heroes, on undiscovered isles with +good harbours and rich land, on ploughing, mowing, and sowing, on +the furniture of houses, on the golden vases wherein the white dust +of the dead is laid,--with all this delight in the real, Homer is +the most romantic of poets. He walks with the surest foot in the +darkling realm of dread Persephone, beneath the poplars on the +solemn last beach of Ocean. He has heard the Siren's music, and the +song of Circe, chanting as she walks to and fro, casting the golden +shuttle through the loom of gold. He enters the cave of the Man +Eater; he knows the unsunned land of the Cimmerians; in the summer +of the North he has looked, from the fiord of the Laestrygons, on +the Midnight Sun. He has dwelt on the floating isle of AEolus, with +its wall of bronze unbroken, and has sailed on those Phaeacian barks +that need no help of helm or oar, that fear no stress either of wind +or tide, that come and go and return obedient to a thought and +silent as a dream. He has seen the four maidens of Circe, daughters +of wells and woods, and of sacred streams. He is the second-sighted +man, and beholds the shroud that wraps the living who are doomed, +and the mystic dripping from the walls of blood yet unshed. He has +walked in the garden closes of Phaeacia, and looked on the face of +gods who fare thither, and watch the weaving of the dance. He has +eaten the honey-sweet fruit of the lotus, and from the hand of Helen +he brings us that Egyptian nepenthe which puts all sorrow out of +mind. His real world is as real as that in Henry V., his enchanted +isles are charmed with the magic of the Tempest. His young wooers +are as insolent as Claudio, as flushed with youth; his beggar-men +are brethren of Edie Ochiltree; his Nausicaa is sister to Rosalind, +with a different charm of stately purity in love. His enchantresses +hold us yet with their sorceries; his Helen is very Beauty: she has +all the sweetness of ideal womanhood, and her repentance is without +remorse. His Achilles is youth itself, glorious, cruel, pitiful, +splendid, and sad, ardent and loving, and conscious of its doom. +Homer, in truth, is to be matched only with Shakespeare, and of +Shakespeare he has not the occasional wilfulness, freakishness, and +modish obscurity. He is a poet all of gold, universal as humanity, +simple as childhood, musical now as the flow of his own rivers, now +as the heavy plunging wave of his own Ocean. + +Such, then, as far as weak words can speak of him, is the first and +greatest of poets. This is he whom English boys are to be ignorant +of, if Greek be ousted from our schools, or are to know only in the +distorting mirror of a versified, or in the pale shadow of a prose +translation. Translations are good only as teachers to bring men to +Homer. English verse has no measure which even remotely suggests +the various flow of the hexameter. Translators who employ verse +give us a feeble Homer, dashed with their own conceits, and moulded +to their own style. Translators who employ prose "tell the story +without the song," but, at least, they add no twopenny "beauties" +and cheap conceits of their own. + +I venture to offer a few examples of original translation, in which +the mannerisms of poets who have, or have not, translated Homer, are +parodied, and, of course (except in the case of Pope), exaggerated. +The passage is the speech of the Second-sighted Man, before the +slaying of the wooers in the hall:- + + +"Ah! wretched men, what ill is this ye suffer? In night are swathed +your heads, your faces, your knees; and the voice of wailing is +kindled, and cheeks are wet with tears, and with blood drip the +walls, and the fair main beams of the roof, and the porch is full of +shadows, and full is the courtyard, of ghosts that hasten hellward +below the darkness, and the sun has perished out of heaven, and an +evil mist sweeps up over all." + + +So much for Homer. The first attempt at metric translation here +given is meant to be in the manner of Pope: + + +"Caitiffs!" he cried, "what heaven-directed blight +Involves each countenance with clouds of night! +What pearly drop the ashen cheek bedews! +Why do the walls with gouts ensanguined ooze? +The court is thronged with ghosts that 'neath the gloom +Seek Pluto's realm, and Dis's awful doom; +In ebon curtains Phoebus hides his head, +And sable mist creeps upward from the dead." + + +This appears pretty bad, and nearly as un-Homeric as a translation +could possibly be. But Pope, aided by Broome and Fenton, managed to +be much less Homeric, much more absurd, and infinitely more +"classical" in the sense in which Pope is classical: + + +"O race to death devote! with Stygian shade +Each destined peer impending fates invade; +With tears your wan distorted cheeks are drowned; +With sanguine drops the walls are rubied round: +Thick swarms the spacious hall with howling ghosts, +To people Orcus and the burning coasts! +Nor gives the sun his golden orb to roll, +But universal night usurps the pole." + + +Who could have conjectured that even Pope would wander away so far +from his matchless original? "Wretches!" cries Theoclymenus, the +seer; and that becomes, "O race to death devote!" "Your heads are +swathed in night," turns into "With Stygian shade each destined +peer" (peer is good!) "impending fates invade," where Homer says +nothing about Styx nor peers. The Latin Orcus takes the place of +Erebus, and "the burning coasts" are derived from modern popular +theology. The very grammar detains or defies the reader; is it the +sun that does not give his golden orb to roll, or who, or what? + +The only place where the latter-day Broome or Fenton can flatter +himself that he rivals Pope at his own game is - + + +"What pearly drop the ashen cheek bedews!" + + +This is, if possible, MORE classical than Pope's own - + + +"With tears your wan distorted cheeks are drowned." + + +But Pope nobly revindicates his unparalleled power of translating +funnily, when, in place of "the walls drip with blood," he writes - + + +"With sanguine drops the walls are rubied round." + + +Homer does not appear to have been acquainted with rubies; but what +of that? And how noble, how eminently worthy of Pope it is to add +that the ghosts "howl"! I tried to make them gibber, but ghosts DO +gibber in Homer (though not in this passage), so Pope, Fenton, +Broome, and Co., make them howl. + +No, Pope is not lightly to be rivalled by a modern translator. The +following example, a far-off following of a noted contemporary poet, +may be left unsigned - + + +"Wretches, the bane hath befallen, the night and the blight of your +sin +Sweeps like a shroud o'er the faces and limbs that were gladsome +therein; +And the dirge of the dead breaketh forth, and the faces of all men +are wet, +And the walls are besprinkled with blood, and the ghosts in the +gateway are met, +Ghosts in the court and the gateway are gathered, Hell opens her +lips, +And the sun in his splendour is shrouded, and sickens in spasm of +eclipse." + + +The next is longer and slower: the poet has a difficulty in telling +his story: + + +"Wretches," he cried, "what doom is this? what night +Clings like a face-cloth to the face of each, - +Sweeps like a shroud o'er knees and head? for lo! +The windy wail of death is up, and tears +On every cheek are wet; each shining wall +And beauteous interspace of beam and beam +Weeps tears of blood, and shadows in the door +Flicker, and fill the portals and the court - +Shadows of men that hellwards yearn--and now +The sun himself hath perished out of heaven, +And all the land is darkened with a mist." + + +That could never be mistaken for a version by the Laureate, as +perhaps any contemporary hack's works might have been taken for +Pope's. The difficulty, perhaps, lies here: any one knows where to +have Pope, any one knows that he will evade the mot propre, though +the precise evasion he may select is hard to guess. But the +Laureate would keep close to his text, and yet would write like +himself, very beautifully, but not with an Homeric swiftness and +strength. Who is to imitate him? As to Mr. William Morris, he +might be fabled to render [Greek text] "niddering wights," but +beyond that, conjecture is baffled. {2} Or is THIS the kind of +thing? - + + +"Niddering wights, what a bane do ye bear, for your knees in the +night, +And your heads and your faces, are shrouded, and clamour that knows +not delight +Rings, and your cheeks are begrutten, and blood is besprent on the +walls, +Blood on the tapestry fair woven, and barrow-wights walk in the +halls. +Fetches and wraiths of the chosen of the Norns, and the sun from the +lift +Shudders, and over the midgarth and swan's bath the cloud-shadows +drift." + + +It may be argued that, though this is perhaps a translation, it is +not English, never was, and never will be. But it is quite as like +Homer as the performance of Pope. + +Such as these, or not so very much better than these as might be +wished, are our efforts to translate Homer. From Chapman to Avia, +or Mr. William Morris, they are all eminently conscientious, and +erroneous, and futile. Chapman makes Homer a fanciful, euphuistic, +obscure, and garrulous Elizabethan, but Chapman has fire. Pope +makes him a wit, spirited, occasionally noble, full of points, and +epigrams, and queer rococo conventionalisms. Cowper makes him slow, +lumbering, a Milton without the music. Maginn makes him pipe an +Irish jig:- + + +"Scarcely had she begun to wash +When she was aware of the grisly gash!" + + +Lord Derby makes him respectable and ponderous. Lord Tennyson makes +him not less, but certainly not more, than Tennysonian. Homer, in +the Laureate's few fragments of experiment, is still a poet, but he +is not Homer. Mr. Morris, and Avia, make him Icelandic, and +archaistic, and hard to scan, though vigorous in his fetters for all +that. Bohn makes him a crib; and of other translators in prose it +has been said, with a humour which one of them appreciates, that +they render Homer into a likeness of the Book of Mormon. + +Homer is untranslatable. None of us can bend the bow of Eurytus, +and make the bow-string "ring sweetly at the touch, like the +swallow's song." The adventure is never to be achieved; and, if +Greek is to be dismissed from education, not the least of the +sorrows that will ensue is English ignorance of Homer. + + + +THE LAST FASHIONABLE NOVEL + + + +The editor of a great American newspaper once offered the author of +these lines a commission to explore a lost country, the seat of a +fallen and forgotten civilisation. It was not in Yucatan, or +Central Africa, or Thibet, or Kafiristan, this desolate region, once +so popular, so gaudy, so much frequented and desired. It was only +the fashionable novels of the Forties, say from 1835 to 1850, that I +was requested to examine and report upon. But I shrank from the +colossal task. I am no Mr. Stanley; and the length, the +difficulties, the arduousness of the labour appalled me. Besides, I +do not know where that land lies, the land of the old Fashionable +Novel, the Kor of which Thackeray's Lady Fanny Flummery is the +Ayesha. What were the names of the old novels, and who were the +authors, and in the circulating library of what undiscoverable +watering-place are they to be found? We have heard of Mrs. Gore, we +have heard of Tremayne, and Emilia Wyndham, and the Bachelor of the +Albany; and many of us have read Pelham, or know him out of +Carlyle's art, and those great curses which he spoke. But who was +the original, or who were the originals, that sat for the portrait +of the "Fashionable Authoress," Lady Fanny Flummery? and of what +work is Lords and Liveries a parody? The author is also credited +with Dukes and Dejeuners, Marchionesses and Milliners, etc. Could, +any candidate in a literary examination name the prototypes? "Let +mantua-makers puff her, but not men," says Thackeray, speaking of +Lady Fanny Flummery, "and the Fashionable Authoress is no more. +Blessed, blessed thought! No more fiddle-faddle novels! When will +you arrive, O happy Golden Age!" + +Well, it has arrived, though we are none the happier for all that. +The Fashionable Novel has ceased to exist, and the place of the +fashionable authoress knows her no more. Thackeray plainly detested +Lady Fanny. He writes about her, her books, her critics, her +successes, with a certain bitterness. Can it be possible that a +world which rather neglected Barry Lyndon was devoted to +Marchionesses and Milliners? Lady Fanny is represented as having +editors and reviewers at her feet; she sits among the flowers, like +the Sirens, and around her are the bones of critics corrupt in +death. She is puffed for the sake of her bouquets, her dinners, her +affabilities and condescensions. She gives a reviewer a great +garnet pin, adorned wherewith he paces the town. Her adorers +compare her to "him who sleeps by Avon." In one of Mr. Black's +novels there is a lady of this kind, who captivates the tribe of +"Log Rollers," as Mr. Black calls them. This lady appears to myself +to be a quite impossible She. One has never met her with her wiles, +nor come across her track, even, and seen the bodies and the bones +of those who perished in puffing her. Some persons of rank and +fashion have a taste for the society of some men of letters, but +nothing in the way of literary puffery seems to come of it. Of +course many critics like to give their friends and acquaintances an +applausive hand, and among their acquaintances may be ladies of +fashion who write novels; but we read nowhere such extraordinary +adulations as Augustus Timson bestowed on Lady Fanny. The +fashionable authoress is nearly extinct, though some persons write +well albeit they are fashionable. The fashionable novel is as dead +as a door nail: Lothair was nearly the last of the species. There +are novelists who write about "Society," to be sure, like Mr. +Norris; but their tone is quite different. They do not speak as if +Dukes and Earls were some strange superior kind of beings; their +manner is that of men accustomed to and undazzled by Earls, writing +for readers who do not care whether the hero is a lord or a +commoner. They are "at ease," though not terribly "in Zion." +Thackeray himself introduces plenty of the peerage, but it cannot be +said that he is always at ease in their society. He remembers that +they are lords, and is on his guard, very often, and suspicious and +sarcastic, except, perhaps when he deals with a gentleman like Lord +Kew. He examines them like curious wild animals in the Jardin des +Plantes. He is an accomplished naturalist, and not afraid of the +lion; but he remembers that the animal is royal, and has a title. +Mr. Norris, for instance, shows nothing of this mood. Mr. Trollope +was not afraid of his Dukes: he thought none the worse of a man +because he was the high and puissant prince of Omnium. As for most +novelists, they no longer paint fashionable society with enthusiasm. +Mr. Henry James has remarked that young British peers favour the +word "beastly,"--a point which does not always impress itself into +other people so keenly as into Mr. Henry James. In reading him you +do not forget that his Tufts are Tufts. But then Tufts are really +strange animals to the denizens of the Great Republic. Perhaps the +modern realism has made novelists desert the world where Dukes and +Dowagers abound. Novelists do not know very much about it; they are +not wont to haunt the gilded saloons, and they prefer to write about +the manners which they know. A very good novel, in these strange +ruinous times, might be written with a Duke for hero; but nobody +writes it, and, if anybody did write it in the modern manner, it +would not in the least resemble the old fashionable novel. + +Here a curious point arises. We have all studied the ingenious lady +who calls herself Ouida. Now, is Ouida, or rather was Ouida in her +early state sublime, the last of the old fashionable novelists, or +did Thackeray unconsciously prophesy of her when he wrote his +burlesque Lords and Liveries? Think of the young earl of Bagnigge, +"who was never heard to admire anything except a coulis de +dindonneau e la St. Menehould, . . . or the bouquet of a flask of +Medoc, of Carbonnell's best quality, or a goutte of Marasquin, from +the cellars of Briggs and Hobson." We have met such young +patricians in Under Two Flags and Idalia. But then there is a +difference: Ouida never tells us that her hero was "blest with a +mother of excellent principles, who had imbued his young mind with +that morality which is so superior to all the vain pomps of the +world." But a hero of Ouida's might easily have had a father who +"was struck down by the side of the gallant Collingwood in the Bay +of Fundy." The heroes themselves may have "looked at the Pyramids +without awe, at the Alps without reverence." They do say "Corpo di +Bacco," and the Duca de Montepulciano does reply, "E' bellissima +certamente." And their creator might conceivably remark "Non cuivis +contigit." But Lady Fanny Flummery's ladies could not dress as +Ouida's ladies do: they could not quote Petronius Arbiter; they had +never heard of Suetonius. No age reproduces itself. There is much +of our old fashionable authoress in Ouida's earlier tales; there is +plenty of the Peerage, plenty of queer French in old novels and +Latin yet more queer; but where is the elan which takes archaeology +with a rush, which sticks at no adventure, however nobly incredible? +where is the pathos, the simplicity, the purple splendour of Ouida's +manner, or manners? No, the spirit of the world, mirroring itself +in the minds of individuals, simpered, and that simper was Lady +Fanny Flummery. But it did many things more portentous than +simpering, when it reflected itself in Ouida. + +Is it that we do no longer gape on the aristocracy admiringly, and +write of them curiously, as if they were creatures in a Paradise? +Is it that Thackeray has converted us? In part, surely, we are just +as snobbish as ever, though the gods of our adoration totter to +their fall, and "a hideous hum" from the mob outside thrills through +the temples. In fiction, on the other hand, the world of fashion is +"played out." Nobody cares to read or write about the dear duchess. +If a peer comes into a novel he comes in, not as a coroneted +curiosity, but as a man, just as if he were a dentist, or a +stockbroker. His rank is an accident; it used to be the essence of +his luminous apparition. I scarce remember a lord in all the many +works of Mr. Besant, nor do they people the romances of Mr. Black. +Mr. Kipling does not deal in them, nor Mr. George Meredith much; Mr. +Haggard hardly gets beyond a baronet, and HE wears chain mail in +Central Africa, and tools with an axe. Mrs. Oliphant has a Scotch +peer, but he is less interesting and prominent than his family +ghost. No, we have only Ouida left, and Mr. Norris--who writes +about people of fashion, indeed, but who has nothing in him of the +old fashionable novelist. + +Is it to a Republic, to France, that we must look for our +fashionable novels--to France and to America. Every third person in +M. Guy de Maupassant's tales has a "de," and is a Marquis or a +Vicomte. As for M. Paul Bourget, one really can be happy with him +in the fearless old fashion. With him we meet Lord Henry Bohun, and +M. De Casal (a Vicomte), and all the Marquises and Marquises; and +all the pale blue boudoirs, and sentimental Duchesses, whose hearts +are only too good, and who get into the most complicated amorous +scrapes. That young Republican, M. Bourget, sincerely loves a +blason, a pedigree, diamonds, lace, silver dressing cases, silver +baths, essences, pomatums, le grand luxe. So does Gyp: apart from +her wit, Gyp is delightful to read, introducing us to the very best +of bad company. Even M. Fortune du Boisgobey likes a Vicomte, and +is partial to the noblesse, while M. Georges Ohnet is accused of +entering the golden world of rank, like a man without a wedding +garment, and of being lost and at sea among his aristocrats. They +order these things better in France: they still appeal to the fine +old natural taste for rank and luxury, splendour and refinement. +What is Gyp but a Lady Fanny Flummery reussie,--Lady Fanny with the +trifling additional qualities of wit and daring? Observe her noble +scorn of M. George Ohnet: it is a fashionable arrogance. + +To my mind, I confess, the decay of the British fashionable novel +seems one of the most threatening signs of the times. Even in +France institutions are much more permanent than here. In France +they have fashionable novels, and very good novels too: no man of +sense will deny that they are far better than our dilettantism of +the slums, or our religious and social tracts in the disguise of +romance. If there is no new tale of treasure and bandits and fights +and lions handy, may I have a fashionable novel in French to fall +back upon! Even Count Tolstoi does not disdain the genre. There is +some uncommonly high life in Anna Karenine. He adds a great deal of +psychology, to be sure; so does M. Paul Bourget. But he takes you +among smart people, who have everything handsome about them--titles, +and lands, and rents. Is it not a hard thing that an honest British +snob, if he wants to move in the highest circles of fiction, must +turn to French novelists, or Russian, or American? As to the +American novels of the elite and the beau monde, their elegance is +obscured to English eyes, because that which makes one New Yorker +better than another, that which creates the Upper Ten Thousand (dear +phrase!) of New York, is so inconspicuous. For example, the +scientific inquirer may venture himself among the novels of two +young American authors. Few English students make this voyage of +exploration. But the romances of these ingenious writers are +really, or really try to be, a kind of fashionable novels. It is a +queer domain of fashion, to be sure, peopled by the strangest +aborigines, who talk and are talked about in a language most +interesting to the philologist. Here poor Lady Fanny Flummery would +have been sadly to seek, for her characters, though noble, were +moral, and her pen was wielded on the side of Church and State. But +these western fashionables have morals and a lingo of their own, +made in equal parts of the American idioms and of expressions +transferred from the jargon of Decadence and the Parnassiculet +Contemporain. As one peruses these novels one thinks of a new tale +to be told--The Last of the Fashionables, who died away, like the +buffalo and the grisly bear, in some canon or forest of the Wild +West. I think this distinguished being, Ultimus hominum +venustiorum, will find the last remnants of the Gentlemanly Party in +some Indian tribe, Apaches or Sioux. I see him raised to the rank +of chief, and leading the red-skinned and painted cavaliers on the +war-path against the Vulgarians of the ultimate Democracy. To +depict this dandy chief would require the art at once of a Cooper +and a Ouida. Let me attempt - + + +THE LAST FIGHT OF FOUR HAIR-BRUSHES + + +By this time the Sioux were flying in all directions, mowed down by +the fire of Gatling and Maxim guns. The scrub of Little Big Horn +Creek was strewn with the bodies of writhing braves. On the livid +and volcanic heights of Mount Buncombe, the painted tents were +blazing merrily. But on a mound above the creek, an ancient +fortress of some long-forgotten people, a small group of Indian +horsemen, might be observed, steady as rocks in the refluent tide of +war. The fire from their Winchester repeaters blazed out like the +streamers of the Northern Lights. Again and again the flower of the +United States army had charged up the mound, only to recoil in +flight, or to line the cliff with their corpses. The First Irish +Cuirassiers had been annihilated: Parnell's own, alas! in the heat +of the combat had turned their fratricidal black-thorns on +M'Carthy's brigade, and these two gallant squadrons were mixed and +broken, falling beneath the blows of brothers estranged. + +But at last the fire from the Redmen on the bluff slackened and grew +silent. The ammunition was exhausted. There was a movement in the +group of braves. Crazy Horse and Bald Coyote turned to Four Hair- +Brushes, who sat his steed Atalanta, last winner of the last Grand +National, with all the old careless elegance of the Row. + +"Four Hair-Brushes," said Crazy Horse (and a tear rolled down his +painted cheek), "nought is left but flight." + +"Then fly," said Four Hair-Brushes, languidly, lighting a cigarette, +which he took from a diamond-studded gold etui, the gift of the +Kaiser in old days. + +"Nay, not without the White Chief," said Bald Coyote; and he seized +the reins of Four Hair-Brushes, to lead him from that stricken +field. + +"Vous etes trop vieux jeu, mon ami," murmured Four Hair-Brushes, "je +ne suis ni Edouard II., ni Charles Edouard e Culloden. Quatre- +brosses meurt, mais il ne se rend pas." + +The Indian released his hold, baffled by the erudition and the calm +courage of his captain. + +"I make tracks," he said; and, swinging round so that his horse +concealed his body, he galloped down the bluff, and through the +American cavalry, scattering death from the arrows which he loosed +under his horse's neck. + +Four Hair-Brushes was alone. + +Unarmed, as ever, he sat, save for the hunting-whip in his right +hand. + +"Scalp him!" yelled the Friendly Crows. + +"Nay, take him alive: a seemlier knight never backed steed!" cried +the gallant Americans. + +From their midst rode a courteous cavalier, Captain John Barry, the +scholar, the hero of sword and pen. + +"Yield thee, Sir Knight!" he said, doffing his kepi in martial +courtesy. + +Four Hair-Brushes replied to his salute, and was opening his curved +and delicate lips to speak, when a chance bullet struck him full in +the breast. He threw up his arms, reeled, and fell. The gallant +American, leaping from saddle to ground, rushed to raise his head. + +Through the war-paint he recognised him. + +"Great Heaven!" he cried, "it is--" + +"Hush!" whispered Four Hair-Brushes, with a weary smile: "let +Annesley de Vere of the Blues die unnamed. Tell them that I fell in +harness." + +He did, indeed. Under his feathered and painted cloak Barry found +that Annesley, ever careful of his figure, ever loyal in love, the +last of the Dandies, yet wore the corset of Madame de Telliere. It +was wet with his life-blood. + +"So dies," said Barry, "the last English gentleman." + + + +THACKERAY + + + +"I thought how some people's towering intellects and splendid +cultivated geniuses rise upon simple, beautiful foundations hidden +out of sight." Thus, in his Letters to Mrs. Brookfield, Mr. +Thackeray wrote, after visiting the crypt of Canterbury Cathedral, +with its "charming, harmonious, powerful combination of arches and +shafts, beautiful whichever way you see them developed, like a fine +music." The simile applies to his own character and genius, to his +own and perhaps to that of most great authors, whose works are our +pleasure and comfort in this troublesome world. There are critics +who profess a desire to hear nothing, or as little as may be, of the +lives of great artists, whether their instrument of art was the pen, +or the brush, or the chisel, or the strings and reeds of music. +With those critics perhaps most of us agree, when we read books that +gossip about Shelley, or Coleridge, or Byron. "Give us their +poetry," we say, "and leave their characters alone: we do not want +tattle about Claire and chatter about Harriet; we want to be happy +with 'The Skylark' or 'The Cloud.'" Possibly this instinct is +correct, where such a poet as Shelley is concerned, whose life, like +his poetry, was as "the life of winds and tides," whose genius, +unlike the skylark's, was more true to the point of heaven than the +point of home. But reflection shows us that on the whole, as Mr. +Thackeray says, a man's genius must be builded on the foundations of +his character. Where that genius deals with the mingled stuff of +human life--sorrow, desire, love, hatred, kindness, meanness--then +the foundation of character is especially important. People are +sometimes glad that we know so little of Shakespeare the man; yet +who can doubt that a true revelation of his character would be not +less worthy, noble and charming than the general effect of his +poems? In him, it is certain, we should always find an example of +nobility, of generosity, of charity and kindness and self- +forgetfulness. Indeed, we find these qualities, as a rule, in the +biographies of the great sympathetic poets and men of genius of the +pen--I do not say in the lives of rebels of genius, "meteoric poets" +like Byron. The same basis, the same foundations of rectitude, of +honour, of goodness, of melancholy, and of mirth, underlie the art +of Moliere, of Scott, of Fielding, and as his correspondence shows, +of Thackeray. + +It seems probable that a complete biography of Thackeray will never +be written. It was his wish to live in his works alone: that wish +his descendants respect; and we must probably regard the Letters to +Mr. and Mrs. Brookfield as the last private and authentic record of +the man which will be given, at least to this generation. In these +Letters all sympathetic readers will find the man they have long +known from his writings--the man with a heart so tender that the +world often drove him back into a bitterness of opposition, into an +assumed hardness and defensive cynicism. There are readers so +unluckily constituted that they can see nothing in Thackeray but +this bitterness, this cruel sense of meanness and power of analysing +shabby emotions, sneaking vanities, contemptible ambitions. All of +us must often feel with regret that he allowed himself to be made +too unhappy by the spectacle of failings so common in the world he +knew best, that he dwelt on them too long and lashed them too +complacently. One hopes never to read "Lovel the Widower" again, +and one gladly skips some of the speeches of the Old Campaigner in +"The Newcomes." They are terrible, but not more terrible than life. +Yet it is hard to understand how Mr. Ruskin, for example, can let +such scenes and characters hide from his view the kindness, +gentleness, and pity of Thackeray's nature. The Letters must open +all eyes that are not wilfully closed, and should at last overcome +every prejudice. + +In the Letters we see a man literally hungering and thirsting after +affection, after love--a man cut off by a cruel stroke of fate from +his natural solace, from the centre of a home. + + +"God took from me a lady dear," + + +he says, in the most touching medley of doggerel and poetry, made +"instead of writing my Punch this morning." Losing "a lady dear," +he takes refuge as he may, he finds comfort as he can, in all the +affections within his reach, in the society of an old college friend +and of his wife, in the love of all children, beginning with his +own; in a generous liking for all good work and for all good +fellows. + +Did any man of letters except Scott ever write of his rivals as +Thackeray wrote of Dickens? Artists are a jealous race. "Potter +hates potter, and poet hates poet," as Hesiod said so long ago. +This jealousy is not mere envy, it is really a strong sense of how +things ought to be done, in any art, touched with a natural +preference for a man's own way of doing them. Now, what could be +more unlike than the "ways" of Dickens and Thackeray? The subjects +chosen by these great authors are not more diverse than their +styles. Thackeray writes like a scholar, not in the narrow sense, +but rather as a student and a master of all the refinements and +resources of language. Dickens copies the chaff of the street, or +he roams into melodramatics, "drops into poetry"--blank verse at +least--and touches all with peculiarities, we might say mannerisms, +of his own. I have often thought, and even tried to act on the +thought, that some amusing imaginary letters might be written, from +characters of Dickens about characters of Thackeray, from characters +of Thackeray about characters of Dickens. They might be supposed to +meet each other in society, and describe each other. Can you not +fancy Captain Costigan on Dick Swiveller, Blanche Amory on Agnes, +Pen on David Copperfield, and that "tiger" Steerforth? What would +the family solicitor of "The Newcomes" have to say of Mr. +Tulkinghorn? How would George Warrington appreciate Mr. Pickwick? +Yes, the two great novelists were as opposed as two men could be--in +manner, in style, in knowledge of books, and of the world. And yet +how admirably Thackeray writes about Dickens, in his letters as in +his books! How he delights in him! How manly is that emulation +which enables an author to see all the points in his rival, and not +to carp at them, but to praise, and be stimulated to keener effort! + +Consider this passage. "Have you read Dickens? O! it is charming! +Brave Dickens! It has some of his very prettiest touches--those +inimitable Dickens touches which make such a great man of him, and +the reading of the book has done another author a great deal of +good." + +Thackeray is just as generous, and perhaps more critical, in writing +of Kingsley. "A fine, honest, go-a-head fellow, who charges a +subject heartily, impetuously, with the greatest courage and +simplicity; but with narrow eyes (his are extraordinarily brave, +blue and honest), and with little knowledge of the world, I think. +But he is superior to us worldlings in many ways, and I wish I had +some of his honest pluck." + +I have often wished that great authors, when their days of creation +were over, when "their minds grow grey and bald," would condescend +to tell us the history of their books. Sir Walter Scott did +something of this kind in the prefaces to the last edition of the +Waverley Novels published during his life. What can be more +interesting than his account, in the introduction to the "Fortunes +of Nigel," of how he worked, how he planned, and found all his plots +and plans overridden by the demon at the end of his pen! But Sir +Walter was failing when he began those literary confessions; good as +they are, he came to them too late. Yet these are not confessions +which an author can make early. The pagan Aztecs only confessed +once in a lifetime--in old age, when they had fewer temptations to +fall to their old loves: then they made a clean breast of it once +for all. So it might be with an author. While he is in his +creative vigour, we want to hear about his fancied persons, about +Pendennis, Beatrix, Becky, not about himself, and how he invented +them. But when he has passed his best, then it is he who becomes of +interest; it is about himself that we wish him to speak, as far as +he modestly may. Who would not give "Lovel the Widower" and +"Philip" for some autobiographical and literary prefaces to the +older novels? They need not have been more egotistic than the +"Roundabout Papers." They would have had far more charm. Some +things cannot be confessed. We do not ask who was the original Sir +Pitt Crawley, or the original Blanche Amory. But we might learn in +what mood, in what circumstances the author wrote this passage or +that. + +The Letters contain a few notes of this kind, a few literary +confessions. We hear that Emmy Sedley was partly suggested by Mrs. +Brookfield, partly by Thackeray's mother, much by his own wife. +There scarce seems room for so many elements in Emmy's personality. +For some reason ladies love her not, nor do men adore her. I have +been her faithful knight ever since I was ten years old and read +"Vanity Fair" somewhat stealthily. Why does one like her except +because she is such a thorough woman? She is not clever, she is not +very beautiful, she is unhappy, and she can be jealous. One pities +her, and that is akin to a more tender sentiment; one pities her +while she sits in the corner, and Becky's green eyes flatter her oaf +of a husband; one pities her in the poverty of her father's house, +in the famous battle over Daffy's Elixir, in the separation from the +younger George. You begin to wish some great joy to come to her: +it does not come unalloyed; you know that Dobbin had bad quarters of +an hour with this lady, and had to disguise a little of his +tenderness for his own daughter. Yes, Emmy is more complex than she +seems, and perhaps it needed three ladies to contribute the various +elements of her person and her character. One of them, the jealous +one, lent a touch to Helen Pendennis, to Laura, to Lady Castlewood. +Probably this may be the reason why some persons dislike Thackeray +so. His very best women are not angels. {3} Are the very best women +angels? It is a pious opinion--that borders on heresy. + +When the Letters began to be written, in 1847, Thackeray had his +worst years, in a worldly sense, behind him. They were past: the +times when he wrote in Galignani for ten francs a day. Has any +literary ghoul disinterred his old ten-franc articles in Galignani? +The time of "Barry Lyndon," too, was over. He says nothing of that +masterpiece, and only a word about "The Great Hoggarty Diamond." "I +have been re-reading it. Upon my word and honour, if it doesn't +make you cry, I shall have a mean opinion of you. It was written at +a time of great affliction, when my heart was very soft and humble. +Amen. Ich habe auch viel geliebt." Of "Pendennis," as it goes on, +he writes that it is "awfully stupid," which has not been the +verdict of the ages. He picks up materials as he passes. He dines +with some officers, and perhaps he stations them at Chatteris. He +meets Miss G-, and her converse suggests a love passage between Pen +and Blanche. Why did he dislike fair women so? It runs all through +his novels. Becky is fair. Blanche is fair. Outside the old +yellow covers of "Pendennis," you see the blonde mermaid, "amusing, +and clever, and depraved," dragging the lover to the sea, and the +nut-brown maid holding him back. Angelina, of the "Rose and the +Ring," is the Becky of childhood; she is fair, and the good Rosalba +is brune. In writing "Pendennis" he had a singular experience. He +looked over his own "back numbers," and found "a passage which I had +utterly forgotten as if I had never read or written it." In +Lockhart's "Life of Scott," James Ballantyne says that "when the +'Bride of Lammermoor' was first put into his hands in a complete +shape, he did not recollect one single incident, character, or +conversation it contained." That is to say, he remembered nothing +of his own invention, though his memory of the traditional parts was +as clear as ever. Ballantyne remarks, "The history of the human +mind contains nothing more wonderful." The experience of Thackeray +is a parallel to that of Scott. "Pendennis," it must be noted, was +interrupted by a severe illness, and "The Bride of Lammermoor" was +dictated by Sir Walter when in great physical pain. On one occasion +Thackeray "lit upon a very stupid part of 'Pendennis,' I am sorry to +say; and yet how well written it is! What a shame the author don't +write a complete good story! Will he die before doing so? or come +back from America and do it?" + +Did he ever write "a complete, good story"? Did any one ever do +such a thing as write a three-volume, novel, or a novel of equal +length, which was "a complete, good story"? Probably not; or if any +mortal ever succeeded in the task, it was the great Alexander Dumas. +"The Three Musketeers," I take leave to think, and "Twenty Years +After," are complete good stories, good from beginning to end, +stories from beginning to end without a break, without needless +episode. Perhaps one may say as much for "Old Mortality," and for +"Quentin Durward." But Scott and Dumas were born story-tellers; +narrative was the essence of their genius at its best; the current +of romance rolls fleetly on, bearing with it persons and events, +mirroring scenes, but never ceasing to be the main thing--the +central interest. Perhaps narrative like this is the chief success +of the novelist. He is triumphant when he carries us on, as Wolf, +the famous critic, was carried on by the tide of the Iliad, "in that +pure and rapid current of action." Nobody would claim this especial +merit for Thackeray. He is one of the greatest of novelists; he +displays human nature and human conduct so that we forget ourselves +in his persons, but he does not make us forget ourselves in their +fortunes. Whether Clive does or does not marry Ethel, or Esmond, +Beatrix, does not very greatly excite our curiosity. We cannot ring +the bells for Clive's second wedding as the villagers celebrated the +bridal of Pamela. It is the development of character, it is the +author's comments, it is his own personality and his unmatched and +inimitable style, that win our admiration and affection. We can +take up "Vanity Fair," or "Pendennis," or "The Newcomes," just where +the book opens by chance, and read them with delight, as we may read +Montaigne. When one says one can take up a book anywhere, it +generally means that one can also lay it down anywhere. But it is +not so with Thackeray. Whenever we meet him he holds us with his +charm, his humour, his eloquence, his tenderness. If he has not, in +the highest degree, the narrative power, he does possess, in a +degree perhaps beyond any other writer of English, that kind of +poetic quality which is not incompatible with prose writing. + +A great deal has been said about prose poetry. As a rule, it is +very poor stuff. As prose it has a tendency to run into blank +verse; as poetry it is highly rhetorical and self-conscious. It +would be invidious and might be irritating to select examples from +modern masters of prose-poetry. They have never been poets. But +the prose of a poet like Milton may be, and is, poetical in the true +sense; and so, upon occasions, was the prose of Thackeray. Some +examples linger always in the memory, and dwell with their music in +the hearing. One I have quoted elsewhere; the passage in "The +Newcomes" where Clive, at the lecture on the Poetry of the Domestic +Affections, given by Sir Barnes Newcome, sees Ethel, whom he has +lost. + +"And the past, and its dear histories, and youth and its hopes and +passions, and tones and looks, for ever echoing in the heart and +present in the memory--those, no doubt, poor Clive saw and heard as +he looked across the great gulf of time and parting and grief, and +beheld the woman he had loved for many years." "The great gulf of +time, and parting, and grief,"--some of us are on the farther side +of it, and our old selves, and our old happiness, and our old +affections beyond, grow near, grow clear, now and then, at the sight +of a face met by chance in the world, at the chance sound of a +voice. Such are human fortunes, and human sorrows; not the worst, +not the greatest, for these old loves do not die--they live in +exile, and are the better parts of our souls. Not the greatest, nor +the worst of sorrows, for shame is worse, and hopeless hunger, and a +life all of barren toil without distractions, without joy, must be +far worse. But of those myriad tragedies of the life of the poor, +Thackeray does not write. How far he was aware of them, how deeply +he felt them, we are not informed. His highest tragedy is that of +the hunger of the heart; his most noble prose sounds in that meeting +of Harry Esmond with Lady Castlewood, in the immortal speech which +has the burden, "bringing your sheaves with you!" All that scene +appears to me no less unique, no less unsurpassable, no less +perfect, than the "Ode to the Nightingale" of Keats, or the Lycidas +of Milton. It were superfluous to linger over the humour of +Thackeray. Only Shakespeare and Dickens have graced the language +with so many happy memories of queer, pleasant people, with so many +quaint phrases, each of which has a kind of freemasonry, and when +uttered, or recalled, makes all friends of Thackeray into family +friends of each other. The sayings of Mr. Harry Foker, of Captain +Costigan, of Gumbo, are all like old dear family phrases, they live +imperishable and always new, like the words of Sir John, the fat +knight, or of Sancho Panza, or of Dick Swiveller, or that other +Sancho, Sam Weller. They have that Shakespearian gift of being ever +appropriate, and undyingly fresh. + +These are among the graces of Thackeray, these and that inimitable +style, which always tempts and always baffles the admiring and +despairing copyist. Where did he find the trick of it, of the words +which are invariably the best words, and invariably fall exactly in +the best places? "The best words in the best places," is part of +Coleridge's definition of poetry; it is also the essence of +Thackeray's prose. In these Letters to Mrs. Brookfield the style is +precisely the style of the novels and essays. The style, with +Thackeray, was the man. He could not write otherwise. But +probably, to the last, this perfection was not mechanical, was not +attained without labour and care. In Dr. John Brown's works, in his +essay on Thackeray, there is an example of a proof-sheet on which +the master has made corrections, and those corrections bring the +passage up to his accustomed level, to the originality of his +rhythm. Here is the piece:- + + +"Another Finis, another slice of life which Tempus edax has +devoured! And I may have to write the word once or twice, perhaps, +and then an end of Ends. [Finite is ever and Infinite beginning.] +Oh, the troubles, the cares, the ennui, [the complications,] the +repetitions, the old conversations over and over again, and here and +there all the delightful passages, the dear, the brief, the forever- +remembered! + +"[And then] A few chapters more, and then the last, and behold +Finis itself coming to an end, and the Infinite beginning." + + +"How like music this," writes Dr. John Brown--"like one trying the +same air in different ways, as it were, searching out and sounding +all its depths!" The words were almost the last that Thackeray +wrote, perhaps the very last. They reply, as it were, to other +words which he had written long before to Mrs. Brookfield. + +"I don't pity anybody who leaves the world; not even a fair young +girl in her prime; I pity those remaining. On her journey, if it +pleases God to send her, depend on it there's no cause for grief, +that's but an earthly condition. Out of our stormy life, and +brought nearer the Divine light and warmth, there must be a serene +climate. Can't you fancy sailing into the calm?" + +Ah! nowhere else shall we find the Golden Bride, "passionless bride, +divine Tranquillity." + +As human nature persistently demands a moral, and, as, to say truth, +Thackeray was constantly meeting the demand, what is the lesson of +his life and his writings? So people may ask, and yet how futile is +the answer! Life has a different meaning, a different riddle, a +different reply for each of us. There is not one sphinx, but many +sphinxes--as many as there are women and men. We must all answer +for ourselves. Pascal has one answer, "Believe!" Moliere has +another, "Observe!" Thackeray's answer is, "Be good and enjoy!" but +a melancholy enjoyment was his. Dr. John Brown says: + +"His persistent state, especially for the later half of his life, +was profoundly morne, there is no other word for it. This arose in +part from temperament, from a quick sense of the littleness and +wretchedness of mankind . . . This feeling, acting on a harsh and +savage nature, ended in the saeva indignatio of Swift; acting on the +kindly and sensitive nature of Mr. Thackeray, it led only to +compassionate sadness." + +A great part of his life, and most of his happiness, lay in love. +"Ich habe auch viel geliebt," he says, and it is a hazardous kind of +happiness that attends great affection. Your capital is always at +the mercy of failures, of death, of jealousy, of estrangement. But +he had so much love to give that he could not but trust those +perilous investments. + +Other troubles he had that may have been diversions from those. He +did not always keep that manly common sense in regard to criticism, +which he shows in a letter to Mrs. Brookfield. "Did you read the +Spectator's sarcastic notice of 'Vanity Fair'? I don't think it is +just, but think Kintoul (Rintoul?) is a very honest man, and rather +inclined to deal severely with his private friends lest he should +fall into the other extreme: to be sure he keeps out of it, I mean +the other extreme, very well." + +That is the way to take unfavourable criticisms--not to go declaring +that a man is your enemy because he does not like your book, your +ballads, your idyls, your sermons, what you please. Why cannot +people keep literature and liking apart? Am I bound to think Jones +a bad citizen, a bad man, a bad householder, because his poetry +leaves me cold? Need he regard me as a malevolent green-eyed +monster, because I don't want to read him? Thackeray was not always +true in his later years to these excellent principles. He was +troubled about trifles of criticisms and gossip, bagatelles not +worth noticing, still less worth remembering and recording. Do not +let us record them, then. + +We cannot expect for Thackeray, we cannot even desire for him, a +popularity like that of Dickens. If ever any man wrote for the +people, it was Dickens. Where can we find such a benefactor, and +who has lightened so many lives with such merriment as he? But +Thackeray wrote, like the mass of authors, for the literary class-- +for all who have the sense of style, the delight in the best +language. He will endure while English literature endures, while +English civilisation lasts. We cannot expect all the world to share +our affection for this humourist whose mirth springs from his +melancholy. His religion, his education, his life in this +unsatisfying world, are not the life, the education, the religion of +the great majority of human kind. He cannot reach so many ears and +hearts as Shakespeare or Dickens, and some of those whom he reaches +will always and inevitably misjudge him. Mais c'est mon homme, one +may say, as La Fontaine said of Moliere. Of modern writers, putting +Scott aside, he is to me the most friendly and sympathetic. Great +genius as he was, he was also a penman, a journalist; and +journalists and penmen will always look to him as their big brother, +the man in their own line of whom they are proudest. As devout +Catholics did not always worship the greatest saints, but the +friendliest saints, their own, so we scribes burn our cheap incense +to St. William Makepeace. He could do all that any of us could do, +and he did it infinitely better. A piece of verse for Punch, a +paragraph, a caricature, were not beneath the dignity of the author +of "Esmond." He had the kindness and helpfulness which I, for one, +have never met a journalist who lacked. He was a good Englishman; +the boy within him never died; he loved children, and boys, and a +little slang, and a boxing match. If he had failings, who knew them +better than he? How often he is at once the boy at the swishing +block and Dr. Birch who does not spare the rod! Let us believe with +that beloved physician, our old friend Dr. John Brown, that "Mr. +Thackeray was much greater, much nobler than his works, great and +noble as they are." Let us part with him, remembering his own +words: + + +"Come wealth or want, come good or ill, +Let young and old accept their part, +And bow before the awful Will, +And bear it with an honest heart." + + + +DICKENS + + + +"I cannot read Dickens!" How many people make this confession, with +a front of brass, and do not seem to know how poor a figure they +cut! George Eliot says that a difference of taste in jokes is a +great cause of domestic discomfort. A difference of taste in books, +when it is decided and vigorous, breaks many a possible friendship, +and nips many a young liking in the bud. I would not willingly seem +intolerant. A man may not like Sophocles, may speak disrespectfully +of Virgil, and even sneer at Herodotus, and yet may be endured. But +he or she (it is usually she) who contemns Scott, and "cannot read +Dickens," is a person with whom I would fain have no further +converse. If she be a lady, and if one meets her at dinner, she +must of course be borne with, and "suffered gladly." But she has +dug a gulf that nothing can bridge; she may be fair, clever and +popular, but she is Anathema. I feel towards her (or him if he +wears a beard) as Bucklaw did towards the person who should make +inquiries about that bridal night of Lammermoor. + +But this admission does not mean that one is sealed of the tribe of +Charles--that one is a Dickensite pure and simple, convinced and +devout--any more than Mr. Matthew Arnold was a Wordsworthian. +Dickens has many such worshippers, especially (and this is an +argument in favour of the faith) among those who knew him in his +life. He must have had a wonderful charm; for his friends in life +are his literary partisans, his uncompromising partisans, even to +this day. They will have no half-hearted admiration, and scout him +who tries to speak of Dickens as of an artist not flawless, no less +than they scorn him who cannot read Dickens at all. At one time +this honourable enthusiasm (as among the Wordsworthians) took the +shape of "endless imitation." That is over; only here and there is +an imitator of the master left in the land. All his own genius was +needed to carry his mannerisms; the mannerisms without the genius +were an armour that no devoted David had proved, that none could +wear with success. + +Of all great writers since Scott, Dickens is probably the man to +whom the world owes most gratitude. No other has caused so many sad +hearts to be lifted up in laughter; no other has added so much mirth +to the toilsome and perplexed life of men, of poor and rich, of +learned and unlearned. "A vast hope has passed across the world," +says Alfred de Musset; we may say that with Dickens a happy smile, a +joyous laugh, went round this earth. To have made us laugh so +frequently, so inextinguishably, so kindly--that is his great good +deed. It will be said, and with a great deal of truth, that he has +purged us with pity and terror as well as with laughter. But it is +becoming plain that his command of tears is less assured than of +old, and I cannot honestly regret that some of his pathos--not all, +by any means--is losing its charm and its certainty of appeal. +Dickens's humour was rarely too obvious; it was essentially +personal, original, quaint, unexpected, and his own. His pathos was +not infrequently derived from sources open to all the world, and +capable of being drawn from by very commonplace writers. Little +Nells and Dombeys, children unhappy, overthrown early in the melee +of the world, and dying among weeping readers, no longer affect us +as they affected another generation. Mrs. Beecher Stowe and the +author of "Misunderstood," once made some people weep like anything +by these simple means. Ouida can do it; plenty of people can do it. +Dickens lives by virtue of what none but he can do: by virtue of +Sairey Gamp, and Sam Weller, and Dick Swiveller, and Mr. Squeers, +with a thousand other old friends, of whom we can never weary. No +more than Cleopatra's can custom stale their infinite variety. + +I do not say that Dickens' pathos is always of the too facile sort, +which plays round children's death-beds. Other pathos he has, more +fine and not less genuine. It may be morbid and contemptible to +feel "a great inclination to cry" over David Copperfield's boyish +infatuation for Steerforth; but I feel it. Steerforth was a +"tiger,"--as Major Pendennis would have said, a tiger with his curly +hair and his ambrosial whiskers. But when a little boy loses his +heart to a big boy he does not think of this. Traddles thought of +it. "Shame, J. Steerforth!" cried Traddles, when Steerforth bullied +the usher. Traddles had not lost his heart, nor set up the big boy +as a god in the shrine thereof. But boys do these things; most of +us have had our Steerforths--tall, strong, handsome, brave, good- +humoured. Far off across the years I see the face of such an one, +and remember that emotion which is described in "David Copperfield," +chap. xix., towards the end of the chapter. I don't know any other +novelist who has touched this young and absolutely disinterested +belief of a little boy in a big one--touched it so kindly and +seriously, that is there is a hint of it in "Dr. Birch's School +Days." + +But Dickens is always excellent in his boys, of whom he has drawn +dozens of types--all capital. There is Tommy Traddles, for example. +And how can people say that Dickens could not draw a gentleman? The +boy who shouted, "Shame, J. Steerforth!" was a gentleman, if one may +pretend to have an opinion about a theme so difficult. The Dodger +and Charley Bates are delightful boys--especially Bates. Pip, in +the good old days, when he was the prowling boy, and fought Herbert +Pocket, was not less attractive, and Herbert himself, with his +theory and practice of the art of self-defence--could Nelson have +been more brave, or Shelley (as in Mr. Matthew Arnold's opinion) +more "ineffectual"? Even the boys at Dotheboys Hall are each of +them quite distinct. Dickens's boys are almost as dear to me as +Thackeray's--as little Rawdon himself. There is one exception. I +cannot interest myself in Little Dombey. Little David Copperfield +is a jewel of a boy with a turn for books. Doubtless he is created +out of Dickens's memories of himself as a child. That is true +pathos again, and not overwrought, when David is sent to Creakle's, +and his poor troubled mother dare hardly say farewell to him. + +And this brings us back to that debatable thing--the pathos of +Dickens--from which one has been withdrawn by the attractions of his +boys. Little Dombey is a prize example of his pathos. Little Nell +is another. Jeffrey, of the Edinburgh Review, who criticised +"Marmion" and the "Lady of the Lake" so vindictively, shed tears +over Little Nell. It is a matter of taste, or, as Science might +say, of the lachrymal glands as developed in each individual. But +the lachrymal glands of this amateur are not developed in that +direction. Little Dombey and Little Nell leave me with a pair of +dry eyes. I do not "melt visibly" over Little Dombey, like the +weak-eyed young man who took out his books and trunk to the coach. +The poor little chap was feeble and feverish, and had dreams of +trying to stop a river with his childish hands, or to choke it with +sand. It may be very good pathology, but I cannot see that it is at +all right pathos. One does not like copy to be made out of the +sufferings of children or of animals. One's heart hardens: the +object is too manifest, the trick is too easy. Conceive a child of +Dombey's age remarking, with his latest breath, "Tell them that the +picture on the stairs at school is not Divine enough!" That is not +the delirium of infancy, that is art-criticism: it is the Athenaeum +on Mr. Holman Hunt. It is not true to nature; it is not good in +art: it is the kind of thing that appears in Sunday-school books +about the virtuous little boy who died. There is more true pathos +in many a page of "Huckleberry Finn." Yet this is what Jeffrey +gushed over. "There has been nothing like the actual dying of that +sweet Paul." So much can age enfeeble the intellect, that he who +had known Scott, and yet nibbled at his fame, descended to admiring +the feeblest of false sentiment. As for Little Nell, who also has +caused floods of tears to be shed, her case is sufficiently +illustrated by the picture in the first edition ("Master Humphrey's +Clock,", 1840, p. 210): + + +"'When I die +Put near me something that has loved the light, +And had the sky above it always.' Those +Were her words." + +"Dear, gentle, patient, noble Nell was dead!" + + +The pathos is about as good as the prose, and THAT is blank verse. +Are the words in the former quotation in the least like anything +that a little girl would say? A German sentimentalist might have +said them; Obermann might have murmured them in his weaker moments. +Let us try a piece of domestic pathos by another hand. It is the +dawn of Waterloo. + +"Heart-stained and shame-stricken, he stood at the bed's foot, and +looked at the sleeping girl. How dared he--who was he--to pray for +one so spotless! God bless her! God bless her! He came to the +bedside, and looked at the hand, the little soft hand, lying asleep, +and he bent over the pillow noiselessly towards the gentle pale +face. Two fair arms closed tenderly round his neck as he stooped +down. 'I am awake, George,' the poor child said, with a sob." + +I know I am making enemies of a large proportion of the readers of +this page. "Odious, sneering beast!" is the quotation which they +will apply, perhaps unconscious of its origin, to a critic who is +humble but would fain be honest, to a critic who thinks that Dickens +has his weak places, and that his pathos is one of these. It cannot +be helped. Each of us has his author who is a favourite, a friend, +an idol, whose immaculate perfection he maintains against all +comers. For example, things are urged against Scott; I receive them +in the attitude of the deaf adder of St. Augustine, who stops one +ear with his tail and presses the other against the dust. The same +with Moliere: M. Scherer utters complaints against Moliere! He +would not convince me, even if I were convinced. So, with regard to +Dickens, the true believer will not listen, he will not be +persuaded. But if any one feels a little shaken, let him try it +another way. There is a character in M. Alphonse Daudet's "Froment +Jeune et Rissler Aine"--a character who, people say, is taken bodily +from Dickens. This is Desiree Delobelle, the deformed girl, the +daughter of un rate, a pretentious imbecile actor. She is poor, +stunted, laborious, toiling at a small industry; she is in love, is +rejected, she tries to drown herself, she dies. The sequence of +ideas is in Dickens's vein; but read the tale, and I think you will +see how little the thing is overdone, how simple and unforced it is, +compared with analogous persons and scenes in the work of the +English master. The idiotic yell of "plagiarism" has been raised, +of course, by critical cretins. M. Daudet, as I understand what he +says in "Trente Ans de Paris," had not read Dickens at all, when he +wrote "Froment Jeune"--certainly had not read "Our Mutual Friend." +But there is something of Dickens's genius in M. Daudet's, and that +something is kept much better in hand by the Frenchman, is more +subordinated to the principles of taste and of truth. + +On the other hand, to be done with this point, look at Delobelle, +the father of Desiree, and compare him with Dickens's splendid +strollers, with Mr. Vincent Crummles, and Mr. Lenville, and the +rest. As in Desiree so in Delobelle, M. Daudet's picture is much +the more truthful. But it is truthful with a bitter kind of truth. +Now, there is nothing not genial and delightful in Crummles and Mrs. +Crummles and the Infant Phenomenon. Here Dickens has got into a +region unlike the region of the pathetic, into a world that welcomes +charge or caricature, the world of humour. We do not know, we never +meet Crummleses quite so unsophisticated as Vincent, who is "not a +Prussian," who "can't think who puts these things into the papers." +But we do meet stage people who come very near to this naivete of +self-advertisement, and some of whom are just as dismal as Crummles +is delightful. + +Here, no doubt, is Dickens's forte. Here his genius is all pure +gold, in his successful studies or inventions of the humorous, of +character parts. One literally does not know where to begin or end +in one's admiration for this creative power that peopled our fancies +with such troops of dear and impossible friends. "Pickwick" comes +practically first, and he never surpassed "Pickwick." He was a poor +story-teller, and in "Pickwick" he had no story to tell; he merely +wandered at adventure in that merrier England which was before +railways were. "Pickwick" is the last of the stories of the road +that begin in the wandering, aimless, adventurous romances of +Greece, or in Petronius Arbiter, and that live with the life of "Gil +Blas" and "Don Quixote," of "Le Roman Comique," of "Tom Jones and +"Joseph Andrews." These tales are progresses along highways +bristling with adventure, and among inns full of confusion, Mr. +Pickwick's affair with the lady with yellow curl-papers being a mild +example. Though "Tom Jones" has a plot so excellent, no plot is +needed here, and no consecutive story is required. Detached +experiences, vagrants of every rank that come and go, as in real +life, are all the material of the artist. With such materials +Dickens was exactly suited; he was at home on high-road and lane, +street and field-path, in inns and yeomen's warm hospitable houses. +Never a humour escaped him, and he had such a wealth of fun and high +spirits in these glad days as never any other possessed before. He +was not in the least a bookish man, not in any degree a scholar; but +Nature taught him, and while he wrote with Nature for his teacher, +with men and women for his matter, with diversion for his aim, he +was unsurpassable--nay, he was unapproachable. + +He could not rest here; he was, after all, a child of an age that +grew sad, and earnest, and thoughtful. He saw abuses round him-- +injustice, and oppression, and cruelty. He had a heart to which +those things were not only abhorrent, but, as it were, maddening. +He knew how great an influence he wielded, and who can blame him for +using it in any cause he thought good? Very possibly he might have +been a greater artist if he had been less of a man, if he had been +quite disinterested, and had never written "with a purpose." That +is common, and even rather obsolete critical talk. But when we +remember that Fielding, too, very often wrote "with a purpose," and +that purpose the protection of the poor and unfriended; and when we +remember what an artist Fielding was, I do not see how we can blame +Dickens. Occasionally he made his art and his purpose blend so +happily that his work was all the better for his benevolent +intentions. We owe Mr. Squeers, Mrs. Squeers, Fanny Squeers, +Wackford and all, to Dickens's indignation against the nefarious +school pirates of his time. If he is less successful in attacking +the Court of Chancery, and very much less successful still with the +Red Tape and Circumlocution Office affairs, that may be merely +because he was less in the humour, and not because he had a purpose +in his mind. Every one of a man's books cannot be his masterpiece. +There is nothing in literary talk so annoying as the spiteful joy +with which many people declare that an author is "worked out," +because his last book is less happy than some that went before. +There came a time in Dickens' career when his works, to my own taste +and that of many people, seemed laboured, artificial--in fact, more +or less failures. These books range from "Dombey and Son," through +"Little Dorrit," I dare not say to "Our Mutual Friend." One is +afraid that "Edwin Drood," too, suggests the malady which Sir Walter +already detected in his own "Peveril of the Peak." The intense +strain on the faculties of Dickens--as author, editor, reader, and +man of the world--could not but tell on him; and years must tell. +"Philip" is not worthy of the author of "Esmond," nor "Daniel +Deronda" of the author of "Silas Marner." At that time--the time of +the Dorrits and Dombeys--Blackwood's Magazine published a +"Remonstrance with Boz"; nor was it quite superfluous. But Dickens +had abundance of talent still to display--above all in "Great +Expectations" and "A Tale of Two Cities." The former is, after +"Pickwick," "Copperfield," "Martin Chuzzlewit," and "Nicholas +Nickleby"--after the classics, in fact--the most delightful of +Dickens's books. The story is embroiled, no doubt. What are we to +think of Estelle? Has the minx any purpose? Is she a kind of Ethel +Newcome of odd life? It is not easy to say; still, for a story of +Dickens's the plot is comparatively clear and intelligible. For a +study of a child's life, of the nature Dickens drew best--the river +and the marshes--and for plenty of honest explosive fun, there is no +later book of Dickens's like "Great Expectations." Miss Havisham, +too, in her mouldy bridal splendour, is really impressive; not like +Ralph Nickleby and Monk in "Oliver Twist"--a book of which the plot +remains to me a mystery. {4} Pip and Pumblechook and Mr. Wopsle and +Jo are all immortal, and cause laughter inextinguishable. The +rarity of this book, by the way, in its first edition--the usual +library three volumes--is rather difficult to explain. One very +seldom sees it come into the market, and then it is highly priced. + +I have mentioned more than once the obscurity of Dickens's plots. +This difficulty may be accounted for in a very flattering manner. +Where do we lose ourselves? Not in the bare high-road, but among +lanes, between hedges hung with roses, blackberries, morning +glories, where all about us is so full of pleasure that our +attention is distracted and we miss our way. Now, in Dickens--in +"Oliver Twist," in "Martin Chuzzlewit," in "Nicholas Nickleby"-- +there is, as in the lanes, so much to divert and beguile, that we +cease to care very much where the road leads--a road so full of +happy marvels. The dark, plotting villains--like the tramp who +frightened Sir Walter Scott so terribly, as he came from Miss +Baillie's at Hampstead--peer out from behind the hedges now and +then. But we are too much amused by the light hearts that go all +the way, by the Dodger and Crummles and Mrs. Gamp, to care much for +what Ralph, and Monk, and Jonas Chuzzlewit are plotting. It may not +be that the plot is so confused, but that we are too much diverted +to care for the plot, for the incredible machinations of Uriah Heap, +to choose another example. Mr. Micawber cleared these up; but it is +Mr. Micawber that hinders us from heeding them. + +This, at least, is a not unfriendly explanation. Yet I cannot but +believe that, though Dickens took great pains with his plots, he was +not a great plotter. He was not, any more than Thackeray, a story- +teller first and foremost. We can hold in our minds every thread of +Mr. Wilkie Collins' web, or of M. Fortune du Boisgobey's, or of M. +Gaboriau's--all great weavers of intrigues. But Dickens goes about +darkening his intrigue, giving it an extra knot, an extra twist, +hinting here, ominously laughing there, till we get mystified and +bored, and give ourselves up to the fun of the humours, indifferent +to the destinies of villains and victims. Look at "Edwin Drood." A +constant war about the plot rages in the magazines. I believe, for +one, that Edwin Drood was resuscitated; but it gives me no pleasure. +He was too uninteresting. Dickens's hints, nods, mutterings, +forebodings, do not at all impress one like that deepening and +darkening of the awful omens in "The Bride of Lammermoor." Here +Scott--unconsciously, no doubt--used the very manner of Homer in the +Odyssey, and nowhere was his genius more Homeric. That was romance. + +The "Tale of Two Cities" is a great test of the faith--that is in +Dickensites. Of all his works it is the favourite with the wrong +sort! Ladies prefer it. Many people can read it who cannot +otherwise read Dickens at all. This in itself proves that it is not +a good example of Dickens, that it is not central, that it is an +outlying province which he conquered. It is not a favourite of +mine. The humour of the humorous characters rings false--for +example, the fun of the resurrection-man with the wife who "flops." +But Sidney Carton has drawn many tears down cheeks not accustomed to +what Mr. B. in "Pamela" calls "pearly fugitives." + +It sometimes strikes one that certain weaknesses in our great +novelists, in Thackeray as well as Dickens, were caused by their +method of publication. The green and yellow leaves flourished on +the trees for two whole years. Who (except Alexandre the Great) +could write so much, and yet all good? Do we not all feel that +"David Copperfield" should have been compressed? As to "Pendennis," +Mr. Thackeray's bad health when he wrote it might well cause a +certain languor in the later pages. Moreover, he frankly did not +care for the story, and bluffly says, in the preface, that he +respited Colonel Altamont almost at the foot of the gallows. +Dickens took himself more in earnest, and, having so many pages to +fill, conscientiously made Uriah Heap wind and wriggle through them +all. + +To try to see blots in the sun, and to pick holes in Dickens, seems +ungrateful, and is indeed an ungrateful task; to no mortal man have +more people owed mirth, pleasure, forgetfulness of care, knowledge +of life in strange places. There never was such another as Charles +Dickens, nor shall we see his like sooner than the like of +Shakespeare. And he owed all to native genius and hard work; he +owed almost nothing to literature, and that little we regret. He +was influenced by Carlyle, he adopted his method of nicknames, and +of hammering with wearisome iteration on some peculiarity--for +example, on Carker's teeth, and the patriarch's white hair. By the +way, how incredible is all the Carker episode in "Dombey"! Surely +Dickens can never have intended Edith, from the first, to behave as +she did! People may have influenced him, as they influenced Scott +about "St. Ronan's Well." It has been said that, save for Carlyle, +Dickens was in letters a self-taught artist, that he was no man's +pupil, and borrowed from none. No doubt this makes him less +acceptable to the literary class than a man of letters, like +Thackeray--than a man in whose treasure chamber of memory all the +wealth of the Middle Ages was stored, like Scott. But the native +naked genius of Dickens,--his heart, his mirth, his observation, his +delightful high spirits, his intrepid loathing of wrong, his +chivalrous desire to right it,--these things will make him for ever, +we hope and believe, the darling of the English people. + + + +ADVENTURES OF BUCCANEERS + + + +Most of us, as boys, have envied the buccaneers. The greatest of +all boys, Canon Kingsley, once wrote a pleasing and regretful poem +in which the Last Buccaneer represents himself as a kind of +picturesque philanthropist:- + + +"There were forty craft in Aves that were both swift and stout, +All furnished well with small arms, and cannons round about; +And a thousand men in Aves made laws so fair and free, +To choose their valiant captains and obey them loyally. +Thence we sailed against the Spaniard with his hoards of plate and +gold, +Which he wrung with cruel tortures from Indian folk of old; +Likewise the merchant captains, with hearts as hard as stone, +Who flog men and keel-haul them, and starve them to the bone." + + +The buccaneer is "a gallant sailor," according to Kingsley's poem--a +Robin Hood of the waters, who preys only on the wicked rich, or the +cruel and Popish Spaniard, and the extortionate shipowner. For his +own part, when he is not rescuing poor Indians, the buccaneer lives +mainly "for climate and the affections":- + + +"Oh, sweet it was in Aves to hear the landward breeze, +A swing with good tobacco in a net between the trees, +With a negro lass to fan you, while you listened to the roar +Of the breakers on the reef outside that never touched the shore." + + +This is delightfully idyllic, like the lives of the Tahitian +shepherds in the Anti-Jacobin--the shepherds whose occupation was a +sinecure, as there were no sheep in Tahiti. + +Yet the vocation was not really so touchingly chivalrous as the poet +would have us deem. One Joseph Esquemeling, himself a buccaneer, +has written the history and described the exploits of his companions +in plain prose, warning eager youths that "pieces-of-eight do not +grow on every tree," as many raw recruits have believed. Mr. +Esquemeling's account of these matters may be purchased, with a +great deal else that is instructive and entertaining, in "The +History of the Buccaneers in America." My edition (of 1810) is a +dumpy little book, in very small type, and quite a crowd of +publishers took part in the venture. The older editions are +difficult to procure if your pockets are not stuffed with pieces-of- +eight. You do not often find even this volume, but "when found make +a note of," and you have a reply to Canon Kingsley. + +A charitable old Scotch lady, who heard our ghostly foe evil spoken +of, remarked that, "If we were all as diligent and conscientious as +the Devil, it would be better for us." Now, the buccaneers were +certainly models of diligence and conscientiousness in their own +industry, which was to torture people till they gave up their goods, +and then to run them through the body, and spend the spoils over +drink and dice. Except Dampier, who was a clever man, but a poor +buccaneer (Mr. Clark Russell has written his life), they were the +most hideously ruthless miscreants that ever disgraced the earth and +the sea. But their courage and endurance were no less notable than +their greed and cruelty, so that a moral can be squeezed even out of +these abandoned miscreants. The soldiers and sailors who made their +way within gunshot of Khartoum, overcoming thirst, hunger, heat, the +desert, and the gallant children of the desert, did not fight, +march, and suffer more bravely than the scoundrels who sacked +Mairaibo and burned Panama. Their good qualities were no less +astounding and exemplary than their almost incredible wickedness. +They did not lie about in hammocks much, listening to the landward +wind among the woods--the true buccaneers. To tell the truth, most +of them had no particular cause to love the human species. They +were often Europeans who had been sold into slavery on the West +Indian plantations, where they learned lessons of cruelty by +suffering it. Thus Mr. Joseph Esquemeling, our historian, was +beaten, tortured, and nearly starved to death in Tortuga, "so I +determined, not knowing how to get any living, to enter into the +order of the pirates or robbers of the sea." The poor Indians of +the isles, much pitied by Kingsley's buccaneer, had a habit of +sticking their prisoners all over with thorns, wrapped in oily +cotton, whereto they then set fire. "These cruelties many +Christians have seen while they lived among these barbarians." Mr. +Esquemeling was to see, and inflict, plenty of this kind of torment, +which was not out of the way nor unusual. One planter alone had +killed over a hundred of his servants--"the English did the same +with theirs." + +A buccaneer voyage began in stealing a ship, collecting desperadoes, +and torturing the local herdsmen till they gave up their masters' +flocks, which were salted as provisions. Articles of service were +then drawn up, on the principle "no prey, no pay." The spoils, when +taken, were loyally divided as a rule, though Captain Morgan, of +Wales, made no more scruple about robbing his crew than about +barbecuing a Spanish priest. "They are very civil and charitable to +each other, so that if any one wants what another has, with great +willingness they give it to one another." In other matters they did +not in the least resemble the early Christians. A fellow nick-named +The Portuguese may be taken as our first example of their +commendable qualities. + +With a small ship of four guns he had taken a great one of twenty +guns, with 70,000 pieces-of-eight . . . He himself, however, was +presently captured by a larger vessel, and imprisoned on board. +Being carelessly watched, he escaped on two earthen jars (for he +could not swim), reached the woods in Campechy, and walked for a +hundred and twenty miles through the bush. His only food was a few +shell-fish, and by way of a knife he had a large nail, which he +whetted to an edge on a stone. Having made a kind of raft, he +struck a river, and paddled to Golpho Triste, where he found +congenial pirates. With twenty of these, and a boat, he returned to +Campechy, where he had been a prisoner, and actually captured the +large ship in which he had lain captive! Bad luck pursued him, +however: his prize was lost in a storm; he reached Jamaica in a +canoe, and never afterwards was concerned as leader in any affair of +distinction. Not even Odysseus had more resource, nor was more +long-enduring; but Fortune was The Portuguese's foe. + +Braziliano, another buccaneer, served as a pirate before the mast, +and "was beloved and respected by all." Being raised to command, he +took a plate ship; but this success was of indifferent service to +his otherwise amiable character. "He would often appear foolish and +brutish when in drink," and has been known to roast Spaniards alive +on wooden spits "for not showing him hog yards where he might steal +swine." One can hardly suppose that Kingsley would have regretted +THIS buccaneer, even if he had been the last, which unluckily he was +not. His habit of sitting in the street beside a barrel of beer, +and shooting all passers-by who would not drink with him, provoked +remark, and was an act detestable to all friends of temperance +principles. + +Francois L'Olonnois, from southern France, had been kidnapped, and +sold as a slave in the Caribbee Islands. Recovering his freedom, he +plundered the Spanish, says my buccaneer author, "till his +unfortunate death." With two canoes he captured a ship which had +been sent after him, carrying ten guns and a hangman for his express +benefit. This hangman, much to the fellow's chagrin, L'Olonnois put +to death like the rest of his prisoners. His great achievements +were in the Gulf of Venezuela or Bay of Maracaibo. The gulf is a +strong place; the mouth, no wider than a gun-shot, is guarded by two +islands. Far up the inlet is Maracaibo, a town of three thousand +people, fortified and surrounded by woods. Yet farther up is the +town of Gibraltar. To attack these was a desperate enterprise; but +L'Olonnois stole past the forts, and frightened the townsfolk into +the woods. As a rule the Spaniards made the poorest resistance; +there were examples of courage, but none of conduct. With strong +forts, heavy guns, many men, provisions, and ammunition, they +quailed before the desperate valour of the pirates. The towns were +sacked, the fugitives hunted out in the woods, and the most +abominable tortures were applied to make them betray their friends +and reveal their treasures. When they were silent, or had no +treasures to declare, they were hacked, twisted, burned, and starved +to death. + +Such were the manners of L'Olonnois; and Captain Morgan, of Wales, +was even more ruthless. + +Gibraltar was well fortified and strengthened after Maracaibo fell; +new batteries were raised, the way through the woods was barricaded, +and no fewer than eight hundred men were under arms to resist a +small pirate force, exhausted by debauch, and having its retreat cut +off by the forts at the mouth of the great salt-water loch. But +L'Olonnois did not blench: he told the men that audacity was their +one hope, also that he would pistol the first who gave ground. The +men cheered enthusiastically, and a party of three hundred and fifty +landed. The barricaded way they could not force, and in a newly cut +path they met a strong battery which fired grape. But L'Olonnois +was invincible. He tried that old trick which rarely fails, a sham +retreat, and this lured the Spaniards from their earthwork on the +path. The pirates then turned, sword in hand, slew two hundred of +the enemy, and captured eight guns. The town yielded, the people +fled to the woods, and then began the wonted sport of torturing the +prisoners. Maracaibo they ransomed afresh, obtained a pilot, passed +the forts with ease, and returned after sacking a small province. +On a dividend being declared, they parted 260,000 pieces-of-eight +among the band, and spent the pillage in a revel of three weeks. + +L'Olonnois "got great repute" by this conduct, but I rejoice to add +that in a raid on Nicaragua he "miserably perished," and met what +Mr. Esquemeling calls "his unfortunate death." For L'Olonnois was +really an ungentlemanly character. He would hack a Spaniard to +pieces, tear out his heart, and "gnaw it with his teeth like a +ravenous wolf, saying to the rest, 'I will serve you all alike if +you show me not another way'" (to a town which he designed +attacking). In Nicaragua he was taken by the Indians, who, being +entirely on the Spanish side, tore him to pieces and burned him. +Thus we really must not be deluded by the professions of Mr. +Kingsley's sentimental buccaneer, with his pity for "the Indian folk +of old." + +Except Denis Scott, a worthy bandit in his day, Captain Henry Morgan +is the first renowned British buccaneer. He was a young Welshman, +who, after having been sold as a slave in Barbadoes, became a sailor +of fortune. With about four hundred men he assailed Puerto Bello. +"If our number is small," he said, "our hearts are great," and so he +assailed the third city and place of arms which Spain then possessed +in the West Indies. The entrance of the harbour was protected by +two strong castles, judged as "almost impregnable," while Morgan had +no artillery of any avail against fortresses. Morgan had the luck +to capture a Spanish soldier, whom he compelled to parley with the +garrison of the castle. This he stormed and blew up, massacring all +its defenders, while with its guns he disarmed the sister fortress. +When all but defeated in a new assault, the sight of the English +colours animated him afresh. He made the captive monks and nuns +carry the scaling ladders; in this unwonted exploit the poor +religious folk lost many of their numbers. The wall was mounted, +the soldiers were defeated, though the Governor fought like a +Spaniard of the old school, slew many pirates with his own hand, and +pistolled some of his own men for cowardice. He died at his post, +refusing quarter, and falling like a gentleman of Spain. Morgan, +too, was not wanting in fortitude: he extorted 100,000 pieces-of- +eight from the Governor of Panama, and sent him a pistol as a sample +of the gun wherewith he took so great a city. He added that he +would return and take this pistol out of Panama; nor was he less +good than his word. In Cuba he divided 250,000 pieces-of-eight, and +a great booty in other treasure. A few weeks saw it all in the +hands of the tavern-keepers and women of the place. + +Morgan's next performance was a new sack of Maracaibo, now much +stronger than L'Olonnois had found it. After the most appalling +cruelties, not fit to be told, he returned, passing the castles at +the mouth of the port by an ingenious stratagem. Running boatload +after boatload of men to the land side, he brought them back by +stealth, leading the garrison to expect an attack from that quarter. +The guns were massed to landward, and no sooner was this done than +Morgan sailed up through the channel with but little loss. Why the +Spaniards did not close the passage with a boom does not appear. +Probably they were glad to be quit of Morgan on any terms. + +A great Spanish fleet he routed by the ingenious employment of a +fire-ship. In a later expedition a strong place was taken by a +curious accident. One of the buccaneers was shot through the body +with an arrow. He drew it out, wrapped it in cotton, fired it from +his musket, and so set light to a roof and burned the town. + +His raid on Panama was extraordinary for the endurance of his men. +For days they lived on the leather of bottles and belts. "Some, who +were never out of their mothers' kitchens, may ask how these pirates +could eat and digest these pieces of leather, so hard and dry? Whom +I answer--that could they once experience what hunger, or rather +famine is, they would find the way, as the pirates did." It was at +the close of this march that the Indians drove wild bulls among +them; but they cared very little for these new allies of the +Spaniards: beef, in any form, was only too welcome. + +Morgan burned the fair cedar houses of Panama, but lost the plate +ship with all the gold and silver out of the churches. How he +tortured a poor wretch who chanced to wear a pair of taffety +trousers belonging to his master, with a small silver key hanging +out, it is better not to repeat. The men only got two hundred +pieces-of-eight each, after all their toil, for their Welshman was +indeed a thief, and bilked his crews, no less than he plundered the +Spaniards, without remorse. Finally, he sneaked away from the fleet +with a ship or two; and it is to be feared that Captain Morgan made +rather a good thing by dint of his incredible cruelty and villainy. + +And so we leave Mr. Esquemeling, whom Captain Morgan also deserted; +for who would linger long when there is not even honour among +thieves? Alluring as the pirate's profession is, we must not forget +that it had a seamy side, and was by no means all rum and pieces-of- +eight. And there is something repulsive to a generous nature in +roasting men because they will not show you where to steal hogs. + + + +THE SAGAS + + + +"The general reader," says a frank critic, "hates the very name of a +Saga." The general reader, in that case, is to be pitied, and, if +possible, converted. But, just as Pascal admits that the sceptic +can only become religious by living as if he WERE religious--by +stupefying himself, as Pascal plainly puts it, with holy water--so +it is to be feared that there is but a single way of winning over +the general reader to the Sagas. Preaching and example, as in this +brief essay, will not avail with him. He must take Pascal's advice, +and live for an hour or two as if he were a lover of Sagas. He +must, in brief, give that old literature a fair chance. He has now +his opportunity: Mr. William Morris and Mr. Eirikr Magnusson are +publishing a series of cheap translations--cheap only in coin of the +realm--a Saga Library. If a general reader tries the first tale in +the first volume, story of "Howard the Halt,"--if he tries it +honestly, and still can make no way with it, then let him take +comfort in the doctrine of Invincible Ignorance. Let him go back to +his favourite literature of gossiping reminiscence, or of realistic +novels. We have all, probably, a drop of the Northmen's blood in +us, but in that general reader the blood is dormant. + +What is a Saga? It is neither quite a piece of history nor wholly a +romance. It is a very old story of things and adventures that +really happened, but happened so long ago, and in times so +superstitious, that marvels and miracles found their way into the +legend. The best Sagas are those of Iceland, and those, in +translations, are the finest reading that the natural man can +desire. If you want true pictures of life and character, which are +always the same at bottom, or true pictures of manners, which are +always changing, and of strange customs and lost beliefs, in the +Sagas they are to be found. Or if you like tales of enterprise, of +fighting by land and sea, fighting with men and beasts, with storms +and ghosts and fiends, the Sagas are full of this entertainment. + +The stories of which we are speaking were first told in Iceland, +perhaps from 950 to 1100 B.C. When Norway and Sweden were still +heathen, a thousand years ago, they were possessed by families of +noble birth, owning no master, and often at war with each other, +when the men were not sailing the seas, to rob and kill in Scotland, +England, France, Italy, and away east as far as Constantinople, or +farther. Though they were wild sea robbers and warriors, they were +sturdy farmers, great shipbuilders; every man of them, however +wealthy, could be his own carpenter, smith, shipwright, and +ploughman. They forged their own good short swords, hammered their +own armour, ploughed their own fields. In short, they lived like +Odysseus, the hero of Homer, and were equally skilled in the arts of +war and peace. They were mighty lawyers, too, and had a most +curious and minute system of laws on all subjects--land, marriage, +murder, trade, and so forth. These laws were not written, though +the people had a kind of letters called runes. But they did not use +them much for documents, but merely for carving a name on a sword- +blade, or a tombstone, or on great gold rings such as they wore on +their arms. Thus the laws existed in the memory and judgment of the +oldest and wisest and most righteous men of the country. The most +important was the law of murder. If one man slew another, he was +not tried by a jury, but any relation of the dead killed him "at +sight," wherever he found him. Even in an Earl's hall, Kari struck +the head off one of his friend Njal's Burners, and the head bounded +on the board, among the trenchers of meat and the cups of mead or +ale. But it was possible, if the relations of a slain man +consented, for the slayer to pay his price--every man was valued at +so much--and then revenge was not taken. But, as a rule, one +revenge called for another. Say Hrut slew Hrap, then Atli slew +Hrut, and Gisli slew Atli, and Kari slew Gisli, and so on till +perhaps two whole families were extinct and there was peace. The +gods were not offended by manslaughter openly done, but were angry +with treachery, cowardice, meanness, theft, perjury, and every kind +of shabbiness. + +This was the state of affairs in Norway when a king arose, Harold +Fair-Hair, who tried to bring all these proud people under him, and +to make them pay taxes and live more regularly and quietly. They +revolted at this, and when they were too weak to defy the king they +set sail and fled to Iceland. There in the lonely north, between +the snow and fire, the hot-water springs, the volcano of Hecla, the +great rivers full of salmon that rush down such falls as Golden +Foot, there they lived their old-fashioned life, cruising as pirates +and merchants, taking foreign service at Mickle Garth, or in England +or Egypt, filling the world with the sound of their swords and the +sky with the smoke of their burnings. For they feared neither God +nor man nor ghost, and were no less cruel than brave; the best of +soldiers, laughing at death and torture, like the Zulus, who are a +kind of black Vikings of Africa. On some of them "Bersark's gang" +would fall--that is, they would become in a way mad, slaying all and +sundry, biting their shields, and possessed with a furious strength +beyond that of men, which left them as weak as children when it +passed away. These Bersarks were outlaws, all men's enemies, and to +kill them was reckoned a great adventure, and a good deed. The +women were worthy of the men--bold, quarrelsome, revengeful. Some +were loyal, like Bergthora, who foresaw how all her sons and her +husband were to be burned; but who would not leave them, and +perished in the burning without a cry. Some were as brave as +Howard's wife, who enabled her husband, old and childless, to +overthrow the wealthy bully, the slayer of his only son. Some were +treacherous, as Halgerda the Fair. Three husbands she had, and was +the death of every man of them. Her last lord was Gunnar of +Lithend, the bravest and most peaceful of men. Once she did a mean +thing, and he slapped her face. She never forgave him. At last +enemies besieged him in his house. The doors were locked--all was +quiet within. One of the enemies climbed up to a window slit, and +Gunnar thrust him through with his lance. "Is Gunnar at home?" said +the besiegers. "I know not--but his lance is," said the wounded +man, and died with that last jest on his lips. For long Gunnar kept +them at bay with his arrows, but at last one of them cut the arrow +string. "Twist me a string with thy hair," he said to his wife, +Halgerda, whose yellow hair was very long and beautiful. "Is it a +matter of thy life or death?" she asked. "Ay," he said. "Then I +remember that blow thou gavest me, and I will see thy death." So +Gunnar died, overcome by numbers, and they killed Samr, his hound, +but not before Samr had killed a man. + +So they lived always with sword or axe in hand--so they lived, and +fought, and died. + +Then Christianity was brought to them from Norway by Thangbrand, and +if any man said he did not believe a word of it, Thangbrand had the +schoolboy argument, "Will you fight?" So they fought a duel on a +holm or island, that nobody might interfere--holm-gang they called +it--and Thangbrand usually killed his man. In Norway, Saint Olaf +did the like, killing and torturing those who held by the old gods-- +Thor, Odin, and Freya, and the rest. So, partly by force and partly +because they were somewhat tired of bloodshed, horsefights, and the +rest, they received the word of the white Christ and were baptised, +and lived by written law, and did not avenge themselves by their own +hands. + +They were Christians now, but they did not forget the old times, the +old feuds and fightings and Bersarks, and dealings with ghosts, and +with dead bodies that arose and wrought horrible things, haunting +houses and strangling men. The Icelandic ghosts were able-bodied, +well "materialised," and Grettir and Olaf Howard's son fought them +with strength of arm and edge of steel. TRUE stories of the ancient +days were told at the fireside in the endless winter nights by story +tellers or Scalds. It was thought a sin for any one to alter these +old stories, but as generations passed more and more wonderful +matters came into the legend. It was believed that the dead Gunnar, +the famed archer, sang within his cairn or "Howe," the mound wherein +he was buried, and his famous bill or cutting spear was said to have +been made by magic, and to sing in the night before the wounding of +men and the waking of war. People were thought to be "second- +sighted"--that is, to have prophetic vision. The night when Njal's +house was burned his wife saw all the meat on the table "one gore of +blood," just as in Homer the prophet Theoclymenus beheld blood +falling in gouts from the walls, before the slaying of the Wooers. +The Valkyries, the Choosers of the slain, and the Norns who wove the +fates of men at a ghastly loom were seen by living eyes. In the +graves where treasures were hoarded the Barrowwights dwelt, ghosts +that were sentinels over the gold: witchwives changed themselves +into wolves and other monstrous animals, and for many weeks the +heroes Signy and Sinfjotli ran wild in the guise of wolves. + +These and many other marvels crept into the Sagas, and made the +listeners feel a shudder of cold beside the great fire that burned +in the centre of the skali or hall where the chief sat, giving meat +and drink to all who came, where the women span and the Saga man +told the tales of long ago. Finally, at the end of the middle ages, +these Sagas were written down in Icelandic, and in Latin +occasionally, and many of them have been translated into English. + +Unluckily, these translations have hitherto been expensive to buy, +and were not always to be had easily. For the wise world, which +reads newspapers all day and half the night, does not care much for +books, still less for good books, least of all for old books. You +can make no money out of reading Sagas: they have nothing to say +about stocks and shares, nor about Prime Ministers and politics. +Nor will they amuse a man, if nothing amuses him but accounts of +races and murders, or gossip about Mrs. Nokes's new novel, Mrs. +Stokes's new dresses, or Lady Jones's diamonds. The Sagas only tell +how brave men--of our own blood very likely--lived, and loved, and +fought, and voyaged, and died, before there was much reading or +writing, when they sailed without steam, travelled without railways, +and warred hand-to-hand, not with hidden dynamite and sunk +torpedoes. But, for stories of gallant life and honest purpose, the +Sagas are among the best in the world. + +Of Sagas in English one of the best is the "Volsunga," the story of +the Niflungs and Volsungs. This book, thanks to Mr. William Morris, +can be bought for a shilling. It is a strange tale in which gods +have their parts, the tale of that oldest Treasure Hunt, the Hunt +for the gold of the dwarf Andvari. This was guarded by the serpent, +Fafnir, who had once been a man, and who was killed by the hero +Sigurd. But Andvari had cursed the gold, because his enemies robbed +him of it to the very last ring, and had no pity. Then the brave +Sigurd was involved in the evil luck. He it was who rode through +the fire, and woke the fair enchanted Brynhild, the Shield-maiden. +And she loved him, and he her, with all their hearts, always to the +death. But by ill fate she was married to another man, Sigurd's +chief friend, and Sigurd to another woman. And the women fell to +jealousy and quarrelling as women will, and they dragged the friends +into the feud, and one manslaying after another befell, till that +great murder of men in the Hall of Atli, the King. The curse came +on one and all of them--a curse of blood, and of evil loves, and of +witchwork destroying good and bad, all fearless, and all fallen in +one red ruin. + +The "Volsunga Saga" has this unique and unparalleled interest, that +it gives the spectacle of the highest epic genius, struggling out of +savagery into complete and free and conscious humanity. It is a +mark of the savage intellect not to discriminate abruptly between +man and the lower animals. In the tales of the lower peoples, the +characters are just as often beasts as men and women. Now, in the +earlier and wilder parts of the "Volsunga Saga," otters and dragons +play human parts. Signy and his son, and the mother of their enemy, +put on the skins of wolves, become wolves, and pass through hideous +adventures. The story reeks with blood, and ravins with lust of +blood. But when Sigurd arrives at full years of manhood, the +barbarism yields place, the Saga becomes human and conscious. + +These legends deal little with love. But in the "Volsunga Saga" the +permanent interest is the true and deathless love of Sigurd and +Brynhild: their separation by magic arts, the revival of their +passion too late, the man's resigned and heroic acquiescence, the +fiercer passion of the woman, who will neither bear her fate nor +accept her bliss at the price of honour and her plighted word. + +The situation, the nodus, is neither ancient merely nor modern +merely, but of all time. Sigurd, having at last discovered the net +in which he was trapped, was content to make the best of marriage +and of friendship. Brynhild was not. "The hearts of women are the +hearts of wolves," says the ancient Sanskrit commentary on the Rig +Veda. But the she-wolf's heart broke, like a woman's, when she had +caused Sigurd's slaying. Both man and woman face life, as they +conceive it, with eyes perfectly clear. + +The magic and the supernatural wiles are accidental, the human heart +is essential and eternal. There is no scene like this in the epics +of Greece. This is a passion that Homer did not dwell upon. In the +Iliad and Odyssey the repentance of Helen is facile; she takes life +easily. Clytemnestra is not brought on the stage to speak for +herself. In this respect the epic of the North, without the charm +and the delightfulness of the Southern epic, excels it; in this and +in a certain bare veracity, but in nothing else. We cannot put the +Germanic legend on the level of the Greek, for variety, for many- +sided wisdom, for changing beauty of a thousand colours. But in +this one passion of love the "Volsunga Saga" excels the Iliad. + +The Greek and the Northern stories are alike in one thing. Fate is +all-powerful over gods and men. Odin cannot save Balder; nor +Thetis, Achilles; nor Zeus, Sarpedon. But in the Sagas fate is more +constantly present to the mind. Much is thought of being "lucky," +or "unlucky." Howard's "good luck" is to be read in his face by the +wise, even when, to the common gaze, he seems a half-paralytic +dotard, dying of grief and age. + +Fate and evil luck dog the heroes of the Sagas. They seldom "end +well," as people say,--unless, when a brave man lies down to die on +the bed he has strewn of the bodies of his foes, you call THAT +ending well. So died Grettir the Strong. Even from a boy he was +strong and passionate, short of temper, quick of stroke, but loyal, +brave, and always unlucky. His worst luck began after he slew Glam. +This Glam was a wicked heathen herdsman, who would not fast on +Christmas Eve. So on the hills his dead body was found, swollen as +great as an ox, and as blue as death. + +What killed him they did not know. But he haunted the farmhouse, +riding the roof, kicking the sides with his heels, killing cattle +and destroying all things. Then Grettir came that way, and he slept +in the hall. At night the dead Glam came in, and Grettir arose, and +to it they went, struggling and dashing the furniture to bits. Glam +even dragged Grettir to the door, that he might slay him under the +sky, and for all his force Grettir yielded ground. Then on the very +threshold he suddenly gave way when Glam was pulling hardest, and +they fell, Glam undermost. Then Grettir drew the short sword, +"Kari's loom," that he had taken from a haunted grave, and stabbed +the dead thing that had lived again. But, as Glam lay a-dying in +the second death, the moon fell on his awful eyes, and Grettir saw +the horror of them, and from that hour he could not endure to be in +the dark, and he never dared to go alone. This was his death, for +he had an evil companion who betrayed him to his enemies; but when +they set on Grettir, though he was tired and sick of a wound, many +died with him. No man died like Grettir the Strong, nor slew so +many in his death. + +Besides those Sagas, there is the best of all, but the longest, +"Njala" (pronounced "Nyoula"), the story of Burnt Njal. That is too +long to sketch here, but it tells how, through the hard hearts and +jealousy of women, ruin came at last on the gentle Gunnar, and the +reckless Skarphedin of the axe, "The Ogress of War," and how Njal, +the wisest, the most peaceful, the most righteous of men, was burned +with all his house, and how that evil deed was avenged on the +Burners of Kari. + +The site of Njal's house is yet to be seen, after these nine hundred +years, and the little glen where Kari hid when he leaped through the +smoke and the flame that made his sword-blade blue. Yes, the very +black sand that Bergthora and her maids threw on the fire lies there +yet, and remnants of the whey they cast on the flames, when water +failed them. They were still there beneath the earth when an +English traveller dug up some of the ground last year, and it is +said that an American gentleman found a gold ring in the house of +Njal. The story of him and of his brave sons, and of his slaves, +and of his kindred, and of Queens and Kings of Norway, and of the +coming of the white Christ, are all in the "Njala." That and the +other Sagas would bear being shortened for general readers; once +they were all that the people had by way of books, and they liked +them long. But, shortened or not, they are brave books for men, for +the world is a place of battle still, and life is war. These old +heroes knew it, and did not shirk it, but fought it out, and left +honourable names and a glory that widens year by year. For the +story of Njal and Gunnar and Skarphedin was told by Captain Speedy +to the guards of Theodore, King of Abyssinia. They liked it well; +and with queer altered names and changes of the tale, that Saga will +be told in Abyssinia, and thence carried all through Africa where +white men have never wandered. So wide, so long-enduring a renown +could be given by a nameless Sagaman. + + + +CHARLES KINGSLEY + + + +When I was very young, a distinguished Review was still younger. I +remember reading one of the earliest numbers, being then myself a +boy of ten, and coming on a review of a novel. Never, as it seemed +to me, or seems to my memory, was a poor novel more heavily handled: +and yet I felt that the book must be a book to read on the very +earliest opportunity. It was "Westward Ho!" the most famous, and +perhaps the best novel, of Charles Kingsley. Often one has read it +since, and it is an example of those large, rich, well-fed romances, +at which you can cut and come again, as it were, laying it down, and +taking it up on occasion, with the certainty of being excited, +amused--and preached at. + +Lately I have re-read "Westward Ho!" and some of Kingsley's other +books, "Hypatia," "Hereward the Wake," and the poems, over again. +The old pleasure in them is not gone indeed, but it is modified. +One must be a boy to think Kingsley a humourist. At the age of +twelve or ten you take the comic passages which he conscientiously +provides, without being vexed or offended; you take them merely in +the way of business. Better things are coming: struggles with the +Inquisition, storms at sea, duels, the Armada, wanderings in the +Lotus land of the tropical west; and for the sake of all this a boy +puts up good-naturedly with Kingsley's humour. Perhaps he even +grins over Amyas "burying alternately his face in the pasty and the +pasty in his face," or he tries to feel diverted by the Elizabethan +waggeries of Frank. But there is no fun in them--they are +mechanical; they are worse than the humours of Scott's Sir Percy +Shafto, which are not fine. + +The same sense of everything not being quite so excellent as one +remembered it haunts one in "Hereward the Wake, the Last of the +English." Kingsley calls him "the Last of the English," but he is +really the first of the literary Vikings. In the essay on the Sagas +here I have tried to show, very imperfectly, what the Norsemen were +actually like. They caught Kingsley's fancy, and his "Hereward," +though born on English soil, is really Norse--not English. But +Kingsley did not write about the Vikings, nor about his Elizabethan +heroes in "Westward Ho!" in a perfectly simple, straightforward way. +He was always thinking of our own times and referring to them. That +is why even the rather ruffianly Hereward is so great an enemy of +saints and monks. That is why, in "Hypatia" (which opens so well), +we have those prodigiously dull, stupid, pedantic, and conceited +reflections of Raphael Ben Ezra. That is why, in all Kingsley's +novels, he is perpetually exciting himself in defence of marriage +and the family life, as if any monkish ideas about the blessedness +of bachelorhood were ever likely to drive the great Anglo-Saxon race +into convents and monasteries. That is the very last thing we have +to be afraid of; but Kingsley was afraid of it, and was eternally +attacking everything Popish and monkish. + +Boys and young people, then, can read "Westward Ho!" and "Hypatia," +and "Hereward the Wake," with far more pleasure than their elders. +They hurry on with the adventures, and do not stop to ask what the +moralisings mean. They forgive the humour of Kingsley because it is +well meant. They get, in short, the real good of this really great +and noble and manly and blundering genius. They take pleasure in +his love of strong men, gallant fights, desperate encounters with +human foes, with raging seas, with pestilence, or in haunted +forests. For in all that is good of his talent--in his courage, his +frank speech, his love of sport, his clear eyes, his devotion to +field and wood, river, moor, sea, and storms--Kingsley is a boy. He +has the brave, rather hasty, and not over well-informed enthusiasm +of sixteen, for persons and for causes. He saw an opponent (it +might be Father Newman): his heart lusted for a fight; he called +his opponent names, he threw his cap into the ring, he took his coat +off, he fought, he got a terrible scientific drubbing. It was like +a sixth-form boy matching himself against the champion. And then he +bore no malice. He took his defeat bravely. Nay, are we not left +with a confused feeling that he was not far in the wrong, though he +had so much the worse of the fight? + +Such was Kingsley: a man with a boy's heart; a hater of cruelty and +injustice, and also with a brave, indomitable belief that his own +country and his own cause were generally in the right, whatever the +quarrel. He loved England like a mistress, and hated her enemies, +Spain and the Pope, though even in them he saw the good. He is for +ever scolding the Spanish for their cruelties to the Indians, but he +defends our doings to the Irish, which (at that time) were neither +more nor less oppressive than the Spanish performances in America. +"Go it, our side!" you always hear this good Kingsley crying; and +one's heart goes out to him for it, in an age when everybody often +proves his own country to be in the wrong. + +Simple, brave, resolute, manly, a little given to "robustiousness," +Kingsley transfigured all these qualities by possessing the soul and +the heart of a poet. He was not a very great poet, indeed, but a +true poet--one of the very small band who are cut off, by a gulf +that can never be passed, from mere writers of verse, however +clever, educated, melodious, ingenious, amiable, and refined. He +had the real spark of fire, the true note; though the spark might +seldom break into flame, and the note was not always clear. Never +let us confuse true poets with writers of verse, still less with +writers of "poetic prose." Kingsley wrote a great deal of that- +perhaps too much: his descriptions of scenes are not always as good +as in Hereward's ride round the Fens, or when the tall, Spanish +galleon staggers from the revenge of man to the vengeance of God, to +her doom through the mist, to her rest in the sea. Perhaps only a +poet could have written that prose; it is certain no writer of +"poetic prose" could have written Kingsley's poems. + +His songs are his best things; they really are songs, not merely +lyric poems. They have the merit of being truly popular, whether +they are romantic, like "The Sands o' Dee," which actually +reproduces the best qualities of the old ballad; or whether they are +pathetic, like the "Doll's Song," in "Water Babies"; or whether they +attack an abuse, as in the song of "The Merry Brown Hares"; or +whether they soar higher, as in "Deep, deep Love, within thine own +abyss abiding"; or whether they are mere noble nonsense, as in +"Lorraine Loree":- + + +"She mastered young Vindictive; oh, the gallant lass was she, +And kept him straight and won the race, as near as near could be; +But he killed her at the brook against a pollard willow tree; +Oh, he killed her at the brook, the brute, for all the world to see, +And no one but the baby cried for poor Lorraine Loree." + + +The truth about Charles Kingsley seems to be that he rather made a +brave and cheery noise in this night-battle of modern life, than +that he directed any movement of forces. He kept cheering, as it +were, and waving his sword with a contagious enthusiasm. Being a +poet, and a man both of heart and of sentiment, he was equally +attached to the best things of the old world and to the best of the +new world, as far as one can forecast what it is to be. He loved +the stately homes of England, the ancient graduated order of +society, the sports of the past, the military triumphs, the +patriotic glories. But he was also on the side of the poor: as +"Parson Lot" he attempted to be a Christian Socialist. + +Now, the Socialists are the people who want to take everything; the +Christians are the persons who do not want to give more than they +find convenient. Kingsley himself was ready to give, and did give, +his time, his labour, his health, and probably his money, to the +poor. But he was by no means minded that they should swallow up the +old England with church and castle, manor-house and tower, wealth, +beauty, learning, refinement. The man who wrote "Alton Locke," the +story of the starved tailor-poet, was the man who nearly wept when +he heard a fox bark, and reflected that the days of fox-hunting were +numbered. He had a poet's politics, Colonel Newcome's politics. He +was for England, for the poor, for the rich, for the storied houses +of the chivalrous past, for the cottage, for the hall; and was dead +against the ideas of Manchester, and of Mr. John Bright. "My +father," he says in a letter, "would have put his hand to a spade or +an axe with any man, and so could I pretty well, too, when I was in +my prime; and my eldest son is now working with his own hands at +farming, previous to emigrating to South America, where he will do +the drudgery of his own cattle-pens and sheepfolds; and if I were +twenty-four and unmarried I would go out there too, and work like an +Englishman, and live by the sweat of my brow." + +This was the right side of his love of the Vikings; it was thus THEY +lived, when not at war--thus that every gentleman who has youth and +health should work, winning new worlds for his class, in place of +this miserable, over-crowded, brawling England. This, I think, was, +or should have been, the real lesson and message of Kingsley for the +generations to come. Like Scott the scion of an old knightly line, +he had that drop of wild blood which drives men from town into the +air and the desert, wherever there are savage lands to conquer, +beasts to hunt, and a hardy life to be lived. But he was the son of +a clergyman, and a clergyman himself. The spirit that should have +gone into action went into talking, preaching, writing--all sources +of great pleasure to thousands of people, and so not wasted. Yet +these were not the natural outlets of Kingsley's life: he should +have been a soldier, or an explorer; at least, we may believe that +he would have preferred such fortune. He did his best, the best he +knew, and it is all on the side of manliness, courage, kindness. +Perhaps he tried too many things--science, history, fairy tales, +religious and political discussions, romance, poetry. Poetry was +what he did best, romance next; his science and his history are +entertaining, but without authority. + +This, when one reads it again, seems a cold, unfriendly estimate of +a man so ardent and so genuine, a writer so vivacious and courageous +as Kingsley. Even the elderly reviewer bears to him, and to his +brother Henry, a debt he owes to few of their generation. The truth +is we should READ Kingsley; we must not criticise him. We must +accept him and be glad of him, as we accept a windy, sunny autumn +day--beautiful and blusterous--to be enjoyed and struggled with. If +once we stop and reflect, and hesitate, he seems to preach too much, +and with a confidence which his knowledge of the world and of +history does not justify. To be at one with Kingsley we must be +boys again, and that momentary change cannot but be good for us. +Soon enough--too soon--we shall drop back on manhood, and on all the +difficulties and dragons that Kingsley drove away by a blast on his +chivalrous and cheery horn. + + + +CHARLES LEVER: HIS BOOKS, ADVENTURES AND MISFORTUNES + + + +Surely it is a pleasant thing that there are books, like other +enjoyments, for all ages. You would not have a boy prefer whist to +fives, nor tobacco to toffee, nor Tolstoi to Charles Lever. The +ancients reckoned Tyrtaecus a fine poet, not that he was +particularly melodious or reflective, but that he gave men heart to +fight for their country. Charles Lever has done as much. In his +biography, by Mr. Fitzpatrick, it is told that a widow lady had but +one son, and for him she obtained an appointment at Woolwich. The +boy was timid and nervous, and she fancied that she must find for +him some other profession--perhaps that of literature. But he one +day chanced on Lever's novels, and they put so much heart into him +that his character quite altered, and he became the bravest of the +brave. + +Lever may not do as much for every one, but he does teach contempt +of danger, or rather, delight in it: a gay, spontaneous, boyish +kind of courage--Irish courage at its best. We may get more good +from that than harm from all his tales of much punch and many +drinking bouts. These are no longer in fashion and are not very gay +reading, perhaps, but his stories and songs, his duels and battles +and hunting scenes are as merry and as good as ever. Wild as they +seem in the reading, they are not far from the truth, as may be +gathered out of "Barrington's Memoirs," and their tales of the +reckless Irish life some eighty years ago. + +There were two men in Charles Lever--a glad man and a sad man. The +gaiety was for his youth, when he poured out his "Lorrequers" and +"O'Malleys," all the mirth and memories of his boyhood, all the +tales of fighting and feasting he gleaned from battered, seasoned +old warriors, like Major Monsoon. Even then, Mr. Thackeray, who +knew him, and liked and laughed at him, recognised through his +merriment "the fund of sadness beneath." "The author's character is +NOT humour, but sentiment . . . extreme delicacy, sweetness and +kindliness of heart. The spirits are mostly artificial, the fond is +sadness, as appears to me to be that of most Irish writing and +people." Even in "Charles O'Malley," what a true, dark picture +that is of the duel beside the broad, angry river on the level waste +under the wide grey sky! Charles has shot his opponent, Bodkin, and +with Considine, his second, is making his escape. "Considine cried +out suddenly, 'Too infamous, by Jove: we are murdered men!'" + +"'What do you mean?' said I. + +"'Don't you see that?' said he, pointing to something black which +floated from a pole at the opposite side of the river. + +"'Yes; what is it?' + +"'It's his coat they've put upon an oar, to show the people he's +killed--that's all. Every man here's his tenant; and look there! +they're not giving us much doubt as to their intentions.' + +"Here a tremendous yell burst forth from the mass of people along +the shore, which, rising to a terrific cry, sank gradually down to a +low wailing, then rose and fell several times, as the Irish death- +cry filled the air, and rose to heaven, as if imploring vengeance on +a murderer." + +Passages like this, and that which follows--the dangerous voyage +through the storm on the flooded Shannon, and through the reefs--are +what Mr. Thackeray may have had in his mind when he spoke of Lever's +underlying melancholy. Like other men with very high spirits, he +had hours of gloom, and the sadness and the thoughtfulness that were +in him came forth then and informed his later books. These are far +more carefully written, far more cunningly constructed, than the old +chapters written from month to month as the fit took him, with no +more plan or premeditation than "Pickwick." But it is the early +stories that we remember, and that he lives by--the pages thrown off +at a heat, when he was a lively doctor with few patients, and was +not over-attentive to them. These were the days of Harry Lorrequer +and Tom Burke; characters that ran away with him, and took their own +path through a merry world of diversion. Like the knights in Sir +Thomas Malory, these heroes "ride at adventure," ride amazing horses +that dread no leap, be it an Irish stone wall on a mountain crest, +or be it the bayonets of a French square. + +Mr. Lever's biographer has not been wholly successful in pleasing +the critics, and he does not seem to affect very critical airs +himself, but he tells a straightforward tale. The life of Charles +Lever is the natural commentary on his novels. He was born at +Dublin in 1806, the son of a builder or architect. At school he was +very much flogged, and the odds are that he deserved these +attentions, for he had high spirits beyond the patience of dominies. +Handsome, merry and clever, he read novels in school hours, wore a +ring, and set up as a dandy. Even then he was in love with the +young lady whom he married in the end. At a fight with boys of +another school, he and a friend placed a mine under the ground +occupied by the enemy, and blew them, more or less, into the air. +Many an eyebrow was singed off on that fatal day, when, for the only +time, this romancer of the wars "smelled powder." He afterwards +pleaded for his party before the worthy police magistrate, and +showed great promise as a barrister. At Trinity College, Dublin, he +was full of his fun, made ballads, sang them through the streets in +disguise (like Fergusson, the Scottish poet), and one night +collected thirty shillings in coppers. + +The original of Frank Webber, in "Charles O'Malley," was a chum of +his, and he took part in the wonderful practical jokes which he has +made immortal in that novel. + +From Trinity College, Dublin, Lever went to Gottingen, where he +found fun and fighting enough among the German students. From that +hour he became a citizen of the world, or, at least, of Europe, and +perhaps, like the prophets, was most honoured when out of his own +country. He returned to Dublin and took his degree in medicine, +after playing a famous practical joke. A certain medical professor +was wont to lecture in bed. One night he left town unexpectedly. +Lever, by chance, came early to lecture, found the Professor absent, +slipped into his bed, put on his nightcap, and took the class +himself. On another day he was standing outside the Foundling +Hospital with a friend, a small man. Now, a kind of stone cradle +for foundlings was built outside the door, and, when a baby was +placed therein, a bell rang. Lever lifted up his friend, popped him +into the cradle, and had the joy of seeing the promising infant +picked out by the porter. + +It seems a queer education for a man of letters; but, like Sir +Walter Scott when revelling in Liddesdale, he "was making himself +all the time." He was collecting myriads of odd experiences and +treasures of anecdotes; he was learning to know men of all sorts; +and later, as a country doctor, he had experiences of mess tables, +of hunting, and of all the ways of his remarkable countrymen. When +cholera visited his district he stuck to his work like a man of +heart and courage. But the usual tasks of a country doctor wearied +him; he neglected them, he became unpopular with the authorities, he +married his first love and returned to Brussels, where he practised +as a physician. He had already begun his first notable book, "Harry +Lorrequer," in the University Magazine. It is merely a string of +Irish and other stories, good, bad, and indifferent--a picture +gallery full of portraits of priests, soldiers, peasants and odd +characters. The plot is of no importance; we are not interested in +Harry's love affairs, but in his scrapes, adventures, duels at home +and abroad. He fights people by mistake whom he does not know by +sight, he appears on parade with his face blackened, he wins large +piles at trente et quarante, he disposes of coopers of claret and +bowls of punch, and the sheep on a thousand hills provide him with +devilled kidneys. The critics and the authors thought little of the +merry medley, but the public enjoyed it, and defied the reviewers. +One paper preferred the book to a wilderness of "Pickwicks"; and as +this opinion was advertised everywhere by M'Glashan, the publisher, +Mr. Dickens was very much annoyed indeed. Authors are easily +annoyed. But Lever writes ut placeat pueris, and there was a +tremendous fight at Rugby between two boys, the "Slogger Williams" +and "Tom Brown" of the period, for the possession of "Harry +Lorrequer." When an author has the boys of England on his side, he +can laugh at the critics. Not that Lever laughed: he, too, was +easily vexed, and much depressed, when the reviews assailed him. +Next he began "Charles O'Malley"; and if any man reads this essay +who has not read the "Irish Dragoon," let him begin at once. +"O'Malley" is what you can recommend to a friend. Here is every +species of diversion: duels and steeplechases, practical jokes at +college (good practical jokes, not booby traps and apple-pie beds); +here is fighting in the Peninsula. If any student is in doubt, let +him try chapter xiv.--the battle on the Douro. This is, indeed, +excellent military writing, and need not fear comparison as art with +Napier's famous history. Lever has warmed to his work; his heart is +in it; he had the best information from an eye-witness; and the +brief beginning, on the peace of nature before the strife of men, is +admirably poetical. + +To reach the French, under Soult, Wellesley had to cross the deep +and rapid Douro, in face of their fire, and without regular +transport. "He dared the deed. What must have been his confidence +in the men he commanded! what must have been his reliance on his own +genius!" + +You hold your breath as you read, while English and Germans charge, +till at last the field is won, and the dust of the French columns +retreating in the distance blows down the road to Spain. + +The Great Duke read this passage, and marvelled how Lever knew +certain things that he tells. He learned this, and much more, the +humours of war, from the original of Major Monsoon. Falstaff is +alone in the literature of the world, but if ever there came a later +Falstaff, Monsoon was the man. And where have you such an Irish +Sancho Panza as Micky Free, that independent minstrel, or such an +Irish Di Vernon as Baby Blake? The critics may praise Lever's +thoughtful and careful later novels as they will, but "Charles +O'Malley" will always be the pattern of a military romance. The +anecdote of "a virtuous weakness" in O'Shaughnessy's father's +character would alone make the fortune of many a story. The truth +is, it is not easy to lay down "Charles O'Malley," to leave off +reading it, and get on with the account of Lever. + +His excellent and delightful novel scarcely received one favourable +notice from the press. This may have been because it was so +popular; but Lever became so nervous that he did not like to look at +the papers. When he went back to Dublin and edited a magazine +there, he was more fiercely assailed than ever. It is difficult for +an Irishman to write about the Irish, or for a Scot to write about +the Scottish, without hurting the feelings of his countrymen. While +their literary brethren are alive they are not very dear to the +newspaper scribes of these gallant nations; and thus Jeffrey was +more severe to Scott than he need have been, while the Irish press, +it appears, made an onslaught on Lever. Mr. Thackeray met Lever in +Dublin, and he mentions this unkind behaviour. "Lorrequer's +military propensities have been objected to strongly by his +squeamish Hibernian brethren . . . But is Lorrequer the only man in +Ireland who is fond of military spectacles? Why does the Nation +publish these edifying and Christian war songs? . . . And who is it +that prates about the Irish at Waterloo, and the Irish at Fontenoy, +and the Irish at Seringapatam, and the Irish at Timbuctoo? If Mr. +O'Connell, like a wise rhetorician, chooses, and very properly, to +flatter the national military passion, why not Harry Lorrequer?" + +Why not, indeed? But Mr. Lever was a successful Irishman of +letters, and a good many other Irish gentlemen of letters, honest +Doolan and his friends, were not successful. That is the humour of +it. + +Though you, my youthful reader, if I have one, do not detest Jones +because he is in the Eleven, nor Brown because he has "got his cap," +nor Smith because he does Greek Iambics like Sophocles; though you +rather admire and applaud these champions, you may feel very +differently when you come to thirty years or more, and see other men +doing what you cannot do, and gaining prizes beyond your grasp. And +then, if you are a reviewer, you "will find fault with a book for +what it does not give," as thus, to take Mr. Thackeray's example:- + +"Lady Smigsmag's novel is amusing, but lamentably deficient in +geological information." "Mr. Lever's novels are trashy and +worthless, for his facts are not borne out by any authority, and he +gives us no information about the political state of Ireland. 'Oh! +our country, our green and beloved, our beautiful and oppressed?'" +and so forth. + +It was not altogether a happy time that Lever passed at home. Not +only did his native critics belabour him most ungrudgingly for "Tom +Burke," that vivid and chivalrous romance, but he made enemies of +authors. He edited a magazine! Is not that enough? He wearied of +wading through waggon-loads of that pure unmitigated rubbish which +people are permitted to "shoot" at editorial doors. How much dust +there is in it to how few pearls! He did not return MSS. punctually +and politely. The office cat could edit the volunteered +contributions of many a magazine, but Lever was even more casual and +careless than an experienced office cat. He grew crabbed, and tried +to quarrel with Mr. Thackeray for that delightful parody "Phil +Fogarty," nearly as good as a genuine story by Lever. + +Beset by critics, burlesqued by his friend, he changed his style +(Mr. Fitzpatrick tells us) and became more sober--and not so +entertaining. He actually published a criticism of Beyle, of +Stendhal, that psychological prig, the darling of culture and of M. +Paul Bourget. Harry Lorrequer on Stendhal!--it beggars belief. He +nearly fought a duel with the gentleman who is said to have +suggested Mr. Pecksniff to Dickens! Yet they call his early novels +improbable. Nothing could be less plausible than a combat between +Harry Lorrequer and a gentleman who, even remotely, resembled the +father of Cherry and Merry. + +Lever went abroad again, and in Florence or the Baths of Lucca, in +Trieste or Spezia, he passed the rest of his life. He saw the +Italian revolution of 1848, and it added to his melancholy. This is +plain from one of his novels with a curious history--"Con Cregan." +He wrote it at the same time as "The Daltons," and he did not sign +it. The reviewers praised "Con Cregan" at the expense of the signed +work, rejoicing that Lever, as "The Daltons" proved, was exhausted, +and that a new Irish author, the author of "Con Cregan," was coming +to eclipse him. In short, he eclipsed himself, and he did not like +it. His right hand was jealous of what his left hand did. It seems +odd that any human being, however dull and envious, failed to detect +Lever in the rapid and vivacious adventures of his Irish "Gil Blas," +hero of one of the very best among his books, a piece not unworthy +of Dumas. "Con" was written after midnight, "The Daltons" in the +morning; and there can be no doubt which set of hours was more +favourable to Lever's genius. Of course he liked "The Daltons" +best; of all people, authors appear to be their own worst critics. + +It is not possible even to catalogue Lever's later books here. +Again he drove a pair of novels abreast--"The Dodds" and "Sir Jasper +Carew"--which contain some of his most powerful situations. When +almost an old man, sad, outworn in body, straitened in +circumstances, he still produced excellent tales in this later +manner--"Lord Kilgobbin," "That Boy of Norcott's," "A Day's Ride," +and many more. These are the thoughts of a tired man of the world, +who has done and seen everything that such men see and do. He says +that he grew fat, and bald, and grave; he wrote for the grave and +the bald, not for the happier world which is young, and curly, and +merry. He died at last, it is said, in his sleep; and it is added +that he did what Harry Lorrequer would not have done--he left his +affairs in perfect order. + +Lever lived in an age so full of great novelists that, perhaps, he +is not prized as he should be. Dickens, Bulwer, Thackeray, +Trollope, George Eliot, were his contemporaries. But when we turn +back and read him once more, we see that Lever, too, was a worthy +member of that famous company--a romancer for boys and men. + + + +THE POEMS OF SIR WALTER SCOTT + + + +Yesterday, as the sun was very bright, and there was no wind, I took +a fishing-rod on chance and Scott's poems, and rowed into the middle +of St. Mary's Loch. Every hill, every tuft of heather was reflected +in the lake, as in a silver mirror. There was no sound but the +lapping of the water against the boat, the cry of the blackcock from +the hill, and the pleasant plash of a trout rising here and there. +So I read "The Lay of the Last Minstrel" over again, here, in the +middle of the scenes where the story is laid and where the fights +were fought. For when the Baron went on pilgrimage, + + +"And took with him this elvish page +To Mary's Chapel of the Lowes," + +it was to the ruined chapel HERE that he came, + + +"For there, beside our Ladye's lake, +An offering he had sworn to make, +And he would pay his vows." + + +But his enemy, the Lady of Branksome, gathered a band, + + +"Of the best that would ride at her command," + + +and they all came from the country round. Branksome, where the lady +lived, is twenty miles off, towards the south, across the ranges of +lonely green hills. Harden, where her ally, Wat of Harden, abode, +is within twelve miles; and Deloraine, where William dwelt, is +nearer still; and John of Thirlestane had his square tower in the +heather, "where victual never grew," on Ettrick Water, within ten +miles. These gentlemen, and their kinsfolk and retainers, being at +feud with the Kers, tried to slay the Baron, in the Chapel of "Lone +St. Mary of the Waves." + + +"They were three hundred spears and three. +Through Douglas burn, up Yarrow stream, +Their horses prance, their lances gleam. +They came to St. Mary's Lake ere day; +But the chapel was void, and the Baron away. +They burned the chapel for very rage, +And cursed Lord Cranstoun's goblin-page." + + +The Scotts were a rough clan enough to burn a holy chapel because +they failed to kill their enemy within the sacred walls. But, as I +read again, for the twentieth time, Sir Walter's poem, floating on +the lonely breast of the lake, in the heart of the hills where +Yarrow flows, among the little green mounds that cover the ruins of +chapel and castle and lady's bower, I asked myself whether Sir +Walter was indeed a great and delightful poet, or whether he pleases +me so much because I was born in his own country, and have one drop +of the blood of his Border robbers in my own veins? + +It is not always pleasant to go back to places, or to meet people, +whom we have loved well, long ago. If they have changed little, we +have changed much. The little boy, whose first book of poetry was +"The Lady of the Lake," and who naturally believed that there was no +poet like Sir Walter, is sadly changed into the man who has read +most of the world's poets, and who hears, on many sides, that Scott +is outworn and doomed to deserved oblivion. Are they right or +wrong, the critics who tell us, occasionally, that Scott's good +novels make up for his bad verse, or that verse and prose, all must +go? Pro captu lectoris, by the reader's taste, they stand or fall; +yet even pessimism can scarcely believe that the Waverley Novels are +mortal. They were once the joy of every class of minds; they cannot +cease to be the joy of those who cling to the permanently good, and +can understand and forgive lapses, carelessnesses, and the leisurely +literary fashion of a former age. But, as to the poems, many give +them up who cling to the novels. It does not follow that the poems +are bad. In the first place, they are of two kinds--lyric and +narrative. Now, the fashion of narrative in poetry has passed away +for the present. The true Greek epics are read by a few in Greek; +by perhaps fewer still in translations. But so determined are we +not to read tales in verse, that prose renderings, even of the +epics, nay, even of the Attic dramas, have come more or less into +vogue. This accounts for the comparative neglect of Sir Walter's +lays. They are spoken of as Waverley Novels spoiled. This must +always be the opinion of readers who will not submit to stories in +verse; it by no means follows that the verse is bad. If we make an +exception, which we must, in favour of Chaucer, where is there +better verse in story telling in the whole of English literature? +The readers who despise "Marmion," or "The Lady of the Lake," do so +because they dislike stories told in poetry. From poetry they +expect other things, especially a lingering charm and magic of +style, a reflective turn, "criticism of life." These things, except +so far as life can be criticised in action, are alien to the Muse of +narrative. Stories and pictures are all she offers: Scott's +pictures, certainly, are fresh enough, his tales are excellent +enough, his manner is sufficiently direct. To take examples: every +one who wants to read Scott's poetry should begin with the "Lay." +From opening to close it never falters:- + + +"Nine and twenty knights of fame +Hung their shields in Branksome Hall; +Nine and twenty squires of name +Brought their steeds to bower from stall, +Nine and twenty yeomen tall +Waited, duteous, on them all . . . +Ten of them were sheathed in steel, +With belted sword, and spur on heel; +They quitted not their harness bright +Neither by day nor yet by night: +They lay down to rest +With corslet laced, +Pillowed on buckler cold and hard; +They carved at the meal +With gloves of steel, +And they drank the red wine through the helmet barred." + + +Now, is not that a brave beginning? Does not the verse clank and +chime like sword sheath on spur, like the bits of champing horses? +Then, when William of Deloraine is sent on his lonely midnight ride +across the haunted moors and wolds, does the verse not gallop like +the heavy armoured horse? + + +"Unchallenged, thence passed Deloraine, +To ancient Riddell's fair domain, +Where Aill, from mountains freed, +Down from the lakes did raving come; +Each wave was crested with tawny foam, +Like the mane of a chestnut steed, +In vain! no torrent, deep or broad, +Might bar the bold moss-trooper's road; +At the first plunge the horse sunk low, +And the water broke o'er the saddle-bow." + + +These last two lines have the very movement and note, the deep heavy +plunge, the still swirl of the water. Well I know the lochs whence +Aill comes red in flood; many a trout have I taken in Aill, long +ago. This, of course, causes a favourable prejudice, a personal +bias towards admiration. But I think the poetry itself is good, and +stirs the spirit, even of those who know not Ailmoor, the mother of +Aill, that lies dark among the melancholy hills. + +The spirit is stirred throughout by the chivalry and the courage of +Scott's men and of his women. Thus the Lady of Branksome addresses +the English invaders who have taken her boy prisoner:- + + +"For the young heir of Branksome's line, +God be his aid, and God be mine; +Through me no friend shall meet his doom; +Here, while I live, no foe finds room. +Then if thy Lords their purpose urge, +Take our defiance loud and high; +Our slogan is their lyke-wake dirge, +Our moat, the grave where they shall lie." + + +Ay, and though the minstrel says he is no love poet, and though, +indeed, he shines more in war than in lady's bower, is not this a +noble stanza on true love, and worthy of what old Malory writes in +his "Mort d'Arthur"? Because here Scott speaks for himself, and of +his own unhappy and immortal affection:- + + +"True love's the gift which God has given +To man alone beneath the Heaven. +It is not Fantasy's hot fire, +Whose wishes, soon as granted, fly; +It liveth not in fierce desire, +With dead desire it dock not die: +It is the secret sympathy, +The silver link, the silken tie, +Which heart to heart and mind to mind, +In body and in soul can bind." + + +Truth and faith, courage and chivalry, a free life in the hills and +by the streams, a shrewd brain, an open heart, a kind word for +friend or foeman, these are what you learn from the "Lay," if you +want to learn lessons from poetry. It is a rude legend, perhaps, as +the critics said at once, when critics were disdainful of wizard +priests and ladies magical. But it is a deathless legend, I hope; +it appeals to every young heart that is not early spoiled by low +cunning, and cynicism, and love of gain. The minstrel's own +prophecy is true, and still, and always, + + +"Yarrow, as he rolls along, +Bears burden to the minstrel's song." + + +After the "Lay" came "Marmion, a Tale of Flodden Field." It is far +more ambitious and complicated than the "Lay," and is not much worse +written. Sir Walter was ever a rapid and careless poet, and as he +took more pains with his plot, he took less with his verse. His +friends reproved him, but he answered to one of them - + + +"Since oft thy judgment could refine +My flattened thought and cumbrous line, +Still kind, as is thy wont, attend, +And in the minstrel spare the friend: +Though wild as cloud, as stream, as gale, +Flow forth, flow unrestrained, my tale!" + + +Any one who knows Scott's country knows how cloud and stream and +gale all sweep at once down the valley of Ettrick or of Tweed. West +wind, wild cloud, red river, they pour forth as by one impulse-- +forth from the far-off hills. He let his verse sweep out in the +same stormy sort, and many a "cumbrous line," many a "flattened +thought," you may note, if you will, in "Marmion." For example - + + +"And think what he must next have felt, +At buckling of the falchion belt." + + +The "Lay" is a tale that only verse could tell; much of "Marmion" +might have been told in prose, and most of "Rokeby." But prose +could never give the picture of Edinburgh, nor tell the tale of +Flodden Fight in "Marmion," which I verily believe is the best +battle-piece in all the poetry of all time, better even than the +stand of Aias by the ships in the Iliad, better than the slaying of +the Wooers in the Odyssey. Nor could prose give us the hunting of +the deer and the long gallop over hillside and down valley, with +which the "Lady of the Lake" begins, opening thereby the enchanted +gates of the Highlands to the world. "The Lady of the Lake," except +in the battle-piece, is told in a less rapid metre than that of the +"Lay," less varied than that of "Marmion." "Rokeby" lives only by +its songs; the "Lord of the Isles" by Bannockburn, the "Field of +Waterloo" by the repulse of the Cuirassiers. But all the poems are +interspersed with songs and ballads, as the beautiful ballad of +"Alice Brand"; and Scott's fame rests on THESE far more than on his +later versified romances. Coming immediately after the very tamest +poets who ever lived, like Hayley, Scott wrote songs and ballads as +wild and free, as melancholy or gay, as ever shepherd sang, or gipsy +carolled, or witch-wife moaned, or old forgotten minstrel left to +the world, music with no maker's name. For example, take the +Outlaw's rhyme - + + +"With burnished brand and musketoon, +So gallantly you come, +I read you for a bold dragoon +That lists the tuck of drum. +I list no more the tuck of drum, +No more the trumpet hear; +But when the beetle sounds his hum, +My comrades take the spear. +And, oh, though Brignal banks be fair, +And Greta woods be gay, +Yet mickle must the maiden dare, +Would reign my Queen of May!" + + +How musical, again, is this! - + + +"This morn is merry June, I trow, +The rose is budding fain; +But she shall bloom in winter snow, +Ere we two meet again. +He turned his charger as he spake, +Upon the river shore, +He gave his bridle-reins a shake, +Said, 'Adieu for evermore, +My love! +Adieu for evermore!'" + + +Turning from the legends in verse, let it not be forgotten that +Scott was a great lyrical poet. Mr. Palgrave is not too lenient a +judge, and his "Golden Treasury" is a touchstone, as well as a +treasure, of poetic gold. In this volume Wordsworth contributes +more lyrics than any other poet: Shelley and Shakespeare come next; +then Sir Walter. For my part I would gladly sacrifice a few of +Wordsworth's for a few more of Scott's. But this may be prejudice. +Mr. Palgrave is not prejudiced, and we see how high is his value for +Sir Walter. + +There are scores of songs in his works, touching and sad, or gay as +a hunter's waking, that tell of lovely things lost by tradition, and +found by him on the moors: all these--not prized by Sir Walter +himself--are in his gift, and in that of no other man. For example, +his "Eve of St. John" is simply a masterpiece, a ballad among +ballads. Nothing but an old song moves us like - + + +"Are these the links o' Forth, she said, +Are these the bends o' Dee!" + + +He might have done more of the best, had he very greatly cared. +Alone among poets, he had neither vanity nor jealousy; he thought +little of his own verse and his own fame: would that he had thought +more! would that he had been more careful of what was so precious! +But he turned to prose; bade poetry farewell. + + +"Yet, once again, farewell, thou Minstrel Harp, +Yet, once again, forgive my feeble sway. +And little reck I of the censure sharp +May idly cavil at an idle lay." + + +People still cavil idly, complaining that Scott did not finish, or +did not polish his pieces; that he was not Keats, or was not +Wordsworth. He was himself; he was the Last Minstrel, the latest, +the greatest, the noblest of natural poets concerned with natural +things. He sang of free, fierce, and warlike life, of streams yet +rich in salmon, and moors not yet occupied by brewers; of lonely +places haunted in the long grey twilights of the North; of crumbling +towers where once dwelt the Lady of Branksome or the Flower of +Yarrow. Nature summed up in him many a past age a world of ancient +faiths; and before the great time of Britain wholly died, to +Britain, as to Greece, she gave her Homer. When he was old, and +tired, and near his death--so worn with trouble and labour that he +actually signed his own name wrong--he wrote his latest verse, for a +lady. It ends - + + +"My country, be thou glorious still!" + + +and so he died, within the sound of the whisper of Tweed, foreseeing +the years when his country would no more be glorious, thinking of +his country only, forgetting quite the private sorrow of his own +later days. + +People will tell you that Scott was not a great poet; that his bolt +is shot, his fame perishing. Little he cared for his fame! But for +my part I think and hope that Scott can never die, till men grow up +into manhood without ever having been boys--till they forget that + + +"One glorious hour of crowded life +Is worth an age without a name!" + + +Thus, the charges against Sir Walter's poetry are, on the whole, +little more than the old critical fallacy of blaming a thing for not +being something else. "It takes all sorts to make a world," in +poetry as in life. Sir Walter's sort is a very good sort, and in +English literature its place was empty, and waiting for him. Think +of what he did. English poetry had long been very tame and +commonplace, written in couplets like Pope's, very artificial and +smart, or sensible and slow. He came with poems of which the music +seemed to gallop, like thundering hoofs and ringing bridles of a +rushing border troop. Here were goblin, ghost, and fairy, fight and +foray, fair ladies and true lovers, gallant knights and hard blows, +blazing beacons on every hill crest and on the bartisan of every +tower. Here was a world made alive again that had been dead for +three hundred years--a world of men and women. + +They say that the archaeology is not good. Archaeology is a +science; in its application to poetry, Scott was its discoverer. +Others can name the plates of a coat of armour more learnedly than +he, but he made men wear them. They call his Gothic art false, his +armour pasteboard; but he put living men under his castled roofs, +living men into his breastplates and taslets. Science advances, old +knowledge becomes ignorance; it is poetry that does not die, and +that will not die, while - + + +"The triple pride +Of Eildon looks over Strathclyde." + + + +JOHN BUNYAN + + + +Dr. Johnson once took Bishop Percy's little daughter on his knee, +and asked her what she thought of the "Pilgrim's Progress." The +child answered that she had not read it. "No?" replied the Doctor; +"then I would not give one farthing for you," and he set her down +and took no further notice of her. + +This story, if true, proves that the Doctor was rather intolerant. +We must not excommunicate people because they have not our taste in +books. The majority of people do not care for books at all. + +There is a descendant of John Bunyan's alive now, or there was +lately, who never read the "Pilgrim's Progress." Books are not in +his line. Nay, Bunyan himself, who wrote sixty works, was no great +reader. An Oxford scholar who visited him in his study found no +books at all, except some of Bunyan's own and Foxe's "Book of +Martyrs." + +Yet, little as the world in general cares for reading, it has read +Bunyan more than most. One hundred thousand copies of the "Pilgrim" +are believed to have been sold in his own day, and the story has +been done into the most savage languages, as well as into those of +the civilised world. + +Dr. Johnson, who did not like Dissenters, praises the "invention, +imagination, and conduct of the story," and knew no other book he +wished longer except "Robinson Crusoe" and "Don Quixote." Well, Dr. +Johnson would not have given a farthing for ME, as I am quite +contented with the present length of these masterpieces. What books +do YOU wish longer? I wish Homer had written a continuation of the +Odyssey, and told us what Odysseus did among the far-off men who +never tasted salt nor heard of the sea. A land epic after the sea +epic, how good it would have been--from Homer! But it would have +taxed the imagination of Dante to continue the adventures of +Christian and his wife after they had once crossed the river and +reached the city. + +John Bunyan has been more fortunate than most authors in one of his +biographies. + +His life has been written by the Rev. Dr. Brown, who is now minister +of his old congregation at Bedford; and an excellent life it is. +Dr. Brown is neither Roundhead nor Cavalier; for though he is, of +course, on Bunyan's side, he does not throw stones at the beautiful +Church of England. + +Probably most of us are on Bunyan's side now. It might be a good +thing that we should all dwell together in religious unity, but +history shows that people cannot be bribed into brotherhood. They +tried to bully Bunyan; they arrested and imprisoned him--unfairly +even in law, according to Dr. Brown, not unfairly, Mr. Froude +thinks--and he would not be bullied. + +What was much more extraordinary, he would not be embittered. In +spite of all, he still called Charles II. "a gracious Prince." When +a subject is in conscience at variance with the law, Bunyan said, he +has but one course--to accept peaceably the punishment which the law +awards. He was never soured, never angered by twelve years of +durance, not exactly in a loathsome dungeon, but in very +uncomfortable quarters. When there came a brief interval of +toleration, he did not occupy himself in brawling, but in preaching, +and looking after the manners and morals of the little "church," +including one woman who brought disagreeable charges against +"Brother Honeylove." The church decided that there was nothing in +the charges, but somehow the name of Brother Honeylove does not +inspire confidence. + +Almost everybody knows the main facts of Bunyan's life. They may +not know that he was of Norman descent (as Dr. Brown seems to +succeed in proving), nor that the Bunyans came over with the +Conqueror, nor that he was a gipsy, as others hold. On Dr. Brown's +showing, Bunyan's ancestors lost their lands in process of time and +change, and Bunyan's father was a tinker. He preferred to call +himself a brazier--his was the rather unexpected trade to which Mr. +Dick proposed apprenticing David Copperfield. + +Bunyan himself, "the wondrous babe," as Dr. Brown enthusiastically +styles him, was christened on November 30th, 1628. He was born in a +cottage, long fallen, and hard by was a marshy place, "a veritable +slough of despond." Bunyan may have had it in mind when he wrote of +the slough where Christian had so much trouble. He was not a +travelled man: all his knowledge of people and places he found at +his doors. He had some schooling, "according to the rate of other +poor men's children," and assuredly it was enough. + +The great civil war broke out, and Bunyan was a soldier; he tells us +not on which side. Dr. Brown and Mr. Lewis Morris think he was on +that of the Parliament, but his old father, the tinker, stood for +the King. Mr. Froude is rather more inclined to hold that he was +among the "gay gallants who struck for the crown." He does not seem +to have been much under fire, but he got that knowledge of the +appearance of war which he used in his siege of the City of Mansoul. +One can hardly think that Bunyan liked war--certainly not from +cowardice, but from goodness of heart. + +In 1646 the army was disbanded, and Bunyan went back to Elstow +village and his tinkering, his bell-ringing, his dancing with the +girls, his playing at "cat" on a Sunday after service. + +He married very young and poor. He married a pious wife, and read +all her library--"The Plain Man's Pathway to Heaven," and "The +Practice of Piety." He became very devout in the spirit of the +Church of England, and he gave up his amusements. Then he fell into +the Slough of Despond, then he went through the Valley of the +Shadow, and battled with Apollyon. + +People have wondered WHY he fancied himself such a sinner? He +confesses to having been a liar and a blasphemer. If I may guess, I +fancy that this was merely the literary genius of Bunyan seeking for +expression. His lies, I would go bail, were tremendous romances, +wild fictions told for fun, never lies of cowardice or for gain. As +to his blasphemies, he had an extraordinary power of language, and +that was how he gave it play. "Fancy swearing" was his only +literary safety-valve, in those early days, when he played cat on +Elstow Green. + +Then he heard a voice dart from heaven into his soul, which said, +"Wilt thou leave thy sins and go to heaven, or have thy sins and go +to hell?" So he fell on repentance, and passed those awful years of +mental torture, when all nature seemed to tempt him to the Unknown +Sin. + +What did all this mean? It meant that Bunyan was within an ace of +madness. + +It happens to a certain proportion of men, religiously brought up, +to suffer like Bunyan. They hear voices, they are afraid of that +awful unknown iniquity, and of eternal death, as Bunyan and Cowper +were afraid. + +Was it not De Quincey who was at school with a bully who believed he +had been guilty of the unpardonable offence? Bullying is an offence +much less pardonable than most men are guilty of. Their best plan +(in Bunyan's misery) is to tell Apollyon that the Devil is an ass, +to do their work and speak the truth. + +Bunyan got quit of his terror at last, briefly by believing in the +goodness of God. He did not say, like Mr. Carlyle, "Well, if all my +fears are true, what then?" His was a Christian, not a stoical +deliverance. + +The "church" in which Bunyan found shelter had for minister a +converted major in a Royalist regiment. It was a quaint little +community, the members living like the early disciples, correcting +each other's faults, and keeping a severe eye on each other's lives. +Bunyan became a minister in it; but, Puritan as he was, he lets his +Pilgrims dance on joyful occasions, and even Mr. Ready-to-Halt +waltzes with a young lady of the Pilgrim company. + +As a minister and teacher Bunyan began to write books of controversy +with Quakers and clergymen. The points debated are no longer +important to us; the main thing was that he got a pen into his hand, +and found a proper outlet for his genius, a better way than fancy +swearing. + +If he had not been cast into Bedford jail for preaching in a +cottage, he might never have dreamed his immortal dream, nor become +all that he was. The leisures of gaol were long. In that "den" the +Muse came to him, the fair kind Muse of the Home Beautiful. He saw +all that company of his, so like and so unlike Chaucer's: Faithful, +and Hopeful, and Christian, the fellowship of fiends, the truculent +Cavaliers of Vanity Fair, and Giant Despair, with his grievous +crabtree cudgel; and other people he saw who are with us always,-- +the handsome Madam Bubble, and the young woman whose name was Dull, +and Mr. Worldly Wiseman, and Mr. Facing Bothways, and Byends, all +the persons of the comedy of human life. + +He hears the angelic songs of the City beyond the river; he hears +them, but repeat them to us he cannot, "for I'm no poet," as he says +himself. He beheld the country of Beulah, and the Delectable +Mountains, that earthly Paradise of nature where we might be happy +yet, and wander no farther, if the world would let us--fair +mountains in whose streams Izaak Walton was then even casting angle. + +It is pleasant to fancy how Walton and Bunyan might have met and +talked, under a plane tree by the Ouse, while the May showers were +falling. Surely Bunyan would not have likened the good old man to +Formalist; and certainly Walton would have enjoyed travelling with +Christian, though the book was by none of his dear bishops, but by a +Non-conformist. They were made to like but not to convert each +other; in matters ecclesiastical they saw the opposite sides of the +shield. Each wrote a masterpiece. It is too late to praise "The +Complete Angler" or the "Pilgrim's Progress." You may put ingenuity +on the rack, but she can say nothing new that is true about the best +romance that ever was wedded to allegory, nor about the best idyl of +old English life. + +The people are living now--all the people: the noisy bullying +judges, as of the French Revolutionary Courts, or the Hanging Courts +after Monmouth's war; the demure, grave Puritan girls; and Matthew, +who had the gripes; and lazy, feckless Ignorance, who came to so ill +an end, poor fellow; and sturdy Old Honest, and timid Mr. Fearing; +not single persons, but dozens, arise on the memory. + +They come, as fresh, as vivid, as if they were out of Scott or +Moliere; the Tinker is as great a master of character and fiction as +the greatest, almost; his style is pure, and plain, and sound, full +of old idioms, and even of something like old slang. But even his +slang is classical. + +Bunyan is everybody's author. The very Catholics have their own +edition of the Pilgrim: they have cut out Giant Pope, but have been +too good-natured to insert Giant Protestant in his place. +Unheralded, unannounced, though not uncriticised (they accused the +Tinker of being a plagiarist, of course), Bunyan outshone the Court +wits, the learned, the poets of the Restoration, and even the great +theologians. + +His other books, except "Grace Abounding" (an autobiography), "The +Holy War," and "Mr. Badman," are only known to students, nor much +read by them. The fashion of his theology, as of all theology, +passed away; it is by virtue of his imagination, of his romance, +that he lives. + +The allegory, of course, is full of flaws. It would not have been +manly of Christian to run off and save his own soul, leaving his +wife and family. But Bunyan shrank from showing us how difficult, +if not impossible, it is for a married man to be a saint. +Christiana was really with him all through that pilgrimage; and how +he must have been hampered by that woman of the world! But had the +allegory clung more closely to the skirts of truth, it would have +changed from a romance to a satire, from "The Pilgrim's Progress" to +"Vanity Fair." There was too much love in Bunyan for a satirist of +that kind; he had just enough for a humourist. + +Born in another class, he might have been, he would have been, a +writer more refined in his strength, more uniformly excellent, but +never so universal nor so popular in the best sense of the term. + +In the change of times and belief it is not impossible that Bunyan +will live among the class whom he least thought of addressing-- +scholars, lovers of worldly literature--for devotion and poverty are +parting company, while art endures till civilisation perishes. + +Are we better or worse for no longer believing as Bunyan believed, +no longer seeing that Abyss of Pascal's open beside our armchairs? +The question is only a form of that wide riddle, Does any +theological or philosophical opinion make us better or worse? The +vast majority of men and women are little affected by schemes and +theories of this life and the next. They who even ask for a reply +to the riddle are the few: most of us take the easy-going morality +of our world for a guide, as we take Bradshaw for a railway journey. +It is the few who must find out an answer: on that answer their +lives depend, and the lives of others are insensibly raised towards +their level. Bunyan would not have been a worse man if he had +shared the faith of Izaak Walton. Izaak had his reply to all +questions in the Church Catechism and the Articles. Bunyan found +his in the theology of his sect, appealing more strongly than +orthodoxy to a nature more bellicose than Izaak's. Men like him, +with his indomitable courage, will never lack a solution of the +puzzle of the earth. At worst they will live by law, whether they +dare to speak of it as God's law, or dare not. They will always be +our leaders, our Captain Greathearts, in the pilgrimage to the city +where, led or unled, we must all at last arrive. They will not fail +us, while loyalty and valour are human qualities. The day may +conceivably come when we have no Christian to march before us, but +we shall never lack the company of Greatheart. + + + +TO A YOUNG JOURNALIST + + + +Dear Smith, - + +You inform me that you desire to be a journalist, and you are kind +enough to ask my advice. Well, be a journalist, by all means, in +any honest and honourable branch of the profession. But do not be +an eavesdropper and a spy. You may fly into a passion when you +receive this very plainly worded advice. I hope you will; but, for +several reasons, which I now go on to state, I fear that you won't. +I fear that, either by natural gift or by acquired habit, you +already possess the imperturbable temper which will be so useful to +you if you do join the army of spies and eavesdroppers. If I am +right, you have made up your mind to refuse to take offence, as long +as by not taking offence you can wriggle yourself forward in the +band of journalistic reptiles. You will be revenged on me, in that +case, some day; you will lie in wait for me with a dirty bludgeon, +and steal on me out of a sewer. If you do, permit me to assure you +that I don't care. But if you are already in a rage, if you are +about tearing up this epistle, and are starting to assault me +personally, or at least to answer me furiously, then there is every +hope for you and for your future. I therefore venture to state my +reasons for supposing that you are inclined to begin a course which +your father, if he were alive, would deplore, as all honourable men +in their hearts must deplore it. When you were at the University +(let me congratulate you on your degree) you edited, or helped to +edit, The Bull-dog. It was not a very brilliant nor a very witty, +but it was an extremely "racy" periodical. It spoke of all men and +dons by their nicknames. It was full of second-hand slang. It +contained many personal anecdotes, to the detriment of many people. +It printed garbled and spiteful versions of private conversations on +private affairs. It did not even spare to make comments on ladies, +and on the details of domestic life in the town and in the +University. The copies which you sent me I glanced at with extreme +disgust. + +In my time, more than a score of years ago, a similar periodical, +but a much more clever periodical, was put forth by members of the +University. It contained a novel which, even now, would be worth +several ill-gotten guineas to the makers of the chronique +scandaleuse. But nobody bought it, and it died an early death. +Times have altered, I am a fogey; but the ideas of honour and +decency which fogies hold now were held by young men in the sixties +of our century. I know very well that these ideas are obsolete. I +am not preaching to the world, nor hoping to convert society, but to +YOU, and purely in your own private, spiritual interest. If you +enter on this path of tattle, mendacity, and malice, and if, with +your cleverness and light hand, you are successful, society will not +turn its back on you. You will be feared in many quarters, and +welcomed in others. Of your paragraphs people will say that "it is +a shame, of course, but it is very amusing." There are so many +shames in the world, shames not at all amusing, that you may see no +harm in adding to the number. "If I don't do it," you may argue, +"some one else will." Undoubtedly; but WHY SHOULD YOU DO IT? + +You are not a starving scribbler; if you determine to write, you can +write well, though not so easily, on many topics. You have not that +last sad excuse of hunger, which drives poor women to the streets, +and makes unhappy men act as public blabs and spies. If YOU take to +this metier, it must be because you like it, which means that you +enjoy being a listener to and reporter of talk that was never meant +for any ears except those in which it was uttered. It means that +the hospitable board is not sacred for YOU; it means that, with you, +friendship, honour, all that makes human life better than a low +smoking-room, are only valuable for what their betrayal will bring. +It means that not even the welfare of your country will prevent you +from running to the Press with any secret which you may have been +entrusted with, or which you may have surprised. It means, this +peculiar kind of profession, that all things open and excellent, and +conspicuous to all men, are with you of no account. Art, +literature, politics, are to cease to interest you. You are to +scheme to surprise gossip about the private lives, dress, and talk +of artists, men of letters, politicians. Your professional work +will sink below the level of servants' gossip in a public-house +parlour. If you happen to meet a man of known name, you will watch +him, will listen to him, will try to sneak into his confidence, and +you will blab, for money, about him, and your blab will inevitably +be mendacious. In short, like the most pitiable outcasts of +womankind, and, without their excuse, you will live by selling your +honour. You will not suffer much, nor suffer long. Your conscience +will very speedily be seared with a red-hot iron. You will be on +the road which leads from mere dishonour to crime; and you may find +yourself actually practising chantage, and extorting money as the +price of your silence. This is the lowest deep: the vast majority, +even of social mouchards, do not sink so low as this. + +The profession of the critic, even in honourable and open criticism, +is beset with dangers. It is often hard to avoid saying an unkind +thing, a cruel thing, which is smart, and which may even be +deserved. Who can say that he has escaped this temptation, and what +man of heart can think of his own fall without a sense of shame? +There are, I admit, authors so antipathetic to me, that I cannot +trust myself to review them. Would that I had never reviewed them! +They cannot be so bad as they seem to me: they must have qualities +which escape my observation. Then there is the temptation to hit +back. Some one writes, unjustly or unkindly as you think, of you or +of your friends. You wait till your enemy has written a book, and +then you have your innings. It is not in nature that your review +should be fair: you must inevitably be more on the look-out for +faults than merits. The ereintage, the "smashing" of a literary foe +is very delightful at the moment, but it does not look well in the +light of reflection. But these deeds are mere peccadilloes compared +with the confirmed habit of regarding all men and women as fair game +for personal tattle and the sating of private spite. Nobody, +perhaps, begins with this intention. Most men and women can find +ready sophistries. If a report about any one reaches their ears, +they say that they are doing him a service by publishing it and +enabling him to contradict it. As if any mortal ever listened to a +contradiction! And there are charges--that of plagiarism, for +example--which can never be disproved, even if contradictions were +listened to by the public. The accusation goes everywhere, is +copied into every printed rag; the contradiction dies with the daily +death of a single newspaper. You may reply that a man of sense will +be indifferent to false accusations. He may, or may not be,--that +is not the question for you; the question for you is whether you +will circulate news that is false, probably, and spiteful, +certainly. + +In short, the whole affair regards yourself more than it regards the +world. Plenty of poison is sold: is it well for you to be one of +the merchants? Is it the business of an educated gentleman to live +by the trade of an eavesdropper and a blab? In the Memoirs of M. +Blowitz he tells you how he began his illustrious career by +procuring the publication of remarks which M. Thiers had made to +him. He then "went to see M. Thiers, not without some +apprehension." Is that the kind of emotion which you wish to be +habitual in your experience? Do you think it agreeable to become +shame-faced when you meet people who have conversed with you +frankly? Do you enjoy being a sneak, and feeling like a sneak? Do +you find blushing pleasant? Of course you will soon lose the power +of blushing; but is that an agreeable prospect? Depend on it, there +are discomforts in the progress to the brazen, in the journey to the +shameless. You may, if your tattle is political, become serviceable +to men engaged in great affairs. They may even ask you to their +houses, if that is your ambition. You may urge that they condone +your deeds, and are even art and part in them. But you must also be +aware that they call you, and think you, a reptile. You are not one +of those who will do the devil's work without the devil's wages; but +do you seriously think that the wages are worth the degradation? + +Many men think so, and are not in other respects bad men. They may +even be kindly and genial. Gentlemen they cannot be, nor men of +delicacy, nor men of honour. They have sold themselves and their +self-respect, some with ease (they are the least blamable), some +with a struggle. They have seen better things, and perhaps vainly +long to return to them. These are "St. Satan's Penitents," and +their remorse is vain: + + +Virtutem videant, intabescantque relicta. + + +If you don't wish to be of this dismal company, there is only one +course open to you. Never write for publication one line of +personal tattle. Let all men's persons and private lives be as +sacred to you as your father's,--though there are tattlers who would +sell paragraphs about their own mothers if there were a market for +the ware. There is no half-way house on this road. Once begin to +print private conversation, and you are lost--lost, that is, to +delicacy and gradually, to many other things excellent and of good +report. The whole question for you is, Do you mind incurring this +damnation? If there is nothing in it which appals and revolts you, +if your conscience is satisfied with a few ready sophisms, or if you +don't care a pin for your conscience, fall to! + +Vous irez loin! You will prattle in print about men's private lives +their hidden motives, their waistcoats, their wives, their boots, +their businesses, their incomes. Most of your prattle will +inevitably be lies. But go on! nobody will kick you, I deeply +regret to say. You will earn money. You will be welcomed in +society. You will live and die content, and without remorse. I do +not suppose that any particular inferno will await you in the future +life. Whoever watches this world "with larger other eyes than ours" +will doubtless make allowance for you, as for us all. I am not +pretending to be a whit better than you; probably I am worse in many +ways, but not in your way. Putting it merely as a matter of taste, +I don't like the way. It makes me sick--that is all. It is a sin +which I can comfortably damn, as I am not inclined to it. You may +put it in that light; and I have no way of converting you, nor, if I +have not dissuaded you, of dissuading you, from continuing, on a +larger scale, your practices in The Bull-dog. + + + +MR. KIPLING'S STORIES + + + +The wind bloweth where it listeth. But the wind of literary +inspiration has rarely shaken the bungalows of India, as, in the +tales of the old Jesuit missionaries, the magical air shook the +frail "medicine tents," where Huron conjurors practised their +mysteries. With a world of romance and of character at their doors, +Englishmen in India have seen as if they saw it not. They have been +busy in governing, in making war, making peace, building bridges, +laying down roads, and writing official reports. Our literature +from that continent of our conquest has been sparse indeed, except +in the way of biographies, of histories, and of rather local and +unintelligible facetiae. Except the novels by the author of "Tara," +and Sir Henry Cunningham's brilliant sketches, such as "Dustypore," +and Sir Alfred Lyall's poems, we might almost say that India has +contributed nothing to our finer literature. That old haunt of +history, the wealth of character brought out in that confusion of +races, of religions, and the old and new, has been wealth untouched, +a treasure-house sealed: those pagoda trees have never been shaken. +At last there comes an Englishman with eyes, with a pen +extraordinarily deft, an observation marvellously rapid and keen; +and, by good luck, this Englishman has no official duties: he is +neither a soldier, nor a judge; he is merely a man of letters. He +has leisure to look around him, he has the power of making us see +what he sees; and, when we have lost India, when some new power is +ruling where we ruled, when our empire has followed that of the +Moguls, future generations will learn from Mr. Kipling's works what +India was under English sway. + +It is one of the surprises of literature that these tiny +masterpieces in prose and verse were poured, "as rich men give that +care not for their gifts," into the columns of Anglo-Indian +journals. There they were thought clever and ephemeral--part of the +chatter of the week. The subjects, no doubt, seemed so familiar, +that the strength of the handling, the brilliance of the colour, +were scarcely recognised. But Mr. Kipling's volumes no sooner +reached England than the people into whose hands they fell were +certain that here were the beginnings of a new literary force. The +books had the strangeness, the colour, the variety, the perfume of +the East. Thus it is no wonder that Mr. Kipling's repute grew up as +rapidly as the mysterious mango tree of the conjurors. There were +critics, of course, ready to say that the thing was merely a trick, +and had nothing of the supernatural. That opinion is not likely to +hold its ground. Perhaps the most severe of the critics has been a +young Scotch gentleman, writing French, and writing it wonderfully +well, in a Parisian review. He chose to regard Mr. Kipling as +little but an imitator of Bret Harte, deriving his popularity mainly +from the novel and exotic character of his subjects. No doubt, if +Mr. Kipling has a literary progenitor, it is Mr. Bret Harte. Among +his earlier verses a few are what an imitator of the American might +have written in India. But it is a wild judgment which traces Mr. +Kipling's success to his use, for example, of Anglo-Indian phrases +and scraps of native dialects. The presence of these elements is +among the causes which have made Englishmen think Anglo-Indian +literature tediously provincial, and India a bore. Mr. Kipling, on +the other hand, makes us regard the continent which was a bore an +enchanted land, full of marvels and magic which are real. There +has, indeed, arisen a taste for exotic literature: people have +become alive to the strangeness and fascination of the world beyond +the bounds of Europe and the United States. But that is only +because men of imagination and literary skill have been the new +conquerors--the Corteses and Balboas of India, Africa, Australia, +Japan, and the isles of the southern seas. All such conquerors, +whether they write with the polish of M. Pierre Loti, or with the +carelessness of Mr. Boldrewood, have, at least, seen new worlds for +themselves; have gone out of the streets of the over-populated lands +into the open air; have sailed and ridden, walked and hunted; have +escaped from the fog and smoke of towns. New strength has come from +fresher air into their brains and blood; hence the novelty and +buoyancy of the stories which they tell. Hence, too, they are +rather to be counted among romanticists than realists, however real +is the essential truth of their books. They have found so much to +see and to record, that they are not tempted to use the microscope, +and pore for ever on the minute in character. A great deal of +realism, especially in France, attracts because it is novel, because +M. Zola and others have also found new worlds to conquer. But +certain provinces in those worlds were not unknown to, but were +voluntarily neglected by, earlier explorers. They were the "Bad +Lands" of life and character: surely it is wiser to seek quite new +realms than to build mud huts and dunghills on the "Bad Lands." + +Mr. Kipling's work, like all good work, is both real and romantic. +It is real because he sees and feels very swiftly and keenly; it is +romantic, again, because he has a sharp eye for the reality of +romance, for the attraction and possibility of adventure, and +because he is young. If a reader wants to see petty characters +displayed in all their meannesses, if this be realism, surely +certain of Mr. Kipling's painted and frisky matrons are realistic +enough. The seamy side of Anglo-Indian life: the intrigues, +amorous or semi-political--the slang of people who describe dining +as "mangling garbage" the "games of tennis with the seventh +commandment"--he has not neglected any of these. Probably the +sketches are true enough, and pity 'tis true: for example, the +sketches in "Under the Deodars" and in "The Gadsbys." That worthy +pair, with their friends, are to myself as unsympathetic, almost, as +the characters in "La Conquete de Plassans." But Mr. Kipling is too +much a true realist to make their selfishness and pettiness +unbroken, unceasing. We know that "Gaddy" is a brave, modest, and +hard-working soldier; and, when his little silly bride (who prefers +being kissed by a man with waxed moustaches) lies near to death, +certainly I am nearer to tears than when I am obliged to attend the +bed of Little Dombey or of Little Nell. Probably there is a great +deal of slangy and unrefined Anglo-Indian society; and, no doubt, to +sketch it in its true colours is not beyond the province of art. At +worst it is redeemed, in part, by its constancy in the presence of +various perils--from disease, and from "the bullet flying down the +pass." Mr. Kipling may not be, and very probably is not, a reader +of "Gyp"; but "The Gadsbys," especially, reads like the work of an +Anglo-Indian disciple, trammelled by certain English conventions. +The more Pharisaic realists--those of the strictest sect--would +probably welcome Mr. Kipling as a younger brother, so far as "Under +the Deodars" and "The Gadsbys" are concerned, if he were not +occasionally witty and even flippant, as well as realistic. But, +very fortunately, he has not confined his observation to the +leisures and pleasures of Simla; he has looked out also on war and +on sport, on the life of all native tribes and castes; and has even +glanced across the borders of "The Undiscovered Country." + +Among Mr. Kipling's discoveries of new kinds of characters, probably +the most popular is his invention of the British soldier in India. +He avers that he "loves that very strong man, Thomas Atkins"; but +his affection has not blinded him to the faults of the beloved. Mr. +Atkins drinks too much, is too careless a gallant in love, has been +educated either too much or too little, and has other faults, partly +due, apparently, to recent military organisation, partly to the +feverish and unsettled state of the civilised world. But he is +still brave, when he is well led; still loyal, above all, to his +"trusty chum." Every Englishman must hope that, if Terence Mulvaney +did not take the city of Lungtung Pen as described, yet he is ready, +and willing so to take it. Mr. Mulvaney is as humorous as Micky +Free, but more melancholy and more truculent. He has, perhaps, "won +his way to the mythical" already, and is not so much a soldier, as +an incarnation, not of Krishna, but of many soldierly qualities. On +the other hand, Private Ortheris, especially in his frenzy, seems to +shew all the truth, and much more than the life of, a photograph. +Such, we presume, is the soldier, and such are his experiences and +temptations and repentance. But nobody ever dreamed of telling us +all this, till Mr. Kipling came. As for the soldier in action, the +"Taking of Lungtung Pen," and the "Drums of the Fore and Aft," and +that other tale of the battle with the Pathans in the gorge, are +among the good fights of fiction. They stir the spirit, and they +should be distributed (in addition, of course, to the "Soldier's +Pocket Book") in the ranks of the British army. Mr. Kipling is as +well informed about the soldier's women-kind as about the soldier: +about Dinah Shadd as about Terence Mulvaney. Lever never instructed +us on these matters: Micky Free, if he loves, rides away; but +Terence Mulvaney is true to his old woman. Gallant, loyal, +reckless, vain, swaggering, and tender-hearted, Terence Mulvaney, if +there were enough of him, "would take St. Petersburg in his +drawers." Can we be too grateful to an author who has extended, as +Mr. Kipling in his military sketches has extended, the frontiers of +our knowledge and sympathy? + +It is a mere question of individual taste; but, for my own part, had +I to make a small selection from Mr. Kipling's tales, I would +include more of his studies in Black than in White, and many of his +excursions beyond the probable and natural. It is difficult to have +one special favourite in this kind; but perhaps the story of the two +English adventurers among the freemasons of unknown Kafiristan (in +the "Phantom Rickshaw") would take a very high place. The gas- +heated air of the Indian newspaper office is so real, and into it +comes a wanderer who has seen new faces of death, and who carries +with him a head that has worn a royal crown. The contrasts are of +brutal force; the legend is among the best of such strange fancies. +Then there is, in the same volume, "The Strange Ride of Morrowbie +Jukes," the most dreadful nightmare of the most awful Bunker in the +realms of fancy. This is a very early work; if nothing else of Mr. +Kipling's existed, his memory might live by it, as does the memory +of the American Irishman by the "Diamond Lens." The sham magic of +"In the House of Suddhu" is as terrible as true necromancy could be, +and I have a faiblesse for the "Bisara of Pooree." "The Gate of the +Hundred Sorrows" is a realistic version of "The English Opium +Eater," and more powerful by dint of less rhetoric. As for the +sketches of native life--for example, "On the City Wall"--to English +readers they are no less than revelations. They testify, more even +than the military stories, to the author's swift and certain vision, +his certainty in his effects. In brief, Mr. Kipling has conquered +worlds, of which, as it were, we knew not the existence. + +His faults are so conspicuous, so much on the surface, that they +hardly need to be named. They are curiously visible to some readers +who are blind to his merits. There is a false air of hardness +(quite in contradiction to the sentiment in his tales of childish +life); there is a knowing air; there are mannerisms, such as "But +that is another story"; there is a display of slang; there is the +too obtrusive knocking of the nail on the head. Everybody can mark +these errors; a few cannot overcome their antipathy, and so lose a +great deal of pleasure. + +It is impossible to guess how Mr. Kipling will fare if he ventures +on one of the usual novels, of the orthodox length. Few men have +succeeded both in the conte and the novel. Mr. Bret Harte is +limited to the conte; M. Guy de Maupassant is probably at his best +in it. Scott wrote but three or four short tales, and only one of +these is a masterpiece. Poe never attempted a novel. Hawthorne is +almost alone in his command of both kinds. We can live only in the +hope that Mr. Kipling, so skilled in so many species of the conte, +so vigorous in so many kinds of verse, will also be triumphant in +the novel: though it seems unlikely that its scene can be in +England, and though it is certain that a writer who so cuts to the +quick will not be happy with the novel's almost inevitable +"padding." Mr. Kipling's longest effort, "The Light which Failed," +can, perhaps, hardly be considered a test or touchstone of his +powers as a novelist. The central interest is not powerful enough; +the characters are not so sympathetic, as are the interest and the +characters of his short pieces. Many of these persons we have met +so often that they are not mere passing acquaintances, but already +find in us the loyalty due to old friends. + + + +Footnotes: + +{1} The subject has been much more gravely treated in Mr. Robert +Bridges's "Achilles in Scyros." + +{2} Conjecture may cease, as Mr. Morris has translated the Odyssey. + +{3} For Helen Pendennis, see the "Letters," p. 97. + +{4} Mr. Henley has lately, as a loyal Dickensite, been defending +the plots of Dickens, and his tragedy. Pro captu lectoris; if the +reader likes them, then they are good for the reader: "good +absolute, not for me though," perhaps. The plot of "Martin +Chuzzlewit" may be good, but the conduct of old Martin would strike +me as improbable if I met it in the "Arabian Nights." That the +creator of Pecksniff should have taken his misdeeds seriously, as if +Mr. Pecksniff had been a Tartuffe, not a delight, seems curious. + + + + + +End of The Project Gutenberg Etext of Essays in Little, by Andrew Lang + diff --git a/old/esltt10.zip b/old/esltt10.zip Binary files differnew file mode 100644 index 0000000..2497ea8 --- /dev/null +++ b/old/esltt10.zip |
