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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/17452-0.txt b/17452-0.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..2315d20 --- /dev/null +++ b/17452-0.txt @@ -0,0 +1,9285 @@ +The Project Gutenberg eBook, Adventures in Criticism, by Sir Arthur Thomas +Quiller-Couch + + +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: Adventures in Criticism + + +Author: Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch + + + +Release Date: January 3, 2006 [eBook #17452] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: UTF-8 + + +***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK ADVENTURES IN CRITICISM*** + + +E-text prepared by Geetu Melwani and the Project Gutenberg Online +Distributed Proofreading Team (http://www.pgdp.net/) + + + +Transcriber's Note: Brief Greek phrases appear in the original + text in three places. They have been + transliterated and placed between +marks+. + + + + +ADVENTURES IN CRITICISM + +by + +A. T. QUILLER-COUCH + + + + + + + +New York +Charles Scribner's Sons +Copyright, 1896 +Trow Directory Printing and Bookbinding Company +New York + + + + + To + + A.B. WALKLEY + + + MY DEAR A.B.W. + + The short papers which follow have been reprinted, with a few + alterations, from _The Speaker_. Possibly you knew this without + my telling you. Possibly, too, you have sat in a theatre before + now and seen the curtain rise on two characters exchanging + information which must have been their common property for years. + So this dedication is partly designed to save me the trouble of + writing a formal preface. + + As I remember then, Adam, it was upon this fashion bequeathed us + by destiny to write side by side in _The Speaker_ every week, you + about Plays and I about Books. Three years ago you found time to + arrange a few of your writings in a notable volume of _Playhouse + Impressions_. Some months ago I searched the files of the paper + with a similar design, and read my way through an astonishing + amount of my own composition. Noble edifice of toil! It stretched + away in imposing proportions and vanishing perspective--week upon + week--two columns to the week! The mischief was, it did not + appear to lead to anything: and for the first mile or two even + the casual graces of the colonnade were hopelessly marred through + that besetting fault of the young journalist, who finds no + satisfaction in his business of making bricks without straw + unless he can go straightway and heave them at somebody. + + Still (to drop metaphor), I have chosen some papers which I hope + may be worth a second reading. They are fragmentary, by force of + the conditions under which they were produced: but perhaps the + fragments may here and there suggest the outline of a first + principle. And I dedicate the book to you because it would be + strange if the time during which we have appeared in print side + by side had brought no sense of comradeship. Though, in fact, we + live far apart and seldom get speech together, more than one of + these papers--ostensibly addressed to anybody whom they might + concern--has been privately, if but sub-consciously, intended + for you. + + A.T.Q.C. + + + + + CONTENTS + + CHAUCER 1 + "THE PASSIONATE PILGRIM" 29 + SHAKESPEARE'S LYRICS 39 + SAMUEL DANIEL 48 + WILLIAM BROWNE 59 + THOMAS CAREW 67 + "ROBINSON CRUSOE" 75 + LAWRENCE STERNE 90 + SCOTT AND BURNS 103 + CHARLES READE 124 + HENRY KINGSLEY 131 + ALEXANDER WILLIAM KINGLAKE 141 + C.S.C. AND J.K.S 147 + ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON 156 + M. ZOLA 192 + SELECTION 198 + EXTERNALS 204 + CLUB TALK 222 + EXCURSIONISTS IN POETRY 229 + THE POPULAR CONCEPTION OF A POET 235 + POETS ON THEIR OWN ART 245 + THE ATTITUDE OF THE + PUBLIC TOWARDS LETTERS 254 + A CASE OF BOOKSTALL CENSORSHIP 267 + THE POOR LITTLE PENNY DREADFUL 276 + IBSEN'S "PEER GYNT" 283 + MR. SWINBURNE'S LATER MANNER 297 + A MORNING WITH A BOOK 306 + MR. JOHN DAVIDSON 314 + BJÖRNSTERNE BJÖRNSON 332 + MR. GEORGE MOORE 341 + MRS. MARGARET L. WOODS 349 + MR. HALL CAINE 368 + MR. ANTHONY HOPE 377 + "TRILBY" 384 + MR. STOCKTON 391 + BOW-WOW 399 + OF SEASONABLE NUMBERS 404 + + + + +ADVENTURES IN CRITICISM + + + + +CHAUCER + + +March 17, 1894. Professor Skeat's Chaucer. + +After twenty-five years of close toil, Professor Skeat has completed +his great edition of Chaucer.[A] It is obviously easier to be +dithyrambic than critical in chronicling this event; to which indeed +dithyrambs are more appropriate than criticism. For when a man writes +_Opus vitæ meæ_ at the conclusion of such a task as this, and so lays +down his pen, he must be a churl (even if he be also a competent +critic) who will allow no pause for admiration. And where, churl or no +churl, is the competent critic to be found? The Professor has here +compiled an entirely new text of Chaucer, founded solely on the +manuscripts and the earliest printed editions that are accessible. +Where Chaucer has translated, the originals have been carefully +studied: "the requirements of metre and grammar have been carefully +considered throughout": and "the phonology and spelling of every word +have received particular attention." We may add that all the materials +for a Life of Chaucer have been sought out, examined, and pieced +together with exemplary care. + +All this has taken Professor Skeat twenty-five years, and in order to +pass competent judgment on his conclusions the critic must follow him +step by step through his researches--which will take the critic (even +if we are charitable enough to suppose his mental equipment equal to +Professor Skeat's) another ten years at least. For our time, then, and +probably for many generations after, this edition of Chaucer will be +accepted as final. + + * * * * * + +And the Clarendon Press. + +And I seem to see in this edition of Chaucer the beginning of the +realization of a dream which I have cherished since first I stood +within the quadrangle of the Clarendon Press--that fine combination of +the factory and the palace. The aspect of the Press itself repeats, as +it were, the characteristics of its government, which is conducted by +an elected body as an honorable trust. Its delegates are not intent +only on money-getting. And yet the Clarendon Press makes money, and +the University can depend upon it for handsome subsidies. It may well +depend upon it for much more. As the Bank of England--to which in its +system of government it may be likened--is the focus of all the other +banks, private or joint-stock, in the kingdom, and the treasure-house, +not only of the nation's gold, but of its commercial honor, so the +Clarendon Press--traditionally careful in its selections and +munificent in its rewards--might become the academy or central temple +of English literature. If it would but follow up Professor Skeat's +Chaucer with a resolution to publish, at a pace suitable to so large +an undertaking, _all the great English classics_, edited with all the +scholarship its wealth can command, I believe that before long the +Clarendon Press would be found to be exercising an influence on +English letters which is at present lacking, and the lack of which +drives many to call, from time to time, for the institution in this +country of something corresponding to the French Academy. I need only +cite the examples of the Royal Society and the Marylebone Cricket +Club to show that to create an authority in this manner is consonant +with our national practice. We should have that centre of correct +information, correct judgment, correct taste--that intellectual +metropolis, in short--which is the surest check upon provinciality in +literature; we should have a standard of English scholarship and an +authoritative dictionary of the English language; and at the same time +we should escape all that business of the green coat and palm branches +which has at times exposed the French Academy to much vulgar intrigue. + +Also, I may add, we should have the books. Where now is the great +edition of Bunyan, of Defoe, of Gibbon? The Oxford Press did once +publish an edition of Gibbon, worthy enough as far as type and paper +could make it worthy. But this is only to be found in second-hand +book-shops. Why are two rival London houses now publishing editions of +Scott, the better illustrated with silly pictures "out of the artists' +heads"? Where is the final edition of Ben Jonson? + +These and the rest are to come, perhaps. Of late we have had from +Oxford a great Boswell and a great Chaucer, and the magnificent +Dictionary is under weigh. So that it may be the dream is in process +of being realized, though none of us shall live to see its full +realization. Meanwhile such a work as Professor Skeat's Chaucer is not +only an answer to much chatter that goes up from time to time about +nine-tenths of the work on English literature being done out of +England. This and similar works are the best of all possible answers +to those gentlemen who so often interrupt their own chrematistic +pursuits to point out in the monthly magazines the short-comings of +our two great Universities as nurseries of chrematistic youth. In this +case it is Oxford that publishes, while Cambridge supplies the +learning: and from a natural affection I had rather it were always +Oxford that published, attracting to her service the learning, +scholarship, intelligence of all parts of the kingdom, or, for that +matter, of the world. So might she securely found new Schools of +English Literature--were she so minded, a dozen every year. They would +do no particular harm; and meanwhile, in Walton Street, out of earshot +of the New Schools, the Clarendon Press would go on serenely +performing its great work. + + * * * * * + +March 23, 1895. Essentials and Accidents of Poetry. + +A work such as Professor Skeat's Chaucer puts the critic into a frame +of mind that lies about midway between modesty and cowardice. One +asks--"What right have I, who have given but a very few hours of my +life to the enjoying of Chaucer; who have never collated his MSS.; who +have taken the events of his life on trust from his biographers; who +am no authority on his spelling, his rhythms, his inflections, or the +spelling, rhythms, inflections of his age; who have read him only as I +have read other great poets, for the pleasure of reading--what right +have I to express any opinion on a work of this character, with its +imposing commentary, its patient research, its enormous accumulation +of special information?" + +Nevertheless, this diffidence, I am sure, may be carried too far. +After all is said and done, we, with our average life of three-score +years and ten, are the heirs of all the poetry of all the ages. We +must do our best in our allotted time, and Chaucer is but one of the +poets. He did not write for specialists in his own age, and his main +value for succeeding ages resides, not in his vocabulary, nor in his +inflections, nor in his indebtedness to foreign originals, nor in the +metrical uniformities or anomalies that may be discovered in his poems; +but in his _poetry_. Other things are accidental; his poetry is +essential. Other interests--historical, philological, antiquarian--must +be recognized; but the poetical, or (let us say) the spiritual, interest +stands first and far ahead of all others. By virtue of it Chaucer, now +as always, makes his chief and his convincing appeal to that which is +spiritual in men. He appeals by the poetical quality of such lines as +these, from Emilia's prayer to Diana: + + "Chaste goddesse, wel wostow that I + Desire to been a mayden al my lyf, + Ne never wol I be no love ne wyf. + + I am, thou woost, yet of thy companye, + A mayde, and love hunting and venerye, + And for to walken in the wodes wilde, + And noght to been a wyf, and be with childe..." + +Or of these two from the Prioresses' Prologue: + + "O moder mayde! O mayde moder free! + O bush unbrent, brenninge in Moyses sighte..." + +Or of these from the general Prologue--also thoroughly poetical, +though the quality differs: + + "Ther was also a Nonne, a Prioresse, + That of hir smyling was ful simple and coy; + Hir gretteste ooth was but by sëynt Loy; + And she was cleped madame Eglentyne. + Ful wel she song the service divyne, + Entuned in hir nose ful semely; + And Frensh she spak ful faire and fetisly, + After the scole of Stratford atte Bowe, + For Frensh of Paris was to hir unknowe..." + +Now the essential quality of this and of all very great poetry is also +what we may call a _universal_ quality; it appeals to those sympathies +which, unequally distributed and often distorted or suppressed, are +yet the common possessions of our species. This quality is the real +antiseptic of poetry: this it is that keeps a line of Homer +perennially fresh and in bloom:-- + + +"Hôs phato tous d' êdê katechen physizoos aia + en Lakedaimoni authi, philê en patridi gaiê."+ + +These lines live because they contain something which is also +permanent in man: they depend confidently on us, and will as +confidently depend on our great-grandchildren. I was glad to see this +point very courageously put the other day by Professor Hiram Corson, +of Cornell University, in an address on "The Aims of Literary +Study"--an address which Messrs. Macmillan have printed and published +here and in America. "All works of genius," says Mr. Corson, "render +the best service, in literary education, when they are first +assimilated in their absolute character. It is, of course, important +to know their relations to the several times and places in which they +were produced; but such knowledge is not for the tyro in literary +study. He must first know literature, if he is constituted so to know +it, in its absolute character. He can go into the philosophy of its +relationships later, if he like, when he has a true literary +education, and when the 'years that bring the philosophic mind' have +been reached. Every great production of genius is, in fact, in its +essential character, no more related to one age than to another. It is +only in its phenomenal character (its outward manifestations) that it +has a _special_ relationship." And Mr. Corson very appositely quotes +Mr. Ruskin on Shakespeare's historical plays-- + + "If it be said that Shakespeare wrote perfect historical plays on + subjects belonging to the preceding centuries, I answer that they + _are_ perfect plays just because there is no care about centuries + in them, but a life which all men recognize for the human life of + all time; and this it is, not because Shakespeare sought to give + universal truth, but because, painting honestly and completely + from the men about him, he painted that human nature which is, + indeed, constant enough--a rogue in the fifteenth century being + _at heart_ what a rogue is in the nineteenth century and was in + the twelfth; and an honest or knightly man being, in like manner, + very similar to other such at any other time. And the work of + these great idealists is, therefore, always universal: not + because it is _not portrait_, but because it is _complete_ + portrait down to the heart, which is the same in all ages; and + the work of the mean idealists is _not_ universal, not because it + is portrait, but because it is _half_ portrait--of the outside, + the manners and the dress, not of the heart. Thus Tintoret and + Shakespeare paint, both of them, simply Venetian and English + nature as they saw it in their time, down to the root; and it + does for _all_ time; but as for any care to cast themselves into + the particular ways of thought, or custom, of past time in their + historical work, you will find it in neither of them, nor in any + other perfectly great man that I know of."--_Modern Painters._ + +It will be observed that Mr. Corson, whose address deals primarily +with literary training, speaks of these absolute qualities of the +great masterpieces as the _first_ object of study. But his words, and +Ruskin's words, fairly support my further contention that they remain +the _most important_ object of study, no matter how far one's literary +training may have proceeded. To the most erudite student of Chaucer in +the wide world Chaucer's poetry should be the dominant object of +interest in connection with Chaucer. + +But when the elaborate specialist confronts us, we are apt to forget +that poetry is meant for mankind, and that its appeal is, or should +be, universal. We pay tribute to the unusual: and so far as this +implies respect for protracted industry and indefatigable learning, we +do right. But in so far as it implies even a momentary confusion of +the essentials with the accidentals of poetry, we do wrong. And the +specialist himself continues admirable only so long as he keeps them +distinct. + +I hasten to add that Professor Skeat _does_ keep them distinct very +successfully. In a single sentence of admirable brevity he tells us +that of Chaucer's poetical excellence "it is superfluous to speak; +Lowell's essay on Chaucer in 'My Study Windows' gives a just estimate +of his powers." And with this, taking the poetical excellence for +granted, he proceeds upon his really invaluable work of preparing a +standard text of Chaucer and illustrating it out of the stores of his +apparently inexhaustible learning. The result is a monument to +Chaucer's memory such as never yet was reared to English poet. Douglas +Jerrold assured Mrs. Cowden Clarke that, when her time came to enter +Heaven, Shakespeare would advance and greet her with the first kiss of +welcome, "_even_ should her husband happen to be present." One can +hardly with decorum imagine Professor Skeat being kissed; but Chaucer +assuredly will greet him with a transcendent smile. + +The Professor's genuine admiration, however, for the poetical +excellence of his poet needs to be insisted upon, not only because the +nature of his task keeps him reticent, but because his extraordinary +learning seems now and then to stand between him and the natural +appreciation of a passage. It was not quite at haphazard that I chose +just now the famous description of the Prioresse as an illustration of +Chaucer's poetical quality. The Professor has a long note upon the +French of Stratford atte Bowe. Most of us have hitherto believed the +passage to be an example, and a very pretty one, of Chaucer's +playfulness. The Professor almost loses his temper over this: he +speaks of it as a view "commonly adopted by newspaper-writers who know +only this one line of Chaucer, and cannot forbear to use it in jest." +"Even Tyrwhitt and Wright," he adds more in sorrow than in anger, +"have thoughtlessly given currency to this idea." "Chaucer," the +Professor explains, "merely states a _fact_" (the italics are his +own), "viz., that the Prioress spoke the usual Anglo-French of the +English Court, of the English law-courts, and of the English +ecclesiastics of higher ranks. The poet, however, had been himself in +France, and knew precisely the difference between the two dialects; +but he had no special reason for thinking _more highly_" (the +Professor's italics again) "of the Parisian than of the +Anglo-French.... Warton's note on the line is quite sane. He shows +that Queen Philippa wrote business letters in French (doubtless +Anglo-French) with 'great propriety'" ... and so on. You see, there +was a Benedictine nunnery at Stratford-le-Bow; and as "Mr. Cutts says, +very justly, 'She spoke French correctly, though with an accent which +savored of the Benedictine Convent at Stratford-le-Bow, where she had +been educated, rather than of Paris.'" So there you have a fact. + +And, now you have it, doesn't it look rather like Bitzer's horse? + + "Bitzer," said Thomas Gradgrind. "Your definition of a horse?" + + "Quadruped. Graminivorous. Forty teeth, namely twenty-four + grinders, four eye-teeth, and twelve incisive. Sheds coat in the + spring; in marshy countries sheds hoofs too. Hoofs hard, but + requiring to be shod with iron. Age known by marks in mouth." + Thus (and much more) Bitzer. + + * * * * * + +March 30, 1895. The Texts of the "Canterbury Tales." + +It follows, I hope, from what I said last week, that by far the most +important service an editor can render to Chaucer and to us is to give +us a pure text, through which the native beauty of the poetry may best +shine. Such a text Professor Skeat has been able to prepare, in part +by his own great industry, in part because he has entered into the +fruit of other men's labors. The epoch-making event in the history of +the Canterbury Tales (with which alone we are concerned here) was Dr. +Furnivall's publication for the Chaucer Society of the famous +"Six-Text Edition." Dr. Furnivall set to work upon this in 1868. + +The Six Texts were these:-- + + 1. The great "Ellesmere" MS. (so called after its owner, the Earl + of Ellesmere). "The finest and best of all the MSS. now extant." + + 2. The "Hengwrt" MS., belonging to Mr. William W.E. Wynne, of + Peniarth; very closely agreeing with the "Ellesmere." + + 3. The "Cambridge" MS. Gg 4.27, in the University Library. The + best copy in any public library. This also follows the + "Ellesmere" closely. + + 4. The "Corpus" MS., in the library of Corpus Christi College, + Oxford. + + 5. The "Petworth" MS., belonging to Lord Leconfield. + + 6. The "Lansdowne" MS. in the British Museum. "Not a good MS., + being certainly the worst of the six; but worth reprinting owing + to the frequent use that has been made of it by editors." + +In his Introduction, Professor Skeat enumerates no fewer than +fifty-nine MSS. of the Tales: but of these the above six (and a +seventh to be mentioned presently) are the most important. The most +important of all is the "Ellesmere"--the great "find" of the Six-Text +Edition. "The best in nearly every respect," says Professor Skeat. +"It not only gives good lines and good sense, but is also (usually) +grammatically accurate and thoroughly well spelt. The publication of +it has been a great boon to all Chaucer students, for which Dr. +Furnivall will be ever gratefully remembered.... This splendid MS. has +also the great merit of being complete, requiring no supplement from +any other source, except in a few cases when a line or two has been +missed." + +Professor Skeat has therefore chiefly employed the Six-Text Edition, +supplemented by a seventh famous MS., the "Harleian 7334"--printed in +full for the Chaucer Society in 1885--a MS. of great importance, +differing considerably from the "Ellesmere." But the Professor judges +it "a most dangerous MS. to trust to, unless constantly corrected by +others, and not at all fitted to be taken as the basis of a text." For +the basis of his text, then, he takes the Ellesmere MS., correcting it +freely by the other seven MSS. mentioned. + +Now, as fate would have it, in the year 1888 Dr. Furnivall invited Mr. +Alfred W. Pollard to collaborate with him in an edition of Chaucer +which he had for many years promised to bring out for Messrs. +Macmillan. The basis of their text of the Tales was almost precisely +that chosen by Professor Skeat, _i.e._ a careful collation of the Six +Texts and the Harleian 7334, due preponderance being given to the +Ellesmere MS., and all variations from it stated in the notes. "A +beginning was made," says Mr. Pollard, "but the giant in the +partnership had been used for a quarter of a century to doing, for +nothing, all the hard work for other people, and could not spare from +his pioneering the time necessary to enter into the fruit of his own +Chaucer labors. Thus the partner who was not a giant was left to go on +pretty much by himself. When I had made some progress, Professor Skeat +informed us that the notes which he had been for years accumulating +encouraged him to undertake an edition on a large scale, and I gladly +abandoned, in favor of an editor of so much greater width of reading, +the Library Edition which had been arranged for in the original +agreement of Dr. Furnivall and myself with Messrs. Macmillan. I +thought, however, that the work which I had done might fairly be used +for an edition on a less extensive plan and intended for a less +stalwart class of readers, and of this the present issue of the +Canterbury Tales is an instalment."[B] + +So it comes about that we have two texts before us, each based on a +collation of the Six-Text edition and the Harleian MS. 7334--the chief +difference being that Mr. Pollard adheres closely to the Ellesmere +MS., while Professor Skeat allows himself more freedom. This is how +they start-- + + "Whán that Apríllė with híse shourės soote + The droghte of March hath percėd to the roote, + And bathed every veyne in swich licóur + Of which vertú engendred is the flour; + Whan Zephirus eck with his swetė breeth 5 + Inspirėd hath in every holt and heeth + The tendrė croppės, and the yongė sonne + Hath in the Ram his halfė cours y-ronne, + And smalė fowelės maken melodye + That slepen al the nvght with open eye,-- 10 + So priketh hem Natúre in hir coráges,-- + Thanne longen folk to goon on pilgrimages ..." + + (_Pollard_.) + + + "Whan that Aprille with his shoures sote + The droghte of Marche hath perced to the rote, + And bathed every veyne in swich licour + Of which vertu engendred is the flour; + Whan Zephirus eek with his swete breeth 5 + Inspired hath in every holt and heeth + The tendre croppes, and the yong sonne + Hath in the Ram his halfe cours y ronne, + And smale fowles maken melodye, + That slepen al the night with open yë, 10 + (So priketh hem nature in hir corages:) + Than longen folk to goon on pilgrimages..." + + (_Skeat._) + +On these two extracts it must be observed (1) that the accents and the +dotted e's in the first are Mr. Pollard's own contrivances for helping +the scansion; (2) in the second, l. 10, "yë" is a special contrivance +of Professor Skeat. "The scribes," he says (Introd. Vol. IV. p. xix.), +"usually write _eye_ in the middle of a line, but when they come to it +at the end of one, they are fairly puzzled. In l. 10, the scribe of Hn +('Hengwrt') writes _lye_, and that of Ln ('Lansdowne') writes _yhe_; +and the variations on this theme are curious. The spelling _ye_ (= yë) +is, however, common.... I print it 'yë' to distinguish it from _ye_, +the pl. pronoun." The other differences are accounted for by the +varying degrees in which the two editors depend on the Ellesmere MS. +Mr. Pollard sticks to the Ellesmere. Professor Skeat corrects it by +the others. Obviously the editor who allows himself the wider range +lays himself open to more criticism, point by point. He has to justify +himself in each particular case, while the other's excuse is set down +once for all in his preface. But after comparing the two texts in over +a dozen passages, I have had to vote in almost every case for +Professor Skeat. + + +The Alleged Difficulty of Reading Chaucer. + +The differences, however, are always trifling. The reader will allow +that in each case we have a clear, intelligible text: a text that +allows Chaucer to be read and enjoyed without toil or vexation. For my +part, I hope there is no presumption in saying that I could very well +do without Mr. Pollard's accents and dotted e's. Remove them, and I +contend that any Englishman with an ear for poetry can read either of +the two texts without difficulty. A great deal too much fuss is made +over the pronunciation and scansion of Chaucer. After all, we are +Englishmen, with an instinct for understanding the language we +inherit; in the evolution of our language we move on the same lines as +our fathers; and Chaucer's English is at least no further removed from +us than the Lowland dialect of Scott's novels. Moreover, we have in +reading Chaucer what we lack in reading Scott--the assistance of +rhythm; and the rhythm of Chaucer is as clearly marked as that of +Tennyson. Professor Skeat might very well have allowed his admirable +text to stand alone. For his rules of pronunciation, with their +elaborate system of signs and symbols, seem to me (to put it coarsely) +phonetics gone mad. This, for instance, is how he would have us read +the Tales:-- + + "Whán-dhat Ápríllə/wídh iz-shúurez sóotə + dhə-drúuht' ov-Márchə/hath pérsed tóo dhə róotə, + ənd-báadhed év'ri véinə/in-swích likúur, + ov-whích vertýy/enjéndred iz dhə flúur...." + +--and so on? I think it may safely be said that if a man need this +sort of assistance in reading or pronouncing Chaucer, he had better +let Chaucer alone altogether, or read him in a German prose +translation. + + * * * * * + +April 6, 1895. + +Why is Chaucer so easy to read? At a first glance a page of the +"Canterbury Tales" appears more formidable than a page of the "Faërie +Queene." As a matter of fact, it is less formidable; or, if this be +denied, everyone will admit that twenty pages of the "Canterbury +Tales" are less formidable than twenty pages of the "Faërie Queene." I +might bring several recent editors and critics to testify that, after +the first shock of the archaic spelling and the final "e," an +intelligent public will soon come to terms with Chaucer; but the +unconscious testimony of the intelligent public itself is more +convincing. Chaucer is read year after year by a large number of men +and women. Spenser, in many respects a greater poet, is also read; but +by far fewer. Nobody, I imagine, will deny this. But what is the +reason of it? + +The first and chief reason is this--Forms of language change, but the +great art of narrative appeals eternally to men, and its rules rest on +principles older than Homer. And whatever else may be said of Chaucer, +he is a superb narrator. To borrow a phrase from another venerable +art, he is always "on the ball." He pursues the story--the story, and +again the story. Mr. Ward once put this admirably-- + + "The vivacity of joyousness of Chaucer's poetic temperament ... + make him amusingly impatient of epical lengths, abrupt in his + transitions, and anxious, with an anxiety usually manifested by + readers rather than by writers, to come to the point, 'to the + great effect,' as he is wont to call it. 'Men,' he says, 'may + overlade a ship or barge, and therefore I will skip at once to + the effect, and let all the rest slip.' And he unconsciously + suggests a striking difference between himself and the great + Elizabethan epic poet who owes so much to him, when he declines + to make as long a tale of the chaff or of the straw as of the + corn, and to describe all the details of a marriage-feast + _seriatim_: + + 'The fruit of every tale is for to say: + They eat and drink, and dance and sing and play.' + + This may be the fruit; but epic poets, from Homer downward, have + been generally in the habit of not neglecting the foliage. + Spenser in particular has that impartial copiousness which we + think it our duty to admire in the Ionic epos, but which, if + truth were told, has prevented generations of Englishmen from + acquiring an intimate personal acquaintance with the 'Fairy + Queen.' With Chaucer the danger certainly rather lay in the + opposite direction." + +Now, if we are once interested in a story, small difficulties of +speech or spelling will not readily daunt us in the time-honored +pursuit of "what happens next"--certainly not if we know enough of our +author to feel sure he will come to the point and tell us what happens +next with the least possible palaver. We have a definite want and a +certainty of being satisfied promptly. But with Spenser this +satisfaction may, and almost certainly will, be delayed over many +pages: and though in the meanwhile a thousand casual beauties may +appeal to us, the main thread of our attention is sensibly relaxed. +Chaucer is the minister and Spenser the master: and the difference +between pursuing what we want and pursuing we-know-not-what must +affect the ardor of the chase. Even if we take the future on trust, +and follow Spenser to the end, we cannot look back on a book of the +"Faërie Queene" as on part of a good story: for it is admittedly an +unsatisfying and ill-constructed story. But my point is that an +ordinary reader resents being asked to take the future on trust while +the author luxuriates in casual beauties of speech upon every mortal +subject but the one in hand. The first principle of good narrative is +to stick to the subject; the second, to carry the audience along in a +series of small surprises--satisfying expectation and going just a +little beyond. If it were necessary to read fifty pages before +enjoying Chaucer, though the sum of eventual enjoyment were as great +as it now is, Chaucer would never be read. We master small +difficulties line by line because our recompense comes line by line. + +Moreover, it is as certain as can be that we read Chaucer to-day more +easily than our fathers read him one hundred, two hundred, three +hundred years ago. And I make haste to add that the credit of this +does not belong to the philologists. + +The Elizabethans, from Spenser onward, found Chaucer distressingly +archaic. When Sir Francis Kynaston, _temp_. Charles I., translated +"Troilus and Criseyde," Cartwright congratulated him that he had at +length made it possible to read Chaucer without a dictionary. And from +Dryden's time to Wordsworth's he was an "uncouthe unkiste" barbarian, +full of wit, but only tolerable in polite paraphrase. Chaucer himself +seems to have foreboded this, towards the close of his "Troilus and +Criseyde," when he addresses his "litel book"-- + + "And for there is so great diversitee + In English, and in wryting of our tonge, + So preye I God that noon miswryte thee, + Ne thee mismetre for defaute of tonge. + And red wher-so thou be, or elles songe, + That thou be understoude I God beseche!..." + +And therewith, as though on purpose to defeat his fears, he proceeded +to turn three stanzas of Boccaccio into English that tastes almost as +freshly after five hundred years as on the day it was written. He is +speaking of Hector's death:-- + + "And whan that he was slayn in this manere, + His lighte goost ful blisfully it went + Up to the holownesse of the seventh spere + In convers leting every element; + And ther he saugh, with ful avysement, + The erratik starres, herkening armonye + With sownes ful of hevenish melodye. + + "And down from thennes faste he gan avyse + This litel spot of erthe, that with the see + Embraced is, and fully gan despyse + This wrecched world, and held al vanitee + To respect of the pleyn felicitee + That is in hevene above; and at the laste, + Ther he was slayn, his loking down he caste; + + "And in himself he lough right at the wo + Of hem that wepten for his death so faste; + And dampned al our werk that folweth so + The blinde lust, the which that may not laste, + And sholden al our harte on hevene caste. + And forth he wente, shortly for to telle, + Ther as Mercurie sorted him to dwelle...." + +Who have prepared our ears to admit this passage, and many as fine? +Not the editors, who point out very properly that it is a close +translation from Boccaccio's "Teseide," xi. 1-3. The information is +valuable, as far as it goes; but what it fails to explain is just the +marvel of the passage--viz., the abiding "Englishness" of it, the +native ring of it in our ears after five centuries of linguistic and +metrical development. To whom, besides Chaucer himself, do we owe +this? For while Chaucer has remained substantially the same, +apparently we have an aptitude that our grandfathers and +great-grandfathers had not. The answer surely is: We owe it to our +nineteenth century poets, and particularly to Tennyson, Swinburne, and +William Morris. Years ago Mr. R.H. Horne said most acutely that the +principle of Chaucer's rhythm is "inseparable from a full and fair +exercise of the genius of our language in versification." This "full +and fair exercise" became a despised, almost a lost, tradition after +Chaucer's death. The rhythms of Skelton, of Surrey, and Wyatt, were +produced on alien and narrower lines. Revived by Shakespeare and the +later Elizabethans, it fell into contempt again until Cowper once more +began to claim freedom for English rhythm, and after him Coleridge, +and the despised Leigh Hunt. But never has its full liberty been so +triumphantly asserted as by the three poets I have named above. If we +are at home as we read Chaucer, it is because they have instructed us +in the liberty which Chaucer divined as the only true way. + +FOOTNOTES: + +[A] The Complete Works of Geoffrey Chaucer. Edited, from numerous +manuscripts, by the Rev. Walter W. Skeat, Litt. D., LL.D., M.A. In six +volumes. Oxford: At the Clarendon Press. 1894. + +[B] Chaucer's Canterbury Tales. Edited, with Notes and Introduction, +by Alfred W. Pollard. London: Macmillan & Co. + + + + +"THE PASSIONATE PILGRIM." + + +January 5, 1805. "The Passionate Pilgrim." + +_The Passionate Pilgrim_ (1599). _Reprinted with a Note about the +Book, by Arthur L. Humphreys. London: Privately Printed by Arthur L. +Humphreys, of 187, Piccadilly. MDCCCXCIV._ + +I was about to congratulate Mr. Humphreys on his printing when, upon +turning to the end of this dainty little volume, I discovered the +well-known colophon of the Chiswick Press--"Charles Whittingham & Co., +Took's Court, Chancery Lane, London." So I congratulate Messrs. +Charles Whittingham & Co. instead, and suggest that the imprint should +have run "Privately Printed _for_ Arthur L. Humphreys." + +This famous (or, if you like it, infamous) little anthology of thirty +leaves has been singularly unfortunate in its title-pages. It was +first published in 1599 as _The Passionate Pilgrims. By W. +Shakespeare. At London. Printed for W. Jaggard, and are to be sold by +W. Leake, at the Greyhound in Paules Churchyard._ This, of course, was +disingenuous. Some of the numbers were by Shakespeare: but the +authorship of some remains doubtful to this day, and others the +enterprising Jaggard had boldly conveyed from Marlowe, Richard +Barnefield, and Bartholomew Griffin. In short, to adapt a famous line +upon a famous lexicon, "the best part was Shakespeare, the rest was +not." For this, Jaggard has been execrated from time to time with +sufficient heartiness. Mr. Swinburne, in his latest volume of Essays, +calls him an "infamous pirate, liar, and thief." Mr. Humphreys +remarks, less vivaciously, that "He was not careful and prudent, or he +would not have attached the name of Shakespeare to a volume which was +only partly by the bard--that was his crime. Had Jaggard foreseen the +tantrums and contradictions he caused some commentators--Mr. Payne +Collier, for instance--he would doubtless have substituted 'By William +Shakespeare _and others_' for 'By William Shakespeare.' Thus he might +have saved his reputation, and this hornets' nest which now and then +rouses itself afresh around his aged ghost of three centuries ago." + +That a ghost can suffer no inconvenience from hornets I take to be +indisputable: but as a defence of Jaggard the above hardly seems +convincing. One might as plausibly justify a forger on the ground +that, had he foreseen the indignation of the prosecuting counsel, he +would doubtless have saved his reputation by forbearing to forge. But +before constructing a better defence, let us hear the whole tale of +the alleged misdeeds. Of the second edition of _The Passionate +Pilgrim_ no copy exists. Nothing whatever is known of it, and the +whole edition may have been but an ideal construction of Jaggard's +sportive fancy. But in 1612 appeared _The Passionate Pilgrime, or +certaine amorous Sonnets between Venus and Adonis, newly corrected and +augmented. By W. Shakespeare. The third edition. Whereunto is newly +added two Love Epistles, the first from Paris to Hellen, and Hellen's +answere back again to Paris. Printed by W. Jaggard._ (These "two Love +Epistles" were really by Thomas Heywood.) This title-page was very +quickly cancelled, and Shakespeare's name omitted. + + +Mr. Humphrey's Hypothesis. + +These are the bare facts. Now observe how they appear when set forth +by Mr. Humphreys:-- + + "Shakespeare, who, when the first edition was issued, was aged + thirty-five, acted his part as a great man very well, for he with + dignity took no notice of the error on the title-page of the + first edition, attributing to him poems which he had never + written. But when Jaggard went on sinning, and the third edition + appeared under Shakespeare's name _solely_, though it had poems + by Thomas Heywood, and others as well, Jaggard was promptly + pulled up by both Shakespeare and Heywood. Upon this the + publisher appears very properly to have printed a new title-page, + omitting the name of Shakespeare." + +Upon this I beg leave to observe--(1) That although it may very likely +have been at Shakespeare's own request that his name was removed from +the title-page of the third edition, Mr. Humphreys has no right to +state this as an ascertained fact. (2) That I fail to understand, if +Shakespeare acted properly in case of the third edition, why we should +talk nonsense about his "acting the part of a great man very well" and +"with dignity taking no notice of the error" in the first edition. In +the first edition he was wrongly credited with pieces that belonged +to Marlowe, Barnefield, Griffin, and some authors unknown. In the +third he was credited with these and some pieces by Heywood as well. +In the name of common logic I ask why, if it were "dignified" to say +nothing in the case of Marlowe and Barnefield, it suddenly became +right and proper to protest in the case of Heywood? But (3) what right +have we to assume that Shakespeare "took no notice of the error on the +title-page of the first edition"? We know this only--that if he +protested, he did not prevail as far as the first edition was +concerned. That edition may have been already exhausted. It is even +possible that he _did_ prevail in the matter of the second edition, +and that Jaggard reverted to his old courses in the third. I don't for +a moment suppose this was the case. I merely suggest that where so +many hypotheses will fit the scanty data known, it is best to lay down +no particular hypothesis as fact. + + +Another. + +For I imagine that anyone can, in five minutes, fit up an hypothesis +quite as valuable as Mr. Humphreys'. Here is one which at least has +the merit of not making Shakespeare look a fool:--W. Jaggard, +publisher, comes to William Shakespeare, poet, with the information +that he intends to bring out a small miscellany of verse. If the poet +has an unconsidered trifle or so to spare, Jaggard will not mind +giving a few shillings for them. "You may have, if you like," says +Shakespeare, "the rough copies of some songs in my _Love's Labour's +Lost_, published last year"; and, being further encouraged, searches +among his rough MSS., and tosses Jaggard a lyric or two and a couple +of sonnets. Jaggard pays his money, and departs with the verses. When +the miscellany appears, Shakespeare finds his name alone upon the +title-page, and remonstrates. But, of the defrauded ones, Marlowe is +dead; Barnefield has retired to live the life of a country gentleman +in Shropshire; Griffin dwells in Coventry (where he died, three years +later). These are the men injured; and if they cannot, or will not, +move in the business, Shakespeare (whose case at law would be more +difficult) can hardly be expected to. So he contents himself with +strong expressions at The Mermaid. But in 1612 Jaggard repeats his +offence, and is indiscreet enough to add Heywood to the list of the +spoiled. Heywood lives in London, on the spot; and Shakespeare, now +retired to Stratford, is of more importance than he was in 1599. +Armed with Shakespeare's authority Heywood goes to Jaggard and +threatens; and the publisher gives way. + +Whatever our hypothesis, we cannot maintain that Jaggard behaved well. +On the other hand, it were foolish to judge his offence as if the man +had committed it the day before yesterday. Conscience in matters of +literary copyright has been a plant of slow growth. But a year or two +ago respectable citizens of the United States were publishing our +books "free of authorial expenses," and even corrected our imperfect +works without consulting us. We must admit that Jaggard acted up to +Luther's maxim, "_Pecca fortiter_." He went so far as to include a +piece so well known as Marlowe's _Live with me and be my love_--which +proves at any rate his indifference to the chances of detection. But +to speak of him as one would speak of a similar offender in this New +Year of Grace is simply to forfeit one's claim to an historical sense. + + +The Book. + +What further palliation can we find? Mr. Swinburne calls the book "a +worthless little volume of stolen and mutilated poetry, patched up +and padded out with dirty and dreary doggrel, under the senseless and +preposterous title of _The Passionate Pilgrim_." On the other hand, +Mr. Humphreys maintains that "Jaggard, at any rate, had very good +taste. This is partly seen in the choice of a title. Few books have so +charming a name as _The Passionate Pilgrim_. It is a perfect title. +Jaggard also set up a good precedent, for this collection was +published a year before _England's Helicon_, and, of course, very many +years before any authorized collection of Shakespeare's 'Poems' was +issued. We see in _The Passionate Pilgrim_ a forerunner of _The Golden +Treasury_ and other anthologies." + +Now, as for the title, if the value of a title lie in its application, +Mr. Swinburne is right. It has little relevance to the verses in the +volume. On the other hand, as a portly and attractive mouthful of +syllables _The Passionate Pilgrim_ can hardly be surpassed. If not "a +perfect title," it is surely "a charming name." But Mr. Humphreys' +contention that Jaggard "set up a good precedent" and produced a +"forerunner" of English anthologies becomes absurd when we remember +that _Tottel's Miscellany_ was published in June, 1557 (just forty-two +years before _The Passionate Pilgrim_), and had reached an eighth +edition by 1587; that _The Paradise of Dainty Devices_ appeared in +1576; _A Gorgeous Gallery of Gallant Inventions_ in 1578; _A Handfull +of Pleasant Delights_ in 1584; and _The Phoenix' Nest_ in 1593. + +Almost as wide of the mark is Mr. Swinburne's description of the +volume as "worthless." It contains twenty-one numbers, besides that +lofty dirge, so unapproachably solemn, _The Phoenix and the Turtle_. +Of these, five are undoubtedly by Shakespeare. A sixth (_Crabbed age +and youth_), if not by Shakespeare, is one of the loveliest lyrics in +the language, and I for my part could give it to no other man. Note +also that but for Jaggard's enterprise this jewel had been irrevocably +lost to us, since it is known only through _The Passionate Pilgrim_. +Marlowe's _Live with me and be my love_, and Barnefield's _As it fell +upon a day_, make numbers seven and eight. And I imagine that even Mr. +Swinburne cannot afford to scorn _Sweet rose, fair flower, untimely +pluck'd, soon vaded_--which again only occurs in _The Passionate +Pilgrim_. These nine numbers, with _The Phoenix and the Turtle_, make +up more than half the book. Among the rest we have the pretty and +respectable lyrics, _If music and sweet poetry agree; Good night, good +rest; Lord, how mine eyes throw gazes to the east. When as thine eye +hath chose the dame_, and the gay little song, _It was a Lording's +daughter_. There remain the _Venus and Adonis_ sonnets and _My flocks +feed not_. Mr. Swinburne may call these "dirty and dreary doggrel," an +he list, with no more risk than of being held a somewhat over-anxious +moralist. But to call the whole book worthless is mere abuse of words. + +It is true, nevertheless, that one of the only two copies existing of +the first edition was bought for three halfpence. + + + + +SHAKESPEARE'S LYRICS + + +August 25, 1894. Shakespeare's Lyrics. + +In their re-issue of _The Aldine Poets_, Messrs. George Bell & Sons +have made a number of concessions to public taste. The new binding is +far more pleasing than the old; and in some cases, where the notes and +introductory memoirs had fallen out of date, new editors have been set +to work, with satisfactory results. It is therefore no small +disappointment to find that the latest volume, "The Poems of +Shakespeare," is but a reprint from stereotyped plates of the Rev. +Alexander Dyce's text, notes and memoir. + + +The Rev. A. Dyce. + +Now, of the Rev. Alexander Dyce it may be fearlessly asserted that his +criticism is not for all time. Even had he been less prone to accept +the word of John Payne Collier for gospel; even had Shakespearian +criticism made no perceptible advance during the last quarter of a +century, yet there is that in the Rev. Alexander Dyce's treatment of +his poet which would warn us to pause before accepting his word as +final. As a test of his æsthetic judgment we may turn to the "Songs +from the Plays of Shakespeare" with which this volume concludes. It +had been as well, in a work of this sort, to include all the songs; +but he gives us a selection only, and an uncommonly bad selection. I +have tried in vain to discover a single principle of taste underlying +it. On what principle, for instance, can a man include the song "Come +away, come away, death" from _Twelfth Night_, and omit "O mistress +mine, where are you roaming?"; or include Amiens' two songs from _As +you Like It_, and omit the incomparable "It was a lover and his lass"? +Or what but stark insensibility can explain the omission of "Take, O +take those lips away," and the bridal song "Roses, their sharp spines +being gone," that opens _The Two Noble Kinsmen_? But stay: the Rev. +Alexander Dyce may attribute this last pair to Fletcher. "Take, O take +those lips away" certainly occurs (with a second and inferior stanza) +in Fletcher's _The Bloody Brother_, first published in 1639; but Dyce +gives no hint of his belief that Fletcher wrote it. We are, therefore, +left to conclude that Dyce thought it unworthy of a place in his +collection. On _The Two Noble Kinsmen_ (first published in 1634) Dyce +is more explicit. In a footnote to the Memoir he says: "The title-page +of the first edition of Fletcher's _Two Noble Kinsmen_ attributes the +play partly to Shakespeare; I do not think our poet had any share in +its composition; but I must add that Mr. C. Lamb (a great authority in +such matters) inclines to a different opinion." When "Mr. C. Lamb" and +the Rev. Alexander Dyce hold opposite opinions, it need not be +difficult to choose. And surely, if internal evidence count for +anything at all, the lines + + "Maiden pinks, of odour faint, + Daisies smell-less, yet most quaint, + And sweet thyme true." + +or-- + + "Oxlips in their cradles growing" + +or-- + + "Not an angel of the air, + Bird melodious, or bird fair, + Be absent hence." + +--were written by Shakespeare and not by Fletcher. Nor is it any +detraction from Fletcher to take this view. Shakespeare himself has +left songs hardly finer than Fletcher wrote at his best--hardly finer, +for instance, than that magnificent pair from _Valentinian_. Only the +note of Shakespeare happens to be different from the note of +Fletcher: and it is Shakespeare's note--the note of + + "The cowslips tall her pensioners be" + +(also omitted by the inscrutable Dyce) and of + + "When daisies pied, and violets blue, + And lady-smocks all silver-white, + And cuckoo buds of yellow hue + Do paint the meadows with delight ..." + +--that we hear repeated in this Bridal Song.[A] And if this be so, it +is but another proof for us that Dyce was not a critic for all time. + +Nor is the accent of finality conspicuous in such passages as this +from the Memoir:-- + + "Wright had heard that Shakespeare 'was a much better poet than + player'; and Rowe tells us that soon after his admission into the + company, he became distinguished, 'if not as an extraordinary + actor, yet as an excellent writer.' Perhaps his execution did not + equal his conception of a character, but we may rest assured that + he who wrote the incomparable instructions to the player in + _Hamlet_ would never offend his audience by an injudicious + performance." + +I have no more to urge against writing of this order than that it has +passed out of fashion, and that something different might reasonably +have been looked for in a volume that bears the date 1894 on its +title-page. The public owes Messrs. Bell & Sons a heavy debt; but at +the same time the public has a peculiar interest in such a series as +that of _The Aldine Poets_. A purchaser who finds several of these +books to his mind, and is thereby induced to embark upon the purchase +of the entire series, must feel a natural resentment if succeeding +volumes drop below the implied standard. He cannot go back: and to +omit the offending volumes is to spoil his set. And I contend that the +action taken by Messrs. Bell & Sons in improving several of their more +or less obsolete editions will only be entirely praiseworthy if we may +take it as an earnest of their desire to place the whole series on a +level with contemporary knowledge and criticism. + +Nor can anyone who knows how much the industry and enthusiasm of Dyce +did, in his day, for the study of Shakespeare, do more than urge that +while, viewed historically, Dyce's criticism is entirely respectable, +it happens to be a trifle belated in the year 1894. The points of +difference between him and Charles Lamb are perhaps too obvious to +need indication; but we may sum them up by saying that whereas Lamb, +being a genius, belongs to all time, Dyce, being but an industrious +person, belongs to a period. It was a period of rapid development, no +doubt--how rapid we may learn for ourselves by the easy process of +taking down Volume V. of Chalmers's "English Poets," and turning to +that immortal passage on Shakespeare's poems which Chalmers put forth +in the year 1810:-- + + "The peremptory decision of Mr. Steevens on the merits of these + poems must not be omitted. 'We have not reprinted the Sonnets, + etc., of Shakespeare, because the strongest Act of Parliament + that could be framed would fail to compel readers into their + service. Had Shakespeare produced no other works than these, his + name would have reached us with as little celebrity as time has + conferred upon that of Thomas Watson, an older and much more + elegant sonnetteer.' Severe as this may appear, it only amounts + to the general conclusion which modern critics have formed. + Still, it cannot be denied that there are many scattered beauties + among his Sonnets, and in the Rape of Lucrece; enough, it is + hoped, to justify their admission into the present collection, + especially as the Songs, etc., from his plays have been added, + and a few smaller pieces selected by Mr. Ellis...." + +No comment can add to, or take from, the stupendousness of this. And +yet it was the criticism proper to its time. "I have only to hope," +writes Chalmers in his preface, "that my criticisms will not be found +destitute of candour, or improperly interfering with the general and +acknowledged principles of taste." Indeed they are not. They were the +right opinions for Chalmers; as Dyce's were the right opinions for +Dyce: and if, as we hope, ours is a larger appreciation of +Shakespeare, we probably hold it by no merit of our own, but as the +common possession of our generation, derived through the chastening +experiences of our grandfathers. That, however, is no reason why we +should not insist on having such editions of Shakespeare as fulfil our +requirements, and refuse to study Dyce except as an historical figure. + +It is an unwise generation that declines to take all its inheritance. +I have heard once or twice of late that English poets in the future +will set themselves to express emotions more complex and subtle than +have ever yet been treated in poetry. I shall be extremely glad, of +course, if this happen in my time. But at present I incline to rejoice +rather in an assured inheritance, and, when I hear talk of this kind, +to say over to myself one particular sonnet which for mere subtlety of +thought seems to me unbeaten by anything that I can select from the +poetry of this century:-- + + Thy bosom is endeared of all hearts + Which I by lacking have supposed dead; + And there reigns Love and all Love's loving parts, + And all those friends which I thought buried. + How many a holy and obsequious Tear + Hath dear religious love stol'n from mine eye, + As interest of the dead, which now appear + But things remov'd that hidden in thee lie! + + Thou art the grave where buried love doth live, + Hung with the trophies of my lovers gone, + Who all their parts of me to thee did give; + That due of many now is thine alone! + Their images I lov'd I view in thee, + And thou, all they, hast all the all of me. + +FOOTNOTES: + +[A] The opening lines of the second stanza of this poem have generally +been printed thus: + + "Primrose, firstborn child of Ver, + Merry springtime's harbinger, + With her bells dim...." + +And many have wondered how Shakespeare or Fletcher came to write of +the "bells" of a primrose. Mr. W.J. Linton proposed "With harebell +slim": although if we must read "harebell" or "harebells," "dim" would +be a pretty and proper word for the color of that flower. The +conjecture takes some little plausibility from Shakespeare's elsewhere +linking primrose and harebell together: + + "Thou shalt not lack + The flower that's like thy face, pale primrose, nor + The azured harebell, like thy veins...." + _Cymbeline_, iv. 2. + +I have always suspected, however, that there should be a semicolon +after "Ver," and that "Merry springtime's harbinger, with her bells +dim," refers to a totally different flower--the snowdrop, to wit. And +I have lately learnt from Dr. Grosart, who has carefully examined the +1634 edition (the only early one), that the text actually gives a +semicolon. The snowdrop may very well come after the primrose in this +song, which altogether ignores the process of the seasons. + + + + +SAMUEL DANIEL + + +February 24, 1894. Samuel Daniel. + +The writings of Samuel Daniel and the circumstances of his life are of +course well enough known to all serious students of English poetry. +And, though I cannot speak on this point with any certainty, I imagine +that our younger singers hold to the tradition of all their fathers, +and that Daniel still + + _renidet in angulo_ + +of their affections, as one who in his day did very much, though +quietly, to train the growth of English verse; and proved himself, in +everything he wrote, an artist to the bottom of his conscience. As +certainly as Spenser, he was a "poet's poet" while he lived. A couple +of pages might be filled almost offhand with the genuine compliments +of his contemporaries, and he will probably remain a "poet's poet" as +long as poets write in English. But the average reader of culture--the +person who is honestly moved by good poetry and goes from time to +time to his bookshelves for an antidote to the common cares and +trivialities of this life--seems to neglect Daniel almost utterly. I +judge from the wretched insufficiency of his editions. It is very hard +to obtain anything beyond the two small volumes published in 1718 (an +imperfect collection), and a volume of selections edited by Mr. John +Morris and published by a Bath bookseller in 1855; and even these are +only to be picked up here and there. I find it significant, too, that +in Mr. Palgrave's _Golden Treasury_ Daniel is represented by one +sonnet only, and that by no means his best. This neglect will appear +the more singular to anyone who has observed how apt is the person +whom I have called the "average reader of culture" to be drawn to the +perusal of an author's works by some attractive idiosyncrasy in the +author's private life or character. Lamb is a staring instance of this +attraction. How we all love Lamb, to be sure! Though he rejected it +and called out upon it, "gentle" remains Lamb's constant epithet. And, +curiously enough, in the gentleness and dignified melancholy of his +life, Daniel stands nearer to Lamb than any other English writer, with +the possible exception of Scott. His circumstances were less gloomily +picturesque. But I defy any feeling man to read the scanty narrative +of Daniel's life and think of him thereafter without sympathy and +respect. + + +Life. + +He was born in 1562--Fuller says in Somersetshire, not far from +Taunton; others say at Beckington, near Philip's Norton, or at +Wilmington in Wiltshire. Anthony Wood tells us that he came "of a +wealthy family;" Fuller that "his father was a master of music." Of +his earlier years next to nothing is known; but in 1579 he was entered +as a commoner at Magdalen Hall, Oxford, and left the university three +years afterwards without taking a degree. His first book--a +translation of Paola Giovio's treatise on Emblems--appeared in 1585, +when he was about twenty-two. In 1590 or 1591 he was travelling in +Italy, probably with a pupil, and no doubt busy with those studies +that finally made him the first Italian scholar of his time. In 1592 +he published his "Sonnets to Delia," which at once made his +reputation; in 1594 his "Complaint of Rosamond" and "Tragedy of +Cleopatra;" and in 1595 four books of his "Civil Wars." On Spenser's +death, in 1599, Daniel is said to have succeeded to the office of +poet-laureate. + + "That wreath which, in Eliza's golden days, + My master dear, divinist Spenser, wore; + That which rewarded Drayton's learned lays, + Which thoughtful Ben and gentle Daniel wore...." + +But history traces the Laureateship, as an office, no further back +than Jonson, and we need not follow Southey into the mists. It is +certain, however, that Daniel was a favorite at Elizabeth's Court, and +in some way partook of her bounty. In 1600 he was appointed tutor to +the Lady Anne Clifford, a little girl of about eleven, daughter of +Margaret, Countess of Cumberland; and his services were gratefully +remembered by mother and daughter during his life and after. But +Daniel seems to have tired of living in great houses as private tutor +to the young. The next year, when presenting his works to Sir Thomas +Egerton, he writes:--"Such hath been my misery that whilst I should +have written the actions of men, I have been constrained to bide with +children, and, contrary to mine own spirit, put out of that sense +which nature had made my part." + + +Self-distrust. + +Now there is but one answer to this--that a man of really strong +spirit does not suffer himself to be "put out of that sense which +nature had made my part." Daniel's words indicate the weakness that +in the end made futile all his powers: they indicate a certain +"donnish" timidity (if I may use the epithet), a certain distrust of +his own genius. Such a timidity and such a distrust often accompany +very exquisite faculties: indeed, they may be said to imply a certain +exquisiteness of feeling. But they explain why, of the two +contemporaries, the robust Ben Jonson is to-day a living figure in +most men's conception of those times, while Samuel Daniel is rather a +fleeting ghost. And his self-distrust was even then recognized as well +as his exquisiteness. He is indeed "well-languaged Daniel," "sweet +honey-dropping Daniel," "Rosamund's trumpeter, sweet as the +nightingale," revered and admired by all his compeers. But the note of +apprehension was also sounded, not only by an unknown contributor to +that rare collection of epigrams, _Skialetheia, or the Shadow of +Truth_. + + "Daniel (as some hold) might mount, _if he list_; + But others say he is a Lucanist" + +--but by no meaner a judge than Spenser himself, who wrote in his +"Colin Clout's Come Home Again": + + "And there is a new shepherd late upsprung + The which doth all afore him far surpass: + Appearing well in that well-tunéd song + Which late he sung unto a scornful lass. + _Yet doth his trembling Muse but lowly fly, + As daring not too rashly mount on height_; + And doth her tender plumes as yet but try + In love's soft lays, and looser thoughts delight. + Then rouse thy feathers quickly, DANIEL, + And to what course thou please thyself advance; + But most, meseems, thy accent will excel + In tragic plaints and passionate mischance." + +Moreover, there is a significant passage in the famous "Return from +Parnassus," first acted at Cambridge during the Christmas of 1601: + + "Sweet honey-dropping Daniel doth wage + War with the proudest big Italian + That melts his heart in sugar'd sonneting, + _Only let him more sparingly make use + Of others' wit and use his own the more._" + + +The 'mauvais pas' of Parnassus. + +Now it has been often pointed out that considerable writers fall into +two classes--(1) those who begin, having something to say, and are +from the first rather occupied with their matter than with the manner +of expressing it; and (2) those who begin with the love of expression +and intent to be artists in words, _and come through expression to +profound thought_. It is fashionable just now, for some reason or +another, to account Class 1 as the more respectable; a judgment to +which, considering that Shakespeare and Milton belonged undeniably to +Class 2, I refuse to assent. The question, however, is not to be +argued here. I have only to point out in this place that the early +work of all poets in Class 2 is largely imitative. Virgil was +imitative, Keats was imitative--to name but a couple of sufficiently +striking examples. And Daniel, who belongs to this class, was also +imitative. But for a poet of this class to reach the heights of song, +there must come a time when out of imitation he forms a genuine style +of his own, _and loses no mental fertility in the transformation_. +This, if I may use the metaphor, is the _mauvais pas_ in the ascent of +Parnassus: and here Daniel broke down. He did indeed acquire a style +of his own; but the effort exhausted him. He was no longer prolific; +his ardor had gone: and his innate self-distrustfulness made him quick +to recognize his sterility. + +Soon after the accession of James I., Daniel, at the recommendation +of his brother-in-law, John Florio, possibly furthered by the interest +of the Earl of Pembroke, was given a post as gentleman extraordinary +and groom of the privy chamber to Anne of Denmark; and a few months +after was appointed to take the oversight of the plays and shows that +were performed by the children of the Queen's revels, or children of +the Chapel, as they were called under Elizabeth. He had thus a snug +position at Court, and might have been happy, had it been another +Court. But in nothing was the accession of James more apparent than in +the almost instantaneous blasting of the taste, manners, and serious +grace that had marked the Court of Elizabeth. The Court of James was a +Court of bad taste, bad manners, and no grace whatever: and +Daniel--"the remnant of another time," as he calls himself--looked +wistfully back upon the days of Elizabeth. + + "But whereas he came planted in the spring, + And had the sun before him of respect; + We, set in th' autumn, in the withering + And sullen season of a cold defect, + Must taste those sour distastes the times do bring + Upon the fulness of a cloy'd neglect. + Although the stronger constitutions shall + Wear out th' infection of distemper'd days ..." + +And so he stood dejected, while the young men of "stronger +constitutions" passed him by. + +In this way it happened that Daniel, whom at the outset his +contemporaries had praised with wide consent, and who never wrote a +loose or unscholarly line, came to pen, in the dedicatory epistle +prefixed to his tragedy of "Philotas," these words--perhaps the most +pathetic ever uttered by an artist upon his work: + + "And therefore since I have outlived the date + Of former grace, acceptance and delight. + I would my lines, late born beyond the fate + Of her[A] spent line, had never come to light; + So had I not been tax'd for wishing well, + Nor now mistaken by the censuring Stage, + Nor in my fame and reputation fell, + Which I esteem more than what all the age + Or the earth can give. _But years hath done this wrong, + To make me write too much, and live too long_." + + +Ease of his verse. + +I said just now that Daniel had done much, though quietly, to train +the growth of English verse. He not only stood up successfully for +its natural development at a time when the clever but less largely +informed Campion and others threatened it with fantastic changes. He +probably did as much as Waller to introduce polish of line into our +poetry. Turn to the famous "Ulysses and the Siren," and read. Can +anyone tell me of English verses that run more smoothly off the +tongue, or with a more temperate grace? + + "Well, well, Ulysses, then I see + I shall not have thee here: + And, therefore, I will come to thee, + And take my fortune there. + I must be won that cannot win, + Yet lost were I not won; + For beauty hath created been + T'undo or be undone." + +To speak familiarly, this is as easy as an old shoe. To speak yet more +familiarly, it looks as if any fool could turn off lines like these. +Let the fool try. + +And yet to how many anthologies do we not turn in vain for "Ulysses +and the Siren"; or for the exquisite spring song, beginning-- + + "Now each creature joys the other, + Passing happy days and hours; + One bird reports unto another + In the fall of silver showers ..." + +--or for that lofty thing, the "Epistle to the Countess of +Cumberland"?--which Wordsworth, who quoted it in his "Excursion," +declares to be "an admirable picture of the state of a wise man's mind +in a time of public commotion." Certainly if ever a critic shall arise +to deny poetry the virtue we so commonly claim for her, of fortifying +men's souls against calamity, this noble Epistle will be all but the +last post from which he will extrude her defenders. + +FOOTNOTES: + +[A] Sc. Elizabeth's. + + + + +WILLIAM BROWNE + + +April 21, 1894. William Browne of Tavistock. + +It has been objected to the author of _Britannia's Pastorals_ that +their perusal sends you to sleep. It had been subtler criticism, as +well as more amiable, to observe that you can wake up again and, +starting anew at the precise point where you dropped off, continue the +perusal with as much pleasure as ever, neither ashamed of your +somnolence nor imputing it as a fault to the poet. For William Browne +is perhaps the easiest figure in our literature. He lived easily, he +wrote easily, and no doubt he died easily. He no more expected to be +read through at a sitting than he tried to write all the story of +Marina at a sitting. He took up his pen and composed: when he felt +tired he went off to bed, like a sensible man: and when you are tired +of reading he expects you to be sensible and do the same. + + +A placid life. + +He was born at Tavistock, in Devon, about the year 1590; and after the +manner of mild and sensible men cherished a particular love for his +birth-place to the end of his days. From Tavistock Grammar School he +passed to Exeter College, Oxford--the old west-country college--and +thence to Clifford's Inn and the Inner Temple. His first wife died +when he was twenty-three or twenty-four. He took his second courtship +quietly and leisurely, marrying the lady at length in 1628, after a +wooing of thirteen years. "He seems," says Mr. A.H. Bullen, his latest +biographer, "to have acquired in some way a modest competence, which +secured him immunity from the troubles that weighed so heavily on men +of letters." His second wife also brought him a portion. More than +four years before this marriage he had returned to Exeter College, as +tutor to the young Robert Dormer, who in due time became Earl of +Carnarvon and was killed in Newbury fight. By his fellow-collegians--as +by everybody with whom he came into contact--he was highly beloved and +esteemed, and in the public Register of the University is styled, "vir +omni humana literarum et bonarum artium cognitione instructus." He +gained the especial favor of William Herbert, Earl of Pembroke, whom +Aubrey calls "the greatest Mæcenas to learned men of any peer of his +time or since," and of whom Clarendon says, "He was a great lover of +his country, and of the religion and justice, which he believed could +only support it; and his friendships were only with men of those +principles,"--another tribute to the poet's character. He was familiarly +received at Wilton, the home of the Herberts. After his second marriage +he moved to Dorking and there settled. He died in or before the year +1645. In the letters of administration granted to his widow (November, +1645) he is described as "late of Dorking, in the county of Surrey, +Esquire." But there is no entry of his death in the registers at Dorking +or Horsham: so perhaps he went back to lay his bones in his beloved Devon. +A William Browne was buried at Tavistock on March 27th, 1643. This may or +may not have been our author. "Tavistock,--Wilton,--Dorking," says Mr. +Bullen,--"Surely few poets have had a more tranquil journey to the +Elysian Fields." + + +An amiable poet. + +As with his life, so with his poetry--he went about it quietly, +contentedly. He learned his art, as he confesses, from Spenser and +Sidney; and he took it over ready-made, with all the conventions and +pastoral stock-in-trade--swains languishing for hard-hearted nymphs, +nymphs languishing for hard-hearted swains; sheep-cotes, rustic +dances, junketings, anadems, and true-love knots; monsters invented +for the perpetual menace of chastity; chastity undergoing the most +surprising perils, but always saved in the nick of time, if not by an +opportune shepherd, then by an equally opportune river-god or +earthquake; episodes innumerable, branching off from the main stem of +the narrative at the most critical point, and luxuriating in endless +ramifications. Beauty, eluding unwelcome embraces, is never too hotly +pressed to dally with an engaging simile or choose the most agreeable +words for depicting her tribulation. Why indeed should she hurry? It +is all a polite and pleasant make-believe; and when Marina and Doridon +are tired, they stand aside and watch the side couples, Fida and +Remond, and get their breath again for the next figure. As for the +finish of the tale, there is no finish. The narrator will stop when he +is tired; just then and no sooner. What became of Marina after Triton +rolled away the stone and released her from the Cave of Famine? I am +sure I don't know. I have followed her adventures up to that point +(though I should be very sorry to attempt a _précis_ of them without +the book) through some 370 pages of verse. Does this mean that I am +greatly interested in her? Not in the least. I am quite content to +hear no more about her. Let us have the lamentations of Celadyne for a +change--though "for a change" is much too strong an expression. The +author is quite able to invent more adventures for Marina, if he +chooses to, by the hour together. If he does not choose to, well and +good. + +Was the composition of _Britannia's Pastorals_ then, a useless or +inconsiderable feat? Not at all: since to read them is to taste a mild +but continuous pleasure. In the first place, it is always pleasant to +see a good man thoroughly enjoying himself: and that Browne thoroughly +"relisht versing"--to use George Herbert's pretty phrase--would be +patent enough, even had he not left us an express assurance:-- + + "What now I sing is but to pass away + A tedious hour, as some musicians play; + Or make another my own griefs bemoan--" + +--rather affected, that, one suspects: + + "Or to be least alone when most alone, + In this can I, as oft as I will choose, + Hug sweet content by my retirèd Muse, + And in a study find as much to please + As others in the greatest palaces. + Each man that lives, according to his power, + On what he loves bestows an idle hour. + Instead of hounds that make the wooded hills + Talk in a hundred voices to the rills, + I like the pleasing cadence of a line + Struck by the consort of the sacred Nine. + In lieu of hawks ..." + +--and so on. Indeed, unless it be Wither, there is no poet of the time +who practised his art with such entire cheerfulness: though Wither's +satisfaction had a deeper note, as when he says of his Muse-- + + "Her true beauty leaves behind + Apprehensions in the mind, + Of more sweetness than all art + Or inventions can impart; + Thoughts too deep to be express'd, + And too strong to be suppressed." + +Yet Charles Lamb's nice observation-- + + "Fame, and that too after death, was all which hitherto the poets + had promised themselves from their art. It seems to have been + left to Wither to discover that poetry was a present possession + as well as a rich reversion, and that the muse had promise of + both lives--of this, and of that which was to come." + +--must be extended by us, after reading his lines quoted above, to +include William Browne. He, at least, had no doubt of the Muse as an +earthly companion. + +As for posthumous fame, Browne confides to us his aspirations in that +matter also:-- + + "And Time may be so kind to these weak lines + To keep my name enroll'd past his that shines + In gilded marble, or in brazen leaves: + Since verse preserves, when stone and brass deceives. + Or if (as worthless) Time not lets it live + To those full days which others' Muses give, + Yet I am sure I shall be heard and sung + Of most severest eld and kinder young + Beyond my days; and maugre Envy's strife, + Add to my name some hours beyond my life." + +This is the amiable hope of one who lived an entirely amiable life in + + "homely towns, + Sweetly environ'd with the daisied downs:" + +and who is not the less to be beloved because at times his amiability +prevents him from attacking even our somnolence too fiercely. If the +casual reader but remember Browne as a poet who had the honor to +supply Keats with inspiration,[A] there will always be others, and +enough of them, to prize his ambling Muse for her own qualities. + +FOOTNOTES: + +[A] _Cf._ his lament for William Ferrar (brother of Nicholas Ferrar, +of Little Gidding), drowned at sea-- + + "Glide soft, ye silver floods, + And every spring: + Within the shady woods + Let no bird sing...." + + + + +THOMAS CAREW + + +July 28, 1894. A Note on his Name. + +Even as there is an M alike in Macedon and Monmouth, so Thomas Carew +and I have a common grievance--that our names are constantly +mispronounced. It is their own fault, of course; on the face of it +they ought to rhyme with "few" and "vouch." And if it be urged +(impolitely but with a fair amount of plausibility) that what my name +may or may not rhyme with is of no concern to anybody, I have only to +reply that, until a month or so back, I cheerfully shared this opinion +and acquiesced in the general error. Had I dreamed then of becoming a +subject for poetry, I had pointed out--as I do now--for the benefit of +all intending bards, that I do not legitimately rhyme with "vouch" (so +liable is human judgment to err, even in trifles), unless they +pronounce it "vooch," which is awkward. I believe, indeed (speaking as +one who has never had occasion to own a Rhyming Dictionary), that the +number of English words consonant with my name is exceedingly small; +but leave the difficulty to the ingenious Dr. Alexander H. Japp, +LL.D., F.R.S.E., who has lately been at the pains to compose and put +into private circulation a sprightly lampoon upon me. As it is not my +intention to reply with a set of verses upon Dr. Japp, it seems +superfluous to inquire if _his_ name should be pronounced as it is +spelt. + +But Carew's case is rather important; and it is really odd that his +latest and most learned editor, the Rev. J.F. Ebsworth, should fall +into the old error. In a "dedicatory prelude" to his edition of "The +Poems and Masque of Thomas Carew" (London: Reeves & Turner), Mr. +Ebsworth writes as follows:-- + + "Hearken strains from one who knew + How to praise and how to sue: + _Celia's_ lover, TOM CAREW." + +Thomas Carew (born April 3d, 1590, at Wickham, in Kent) was the son of +Sir Matthew Carew, Master in Chancery, and the grandson of Sir Wymond +Carew, of East Antony, or Antony St. Jacob, between the Lynher and +Tamar rivers in Cornwall, where the family of Pole-Carew lives to +this day. Now, the Cornish Carews have always pronounced their name as +"Carey," though, as soon as you cross the Tamar and find yourself (let +us say) as far east as Haccombe in South Devon, the name becomes +"Carew"--pronounced as it is written. The two forms are both of great +age, as the old rhyme bears witness-- + + "Carew, Carey and Courtenay, + When the Conqueror came, were here at play"-- + +and the name was often written "Carey" or "Cary," as in the case of +the famous Lucius Carey, Lord Falkland, and his descendants. In +Cornwall, however, where spelling is often an untrustworthy guide to +pronunciation (I have known people to write their name "Hix" and +pronounce it as "Hic"--when sober, too), it was written "Carew" and +pronounced as "Carey"; and there is not the slightest doubt that this +was the case with our poet's name. If anyone deny it, let him consider +the verse in which Carew is mentioned by his contemporaries: and +attempt, for instance, to scan the lines in Robert Baron's "Pocula +Castalia," 1650-- + + "Sweet _Suckling_ then, the glory of the Bower + Wherein I've wanton'd many a genial hour, + Fair Plant! whom I have seen _Minerva_ wear + An ornament to her well-plaited hair, + On highest days; remove a little from + Thy excellent _Carew_! and thou, dearest _Tom_, + _Love's Oracle_! lay thee a little off + Thy flourishing _Suckling_, that between you both + I may find room...." + +Or this by Suckling-- + + "_Tom Carew_ was next, but he had a fault, + That would not well stand with a Laureat; + His Muse was hard-bound, and th' issue of 's brain + Was seldom brought forth but with trouble and pain." + +Or this, by Lord Falkland himself (who surely may be supposed to have +known how the name was pronounced), in his "Eclogue on the Death of +Ben Jonson"-- + + "_Let Digby, Carew, Killigrew_ and _Maine, + Godolphin, Waller_, that inspired train-- + Or whose rare pen beside deserves the grace + Or of an equal, or a neighbouring place-- + Answer thy wish, for none so fit appears + To raise his Tomb, as who are left his heirs." + +In each case "Carey" scans admirably, while "Carew" gives the line an +intolerable limp. + + +Mr. Ebsworth's championship. + +This mistake of Mr. Ebsworth's is the less easy to understand inasmuch +as he has been very careful to clear up the popular confusion of our +poet Thomas Carew, "gentleman of the Privy Chamber to King Charles I., +and cup-bearer to His Majesty," with another Thomas Gary (also a +poet), son of the Earl of Monmouth and groom of His Majesty's +bed-chamber. But it is one thing to prove that this second Thomas Gary +is the original of the "medallion portrait" commonly supposed to be +Carew's: it is quite another thing to saddle him, merely upon +guess-work, with Carew's reputed indiscretions. Indeed, Mr. Ebsworth +lets his enthusiasm for his author run clean away with his sense of +fairness. He heads his Introductory Memoir with the words of Pallas in +Tennyson's "Œnone"-- + + "Again she said--'I woo thee not with gifts: + Sequel of guerdon could not alter me + To fairer. Judge thou me by what I am, + So shalt thou find me fairest.'"-- + +from which I take it that Mr. Ebsworth claims his attitude towards +Carew to be much the same as Thackeray's towards Pendennis. But in +fact he proves himself a thorough-going partisan, and anyone less +enthusiastic may think himself lucky if dismissed by Mr. Ebsworth +with nothing worse than a smile of pity mingled with contempt. Now, +so long as an editor confines this belligerent enthusiasm to the +defence of his author's writings, it is at worst but an amiable +weakness; and every word he says in their praise tends indirectly to +justify his own labor in editing these meritorious compositions. But +when he extends this championship over the author's private life, he +not unfrequently becomes something of a nuisance. We may easily +forgive such talk as "There must assuredly have been a singular +frankness and affectionate simplicity in the disposition of Carew:" +talk which is harmless, though hardly more valuable than the +reflection beloved of local historians--"If these grey old walls could +speak, what a tale might they not unfold!" It is less easy to forgive +such a note as this:-- + + "Sir John Suckling was incapable of understanding Carew in his + final days of sickness and depression, as he had been (and this + is conceding much) in their earlier days of reckless gallantry. + His vile address 'to T---- C----,' etc., 'Troth, _Tom_, I must + confess I much admire ...' is nothing more than coarse badinage + without foundation; in any case not necessarily addressed to + Carew, although they were of close acquaintance; but many other + Toms were open to a similar expression, since 'T.C.' might apply + to Thomas Carey, to Thomas Crosse, and other T.C. poets." + +It is not pleasant to rake up any man's faults; but when an editor +begins to suggest some new man against whom nothing is known (except +that he wrote indifferent verse)--who is not even known to have been +on speaking terms with Suckling--as the proper target of Suckling's +coarse raillery, we have a right not only to protest, but to point out +that even Clarendon, who liked Carew, wrote of him that, "after fifty +years of his life spent with less severity and exactness than it ought +to have been, he died with great remorse for that license, and with +the greatest manifestation of Christianity that his best friends could +desire." If Carew thought fit to feel remorse for that license, it +scarcely becomes Mr. Ebsworth to deny its existence, much less to hint +that the sinfulness was another's. + + +A correction. + +As a minor criticism, I may point out that the song, "Come, my Celia, +let us prove ..." (included by Mr. Ebsworth, with the remark that +"there is no external evidence to confirm the attribution of this song +to Carew") was written by Ben Jonson, and is to be found in +_Volpone_, Act III., sc. 7, 1607. + +But, with some imperfections, this is a sound edition--sadly +needed--of one of the most brilliant lyrical writers of his time. It +contains a charming portrait; and the editor's enthusiasm, when it +does not lead him too far, is also charming. + + + + +"ROBINSON CRUSOE" + + +April 13, 1895. Robinson Crusoe. + +Many a book has produced a wide and beneficent effect and won a great +reputation, and yet this effect and this reputation have been +altogether wide of its author's aim. Swift's _Gulliver_ is one +example. As Mr. Birrell put it the other day, "Swift's gospel of +hatred, his testament of woe--his _Gulliver_, upon which he expended +the treasures of his wit, and into which he instilled the concentrated +essence of his rage--has become a child's book, and has been read with +wonder and delight by generations of innocents." + + +How far is the tale a parable? + +Generations of innocents in like manner have accepted _Robinson +Crusoe_ as a delightful tale about a castaway mariner, a story of +adventure pure and simple, without sub-intention of any kind. But we +know very well that Defoe in writing it intended a parable--a parable +of his own life. In the first place, he distinctly affirms this in +his preface to the _Serious Reflections_ which form Part iii. of his +great story:-- + + "As the design of everything is said to be first in the + intention, and last in the execution, so I come now to + acknowledge to my reader that the present work is not merely a + product of the two first volumes, but the two first volumes may + rather be called the product of this. The fable is always made + for the moral, not the moral for the fable...." + +He goes on to say that whereas "the envious and ill-disposed part of +the world" have accused the story of being feigned, and "all a +romance, formed and embellished by invention to impose upon the +world," he declares this objection to be an invention scandalous in +design, and false in fact, and affirms that the story, "though +allegorical, is also historical"; that it is + + "the beautiful representation of a life of unexampled + misfortunes, and of a variety not to be met with in the world, + sincerely adapted to and intended for the common good of mankind, + and _designed at first_, as it is now further applied, to the + most serious use possible. Farther, that there is a man alive, + and well known too, the actions of whose life are the just + subject of these volumes, _and to whom all or most part of the + story most directly alludes_; this may be depended upon, for + truth, and to this I set my name." + +He proceeds to assert this in detail of several important passages in +the book, and obviously intends us to infer that the adventures of +Robinson Crusoe of York, Mariner, were throughout and from the +beginning designed as a story in parable of the life and adventures of +Daniel Defoe, Gentleman. "But Defoe may have been lying?" This was +never quite flatly asserted. Even his enemy Gildon admitted an analogy +between the tale of Crusoe and the stormy life of Defoe with its +frequent shipwrecks "more by land than by sea." Gildon admitted this +implicitly in the title of his pamphlet, _The Life and Strange +Surprising Adventures of Mr. D---- De F----, of London, Hosier, who +has lived above Fifty Years by himself in the Kingdoms of North and +South Britain._ But the question has always been, To what extent are +we to accept Defoe's statement that the story is an allegory? Does it +agree step by step and in detail with the circumstances of Defoe's +life? Or has it but a general allegorical resemblance? + +Hitherto, critics have been content with the general resemblance, and +have agreed that it would be a mistake to accept Defoe's statement +too literally, to hunt for minute allusions in _Robinson Crusoe_, and +search for exact resemblances between incidents in the tale and events +in the author's life. But this at any rate may be safely affirmed, +that recent discoveries have proved the resemblance to be a great deal +closer than anyone suspected a few years ago. + + +Mr. Wright's hypothesis. + +Mr. Aitken supplied the key when he announced in the _Athenæum_ for +August 23rd, 1890, his discovery that Daniel Defoe was born, not in +1661 (as had hitherto been supposed), but earlier, and probably in the +latter part of the year 1659. The story dates Crusoe's birth September +30th, 1632, or just twenty-seven years earlier. Now Mr. Wright, +Defoe's latest biographer,[A] maintains that if we add these +twenty-seven years to the date of any event in Crusoe's life we shall +have the date of the corresponding event in Defoe's life. By this +simple calculation he finds that Crusoe's running away to sea +corresponds in time with Defoe's departure from the academy at +Newington Green; Crusoe's early period on the island (south side) +with the years Defoe lived at Tooting; Crusoe's visit to the other +side of the island with a journey of Defoe's into Scotland; the +footprint and the arrival of the savages with the threatening letters +received by Defoe, and the physical assaults made on him after the +Sacheverell trial; while Friday stands for a collaborator who helped +Defoe with his work. + +Defoe expressly states in his _Serious Reflections_ that the story of +Friday is historical and true in fact-- + + "It is most real that I had ... such a servant, a savage, and + afterwards a Christian, and that his name was called Friday, and + that he was ravished from me by force, and died in the hands that + took him, which I represent by being killed; this is all + literally true, and should I enter into discoveries many alive + can testify them. His other conduct and assistance to me also + have just references in all their parts to the helps I had from + that faithful savage in my real solitudes and disasters." + +It may be added that there are strong grounds for believing Defoe to +have had about this time assistance in his literary work. + +All this is very neatly worked out; but of course the really important +event in Crusoe's life is his great shipwreck and his long solitude +on the island. Now of what events in Defoe's life are these +symbolical? + + +The 'Silence.' + +Well, in the very forefront of his _Serious Reflections_, and in +connection with his long confinement in the island, Defoe makes Crusoe +tell the following story:-- + + "I have heard of a man that, upon some extraordinary disgust + which he took at the unsuitable conversation of some of his + nearest relations, whose society he could not avoid, suddenly + resolved never to speak any more. He kept his resolution most + rigorously many years; not all the tears or entreaties of his + friends--no, not of his wife and children--could prevail with him + to break his silence. It seems it was their ill-behaviour to him, + at first, that was the occasion of it; for they treated him with + provoking language, which frequently put him into undecent + passions, and urged him to rash replies; and he took this severe + way to punish himself for being provoked, and to punish them for + provoking him. But the severity was unjustifiable; it ruined his + family and broke up his house. His wife could not bear it, and + after endeavouring, by all the ways possible, to alter his rigid + silence, went first away from him, and afterwards from herself, + turning melancholy and distracted. His children separated, some + one way and some another way; and only one daughter, who loved + her father above all the rest, kept with him, tended him, talked + to him by signs, and lived almost dumb like her father _near + twenty-nine years with him; till being very sick, and in a high + fever, delirious as we call it, or light-headed, he broke his + silence_, not knowing when he did it, and spoke, though wildly at + first. He recovered of his illness afterwards, and frequently + talked with his daughter, but not much, and very seldom to + anybody else." + +I italicise some very important words in the above story. Crusoe was +wrecked on his island on September 30th, 1659, his twenty-seventh +birthday. We are told that he remained on the island twenty-eight +years, two months and nineteen days. (Compare with duration of the +man's silence in the story.) This puts the date of his departure at +December 19th, 1687. + +Now add twenty-seven years. We find that Defoe left _his_ +solitude--whatever that may have been--on December 19th, 1714. Just at +that date, as all his biographers record, Defoe was struck down by a +fit of apoplexy and lay ill for six weeks. Compare this again with the +story. + +You divine what is coming. Astounding as it may be, Mr. Wright +contends that Defoe himself was the original of the story: that Defoe, +provoked by his wife's irritating tongue, made a kind of vow to live +a life of silence--and kept it for more than twenty-eight years! + +So far back as 1859 the egregious Chadwick nibbled at this theory in +his _Life and Times of Daniel Defoe, with Remarks Digressive and +Discursive_. The story, he says, "would be very applicable" to Defoe +himself, and again, "is very likely to have been taken from his own +life"; but at this point Chadwick maunders off with the remark that +"perhaps the domestic fireside of the poet or book-writer is not the +place we should go to in search of domestic happiness." Perhaps not; +but Chadwick, tallyhoing after domestic happiness, misses the scent. +Mr. Wright sticks to the scent and rides boldly; but is he after the +real fox? + + * * * * * + +April 20, 1895. + +Can we believe it? Can we believe that on the 30th of September, 1686, +Defoe, provoked by his wife's nagging tongue, made a vow to live a +life of complete silence; that for twenty-eight years and a month or +two he never addressed a word to his wife or children; and that his +resolution was only broken down by a severe illness in the winter of +1714? + + +Mr. Aitken on Mr. Wright's hypothesis. + +Mr. Aitken,[B] who has handled this hypothesis of Mr. Wright's, brings +several arguments against it, which, taken together, seem to me quite +conclusive. To begin with, several children were born to Defoe during +this period. He paid much attention to their education, and in 1713, +the penultimate year of this supposed silence, we find his sons +helping him in his work. Again, in 1703 Mrs. Defoe was interceding for +her husband's release from Newgate. Let me add that it was an age in +which personalities were freely used in public controversy; that Defoe +was continuously occupied with public controversy during these +twenty-eight years, and managed to make as many enemies as any man +within the four seas; and I think the silence of his adversaries upon +a matter which, if proved, would be discreditable in the extreme, is +the best of all evidence that Mr. Wright's hypothesis cannot be +sustained. Nor do I see how Mr. Wright makes it square with his own +conception of Defoe's character. "Of a forgiving temper himself," says +Mr. Wright on p. 86, "he (Defoe) was quite incapable of understanding +how another person could nourish resentment." This of a man whom the +writer asserts to have sulked in absolute silence with his wife and +family for twenty-eight years, two months, and nineteen days! + + +An inherent improbability. + +At all events it will not square with _our_ conception of Defoe's +character. Those of us who have an almost unlimited admiration for +Defoe as a master of narrative, and next to no affection for him as a +man, might pass the heartlessness of such conduct. "At first sight," +Mr. Wright admits, "it may appear monstrous that a man should for so +long a time abstain from speech with his own family." Monstrous, +indeed--but I am afraid we could have passed that. Mr. Wright, who has +what I may call a purfled style, tells us that-- + + "To narrate the career of Daniel Defoe is to tell a tale of + wonder and daring, of high endeavour and marvellous success. To + dwell upon it is to take courage and to praise God for the + splendid possibilities of life.... Defoe is always the hero; his + career is as thick with events as a cornfield with corn; his + fortunes change as quickly and as completely as the shapes in a + kaleidoscope--he is up, he is down, he is courted, he is spurned; + it is shine, it is shower, it is _couleur de rose_, it is + Stygian night. Thirteen times he was rich and poor. Achilles was + not more audacious, Ulysses more subtle, Æneas more pious." + +That is one way of putting it. Here is another way (as the cookery +books say):--"To narrate the career of Daniel Defoe is to tell a tale +of a hosier and pantile maker, who had a hooked nose and wrote tracts +indefatigably--he was up, he was down, he was in the Pillory, he was +at Tooting; it was _poule de soie_, it was leather and prunella; and +it was always tracts. Æneas was not so pious a member of the Butchers' +Company; and there are a few milestones on the Dover Road; but Defoe's +life was as thick with tracts as a cornfield with corn." These two +estimates may differ here and there; but on one point they agree--that +Defoe was an extremely restless, pushing, voluble person, who could as +soon have stood on his head for twenty-eight years, two months, and +nineteen days as have kept silence for that period with any man or +woman in whose company he found himself frequently alone. Unless we +have entirely misjudged his character--and, I may add, unless Mr. +Wright has completely misrepresented the rest of his life--it simply +was not _in_ the man to keep this foolish vow for twenty-four hours. + +No, I am afraid Mr. Wright's hypothesis will not do. And yet his plan +of adding twenty-seven years to each important date in Crusoe's +history has revealed so many coincident events in the life of Defoe +that we cannot help feeling he is "hot," as they say in the children's +game; that the wreck upon the island and Crusoe's twenty-eight years +odd of solitude do really correspond with some great event and +important period of Defoe's life. The wreck is dated 30th September, +1659. Add the twenty-seven years, and we come to September 30th, 1686. +Where was Defoe at that date, and what was he doing? Mr. Wright has to +confess that of his movements in 1686 and the two following years "we +know little that is definite." Certainly we know of nothing that can +correspond with Crusoe's shipwreck. + + +A suggestion. + +But wait a moment--The _original_ editions of _Robinson Crusoe_ (and +most, if not all, later editions) give the date of Crusoe's departure +from the island as December 19th, 1686, instead of 1687. Mr. Wright +suggests that this is a misprint; and, to be sure, it does not agree +with the statement respecting the length of Crusoe's stay on the +island, _if we assume the date of the wreck to be correct_. But, (as +Mr. Aitken points out) the mistake must be the author's, not the +printer's, because in the next paragraph we are told that Crusoe +reached England in June, 1687, not 1688. I agree with Mr. Aitken; and +I suggest _that the date of Crusoe's arrival at the island, not the +date of his departure, is the date misprinted_. Assume for a moment +that the date of departure (December 19th, 1686) is correct. Subtract +the twenty-eight years, two months, and nineteen days of Crusoe's stay +on the island, and we get September 30th, 1658, as the date of the +wreck and his arrival at the island. Now add the twenty-seven years +which separate Crusoe's experiences from Defoe's, and we come to +September 30th, 1685. What was happening in England at the close of +September, 1685? Why, Jeffreys was carrying through his Bloody Assize. + +"Like many other Dissenters," says Mr. Wright on p. 21, "Defoe +sympathised with Monmouth; and, to his misfortune, took part in the +rising." His comrades perished in it, and he himself, in Mr. Wright's +words, "probably had to lie low." There is no doubt that the Monmouth +affair was the beginning of Defoe's troubles: and I suggest that +certain passages in the story of Crusoe's voyage (_e.g._ the "secret +proposal" of the three merchants who came to Crusoe) have a peculiar +significance if read in this connection. I also think it possible +there may be a particular meaning in the several waves, so carefully +described, through which Crusoe made his way to dry land; and in the +simile of the reprieved malefactor (p. 50 in Mr. Aitken's delightful +edition); and in the several visits to the wreck. + +I am no specialist in Defoe, but put this suggestion forward with the +utmost diffidence. And yet, right or wrong, I feel it has more +plausibility than Mr. Wright's. Defoe undoubtedly took part in the +Monmouth rising, and was a survivor of that wreck "on the south side +of the island": and undoubtedly it formed the turning-point of his +career. If we could discover how he escaped Kirke and Jeffreys, I am +inclined to believe we should have a key to the whole story of the +shipwreck. I should not be sorry to find this hypothesis upset; for +the story of Robinson Crusoe is quite good enough for me as it stands, +and without any sub-intention. But whatever be the true explanation +of the parable, if time shall discover it, I confess I expect it will +be a trifle less recondite than Mr. Wright's, and a trifle more +creditable to the father of the English novel.[C] + +FOOTNOTES: + +[A] "The Life of Daniel Defoe." By Thomas Wright, Principal of Cowper +School, Olney. London: Cassell & Co. + +[B] _Romances and Narratives by Daniel Defoe_. Edited by George A. +Aitken. Vols. i., ii., and iii. Containing the Life and Adventures, +Farther Adventures, and Serious Reflections of Robinson Crusoe. With a +General Introduction by the Editor. London: J.M. Dent & Co. + +[C] Upon this suggestion Mr. Aitken, in a postscript to his seventh +volume of the _Romances and Narratives_, has since remarked as +follows:-- + + "In a discussion in _The Speaker_ upon Defoe's supposed + period of 'silence,' published since the appearance of the + first volume of this edition, Mr. Quiller Couch, while + agreeing, for the reasons I have given (vol. i. p. lvii.), + that there is no mistake in the date of Robinson Crusoe's + departure from his island (December, 1686), has suggested + that perhaps the error in the chronology lies, not in the + length of time Crusoe is said to have lived on the island, + but in the date given for his landing (September, 1659). That + this suggestion is right appears from a passage which has + hitherto escaped notice. Crusoe was born in 1632, and Defoe + makes him say (vol. i. p. 147), 'The same day of the year I + was born on, viz. the 30th of September, that same day I had + my life so miraculously saved twenty-six years after, when I + was cast ashore on this island.' Crusoe must, therefore, have + reached his island on September 30, 1658, not 1659, as twice + stated by Defoe; and by adding twenty-eight years to 1658 we + get 1686, the date given for Crusoe's departure. + + "It is, however, questionable whether this rectification + helps us to interpret the allegory in _Robinson Crusoe_. It + is true that if, in accordance with the 'key' suggested by + Mr. Wright, we add twenty-seven years to the date of the + shipwreck (1658) in order to find the corresponding event in + Defoe's life, we arrive at September, 1685, when Jeffreys was + sentencing many of those who--like Defoe--took part in + Monmouth's rising. But we have no evidence that Defoe + suffered seriously in consequence of the part he took in this + rebellion; and the addition of twenty-seven years to the date + of Crusoe's departure from the island (December, 1686) does + not bring us to any corresponding event in Defoe's own story. + Those who are curious will find the question discussed at + greater length in _The Speaker_ for April 13 and 20, and May + 4, 1895." + + + + +LAWRENCE STERNE + + +Dec. 10, 1891. Sterne and Thackeray. + +It is told by those who write scraps of Thackeray's biography that a +youth once ventured to speak disrespectfully of Scott in his presence. +"You and I, sir," said the great man, cutting him short, "should lift +our hats at the mention of that great name." + +An admirable rebuke!--if only Thackeray had remembered it when he sat +down to write those famous Lectures on the English Humorists, or at +least before he stood up in Willis's Rooms to inform a polite audience +concerning his great predecessors. Concerning their work? No. +Concerning their genius? No. Concerning the debt owed to them by +mankind? Not a bit of it. Concerning their _lives_, ladies and +gentlemen; and whether their lives were pure and respectable and free +from scandal and such as men ought to have led whose works you would +like your sons and daughters to handle. Mr. Frank T. Marzials, +Thackeray's latest biographer, finds the matter of these Lectures +"excellent":-- + + "One feels in the reading that Thackeray is a peer among his + peers--a sort of elder brother,[A] kindly, appreciative and + tolerant--as he discourses of Addison, Steele, Swift, Pope, + Sterne, Fielding, Goldsmith. I know of no greater contrast in + criticism--a contrast, be it said, not to the advantage of the + French critic--than Thackeray's treatment of Pope and that of M. + Taine. What allowance the Englishman makes for the physical ills + that beset the 'gallant little cripple'; with what a gentle hand + he touches the painful places in that poor twisted body! M. + Taine, irritated apparently that Pope will not fit into his + conception of English literature, exhibits the same deformities + almost savagely." + +I am sorry that I cannot read this kindliness, this appreciation, this +tolerance, into the Lectures--into those, for instance, of Sterne and +Fielding: that the simile of the "elder brother" carries different +suggestions for Mr. Marzials and for me: and that the lecturer's +attitude is to me less suggestive of a peer among his peers than of a +tall "bobby"--a volunteer constable--determined to warn his polite +hearers what sort of men these were whose books they had hitherto read +unsuspectingly. + +And even so--even though the lives and actions of men who lived too +early to know Victorian decency must be held up to shock a crowd in +Willis's Rooms, yet it had been but common generosity to tell the +whole truth. Then the story of Fielding's _Voyage to Lisbon_ might +have touched the heart to sympathy even for the purely fictitious low +comedian whom Thackeray presented: and Sterne's latest letters might +have infused so much pity into the polite audience that they, like his +own Recording Angel, might have blotted out his faults with a tear. +But that was not Thackeray's way. Charlotte Brontë found "a finished +taste and ease" in the Lectures, a "something high bred." Motley +describes their style as "hovering," and their method as "the +perfection of lecturing to high-bred audiences." Mr. Marzials quotes +this expression "hovering" as admirably descriptive. It is. By +judicious selection, by innuendo, here a pitying aposiopesis, there an +indignant outburst, the charges are heaped up. Swift was a toady at +heart, and used Stella vilely for the sake of that hussy Vanessa. +Congreve had captivating manners--of course he had, the dog! And we +all know what that meant in those days. Dick Steele drank and failed +to pay his creditors. Sterne--now really I know what Club life is, +ladies and gentlemen, and I might tell you a thing or two if I would: +but really, speaking as a gentleman before a polite audience, I warn +you against Sterne. + +I do not suppose for a moment that Thackeray consciously defamed these +men. The weaknesses, the pettinesses of humanity interested him, and +he treated them with gusto, even as he spares us nothing of that +horrible scene between Mrs. Mackenzie and Colonel Newcome. And of +course poor Sterne was the easiest victim. The fellow was so full of +his confounded sentiments. You ring a choice few of these on the +counter and prove them base metal. You assume that the rest of the bag +is of equal value. You "go one better" than Sir Peter Teazle and damn +all sentiment, and lo! the fellow is no better than a smirking jester, +whose antics you can expose till men and women, who had foolishly +laughed and wept as he moved them, turn from him, loathing him as a +swindler. So it is that although _Tristram Shandy_ continues one of +the most popular classics in the language, nobody dares to confess his +debt to Sterne except in discreet terms of apology. + +But the fellow wrote the book. You can't deny _that_, though +Thackeray may tempt you to forget it. (What proportion does my Uncle +Toby hold in that amiable Lecture?) The truth is that the elemental +simplicity of Captain Shandy and Corporal Trim did not appeal to the +author of _The Book of Snobs_ in the same degree as the pettiness of +the man Sterne appealed to him: and his business in Willis's Rooms was +to talk, not of Captain Shandy, but of the man Sterne, to whom his +hearers were to feel themselves superior as members of society. I +submit that this was not a worthy task for a man of letters who was +also a man of genius. I submit that it was an inversion of the true +critical method to wreck Sterne's _Sentimental Journey_ at the outset +by picking Sterne's life to pieces, holding up the shreds and warning +the reader that any nobility apparent in his book will be nothing +better than a sham. Sterne is scarcely arrived at Calais and in +conversation with the Monk before you are cautioned how you listen to +the impostor. "Watch now," says the critic; "he'll be at his tricks in +a moment. Hey, _paillasse_! There!--didn't I tell you?" And yet I am +as sure that the opening pages of the _Sentimental Journey_ are full +of genuine feeling as I am that if Jonathan Swift had entered the room +while the Lecture upon him was going forward, he would have eaten +William Makepeace Goliath, white waistcoat and all. + +Frenchmen, who either are less awed than we by lecturers in white +waistcoats, or understand the methods of criticism somewhat better, +cherish the _Sentimental Journey_ (in spite of its indifferent French) +and believe in the genius that created it. But the Briton reads it +with shyness, and the British critic speaks of Sterne with bated +breath, since Thackeray told it in Gath that Sterne was a bad man, and +the daughters of Philistia triumphed. + + * * * * * + +October 6, 1894. Mr. Whibley's Edition of "Tristram Shandy." + +We are a strenuous generation, with a New Humor and a number of +interesting by-products; but a new _Tristram Shandy_ stands not yet +among our achievements. So Messrs. Henley and Whibley have made the +best of it and given us a new edition of the old _Tristram_--two +handsome volumes, with shapely pages, fair type, and an Introduction. +Mr. Whibley supplies the Introduction, and that he writes lucidly and +forcibly needs not to be said. His position is neither that so +unfairly taken up by Thackeray; nor that of Allibone, who, writing for +Heaven knows how many of Allibone's maiden aunts, summed up Sterne +thus:-- + + "A standing reproach to the profession which he disgraced, + grovelling in his tastes, indiscreet, if not licentious, in his + habits, he lived unhonoured and died unlamented, save by those + who found amusement in his wit or countenance in his + immorality."[B] + +But though he avoids these particular excesses; though he goes +straight for the book, as a critic should; Mr. Whibley cannot get quit +of the bad tradition of patronizing Sterne:-- + + "He failed, as only a sentimentalist can fail, in the province of + pathos.... There is no trifle, animate or inanimate, he will not + bewail, if he be but in the mood; nor does it shame him to dangle + before the public gaze those poor shreds of sensibility he calls + his feelings. Though he seldom deceives the reader into sympathy, + none will turn from his choicest agony without a thrill of + disgust. The _Sentimental Journey_, despite its interludes of + tacit humour and excellent narrative, is the last extravagance of + irrelevant grief.... Genuine sentiment was as strange to Sterne + the writer as to Sterne the man; and he conjures up no tragic + figure that is not stuffed with sawdust and tricked out in the + rags of the green-room. Fortunately, there is scant opportunity + for idle tears in _Tristram Shandy_.... Yet no occasion is + lost.... Yorick's death is false alike to nature and art. The + vapid emotion is properly matched with commonness of expression, + and the bad taste is none the more readily excused by the + suggestion of self-defence. Even the humour of My Uncle Toby is + something: degraded by the oft-quoted platitude: 'Go, poor + devil,' says he, to an overgrown fly which had buzzed about his + nose; 'get thee gone. Why should I hurt thee? This world surely + is big enough to hold both thee and me.'" + +But here Mr. Whibley's notorious hatred of sentiment leads him into +confusion. That the passage has been over-quoted is no fault of +Sterne's. Of My Uncle Toby, if of any man, it might have been +predicted that he would not hurt a fly. To me this trivial action of +his is more than merely sentimental. But, be this as it may, I am sure +it is honestly characteristic. + +Still, on the whole Mr. Whibley has justice. Sterne _is_ a +sentimentalist. Sterne _is_ indecent by reason of his reticence--more +indecent than Rabelais, because he uses a hint where Rabelais would +have said what he meant, and prints a dash where Rabelais would have +plumped out with a coarse word and a laugh. Sterne _is_ a convicted +thief. On a famous occasion Charles Reade drew a line between plagiary +and justifiable borrowing. To draw material from a heterogeneous +work--to found, for instance, the play of _Coriolanus_ upon Plutarch's +_Life_--is justifiable: to take from a homogeneous work--to enrich +your drama from another man's drama--is plagiary. But even on this +interpretation of the law Sterne must be condemned; for in decking out +_Tristram_ with feathers from the history of Gargantua he was +pillaging a homogeneous work. Nor can it be pleaded in extenuation +that he improved upon his originals--though it can, I think, be +pleaded that he made his borrowings his own. I do not think much of +Mr. Whibley's instance of Servius Sulpicius' letter. No doubt Sterne +took his translation of it from Burton; but the letter is a very well +known one, and Burton's translation happened to be uncommonly good, +and the borrowing of a good rendering without acknowledgment was not, +as far as I know, then forbidden by custom. In any case, the whole +passage is intended merely to lead up to the beautiful perplexity of +My Uncle Toby. And that is Sterne's own, and could never have been +another man's. "After all," says Mr. Whibley, "all the best in Sterne +is still Sterne's own." + +But the more I agree with Mr. Whibley's strictures the more I desire +to remove them from an Introduction to _Tristram Shandy_, and to read +them in a volume of Mr. Whibley's collected essays. Were it not +better, in reading _Tristram Shandy_, to take Sterne for once (if only +for a change) at his own valuation, or at least to accept the original +postulates of the story? If only for the entertainment he provides we +owe him the effort. There will be time enough afterwards to turn to +the cold judgment of this or that critic, or to the evidence of this +or that thief-taker. For the moment he claims to be heard without +prejudice; he has genius enough to make it worth our while to listen +without prejudice; and the most lenient "appreciation" of his sins, if +we read it beforehand, is bound to raise prejudice and infect our +enjoyment as we read. And, as a corollary of this demand, let us ask +that he shall be allowed to present his book to us exactly as he +chooses. Mr. Whibley says, "He set out upon the road of authorship +with a false ideal: 'Writing,' said he, 'when properly managed, is +but a different name for conversation.' It would be juster to assert +that writing is never properly managed, unless it be removed from +conversation as far as possible." Very true; or, at least, very +likely. But since Sterne _had_ this ideal, let us grant him full +liberty to make his spoon or spoil his horn, and let us judge +afterwards concerning the result. The famous blackened page and the +empty pages (all omitted in this new edition) are part of Sterne's +method. They may seem to us trick-work and foolery; but, if we +consider, they link on to his notion that writing is but a name for +conversation; they are included in his demand that in writing a book a +man should be allowed to "go cluttering away like hey-go mad." "You +may take my word"--it is Sterne who speaks, and in his very first +chapter-- + + "You may take my word that nine parts in ten of a man's sense or + his nonsense, his success and miscarriages in this world, depend + upon their motions and activity, and the different tracks and + trains you put them into, so that when they are once set + going--whether right or wrong, 'tis not a halfpenny matter--away + they go cluttering like hey-go mad; and by treading the same + steps over and over again, they presently make a road of it, as + plain and smooth as a garden walk, which, when once they are + used to, the devil himself sometimes shall not be able to drive + them off it." + +This, at any rate, is Sterne's own postulate. And I had rather judge +him with all his faults after reading the book than be prepared +beforehand to make allowances. + + * * * * * + +Nov. 12, 1895. Sterne's Good-nature. + +Let one thing be recorded to the credit of this much-abused man. He +wrote two masterpieces of fiction (one of them a work of considerable +length), and in neither will you find an ill-natured character or an +ill-natured word. On the admission of all critics My Father, My +Mother, My Uncle Toby, Corporal Trim, and Mrs. Wadman are immortal +creations. To the making of them there has gone no single sour or +uncharitable thought. They are essentially amiable: and the same may +be said of all the minor characters and of the author's disquisitions. +Sterne has given us a thousand occasions to laugh, but never an +occasion to laugh on the wrong side of the mouth. For savagery or +bitterness you will search his books in vain. He is obscene, to be +sure. But who, pray, was ever the worse for having read him? Alas, +poor Yorick! He had his obvious and deplorable failings. I never +heard that he communicated them. Good-humor he has been communicating +now for a hundred and fifty years. + +FOOTNOTES: + +[A] But why "elder"? + +[B] "Pan might _indeed_ be proud if ever he begot + Such an Allibone ..." + _Spenser (revised)._ + + + + +SCOTT AND BURNS + + +Dec. 9, 1893. Scott's Letters. + + "_All Balzac's novels occupy one shelf. The new edition fifty + volumes long"_ + +--says Bishop Blougram. But for Scott the student will soon have to +hire a room. The novels and poems alone stretch away into just sixty +volumes in Cadell's edition; and this is only the beginning. At this +very moment two new editions (one of which, at least, is +indispensable) are unfolding their magnificent lengths, and report +says that Messrs. Hodder and Stoughton already project a third, with +introductory essays by Mr. Barrie. Then the Miscellaneous Prose Works +by that untiring hand extend to some twenty-eight or thirty volumes. +And when Scott stops, his biographer and his commentators begin, and +all with like liberal notions of space and time. Nor do they deceive +themselves. We take all they give, and call for more. Three years ago, +and fifty-eight from the date of Scott's death, his Journal was +published; and although Lockhart had drawn upon it for one of the +fullest biographies in the language, the little that Lockhart had left +unused was sufficient to make its publication about the most important +literary event of the year 1890. + +And now Mr. David Douglas, the publisher of the "Journal," gives us in +two volumes a selection from the familiar letters preserved at +Abbotsford. The period covered by this correspondence is from 1797, +the year of Sir Walter's marriage, to 1825, when the "Journal" +begins--"covered," however, being too large a word for the first seven +years, which are represented by seven letters only; it is only in 1806 +that we start upon something like a consecutive story. Mr. Douglas +speaks modestly of his editorial work. "I have done," he says, "little +more than arrange the correspondence in chronological order, supplying +where necessary a slight thread of continuity by annotation and +illustration." It must be said that Mr. Douglas has done this +exceedingly well. There is always a note where a note is wanted, and +never where information would be superfluous. On the taste and +judgment of his selection one who has not examined the whole mass of +correspondence at Abbotsford can only speak on _a priori_ grounds. But +it is unlikely that the writer of these exemplary footnotes has made +many serious mistakes in compiling his text. + +Man's perennial and pathetic curiosity about virtue has no more +striking example than the public eagerness to be acquainted with every +detail of Scott's life. For what, as a mere story, is that life?--a +level narrative of many prosperous years; a sudden financial crash; +and the curtain falls on the struggle of a tired and dying gentleman +to save his honor. Scott was born in 1771 and died in 1832, and all +that is special in his life belongs to the last six years of it. Even +so the materials for the story are of the simplest--enough, perhaps, +under the hand of an artist to furnish forth a tale of the length of +Trollope's _The Warden_. In picturesqueness, in color, in wealth of +episode and +peripeteia+, Scott's career will not compare for a +moment with the career of Coleridge, for instance. Yet who could +endure to read the life of Coleridge in six volumes? De Quincey, in an +essay first published the other day by Dr. Japp, calls the story of +the Coleridges "a perfect romance ... a romance of beauty, of +intellectual power, of misfortune suddenly illuminated from heaven, of +prosperity suddenly overcast by the waywardness of the individual." +But the "romance" has been written twice and thrice, and desperately +dull reading it makes in each case. Is it then an accident that +Coleridge has been unhappy in his biographers, while Lockhart +succeeded once for all, and succeeded so splendidly? + +It is surely no accident. Coleridge is an ill man to read about just +as certainly as Scott is a good man to read about; and the secret is +just that Scott had character and Coleridge had not. In writing of the +man of the "graspless hand," the biographer's own hand in time grows +graspless on the pen; and in reading of him our hands too grow +graspless on the page. We pursue the man and come upon group after +group of his friends; and each as we demand "What have you done with +Coleridge?" answers "He was here just now, and we helped him forward a +little way." Our best biographies are all of men and women of +character--and, it may be added, of beautiful character--of Johnson, +Scott, and Charlotte Brontë. + +There are certain people whose biographies _ought_ to be long. Who +could learn too much concerning Lamb? And concerning Scott, who will +not agree with Lockhart's remark in the preface to his abridged +edition of 1848:--"I should have been more willing to produce an +enlarged edition; for the interest of Sir Walter's history lies, I +think, peculiarly in its minute details"? You may explore here, and +explore there, and still you find pure gold; for the man was gold +right through. + +So in the present volume every line is of interest because we refer it +to Scott's known character and test it thereby. The result is always +the same; yet the employment does not weary. In themselves the letters +cannot stand, as mere writing, beside the letters of Cowper, or of +Lamb. They are just the common-sense epistles of a man who to his last +day remained too modest to believe in the extent of his own genius. +The letters in this collection which show most acuteness on literary +matters are not Scott's, but Lady Louisa Stuart's, who appreciated +the Novels on their appearance (their faults as well as their merits) +with a judiciousness quite wonderful in a contemporary. Scott's +literary observations (with the exception of one passage where the +attitude of an English gentleman towards literature is stated +thus--"he asks of it that it shall arouse him from his habitual +contempt of what goes on about him") are much less amusing; and his +letters to Joanna Baillie the dullest in the volume, unless it be the +answers which Joanna Baillie sent. Best of all, perhaps, is the +correspondence (scarcely used by Lockhart) between Scott and Lady +Abercorn, with its fitful intervals of warmth and reserve. This alone +would justify Mr. Douglas's volumes. But, indeed, while nothing can be +found now to alter men's conception of Scott, any book about him is +justified, even if it do no more than heap up superfluous testimony to +the beauty of his character. + + * * * * * + +June 15, 1895. A racial disability. + +Since about one-third of the number of my particular friends happen to +be Scotsmen, it has always distressed and annoyed me that, with the +best will in the world, I have never been able to understand on what +principle that perfervid race conducts its enthusiasms. Mine is a +racial disability, of course; and the converse has been noted by no +less a writer than Stevenson, in the story of his journey "Across the +Plains":-- + + "There were no emigrants direct from Europe--save one German + family and a knot of Cornish miners who kept grimly by + themselves, one reading the New Testament all day long through + steel spectacles, the rest discussing privately the secrets of + their old-world mysterious race. Lady Hester Stanhope believed + she could make something great of the Cornish; for my part I can + make nothing of them at all. A division of races, older and more + original than that of Babel, keeps this dose, esoteric family + apart from neighbouring Englishmen." + +The loss on my side, to be sure, would be immensely the greater, were +it not happily certain that I _can_ make something of Scotsmen; can, +and indeed do, make friends of them. + + +The Cult of Burns. + +All the same, this disability weighs me down with a sense of hopeless +obtuseness when I consider the deportment of the average intelligent +Scot at a Burns banquet, or a Burns _conversazione_, or a Burns +festival, or the unveiling of a Burns statue, or the putting up of a +pillar on some spot made famous by Burns. All over the world--and all +under it, too, when their time comes--Scotsmen are preparing +after-dinner speeches about Burns. The great globe swings round out of +the sun into the dark; there is always midnight somewhere; and always +in this shifting region the eye of imagination sees orators +gesticulating over Burns; companies of heated exiles with crossed arms +shouting "Auld Lang Syne"; lesser groups--if haply they be +lesser--reposing under tables, still in honor of Burns. And as the +vast continents sweep "eastering out of the high shadow which reaches +beyond the moon," and as new nations, with _their_ cities and +villages, their mountains and seashores, rise up on the morning-side, +lo! fresh troops, and still fresh troops, and yet again fresh troops, +wend or are carried out of action with the dawn. + + +Scott and Burns. + +None but a churl would wish this enthusiasm abated. But why is it all +lavished on Burns? That is what gravels the Southron. Why Burns? Why +not Sir Walter? Had I the honor to be a fellow-countryman of Scott, +and had I command of the racial tom-tom, it seems to me that I would +tund upon it in honor of that great man until I dropped. To me, a +Southron, Scott is the most imaginative, and at the same time the +justest, writer of our language since Shakespeare died. To say this is +not to suggest that he is comparable with Shakespeare. Scott himself, +sensible as ever, wrote in his _Journal_, "The blockheads talk of my +being like Shakespeare--not fit to tie his brogues." "But it is also +true," said Mr. Swinburne, in his review of the _Journal_, "that if +there were or could be any man whom it would not be a monstrous +absurdity to compare with Shakespeare as a creator of men and inventor +of circumstance, that man could be none other than Scott." Greater +poems than his have been written; and, to my mind, one or two novels +better than his best. But when one considers the huge mass of his work, +and its quality in the mass; the vast range of his genius, and its +command over that range; who shall be compared with him? + +These are the reflections which occur, somewhat obviously, to the +Southron. As for character, it is enough to say that Scott was one of +the best men who ever walked on this planet; and that Burns was not. +But Scott was not merely good: he was winningly good: of a character +so manly, temperate, courageous that men read his Life, his Journal, +his Letters with a thrill, as they might read of Rorke's Drift or +Chitral. How then are we to account for the undeniable fact that his +countrymen, in public at any rate, wax more enthusiastic over Burns? +Is it that the _homeliness_ of Burns appeals to them as a wandering +race? Is it because, in farthest exile, a line of Burns takes their +hearts straight back to Scotland?--as when Luath the collie, in "The +Twa Dogs," describes the cotters' New Year's Day:-- + + "That merry day the year begins, + They bar the door on frosty winds; + The nappy reeks wi' mantling ream, + An' sheds a heart-inspirin' steam; + The luntin' pipe an' sneeshin' mill + Are handed round wi' richt guid will; + The cantie auld folks crackin' crouse, + The young anes rantin' through the house,-- + My heart has been sae fain to see them, + That I for joy hae barkit wi' them." + +That is one reason, no doubt. But there is another, I suspect. With +all his immense range Scott saw deeply into character; but he did not, +I think, see very deeply into feeling. You may extract more of the +_lacrimæ rerum_ from the story of his own life than from all his +published works put together. The pathos of Lammermoor is +taken-for-granted pathos. If you deny this, you will not deny, at any +rate, that the pathos of the last scene of _Lear_ is quite beyond his +scope. Yet this is not more certainly beyond his scope than is the +feeling in many a single line or stanza of Burns'. Verse after verse, +line after line, rise up for quotation-- + + "Thou'lt break my heart, thou bonnie bird + That sings beside thy mate; + For sae I sat, and sae I sang, + And wist na o' my fate." + +Or, + + "O pale, pale now, those rosy lips + I aft hae kissed sae fondly! + And closed for aye the sparkling glance + That dwelt on me sae kindly! + And mouldering now in silent dust + The heart that lo'ed me dearly-- + But still within my bosom's core + Shall live my Highland Mary." + +Or, + + "Had we never loved sae kindly, + Had we never loved sae blindly, + Never met--or never parted, + We had ne'er been broken-hearted." + +Scott left an enormous mass of writing behind him, and almost all of +it is good. Burns left very much less, and among it a surprising +amount of inferior stuff. But such pathos as the above Scott cannot +touch. I can understand the man who holds that these deeps of pathos +should not be probed in literature: and am not sure that I wholly +disagree with him. The question certainly is discutable and worth +discussing. But such pathos, at any rate, is immensely popular: and +perhaps this will account for the hold which Burns retains on the +affections of a race which has a right to be at least thrice as proud +of Scott. + +However, if Burns is honored at the feast, Scott is read by the +fireside. Hardly have the rich Dryburgh and Border editions issued +from the press before Messrs. Archibald Constable and Co. are bringing +out their reprint of the famous 48-volume edition of the Novels; and +Mr. Barrie is supposed to be meditating another, with introductory +notes of his own upon each Novel. In my own opinion nothing has ever +beaten, or come near to beat, the 48-volume "Waverley" of 1829; and +Messrs. Constable and Co. were happily inspired when they decided to +make this the basis of their new edition. They have improved upon it +in two respects. The paper is lighter and better. And each novel is +kept within its own covers, whereas in the old editions a volume would +contain the end of one novel and beginning of another. The original +illustrations, by Wilkie, Landseer, Leslie, Stanfield, Bonington, and +the rest, have been retained, in order to make the reprint complete. +But this seems to me a pity; for a number of them were bad to begin +with, and will be worse than ever now, being reproduced (as I +understand) from impressions of the original plates. To do without +illustrations were a counsel of perfection. But now that the novels +have become historical, surely it were better to illustrate them with +authentic portraits of Scott, pictures of scenery, facsimiles of MSS., +and so on, than with (_e.g._) a worn reproduction of what Mr. F.P. +Stephanoff thought that Flora Mac-Ivor looked like while playing the +harp and introducing a few irregular strains which harmonized well +with the distant waterfall and the soft sigh of the evening breeze in +the rustling leaves of an aspen which overhung the fair +harpress--especially as F.P. Stephanoff does not seem to have known +the difference between an aspen and a birch. + +In short, did it not contain the same illustrations, this edition +would probably excel even that of 1828. As it is, after many +disappointments, we now have a cheap Waverley on what has always been +the best model. + + +A Protest. + + 'SIR,--In your 'Literary Causerie' of last week ... the question + is discussed why the name of Burns raises in Scotsmen such + unbounded enthusiasm while that of Scott falls comparatively + flat. This question has puzzled many another Englishman besides + 'A.T.Q.C.' And yet the explanation is not far to seek: Burns + appeals to the hearts and feelings of the masses in a way Scott + never does. 'A.T.Q.C.' admits this, and gives quotations in + support. These quotations, however excellent in their way, are + not those that any Scotsman would trust to in support of the + above proposition. A Scotsman would at once appeal to 'Scots wha + hae,' 'Auld Lang Syne,' and 'A man's a man for a' that.' The very + familiarity of these quotations has bred the proverbial contempt. + Think of the soul-inspiring, 'fire-eyed fury' of 'Scots wha hae'; + the glad, kind, ever fresh greeting of 'Auld Lang Syne'; the + manly, sturdy independence of 'A man's a man for a' that,' and + who can wonder at the ever-increasing enthusiasm for Burns' name? + + Is there for honest poverty + That hangs his head and a' that? + The coward slave we pass him by-- + We dare be poor for a' that.' + * * * * * + 'The rank is but the guinea stamp-- + The man's the gowd for a' that.' + + "Nor is it in his patriotism, independence, and conviviality + alone that Burns touches every mood of a Scotsman's heart. There + is an enthusiasm of humanity about Burns which you will hardly + find equalled in any other author, and which most certainly does + not exist in Scott. + + 'Man's inhumanity to man + Makes countless thousands mourn.' + * * * * * + 'Why has man this will and power + To make his fellow mourn?' + + "These quotations might be multiplied were it necessary; but I + think enough has been said to explain what puzzles 'A.T.Q.C.' I + have an unbounded admiration of Sir W. Scott--quite as great as + 'A.T.Q.C.' Indeed, I think him the greatest of all novelists; + but, as a Scot, somewhat Anglicised by a residence in London of + more than a quarter of a century, I unhesitatingly say that I + would rather be the author of the above three lyrics of Burns' + than I would be the author of all Scott's novels. Certain I am + that if immortality were my aim I should be much surer of it in + the one case than the other. I cannot conceive 'Scots wha hae,' + 'Auld Lang Syne,' etc., ever dying. Are there any of Scott's + writings of which the same could be said? I doubt it.... + + --I am yours, etc., "J.B. + "London, June 18th, 1895." + +The hopelessness of the difficulty is amusingly, if rather +distressingly, illustrated by this letter. Here again you have the +best will in the world. Nothing could be kindlier than "J.B.'s" tone. +As a Scot he has every reason to be impatient of stupidity on the +subject of Burns: yet he takes real pains to set me right. Alas! his +explanations leave me more than ever at sea, more desperate than ever +of understanding _what exactly it is_ in Burns that kindles this +peculiar enthusiasm in Scotsmen and drives them to express it in +feasting and oratory. + +After casting about for some time, I suggested that Burns--though in +so many respects immeasurably inferior to Scott--frequently wrote with +a depth of feeling which Scott could not command. On second thoughts, +this was wrongly put. Scott may have _possessed_ the feeling, together +with notions of his own, on the propriety of displaying it in his +public writings. Indeed, after reading some of his letters again, I am +sure he did possess it. Hear, for instance, how he speaks of Dalkeith +Palace, in one of his letters to Lady Louisa Stuart:-- + + "I am delighted my dear little half god-daughter is turning out + beautiful. I was at her christening, poor soul, and took the + oaths as representing I forget whom. That was in the time when + Dalkeith was Dalkeith; how changed alas! I was forced there the + other day by some people who wanted to see the house, and I felt + as if it would have done me a great deal of good to have set my + manhood aside, to get into a corner and cry like a schoolboy. + Every bit of furniture, now looking old and paltry, had some + story and recollections about it, and the deserted gallery, which + I have seen so happily filled, seemed waste and desolate like + Moore's + + 'Banquet hall deserted, + Whose flowers are dead, + Whose odours fled, + And all but I departed.' + + But it avails not either sighing or moralising; to have known the + good and the great, the wise and the witty, is still, on the + whole, a pleasing reflection, though saddened by the thought that + their voices are silent and their halls empty." + +Yes, indeed, Scott possessed deep feelings, though he did not exhibit +them to the public. + +Now Burns does exhibit his deep feelings, as I demonstrated by +quotations. And I suggested that it is just his strength of emotion, +his command of pathos and readiness to employ it, by which Burns +appeals to the mass of his countrymen. On this point "J.B." expressly +agrees with me; but--he will have nothing to do with my quotations! +"However excellent in their way" these quotations may be, they "are +not those that any Scotsman would trust to in support of the above +proposition"; the above proposition being that "Burns appeals to the +hearts and feelings of the masses in a way that Scott never does." + +You see, I have concluded rightly; but on wrong evidence. Let us see, +then, what evidence a Scotsman will call to prove that Burns is a +writer of deep feeling. "A Scotsman," says "J.B." "would at once +appeal to "Scots wha hae," "Auld Lang Syne," and "A man's a man for a' +that." ... Think of the soul-inspiring, 'fire-eyed fury' of 'Scots wha +hae'; the glad, kind, ever fresh greeting of 'Auld Lang Syne'; the +manly, sturdy independence of 'A man's a man for a' that,' and who can +wonder at the ever-increasing enthusiasm for Burns' name?... I would +rather," says "J.B.," "be the author of the above three lyrics than I +would be the author of all Scott's novels." + +Here, then, is the point at which I give up my attempts, and admit my +stupidity to be incurable. I grant "J.B." his "Auld Lang Syne." I +grant the poignancy of-- + + "We twa hae paidl't i' the burn, + Frae morning sun till dine: + But seas between us braid hae roar'd + Sin auld lang syne." + +I see poetry and deep feeling in this. I can see exquisite poetry and +deep feeling in "Mary Morison"-- + + "Yestreen when to the trembling string, + The dance ga'ed thro' the lighted ha', + To thee my fancy took its wing, + I sat, but neither heard nor saw: + Tho' this was fair, and that was braw, + And yor the toast a' the town, + I sigh'd and said amang them a' + 'Ye are na Mary Morison.'" + +I see exquisite poetry and deep feeling in the Lament for the Earl of +Glencairn-- + + "The bridegroom may forget the bride + Was made his wedded wife yestreen; + The monarch may forget the crown + That on his head an hour has been; + The mother may forget the child + That smiles sae sweetly on her knee; + But I'll remember thee, Glencairn, + And a' that thou hast done for me!" + +But--it is only honest to speak one's opinion and to hope, if it be +wrong, for a better mind--I do _not_ find poetry of any high order +either in "Scots wha hae" or "A man's a man for a' that." The former +seems to me to be very fine rant--inspired rant, if you will--hovering +on the borders of poetry. The latter, to be frank, strikes me as +rather poor rant, neither inspired nor even quite genuine, and in no +proper sense poetry at all. And "J.B." simply bewilders my Southron +intelligence when he quotes it as an instance of deeply emotional +song. + + "Ye see yon birkie, ca'd a lord, + Wha struts, and stares, and a' that; + Tho' hundreds worship at his word, + He's but a coof for a' that: + For a' that, and a' that, + His riband, star and a' that. + The man of independent mind, + He looks and laughs at a' that." + +The proper attitude, I should imagine, for a man "of independent mind" +in these circumstances--assuming for the moment that ribands and stars +_are_ bestowed on imbeciles--would be a quiet disdain. The above +stanza reminds me rather of ill-bred barking. People of assured +self-respect do not call other people "birkies" and "coofs," or "look +and _laugh_ at a' that"--at least, not so loudly. Compare these +verses of Burns with Samuel Daniel's "Epistle to the Countess of +Cumberland," and you will find a higher manner altogether-- + + "He that of such a height hath built his mind, + And reared the dwelling of his thoughts so strong, + As neither fear nor hope can shake the frame + Of his resolved powers; nor all the wind + Of vanity and malice pierce to wrong + His settled peace, or to disturb the same; + What a fair seat hath he, from whence he may + The boundless wastes and wilds of men survey? + + "And with how free an eye doth he look down + Upon these lower regions of turmoil?" ... + +As a piece of thought, "A man's a man for a' that" unites the two +defects of obviousness and inaccuracy. As for the deep feeling, I +hardly see where it comes in--unless it be a feeling of wounded and +blatant but militant self-esteem. As for the _poetry_--well, "J.B." +had rather have written it than have written one-third of Scott's +novels. Let us take him at less than his word: he would rather have +written "A man's a man for a' that" than "Ivanhoe," "Redgauntlet," and +"The Heart of Midlothian." + + _Ma sonties!_ + + + + +CHARLES READE + + +March 10, 1894. "The Cloister and the Hearth." + +There is a venerable proposition--I never heard who invented it--that +an author is finally judged by his best work. This would be comforting +to authors if true: but is it true? A day or two ago I picked up on a +railway bookstall a copy of Messrs. Chatto & Windus's new sixpenny +edition of _The Cloister and the Hearth_, and a capital edition it is. +I think I must have worn out more copies of this book than of any +other; but somebody robbed me of the pretty "Elzevir edition" as soon +as it came out, and so I have only just read Mr. Walter Besant's +Introduction, which the publishers have considerately reprinted and +thrown in with one of the cheapest sixpennyworths that ever came from +the press. Good wine needs no bush, and the bush which Mr. Besant +hangs out is a very small one. But one sentence at least has +challenged attention. + + "I do not say that the whole of life, as it was at the end of the + fourteenth century, may be found in the _Cloister and the + Hearth_; but I do say that there is portrayed so vigorous, + lifelike, and truthful a picture of a time long gone by, and + differing, in almost every particular from our own, that the + world has never seen its like. To me it is a picture of the past + more faithful than anything in the works of Scott." + +This last sentence--if I remember rightly--was called a very bold one +when it first appeared in print. To me it seems altogether moderate. +Go steadily through Scott, and which of the novels can you choose to +compare with the _Cloister_ as a "vigorous, lifelike, and truthful +picture of a time long gone by"? + +Is it _Ivanhoe_?--a gay and beautiful romance, no doubt; but surely, +as the late Mr. Freeman was at pains to point out, not a "lifelike and +truthful picture" of any age that ever was. Is it _Old Mortality_? +Well, but even if we here get something more like a "vigorous, +lifelike, and truthful picture of a time gone by," we are bound to +consider the scale of the two books. Size counts, as Aristotle pointed +out, and as we usually forget. It is the whole of Western Europe that +Reade reconstructs for the groundwork of his simple story. + +Mr. Besant might have said more. He might have pointed out that no +novel of Scott's approaches the _Cloister_ in lofty humanity, in +sublimity of pathos. The last fifty pages of the tale reach an +elevation of feeling that Scott never touched or dreamed of touching. +And the sentiment is sane and honest, too: the author reaches to the +height of his great argument easily and without strain. It seems to me +that, as an appeal to the feelings, the page that tells of Margaret's +death is the finest thing in fiction. It appeals for a score of +reasons, and each reason is a noble one. We have brought together in +that page extreme love, self-sacrifice, resignation, courage, +religious feeling: we have the end of a beautiful love-tale, the end +of a good woman, and the last earthly trial of a good man. And with +all this, there is no vulgarization of sacred ground, no cheap parade +of the heart's secrets; but a deep sobriety relieved with the most +delicate humor. Moreover, the language is Charles Reade's at its +best--which is almost as good as at its worst it is abominable. + +That Scott could never reach the emotional height of Margaret's +death-scene, or of the scene in Clement's cave, is certain. Moreover +in the _Cloister_ Reade challenges comparison with Scott on Scott's +own ground--the ground of sustained adventurous narrative--and the +advantage is not with Scott. Once more, take all the Waverley Novels +and search them through for two passages to beat the adventures of +Gerard and Denis the Burgundian (1) with the bear and (2) at "The Fair +Star" Inn, by the Burgundian Frontier. I do not think you will +succeed, even then. Indeed, I will go so far as to say that to match +these adventures of Gerard and Denis you must go again to Charles +Reade, to the homeward voyage of the _Agra_ in _Hard Cash_. For these +and for sundry other reasons which, for lack of space, cannot be +unfolded here, _The Cloister and the Hearth_ seems to me a finer +achievement than the finest novel of Scott's. + +And now we come to the proposition that an author must be judged by +his best work. If this proposition be true, then I must hold Reade to +be a greater novelist than Scott. But do I hold this? Does anyone hold +this? Why, the contention would be an absurdity. + +Reade wrote some twenty novels beside _The Cloister and the Hearth_, +and not one of the twenty approaches it. One only--_Griffith +Gaunt_--is fit to be named in the same day with it; and _Griffith +Gaunt_ is marred by an insincerity in the plot which vitiates, and is +at once felt to vitiate, the whole work. On everything he wrote before +and after _The Cloister_ Reade's essential vulgarity of mind is +written large. That he shook it off in that great instance is one of +the miracles of literary history. It may be that the sublimity of his +theme kept him throughout in a state of unnatural exaltation. If the +case cannot be explained thus, it cannot be explained at all. Other of +his writings display the same, or at any rate a like, capacity for +sustained narrative. _Hard Cash_ displays it; parts of _It is Never +Too Late to Mend_ display it. But over much of these two novels lies +the trail of that defective taste which makes _A Simpleton_, for +instance, a prodigy of cheap ineptitude. + +But if Reade be hopelessly Scott's inferior in manner and taste, what +shall we say of the invention of the two men? Mr. Barrie once affirmed +very wisely in an essay on Robert Louis Stevenson, "Critics have said +enthusiastically--for it is difficult to write of Mr. Stevenson +without enthusiasm--that Alan Breck is as good as anything in Scott. +Alan Breck is certainly a masterpiece, quite worthy of the greatest of +all story-tellers, _who, nevertheless, it should be remembered, +created these rich side characters by the score, another before +dinner-time_." Inventiveness, is, I suppose, one of the first +qualities of a great novelist: and to Scott's invention there was no +end. But set aside _The Cloister_; and Reade's invention will be found +to be extraordinarily barren. Plot after plot turns on the same old +tiresome trick. Two young people are in love: by the villainy of a +third person they are separated for a while, and one of the lovers is +persuaded that the other is dead. The missing one may be kept missing +by various devices; but always he is supposed to be dead, and always +evidence is brought of his death, and always he turns up in the end. +It is the same in _The Cloister_, in _It is Never Too Late to Mend_, +in _Put Yourself in His Place_, in _Griffith Gaunt_, in _A Simpleton_. +Sometimes, as in _Hard Cash_ and _A Terrible Temptation_, he is +wrongfully incarcerated as a madman; but this is obviously a variant +only on the favorite trick. Now the device is good enough in a tale of +the fourteenth century, when news travelled slowly, and when by the +suppression of a letter, or by a piece of false news, two lovers, the +one in Holland, the other in Rome, could easily be kept apart. But in +a tale of modern life no trick could well be stagier. Besides the +incomparable Margaret--of whom it does one good to hear Mr. Besant +say, "No heroine in fiction is more dear to me"--Reade drew some +admirable portraits of women; but his men, to tell the truth--and +especially his priggish young heroes--seem remarkably ill invented. +Again, of course, I except _The Cloister_. Omit that book, and you +would say that such a character as Bailie Nicol Jarvie or Dugald +Dalgetty were altogether beyond Reade's range. Open _The Cloister_ and +you find in Denis the Burgundian a character as good as the Bailie and +Dalgetty rolled into one. + +Other authors have been lifted above themselves. But was there ever a +case of one sustained at such an unusual height throughout a long, +intricate and arduous work? + + + + +HENRY KINGSLEY + + +Feb. 9, 1895. Henry Kingsley. + +Mr. Shorter begins his Memoir of the author of _Ravenshoe_ with this +paragraph:-- + + "The story of Henry Kingsley's life may well be told in a few + words, because that life was on the whole a failure. The world + will not listen very tolerantly to a narrative of failure + unaccompanied by the halo of remoteness. To write the life of + Charles Kingsley would be a quite different task. Here was + success, victorious success, sufficient indeed to gladden the + heart even of Dr. Smiles--success in the way of Church + preferment, success in the way of public veneration, success, + above all, as a popular novelist, poet, and preacher. Canon + Kingsley's life has been written in two substantial volumes + containing abundant letters and no indiscretions. In this + biography the name of Henry Kingsley is absolutely ignored. And + yet it is not too much to say that, when time has softened his + memory for us, as it has softened for us the memories of Marlowe + and Burns and many another, the public interest in Henry Kingsley + will be stronger than in his now more famous brother."[A] + + +A prejudice confessed. + +I almost wish I could believe this. If one cannot get rid of a +prejudice, the wisest course is to acknowledge it candidly: and +therefore I confess myself as capable of jumping over the moon as of +writing fair criticism on Charles or Henry Kingsley. As for Henry, I +worshipped his books as a boy; to-day I find them full of +faults--often preposterous, usually ill-constructed, at times +unnatural beyond belief. John Gilpin never threw the Wash about on +both sides of the way more like unto a trundling mop or a wild goose +at play than did Henry Kingsley the decent flow of fiction when the +mood was on him. His notion of constructing a novel was to take equal +parts of wooden melodrama and low comedy and stick them boldly +together in a paste of impertinent drollery and serious but entirely +irrelevant moralizing. And yet each time I read _Ravenshoe_--and I +must be close upon "double figures"--I like it better. Henry did my +green unknowing youth engage, and I find it next to impossible to give +him up, and quite impossible to choose the venerated Charles as a +substitute in my riper age. For here crops up a prejudice I find quite +ineradicable. To put it plainly, I cannot like Charles Kingsley. Those +who have had opportunity to study the deportment of a certain class +of Anglican divine at a foreign _table d'hôte_ may perhaps understand +the antipathy. There was almost always a certain sleek offensiveness +about Charles Kingsley when he sat down to write. He had a knack of +using the most insolent language, and attributing the vilest motives +to all poor foreigners and Roman Catholics and other extra-parochial +folk, and would exhibit a pained and completely ludicrous surprise on +finding that he had hurt the feelings of these unhappy inferiors--a +kind of indignant wonder that Providence should have given them any +feelings to hurt. At length, encouraged by popular applause, this very +second-rate man attacked a very first-rate man. He attacked with every +advantage and with utter unscrupulousness; and the first-rate man +handled him; handled him gently, scrupulously, decisively; returned +him to his parish; and left him there, a trifle dazed, feeling his +muscles. + + +Charles and Henry. + +Still, one may dislike the man and his books without thinking it +probable that his brother Henry will supersede him in the public +interest; nay, without thinking it right that he should. Dislike him +as you will, you must acknowledge that Charles Kingsley had a lyrical +gift that--to set all his novels aside--carries him well above Henry's +literary level. It is sufficient to say that Charles wrote "The +Pleasant Isle of Avès" and "When all the world is young, lad," and the +first two stanzas of "The Sands of Dee." Neither in prose nor in verse +could Henry come near such excellence. But we may go farther. Take the +novels of each, and, novel for novel, you must acknowledge--I say it +regretfully--that Charles carries the heavier guns. If you ask me +whether I prefer _Westward Ho!_ or _Ravenshoe_, I answer without +difficulty that I find _Ravenshoe_ almost wholly delightful, and +_Westward Ho!_ as detestable in some parts as it is admirable in +others; that I have read _Ravenshoe_ again and again merely for +pleasure, and that I can never read a dozen pages of _Westward Ho!_ +without wishing to put the book in the fire. But if you ask me which I +consider the greater novel, I answer with equal readiness that +_Westward Ho!_ is not only the greater, but much the greater. It is a +truth too seldom recognized that in literary criticism, as in +politics, one may detest a man's work while admitting his greatness. +Even in his episodes it seems to me that Charles stands high above +Henry. Sam Buckley's gallop on Widderin in _Geoffry Hamlyn_ is (I +imagine) Henry Kingsley's finest achievement in vehement narrative: +but if it can be compared for one moment with Amyas Leigh's quest of +the Great Galleon then I am no judge of narrative. The one point--and +it is an important one--in which Henry beats Charles as an artist is +his sustained vivacity. Charles soars far higher at times; but Charles +is often profoundly dull. Now, in all Henry's books I have not found a +single dull page. He may be trivial, inconsequent, irrelevant, absurd; +but he never wearies. It is a great merit: but it is not enough in +itself to place a novelist even in the second rank. In a short sketch +of Henry Kingsley, contributed by his nephew, Mr. Maurice Kingsley, to +Messrs. Scribner's paper, _The Bookbuyer_, I find that the younger +brother was considered at home "undoubtedly the novelist of the +family; the elder being more of the poet, historian, and prophet." +(Prophet!) "My father only wrote one novel pure and simple--viz. _Two +Years Ago_--his other works being either historical novels or 'signs +of the times.'" Now why an "historical novel" should not be a "novel +pure and simple," and what kind of literary achievement a "sign of the +times" may be, I leave the reader to guess. The whole passage seems to +suggest a certain confusion in the Kingsley family with regard to the +fundamental divisions of literature. And it seems clear that the +Kingsley family considered novel-writing "pure and simple"--in so far +as they differentiated this from other kinds of novel-writing--to be +something not entirely respectable. + +Their opinion of Henry Kingsley in particular is indicated in no +uncertain manner. In Mrs. Charles Kingsley's life of her husband, +Henry's existence is completely ignored. The briefest biographical +note was furnished forth for Mr. Leslie Stephen's _Dictionary of +National Biography_: and Mr. Stephen dismisses our author with a few +curt lines. This disposition to treat Henry as an awful warning and +nothing more, while sleek Charles is patted on the back for a saint, +inclines one to take up arms on the other side and assert, with Mr. +Shorter, that "when time has softened his memory for us, the public +interest in Henry Kingsley will be stronger than in his now more +famous brother." But can we look forward to this reversal of the +public verdict? Can we consent with it if it ever comes? The most we +can hope is that future generations will read Henry Kingsley, and will +love him in spite of his faults. + +Henry, the third son of the Rev. Charles Kingsley, was born in +Northamptonshire on the 2nd of January, 1830, his brother Charles +being then eleven years old. In 1836 his father became rector of St. +Luke's Church, Chelsea--the church of which such effective use is made +in _The Hillyars and the Burtons_--and his boyhood was passed in that +famous old suburb. He was educated at King's College School and +Worcester College, Oxford, where he became a famous oarsman, rowing +bow of his College boat; also bow of a famous light-weight University +"four," which swept everything before it in its time. He wound up his +racing career by winning the Diamond Sculls at Henley. From 1853 to +1858 his life was passed in Australia, whence after some variegated +experiences he returned to Chelsea in 1858, bringing back nothing but +good "copy," which he worked into _Geoffry Hamlyn_, his first romance. +_Ravenshoe_ was written in 1861; _Austin Elliot_ in 1863; _The +Hillyars and the Burtons_ in 1865; _Silcote of Silcotes_ in 1867; +_Mademoiselle Mathilde_ (admired by few, but a favorite of mine) in +1868. He was married in 1864, and settled at Wargrave-on-Thames. In +1869 he went north to edit the _Edinburgh Daily Review_, and made a +mess of it; in 1870 he represented that journal as field-correspondent +in the Franco-Prussian War, was present at Sedan, and claimed to have +been the first Englishman to enter Metz. In 1872 he returned to London +and wrote novels in which his powers appeared to deteriorate steadily. +He removed to Cuckfield, in Sussex, and there died in May, 1876. +Hardly a man of letters followed him to the grave, or spoke, in print, +a word in his praise. + +And yet, by all accounts, he was a wholly amiable ne'er-do-well--a +wonderful flyfisher, an extremely clever amateur artist, a lover of +horses and dogs and children (surely, if we except a chapter of Victor +Hugo's, the children in _Ravenshoe_ are the most delightful in +fiction), and a joyous companion. + + "To us children," writes Mr. Maurice Kingsley, "Uncle Henry's + settling in Eversley was a great event.... At times he fairly + bubbled over with humour; while his knowledge of slang--Burschen, + Bargee, Parisian, Irish, Cockney, and English provincialisms--was + awful and wonderful. Nothing was better than to get our uncle on + his 'genteel behaviour,' which, of course, meant exactly the + opposite, and brought forth inimitable stories, scraps of old + songs and impromptu conversations, the choicest of which were + between children, Irishwomen, or cockneys. He was the only man, I + believe, who ever knew by heart the famous _Irish Court + Scenes_--naughtiest and most humorous of tales--unpublished, of + course, but handed down from generation to generation of the + faithful. Most delightful was an interview between his late + Majesty George the Fourth and an itinerant showman, which ended + up with, 'No, George the Fourth, you shall not have my + Rumptifoozle!' What said animal was, or the authenticity of the + story, he never would divulge." + +I think it is to the conversational quality of their style--its +ridiculous and good-humored impertinences and surprises--that his best +books owe a great deal of their charm. The footnotes are a study in +themselves, and range from the mineral strata of Australia to the best +way of sliding down banisters. Of the three tales already republished +in this pleasant edition, _Ravenshoe_ has always seemed to me the best +in every respect; and in spite of its feeble plot and its impossible +lay-figures--Erne, Sir George Hillyar, and the painfully inane +Gerty--I should rank _The Hillyars and the Burtons_ above the more +terrifically imagined and more neatly constructed _Geoffry Hamlyn_. +But this is an opinion on which I lay no stress. + +FOOTNOTES: + +[A] _The Recollections of Geoffry Hamlyn_. By Henry Kingsley. New +Edition, with a Memoir by Clement Shorter. London: Ward, Lock & +Bowden. + + + + +ALEXANDER WILLIAM KINGLAKE + + +January 10, 1891. His Life. + +Alexander William Kinglake was born in 1812, the son of a country +gentleman--Mr. W. Kinglake, of Wilton House, Taunton--and received a +country gentleman's education at Eton and Trinity College, Cambridge. +From college he went to Lincoln's Inn, and in 1837 was called to the +Chancery Bar, where he practised with fair but not eminent success. In +1844 he published _Eothen_, and having startled the town, quietly +resumed his legal work and seemed willing to forget the achievement. +Ten years later he accompanied his friend, Lord Raglan, to the Crimea. +He retired from the Bar in 1856, and entered Parliament next year as +member for Bridgwater. Re-elected in 1868, he was unseated on petition +in 1869, and thenceforward gave himself up to the work of his life. He +had consented, after Lord Raglan's death, to write a history of the +Invasion of the Crimea. The two first volumes appeared in 1863; the +last was published but two years before he succumbed, in the first +days of 1891, to a slow incurable disease. In all, the task had +occupied thirty years. Long before these years ran out, the world had +learnt to regard the Crimean struggle in something like its true +perspective; but over Kinglake's mind it continued to loom in all its +original proportions. To adapt a phrase of M. Jules Lemaître's, "_le +monde a changé en trente ans: lui ne bouge; il ne lève plus de dessus +son papier à copie sa face congestionné_." And yet Kinglake was no +cloistered scribe. Before his last illness he dined out frequently, +and was placed by many among the first half-a-dozen talkers in London. +His conversation, though delicate and finished, brimmed full of +interest in life and affairs: but let him enter his study, and its +walls became a hedge. Without, the world was moving: within, it was +always 1854, until by slow toiling it turned into 1855. + + +Style. + +His style is hard, elaborate, polished to brilliance. Its difficult +labor recalls Thucydides. In effect it charms at first by its accuracy +and vividness: but with continuous perusal it begins to weigh upon +the reader, who feels the strain, the unsparing effort that this +glittering fabric must have cost the builder, and at length ceases to +sympathize with the story and begins to sympathize with the author. +Kinglake started by disclaiming "composition." "My narrative," he +says, in the famous preface to _Eothen_, "conveys not those +impressions which _ought to have been_ produced upon any +well-constituted mind, but those which were really and truly received, +at the time of his rambles, by a headstrong and not very amiable +traveller.... As I have felt, so I have written." + + +"_Eothen_." + +For all this, page after page of _Eothen_ gives evidence of deliberate +calculation of effect. That book is at once curiously like and +curiously unlike Borrows' _Bible in Spain_. The two belong to the same +period and, in a sense, to the same fashion. Each combines a +tantalizing personal charm with a strong, almost fierce, coloring of +circumstance. The central figure in each is unmistakably an +Englishman, and quite as unmistakably a singular Englishman. Each +bears witness to a fine eye for theatrical arrangement. But whereas +Borrow stood for ever fortified by his wayward nature and atrocious +English against the temptation of writing as he ought, Kinglake +commenced author with a respect for "composition," ingrained perhaps +by his Public School and University training. Borrow arrays his page +by instinct, Kinglake by study. His irony (as in the interview with +the Pasha) is almost too elaborate; his artistic judgment (as in the +Plague chapter) almost too sure; the whole book almost too clever. The +performance was wonderful; the promise a trifle dangerous. + + +The "Invasion." + +"Composition" indeed proved the curse of the _Invasion of the Crimea_: +for Kinglake was a slow writer, and composed with his eye on the page, +the paragraph, the phrase, rather than on the whole work. Force and +accuracy of expression are but parts of a good prose style; indeed +are, strictly speaking, inseparable from perspective, balance, logical +connection, rise and fall of emotion. It is but an indifferent +landscape that contains no pedestrian levels: and his desire for the +immediate success of each paragraph as it came helped Kinglake to miss +the broad effect. He must always be vivid; and when the strain told, +he exaggerated and sounded--as Matthew Arnold accused him of +sounding--the note of provinciality. There were other causes. He was, +as we have seen, an English country gentleman--_avant tout je suis +gentilhomme anglais_, as the Duke of Wellington wrote to Louis XVIII. +His admiration of the respectable class to which he belonged is +revealed by a thousand touches in his narrative--we can find half a +score in the description of Codrington's assault on the Great Redoubt +in the battle of the Alma; nor, when some high heroic action is in +progress, do we often miss an illustration, or at least a metaphor, +from the hunting-field. Undoubtedly he had the distinction of his +class; but its narrowness was his as surely. Also the partisanship of +the eight volumes grows into a weariness. The longevity of the English +Bench is notorious; but it comes of hearing both sides of every +question. + +After all, he was a splendid artist. He tamed that beautiful and +dangerous beast, the English sentence, with difficulty indeed, but +having tamed, worked it to high achievements. The great occasion +always found him capable, and his treatment of it is not of the sort +to be forgotten: witness the picture of the Prince President cowering +in an inner chamber during the bloodshed of the _Coup d'État_, the +short speech of Sir Colin Campbell to his Highlanders before the Great +Redoubt (given in the exact manner of Thucydides), or the narrative of +the Heavy Brigade's charge at Balaclava, culminating thus-- + + "The difference that there was in the temperaments of the two + comrade regiments showed itself in the last moments of the onset. + The Scots Greys gave no utterance except to a low, eager, fierce + moan of rapture--the moan of outbursting desire. The + Inniskillings went in with a cheer. With a rolling prolongation + of clangour which resulted from the bends of a line now deformed + by its speed, the 'three hundred' crashed in upon the front of + the column." + + + + +C.S.C. and J.K.S. + + +Dec. 5, 1891. Cambridge Baras. + +What I am about to say will, no doubt, be set down to tribal +malevolence; but I confess that if Cambridge men appeal to me less at +one time than another it is when they begin to talk about their poets. +The grievance is an old one, of course--at least as old as Mr. +Birrell's "_Obiter Dicta_": but it has been revived by the little book +of verse ("_Quo Musa Tendis_?") that I have just been reading. I laid +it down and thought of Mr. Birrell's essay on Cambridge Poets, as he +calls them: and then of another zealous gentleman, hailing from the +same University, who arranged all the British bards in a tripos and +brought out the Cambridge men at the top. This was a very +characteristic performance: but Mr. Birrell's is hardly less so in +these days when (to quote the epistolary parent) so much prominence is +given to athleticism in our seats of learning. For he picks out a team +of lightblue singers as though he meant to play an inter-University +match, and challenges Oxford to "come on." He gives Milton a "blue," +and says we oughtn't to play Shelley because Shelley isn't in +residence. + +Now to me this is as astonishing as if my butcher were to brag about +Kirke White. My doctor might retort with Keats; and my scrivener--if I +had one--might knock them both down with the name of Milton. It would +be a pretty set-to; but I cannot see that it would affect the relative +merits of mutton and laudanum and the obscure products of scrivenage. +Nor, conversely (as they say at Cambridge), is it certain, or even +likely, that the difference between a butcher or a doctor is the +difference between Kirke White and Keats. And this talk about +"University" poets seems somewhat otiose unless it can be shown that +Cambridge and Oxford directly encourage poesy, or aim to do so. I am +aware that somebody wins the Newdigate every year at Oxford, and that +the same thing happens annually at Cambridge with respect to the +Chancellor's Prize. But--to hark back to the butcher and +apothecary--verses are perennially made upon Mr. Lipton's Hams and +Mrs. Allen's Hair Restorer. Obviously some incentive is needed beyond +a prize for stanzas on a given subject. I can understand Cambridge men +when they assert that they produce more Wranglers than Oxford: that is +a justifiable boast. But how does Cambridge encourage poets? + + +Calverley. + +Oxford expelled Shelley: Cambridge whipped Milton.[A] _Facit +indignatio versus_. If we press this misreading of Juvenal, Oxford +erred only on the side of thoroughness. But that, notoriously, is +Oxford's way. She expelled Landor, Calverley, and some others. My +contention is that to expel a man is--however you look at it--better +for his poesy than to make a don of him. Oxford says, "You are a poet; +therefore this is no place for you. Go elsewhere; we set your aspiring +soul at large." Cambridge says: "You are a poet. Let us employ you to +fulfil other functions. Be a don." She made a don of Gray, of +Calverley. Cambridge men are for ever casting Calverley in our teeth; +whereas, in truth, he is specially to be quoted against them. As +everybody knows, he was at both Universities, so over him we have a +fair chance of comparing methods. As everybody knows, he went to +Balliol first, and his ample cabin'd spirit led him to climb a wall, +late at night. Something else caused him to be discovered, and +Blaydes--he was called Blaydes then--was sent down. + +Nobody can say what splendid effect this might have had upon his +poetry. But he changed his name and went to Cambridge. And Cambridge +made a don of him. If anybody thinks this was an intelligent stroke, +let him consider the result. Calverley wrote a small amount of verse +that, merely as verse, is absolutely faultless. To compare great +things with little, you might as well try to alter a line of Virgil's +as one of Calverley's. Forget a single epithet and substitute another, +and the result is certain disaster. He has the perfection of the +phrase--and there it ends. I cannot remember a single line of +Calverley's that contains a spark of human feeling. Mr. Birrell +himself has observed that Calverley is just a bit inhuman. But the +cause of it does not seem to have occurred to him. Nor does the +biography explain it. If we are to believe the common report of all +who knew Calverley, he was a man of simple mind and sincere, of quick +and generous emotions. His biographers tell us also that he was one +who seemed to have the world at his feet, one who had only to choose a +calling to excel in it. Yet he never fulfilled his friends' high +expectations. What was the reason of it all? + +The accident that cut short his career is not wholly to blame, I +think. At any rate, it will not explain away the exception I have +taken to his verse. Had that been destined to exhibit the humanity +which we seek, some promise of it would surely be discoverable; for he +was a full-grown man at the time of that unhappy tumble on the ice. +But there is none. It is all sheer wit, impish as a fairy +changeling's, and always barren of feeling. Mr. Birrell has not +supplied the explanatory epithet, so I will try to do so. It is +"donnish." Cambridge, fondly imagining that she was showing right +appreciation of Calverley thereby, gave him a Fellowship. Mr. Walter +Besant, another gentleman from Calverley's college, complained, the +other day, that literary distinction was never marked with a peerage. +It is the same sort of error. And now Cambridge, having made +Calverley a don, claims him as a Cambridge poet; and the claim is +just, if the epithet be intended to mark the limitations imposed by +that University on his achievement. + + +"J.K.S." + +Of "J.K.S.," whose second volume, _Quo Musa Tendis?_ (Macmillan & +Bowles), has just come from the press, it is fashionable to say that +he follows after Calverley, at some distance. To be sure, he himself +has encouraged this belief by coming from Cambridge and writing about +Cambridge, and invoking C.S.C. on the first page of his earlier +volume, _Lapsus Calami_. But, except that J.K.S. does his talent some +violence by constraining it to imitate Calverley's form, the two men +have little in common. The younger has a very different wit. He is +more than academical. He thinks and feels upon subjects that were far +outside Calverley's scope. Among the dozen themes with which he deals +under the general heading of _Paullo Majora Canamus_, there is not one +which would have interested his "master" in the least. Calverley +appears to have invited his soul after this fashion--"Come, let us go +into the King's Parade and view the undergraduate as he walks about +having no knowledge of good or evil. Let us make a jest of the books +he admires and the schools for which he is reading." And together they +manage it excellently. They talk Cambridge "shop" in terms of the +wittiest scholarship. But of the very existence of a world of grown-up +men and women they seem to have no inkling, or, at least, no care. + +The problems of J.K.S. are very much more grown-up. You have only to +read _Paint and Ink_ (a humorous, yet quite serious, address to a +painter upon the scope of his art) or _After the Golden Wedding_ +(wherein are given the soliloquies of the man and the woman who have +been married for fifty years) to assure yourself that if J.K.S. be not +Calverley's equal, it is only because his mind is vexed with problems +bigger than ever presented themselves to the Cambridge don. To C.S.C., +Browning was a writer of whose eccentricities of style delicious sport +might be made. J.K.S. has parodied Browning too; but he has also +perpended Browning, and been moulded by him. There are many stanzas in +this small volume that, had Browning not lived, had never been +written. Take this, from a writer to a painter:-- + + "So I do dare claim to be kin with you, + And I hold you higher than if your task + Were doing no more than you say you do: + We shall live, if at all, we shall stand or fall, + As men before whom the world doffs its mask + And who answer the questions our fellows ask." + +Many such lines prove our writer's emancipation from servitude to the +Calverley fetish, a fetish that, I am convinced, has done harm to many +young men of parts. It is pretty, in youth, to play with style as a +puppy plays with a bone, to cut teeth upon it. But words are, after +all, a poor thing without matter. J.K.S.'s emancipation has come +somewhat late; but he has depths in him which he has not sounded yet, +and it is quite likely that when he sounds them he may astonish the +world rather considerably. Now, if we may interpret the last poem in +his book, he is turning towards prose. "I go," he says-- + + "I go to fly at higher game: + At prose as good as I can make it; + And though it brings nor gold nor fame, + I will not, while I live, forsake it." + +It is no disparagement to his verse to rejoice over this resolve of +his. For a young man who begins with epic may end with good epic; but +a young man who begins with imitating Calverley will turn in time to +prose if he means to write in earnest. And J.K.S. may do well or ill, +but that he is to be watched has been evident since the days when he +edited the _Reflector_.[B] + +FOOTNOTES: + +[A] I am bound to admit that the only authority for this is +a note written into the text of Aubrey's _Lives_. + +[B] The reader will refer to the date at the head of this paper:-- + + "Heu miserande puer! signa fata aspera rumpas, + Tu Marcellus eris. + * * * * * + Sed nox atra caput tristi circumvolat umbra." + + + + +ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON + + +April 15, 1893. The "Island Nights' Entertainments." + +I wish Mr. Stevenson had given this book another title. It covers but +two out of the three stories in the volume; and, even so, it has the +ill-luck to be completely spoilt by its predecessor, the _New Arabian +Nights_. + +The _New Arabian Nights_ was in many respects a parody of the Eastern +book. It had, if we make a few necessary allowances for the difference +between East and West, the same, or very near the same, atmosphere of +gallant, extravagant, intoxicated romance. The characters had the same +adventurous irresponsibility, and exhibit the same irrelevancies and +futilities. The Young Man with the Cream Cakes might well have sprung +from the same brain as the facetious Barmecide, and young Scrymgeour +sits helpless before his destiny as sat that other young man while the +inexorable Barber sang the song and danced the dance of Zantout. +Indeed Destiny in these books resembles nothing so much as a Barber +with forefinger and thumb nipping his victims by the nose. It is as +omnipotent, as irrational, as humorous and almost as cruel in the +imitation as in the original. Of course I am not comparing these in +any thing but their general presentment of life, or holding up _The +Rajah's Diamond_ against _Aladdin_. I am merely pointing out that life +is presented to us in Galland and in Mr. Stevenson's first book of +tales under very similar conditions--the chief difference being that +Mr. Stevenson has to abate something of the supernatural, or to handle +it less frankly. + +But several years divide the _New Arabian Nights_ from the _Island +Nights' Entertainments_; and in the interval our author has written +_The Master of Ballantrae_ and his famous _Open Letter_ on Father +Damien. That is to say, he has grown in his understanding of the human +creature and in his speculations upon his creature's duties and +destinies. He has travelled far, on shipboard and in emigrant trains; +has passed through much sickness; has acquired property and +responsibility; has mixed in public affairs; has written _A Footnote +to History_, and sundry letters to the _Times_; and even, as his +latest letter shows, stands in some danger of imprisonment. Therefore, +while the title of his new volume would seem to refer us once more to +the old Arabian models, we are not surprised to find this apparent +design belied by the contents. The third story, indeed, _The Isle of +Voices_, has affinity with some of the Arabian tales--with Sindbad's +adventures, for instance. But in the longer _Beach of Falesá_ and _The +Bottle Imp_ we are dealing with no debauch of fancy, but with the +problems of real life. + +For what is the knot untied in the _Beach of Falesá_? If I mistake +not, our interest centres neither in Case's dirty trick of the +marriage, nor in his more stiff-jointed trick of the devil-contraptions. +The first but helps to construct the problem, the second seems a +superfluity. The problem is (and the author puts it before us fair +and square), How is Wiltshire a fairly loose moralist with some +generosity of heart, going to treat the girl he has wronged? And I +am bound to say that as soon as Wiltshire answers that question +before the missionary--an excellent scene and most dramatically +managed--my interest in the story, which is but halftold at this +point, begins to droop. As I said, the "devil-work" chapter strikes me +as stiff, and the conclusion but rough-and-tumble. And I feel certain +that the story itself is to blame, and neither the scenery nor the +persons, being one of those who had as lief Mr. Stevenson spake of the +South Seas as of the Hebrides, so that he speak and I listen. Let it +be granted that the Polynesian names are a trifle hard to distinguish +at first--they are easier than Russian by many degrees--yet the +difficulty vanishes as you read the _Song of Rahéro_, or the _Footnote +to History_. And if it comes to habits, customs, scenery, etc., I +protest a man must be exacting who can find no romance in these while +reading Melville's _Typee_. No, the story itself is to blame. + +But what is the human problem in _The Bottle Imp_? (Imagine +Scheherazadé with a human problem!) Nothing less, if you please than +the problem of Alcestis--nothing less and even something more; for in +this case when the wife has made her great sacrifice of self, it is no +fortuitous god but her own husband who wins her release, and at a +price no less fearful than she herself has paid. Keawe being in +possession of a bottle which must infallibly bring him to hell-flames +unless he can dispose of it at a certain price, Kokua his wife by a +stratagem purchases the bottle from him, and stands committed to the +doom he has escaped. She does her best to hide this from Keawe, but +he, by accident discovering the truth, by another stratagem wins back +the curse upon his own head, and is only rescued by a _deus ex +machinâ_ in the shape of a drunken boatswain. + +Two or three reviewers have already given utterance upon this volume; +and they seem strangely unable to determine which is the best of its +three tales. I vote for _The Bottle Imp_ without a second's doubt; +and, if asked my reasons, must answer (1), that it deals with a high +and universal problem, whereas in _The Isle of Voices_ there is no +problem at all, and in the _Beach of Falesá_ the problem is less +momentous and perhaps (though of this I won't be sure) more closely +restricted by the accidents of circumstance and individual character; +(2) as I have hinted, the _Beach of Falesá_ has faults of +construction, one of which is serious, if not vital, while _The Isle +of Voices_, though beautifully composed, is tied down by the +triviality of its subject. But _The Bottle Imp_ is perfectly +constructed: the last page ends the tale, and the tale is told with a +light grace, sportive within restraint, that takes nothing from the +seriousness of the subject. Some may think this extravagant praise for +a little story which, after all (they will say), is flimsy as a soap +bubble. But let them sit down and tick off on their fingers the names +of living authors who could have written it, and it may begin to dawn +on them that a story has other dimensions than length and thickness. + + * * * * * + +Sept. 9, 1893. First thoughts on "Catriona." + +Some while ago Mr. Barrie put together in a little volume eleven +sketches of eleven men whose fame has travelled far beyond the +University of Edinburgh. For this reason, I believe, he called them +"An Edinburgh Eleven"--as fond admirers speak of Mr. Arthur Shrewsbury +(upon whose renown it is notorious that the sun never sets) as "the +Notts Professional," and of a yet more illustrious cricketer by his +paltry title of "Doctor"-- + + "Not so much honouring thee, + As giving it a hope that there + It could not wither'd be." + +Of the Eleven referred to, Mr. Robert Louis Stevenson was sent in at +eighth wicket down to face this cunning "delivery":--"He experiments +too long; he is still a boy wondering what he is going to be. With +Cowley's candor he tells us that he wants to write something by which +he may be for ever known. His attempts in this direction have been in +the nature of trying different ways, and he always starts off +whistling. Having gone so far without losing himself, he turns back to +try another road. Does his heart fail him, despite his jaunty bearing, +_or is it because there is no hurry?_ ... But it is quite time the +great work was begun." + +I have taken the liberty to italicise a word or two, because in them +Mr. Barrie supplied an answer to his question. "The lyf so short, the +craft so long to lerne!" is not an exhortation to hurry: and in Mr. +Stevenson's case, at any rate, there was not the least need to hurry. +There was, indeed, a time when Mr. Stevenson had not persuaded himself +of this. In _Across the Plains_ he tells us how, at windy Anstruther +and an extremely early age, he used to draw his chair to the table and +pour forth literature "at such a speed, and with such intimations of +early death and immortality, as I now look back upon with wonder. +Then it was that I wrote _Voces Fidelium_, a series of dramatic +monologues in verse; then that I indited the bulk of a Covenanting +novel--like so many others, never finished. Late I sat into the night, +toiling (as I thought) under the very dart of death, toiling to leave +a memory behind me. I feel moved to thrust aside the curtain of the +years, to hail that poor feverish idiot, to bid him go to bed and clap +_Voces Fidelium_ on the fire before he goes, so clear does he appear +to me, sitting there between his candles in the rose-scented room and +the late night; so ridiculous a picture (to my elderly wisdom) does +the fool present!" + +There was no hurry then, as he now sees: and there never was cause to +hurry, I repeat. "But how is this? Is, then, the great book written?" +I am sure I don't know. Probably not: for human experience goes to +show that _The_ Great Book (like _The_ Great American Novel) never +gets written. But that _a_ great story has been written is certain +enough: and one of the curious points about this story is its title. + +It is not _Catriona_; nor is it _Kidnapped_. _Kidnapped_ is a taking +title, and _Catriona_ beautiful in sound and suggestion of romance: +and _Kidnapped_ (as everyone knows) is a capital tale, though +imperfect; and _Catriona_ (as the critics began to point out, the day +after its issue) a capital tale with an awkward fissure midway in it. +"It is the fate of sequels"--thus Mr. Stevenson begins his +Dedication--"to disappoint those who have waited for them"; and it is +possible that the boys of Merry England (who, it may be remembered, +thought more of _Treasure Island_ than of _Kidnapped_) will take but +lukewarmly to _Catriona_, having had five years in which to forget its +predecessor. No: the title of the great story is _The Memoirs of David +Balfour_. Catriona has a prettier name than David, and may give it to +the last book of her lover's adventures: but the Odyssey was not +christened after Penelope. + +Put _Kidnapped_ and _Catriona_ together within the same covers, with +one title-page, one dedication (here will be the severest loss) and +one table of contents, in which the chapters are numbered straight +away from I. to LX.: and--this above all things--read the tale right +through from David's setting forth from the garden gate at Essendean +to his homeward voyage, by Catriona's side, on the Low Country ship. +And having done this, be so good as to perceive how paltry are the +objections you raised against the two volumes when you took them +separately. Let me raise again one or two of them. + +(1.) _Catriona_ is just two stories loosely hitched together--the one +of David's vain attempt to save James Stewart, the other of the loves +of David and Catriona: and in case the critic should be too stupid to +detect this, Mr. Stevenson has been at the pains to divide his book +into Part I. and Part II. Now this, which is a real fault in a book +called _Catriona_, is no fault at all in _The Memoirs of David +Balfour_, which by its very title claims to be constructed loosely. In +an Odyssey the road taken by the wanderer is all the nexus required; +and the continuity of his presence (if the author know his business) +is warrant enough for the continuity of our interest in his +adventures. That the history of Gil Blas of Santillane consists +chiefly of episodes is not a serious criticism upon Lesage's novel. + +(2.) In _Catriona_ more than a few of the characters are suffered to +drop out of sight just as we have begun to take an interest in them. +There is Mr. Rankeillor, for instance, whose company in the concluding +chapter of _Kidnapped_ was too good to be spared very easily; and +there is Lady Allardyce--a wonderfully clever portrait; and Captain +Hoseason--we tread for a moment on the verge of re-acquaintance, but +are disappointed; and Balfour of Pilrig; and at the end of Part I. +away into darkness goes the Lord Advocate Preston-grange, with his +charming womenkind. + +Well, if this be an objection to the tale, it is one urged pretty +often against life itself--that we scarce see enough of the men and +women we like. And here again that which may be a fault in _Catriona_ +is no fault at all in _The Memoirs of David Balfour_. Though novelists +may profess in everything they write to hold a mirror up to life, the +reflection must needs be more artificial in a small book than in a +large. In the one, for very clearness, they must isolate a few human +beings and cut off the currents (so to speak) bearing upon them from +the outside world: in the other, with a larger canvas they are able +to deal with life more frankly. Were the Odyssey cut down to one +episode--say that of Nausicäa--we must round it off and have everyone +on the stage and provided with his just portion of good and evil +before we ring the curtain down. As it is, Nausicäa goes her way. And +as it is, Barbara Grant must go her way at the end of Chapter XX.; and +the pang we feel at parting with her is anything rather than a +reproach against the author. + +(3.) It is very certain, as the book stands, that the reader must +experience some shock of disappointment when, after 200 pages of the +most heroical endeavoring, David fails in the end to save James +Stewart of the Glens. Were the book concerned wholly with James +Stewart's fate, the cheat would be intolerable: and as a great deal +more than half of _Catriona_ points and trembles towards his fate like +a magnetic needle, the cheat is pretty bad if we take _Catriona_ +alone. But once more, if we are dealing with _The Memoirs of David +Balfour_--if we bear steadily in mind that David Balfour is our +concern--not James Stewart--the disappointment is far more easily +forgiven. Then, and then only, we get the right perspective of +David's attempt, and recognize how inevitable was the issue when this +stripling engaged to turn back the great forces of history. + +It is more than a lustre, as the Dedication reminds us, since David +Balfour, at the end of the last chapter of _Kidnapped_, was left to +kick his heels in the British Linen Company's office. Five years have +a knack of making people five years older; and the wordy, politic +intrigue of _Catriona_ is at least five years older than the +rough-and-tumble intrigue of _Kidnapped_; of the fashion of the +_Vicomte de Bragelonne_ rather than of the _Three Musketeers_. But +this is as it should be; for older and astuter heads are now mixed up +in the case, and Preston-grange is a graduate in a very much higher +school of diplomacy than was Ebenezer Balfour. And if no word was said +in _Kidnapped_ of the love of women, we know now that this matter was +held over until the time came for it to take its due place in David +Balfour's experience. Everyone knew that Mr. Stevenson would draw a +woman beautifully as soon as he was minded. Catriona and her situation +have their foreshadowing in _The Pavilion on the Links_. But for all +that she is a surprise. She begins to be a surprise--a beautiful +surprise--when in Chapter X. she kisses David's hand "with a higher +passion than the common kind of clay has any sense of;" and she is a +beautiful surprise to the end of the book. The loves of these two make +a moving story--old, yet not old: and I pity the heart that is not +tender for Catriona when she and David take their last walk together +in Leyden, and "the knocking of her little shoes upon the way sounded +extraordinarily pretty and sad." + + * * * * * + +Nov. 3, 1894. "The Ebb Tide." + +A certain Oxford lecturer, whose audience demurred to some trivial +mistranslation from the Greek, remarked: "I perceive, gentlemen, that +you have been taking a mean advantage of me. You have been looking it +out in the Lexicon." + +The pleasant art of reasoning about literature on internal evidence +suffers constant discouragement from the presence and activity of +those little people who insist upon "looking it out in the Lexicon." +Their brutal methods will upset in two minutes the nice calculations +of months. Your logic, your taste, your palpitating sense of style, +your exquisite ear for rhythm and cadence--what do these avail against +the man who goes straight to Stationers' Hall or the Parish Register? + + "Two thousand pounds of education + Drops to a ten-rupee jezail," + +as Mr. Kipling sings. The answer, of course, is that the beauty of +reasoning upon internal evidence lies in the process rather than the +results. You spend a month in studying a poet, and draw some +conclusion which is entirely wrong: within a week you are set right by +some fellow with a Parish Register. Well, but meanwhile you have been +reading poetry, and he has not. Only the uninstructed judge criticism +by its results alone. + +If, then, after studying Messrs. Stevenson and Osbourne's _The +Ebb-Tide_ (London: Heinemann) I hazard a guess or two upon its +authorship; and if somebody take it into his head to write out to +Samoa and thereby elicit the information that my guesses are entirely +wrong--why then we shall have been performing each of us his proper +function in life; and there's an end of the matter. + +Let me begin though--after reading a number of reviews of the +book--by offering my sympathy to Mr. Lloyd Osbourne. Very possibly he +does not want it. I guess him to be a gentleman of uncommonly cheerful +heart. I hope so, at any rate: for it were sad to think that +indignation had clouded even for a minute the gay spirit that gave us +_The Wrong Box_--surely the funniest book written in the last ten +years. But he has been most shamefully served. Writing with him, Mr. +Stevenson has given us _The Wrecker_ and _The Ebb-Tide_. Faults +may be found in these, apart from the criticism that they are freaks in +the development of Mr. Stevenson's genius. Nobody denies that they are +splendid tales: nobody (I imagine) can deny that they are tales of a +singular and original pattern. Yet no reviewer praises them on their +own merits or points out their own defects. They are judged always in +relation to Mr. Stevenson's previous work, and the reviewers +concentrate their censure upon the point that they are freaks in Mr. +Stevenson's development--that he is not continuing as the public +expected him to continue. + +Now there are a number of esteemed novelists about the land who earn +comfortable incomes by doing just what the public expects of them. But +of Mr. Stevenson's genius--always something wayward--freaks might have +been predicted from the first. A genius so consciously artistic, so +quick in sympathy with other men's writings, however diverse, was +bound from the first to make many experiments. Before the public took +his career in hand and mapped it out for him, he made such an +experiment with _The Black Arrow_; and it was forgiven easily enough. +But because he now takes Mr. Osbourne into partnership for a new set +of experiments, the reviewers--not considering that these, whatever +their faults, are vast improvements on _The Black Arrow_--ascribe all +those faults to the new partner. + +But that is rough criticism. Moreover it is almost demonstrably false. +For the weakness of _The Wrecker_, such as it was, lay in the Paris +and Barbizon business and the author's failure to make this of one +piece with the main theme, with the romantic histories of the +_Currency Lass_ and the _Flying Scud_. But which of the two partners +stands responsible for this Pais-Barbizon business? Mr. Stevenson +beyond a doubt. If you shut your eyes to Mr. Stevenson's confessed +familiarity with the Paris and the Barbizon of a certain era; if you +choose to deny that he wrote that chapter on Fontainebleau in _Across +the Plains_; if you go on to deny that he wrote the opening of Chapter +XXI. of _The Wrecker_; why then you are obliged to maintain that it +was Mr. Osbourne, and not Mr. Stevenson, who wrote that famous chapter +on the Roussillon Wine--which is absurd. And if, in spite of its +absurdity, you stick to this also, why, then you are only +demonstrating that Mr. Lloyd Osbourne is one of the greatest living +writers of fiction: and your conception of him as a mere imp of +mischief jogging the master's elbow is wider of the truth than ever. + +No; the vital defect of _The Wrecker_ must be set down to Mr. +Stevenson's account. Fine story as that was, it failed to assimilate +the Paris-Barbizon business. _The Ebb-Tide_, on the other hand, is all +of one piece. It has at any rate one atmosphere, and one only. And who +can demand a finer atmosphere of romance than that of the South +Pacific? + +_The Ebb-Tide_, so far as atmosphere goes, is all of one piece. And +the story, too, is all of one piece--until we come to Attwater: I own +Attwater beats me. As Mr. Osbourne might say, "I have no use for" that +monstrous person. I wish, indeed, Mr. Osbourne _had_ said so: for +again I cannot help feeling that the offence of Attwater lies at Mr. +Stevenson's door. He strikes me as a bad dream of Mr. Stevenson's--a +General Gordon out of the _Arabian Nights_. Do you remember a drawing +of Mr. du Maurier's in _Punch_, wherein, seizing upon a locution of +Miss Rhoda Broughton's, he gave us a group of "magnificently ugly" +men? I seem to see Attwater in that group. + +But if Mr. Stevenson is responsible for Attwater, surely also he +contributed the two splendid surprises of the story. I am the more +certain because they occur in the same chapter, and within three pages +of each other. I mean, of course, Captain Davis's sudden confession +about his "little Adar," and the equally startling discovery that the +cargo of the _Farallone_ schooner, supposed to be champagne, is mostly +water. These are the two triumphant surprises of the book: and I shall +continue to believe that only one living man could have contrived +them, until somebody writes to Samoa and obtains the assurance that +they are among Mr. Osbourne's contributions to the tale. + +Two small complaints I have to make. The first is of the rather +inartistically high level of profanity maintained by the speech of +Davis and Huish. It is natural enough, of course; but that is no +excuse if the frequency of the swearing prevent its making its proper +impression in the right place. And the name "Robert Herrick," bestowed +on one of the three beach-loafers, might have been shunned. You may +call an ordinary negro "Julius Cæsar": for out of such extremes you +get the legitimately grotesque. But the Robert Herrick, loose writer +of the lovely _Hesperides_, and the Robert Herrick, shameful haunter +of Papeete beach, are not extremes: and it was so very easy to avoid +the association of ideas. + + * * * * * + +Dec. 22, 1894. R.L.S. In Memorium. + +The Editor asks me to speak of Stevenson this week: because, since the +foundation of THE SPEAKER, as each new book of Stevenson's appeared, I +have had the privilege of writing about it here. So this column, too, +shall be filled; at what cost ripe journalists will understand, and +any fellow-cadet of letters may guess. + +For when the telegram came, early on Monday morning, what was our +first thought, as soon as the immediate numbness of sorrow passed and +the selfish instinct began to reassert itself (as it always does) and +whisper "What have _I_ lost? What is the difference to _me_?" Was it +not something like this--"Put away books and paper and pen. Stevenson +is dead. Stevenson is dead, and now there is nobody left to write +for." Our children and grandchildren shall rejoice in his books; but +we of this generation possessed in the living man something that they +will not know. So long as he lived, though it were far from +Britain--though we had never spoken to him and he, perhaps, had barely +heard our names--we always wrote our best for Stevenson. To him each +writer amongst us--small or more than small--had been proud to have +carried his best. That best might be poor enough. So long as it was +not slipshod, Stevenson could forgive. While he lived, he moved men to +put their utmost even into writings that quite certainly would never +meet his eye. Surely another age will wonder over this curiosity of +letters--that for five years the needle of literary endeavor in Great +Britain has quivered towards a little island in the South Pacific, as +to its magnetic pole. + +Yet he founded no school, though most of us from time to time have +poorly tried to copy him. He remained altogether inimitable, yet never +seemed conscious of his greatness. It was native in him to rejoice in +the successes of other men at least as much as in his own triumphs. +One almost felt that, so long as good books were written, it was no +great concern to him whether he or others wrote them. Born with an +artist's craving for beauty of expression, he achieved that beauty +with infinite pains. Confident in romance and in the beneficence of +joy, he cherished the flame of joyous romance with more than Vestal +fervor, and kept it ardent in a body which Nature, unkind from the +beginning, seemed to delight in visiting with more unkindness--a +"soul's dark cottage, battered and decayed" almost from birth. And his +books leave the impression that he did this chiefly from a sense of +duty: that he labored and kept the lamp alight chiefly because, for +the time, other and stronger men did not. + +Had there been another Scott, another Dumas--if I may change the +image--to take up the torch of romance and run with it, I doubt if +Stevenson would have offered himself. I almost think in that case he +would have consigned with Nature and sat at ease, content to read of +new Ivanhoes and new D'Artagnans: for--let it be said again--no man +had less of the ignoble itch for merely personal success. Think, too, +of what the struggle meant for him: how it drove him unquiet about the +world, if somewhere he might meet with a climate to repair the +constant drain upon his feeble vitality; and how at last it flung him, +as by a "sudden freshet," upon Samoa--to die "far from Argos, dear +land of home." + +And then consider the brave spirit that carried him--the last of a +great race--along this far and difficult path; for it is the man we +must consider now, not, for the moment, his writings. Fielding's +voyage to Lisbon was long and tedious enough; but almost the whole of +Stevenson's life has been a voyage to Lisbon, a voyage in the very +penumbra of death. Yet Stevenson spoke always as gallantly as his +great predecessor. Their "cheerful stoicism," which allies his books +with the best British breeding, will keep them classical as long as +our nation shall value breeding. It shines to our dim eyes now, as we +turn over the familiar pages of _Virginibus Puerisque_, and from page +after page--in sentences and fragments of sentences--"It is not +altogether ill with the invalid after all" ... "Who would project a +serial novel after Thackeray and Dickens had each fallen in +mid-course." [_He_ had two books at least in hand and uncompleted, the +papers say.] "Who would find heart enough to begin to live, if he +dallied with the consideration of death?" ... "What sorry and pitiful +quibbling all this is!" ... "It is better to live and be done with it, +than to die daily in the sick-room. By all means begin your folio; +even if the doctor does not give you a year, even if he hesitates over +a month, make one brave push and see what can be accomplished in a +week.... For surely, at whatever age it overtake the man, this is to +die young.... The noise of the mallet and chisel is scarcely quenched, +the trumpets are hardly done blowing, when, trailing with him clouds +of glory, this happy-starred, full-blooded spirit shoots into the +spiritual land." + +As it was in _Virginibus Puerisque_, so is it in the last essay in his +last book of essays:-- + + "And the Kingdom of Heaven is of the childlike, of those who are + easy to please, who love and who give pleasure. Mighty men of + their hands, the smiters, and the builders, and the judges, have + lived long and done sternly, and yet preserved this lovely + character; and among our carpet interests and two-penny concerns, + the shame were indelible if _we_ should lose it. _Gentleness and + cheerfulness, these come before all morality; they are the + perfect duties_...." + +I remember now (as one remembers little things at such times) that, +when first I heard of his going to Samoa, there came into my head +(Heaven knows why) a trivial, almost ludicrous passage from his +favorite, Sir Thomas Browne: a passage beginning "He was fruitlessly +put in hope of advantage by change of Air, and imbibing the pure +Aerial Nitre of those Parts; and therefore, being so far spent, he +quickly found Sardinia in Tivoli, and the most healthful air of little +effect, where Death had set her Broad Arrow...." A statelier sentence +of the same author occurs to me now-- + +"To live indeed, is to be again ourselves, which being not only a +hope, but an evidence in noble believers, it is all one to lie in St. +Innocent's Churchyard, as in the sands of Egypt. Ready to be anything +in the ecstacy of being ever, and as content with six foot as the +_moles_ of Adrianus." + +This one lies, we are told, on a mountain-top, overlooking the +Pacific. At first it seemed so much easier to distrust a News Agency +than to accept Stevenson's loss. "O captain, my captain!" ... One +needs not be an excellent writer to feel that writing will be +thankless work, now that Stevenson is gone. But the papers by this +time leave no room for doubt. "A grave was dug on the summit of Mount +Vaea, 1,300 feet above the sea. The coffin was carried up the hill by +Samoans with great difficulty, a track having to be cut through the +thick bush which covers the side of the hill from the base to the +peak." For the good of man, his father and grandfather planted the +high sea-lights upon the Inchcape and the Tyree Coast. He, the last of +their line, nursed another light and tended it. Their lamps still +shine upon the Bell Rock and the Skerryvore; and--though in alien +seas, upon a rock of exile--this other light shall continue, +unquenchable by age, beneficent, serene. + + * * * * * + +Nov. 2, 1895. The "Vailima Letters." + +Eagerly as we awaited this volume, it has proved a gift exceeding all +our hopes--a gift, I think, almost priceless. It unites in the rarest +manner the value of a familiar correspondence with the value of an +intimate journal: for these Samoan letters to his friend Mr. Sidney +Colvin form a record, scarcely interrupted, of Stevenson's thinkings +and doings from month to month, and often from day to day, during the +last four romantic years of his life. The first is dated November 2nd, +1890, when he and his household were clearing the ground for their +home on the mountain-side of Vaea: the last, October 6th, 1894, just +two months before his grave was dug on Vaea top. During his Odyssey in +the South Seas (from August, 1888, to the spring of 1890) his letters, +to Mr. Colvin at any rate, were infrequent and tantalizingly vague; +but soon after settling on his estate in Samoa, "he for the first +time, to my infinite gratification, took to writing me long and +regular monthly budgets as full and particular as heart could wish; +and this practice he maintained until within a few weeks of his +death." These letters, occupying a place quite apart in Stevenson's +correspondence, Mr. Colvin has now edited with pious care and given to +the public. + +But the great, the happy surprise of the _Vailima Letters_ is neither +their continuity nor their fulness of detail--although on each of +these points they surpass our hopes. The great, the entirely happy +surprise is their intimacy. We all knew--who could doubt it?--that +Stevenson's was a clean and transparent mind. But we scarcely allowed +for the innocent zest (innocent, because wholly devoid of vanity or +selfishness) which he took in observing its operations, or for the +child-like confidence with which he held out the crystal for his +friend to gaze into. + +One is at first inclined to say that had these letters been less +open-hearted they had made less melancholy reading--the last few of +them, at any rate. For, as their editor says, "the tenor of these last +letters of Stevenson's to me, and of others written to several of his +friends at the same time, seemed to give just cause for anxiety. +Indeed, as the reader will have perceived, a gradual change had during +the past months been coming over the tone of his correspondence.... To +judge by these letters, his old invincible spirit of cheerfulness was +beginning to give way to moods of depression and overstrained feeling, +although to those about him, it seems, his charming, habitual +sweetness and gaiety of temper were undiminished." Mr. Colvin is +thinking, no doubt, of passages such as this, from the very last +letter:-- + + "I know I am at a climacteric for all men who live by their wits, + so I do not despair. But the truth is, I am pretty nearly useless + at literature.... Were it not for my health, which made it + impossible, I could not find it in my heart to forgive myself + that I did not stick to an honest, commonplace trade when I was + young, which might have now supported me during these ill years. + But do not suppose me to be down in anything else; only, for the + nonce, my skill deserts me, such as it is, or was. It was a very + little dose of inspiration, and a pretty little trick of style, + long lost, improved by the most heroic industry. So far, I have + managed to please the journalists. But I am a fictitious article, + and have long known it. I am read by journalists, by my + fellow-novelists, and by boys; with these _incipit et explicit_ + my vogue." + +I appeal to all who earn their living by pen or brush--Who does not +know moods such as this? Who has not experience of those dark days +when the ungrateful canvas refuses to come right, and the artist sits +down before it and calls himself a fraud? We may even say that these +fits of incapacity and blank despondency are part of the cost of all +creative work. They may be intensified by terror for the family +exchequer. The day passes in strenuous but futile effort, and the man +asks himself, "What will happen to me and mine if this kind of thing +continues?" Stevenson, we are allowed to say (for the letters tell +us), did torment himself with these terrors. And we may say further +that, by whatever causes impelled, he certainly worked too hard during +the last two years of his life. With regard to the passage quoted, +what seems to me really melancholy is not the baseless self-distrust, +for that is a transitory malady most incident to authorship; but that, +could a magic carpet have transported Stevenson at that moment to the +side of the friend he addressed--could he for an hour or two have +visited London--all this apprehension had been at once dispelled. He +left England before achieving his full conquest of the public heart, +and the extent of that conquest he, in his exile, never quite +realized. When he visited Sydney, early in 1893, it was to him a new +and disconcerting experience--but not, I fancy altogether +unpleasing--_digito monstrari_, or, as he puts it elsewhere, to "do +the affable celebrity life-sized." Nor do I think he quite realized +how large a place he filled in the education, as in the affections, of +the younger men--the Barries and Kiplings, the Weymans, Doyles and +Crocketts--whose courses began after he had left these shores. An +artist gains much by working alone and away from chatter and criticism +and adulation: but his gain has this corresponding loss, that he must +go through his dark hours without support. Even a master may take +benefit at times--if it be only a physical benefit--from some closer +and handier assurance than any letters can give of the place held by +his work in the esteem of "the boys." + +We must not make too much of what he wrote in this dark mood. A few +days later he was at work on _Weir of Hermiston_, laboring "at the +full pitch of his powers and in the conscious happiness of their +exercise." Once more he felt himself to be working at his best. The +result the world has not yet been allowed to see: for the while we are +satisfied and comforted by Mr. Colvin's assurances. "The fragment on +which he wrought during the last month of his life gives to my mind +(as it did to his own) for the first time the true measure of his +powers; and if in the literature of romance there is to be found work +more masterly, of more piercing human insight and more concentrated +imaginative wisdom, I do not know it." + +On the whole, these letters from Vailima give a picture of a serene +and--allowance being made for the moods--a contented life. It is, I +suspect, the genuine Stevenson that we get in the following passage +from the letter of March, 1891:-- + + "Though I write so little, I pass all my hours of field-work in + continual converse and imaginary correspondence. I scarce pull up + a weed, but I invent a sentence on the matter to yourself; it + does not get written; _autant en emportent les vents_; but the + intent is there, and for me (in some sort) the companionship. + To-day, for instance, we had a great talk. I was toiling, the + sweat dripping from my nose, in the hot fit after a squall of + rain; methought you asked me--frankly, was I happy? Happy (said + I); I was only happy once; that was at Hyères; it came to an end + from a variety of reasons--decline of health, change of place, + increase of money, age with his stealing steps; since then, as + before then, I know not what it means. But I know pleasures + still; pleasure with a thousand faces and none perfect, a + thousand tongues all broken, a thousand hands, and all of them + with scratching nails. High among these I place the delight of + weeding out here alone by the garrulous water, under the silence + of the high wood, broken by incongruous sounds of birds. And take + my life all through, look at it fore and back, and upside down--I + would not change my circumstances, unless it were to bring you + here. And yet God knows perhaps this intercourse of writing + serves as well; and I wonder, were you here indeed, would I + commune so continually with the thought of you. I say 'I wonder' + for a form; I know, and I know I should not." + +In a way the beauty of these letters is this, that they tell us so +much of Stevenson that is new, and nothing that is strange--nothing +that we have difficulty in reconciling with the picture we had already +formed in our own minds. Our mental portraits of some other writers, +drawn from their deliberate writings, have had to be readjusted, and +sometimes most cruelly readjusted, as soon as their private +correspondence came to be published. If any of us dreamed of this +danger in Stevenson's case (and I doubt if anyone did), the danger at +any rate is past. The man of the letters is the man of the books--the +same gay, eager, strenuous, lovable spirit, curious as ever about life +and courageous as ever in facing its chances. Profoundly as he +deplores the troubles in Samoa, when he hears that war has been +declared he can hardly repress a boyish excitement. "War is a huge +_entraînement_," he writes in June, 1893; "there is no other +temptation to be compared to it, not one. We were all wet, we had been +five hours in the saddle, mostly riding hard; and we came home like +schoolboys, with such a lightness of spirits, and I am sure such a +brightness of eye, as you could have lit a candle at." + +And that his was not by any means mere "literary" courage one more +extract will prove. One of his boys, Paatalise by name, had suddenly +gone mad:-- + + "I was busy copying David Balfour, with my left hand--a most + laborious task--Fanny was down at the native house superintending + the floor, Lloyd down in Apia, and Bella in her own house + cleaning, when I heard the latter calling on my name. I ran out + on the verandah; and there on the lawn beheld my crazy boy with + an axe in his hand and dressed out in green ferns, dancing. I ran + downstairs and found all my house boys on the back verandah, + watching him through the dining-room. I asked what it + meant?--'Dance belong his place,' they said.--'I think this is no + time to dance,' said I. 'Has he done his work?'--'No,' they told + me, 'away bush all morning.' But there they all stayed in the + back verandah. I went on alone through the dining-room and bade + him stop. He did so, shouldered the axe, and began to walk away; + but I called him back, walked up to him, and took the axe out of + his unresisting hands. The boy is in all things so good, that I + can scarce say I was afraid; only I felt it had to be stopped ere + he could work himself up by dancing to some craziness. Our house + boys protested they were not afraid; all I know is they were all + watching him round the back door, and did not follow me till I + had the axe. As for the out-boys, who were working with Fanny in + the native house, they thought it a bad business, and made no + secret of their fears." + +But indeed all the book is manly, with the manliness of Scott's +_Journal_ or of Fielding's _Voyage to Lisbon_. "To the English-speaking +world," concludes Mr. Colvin, "he has left behind a treasure which it +would be vain as yet to attempt to estimate; to the profession of +letters one of the most ennobling and inspiriting of examples; and +to his friends an image of memory more vivid and more dear than are +the presences of almost any of the living." Very few men of our time +have been followed out of this world with the same regret. None have +repined less at their own fate-- + + "This be the verse you grave for me:-- + 'Here he lies where he longed to be; + Home is the sailor, home from the sea, + And the hunter home from the hill.'" + + + + +M. ZOLA + + +Sept. 23, 1892. La Débâcle. + +To what different issues two men will work the same notion! Imagine +this world to be a flat board accurately parcelled out into squares, +and you have the basis at once of _Alice through the Looking-Glass_ +and of _Les Rougon-Macquart_. But for the mere fluke that the +Englishman happened to be whimsical and the Frenchman entirely without +humor (and the chances were perhaps against this), we might have had +the Rougon-Macquart family through the looking-glass, and a natural +and social history of Alice in _parterres_ of existence labelled +_Drink, War, Money_, etc. As it is, in drawing up any comparison of +these two writers we should remember that Mr. Carroll sees the world +in sections because he chooses, M. Zola because he cannot help it. + +If life were a museum, M. Zola would stand a reasonable chance of +being a Balzac. But I invite the reader who has just laid down _La +Débâcle_ to pick up _Eugénie Grandet_ again and say if that little +Dutch picture has not more sense of life, even of the storm and stir +and big furies of life, than the detonating _Débâcle_. The older +genius + + "Saw life steadily and saw it whole" + +--No matter how small the tale, he draws no curtain around it; it +stands in the midst of a real world, set in the white and composite +light of day. M. Zola sees life in sections and by one or another of +those colors into which daylight can be decomposed by the prism. He is +like a man standing at the wings with a limelight apparatus. The rays +fall now here, now there, upon the stage; are luridly red or vividly +green; but neither mix nor pervade. + +I am aware that the tone of the above paragraph is pontifical and its +substance a trifle obvious, and am eager to apologize for both. +Speaking as an impressionist, I can only say that _La Débâcle_ stifles +me. And this is the effect produced by all his later books. Each has +the exclusiveness of a dream; its subject--be it drink or war or +money--possesses the reader as a nightmare possesses the dreamer. For +the time this place of wide prospect, the world, puts up its shutters; +and life becomes all drink, all war, all money, while M. Zola +(adaptable Bacchanal!) surrenders his brain to the intoxication of his +latest theme. He will drench himself with ecclesiology, or veterinary +surgery, or railway technicalities--everything by turns and everything +long; but, like the gentleman in the comic opera, he "never mixes." Of +late he almost ceased to add even a dash of human interest. + +Mr. George Moore, reviewing _La Débâcle_ in the _Fortnightly_ last +month, laments this. He reminds us of the splendid opportunity M. Zola +has flung away in his latest work. + + "Jean and Maurice," says Mr. Moore, "have fought side by side; + they have alternately saved each other's lives; war has united + them in a bond of inseparable friendship; they have grasped each + other's hands, and looked in each other's eyes, overpowered with + a love that exceeds the love that woman ever gave to man; now + they are ranged on different sides, armed one against the other. + The idea is a fine one, and it is to be deeply regretted that M. + Zola did not throw history to the winds and develop the beautiful + human story of the division of friends in civil war. Never would + history have tempted Balzac away from the human passion of such a + subject...." + +But it is just fidelity to the human interest of every subject that +gives the novelist his rank; that makes--to take another instance--a +page or two of Balzac, when Balzac is dealing with money, of more +value than the whole of _l'Argent_. + +Of Burke it has been said by a critic with whom it is a pleasure for +once in a way to agree, that he knew how the whole world lived. + + "It was Burke's peculiarity and his glory to apply the + imagination of a poet of the first order to the facts and + business of life.... Burke's imagination led him to look over the + whole land: the legislator devising new laws, the judge + expounding and enforcing old ones, the merchant despatching all + his goods and extending his credit, the banker advancing the + money of his customers upon the credit of the merchant, the + frugal man slowly accumulating the store which is to support him + in old age, the ancient institutions of Church and University + with their seemly provisions for sound learning and true + religion, the parson in his pulpit, the poet pondering his + rhymes, the farmer eyeing his crops, the painter covering his + canvases, the player educating the feelings. Burke saw all this + with the fancy of a poet, and dwelt on it with the eye of a + lover." + +Now all this, which is true of Burke, is true of the very first +literary artists--of Shakespeare and Balzac. All this, and more--for +they not only see all this immense activity of life, but the emotions +that animate each of the myriad actors. + +Suppose them to treat of commerce: they see not only the goods and +money changing hands, but the ambitions, dangers, fears, delights, the +fierce adventures by desert and seas, the slow toil at home, upon +which the foundations of commerce are set. Like the Gods, + + "They see the ferry + On the broad, clay-laden + Lone Chorasmian stream;--thereon, + With snort and strain, + Two horses, strongly swimming, tow + The ferry-boat, with woven ropes + To either bow + Firm-harness'd by the mane; a chief, + With shout and shaken spear, + Stands at the prow, and guides them; but astern + The cowering merchants, in long robes, + Sit pale beside their wealth...." + +Like the Gods, they see all this; but, unlike the Gods, they must feel +also:-- + + "They see the merchants + On the Oxus stream;--_but care + Must visit first them too, and make them pale_. + Whether, through whirling sand, + A cloud of desert robber-horse have burst + Upon their caravan; or greedy kings, + In the wall'd cities the way passes through, + Crush'd them with tolls; or fever-airs, + On some great river's marge, + Mown them down, far from home." + +Mr. Moore speaks of M. Zola's vast imagination. It is vast in the +sense that it sees one thing at a time, and sees it a thousand times +as big as it appears to most men. But can the imagination that sees a +whole world under the influence of one particular fury be compared +with that which surveys this planet and sees its inhabitants busy with +a million diverse occupations? Drink, Money, War--these may be +usefully personified as malignant or beneficent angels, for pulpit +purposes. But the employment of these terrific spirits in the harrying +of the Rougon-Macquart family recalls the announcement that + + "The Death-Angel smote Alexander McGlue...." + +while the methods of the _Roman Expérimental_ can hardly be better +illustrated than by the rest of the famous stanza-- + + "--And gave him protracted repose: + He wore a check shirt and a Number 9 shoe, + And he had a pink wart on his nose." + + + + +SELECTION + + +May 4, 1895. Hazlitt. + +"Coming forward and seating himself on the ground in his white dress +and tightened turban, the chief of the Indian jugglers begins with +tossing up two brass balls, which is what any of us could do, and +concludes with keeping up four at the same time, which is what none of +us could do to save our lives." ... You remember Hazlitt's essay on +the Indian Jugglers, and how their performance shook his self-conceit. +"It makes me ashamed of myself. I ask what there is that I can do as +well as this. Nothing..... Is there no one thing in which I can +challenge competition, that I can bring as an instance of exact +perfection, in which others cannot find a flaw? The utmost I can +pretend to is to write a description of what this fellow can do. I can +write a book; so can many others who have not even learned to spell. +What abortions are these essays! What errors, what ill-pieced +transitions, what crooked reasons, what lame conclusions! How little +is made out, and that little how ill! Yet they are the best I can do." + +Nevertheless a play of Shakespeare's, or a painting by Reynolds, or an +essay by Hazlitt, imperfect though it be, is of more rarity and worth +than the correctest juggling or tight-rope walking. Hazlitt proceeds +to examine why this should be, and discovers a number of good reasons. +But there is one reason, omitted by him, or perhaps left for the +reader to infer, on which we may profitably spend a few minutes. It +forms part of a big subject, and tempts to much abstract talk on the +universality of the Fine Arts; but I think we shall be putting it +simply enough if we say that an artist is superior to an "artiste" +because he does well what ninety-nine people in a hundred are doing +poorly all their lives. + + +Selection. + +When people compare fiction with "real life," they start with +asserting "real life" to be a conglomerate of innumerable details of +all possible degrees of pertinence and importance, and go on to show +that the novelist selects from this mass those which are the most +important and pertinent to his purpose. (I speak here particularly of +the novelist, but the same is alleged of all practitioners of the fine +arts.) And, in a way, this is true enough. But who (unless in an idle +moment, or with a view to writing a treatise in metaphysics) ever +takes this view of the world? Who regards it as a conglomerate of +innumerable details? Critics say that the artist's difficulty lies in +selecting the details proper to his purpose, and his justification +rests on the selection he makes. But where lives the man whose +difficulty and whose justification do not lie just here?--who is not +consciously or unconsciously selecting from morning until night? You +take the most ordinary country walk. How many millions of leaves and +stones and blades of grass do you pass without perceiving them at all? +How many thousands of others do you perceive, and at once allow to +slip into oblivion? Suppose you have walked four miles with the +express object of taking pleasure in country sights. I dare wager the +objects that have actually engaged your attention for two seconds are +less than five hundred, and those that remain in your memory, when you +reach home, as few as a dozen. All the way you have been, quite +unconsciously, selecting and rejecting. And it is the brain's +bedazzlement over this work, I suggest, and not merely the rhythmical +physical exertion, that lulls the more ambitious walker and induces +that phlegmatic mood so prettily described by Stevenson--the mood in +which + + "we can think of this or that, lightly or laughingly, as a child + thinks, or as we think in a morning doze; we can make puns or + puzzle out acrostics, and trifle in a thousand ways with words + and rhymes; but when it comes to honest work, when we come to + gather ourselves together for an effort, we may sound the trumpet + as long and loud as we please; the great barons of the mind will + not rally to the standard, but sit, each one at home, warming his + hands over his own fire and brooding on his own private thought!" + +Again, certain critics never seem tired of pelting the novelist with +comparisons drawn between painting and photography. "Mr. So-and-So's +fidelity to life suggests the camera rather than the brush and +palette"; and the implication is that Mr. So-and-So and the camera +resemble each other in their tendency to reproduce irrelevant detail. +The camera, it is assumed, repeats this irrelevant detail. The +photographer does not select. But is this true? I have known many +enthusiasts in photography whose enthusiasm I could not share. But I +never knew one, even among amateurs, who wished to photograph +everything he saw, from every possible point of view. Even the amateur +selects--wrongly as a rule: still he selects. The mere act of setting +up a camera in any particular spot implies a process of selection. And +when the deed is done, the scenery has been libelled. Our eyes behold +the photograph, and go through another process of selection. In short, +whatever they look upon, men and women are selecting ceaselessly. + +The artist therefore does well and consciously, and for a particular +end, what every man or woman does poorly, and unconsciously, and +casually. He differs in the photographer in that he has more licence +to eliminate. When once the camera is set up, it's owner's power over +the landscape has come to an end. The person who looks on the +resultant photograph must go through the same process of choosing and +rejecting that he would have gone through in contemplating the natural +landscape. The sole advantage is that the point of view has been +selected for him, and that he can enjoy it without fatigue in any +place and at any time. + +The truth seems to be that the human brain abhors the complexity--the +apparently aimless complexity--of nature and real life, and is for +ever trying to get away from it by selecting this and ignoring that. +And it contrives so well that I suppose the average man is not +consciously aware twice a year of that conglomerate of details which +the critics call real life. He holds one stout thread, at any rate, to +guide him through the maze--the thread of self-interest. + +The justification of the poet or the novelist is that he discovers a +better thread. He follows up a universal where the average man follows +only a particular. But in following it, he does but use those +processes by which the average man arrives, or attempts to arrive, at +pleasure. + + + + +EXTERNALS + + +Nov. 18, 1893. Story and Anecdote. + +I suppose I am no more favored than most people who write stories in +receiving from unknown correspondents a variety of suggestions, +outlines of plots, sketches of situations, characters, and so forth. +One cannot but feel grateful for all this spontaneous beneficence. The +mischief is that in ninety-nine cases out of a hundred (the fraction +is really much smaller) these suggestions are of no possible use. + +Why should this be? Put briefly, the reason is that a story differs +from an anecdote. I take the first two instances that come into my +head: but they happen to be striking ones, and, as they occur in a +book of Mr. Kipling's, are safe to be well known to all my +correspondents. In Mr. Kipling's fascinating book, _Life's Handicap, +On Greenhow Hill_ is a story; _The Lang Men o' Larut_ is an anecdote. +_On Greenhow Hill_ is founded on a study of the human heart, and it is +upon the human heart that the tale constrains one's interest. _The +Lang Men o' Larut_ is just a yarn spun for the yarn's sake: it informs +us of nothing, and is closely related (if I may use some of Mr. +Howells' expressive language for the occasion) to "the lies swapped +between men after the ladies have left the table." And the reason why +the story-teller, when (as will happen at times) his invention runs +dry, can take no comfort in the generous outpourings of his unknown +friends, is just this--that the plots are merely plots, and the +anecdotes merely anecdotes, and the difference between these and a +story that shall reveal something concerning men and women is just the +difference between bad and good art. + +Let us go a step further. At first sight it seems a superfluous +contention that a novelist's rank depends upon what he can see and +what he can tell us of the human heart. But, as a matter of fact, you +will find that four-fifths at least of contemporary criticism is +devoted to matters quite different--to what I will call Externals, or +the Accidents of Story-telling: and that, as a consequence, our +novelists are spending a quite unreasonable proportion of their labor +upon Externals. I wrote "as a consequence" hastily, because it is +always easier to blame the critics. If the truth were known, I dare +say the novelists began it with their talk about "documents," "the +scientific method," "observation and experiment," and the like. + + +The Fallacy of "Documents." + +Now you may observe a man until you are tired, and then you may begin +and observe him over again: you may photograph him and his +surroundings: you may spend years in studying what he eats and drinks: +you may search out what his uncles died of, and the price he pays for +his hats, and--know nothing at all about him. At least, you may know +enough to insure his life or assess him for Income Tax: but you are +not even half-way towards writing a novel about him. You are still +groping among externals. His unspoken ambitions; the stories he tells +himself silently, at midnight, in his bed; the pain he masks with a +dull face and the ridiculous fancies he hugs in secret--these are the +Essentials, and you cannot get them by Observation. If you can +discover these, you are a Novelist born: if not, you may as well shut +up your note-book and turn to some more remunerative trade. You will +never surprise the secret of a soul by accumulating notes upon +Externals. + + +Local Color. + +Then, again, we have Local Color, an article inordinately bepraised +just now; and yet an External. For human nature, when every possible +allowance has been made for geographical conditions, undergoes +surprisingly little change as we pass from one degree of latitude or +longitude to another. The Story of Ruth is as intelligible to an +Englishman as though Ruth had gleaned in the stubble behind Tess +Durbeyfield. Levine toiling with the mowers, Achilles sulking in his +tent, Iphigeneia at the altar, Gil Blas before the Archbishop of +Granada have as close a claim on our sympathy as if they lived but a +few doors from us. Let me be understood. I hold it best that a +novelist should be intimately acquainted with the country in which he +lays his scene. But, none the less, the study of local color is not of +the first importance. And the critic who lavishes praise upon a writer +for "introducing us to an entirely new atmosphere," for "breaking new +ground," and "wafting us to scenes with which the jaded novel-reader +is scarcely acquainted," and for "giving us work which bears every +trace of minute local research," is praising that which is of +secondary importance. The works of Richard Jefferies form a +considerable museum of externals of one particular kind; and this is +possibly the reason why the Cockney novelist waxes eloquent over +Richard Jefferies. He can now import the breath of the hay-field into +his works at no greater expense of time and trouble than taking down +the _Gamekeeper at Home_ from his club bookshelf and perusing a +chapter or so before settling down to work. There is not the slightest +harm in his doing this: the mistake lies in thinking local color +(however acquired) of the first importance. + +In judging fiction there is probably no safer rule than to ask one's +self, How far does the pleasure excited in me by this book depend upon +the transitory and trivial accidents that distinguish this time, this +place, this character, from another time, another place, another +character? And how far upon the abiding elements of human life, the +constant temptations, the constant ambitions, and the constant +nobility and weakness of the human heart? These are the essentials, +and no amount of documents or local color can fill their room. + + * * * * * + +Sept. 30, 1893. The Country as "Copy". + +The case of a certain small volume of verse in which I take some +interest, and its treatment at the hands of the reviewers, seems to me +to illustrate in a sufficiently amusing manner a trick that the +British critic has been picking up of late. In a short account of Mr. +Hosken, the postman poet, written by way of preface to his _Verses by +the Way_ (Methuen & Co.), I took occasion to point out that he is not +what is called in the jargon of these days a "nature-poet"; that his +poetic bent inclines rather to meditation than to description; and +that though his early struggles in London and elsewhere have made him +acquainted with many strange people in abnormal conditions of life, +his interest has always lain, not in these striking anomalies, but in +the destiny of humanity as a whole and its position in the great +scheme of things. + +These are simple facts. I found them, easily enough, in Mr. Hosken's +verse--where anybody else may find them. They also seem to me to be, +for a critic's purpose, ultimate facts. It is an ultimate fact that +Publius Virgilius Maro wore his buskins somewhat higher in the heel +than did Quintus Horatius Flaccus: and no critic, to my knowledge, +has been impertinent enough to point out that, since Horace had some +experience of the tented field, while Virgil was a stay-at-home +courtier, therefore Horace should have essayed to tell the martial +exploits of Trojan and Rutulian while Virgil contented himself with +the gossip of the Via Sacra. Yet--to compare small things with +great--this is the mistake into which our critics have fallen in Mr. +Hosken's case; and I mention it because the case is typical. They try +to get behind the ultimate facts and busy themselves with questions +they have no proper concern with. Some ask petulantly why Mr. Hosken +is not a "nature-poet." Some are gravely concerned that "local talent" +(_i.e._ the talent of a man who happens to dwell in some locality +other than the critic's) should not concern itself with local affairs; +and remind him-- + + "To thine orchard edge belong + All the brass and plume of song." + +As if a man may not concern himself with the broader problems of life +and attack them with all the apparatus of recorded experience, unless +he happen to live on one bank or other of the Fleet Ditch! If a man +have the gift, he can find all the "brass and plume of song" in his +orchard edge. If he have not, he may (provided he be a _bonâ fide_ +traveller) find it elsewhere. What, for instance, were the use of +telling Keats: "To thy surgery belong all the brass and plume of +song"? He couldn't find it there, so he betook himself to Chapman and +Lempriere. If you ask, "What right has a country postman to be +handling questions that vexed the brain of Plato?"--I ask in return, +"What right had John Keats, who knew no Greek, to busy himself with +Greek mythology?" And the answer is that each has a perfect right to +follow his own bent. + +The assumption of many critics that only within the metropolitan cab +radius can a comprehensive system of philosophy be constructed, and +that only through the plate-glass windows of two or three clubs is it +possible to see life steadily, and see it whole, is one that I have +before now had occasion to dispute. It is joined in this case to +another yet more preposterous--that from a brief survey of an author's +circumstances we can dictate to him what he ought to write about, and +how he ought to write it. And I have observed particularly that if a +writer be a countryman, or at all well acquainted with country life, +all kinds of odd entertainment is expected of him in the way of notes +on the habits of birds, beasts, and fishes, on the growth of all kinds +of common plants, on the proper way to make hay, to milk a cow, and so +forth. + + +Richard Jefferies. + +Now it is just the true countryman who would no more think of noting +these things down in a book than a Londoner would think of stating in +a novel that Bond Street joins Oxford Street and Piccadilly: simply +because they have been familiar to him from boyhood. And to my mind it +is a small but significant sign of a rather lamentable movement--of +none other, indeed, than the "Rural Exodus," as Political Economists +call it--that each and every novelist of my acquaintance, while +assuming as a matter of course that his readers are tolerably familiar +with the London Directory, should, equally as a matter of course, +assume them to be ignorant of the commonest features of open-air life. +I protest there are few things more pitiable than the transports of +your Cockney critic over Richard Jefferies. Listen, for instance, to +this kind of thing:-- + + "Here and there upon the bank wild gooseberry and currant bushes + may be found, planted by birds carrying off ripe fruit from the + garden. A wild gooseberry may sometimes be seen growing out of + the decayed 'touchwood' on the top of a hollow withy-pollard. + Wild apple trees, too, are not uncommon in the hedges. + + "The beautiful rich colour of the horse-chestnut, when quite ripe + and fresh from its prickly green shell, can hardly be surpassed; + underneath the tree the grass is strewn with shells where they + have fallen and burst. Close to the trunk the grass is worn away + by the restless trampling of horses, who love the shade its + foliage gives in summer. The oak apples which appear on the oaks + in spring--generally near the trunk--fall off in summer, and lie + shrivelled on the ground, not unlike rotten cork, or black as if + burned. But the oak-galls show thick on some of the trees, light + green, and round as a ball; they will remain on the branches + after the leaves have fallen, turning brown and hard, and hanging + there till the spring comes again."--_Wild Life in a Southern + County_, pp. 224-5. + +I say it is pitiable that people should need to read these things in +print. Let me apply this method to some district of south-west +London--say the Old Brompton Road:-- + + "Here and there along the street Grocery Stores and shops of + Italian Warehousemen may be observed, opened here as branches of + bigger establishments in the City. Three gilt balls may + occasionally be seen hanging out under the first-floor windows of + a 'pawnbroker's' residence. House-agents, too, are not uncommon + along the line of route. + + "The appearance of a winkle, when extracted from its shell with + the aid of a pin, is extremely curious. There is a winkle-stall + by the South Kensington Station of the Underground Railway. + Underneath the stall the pavement is strewn with shells, where + they have fallen and continue to lie. Close to the stall is a + cab-stand, paved with a few cobbles, lest the road be worn + overmuch by the restless trampling of cab-horses, who stand here + because it is a cab-stand. The thick woollen goods which appear + in the haberdashers' windows through the winter--generally + _inside_ the plate glass--give way to garments of a lighter + texture as the summer advances, and are put away or exhibited at + decreased prices. But collars continue to be shown, quite white + and circular in form; they will probably remain, turning grey as + the dust settles on them, until they are sold." + +This is no travesty. It is a hasty, but I believe a pretty exact +application of Jefferies' method. And I ask how it would look in a +book. If the critics really enjoy, as they profess to, all this +trivial country lore, why on earth don't they come into the fresh air +and find it out for themselves? There is no imperative call for their +presence in London. Ink will stain paper in the country as well as in +town, and the Post will convey their articles to their editors. As it +is, they do but overheat already overheated clubs. Mr. Henley has +suggested concerning Jefferies' works that + + "in years to be, when the whole island is one vast congeries of + streets, and the fox has gone down to the bustard and the dodo, + and outside museums of comparative anatomy the weasel is not, and + the badger has ceased from the face of the earth, it is not + doubtful that the _Gamekeeper_ and _Wild Life_ and the + _Poacher_--epitomising, as they will, the rural England of + certain centuries before--will be serving as material authority + for historical descriptions, historical novels, historical epics, + historical pictures, and will be honoured as the most useful + stuff of their kind in being." + +Let me add that the movement has begun. These books are already +supplying the club-novelist with his open-air effects: and, therefore, +the club-novelist worships them. From them he gathers that "wild +apple-trees, too, are not uncommon in the hedges," and straightway he +informs the public of this wonder. But it is hard on the poor +countryman who, for the benefit of a street-bred reading public, must +cram his books with solemn recitals of his A, B, C, and impressive +announcements that two and two make four and a hedge-sparrow's egg is +blue. + + * * * * * + +Aug. 18, 1894. A Defence of "Local Fiction." + +Under the title "Three Years of American Copyright" the _Daily +Chronicle_ last Tuesday published an account of an interview with Mr. +Brander Matthews, who holds (among many titles to distinction) the +Professorship of Literature in Columbia College, New York. Mr. +Matthews is always worth listening to, and has the knack of speaking +without offensiveness even when chastising us Britons for our national +peculiarities. His conversation with the _Daily Chronicle's_ +interviewer contained a number of good things; but for the moment I am +occupied with his answer to the question "What form of literature +should you say is at present in the ascendant in the United States?" +"Undoubtedly," said Mr. Matthews, "what I may call local fiction." + + "Every district of the country is finding its 'sacred poet.' Some + of them have only a local reputation, but all possess the common + characteristic of starting from fresh, original, and loving study + of local character and manners. You know what Miss Mary E. + Wilkins has done for New England, and you probably know, too, + that she was preceded in the same path by Miss Sarah Orne Jewett + and the late Mrs. Rose Terry Cooke. Mr. Harold Frederic is + performing much the same service for rural New York, Miss Murfree + (Charles Egbert Craddock) for the mountains of Tennessee, Mr. + James Lane Allen for Kentucky, Mr. Joel Chandler Harris for + Georgia, Mr. Cable for Louisiana, Miss French (Octave Thanet) for + Iowa, Mr. Hamlin Garland for the western prairies, and so forth. + Of course, one can trace the same tendency, more or less clearly, + in English fiction...." + +And Mr. Matthews went on to instance several living novelists, Scotch, +Irish, and English to support this last remark. + +The matter, however, is not in doubt. With Mr. Barrie in the North, +and Mr. Hardy in the South; with Mr. Hall Caine in the Isle of Man, +Mr. Crockett in Galloway, Miss Barlow in Lisconnell; with Mr. Gilbert +Parker in the territory of the H.B.C., and Mr. Hornung in Australia; +with Mr. Kipling scouring the wide world, but returning always to +India when the time comes to him to score yet another big artistic +success; it hardly needs elaborate proof to arrive at the conclusion +that 'locality' is playing a strong part in current fiction. + +The thing may possibly be overdone. Looking at it from the artistic +point of view as dispassionately as I may, I think we are overdoing +it. But that, for the moment, is not the point of view I wish to take. +If for the moment we can detach ourselves from the prejudice of +fashion and look at the matter from the historical point of view--if +we put ourselves into the position of the conscientious gentleman who, +fifty or a hundred years hence, will be surveying us and our works--I +think we shall find this elaboration of "locality" in fiction to be +but a swing-back of the pendulum, a natural revolt from the +thin-spread work of the "carpet-bagging" novelist who takes the whole +world for his province, and imagines he sees life steadily and sees it +whole when he has seen a great deal of it superficially. + +The "carpet-bagger" still lingers among us. We know him, with his +"tourist's return" ticket, and the ready-made "plot" in his head, and +his note-book and pencil for jotting down "local color." We still find +him working up the scenery of Bolivia in the Reading Room of the +British Museum. But he is going rapidly out of fashion; and it is as +well to put his features on record and pigeon-hole them, if only that +we may recognize him on that day when the pendulum shall swing him +triumphantly back into our midst, and "locality" shall in its turn +pass out of vogue. + +I submit this simile of the pendulum with some diffidence to those +eager theorists who had rather believe that their art is advancing +steadily, but at a fair rate of speed, towards perfection. My own less +cheerful--yet not altogether cheerless view--is that the various +fashions in art swing to and fro upon intersecting curves. Some of the +points of intersection are fortunate points--others are obviously the +reverse; and generally the fortunate points lie near the middle of +each arc, or the mean; while the less fortunate ones lie towards the +ends, that is, towards excess upon one side or another. I have already +said that, in the amount of attention they pay to locality just now, +the novelists seem to be running into excess. If I must choose between +one excess and the other--between the carpet-bagger and the writer of +"dialect-stories," each at his worst--I unhesitatingly choose the +latter. But that is probably because I happened to be born in the +'sixties. + +Let us get back (I hear you implore) to the historical point of view, +if possible: anywhere, anywhere, out of the _Poetics!_ And I admit +that a portion of the preceding paragraph reads like a bad parody of +that remarkable work. Well, then, I believe that our imaginary +historian--I suppose he will be a German: but we need not let our +imagination dwell upon _that_--will find a dozen reasons in +contemporary life to account for the attention now paid by novelists +to "locality." He will find one of them, no doubt, in the development +of locomotion by steam. He will point out that any cause which makes +communication easier between two given towns is certain to soften the +difference in the characteristics of their inhabitants: that the +railway made communication easier and quicker year by year; and its +tendency was therefore to obliterate local peculiarities. He will +describe how at first the carpet-bagger went forth in railway-train +and steamboat, rejoicing in his ability to put a girdle round the +world in a few weeks, and disposed to ignore those differences of race +and region which he had no time to consider and which he was daily +softening into uniformity. He will then relate that towards the close +of the nineteenth century, when these differences were rapidly +perishing, people began to feel the loss of them and recognize their +scientific and romantic value; and that a number of writers entered +into a struggle against time and the carpet-bagger, to study these +differences and place them upon record, before all trace of them +should disappear. And then I believe our historian, though he may find +that in 1894 we paid too much attention to the _minutiæ_ of dialect, +folk-lore and ethnic differences, and were inclined to overlay with +these the more catholic principles of human conduct, will acknowledge +that in our hour we did the work that was most urgent. Our hour, no +doubt, is not the happiest; but, since this is the work it brings, +there can be no harm in going about it zealously. + + + + +CLUB TALK + + +Nov. 12, 1892. Mr. Gilbert Parker. + +Mr. Gilbert Parker's book of Canadian tales, "Pierre and His People" +(Methuen and Co.), is delightful for more than one reason. To begin +with, the tales themselves are remarkable, and the language in which +they are told, though at times it overshoots the mark by a long way +and offends by what I may call an affected virility, is always +distinguished. You feel that Mr. Parker considers his sentences, not +letting his bolts fly at a venture, but aiming at his effects +deliberately. It is the trick of promising youth to shoot high and +send its phrases in parabolic curves over the target. But a slight +wildness of aim is easily corrected, and to see the target at all is a +more conspicuous merit than the public imagines. Now Mr. Parker sees +his target steadily; he has a thoroughly good notion of what a short +story ought to be: and more than two or three stories in his book are +as good as can be. + + +Open Air v. Clubs. + +But to me the most pleasing quality in the book is its open-air +flavor. Here is yet another young author, and one of the most +promising, joining the healthy revolt against the workshops. Though +for my sins I have to write criticism now and then, and use the +language of the workshops, I may claim to be one of the rebels, having +chosen to pitch a small tent far from cities and to live out of doors: +and it rejoices me to see the movement growing, as it undoubtedly has +grown during the last few years, and find yet one more of the younger +men refusing, in Mr. Stevenson's words, to cultivate restaurant fat, +to fall in mind "to a thing perhaps as low as many types of +_bourgeois_--the implicit or exclusive artist." London is an alluring +dwelling-place for an author, even for one who desires to write about +the country. He is among the paragraph-writers, and his reputation +swells as a cucumber under glass. Being in sight of the newspaper men, +he is also in their mind. His prices will stand higher than if he go +out into the wilderness. Moreover, he has there the stimulating talk +of the masters in his profession, and will be apt to think that his +intelligence is developing amazingly, whereas in fact he is developing +all on one side; and the end of him is--the Exclusive Artist:-- + + "_When the flicker of London sun falls faint on the + Club-room's green and gold + The sons of Adam sit them down and scratch with their + pens in the mould-- + They scratch with their pens in the mould of their + graves and the ink and the anguish start, + For the Devil mutters behind the leaves: 'It's pretty, + but is it Art?'_" + +The spirit of our revolt is indicated clearly enough on that page of +Mr. Stevenson's "Wrecker," from which I have already quoted a +phrase:-- + + "That was a home word of Pinkerton's, deserving to be writ in + letters of gold on the portico of every School of Art: 'What I + can't see is why you should want to do nothing else.' The dull + man is made, not by the nature, but by the degree of his + immersion in a single business. And all the more if that be + sedentary, uneventful, and ingloriously safe. More than half of + him will then remain unexercised and undeveloped; the rest will + be distended and deformed by over-nutrition, over-cerebration and + the heat of rooms. And I have often marvelled at the impudence of + gentlemen who describe and pass judgment on the life of man, in + almost perfect ignorance of all its necessary elements and + natural careers. Those who dwell in clubs and studios may paint + excellent pictures or write enchanting novels. There is one thing + that they should not do: they should pass no judgment on man's + destiny, for it is a thing with which they are unacquainted. + Their own life is an excrescence of the moment, doomed, in the + vicissitude of history, to pass and disappear. The eternal life + of man, spent under sun and rain and in rude physical effort, + lies upon one side, scarce changed since the beginning." + +A few weeks ago our novelists were discussing the reasons why they +were novelists and not playwrights. The discussion was sterile enough, +in all conscience: but one contributor--it was "Lucas Malet"--managed +to make it clear that English fiction has a character to lose. "If +there is one thing," she said, "which as a nation we understand, it is +_out-of-doors_ by land and sea." Heaven forbid that, with only one +Atlantic between me and Mr. W.D. Howells, I should enlarge upon any +merit of the English novel: but I do suggest that this open-air +quality is a characteristic worth preserving, and that nothing is so +likely to efface it as the talk of workshops. It is worth preserving +because it tends to keep us in sight of the elemental facts of human +nature. After all, men and women depend for existence on the earth and +on the sky that makes earth fertile; and man's last act will be, as it +was his first, to till the soil. All empires, cities, tumults, civil +and religious wars, are transitory in comparison. The slow toil of +the farm-laborer, the endurance of the seaman, outlast them all. + + +Open Air in Criticism. + +That studio-talk tends to deaden this sense of the open-air is just +as certain. It runs not upon Nature, but upon the presentation of +Nature. I am almost ready to assert that it injures a critic as +surely as it spoils a creative writer. Certainly I remember that +the finest appreciation of Carlyle--a man whom every critic among +English-speaking races had picked to pieces and discussed and +reconstructed a score of times--was left to be uttered by an inspired +loafer in Camden, New Jersey. I love to read of Whitman dropping the +newspaper that told him of Carlyle's illness, and walking out under +the stars-- + + "Every star dilated, more vitreous, larger than usual. Not as in + some clear nights when the larger stars entirely outshine the + rest. Every little star or cluster just as distinctly visible and + just as high. Berenice's hair showing every gem, and new ones. To + the north-east and north the Sickle, the Goat and Kids, + Cassiopeia, Castor and Pollux, and the two Dippers. While through + the whole of this silent indescribable show, inclosing and + bathing my whole receptivity, ran the thought of Carlyle dying." + +In such a mood and place--not in a club after a dinner unearned by +exercise--a man is likely, if ever, to utter great criticism as well +as to conceive great poems. It is from such a mood and place that we +may consider the following fine passage fitly to issue:-- + + "The way to test how much he has left his country were to + consider, or try to consider, for a moment the array of British + thought, the resultant _ensemble_ of the last fifty years, as + existing to-day, _but with Carlyle left out._ It would be like an + army with no artillery. The show were still a gay and rich + one--Byron, Scott, Tennyson, and many more--horsemen and rapid + infantry, and banners flying--but the last heavy roar so dear to + the ear of the trained soldier, and that settles fate and + victory, would be lacking." + +For critic and artist, as for their fellow-creatures, I believe an +open-air life to be the best possible. And that is why I am glad to +read in certain newspaper paragraphs that Mr. Gilbert Parker is at +this moment on the wide seas, and bound for Quebec, where he starts to +collect material for a new series of short stories. His voyage will +loose him, in all likelihood, from the little he retains of club art. + +Of course, a certain proportion of our novelists must write of town +life: and to do this fitly they must live in town. But they must +study in the town itself, not in a club. Before anyone quotes Dickens +against me, let him reflect, first on the immensity of Dickens' +genius, and next on the conditions under which Dickens studied London. +If every book be a part of its writer's autobiography I invite the +youthful author who now passes his evenings in swapping views about +Art with his fellow cockneys to pause and reflect if he is indeed +treading in Dickens' footsteps or stands in any path likely to lead +him to results such as Dickens achieved. + + + + +EXCURSIONISTS IN POETRY + + +Nov. 5, 1892. An Itinerary. + +Besides the glorious exclusiveness of it, there is a solid advantage +just now, in not being an aspirant for the Laureateship. You can go +out into the wilderness for a week without troubling to leave an +address. A week or so back I found with some difficulty a friend who +even in his own judgment has no claim to the vacant office, and we set +out together across Dartmoor, Exmoor, the Quantocks, by eccentric +paths over the southern ranges of Wales to the Wye, and homewards by +canoe between the autumn banks of that river. The motto of the voyage +was Verlaine's line-- + + "Et surtout ne parlons pas littérature" + +--especially poetry. I think we felt inclined to congratulate each +other after passing the Quantocks in heroic silence; but were content +to read respect in each other's eyes. + + +The Return to Literature. + +On our way home we fell across a casual copy of the _Globe_ +newspaper, and picked up a scrap of information about the Blorenge, a +mountain we had climbed three days before. It is (said the _Globe_) +the only thing in the world that rhymes with orange. From this we +inferred that the Laureate had not been elected during our wanderings, +and that the Anglo-Saxon was still taking an interest in poetry. It +was so. + + +Public Excursions in Verse. + +The progress of this amusing epidemic may be traced in the _Times_. +It started mildly and decorously with the death of a politician. The +writer of Lord Sherbrooke's obituary notice happened to remember and +transcribe the rather flat epigram beginning-- + + "Here lie the bones of Robert Lowe, + Where he's gone to I don't know...." + +with Lowe's own Latin translation of the same. At once the _Times_ was +flooded with other versions by people who remembered the lines more or +less imperfectly, who had clung each to his own version since +childhood, who doubted if the epigram were originally written on Lord +Sherbrooke, who had seen it on an eighteenth-century tombstone in +several parts of England, and so on. London Correspondents took up +the game and carried it into the provincial press. Then country +clergymen bustled up and tried to recall the exact rendering; while +others who had never heard of the epigram waxed emulous and produced +translations of their own, with the Latin of which the local +compositor made sport after his kind. For weeks there continued quite +a pretty rivalry among these decaying scholars. + +The gentle thunders of this controversy had scarcely died down when +the _Times_ quoted a four-lined epigram about Mr. Leech making a +speech, and Mr. Parker making something darker that was dark enough +without; and another respectable profession, which hitherto had +remained cold, began to take fire and dispute with ardor. The Church, +the Legislature, the Bar, were all excited by this time. They strained +on the verge of surpassing feats, should the occasion be given. From +men in this mood the occasion is rarely withheld. Lord Tennyson died. +He had written at Cambridge a prize poem on Timbuctoo. Somebody else, +at Cambridge or elsewhere, had also written about Timbuctoo and a +Cassowary that ate a missionary with his this and his that and his +hymn-book too. Who was this somebody? Did he write it at Cambridge +(home of poets)? And what were the "trimmings," as Mr. Job Trotter +would say, with which the missionary was eaten? + +Poetry was in the air by this time. It would seem that those treasures +which the great Laureate had kept close were by his death unlocked and +spread over England, even to the most unexpected corners. "All have +got the seed," and already a dozen gentlemen were busily growing the +flower in the daily papers. It was not to be expected that our +senators, barristers, stockbrokers, having proved their strength, +would stop short at Timbuctoo and the Cassowary. Very soon a bold +egregious wether jumped the fence into the Higher Criticism, and gave +us a new and amazing interpretation of the culminating line in +_Crossing the Bar_. The whole flock was quick upon his heels. "Allow +me to remind the readers of your valuable paper that there are _two_ +kinds of pilot" is the sentence that now catches our eyes as we open +the _Times_. And according to the _Globe_ if you need a rhyme +for orange you must use Blorenge. And the press exists to supply the real +wants of the public.[A] + +They talk of decadence. But who will deny the future to a race capable +of producing, on the one hand, _Crossing the Bar_--and on the other, +this comment upon it, signed "T.F.W." and sent to the _Times_ from +Cambridge, October 27th, 1892?-- + + "... a poet so studious of fitness of language as Tennyson would + hardly, I suspect, have thrown off such words on such an occasion + haphazard. If the analogy is to be inexorably criticised, may it + not be urged that, having in his mind not the mere passage 'o'er + life's solemn main,' which we all are taking, with or without + reflection, but the near approach to an unexplored ocean beyond + it, he was mentally assigning to the pilot in whom his confidence + was fast the _status_ of the navigator of old days, the + sailing-master, on whose knowledge and care crews and captains + engaged in expeditions alike relied? Columbus himself married the + daughter of such a man, _un piloto Italiano famoso navigante_. + Camoens makes the people of Mozambique offer Vasco da Gama a + _piloto_ by whom his fleet shall be deftly (_sabiamente_) + conducted across the Indian Ocean. In the following century + (1520-30) Sebastian Cabot, then in the service of Spain, + commanded a squadron which was to pass through the Straits of + Magellan to the Moluccas, having been appointed by Charles V. + Grand Pilot of Castile. The French still call the mates of + merchant vessels--that is, the officers who watch about, take + charge of the deck--_pilotes_, and this designation is not + impossibly reserved to them as representing the _pilote + hauturier_ of former times, the scientific guide of ships _dans + la haute mer_, as distinguished from the _pilote côtier_, who + simply hugged the shore. The last class of pilot, it is almost + superfluous to observe, is still with us and does take our ships, + inwards or outwards, across the bar, if there be one, and does no + more. The _hauturier_ has long been replaced in all countries by + the captain, and it must be within the experience of some of us + that when outward bound the captain as often as not has been the + last man to come on board. We did not meet him until the ship, + which until his arrival was in the hands of the _côtier_, was + well out of harbour. Then our _côtier_ left us." + +Prodigious! + +FOOTNOTES: + +[A] Note, Oct. 21, 1893.--The nuisance revived again when Mr. +Nettleship the younger perished on Mont Blanc. And again, the friend +of Lowe and Nettleship, the great Master of Balliol, had hardly gone +to his grave before a dispute arose, not only concerning his parentage +(about which any man might have certified himself at the smallest +expense of time and trouble), but over an unusually pointless epigram +that was made at Cambridge many years ago, and neither on him, nor on +his father, but on an entirely different Jowett, _Semper ego auditor +tantum?_-- + + If a funny "Cantab" write a dozen funny rhymes, + Need a dozen "Cantabs" write about it to the _Times_? + Need they write, at any rate, a generation after, + Stating cause and date of joke and reasons for their laughter? + + + + +THE POPULAR CONCEPTION OF A POET + + +June 24, 1893. March 4, 1804. In what respect Remarkable. + +What seems to me chiefly remarkable in the popular conception of a +Poet is its unlikeness to the truth. Misconception in this case has +been flattered, I fear, by the poets themselves:-- + + "The poet in a golden Clime was born, + With golden stars above; + Dowered with the hate of hate, the scorn of scorn, + The love of love. + He saw thro' life and death, thro' good and ill; + He saw thro' his own soul. + The marvel of the Everlasting Will, + An open scroll, + Before him lay...." + +I should be sorry to vex any poet's mind with my shallow wit; but this +passage always reminds me of the delusions of the respectable +Glendower:-- + + "At my birth + The frame and huge foundation of the earth + Shak'd like a coward." + +--and Hotspur's interpretation (slightly petulant, to be sure), "Why, +so it would have done at the time if your mother's cat had but +kittened, though you yourself had never been born." I protest that I +reverence poetry and the poets: but at the risk of being warned off +the holy ground as a "dark-browed sophist," must declare my plain +opinion that the above account of the poet's birth and native gifts +does not consist with fact. + +Yet it consents with the popular notion, which you may find presented +or implied month by month and week by week, in the reviews; and even +day by day--for it has found its way into the newspapers. Critics have +observed that considerable writers fall into two classes-- + + +Two lines of Poetic Development. + +(1) Those who start with their heads full of great thoughts, and are +from the first occupied rather with their matter than with the manner +of expressing it. + +(2) Those who begin with the love of expression and intent to be +artists in words, _and come through expression to profound thought_. + + +The Popular Type. + +Now, for some reason it is fashionable just now to account Class 1 the +more respectable; a judgment to which, considering that Virgil and +Shakespeare belong to Class 2, I refuse my assent. It is fashionable +to construct an imaginary figure out of the characteristics of Class +1, and set him up as the Typical Poet. The poet at whose nativity +Tennyson assists in the above verses of course belongs to Class 1. A +babe so richly dowered can hardly help his matter overcrowding his +style; at least, to start with. + +But this is not all. A poet who starts with this tremendous equipment +can hardly help being something too much for the generation in which +he is born. Consequently, the Typical Poet is misunderstood by his +contemporaries, and probably persecuted. In his own age his is a voice +crying in the wilderness; in the wilderness he speeds the "viewless +arrows of his thought"; which fly far, and take root as they strike +earth, and blossom; and so Truth multiplies, and in the end (most +likely after his death) the Typical Poet comes by his own. + +Such is the popular conception of the Typical Poet, and I observe +that it fascinates even educated people. I have in mind the recent +unveiling of Mr. Onslow Ford's Shelley Memorial at University College, +Oxford. Those who assisted at that ceremony were for the most part men +and women of high culture. Excesses such as affable Members of +Parliament commit when distributing school prizes or opening free +public libraries were clearly out of the question. Yet even here, and +almost within the shadow of Bodley's great library, speaker after +speaker assumed as axiomatic this curious fallacy--that a Poet is +necessarily a thinker in advance of his age, and therefore peculiarly +liable to persecution at the hands of his contemporaries. + + +How supported by History. + +But logic, I believe, still flourishes in Oxford; and induction still +has its rules. Now, however many different persons Homer may have +been, I cannot remember that one of him suffered martyrdom, or even +discomfort, on account of his radical doctrine. I seem to remember +that Æchylus enjoyed the esteem of his fellow-citizens, sided with the +old aristocratic party, and lived long enough to find his own +tragedies considered archaic; that Sophocles, towards the end of a +very prosperous life, was charged with senile decay and consequent +inability to administer his estates--two infirmities which even his +accusers did not seek to connect with advanced thinking; and that +Euripides, though a technical innovator, stood hardly an inch ahead of +the fashionable dialectic of his day, and suffered only from the +ridicule of his comic contemporaries and the disdain of his +wife--misfortunes incident to the most respectable. Pindar and Virgil +were court favorites, repaying their patrons in golden song. Dante, +indeed, suffered banishment; but his banishment was just a move in a +political (or rather a family) game. Petrarch and Ariosto were not +uncomfortable in their generations. Chaucer and Shakespeare lived +happy lives and sang in the very key of their own times. Puritanism +waited for its hour of triumph to produce its great poet, who lived +unmolested when the hour of triumph passed and that of reprisals +succeeded. Racine was a royal pensioner; Goethe a chamberlain and the +most admired figure of his time. Of course, if you hold that these +poets one and all pale their ineffectual fires before the radiant +Shelley, our argument must go a few steps farther back. I have +instanced them as acknowledged kings of song. + + +The Case of Tennyson. + +Tennyson was not persecuted. He was not (and more honor to him for his +clearness) even misunderstood. I have never met with the contention +that he stood an inch ahead of the thought of his time. As for seeing +through death and life and his own soul, and having the marvel of the +everlasting will spread before him like an open scroll,--well, to +begin with, I doubt if these things ever happened to any man. Heaven +surely has been, and is, more reticent than the verse implies. But if +they ever happened, Tennyson most certainly was not the man they +happened to. What Tennyson actually sang, till he taught himself to +sing better, was:-- + + "Airy, fairy Lilian, + Flitting fairy Lilian, + When I ask her if she love me, + Claps her tiny hands above me, + Laughing all she can; + She'll not tell me if she love me, + Cruel little Lilian." + +There is not much of the scorn of scorn, or the love of love, or the +open scroll of the everlasting will, about _Cruel Little Lilian_. But +there _is_ a distinct striving after style--a striving that, as +everyone knows, ended in mastery: and through style Tennyson reached +such heights of thought as he was capable of. To the end his thought +remained inferior to his style: and to the end the two in him were +separable, whereas in poets of the very first rank they are +inseparable. But that towards the end his style lifted his thought to +heights of which even _In Memoriam_ gave no promise cannot, I think, +be questioned by any student of his collected works. + +Tennyson belongs, if ever poet belonged, to Class 2: and it is the +prettiest irony of fate that, having unreasonably belauded Class 1, he +is now being found fault with for not conforming to the supposed +requirements of that Class. He, who spoke of the poet as of a seër +"through life and death," is now charged with seeing but a short way +beyond his own nose. The Rev. Stopford Brooke finds that he had little +sympathy with the aspirations of the struggling poor; that he bore +himself coldly towards the burning questions of the hour; that, in +short, he stood anywhere but in advance of his age. As if plenty of +people were not interested in these things! Why, I cannot step out +into the street without running against somebody who is in advance of +the times on some point or another. + + +Of Virgil and Shakespeare. + +Virgil and Shakespeare were neither martyrs nor preachers despised in +their generation. I have said that as poets they also belong to Class +2. Will a champion of the Typical Poet (new style) dispute this, and +argue that Virgil and Shakespeare, though they escaped persecution, +yet began with matter that overweighted their style--with deep +stuttered thoughts--in fine, with a Message to their Time? I think +that view can hardly be maintained. We have the _Eclogues_ before the +_Æneid_; and _The Comedy of Errors_ before _As You Like It_. +Expression comes first; and through expression, thought. These are the +greatest names, or of the greatest: and they belong to Class 2. + + +Of Milton. + +Again, no English poetry is more thoroughly informed with thought than +Milton's. Did he find big thoughts hustling within him for utterance? +And did he at an early age stutter in numbers till his oppressed soul +found relief? And was it thus that he attained the glorious manner of + + "Seasons return, but not to me returns + Day, or the sweet approach of even or morn...." + +--and so on. No, to be short, it was not. At the age of twenty-four, +or thereabouts, he deliberately proposed to himself to be a great +poet. To this end he practised and studied, and travelled unweariedly +until his thirty-first year. Then he tried to make up his mind what to +write about. He took some sheets of paper--they are to be seen at this +day in the Library of Trinity College, Cambridge--and set down no less +than ninety-nine subjects for his proposed _magnum opus_, before he +could decide upon _Paradise Lost_. To be sure, when the _magnum opus_ +was written it fetched £5 only. But even this does not prove that +Milton was before his age. Perhaps he was behind it. _Paradise Lost_ +appeared in 1667: in 1657 it might have fetched considerably more than +£5. + +If the Typical Poet have few points in common with Shakespeare or +Milton, I fear that the Typical Poet begins to be in a bad way. + + +Of Coleridge. + +Shall we try Coleridge? He had "great thoughts"--thousands of them. On +the other hand, he never had the slightest difficulty in uttering +them, in prose. His great achievements in verse--his _Genevieve_, his +_Christabel_, his _Kubla Khan_, his _Ancient Mariner_--are +achievements of expression. When they appeal from the senses to the +intellect their appeal is usually quite simple. + + "He prayeth best who loveth best + All things both great and small." + +No, I am afraid Coleridge is not the Typical Poet. + +On the whole I suspect the Typical Poet to be a hasty generalization +from Shelley. + + + + +POETS ON THEIR OWN ART + + +May 11, 1895. A Prelude to Poetry. + +"To those who love the poets most, who care most for their ideals, +this little book ought to be the one indispensable book of devotion, +the _credo_ of the poetic faith." "This little book" is the volume +with which Mr. Ernest Rhys prefaces the pretty series of Lyrical Poets +which he is editing for Messrs. Dent & Co. He calls it _The Prelude to +Poetry_, and in it he has brought together the most famous arguments +stated from time to time by the English poets in defence and praise of +their own art. Sidney's magnificent "Apologie" is here, of course, and +two passages from Ben Jonson's "Discoveries," Wordsworth's preface to +the second edition of "Lyrical Ballads," the fourteenth chapter of the +"Biographia Literaria," and Shelley's "Defence." + + +Poets as Prose-writers. + +What admirable prose these poets write! Southey, to be sure, is not +represented in this volume. Had he written at length upon his art--in +spite of his confession that, when writing prose, "of what is now +called style not a thought enters my head at any time"--we may be sure +the reflection would have been even more obvious than it is. But +without him this small collection makes out a splendid case against +all that has been said in disparagement of the prose style of poets. +Let us pass what Hazlitt said of Coleridge's prose; or rather let us +quote it once again for its vivacity, and so pass on-- + + "One of his (Coleridge's) sentences winds its 'forlorn way + obscure' over the page like a patriarchal procession with camels + laden, wreathed turbans, household wealth, the whole riches of + the author's mind poured out upon the barren waste of his + subject. The palm tree spreads its sterile branches overhead, and + the land of promise is seen in the distance." + +All this is very neatly malicious, and particularly the last +co-ordinate sentence. But in the chapter chosen by Mr. Rhys from the +"Biographia Literaria" Coleridge's prose is seen at its +best--obedient, pertinent, at once imaginative and restrained--as in +the conclusion-- + + "Finally, good sense is the body of poetic genius, fancy its + drapery, motion its life, and imagination the soul that is + everywhere, and in each; and forms all into one graceful and + intelligent whole." + +The prose of Sidney's _Apologie_ is Sidney's best; and when that has +been said, nothing remains but to economize in quoting. I will take +three specimens only. First then, for beauty:-- + + "Nature never set forth the earth in so rich tapistry, as divers + Poets have done, neither with plesant rivers, fruitful trees, + sweet-smelling flowers: nor whatsoever else may make the too much + loved earth more lovely. Her world is brasen, the Poets only + deliver a golden: but let those things alone and goe to man, for + whom as the other things are, so it seemeth in him her uttermost + cunning is imployed, and know whether shee have brought forth so + true a lover as _Theagines_, so constant a friende as _Pilades_, + so valiant a man as _Orlando_, so right a Prince as _Xenophon's + Cyrus_; so excellent a man every way as _Virgil's Aeneas_...." + +Next for wit--roguishness, if you like the term better:-- + + "And therefore, if _Cato_ misliked _Fulvius_, for carrying + _Ennius_ with him to the field, it may be answered, that if + _Cato_ misliked it, the noble _Fulvius_ liked it, or else he had + not done it." + +And lastly for beauty and wit combined:-- + + "For he (the Poet) doth not only show the way, but giveth so + sweete a prospect into the way, as will intice any man to enter + into it. Nay he doth, as if your journey should lye through a + fayre Vineyard, at the first give you a cluster of Grapes: that + full of that taste, you may long to passe further. He beginneth + not with obscure definitions, which must blur the margent with + interpretations, and load the memory with doubtfulnesse: but he + cometh to you with words set in delightful proportion, either + accompanied with or prepared for the well inchanting skill of + Musicke: and with a tale forsooth he cometh unto you: with a tale + which holdeth children from play, and old men from the chimney + corner." + +"Is not this a glorious way to talk?" demanded the Rev. T.E. Brown of +this last passage, when he talked about Sidney, the other day, in Mr. +Henley's _New Review_. "No one can fail," said Mr. Brown, amiably +assuming the fineness of his own ear to be common to all mankind--"no +one can fail to observe the sweetness and the strength, the +outspokenness, the downrightness, and, at the same time, the nervous +delicacy of pausation, the rhythm all ripple and suspended fall, the +dainty _but_, the daintier _and forsooth_, as though the +pouting of a proud reserve curved the fine lip of him, and had to be +atoned for by the homeliness of _the chimney-corner_." + +Everybody admires Sidney's prose. But how of this?-- + + "Poetry is the breath and finer spirit of all knowledge; it is + the impassioned expression which is in the countenance of all + science. Emphatically it may be said of the Poet, as Shakespeare + has said of man, 'that he looks before and after.' He is the rock + of defence of human nature; an upholder and preserver, carrying + everywhere with him relationship and love. In spite of difference + of soil and climate, of language and manners, of laws and + customs, _in spite of things silently gone out of mind, and + things violently destroyed_, the Poet binds together by passion + and knowledge the vast empire of human society, as it is spread + over the whole earth, and over all time." + +It is Wordsworth who speaks--too rhetorically, perhaps. At any rate, +the prose will not compare with Sidney's. But it is good prose, +nevertheless; and the phrase I have ventured to italicise is superb. + + +Their high claims for Poesy. + +As might be expected, the poets in this volume agree in pride of their +calling. We have just listened to Wordsworth. Shelley quotes Tasso's +proud sentence--"Non c'è in mondo chi merita nome di creatore, se non +Iddio ed il Poeta": and himself says, "The jury which sits in judgment +upon a poet, belonging as he does to all time, must be composed of +his peers: it must be impanelled by Time from the selectest of the +wise of many generations." Sidney exalts the poet above the historian +and the philosopher; and Coleridge asserts that "no man was ever yet a +great poet without being at the same time a profound philosopher." Ben +Jonson puts it characteristically: "Every beggarly corporation affords +the State a mayor or two bailiffs yearly; but _Solus rex, aut poeta, +non quotannis nascitur_." The longer one lives, the more cause one +finds to rejoice that different men have different ways of saying the +same thing. + + +Inspiration not Improvisation. + +The agreement of all these poets on some other matters is more +remarkable. Most of them claim _inspiration_ for the great +practitioners of their art; but wonderful is the unanimity with which +they dissociate this from _improvisation_. They are sticklers for the +rules of the game. The Poet does not pour his full heart + + "In profuse strains of _unpremeditated_ art." + +On the contrary, his rapture is the sudden result of long +premeditation. The first and most conspicuous lesson of this volume +seems to be that Poetry is an _art_, and therefore has rules. Next +after this, one is struck with the carefulness with which these +practitioners, when it comes to theory, stick to their Aristotle. + + +Poetry not mere Metrical Composition + +For instance, they are practically unanimous in accepting Aristotle's +contention that it is not the metrical form that makes the poem. +"Verse," says Sidney, "is an ornament and no cause to poetry, since +there have been many most excellent poets that never versified, and +now swarm many versifiers that need never answer to the name of +poets." Wordsworth apologizes for using the word "Poetry" as +synonymous with metrical composition. "Much confusion," he says, "has +been introduced into criticism by this contradistinction of Poetry and +Prose, instead of the more philosophical one of Poetry and Matter of +Fact or Science. The only strict antithesis to Prose is Metre: nor is +this, in truth, a _strict_ antithesis, because lines and passages of +metre so naturally occur in writing prose that it would be scarcely +possible to avoid them, even were it desirable." And Shelley--"It is +by no means essential that a poet should accommodate his language to +this traditional form, so that the harmony, which is its spirit, be +observed.... The distinction between poets and prose writers is a +vulgar error." Shelley goes on to instance Plato and Bacon as true +poets, though they wrote in prose. "The popular division into prose +and verse," he repeats, "is inadmissible in accurate philosophy." + + +Its philosophic function. + +Then again, upon what Wordsworth calls "the more philosophical +distinction" between Poetry and Matter of Fact--quoting, of course, +the famous +"Philosophôteron kai spoudaioteron"+ passage in the +_Poetics_--it is wonderful with what hearty consent our poets pounce +upon this passage, and paraphrase it, and expand it, as the great +justification of their art: which indeed it is. Sidney gives the +passage at length. Wordsworth writes, "Aristotle, I have been told, +hath said that Poetry is the most philosophic of all writings: it is +so." Coleridge quotes Sir John Davies, who wrote of Poesy (surely with +an eye on the _Poetics_): + + "From their gross matter she abstracts their forms, + And draws a kind of quintessence from things; + Which to her proper nature she transforms + To bear them light on her celestial wings. + + "Thus does she, when from individual states + She doth abstract the universal kinds; + Which then reclothed in divers names and fates + Steal access through our senses to our minds." + +And Shelley has a remarkable paraphrase, ending, "The story of +particular facts is as a mirror which obscures and distorts that which +should be beautiful: poetry is a mirror which makes beautiful that +which is distorted." + +In fine, this book goes far to prove of poetry, as it has been proved +over and over again of other arts, that it is the men big enough to +break the rules who accept and observe them most cheerfully. + + + + +THE ATTITUDE OF THE PUBLIC TOWARDS LETTERS + + +Sept. 29, 1894. The "Great Heart" of the Public. + +I observe that our hoary friend, the Great Heart of the Public, has +been taking his annual outing in September. Thanks to the German +Emperor and the new head of the House of Orleans, he has had the +opportunity of a stroll through the public press arm in arm with his +old crony and adversary, the Divine Right of Kings. And the two have +gone once more a-roaming by the light of the moon, to drop a tear, +perchance, on the graves of the Thin End of the Wedge and the Stake in +the Country. You know the unhappy story?--how the Wedge drove its thin +end into the Stake, with fatal results: and how it died of remorse and +was buried at the cross-roads with the Stake in its inside! It is a +pathetic tale, and the Great Heart of the Public can always be trusted +to discriminate true pathos from false. + + +Miss Marie Corelli's Opinion of it. + +It was Mr. G.B. Burgin, in the September number of the _Idler_, who +let the Great Heart loose this time--unwittingly, I am sure; for Mr. +Burgin, when he thinks for himself (as he usually does), writes sound +sense and capital English. But in the service of Journalism Mr. Burgin +called on Miss Marie Corelli, the authoress of _Barabbas_, and asked +what she thought of the value of criticism. Miss Corelli "idealised +the subject by the poetic manner in which she mingled tea and +criticism together." She said-- + + "I think authors do not sufficiently bear in mind the important + fact that, in this age of ours, the public _thinks for itself_ + much more extensively than we give it credit for. It is a + cultured public, and its great brain is fully capable of deciding + things. It rather objects to be treated like a child and told + 'what to read and what to avoid'; and, moreover, we must not fail + to note that it mistrusts criticism generally, and seldom reads + 'reviews.' And why? Simply 'logrolling.' It is perfectly aware, + for instance, that Mr. Theodore Watts is logroller-in-chief to + Mr. Swinburne; that Mr. Le Gallienne 'rolls' greatly for Mr. + Norman Gale; and that Mr. Andrew Lang tumbles his logs along over + everything for as many as his humour fits...." + +--I don't know the proportion of tea to criticism in all this: but +Miss Corelli can hardly be said to "idealise the subject" here:-- + + "... The public is the supreme critic; and though it does not + write in the _Quarterly_ or the _Nineteenth Century_, it thinks + and talks independently of everything and everybody, and on its + thought and word alone depends the fate of any piece of + literature." + + +Mr. Hall Caine's View. + +Then Mr. Burgin called on Mr. Hall Caine, who "had just finished +breakfast." Mr. Hall Caine gave reasons which compelled him to believe +that "for good or bad, criticism is a tremendous force." But he, too, +confessed that in his opinion the public is the "ultimate critic." "It +often happens that the public takes books on trust from the professed +guides of literature, but if the books are not _right_, it drops +them." And he proceeded to make an observation, with which we may most +cordially agree. "I am feeling," he said, "increasingly, day by day, +that _rightness_ in imaginative writing is more important than +subject, or style, or anything else. If a story is right in its theme, +and the evolution of its theme, it will live; if it is not right, it +will die, whatever its secondary literary qualities." + + +In what sense the Public is the "Ultimate Critic." + +I say that we may agree with this most cordially: and it need not cost +us much to own that the public is the "ultimate critic," if we mean no +more than this, that, since the public holds the purse, it rests +ultimately with the public to buy, or neglect to buy, an author's +books. That, surely, is obvious enough without the aid of fine +language. But if Mr. Hall Caine mean that the public, without +instruction from its betters, is the best judge of a book; if he +consent with Miss Corelli that the general public is a cultured public +with a great brain, and by the exercise of that great brain approves +itself an infallible judge of the rightness or wrongness of a book, +then I would respectfully ask for evidence. The poets and critics of +his time united in praising Campion as a writer of lyrics: the Great +Brain and Heart of the Public neglected him utterly for three +centuries: then a scholar and critic arose and persuaded the public +that Campion was a great lyrical writer: and now the public accepts +him as such. Shall we say, then, the Great Heart of the Public is the +"ultimate judge" of Campion's lyrics? Perhaps: but we might as well +praise for his cleanliness a boy who has been held under the pump. +When Martin Farquhar Tupper wrote, the Great Heart of the Public +expanded towards him at once. The public bought his effusions by tens +of thousands. Gradually the small voice of skilled criticism made +itself heard, and the public grew ashamed of itself; and, at length, +laughed at Tupper. Shall we, then, call the public the ultimate judge +of Tupper? Perhaps: but we might as well praise the continence of a +man who turns in disgust from drink on the morning after a drunken +fit.[A] + + +What is "The Public"? + +The proposition that the Man in the Street is a better judge of +literature than the Critic--the man who knows little than the man who +knows more--wears (to my mind, at least) a slightly imbecile air on +the face of it. It also appears to me that people are either confusing +thought or misusing language when they confer the title of "supreme +critic" on the last person to be persuaded. And, again, what is "the +public?" I gather that Miss Corelli's story of _Barabbas_ has had an +immense popular success. But so, I believe, has the _Deadwood Dick_ +series of penny dreadfuls. And the gifted author of _Deadwood Dick_ +may console himself (as I daresay he does) for the neglect of the +critics by the thought that the Great Brain[B] of the Public is the +supreme judge of literature. But obviously he and Miss Corelli will +not have the same Public in their mind. If for "the Great Brain of the +Public" we substitute "the Great Brain of that Part of the Public +which subscribes to Mudie's," we may lose something of impressiveness, +but we shall at least know what we are talking about. + + * * * * * + +June 17, 1893. Mr. Gosse's View. + +Astounding as the statement must appear to any constant reader of +the Monthly Reviews, it is mainly because Mr. Gosse happens to be +a man of letters that his opinion upon literary questions is worth +listening to. In his new book[C] he discusses a dozen or so: and +one of them--the question, "What Influence has Democracy upon +Literature?"--not only has a chapter to itself, but seems to lie at +the root of all the rest. I may add that Mr. Gosse's answer is a +trifle gloomy. + + "As we filed slowly out of the Abbey on the afternoon of + Wednesday, the 12th of October, 1892, there must have occurred to + others, I think, as to myself, a whimsical and half-terrifying + sense of the symbolic contrast between what we had left and what + we had emerged upon. Inside, the grey and vitreous atmosphere, + the reverberations of music moaning somewhere out of sight, the + bones and monuments of the noble dead, reverence, antiquity, + beauty, rest. Outside, in the raw air, a tribe of hawkers urging + upon the edges of a dense and inquisitive crowd a large sheet of + pictures of the pursuit of a flea by a 'lady,' and more insidious + salesmen doing a brisk trade in what they falsely pretended to be + 'Tennyson's last poem.' Next day we read in our newspapers + affecting accounts of the emotion displayed by the vast crowd + outside the Abbey--horny hands dashing away the tear, + seamstresses holding 'the little green volumes' to their faces to + hide their agitation. Happy for those who could see these with + their fairy telescopes out of the garrets of Fleet Street. I, + alas!--though I sought assiduously--could mark nothing of the + kind." + +Nothing of the kind was there. Why should anything of the kind be +there? Her poetry has been one of England's divinest treasures: but +of her population a very few understand it; and the shrine has always +been guarded by the elect who happen to possess, in varying degrees, +certain qualities of mind and ear. It is, as Mr. Gosse puts it, by a +sustained effort of bluff on the part of these elect that English +poetry is kept upon its high pedestal of honor. The worship of it as +one of the glories of our birth and state is imposed upon the masses +by a small aristocracy of intelligence and taste. + + +Mr. Gissing's Testimony. + +What do the "masses" care for poetry? In an appendix Mr. Gosse prints +a letter from Mr. George Gissing, who, as everyone knows, has studied +the popular mind assiduously, and with startling results. Here are a +few sentences from his letter:-- + + (1) "After fifteen years' observation of the poorer classes of + English folk, chiefly in London and the south, I am pretty well + assured that, whatever civilising agencies may be at work among + the democracy, poetry is not one of them." + + (2) "The custodian of a Free Library in a southern city informs + me that 'hardly once in a month' does a volume of verse pass over + his counter; that the exceptional applicant (seeking Byron or + Longfellow) is generally 'the wife of a tradesman;' and that an + offer of verse to man or woman who comes simply for 'a book' is + invariably rejected; 'they won't even look at it.'" + + (3) "It was needless folly to pretend that, because one or two of + Tennyson's poems became largely known through popular recitation, + therefore Tennyson was dear to the heart of the people, a subject + of their pride whilst he lived, of their mourning when he died. + My point is that _no_ poet holds this place in the esteem of the + English lower orders." + + (4) "Some days before (the funeral) I was sitting in a public + room, where two men, retired shopkeepers, exchanged an occasional + word as they read the morning's news. 'A great deal here about + Lord Tennyson' said one. The 'Lord' was significant. I listened + anxiously for his companion's reply. 'Ah, yes.' The man moved + uneasily, and added at once: 'What do you think about this + long-distance ride?' In that room (I frequented it on successive + days with this object) not a syllable did I hear regarding + Tennyson save the sentence faithfully recorded." + + +Poetry not beloved by any one Class. + +Mr. Gissing, be it observed, speaks only of the class which he has +studied: but in talking of "demos," or, more loosely, of "democracy," +we must be careful not to limit these terms to the "lower" and +"lower-middle" classes. For Poetry, who draws her priests and warders +from all classes of society, is generally beloved of none. The average +country magnate, the average church dignitary, the average +professional man, the average commercial traveller--to all these she +is alike unknown: at least, the insensibility of each is +differentiated by shades so fine that we need not trouble ourselves to +make distinctions. A public school and university education does as +little for the Squire Westerns one meets at country dinner-tables as a +three-guinea subscription to a circulating library for the kind of +matron one comes upon at a _table d'hôte_. Five minutes after hearing +the news of Browning's death I stopped an acquaintance in the street, +a professional man of charming manner, and repeated it to him. He +stared for a moment, and then murmured that he was sorry to hear it. +Clearly he did not wish to hurt my feelings by confessing that he +hadn't the vaguest idea who Browning might be. And if anybody think +this an extreme case, let him turn to the daily papers and read the +names of those who were at Newmarket on that same afternoon when our +great poet was laid in the Abbey with every pretence of national +grief. The pursuit of one horse by another is doubtless a more +elevating spectacle than "the pursuit of a flea by a 'lady,'" but on +that afternoon even a tepid lover of letters must have found an equal +incongruity in both entertainments. + +I do not say that the General Public hates Poetry. But I say that +those who care about it are few, and those who know about it are +fewer. Nor do these assert their right of interference as often as +they might. Just once or twice in the last ten or fifteen years they +have pulled up some exceptionally coarse weed on which the General +Public had every disposition to graze, and have pitched it over the +hedge to Lethe wharf, to root itself and fatten there; and terrible as +those of Polydorus have been the shrieks of the avulsed root. But as a +rule they have sat and piped upon the stile and considered the good +cow grazing, confident that in the end she must "bite off more than +she can chew." + + +The "Outsiders." + +Still, the aristocracy of letters exists: and in it, if nowhere else, +titles, social advantages, and commercial success alike count for +nothing; while Royalty itself sits in the Court of the Gentiles. And I +am afraid we must include in the crowd not only those affable +politicians who from time to time open a Public Library and oblige us +with their views upon literature, little realizing what Hecuba is to +them, and still less what they are to Hecuba, but also those affable +teachers of religion, philosophy, and science, who condescend +occasionally to amble through the garden of the Muses, and rearrange +its labels for us while drawing our attention to the rapid +deterioration of the flowerbeds. The author of _The Citizen of the +World_ once compared the profession of letters in England to a Persian +army, "where there are many pioneers, several suttlers, numberless +servants, women and children in abundance, and but few soldiers." Were +he alive to-day he would be forced to include the Volunteers. + +FOOTNOTES: + +[A] In a private letter, from which I am allowed to quote, Mr. Hall +Caine (October 2nd, 1894) explains and (as I think) amends his +position:--"If I had said _time_ instead of _the public_, I should +have expressed myself exactly. It is impossible for me to work up any +enthusiasm for the service done to literature by criticism as a whole. +I have, no doubt, the unenviable advantage over you of having wasted +three mortal months in reading all the literary criticism extant of +the first quarter of this century. It would be difficult to express my +sense of its imbecility, its blundering, and its bad passions. But the +good books it assailed are not lost, and the bad ones it glorified do +not survive. It is not that the public has been the better judge, but +that good work has the seeds of life, while bad work carries with it +the seeds of dissolution. This is the key to the story of Wordsworth +on the one hand, and to the story of Tupper on the other. Tupper did +not topple down because James Hannay smote him. Fifty James Hannays +had shouted him up before. And if there had not been a growing sense +that the big mountain was a mockery, five hundred James Hannays would +not have brought it down. The truth is that it is not the 'critic who +knows' or the public which does not know that determines the ultimate +fate of a book--the immediate fate they may both influence. The book +must do that for itself. If it is right, it lives; if it is wrong, it +dies. And the critic who re-establishes a neglected poet is merely +articulating the growing sense. There have always been a few good +critics, thank God ... but the finest critic is the untutored +sentiment of the public, not of to-day or to-morrow or the next day, +but of all days together--a sentiment which tells if a thing is right +or wrong by holding on to it or letting it drop." + +Of course, I agree that a book must ultimately depend for its fate +upon its own qualities. But when Mr. Hall Caine talks of "a growing +sense," I ask, In whom does this sense first grow? And I answer, In +the cultured few who enforce it upon the many--as in this very case of +Wordsworth. And I hold the credit of the result (apart from the +author's share) belongs rather to those few persistent advocates than +to those judges who are only "ultimate" in the sense that they are the +last to be convinced. + +[B] If the reader object that I am using the Great Heart and Great +Brain of the Public as interchangeable terms, I would refer him to Mr. +Du Maurier's famous Comic Alphabet, letter Z:-- + + "Z is a Zoophyte, whose heart's in his head, + And whose head's in his turn--rudimentary Z!" + +[C] _Questions at Issue_; by Edmund Gosse. London: William Heinemann. + + + + +A CASE OF BOOKSTALL CENSORSHIP + + +March 16, 1895. The "Woman Who Did," and Mr. Eason who wouldn't. + + "In the romantic little town of 'Ighbury, + My father kept a Succulating Libary...." + +--and, I regret to say, gave himself airs on the strength of it. + +The persons in my instructive little story are-- + + H.H. Prince Francis of Teck. + + Mr. Grant Allen, author of _The Woman Who Did_. + + Mr. W.T. Stead, Editor of _The Review of Reviews_. + + Messrs. Eason & Son, booksellers and newsvendors, possessing on + the railways of Ireland a monopoly similar to that enjoyed by + Messrs. W.H. Smith & Son on the railways of Great Britain. + + Mr. James O'Hara, of 18, Cope Street, Dublin. + + A Clerk. + +Now, on the appearance of Mr. Grant Allen's _The Woman Who Did_, Mr. +Stead conceived the desire of criticising it as the "Book of the +Month" in _The Review of Reviews_ for February, 1895. He strongly +dissents from the doctrine of _The Woman Who Did_, and he also +believes that the book indicts, and goes far to destroy, its own +doctrine. This opinion, I may say, is shared by many critics. He says +"Wedlock is to Mr. Grant Allen _Nehushtan_. And the odd thing about it +is that the net effect of the book which he has written with his +heart's blood to destroy this said _Nehushtan_ can hardly fail to +strengthen the foundation of reasoned conviction upon which marriage +rests." And again--"Those who do not know the author, but who take +what I must regard as the saner view of the relations of the sexes, +will rejoice at what might have been a potent force for evil has been +so strangely overruled as to become a reinforcement of the garrison +defending the citadel its author desires so ardently to overthrow. +From the point of view of the fervent apostle of Free Love, this is a +Boomerang of a Book." + +Believing this--that the book would be its own best antidote--Mr. +Stead epitomized it in his _Review_, printed copious extracts, and +wound up by indicating his own views and what he deemed the true moral +of the discussion. The _Review_ was published and, so far as Messrs. +W.H. Smith & Son were concerned, passed without comment. But to the +Editor's surprise (he tells the story in the _Westminster Gazette_ of +the 2nd inst.), no sooner was it placed on the market in Ireland than +he received word that every copy had been recalled from the +bookstalls, and that Messrs. Eason had refused to sell a single copy. +On telegraphing for more information, Mr. Stead was sent the following +letter:-- + + "DEAR SIR,--Allen's book is an avowed defence of Free Love, and + a direct attack upon the Christian view of marriage. Mr. Stead + criticises Allen's views adversely, but we do not think the + antidote can destroy the ill-effects of the poison, and we + decline to be made the vehicle for the distribution of attacks + upon the most fundamental institution of the Christian + state.--Yours faithfully, + ------." + +Mr. Stead thereupon wrote to the managing Director of Messrs. Eason & +Son, and received this reply:-- + + "DEAR SIR,--We have considered afresh the character of the + February number of your _Review_ so far as it relates to the + notice of Grant Allen's book, and we are more and more confirmed + in the belief that its influence has been, and is, most + pernicious. + + "Grant Allen is not much heard of in Ireland, and the laudations + you pronounce on him as a writer, so far as we know him, appear + wholly unmerited. + + "At any rate, he appears in your _Review_ as the advocate for + Free Love, and it seems to us strange that you should place his + work in the exaggerated importance of 'The Book of the Month,' + accompanied by eighteen pages of comment and quotation, in which + there is a publicity given to the work out of all proportion to + its merits. + + "I do not doubt that the topic of Free Love engages the attention + of the corrupt Londoner. There are plenty of such persons who are + only too glad to get the sanction of writers for the maintenance + and practice of their evil thoughts, but the purest and best + lives in all parts of the field of Christian philanthropy will + mourn the publicity you have given to this evil book. It is not + even improbable that the perusal of Grant Allen's book, which you + have lifted into importance as 'The Book of the Month,' may + determine the action of souls to their spiritual ruin. + + "The problem of indirect influence is full of mystery, but, as + the hour of our departure comes near, the possible consequences + to other minds of the example and teaching of our lives may + quicken our perceptions, and we may see and deeply regret our + actions when not directed by the highest authority, the will of + God.--We are, dear Sir, yours very truly (for Eason & Son, + Limited), + + "CHARLES EASON, Managing Director." + +Exception may be taken to this letter on many points, some trivial and +some important. Of the trivial points we may note with interest Mr. +Eason's assumption that his opinion is wanted on the literary merits +of the ware he vends; and, with concern, the rather slipshod manner in +which he allows himself and his assistants to speak of a gentleman as +"Allen," or "Grant Allen," without the usual prefix. But no one can +fail to see that this is an honest letter--the production of a man +conscious of responsibility and struggling to do his best in +circumstances he imperfectly understands. Nor do I think this view of +Mr. Eason need be seriously modified upon perusal of a letter received +by Mr. Stead from a Mr. James O'Hara, of 18, Cope Street, Dublin, and +printed in the _Westminster Gazette_ of March 11th. Mr. O'Hara +writes:-- + + "DEAR SIR,--The following may interest you and your readers. I + was a subscriber to the library owned by C. Eason & Co., Limited, + and in December asked them for _Napoleon and the Fair Sex_, by + Masson. The librarian informed me Mr. Eason had decided not to + circulate it, as it contained improper details, which Mr. Eason + considered immoral. A copy was also refused to one of the + best-known pressmen in Dublin, a man of mature years and + experience. + + "Three days afterwards I saw a young man ask the librarian for + the same book, and Eason's manager presented it to him with a low + bow. I remarked on this circumstance to Mr. Charles Eason, who + told me that he had issued it to this one subscriber only, + because he was Prince Francis of Teck. + + "I told him it was likely, from the description he had given me + of it, to be more injurious to a young man such as Prince Francis + of Teck than to me; but he replied: 'Oh, these high-up people + _are different_. Besides, they are so influential we cannot + refuse them. However, if you wish, you can now have the book.' + + "I told Mr. Eason that I did not wish to read it ever since he + had told me when I first applied for it that it was quite + improper." + +The two excuses produced by Mr. Eason do not agree very well together. +The first gives us to understand that, in Mr. Eason's opinion, +ordinary moral principles cannot be applied to persons of royal blood. +The second gives us to understand that though, in Mr. Eason's opinion, +ordinary moral principles _can_ be applied to princes, the application +would involve more risk than Mr. Eason cares to undertake. Each of his +excuses, taken apart, is intelligible enough. Taken together they can +hardly be called consistent. But the effects of royal and semi-royal +splendor upon the moral eyesight are well known, and need not be dwelt +on here. After all, what concerns us is not Mr. Eason's attitude +towards Prince Francis of Teck, but Mr. Eason's attitude towards the +reading public. And in this respect, from one point of view--which +happens to be his own--Mr. Eason's attitude seems to me +irreproachable. He is clearly alive to his responsibility, and is +honestly concerned that the goods he purveys to the public shall be +goods of which his conscience approves. Here is no grocer who sands +his sugar before hurrying to family prayer. Here is a man who carries +his religion into his business, and stakes his honor on the purity of +his wares. I think it would be wrong in the extreme to deride Mr. +Eason's action in the matter of _The Woman Who Did_ and Mr. Stead's +review. He is doing his best, as Mr. Stead cheerfully allows. + + +The reasonable Objection to Bookstall Censorship. + +But, as I said above, he is doing his best under circumstances he +imperfectly understands--and, let me add here, in a position which is +unfair to him. That Mr. Eason imperfectly understands his position +will be plain (I think) to anyone who studies his reply to Mr. Stead. +But let me make the point clear; for it is the crucial point in the +discussion of the modern Bookstall Censorship. A great deal may be +said against setting up a censorship of literature. A great deal may +be said in favor of a censorship. But if a censorship there must be, +the censor should be deliberately chosen for his office, and, in +exercising his power, should be directly responsible to the public +conscience. If a censorship there must be, let the community choose a +man whose qualifications have been weighed, a man in whose judgment it +decides that it can rely. But that Tom or Dick or Harry, or Tom Dick +Harry & Co. (Limited), by the process of collaring a commercial +monopoly from the railway companies, should be exalted into the +supreme arbiters of what men or women may or may not be allowed to +read--this surely is unjustifiable by any argument? Mr. Eason may on +the whole be doing more good than harm. He is plainly a very +well-meaning man of business. If he knows a good book from a bad--and +the public has no reason to suppose that he does--I can very well +believe that when his moral and literary judgment came into conflict +with his business interests, he would sacrifice his business +interests. But the interests of good literature and profitable +business cannot always be identical; and whenever they conflict they +put Mr. Eason into a false position. As managing director of Messrs. +Eason & Son, he must consider his shareholders; as supreme arbiter of +letters, he stands directly answerable to the public conscience. I +protest, therefore, that these functions should never be combined in +one man. As readers of THE SPEAKER know, I range myself on the side of +those who would have literature free. But even our opponents, who +desire control, must desire a form of control such as reason +approves. + + + + +THE POOR LITTLE PENNY DREADFUL + + +Oct. 5, 1895. Our "Crusaders." + +The poor little Penny Dreadful has been catching it once more. Once +more the British Press has stripped to its massive waist and solemnly +squared up to this hardened young offender. It calls this remarkable +performance a "Crusade." + +I like these Crusades. They remind one of that merry passage in +_Pickwick_ (p. 254 in the first edition):-- + + "Whether Mr. Winkle was seized with a temporary attack of that + species of insanity which originates in a sense of injury, or + animated by this display of Mr. Weller's valour, is uncertain; + but certain it is, that he no sooner saw Mr. Grummer fall, than + _he made a terrific onslaught on a small boy who stood next to + him_; whereupon Mr. Snodgrass--" + +[Pay attention to Mr. Snodgrass, if you please, and cast your memories +back a year or two, to the utterances of a famous Church Congress on +the National Vice of Gambling.] + + "--whereupon Mr. Snodgrass, in a truly Christian spirit, and in + order that he might take no one unawares, announced in a very + loud tone that he was going to begin, and proceeded to take off + his coat with the utmost deliberation. He was immediately + surrounded and secured; and it is but common justice both to him + and to Mr. Winkle to say that they did not make the slightest + attempt to rescue either themselves or Mr. Weller, who, after a + most vigorous resistance, was overpowered by numbers and taken + prisoner. The procession then reformed, the chairmen resumed + their stations, and the march was re-commenced." + +"The chairmen resumed their stations, and the march was re-commenced." +Is it any wonder that Dickens and Labiche have found no fit +successors? One can imagine the latter laying down his pen and +confessing himself beaten at his own game; for really this periodical +"crusade" upon the Penny Dreadful has all the qualities of the very +best vaudeville--the same bland exhibition of _bourgeois_ logic, the +same wanton appreciation of evidence, the same sententious alacrity in +seizing the immediate explanation--the more trivial the better--the +same inability to reach the remote cause, the same profound +unconsciousness of absurdity. + +You remember _La Grammaire_? Caboussat's cow has eaten a piece of +broken glass, with fatal results. Machut, the veterinary, comes:-- + + _Caboussat._ "Un morceau de verre ... est-ce drole? Une vache de + quatre ans." + + _Machut._ "Ah! monsieur, les vaches ... ça avale du verre à tout + âge. J'en ai connu une qui a mangé une éponge à laver les + cabriolets ... à sept ans! Elle en est morte." + + _Caboussat._ "Ce que c'est que notre pauvre humanité!" + + +Penny Dreadfuls and Matricide. + +Our friends have been occupied with the case of a half-witted boy who +consumed Penny Dreadfuls and afterwards went and killed his mother. +They infer that he killed his mother because he had read Penny +Dreadfuls (_post hoc ergo propter hoc_) and they conclude very +naturally that Penny Dreadfuls should be suppressed. But before +roundly pronouncing the doom of this--to me unattractive--branch of +fiction, would it not be well to inquire a trifle more deeply into +cause and effect? In the first place matricide is so utterly unnatural +a crime that there must be something abominably peculiar in a form of +literature that persuades to it. But a year or two back, on the +occasion of a former crusade, I took the pains to study a +considerable number of Penny Dreadfuls. My reading embraced all +those--I believe I am right in saying all--which were reviewed, a few +days back, in the _Daily Chronicle_; and some others. I give you my +word I could find nothing peculiar about them. They were even rather +ostentatiously on the side of virtue. As for the bloodshed in them, it +would not compare with that in many of the five-shilling adventure +stories at that time read so eagerly by boys of the middle and upper +classes. The style was ridiculous, of course: but a bad style excites +nobody but a reviewer, and does not even excite him to deeds of the +kind we are now trying to account for. The reviewer in the _Daily +Chronicle_ thinks worse of these books than I do. But he certainly +failed to quote anything from them that by the wildest fancy could be +interpreted as sanctioning such a crime as matricide. + + +The Cause to be sought in the Boy rather than in the Book. + +Let us for a moment turn our attention from the Penny Dreadful to the +boy--from the _éponge á laver les cabriolets_ to _notre pauvre +humanité_. Now--to speak quite seriously--it is well known to every +doctor and every schoolmaster (and should be known, if it is not, to +every parent), that all boys sooner or later pass through a crisis in +growth during which absolutely nothing can be predicted of their +behavior. At such times honest boys have given way to lying and theft, +gentle boys have developed an unexpected savagery, ordinary boys--"the +small apple-eating urchins whom we know"--have fallen into morbid +brooding upon unhealthy subjects. In the immense majority of cases the +crisis is soon over and the boy is himself again; but while it lasts, +the disease will draw its sustenance from all manner of +things--things, it may be, in themselves quite innocent. I avoid +particularizing for many reasons; but any observant doctor will +confirm what I have said. Now the moderately affluent boy who reads +five-shilling stories of adventure has many advantages at this period +over the poor boy who reads Penny Dreadfuls. To begin with, the crisis +has a tendency to attack him later. Secondly, he meets it fortified by +a better training and more definite ideas of the difference between +right and wrong, virtue and vice. Thirdly (and this is very +important), he is probably under school discipline at the time--which +means, that he is to some extent watched and shielded. When I think +of these advantages, I frankly confess that the difference in the +literature these two boys read seems to me to count for very little. I +myself have written "adventure-stories" before now: stories which, I +suppose--or, at any rate, hope--would come into the class of "Pure +Literature," as the term is understood by those who have been writing +on this subject in the newspapers. They were, I hope, better written +than the run of Penny Dreadfuls, and perhaps with more discrimination +of taste in the choice of adventures. But I certainly do not feel able +to claim that their effect upon a perverted mind would be innocuous. + + +Fallacy of the "Crusade." + +For indeed it is not possible to name any book out of which a +perverted mind will not draw food for its disease. The whole fallacy +lies in supposing literature the cause of the disease. Evil men are +not evil because they read bad books: they read bad books because they +are evil: and being evil, or diseased, they are quickly able to +extract evil or disease even from very good books. There is talk of +disseminating the works of our best authors, at a cheap rate, in the +hope that they will drive the Penny Dreadful out of the market. But +has good literature at the cheapest driven the middle classes from +their false gods? And let it be remembered, to the credit of these +poor boys, that they do buy their books. The middle classes take +_their_ poison on hire or exchange. + +But perhaps the full enormity of the cant about Penny Dreadfuls +can best be perceived by travelling to and fro for a week +between London and Paris and observing the books read by those +who travel with first-class tickets. I think a fond belief in +Ivanhoe-within-the-reach-of-all would not long survive that +experiment. + + + + +IBSEN'S "PEER GYNT" + + +Oct. 7, 1892. A Masterpiece. + + "_Peer Gynt_ takes its place, as we hold, on the summits of + literature precisely because it means so much more than the poet + consciously intended. Is not this one of the characteristics of + the masterpiece, that everyone can read in it his own secret? In + the material world (though Nature is very innocent of symbolic + intention) each of us finds for himself the symbols that have + relevance and value for him; and so it is with the poems that are + instinct with true vitality." + +I was glad to come across the above passage in Messrs. William and +Charles Archer's introduction to their new translation of Ibsen's +_Peer Gynt_ (London: Walter Scott), because I can now, with a clear +conscience, thank the writers for their book, even though I fail to +find some of the things they find in it. The play's the thing after +all. _Peer Gynt_ is a great poem: let us shake hands over that. It +will remain a great poem when we have ceased pulling it about to find +what is inside or search out texts for homilies in defence of our own +particular views of life. The world's literature stands unaffected, +though Archdeacon Farrar use it for chapter-headings and Sir John +Lubbock wield it as a mallet to drive home self-evident truths. + + +Not a Pamphlet. + +_Peer Gynt_ is an extremely modern story founded on old Norwegian +folk-lore--the folk-lore which Asbjörnsen and Moe collected, and +Dasent translated for our delight in childhood. Old and new are +curiously mixed; but the result is piquant and not in the least +absurd, because the story rests on problems which are neither old nor +new, but eternal, and on emotions which are neither older nor newer +than the breast of man. To be sure, the true devotee of Ibsen will not +be content with this. You will be told by Herr Jaeger, Ibsen's +biographer, that _Peer Gynt_ is an attack on Norwegian romanticism. +The poem, by the way, is romantic to the core--so romantic, indeed, +that the culminating situation, and the page for which everything has +been a preparation, have to be deplored by Messrs. Archer as "a mere +commonplace of romanticism, which Ibsen had not outgrown when he wrote +_Peer Gynt_." But your true votary is for ever taking his god off the +pedestal of the true artist to set him on the tub of the +hot-gospeller; even so genuine a specimen of impressionist work as +_Hedda Gabler_ being claimed by him for a sermon. And if ever you have +been moved by _Ghosts_, or _Brand_, or _Peer Gynt_ to exclaim "This is +poetry!" you have only to turn to Herr Jaeger--whose criticism, like +his namesake's underclothing, should be labelled "All Pure Natural +Wool"--to find that you were mistaken and that it is really +pamphleteering. + + +Yet Enforcing a Moral. + +To be sure, in one sense _Peer Gynt_ is a sermon upon a text. That is +to say, it is written primarily to expound one view of man's duty, not +to give a mere representation of life. The problem, not the picture, +is the main thing. But then the problem, not the picture, is the main +thing in _Alcestis_, _Hamlet_, _Faust_. In _Peer Gynt_ the poet's own +solution of the problem is presented with more insistence than in +_Alcestis_, _Hamlet_, or _Faust_: but the problem is wider, too. + +The problem is, What is self? and how shall a man be himself? And the +poet's answer is, "Self is only found by being lost, gained by being +given away": an answer at least as old as the gospels. The eponymous +hero of the story is a man essentially half-hearted, "the incarnation +of a compromising dread of self-committal to any one course," a fellow +who says, + + "Ay, think of it--wish it done--_will_ it to boot, + But _do_ it----. No, that's past my understanding!" + +--who is only stung to action by pique, or by what is called the +"instinct of self-preservation," an instinct which, as Ibsen shows, is +the very last that will preserve self. + + +The Story. + +This fellow, Peer Gynt, wins the love of Solveig, a woman essentially +whole-hearted, who has no dread of self-committal, who surrenders +self. Solveig, in short, stands in perfect antithesis to Peer. When +Peer is an outlaw she deserts her father's house and follows him to +his hut in the forest. The scene in which she presents herself before +Peer and claims to share his lot is worthy to stand beside the ballad +of the Nut-browne Mayde: indeed, as a confessed romantic I must own to +thinking Solveig one of the most beautiful figures in poetry. Peer +deserts her, and she lives in the hut alone and grows an old woman +while her lover roams the world, seeking everywhere and through the +wildest adventures the satisfaction of his Self, acting everywhere on +the Troll's motto, "To thyself be enough," and finding everywhere his +major premiss turned against him, to his own discomfiture, by an +ironical fate. We have one glimpse of Solveig, meanwhile, in a little +scene of eight lines. She is now a middle-aged woman, up in her forest +hut in the far north. She sits spinning in the sunshine outside her +door and sings:-- + + _"Maybe both the winter and spring will pass by, + And the next summer too, and the whole of the year; + But thou wilt come one day.... + * * * * * + God strengthen thee, whereso thou goest in the world! + God gladden thee, if at His footstool thou stand! + Here will I await thee till thou comest again; + And if thou wait up yonder, then there we'll meet, my friend!"_ + +At last Peer, an old man, comes home. On the heath around his old hut +he finds (in a passage which the translators call "fantastic," +intending, I hope, approval by this word) the thoughts he has missed +thinking, the watchword he has failed to utter, the tears he has +missed shedding, the deed he has missed doing. The thoughts are +thread-balls, the watchword withered leaves, the tears dewdrops, etc. +Also he finds on that heath a Button-Moulder with an immense ladle. +The Button-Moulder explains to Peer that he must go into this ladle, +for his time has come. He has neither been a good man nor a sturdy +sinner, but a half-and-half fellow without any real self in him. Such +men are dross, badly cast buttons with no loops to them, and must go, +by the Master's orders, into the melting-pot again. Is there no +escape? None, unless Peer can find the loop of the button, his real +Self, the Peer Gynt that God made. After vain and frantic searching +across the heath, Peer reaches the door of his own old hut. Solveig +stands on the threshold. + +As Peer flings himself to earth before her, calling out upon her to +denounce him, she sits down by his side and says-- + + "_Thou hast made all my life as a beautiful song. + Blessed be thou that at last thou hast come! + Blessed, thrice-blessed our Whitsun-morn meeting_!" + +"But," says Peer, "I am lost, unless thou canst answer riddles." "Tell +me them," tranquilly answers Solveig. And Peer asks, while the +Button-Moulder listens behind the hut-- + + "_Canst thou tell me where Peer Gynt has been since we parted_?" + + Solveig.--_Been_? + + Peer.-- _With his destiny's seal on his brow; + Been, as in God's thought he first sprang forth? + Canst thou tell me? If not, I must get me home_,-- + _Go down to the mist-shrouded regions_. + + Solveig (smiling).--_Oh, that riddle is easy_. + + Peer.-- _Then tell what thou knowest! + Where was I, as myself, as the whole man, the true man? + Where was I, with God's sigil upon my brow_? + + Solveig.--_In my faith, in my hope, in my love_. + + +A Shirking of the Ethical Problem? + +"This," says the Messrs. Archer, in effect, "may be--indeed +is--magnificent: but it is not Ibsen." To quote their very words-- + + "The redemption of the hero through a woman's love ... we take to + be a mere commonplace of romanticism, which Ibsen, though he + satirised it, had by no means fully outgrown when he wrote _Peer + Gynt_. Peer's return to Solveig is (in the original) a passage of + the most poignant lyric beauty, but it is surely a shirking, not + a solution, of the ethical problem. It would be impossible to the + Ibsen of to-day, who knows (none better) that _No man can save + his brother's soul, or pay his brother's debt_." + +In a footnote to the italicized words Messrs. Archer add the +quotation-- + + "No, nor woman, neither." + + * * * * * + +Oct. 22, 1892. The main Problem. + +"Peer's return to Solveig is surely a shirking, not a solution of the +ethical problem." Of what ethical problem? The main ethical problem of +the poem is, What is self? And how shall a man be himself? As Mr. +Wicksteed puts it in his "Four Lectures on Henrik Ibsen," "What is it +to be one's self? God _meant something_ when He made each one of us. +For a man to embody that meaning of God in his words and deeds, and so +become, in a degree, 'a word of God made flesh' is to be himself. But +thus to be himself he must slay himself. That is to say, he must slay +the craving to make himself the centre round which others revolve, and +must strive to find his true orbit, and swing, self poised, round the +great central light. But what if a poor devil can never puzzle out +what God _did_ mean when He made him? Why, then he must _feel_ it. But +how often your 'feeling' misses fire! Ay, there you have it. The devil +has no stancher ally than _want of perception_." + + +And its Solution. + +This is a fair statement of Ibsen's problem and his solution of it. In +the poem he solves it by the aid of two characters, two diagrams we +may say. Diagram I. is Peer Gynt, a man who is always striving to make +himself the centre round which others revolve, who never sacrifices +his Self generously for another's good, nor surrenders it to a decided +course of action. Diagram II. is Solveig, a woman who has no dread of +self-committal, who surrenders Self and is, in short, Peer's perfect +antithesis. When Peer is an outlaw she forsakes all and follows him to +his hut in the forest. Peer deserts her and roams the world, where he +finds his theory of Self upset by one adventure after another and at +last reduced to absurdity in the madhouse at Cairo. But though his own +theory is discredited, he has not yet found the true one. To find this +he must be brought face to face in the last scene with his deserted +wife. There, for the first time, he asks the question and receives the +answer. "Where," he asks, "has Peer Gynt's true self been since we +parted:-- + + "Where was I, as myself, as the whole man, the true man? + Where was I with God's sigil upon my brow?" + +And Solveig answers:-- + + "In my faith, in my hope, in my love." + +In these words we have the main ethical problem solved; and Peer's +_perception_ of the truth (_vide_ Mr. Wicksteed's remarks quoted +above) is the one necessary climax of the poem. We do not care a +farthing--at least, I do not care a farthing--whether Peer escape the +Button-Moulder or not. It may be too late for him, or there may be yet +time to live another life; but whatever the case may be, it doesn't +alter what Ibsen set out to prove. The problem which Ibsen shirks (if +indeed he does shirk it) is a subsidiary problem--a rider, so to +speak. Can Solveig by her love redeem Peer Gynt? Can the woman save +the man's soul? Will she, after all, cheat the Button-Moulder of his +victim? + +The poet, by giving Solveig the last word, seems to think it possible. +According to Mr. Archer, the Ibsen of to-day would know it to be +impossible. He knows (none better) that "No man can save his brother's +soul or pay his brother's debt." "No, nor women neither," adds Mr. +Archer. + + +Is Peer's Redemption a romantic Fallacy? + +But is this so? _Peer Gynt_ was published in 1867. I turn to _A Doll's +House_, written twelve years later, and I find there a woman preparing +to redeem a man just as Solveig prepares to redeem Peer. I find in Mr. +Archer's translation of that play the following page of dialogue:-- + + _Mrs. Linden_: There's no happiness in working for oneself, Nils; + give me somebody and something to work for. + + _Krogstad_: No, no; that can never be. It's simply a woman's + romantic notion of self-sacrifice. + + _Mrs. Linden_: Have you ever found me romantic? + + _Krogstad_: Would you really--? Tell me, do you know my past? + + _Mrs. Linden_: Yes. + + _Krogstad_: And do you know what people say of me? + + _Mrs. Linden_: Didn't you say just now that with me you could + have been another man? + + _Krogstad_: I am sure of it. + + _Mrs. Linden_: Is it too late? + + _Krogstad_: Christina, do you know what you are doing? Yes, you + do; I see it in your face. Have you the courage--? + + _Mrs. Linden_: I need someone to tend, and your children need a + mother. You need me, and I--I need you. Nils, I believe in your + better self. With you I fear nothing. + + +Ibsen's hopes of Enfranchised Women. + +Again, we are not told if Mrs. Linden's experiment is successful; but +Ibsen certainly gives no hint that she is likely to fail. This was in +1879. In 1885 Ibsen paid a visit to Norway and made a speech to some +workingmen at Drontheim, in which this passage occurred:-- + + "Democracy by itself cannot solve the social question. We must + introduce an aristocratic element into our life. I am not + referring, of course, to an aristocracy of birth, or of purse, or + even of intellect. I mean an aristocracy of character, of will, + of mind. That alone can make us free. From two classes will this + aristocracy I desire come to us--_from our women and our + workmen_. The social revolution, now preparing in Europe, is + chiefly concerned with the future of the workers and the women. + On this I set all my hopes and expectations...." + +I think it would be easy to multiply instances showing that, though +Ibsen may hold that no man can save his brother's soul, he does not +extend this disability to women, but hopes and believes, on the +contrary, that women will redeem mankind. On men he builds little +hope. To speak roughly, men are all in Peer Gynt's case, or Torvald +Helmer's. They are swathed in timid conventions, blindfolded with +selfishness, so that they cannot perceive, and unable with their own +hands to tear off these bandages. They are incapable of the highest +renunciation. "No man," says Torvald Helmer, "sacrifices his honor, +even for one he loves." Those who heard Miss Achurch deliver Nora's +reply will not easily forget it. "Millions of women have done so." The +effect in the theatre was tremendous. This sentence clinched the whole +play. + +Millions of women are, like Solveig, capable of renouncing all for +love, of surrendering self altogether; and, as I read Ibsen, it is +precisely on this power of renunciation that he builds his hope of +man's redemption. So that, unless I err greatly, the scene in _Peer +Gynt_ which Mr. Archer calls a shirking of the ethical problem, is +just the solution which Ibsen has been persistent in presenting to the +world. + +Let it be understood, of course, that it is only your Solveigs and +Mrs. Lindens who can thus save a brother's soul: women who have made +their own way in the world, thinking for themselves, working for +themselves, freed from the conventions which man would impose on them. +I know Mr. Archer will not retort on me with Nora, who leaves her +husband and children, and claims that her first duty is to herself. +Nora is just the woman who cannot redeem a man. Her Doll's House +training is the very opposite of Solveig's and Mrs. Linden's. She is a +silly girl brought up amid conventions, and awakened, by one blow, to +the responsibilities of life. That she should at once know the right +course to take would be incredible in real life, and impossible in a +play the action of which has been evolved as inevitably as real life. +Many critics have supposed Ibsen to commend Nora's conduct in the last +act of the play. He neither sanctions nor condemns. But he does +contrast her in the play with Mrs. Linden, and I do not think that +contrast can be too carefully studied. + + + + +MR. SWINBURNE'S LATER MANNER + + +May 5, 1894. Aloofness of Mr. Swinburne's Muse. + +There was a time--let us say, in the early seventies--when many young +men tried to write like Mr. Swinburne. Remarkably small success waited +on their efforts. Still their numbers and their youth and (for a while +also) their persistency seemed to promise a new school of poesy, with +Mr. Swinburne for its head and great exemplar: exemplar rather than +head, for Mr. Swinburne's attitude amid all this devotion was rather +that of the god than of the priest. He sang, and left the worshippers +to work up their own enthusiasm. And to this attitude he has been +constant. Unstinting, and occasionally unmeasured, in praise and +dispraise of other men, he has allowed his own reputation the noble +liberty to look after itself. Nothing, for instance, could have been +finer than the careless, almost disdainful, dignity of his bearing in +the months that followed Tennyson's death. The cats were out upon the +tiles, then, and his was the luminous, expressive silence of a sphere. +One felt, "whether he received it or no, here is the man who can wear +the crown." + + +And Her Tendency towards Abstractions. + +It was not, however, the aloofness of Mr. Swinburne's bearing that +checked the formation of a Swinburnian school of poetry. The cause lay +deeper, and has come more and more into the light in the course of Mr. +Swinburne's poetic development--let me say, his thoroughly normal +development. We can see now that from the first such a school, such a +successful following, was an impossibility. The fact is that Mr. +Swinburne has not only genius, but an extremely rare and individual +genius. The germ of this individuality may be found, easily enough, in +"Atalanta" and the Ballads; but it luxuriates in his later poems and +throughout them--flower and leaf and stem. It was hardly more natural +in 1870 to confess the magic of the great chorus, "Before the +beginning of years," or of "Dolores," than to embark upon the vain +adventure of imitating them. I cannot imagine a youth in all Great +Britain so green or unknowing as to attempt an imitation of "A +Nympholept," perhaps the finest poem in the volume before me. + +I say "in Great Britain;" because peculiar as Mr. Swinburne's genius +would be in any country, it is doubly peculiar as the endowment of an +English poet. If there be one quality beloved above others by the +inhabitants of this island, it is concreteness; and I suppose there +never was a poet in the world who used less concreteness of speech +than Mr. Swinburne. Mr. Palgrave once noted that the landscape of +Keats falls short of the landscape of Shelley in its comparative lack +of the larger features of sky and earth; Keats's was "foreground work" +for the most part. But what shall be said of Shelley's universe after +the immense vague regions inhabited by Mr. Swinburne's muse? She sings +of the sea; but we never behold a sail, never a harbor: she sings of +passion--among the stars. We seem never to touch earth; page after +page is full of thought--for, vast as the strain may be, it is never +empty--but we cannot apply it. And all this is extremely distressing +to the Briton, who loves practice as his birthright. He comes on a +Jacobite song. "Now, at any rate," he tells himself, "we arrive at +something definite: some allusion, however small, to Bonny Prince +Charlie." He reads-- + + "Faith speaks when hope dissembles; + Faith lives when hope lies dead: + If death as life dissembles, + And all that night assembles + Of stars at dawn lie dead, + Faint hope that smiles and trembles + May tell not well for dread: + But faith has heard it said." + +"Very beautiful," says the Briton; "but why call this a 'Jacobite +Song'?" Some thorough-going admirer of Mr. Swinburne will ask, no +doubt, if I prefer gush about Bonny Prince Charlie. Most decidedly I +do not. I am merely pointing out that the poet cares so little for the +common human prejudice in favor of concreteness of speech as to give +us a Jacobite song which, for all its indebtedness to the historical +facts of the Jacobite Risings, might just as well have been put in the +mouth of Judas Maccabæus. + +Somebody--I forget for the moment who it was--compared Poetry with +Antæus, who was strong when his feet touched Earth, his mother; +weaker when held aloft in air. The justice of this criticism I have +no space here to discuss; but the difference is patent enough between +poetry such as this of Herrick-- + + "When as in silks my Julia goes, + Then, then, methinks, how sweetly flows + The liquefaction of her clothes." + +Or this, of Burns-- + + "The boat rocks at the pier o' Leith, + Fu' loud the wind blaws frae the ferry, + The boat rides by the Berwick-law, + And I maun leave my bonny Mary." + +Or this, of Shakespeare-- + + "When daisies pied, and violets blue, + And lady smocks all silver-white, + And cuckoo-buds of yellow hue + Do paint the meadows with delight." + +Or this, of Milton-- + + "the broad circumference + Hung on his shoulders like the moon, whose orb, + Through optic glass the Tuscan artist views + At evening from the top of Fesolé, + Or in Valdarno...." + +And such lines as these by Mr. Swinburne-- + + "The dark dumb godhead innate in the fair world's life + Imbues the rapture of dawn and of noon with dread, + Infects the peace of the star-shod night with strife, + Informs with terror the sorrow that guards the dead. + No service of bended knee or of humbled head + May soothe or subdue the God who has change to wife: + And life with death is as morning with evening wed." + +Take Burns's song, "It was a' for our right-fu' King," and set it +beside the Jacobite song quoted above, and it is clear at once that +with Mr. Swinburne we pass from the particular and concrete to the +general and abstract. And in this direction Mr. Swinburne's muse has +steadily marched. In his "Erechtheus" he tells how the gods gave +Pallas the lordship of Athens-- + + "The lordship and love of the lovely land, + The grace of the town that hath on it for crown + But a headband to wear + Of violets one-hued with her hair." + +Here at least we were allowed a picture of Athens: the violet crown +was something definite. But now, when Mr. Swinburne sings of England, +we have to precipitate our impressions from lines fluid as these:-- + + "Things of night at her glance took flight: the + strengths of darkness recoiled and sank: + Sank the fires of the murderous pyres whereon wild + agony writhed and shrank: + Rose the light of the reign of right from gulfs of + years that the darkness drank." + +Or-- + + "Change darkens and lightens around her, alternate + in hope and in fear to be: + Hope knows not if fear speak truth, nor fear whether + hope be not blind as she: + But the sun is in heaven that beholds her immortal, + and girdled with life by the sea." + +I suspect, then, that a hundred years hence, when criticism speaks +calm judgment upon all Mr. Swinburne's writings, she will find that +his earlier and more definite poems are the edge of his blade, and +such volumes as "Astrophel" the heavy metal behind it. The former +penetrated the affections of his countrymen with ease: the latter +followed more difficultly through the outer tissues of a people +notoriously pachydermatous to abstract speech. And criticism will then +know if Mr. Swinburne brought sufficient impact to drive the whole +mass of metal deep. + + +A Voice chanting in the Void. + +At present in these later volumes his must seem to us a godlike voice +chanting in the void. For, fit or unfit as we may be to grasp the +elusive substance of his strains, all must confess the voice of the +singer to be divine. At once in the range and suppleness of his music +he is not merely the first of our living poets, but incomparable. In +learning he has Robert Bridges for a rival, and no other. But no +amount of learning could give us 228 pages of music that from first to +last has not a flaw. Rather, his marvellous ear has taken him safely +through metres set by his learning as so many traps. There is one +metre, for instance, that recurs again and again in this volume. Here +is a specimen of it:-- + + "Music bright as the soul of light, for wings an eagle, + for notes a dove, + Leaps and shines from the lustrous lines wherethrough + thy soul from afar above + Shone and sang till the darkness rang with light whose + fire is the fount of love." + +These lines are written of Sir Philip Sidney. Could another man have +written them they had stood even better for Mr. Swinburne. But we are +considering the metre, not the meaning. Now the metre may have great +merits. I am disposed to say that, having fascinated Mr. Swinburne, it +must have great merits. That I dislike it is, no doubt, my fault, or +rather my misfortune. But undoubtedly it is a metre that no man but +Mr. Swinburne could handle without producing a monotony varied only by +discords. + + + + +A MORNING WITH A BOOK + + +April 29, 1893. Hazlitt's Stipulation. + + "Food, warmth, sleep, and a book; these are all I at present + ask--the _Ultima Thule_ of my wandering desires. Do you not then + wish for-- + _a friend in your retreat + Whom you may whisper, 'Solitude is sweet'?_ + + Expected, well enough: gone, still better. Such attractions are + strengthened by distance." + +So Hazlitt wrote in his _Farewell to Essay Writing_. There never was +such an epicure of his moods as Hazlitt. Others might add Omar's +stipulation-- + + "--and Thou + Beside me singing in the wilderness." + +But this addition would have spoiled Hazlitt's enjoyment. Let us +remember that his love affairs had been unprosperous. "Such +attractions," he would object, "are strengthened by distance." In any +case, the book and singer go ill together, and most of us will declare +for a spell of each in turn. + + +What are "The Best Books"? + +Suppose we choose the book. What kind of book shall it be? Shall it be +an old book which we have forgotten just sufficiently to taste +surprise as its felicities come back to us, and remember just +sufficiently to escape the attentive strain of a first reading? Or +shall it be a new book by an author we love, to be glanced through +with no critical purpose (this may be deferred to the second reading), +but merely for the lazy pleasure of recognizing the familiar brain at +work, and feeling happy, perhaps, at the success of a friend? There is +no doubt which Hazlitt would have chosen; he has told us in his essay +_On Reading Old Books_. But after a recent experience I am not sure +that I agree with him. + +That your taste should approve only the best thoughts of the best +minds is a pretty counsel, but one of perfection, and is found in +practice to breed prigs. It sets a man sailing round in a vicious +circle. What is the best thought of the best minds? That approved by +the man of highest culture. Who is the man of highest culture? He +whose taste approves the best thoughts of the best minds. To escape +from this foolish whirlpool, some of our stoutest bottoms run for +that discredited harbor of refuge--Popular Acceptance: a harbor full +of shoals, of which nobody has provided even the sketch of a chart. + +Some years ago, when the _Pall Mall Gazette_ sent round to all sorts +and conditions of eminent men, inviting lists of "The Hundred Best +Books"--the first serious attempt to introduce a decimal system into +Great Britain--I remember that these eminent men's replies disclosed +nothing so wonderful as their unanimity. We were prepared for Sir John +Lubbock, but not, I think, for the host of celebrities who followed +his hygienic example, and made a habit of taking the Rig Vedas to bed +with them. Altogether their replies afforded plenty of material for a +theory that to have every other body's taste in literature is the +first condition of eminence in every branch of the public service. But +in one of the lists--I think it was Sir Monier Williams's--the +unexpected really happened. Sir Monier thought that Mr. T.E. Brown's +_The Doctor_ was one of the best books in the world. + +Now, the poems of Mr. T.E. Brown are not known to the million. But, +like Mr. Robert Bridges, Mr. Brown has always had a band of readers to +whom his name is more than that of many an acknowledged classic. I +fancy it is a case of liking deeply or scarce at all. Those of us who +are not celebrities may be allowed to have favorites who are not the +favorites of others, writers who (fortuitously, perhaps) have helped +us at some crisis of our life, have spoken to us the appropriate word +at the moment of need, and for that reason sit cathedrally enthroned +in our affections. To explain why the author of _Betsy Lee_, _Tommy +Big-Eyes_ and _The Doctor_ is more to me than most poets--why to open +a new book of his is one of the most exciting literary events that can +befall me in now my twenty-ninth year--would take some time, and the +explanation might poorly satisfy the reader after all. + + +My Morning with a Book. + +But I set out to describe a morning with a book. The book was Mr. +Brown's _Old John, and other Poems_, published but a few days back by +Messrs. Macmillan & Co. The morning was spent in a very small garden +overlooking a harbor. Hazlitt's conditions were fulfilled. I had +enjoyed enough food and sleep to last me for some little time: few +people, I imagine, have complained of the cold, these last few weeks: +and the book was not only new to me for the most part, but certain to +please. Moreover, a small incident had already put me in the best of +humors. Just as I was settling down to read, a small tug came down the +harbor with a barque in tow whose nationality I recognized before she +cleared a corner and showed the Norwegian colors drooping from her +peak. I reached for the field-glass and read her name--_Henrik Ibsen_! +I imagined Mr. William Archer applauding as I ran to my own flag-staff +and dipped the British ensign to that name. The Norwegians on deck +stood puzzled for a moment, but, taking the compliment to themselves, +gave me a cheerful hail, while one or two ran aft and dipped the +Norwegian flag in response. It was still running frantically up and +down the halliards when I returned to my seat, and the lines of the +bark were softening to beauty in the distance--for, to tell the truth, +she had looked a crazy and not altogether seaworthy craft--as I opened +my book, and, by a stroke of luck, at that fine poem, _The Schooner_. + + "Just mark that schooner westward far at sea-- + 'Tis but an hour ago + When she was lying hoggish at the quay, + And men ran to and fro + And tugged, and stamped, and shoved, and pushed, and swore. + And ever an anon, with crapulous glee, + Grinned homage to viragoes on the shore. + + "So to the jetty gradual she was hauled: + Then one the tiller took, + And chewed, and spat upon his hand, and bawled; + And one the canvas shook + Forth like a mouldy bat; and one, with nods + And smiles, lay on the bowsprit end, and called + And cursed the Harbour-master by his gods. + + "And rotten from the gunwale to the keel, + Rat riddled, bilge bestank, + Slime-slobbered, horrible, I saw her reel + And drag her oozy flank, + And sprawl among the deft young waves, that laughed + And leapt, and turned in many a sportive wheel + As she thumped onward with her lumbering draught. + + "And now, behold! a shadow of repose + Upon a line of gray + She sleeps, that transverse cuts the evening rose, + She sleeps and dreams away, + Soft blended in a unity of rest + All jars, and strifes obscene, and turbulent throes + 'Neath the broad benediction of the West-- + + "Sleeps; and methinks she changes as she sleeps, + And dies, and is a spirit pure; + Lo! on her deck, an angel pilot keeps + His lonely watch secure; + And at the entrance of Heaven's dockyard waits + Till from night's leash the fine-breathed morning leaps + And that strong hand within unbars the gates." + +It is very far from being the finest poem in the volume. It has not +the noble humanity of _Catherine Kinrade_--and if this be not a great +poem I know nothing about poetry--nor the rapture of _Jessie_, nor the +awful pathos of _Mater Dolorosa_, nor the gentle pathos of _Aber +Stations_, nor the fine religious feeling of _Planting_ and +_Disguises_. But it came so pat to the occasion, and used the occasion +so deftly to take hold of one's sympathy, that these other poems were +read in the very mood that, I am sure, their author would have asked +for them. One has not often such luck in reading--"Never the time and +the place and the author all together," if I may do this violence to +Browning's line. Yet I trust that in any mood I should have had the +sense to pay its meed of admiration to this volume. + +Now, having carefully read the opinions of some half-a-dozen +reviewers upon it, I can only wonder and leave the question to my +reader, warning him by no means to miss _Mater Dalorosa_ and +_Catherine Kinrade_. If he remain cold to these two poems, then I +shall still preserve my own opinion. + + + + +MR. JOHN DAVIDSON + + +April 7, 1894. His Plays. + +For some weeks now I have been meaning to write about Mr. John +Davidson's "Plays" (Elkin Mathews and John Lane), and always shirking +the task at the last moment. The book is an exceedingly difficult one +to write about, and I am not at all sure that after a few sentences I +shall not stick my hands in my pockets and walk off to something +easier. The recent fine weather has, however, made me desperate. The +windows of the room in which I sit face S. and S.-E.; consequently a +deal of sunshine comes in upon my writing-table. In ninety-nine cases +out of the hundred this makes for idleness; in this, the hundredth +case, it constrains to energy, because it is rapidly bleaching the +puce-colored boards in which Mr. Davidson's plays are bound--and +(which is worse) bleaching them unevenly. I have tried (let the +miserable truth be confessed) turning the book daily, as one turns a +piece of toast--But this is not criticism of Mr. Davidson's "Plays." + + +His Style full of Imagination and Wit. + +Now it would be easy and pleasant to express my great admiration of +Mr. Davidson's Muse, and justify it by a score of extracts and so make +an end: and nobody (except perhaps Mr. Davidson himself) would know my +dishonesty. For indeed and out of doubt he is in some respects the +most richly-endowed of all our younger poets. Of wit and of +imagination he has almost a plethora: they crowd this book, and all +his books, from end to end. And his frequent felicity of phrase is +hardly less remarkable. You may turn page after page, and with each +page the truth of this will become more obvious. Let me add his quick +eye for natural beauty, his penetrating instinct for the principles +that lie beneath its phenomena, his sympathy with all men's more +generous emotions--and still I have a store of satisfactory +illustrations at hand for the mere trouble of turning the leaves. +Consider, for instance, the imagery in his description of the fight by +Bannockburn-- + + Now are they hand to hand! + How short a front! How close! _They're sewn together + with steel cross-stitches, halbert over sword,_ + _Spear across lance and death the purfled seam!_ + I never saw so fierce, so lock'd a fight. + That tireless brand that like a pliant flail + Threshes the lives from sheaves of Englishmen-- + Know you who wields it? Douglas, who but he! + A noble meets him now. Clifford it is! + No bitterer foes seek out each other there. + Parried! That told! And that! Clifford, good night! + And Douglas shouts to Randolf; Edward Bruce + Cheers on the Steward; while the King's voice rings + In every Scotch ear: such a narrow strait + Confines this firth of war! + + _Young Friar_: "God gives me strength + Again to gaze with eyes unseared. _Jewels! + These must be jewels peering in the grass. + Cloven from helms, or on them: dead men's eyes + Scarce shine so bright. The banners dip and mount + Like masts at sea...._" + +Or consider the fanciful melody of the Fairies' song in _An +Unhistorical Pastoral_-- + + "Weave the dance and sing the song; + _Subterranean depths prolong + The rainy patter of our feet;_ + Heights of air are rendered sweet + By our singing. Let us sing, + Breathing softly, fairily, + Swelling sweetly, airily, + Till earth and sky our echo ring. + Rustling leaves chime with our song: + Fairy bells its close prolong + Ding-dong, ding-dong." + +--Or the closely-packed wit in such passages as these-- + + _Brown_: "This world, + This oyster with its valves of toil and play, + Would round his corners for its own good ease, + And make a pearl of him if he'd plunge in. + * * * * * + _Jones_: And in this matter we may all be pearls. + + _Smith_: Be worldlings, truly. I would rather be + A shred of glass that sparkles in the sun, + And keeps a lowly rainbow of its own, + Than one of these so trim and patent pearls + With hearts of sand veneered, sewed up and down + The stiff brocade society affects." + +I have opened the book at random for these quotations. Its pages are +stuffed with scores as good. Nor will any but the least intelligent +reviewer upbraid Mr. Davidson for deriving so much of his inspiration +directly from Shakespeare. Mr. Davidson is still a young man; but the +first of these plays, _An Unhistorical Pastoral_, was first printed so +long ago as 1877; and the last, _Scaramouch in Naxos; a Pantomime_, in +1888. They are the work therefore of a very young man, who must use +models while feeling his way to a style and method of his own. + + +Lack of "Architectonic" Quality. + +But--there is a "but"; and I am coming at length to my difficulty with +Mr. Davidson's work. Oddly enough, this difficulty may be referred to +the circumstance that Mr. Davidson's poetry touches Shakespeare's +great circle at a second point. Wordsworth, it will be remembered, +once said that Shakespeare _could_ not have written an Epic +(Wordsworth, by the way, was rather fond of pointing out the things +that Shakespeare could not have done). "Shakespeare _could_ not have +written an Epic; he would have died of plethora of thought." +Substitute "wit" for "thought," and you have my difficulty with Mr. +Davidson. It is given to few men to have great wit: it is given to +fewer to carry a great wit lightly. In Mr. Davidson's case it +luxuriates over the page and seems persistently to choke his sense of +form. One image suggests another, one phrase springs under the very +shadow of another until the fabric of his poem is completely hidden +beneath luxuriant flowers of speech. Either they hide it from the +author himself; or, conscious of his lack of architectonic skill, he +deliberately trails these creepers over his ill-constructed walls. I +think the former is the true explanation, but am not sure. + +Let me be cautious here, or some remarks I made the other day upon +another poet--Mr. Hosken, author of _Phaon and Sappho_, and _Verses by +the Way_--will be brought up against me. Defending Mr. Hosken against +certain critics who had complained of the lack of dramatic power in +his tragedies, I said, "Be it allowed that he has little dramatic +power, and that (since the poem professed to be a tragedy) dramatic +power was what you reasonably looked for. But an alert critic, +considering the work of a beginner, will have an eye for the +bye-strokes as well as the main ones: and if the author, while missing +the main, prove effective with the bye--if Mr. Hosken, while failing +to construct a satisfactory drama, gave evidence of strength in many +fine meditative passages--then at the worst he stands convicted of a +youthful error in choosing a literary form unsuited to convey his +thought." + + +Not in the "Plays" only. + +These observations I believe to be just, and having entered the +_caveat_ in Mr. Hosken's case, I should observe it in Mr. Davidson's +also, did these five youthful plays stand alone. But Mr. Davidson has +published much since these plays first appeared--works both in prose +and verse--_Fleet Street Eclogues_, _Ninian Jamieson_, _A Practical +Novelist_, _A Random Itinerary_, _Baptist Lake_: and because I have +followed his writings (I think from his first coming to London) with +the greatest interest, I may possibly be excused for speaking a word +of warning. I am quite certain that Mr. Davidson will never bore me: +but I wish I could be half so certain that he will in time produce +something in true perspective; a fabric duly proportioned, each line +of which from the beginning shall guide the reader to an end which the +author has in view; something which + + "_Servetur ad imum + Qualis ab incepto processerit, et sibi constet._" + +_Sibi constet_, be it remarked. A work of art may stand very far from +Nature, provided its own parts are consistent. Heaven forbid that a +critic should decry an author for being fantastic, so long as he is +true to his fantasy. + +But Mr. Davidson's wit is so brilliant within the circles of its +temporary coruscation as to leave the outline of his work in a +constant penumbra. Indeed, when he wishes to unburden his mind of an +idea, he seems to have less capacity than many men of half his +ability to determine the form best suited for conveying it. If +anything can be certain which has not been tried, it is that his story +_A Practical Novelist_ should have been cast in dramatic form. His +vastly clever _Perfervid: _or_ the Career of Ninian Jamieson_ is cast +in two parts which neither unite to make a whole, nor are sufficiently +independent to stand complete in themselves. I find it characteristic +that his _Random Itinerary_--that fresh and agreeable narrative of +suburban travel--should conclude with a crashing poem, magnificent in +itself, but utterly out of key with the rest of the book. Turn to the +_Compleat Angler_, and note the exquisite congruity of the songs +quoted by Walton with the prose in which they are set, and the +difference will be apparent at once. Fate seems to dog Mr. Davidson +even into his illustrations. _A Random Itinerary_ and this book of +_Plays_ (both published by Messrs. Mathews and Lane) have each a +conspicuously clever frontispiece. But the illustrator of _A Random +Itinerary_ has chosen as his subject the very poem which I have +mentioned as out of harmony with the book; and I must protest that the +vilely sensual faces in Mr. Beardsley's frontispiece to these _Plays_ +are hopelessly out of keeping with the sunny paganism of _Scaramouch +in Naxos_. There is nothing Greek about Mr. Beardsley's figures: their +only relationship with the Olympians is derived through the goddess +Aselgeia. + +With all this I have to repeat that Mr. Davidson is in some respects +the most richly endowed of all the younger poets. The grand manner +comes more easily to him than to any other: and if he can cultivate a +sense of form and use this sense as a curb upon his wit, he has all +the qualities that take a poet far. + + * * * * * + +Nov. 24, 1984. "Ballads and Songs." + +At last there is no mistake about it: Mr. John Davidson has come by +his own. And by "his own" I do not mean popularity--though I hope +that in time he will have enough of this and to spare--but mastery of +his poetic method. This new volume of "Ballads and Songs" (London: +John Lane) justifies our hopes and removes our chief fear. You +remember Mr. T.E. Brown's fine verses on "Poets and Poets"?-- + + He fishes in the night of deep sea pools: + For him the nets hang long and low, + Cork-buoyed and strong; the silver-gleaming schools + Come with the ebb and flow + Of universal tides, and all the channels glow. + + Or holding with his hand the weighted line + He sounds the languor of the neaps, + Or feels what current of the springing brine + The cord divergent sweeps, + The throb of what great heart bestirs the middle deeps. + + Thou also weavest meshes, fine and thin, + And leaguer'st all the forest ways; + But of that sea and the great heart therein + Thou knowest nought; whole days + Thou toil'st, and hast thy end--good store of pies and jays. + +Mr. Davidson has never allowed us to doubt to which of these two +classes he belongs. "For him the nets hang long and low." But though +it may satisfy the Pumblechook within us to recall our pleasant +prophesyings, we shall find it more salutary to remember our fears. We +watched Mr. Davidson struggling in the thicket of his own fancies, and +saw him too often break his shins over his own wit. We asked: Will he +in the end overcome the defect of his qualities? Will he remain unable +to see the wood for the trees? Or will he some day be giving us poems +of which the whole conception and structure shall be as beautiful as +the casual fragment or the single line? For this architectonic quality +is just that "invidious distinction" which the fabled undergraduate +declined to draw between the major and minor prophets. + + +The "Ballad of a Nun." + +Since its appearance, a few weeks back, all the critics have spoken of +"A Ballad of a Nun," and admitted its surprising strength and beauty. +They have left me in the plight of that belated fiddle in "Rejected +Addresses," or of the gentleman who had to be content with saying +"ditto" to Mr. Burke. For once they seem unanimous, and for once they +are right. The poem is beautiful indeed in detail: + + "The adventurous sun took Heaven by storm; + Clouds scattered largesses of rain; + The sounding cities, rich and warm, + Smouldered and glittered in the plain." + +Dickens, reading for the first time Tennyson's "Dream of Fair Women," +laid down the book, saying, "What a treat it is to come across a +fellow who can _write_!" The verse that moved him to exclaim it was +this-- + + "Squadrons and squares of men in brazen plates, + Scaffolds, still sheets of water, divers woes, + Ranges of glimmering vaults with iron grates; + And hushed seraglios." + +It is not necessary to compare these two stanzas. Tennyson's depicts a +confused and moving dream; Mr. Davidson's a wide earthly prospect. The +point to notice in each is the superlative skill with which the poet +chooses the essential points of the picture and presents them so as to +convey their full meaning, appealing at once to the senses and the +intelligence. Tennyson, who is handling a mental condition in which +the sensations are less sharply and logically separated than in a +waking vision, can enforce this second appeal--this appeal to the +intelligence--by introducing the indefinite "divers woes" between the +definite "sheets of water" and the definite "ranges of glimmering +vaults with iron grates": just as Wordsworth, to convey the vague +unanalyzed charm of singing, combines the indefinite "old unhappy +far-off things" with the definite "battles long ago." Mr. Davidson, on +the other hand, is describing what the eye sees, and conveying what +the mind suspects, in their waking hours, and is therefore restricted +in his use of the abstract and indefinite. Notice, therefore, how he +qualifies that which can be seen--the sun, the clouds, the plain, the +cities that "smoulder" and "glitter"--with the epithets "sounding," +"rich," and "warm," each an inference rather than a direct sensation: +for nobody imagines that the sound of the cities actually rang in the +ear of the Nun who watched them from the mountain-side. The whole +picture has the effect of one of those wide conventional landscapes +which old painters delighted to spread beyond the court-yard of +Nazareth, or behind the pillars of the temple at Jerusalem. My attempt +to analyze it is something of a folly; to understand it is impossible: + + "but _if_ I could understand + What you are, root and all, and all in all,"-- + +I should at length comprehend the divine and inexplicable gift of +song. + + +The "Ballad of the Making of a Poet." + +But beautiful as it is in detail, this poem, and at least one other in +the little volume, have the great merit which has hitherto been +lacking in the best of Mr. Davidson's work. They are thoroughly +considered; seen as solid wholes; seen not only in front but round at +the back. In fact, they are natural growths of Mr. Davidson's +philosophy of life. In his "Ballad of the Making of a Poet" Mr. +Davidson lets us know his conception of the poet's proper function. + + "I am a man apart: + A mouthpiece for the creeds of all the world; + A soulless life that angels may possess + Or demons haunt, wherein the foulest things + May loll at ease beside the loveliest; + A martyr for all mundane moods to tear; + The slave of every passion; and the slave + Of heat and cold, of darkness and of light; + A trembling lyre for every wind to sound. + * * * * * + Within my heart + I'll gather all the universe, and sing + As sweetly as the spheres; and I shall be + The first of men to understand himself...." + +Making, of course, full concessions to the demands of poetical +treatment, we may assume pretty confidently that Mr. Davidson intended +this "Ballad in Blank Verse of the Making of a Poet" for a soul's +autobiography, of a kind. If so, I trust he will forgive me for +doubting if he is at all likely to fulfil the poet's office as he +conceives it here, or even to approach within measurable distance of +his ideal-- + + "A trembling lyre for every wind to sound." + +That it is one way in which a poet may attain, I am not just now +denying. But luckily men attain in many ways: and the man who sits +himself down of fixed purpose to be an Æolian harp for the winds of +the world, is of all men the least likely to be merely Æolian. For the +first demand of Æolian sound is that the instrument should have no +theories of its own; and explicitly to proclaim yourself Æolian is +implicitly to proclaim yourself didactic. As a matter of fact, both +the "Ballad of the Making of a Poet" and the "Ballad of a Nun" contain +sharply pointed morals very stoutly driven home. In each the poet has +made up his mind; he has a theory of life, and presents that theory to +us under cover of a parable. The beauty of the "Ballad of a Nun"--or +so much of it as stands beyond and above mere beauty of +language--consists in this, that it is informed, and consciously +informed, by a spirit of tolerance so exceedingly wide that to match +it I can find one poem and one only among those of recent years: I +mean "Catherine Kinrade." In Mr. Brown's poem the Bishop is welcomed +into Heaven by the half-wilted harlot he had once condemned to painful +and public punishment. In Mr. Davidson's poem, Mary, the Mother of +Heaven, herself takes the form and place of the wandering nun and +fills it until the penitent returns. Take either poem: take Mr. +Brown's-- + + "Awe-stricken, he was 'ware + How on the Emerald stair + A woman sat divinely clothed in white, + And at her knees four cherubs bright. + That laid + Their heads within their lap. Then, trembling, he essayed + To speak--'Christ's mother, pity me!' + Then answered she-- + 'Sir, I am Catherine Kinrade.'" + +Or take Mr. Davidson's--in a way, its converse-- + + "The wandress raised her tenderly; + She touched her wet and fast-shut eyes; + 'Look, sister; sister, look at me; + Look; can you see through my disguise?' + + She looked and saw her own sad face, + And trembled, wondering, 'Who art thou?' + 'God sent me down to fill your place; + I am the Virgin Mary now.' + + And with the word, God's mother shone; + The wanderer whispered 'Mary, hail!' + The vision helped her to put on + Bracelet and fillet, ring and veil. + + 'You are sister to the mountains now, + And sister to the day and night; + Sister to God.' And on her brow + She kissed her thrice and left her sight." + +The voice in each case is that of a prophet rather than that of a reed +shaken by the wind, or an Æolian harp played upon by the same. + + * * * * * + +March, 1895. Second Thoughts. + +I have to add that, apart from the beautiful language in which they +are presented, Mr. Davidson's doctrines do not appeal to me. I cannot +accept his picture of the poet's as "a soulless life ... wherein the +foulest things may loll at ease beside the loveliest." It seems to me +at least as obligatory on a poet as on other men to keep his garden +weeded and his conscience active. Indeed, I believe some asceticism of +soul to be a condition of all really great poetry. Also Mr. Davidson +appears to be confusing charity with an approbation of things in the +strict sense damnable when he makes the Mother of Christ abet a Nun +whose wanderings have no nobler excuse than a carnal desire--_savoir +enfin ce que c'est un homme_. Between forgiving a lapsed man or woman +and abetting the lapse I now, in a cooler hour, see an immense, an +essential, moral difference. But I confess that the foregoing paper +was written while my sense of this difference was temporarily blinded +under the spell of Mr. Davidson's beautiful verse. + +It may still be that his Nun had some nobler motive than I am able, +after two or three readings of the ballad, to discover. In that case I +can only ask pardon for my obtuseness. + + + + +BJÖRNSTERNE BJÖRNSON + + +June 1, 1895. Björnson's First Manner. + +I see that the stories promised in Mr. Heinemann's new series of +translations of Björnson are _Synnövé Solbakken_, _Arne_, _A Happy +Boy_, _The Fisher Maiden_, _The Bridal March_, _Magnhild_, and +_Captain Mansana_. The first, _Synnövé Solbakken_, appeared in 1857. +The others are dated thus:--_Arne_ in 1858, _A Happy Boy_ in 1860, +_The Fisher Maiden_ in 1868, _The Bridal March_ in 1873, _Magnhild_ in +1877, and _Captain Mansana_ in 1879. There are some very significant +gaps here, the most important being the eight years' gap between _A +Happy Boy_ and _The Fisher Maiden_. Again, after 1879 Björnson ceased +to write novels for a while, returning to the charge in 1884 with +_Flags are Flying in Town and Haven_, and following up with _In God's +Way_, 1889. Translations of these two novels have also been published +by Mr. Heinemann (the former under an altered title, _The Heritage of +the Kurts_) and, to use Mr. Gosse's words, are the works, by which +Björnson is best known to the present generation of Englishmen. "They +possess elements which have proved excessively attractive to certain +sections of our public; indeed, in the case of _In God's Way_, a novel +which was by no means successful in its own country at its original +publication, has enjoyed an aftermath of popularity in Scandinavia, +founded on reflected warmth from its English admirers." + +Taking, then, Björnson's fiction apart from his other writings (with +which I confess myself unacquainted), we find that it falls into three +periods, pretty sharply divided. The earliest is the idyllic period, +pure and simple, and includes _Synnövé_, _Arne_, and _A Happy Boy_. +Then with _The Fisher Maiden_ we enter on a stage of transition. It is +still the idyll; but it grows self-conscious, elaborate, confused by +the realism that was coming into fashion all over Europe; and the +trouble and confusion grow until we reach _Magnhild_. With _Flags are +Flying_ and _In God's Way_ we reach a third stage--the stage of +realism, some readers would say. I should not agree. But these tales +certainly differ remarkably from their predecessors. They are much +longer, to begin with; in them, too, realism at length preponderates; +and they are probably as near to pure realism as Björnson will ever +get. + +If asked to label these three periods, I should call them the periods +of (1) Simplicity, (2) Confusion, (3) Dire Confusion. + +I speak, of course, as a foreigner, obliged to read Björnson in +translations. But perhaps the disability is not so important as it +seems at first sight. Translations cannot hide Björnson's genius; nor +obscure the truth that his genius is essentially idyllic. Now if one +form of literary expression suffers more than another by translation +it is the idyll. Its bloom is peculiarly delicate; its freshness +peculiarly quick to disappear under much handling of any kind. But all +the translations leave _Arne_ a masterpiece, and _Synnövé_ and _The +Happy Boy_. + +How many artists have been twisted from their natural bent by the long +vogue of "naturalism" we shall never know. We must make the best of +the great works which have been produced under its influence, and be +content with that. But we may say with some confidence that Björnson's +genius was unfortunate in the date of its maturity. He was born on the +8th of December, 1832, in a lonely farmhouse among the mountains, at +the head of the long valley called Osterdalen; his father being priest +of Kvikne parish, one of the most savage in all Norway. After six +years the family removed to Naesset, in the Romsdal, "a spot as +enchanting and as genial as Kvikne is the reverse." Mr. Gosse, who +prefaces Mr. Heinemann's new series with a study of Björnson's +writings, quotes a curious passage in which Björnson records the +impression of physical beauty made upon his childish mind by the +physical beauty of Naesset:-- + + "Here in the parsonage of Naesset--one of the loveliest places in + Norway, where the land lies broadly spreading where two fjords + meet, with the green braeside above it, with waterfalls and + farmhouses on the opposite shore, with billowy meadows and cattle + away towards the foot of the valley, and, far overhead, along the + line of the fjord, mountains shooting promontory after promontory + out into the lake, a big farmhouse at the extremity of each--here + in the parsonage of Naesset, where I would stand at the close of + the day and gaze at the sunlight playing over mountain and + fjord, until I wept, as though I had done something wrong; and + where I, descending on my snow-shoes into some valley, would + pause as though bewitched by a loveliness, by a longing, which I + had not the power to explain, but which was so great that above + the highest ecstasy of joy I would feel the deepest apprehension + and distress--here in the parsonage of Naesset were awakened my + earliest sensations." + +The passage is obviously important. And Björnson shows how much +importance he attaches to the experience by introducing it, or +something like it, time after time into his stories. Readers of _In +God's Way_--the latest of the novels under discussion--will remember +its opening chapter well. + +It was good fortune indeed that a boy of such gifts should pass his +early boyhood in such surroundings. Nor did the luck end here. While +the young Björnson accumulated these impressions, the peasant-romance, +or idyll of country life, was taking its place and growing into favor +as one of the most beautiful forms of modern prose-fiction. Immermann +wrote _Der Oberhof_ in 1839. Weill and Auerbach took up the running in +1841 and 1843. George Sand followed, and Fritz Reuter. Björnson began +to write in 1856. _Synnövé Solbakken_ and _Arne_ came in on the high +flood of this movement. "These two stories," writes Mr. Gosse, "seem +to me to be almost perfect; they have an enchanting lyrical quality, +without bitterness or passion, which I look for elsewhere in vain in +the prose literature of the second half of the century." To my mind, +without any doubt, they and _A Happy Boy_ are the best work Björnson +has ever done in fiction, or is ever likely to do. For they are +simple, direct, congruous; all of one piece as a flower is of a piece +with its root. And never since has Björnson written a tale altogether +of one piece. + + +His later Manner. + +For here the luck ended. All over Europe there began to spread +influences that may have been good for some artists, but were (we may +say) peculiarly injurious to so _naïf_ and, at the same time, so +personal a writer as Björnson. I think another age will find much the +same cause to mourn over Daudet when it compares his later novels with +the promise of _Lettres de Mon Moulin_ and _Le Petit Chose_. +Naturalism demands nothing more severely than an impersonal treatment +of its themes. Of three very personal and romantic writers, our own +Stevenson escaped the pit into which both Björnson and Daudet +stumbled. You may say the temptation came later to him. But the +temptation to follow an European fashion does, as a rule, befall a +Briton last of all men, for reasons of which we need not feel proud: +and the date of Mr. Hardy's stumbling is fairly recent, after all. +Björnson, at any rate, began very soon to be troubled. Between 1864 +and 1874, from his thirty-second to his forty-second year, his +invention seemed, to some extent, paralyzed. _The Fisher Maiden_, the +one story written during that time, starts as beautifully as _Arne_; +but it grows complicated and introspective: the psychological +experiences of the stage-struck heroine are not in the same key as the +opening chapters. Passing over nine years, we find _Magnhild_ much +more vague and involved-- + + "Here he is visibly affected by French models, and by the methods + of the naturalists, but he is trying to combine them with his own + simpler traditions of rustic realism.... The author felt himself + greatly moved by fermenting ideas and ambitions which he had not + completely mastered.... There is a kind of uncomfortable + discrepancy between the scene and the style, a breath of Paris + and the boulevards blowing through the pine-trees of a + puritanical Norwegian village.... But the book is a most + interesting link between the early peasant-stories and the great + novels of his latest period." + +Well, of these same "great novels"--of _Flags are Flying_ and _In +God's Way_--people must speak as they think. They seem to me the +laborious productions of a man forcing himself still further and +further from his right and natural bent. In them, says Mr. Gosse, +"Björnson returns, in measure, to the poetical elements of his youth. +He is now capable again, as for instance in the episode of Ragni's +symbolical walk in the woodlands, _In God's Way_, of passages of pure +idealism." Yes, he returns--"in measure." He is "capable of idyllic +passages." In other words, his nature reasserts itself, and he remains +an imperfect convert. "He has striven hard to be a realist, and at +times he has seemed to acquiesce altogether in the naturalistic +formula, but in truth he has never had anything essential in common +with M. Zola." In other words, he has fallen between two stools. He +has tried to expel nature with a pitchfork and still she runs back +upon him. He has put his hand to the plough and has looked back: or +(if you take my view of "the naturalistic formula") he has sinned, but +has not sinned with his whole heart. For to produce a homogeneous +story, either the acquired Zola or the native Björnson must have been +cast out utterly. + + +Value of Early Impressions to a Novelist. + +I have quoted an example of the impressions of Björnson's childhood. I +do not think critics have ever quite realized the extent to which +writers of fiction--especially those who use a personal style--depend +upon the remembered impressions of childhood. Such impressions--no +matter how fantastic--are an author's firsthand stock: and in using +them he comes much closer to nature than when he collects any number +of scientifically approved data to maintain some view of life which he +has derived from books. Compare _Flags are Flying_ with _Arne_, and +you will see my point. The longer book is ten times as realistic in +treatment, and about one-tenth as true to life. + + + + +MR. GEORGE MOORE + + +March 31, 1894. "Esther Waters." + +It is good, after all, to come across a novel written by a man who can +write a novel. We have been much in the company of the Amateur of +late, and I for one am very weary of him--weary of his preposterous +goings-out and comings-in, of his smart ineptitudes, of his solemn +zeal in reforming the decayed art of fiction, of his repeated failures +to discover beneficence in all those institutions, from the Common Law +of England to the Scheme of the Universe, which have managed to leave +him and his aspirations out of count. I am weary of him and of his +deceased wife's sister, and of their fell determination to discover +each other's soul in a bottle of hay. Above all, I am weary of his +writings, because he cannot write, neither has he the humility to sit +down and learn. + +Mr. George Moore, on the other hand, has steadily labored to make +himself a fine artist, and his training has led him through many +strange places. I should guess that among living novelists few have +started with so scant an equipment. As far as one can tell he had, to +begin with, neither a fertile invention nor a subtle dramatic +instinct, nor an accurate ear for language. A week ago I should have +said this very confidently: after reading _Esther Waters_ I say it +less confidently, but believe it to be true, nevertheless. Mr. Moore +has written novels that are full of faults. These faults have been +exposed mercilessly, for Mr. Moore has made many enemies. But he has +always possessed an artistic conscience and an immense courage. He +answered his critics briskly enough at the time, but an onlooker of +common sagacity could perceive that the really convincing answer was +held in reserve--that, as they say in America, Mr. Moore "allowed" he +was going to write a big novel one of these days, and meanwhile we had +better hold our judgment upon Mr. Moore's capacity open to revision. + +What, then, is to be said of _Esther Waters_, this volume of a modest +377 pages, upon which Mr. Moore has been at work for at least two +years? + + +"Esther" and Mr. Hardy's "Tess." + +Well, in the first place, I say, without hesitation, that _Esther +Waters_ is the most important novel published in England during these +two years. We have been suffering from the Amateur during that period, +and no doubt (though it seems hard) every nation has the Amateur it +deserves. To find a book to compare with _Esther Waters_ we must go +back to December, 1891, and to Mr. Hardy's _Tess of the +D'Urbervilles_. It happens that a certain similarity in the motives of +these two stories makes comparison easy. Each starts with the +seduction of a young girl; and each is mainly concerned with her +subsequent adventures. From the beginning the advantage of probability +is with the younger novelist. Mr. Moore's "William Latch" is a +thoroughly natural figure, and remains a natural figure to the end of +the book: an uneducated man and full of failings, but a man always, +and therefore to be forgiven by the reader only a little less readily +than Esther herself forgives him. Mr. Hardy's "Alec D'Urberville" is a +grotesque and violent lay figure, a wholly incredible cad. Mr. Hardy, +by killing Tess's child, takes away the one means by which his heroine +could have been led to return to D'Urberville without any loss of the +reader's sympathy. Mr. Moore allows Esther's child to live, and thus +has at hand the material for one of the most beautiful stories of +maternal love ever imagined by a writer. I dislike extravagance of +speech, and would run my pen through these words could I remember, in +any novel I have read, a more heroic story than this of Esther Waters, +a poor maid-of-all-work, without money, friends, or character, +fighting for her child against the world, and in the end dragging +victory out of the struggle. In spite of the Æschylean gloom in which +Mr. Hardy wraps the story of Tess, I contend that Esther's fight is, +from end to end, the more heroic. + +Also Esther's story seems to me informed with a saner philosophy of +life. There is gloom in her story; and many of the circumstances are +sordid enough; but throughout I see the recognition that man and woman +can at least improve and dignify their lot in this world. Many people +believe _Tess_ to be the finest of its author's achievements. A +devoted admirer of Mr. Hardy's genius, I decline altogether to +consent. To my mind, among recent developments of the English novel +nothing is more lamentable than the manner in which this +distinguished writer has allowed himself of late to fancy that the +riddles of life are solved by pulling mouths at Providence (or +whatever men choose to call the Supreme Power) and depicting it as a +savage and omnipotent bully, directing human affairs after the fashion +of a practical joker fresh from a village ale-house. For to this +teaching his more recent writings plainly tend; and alike in _Tess_ +and _Life's Little Ironies_ the part played by the "President of the +Immortals" is no sublimer--save in the amount of force exerted--than +that of a lout who pulls a chair suddenly from under an old woman. +Now, by wedding Necessity with uncouth Jocularity, Mr. Hardy may have +found an hypothesis that solves for him all the difficulties of life. +I am not concerned in this place to deny that it may be the true +explanation. I have merely to point out that art and criticism must +take some time in getting accustomed to it, and that meanwhile the +traditions of both are so far agreed in allowing a certain amount of +free will to direct the actions of men and women that a tale which +should be all necessity and no free will would, in effect, be +necessity's own contrary--a merely wanton freak. + +For, in effect, it comes to this:--The story of Tess, in which +attention is so urgently directed to the hand of Destiny, is not felt +to be inevitable, but freakish. The story of Esther Waters, in which a +poor servant-girl is allowed to grapple with her destiny and, after a +fashion, to defeat it, is felt (or has been felt by one reader, at any +rate) to be absolutely inevitable. To reconcile us to the black flag +above Wintoncester prison as to the appointed end of Tess's career, a +curse at least as deep as that of Pelops should have been laid on the +D'Urberville family. Tess's curse does not lie by nature on all women; +nor on all Dorset women; nor on all Dorset women who have illegitimate +children; for a very few even of these are hanged. We feel that we are +not concerned with a type, but with an individual case deliberately +chosen by the author; and no amount of talk about the "President of +the Immortals" and his "Sport" can persuade us to the contrary. With +Esther Waters, on the other hand, we feel we are assisting in the +combat of a human life against its natural destiny; we perceive that +the woman has a chance of winning; we are happy when she wins; and we +are the better for helping her with our sympathy in the struggle. +That is why, using the word in the Aristotelian sense, I maintain that +_Esther Waters_ is a more "philosophical" work than _Tess_. + +The atmosphere of the low-class gambling in which Mr. Moore's +characters breathe and live is no doubt a result of his careful study +of Zola. It is, as everyone knows, M. Zola's habit to take one of the +many pursuits of men--from War and Religion down to Haberdashery and +Veterinary Surgery--and expand it into an atmosphere for a novel. But +in Mr. Moore's case it may safely be urged that gambling on racehorses +actually is the atmosphere in which a million or two of Londoners pass +their lives. Their hopes, their very chances of a satisfying meal, +hang from day to day on the performances of horses they have never +seen. I cannot profess to judge with what accuracy Mr. Moore has +reproduced the niceties of handicapping, bookmaking, place-betting, +and the rest, the fluctuations of the gambling market, and their +causes. I gather that extraordinary care has been bestowed upon these +details; but criticism here must be left to experts, I only know that, +not once or twice only in the course of his narrative, Mr. Moore +makes us study the odds against a horse almost as eagerly as if it +carried our own money: because it does indeed carry for a while the +destiny of Esther Waters--and yet for a while only. We feel that, +whichever horse wins the ultimate issues are inevitable. + +It will be gathered from what I have said that Mr. Moore has vastly +outstripped his own public form, even as shown in _A Mummer's Wife_. +But it may be as well to set down, beyond possibility of +misapprehension, my belief that in _Esther Waters_ we have the most +artistic, the most complete, and the most inevitable work of fiction +that has been written in England for at least two years. Its plainness +of speech may offend many. It may not be a favorite in the circulating +libraries or on the bookstalls. But I shall be surprised if it fails +of the place I predict for it in the esteem of those who know the true +aims of fiction and respect the conscientious practice of that great +art. + + + + +MRS. MARGARET L. WOODS + + +Nov. 28, 1891. "Esther Vanhomrigh." + +Among considerable novelists who have handled historical +subjects--that is to say, who have brought into their story men and +women who really lived and events which have really taken place--you +will find one rule strictly observed, and no single infringement of it +that has been followed by success. This rule is that the historical +characters and events should be mingled with poetical characters and +events, and _made subservient to them_. And it holds of books as +widely dissimilar as _La Vicomte de Bragelonne_ and _La Guerre et la +Paix_; _The Abbot_ and _John Inglesant_. In history Louis XIV. and +Napoleon are the most salient men of their time: in fiction they fall +back and give prominence to D'Artagnan and the Prince André. They may +be admirably painted, but unless they take a subordinate place in the +composition, the artist scores a failure. + + +A Disability of "Historical Fiction." + +The reason of this is, of course, very simple. If an artist is to +have full power over his characters, to know their hearts, to govern +their emotions and sway them at his will, they must be his own +creatures and the life in them derived from him. He must have an +entirely free hand with them. But the personages of history have an +independent life of their own, and with them his hand is tied. +Thackeray has a freehold on the soul of Beatrix Esmond, but he takes +the soul of Marlborough furnished, on a short lease, and has to render +an account to the Muse of History. He is lord of one and mere occupier +of the other. Nor will it do to say that an artist by sympathetic and +intelligent study can master the motives of any group of historical +characters sufficiently for his purpose. For, since they have +anticipated him and lived their lives without his help, they leave him +but a choice between two poor courses. If he narrate their lives and +adventures as they really befel, he is writing history. If, on the +other hand, he disregard historical accuracy, he might just as well +have used another set of characters or have given his characters other +names. Indeed, it would be much better. For if Alcibiades went as a +matter of fact to Sparta and as a matter of fiction you make him stay +at home, you merely advertise to the world that there was something in +Alcibiades you don't understand. And if you are writing about an +Alcibiades whom you don't quite understand, you will save your readers +some risk of confusion by calling him Charicles. + +Now Jonathan Swift and Esther Johnson and Esther Vanhomrigh really +lived; and by living, became historical. But Mrs. Woods sets forth to +translate them back into fiction, not as subordinate characters, but +as protagonists. She has chosen to work within the difficult limits I +have indicated. But there are others which might easily have cramped +her hand even more closely. + + +A Tale of Passion to be told in Terms of Reason. + +The story of Swift and Esther Vanhomrigh is a story of passion, and +runs on the confines of madness. But it happened in the Age of Reason. +Doubtless men and women felt madness and passion in that age: +doubtless, too, they spoke of madness and passion, but not in their +literature. And now that the lips are dust and the fiery conversations +lost, Mrs. Woods has only their written prose to turn to for help. To +satisfy the pedant she must tell her story of passion in terms of +reason. In one respect Thackeray had a more difficult task in +_Esmond_; for he aimed to make his book a reflection, in every page +and line, of the days of Queen Anne. Not only had he, like Mrs. Woods, +to make his characters and their talk consistent with that age; but +every word of the story is supposed to be told by a gentleman of that +age, whereas Mrs. Woods in her narrative prose may use the language of +her own century. On the other hand, the story of _Esmond_ deals with +comparatively temperate emotions. There is nothing in Thackeray's +masterpiece to strain the prose of the Age of Reason. It is pitched in +the key of those times, and the prose of those times is sufficient and +exactly sufficient for it. That it should be so is all the more to +Thackeray's honor, for the artist is to be praised in the conception +as duly as in the execution of his work. But, the conception being +granted, I think _Esther Vanhomrigh_ must have been a harder book than +_Esmond_ to write. + +For even the prose of Swift himself is inadequate to Swift. He was a +great and glaring anomaly who never fell into perspective with his age +while he lived, and can hardly be pulled into perspective now with the +drawing materials which are left to us. Men of like abundant genius +are rarely measurable in language used by their contemporaries; and +this is perhaps the reason why they disquiet their contemporaries so +confoundedly. Where in the books written by tye-bewigged gentlemen, or +in the letters written by Swift himself, can you find words to explain +that turbulent and potent man? He bursts the capacity of Addison's +phrase and Pope's couplet. He was too big for a bishop's chair, and +now, if a novelist attempt to clothe him in the garments of his time, +he splits them down the back. + +It is in meeting this difficulty that Mrs. Woods seems to me to +display the courage and intelligence of a true artist. She is bound to +be praised by many for her erudition; but perhaps she will let me +thank her for having trodden upon her erudition. In the first volume +it threatened to overload and sink her. But no sooner does she begin +to catch the wind of her subject than she tosses all this superfluous +cargo overboard. From the point where passion creeps into the story +this learning is carried lightly and seems to be worn unconsciously. +Instead of cataloguing the age, she comprehends it. + +To me the warmth and pathos she packs into her eighteenth-century +conversation, without modernizing it thereby, is something amazing. +For this alone the book would be notable; and it can be proved to come +of divination, simply because nothing exists from which she could have +copied it. More obvious, though not more wonderful, is her feminine +gift of rendering a scene vivid for us by describing it, not as it is, +but as it excites her own intelligence or feelings. Let me explain +myself: for it is the sorry fate of a book so interesting and +suggestive as _Esther Vanhomrigh_ to divert the critic from praise of +the writer to consider a dozen problems which the writer raises. + + +Women and "le don pittoresque." + +Well, then, M. Jules Lemaître has said somewhere--and with +considerable truth--that women when they write have not _le don +pittoresque_. By this he means that they do not strive to depict a +scene exactly as it strikes upon their senses, but as they perceive +it after testing its effect upon their emotions and experience. +Suppose now we have to describe a moonlit night in May. Mrs. Woods +begins as a man might begin, thus-- + + "The few and twinkling lights disappeared from the roadside + cottages. The full white moon was high in the cloudless deep of + heaven, and the sounds of the warm summer night were all about + their path; the splash of leaping fish, the sleepy chirrup of + birds disturbed by some night-wandering creature; the song of the + reed-warbler, the persistent churring of the night jar, and the + occasional hoot of the owl, far off on some ancestral tree." + +Now all this, except, perhaps, the "ancestral" tree, is a direct +picture, and with it some men might stop. But no woman could stop +here, and Mrs. Woods does not. She goes on-- + + "It was such an exquisite May night, full of the mystery and + beauty of moonlight and the scent of hawthorn, as makes the earth + an Eden in which none but lovers should walk--happy lovers or + young poets, whose large eyes, so blind in the daylight world of + men, can see God walking in the Garden." ... + +You see it is sensation no longer, but reflection and emotion. + +Now I am only saying that women cannot avoid this. I am not +condemning it. On the contrary, it is beautiful in Mrs. Woods's hand, +and sometimes luminously true. Take this, for instance, of the +interior of a city church:-- + + "It had none of the dim impressiveness of a mediæval church, that + seems reared with a view to Heaven rather than Earth, and whose + arches, massive or soaring, neither gain nor lose by the + accidental presence of ephemeral human creatures below them. No, + the building seemed to cry out for a congregation, and the mind's + eye involuntarily peopled it with its Sunday complement of + substantial citizens and their families." + +This is not a picturesque but a reflective description. Yet how it +illuminates! If we had never thought of it before we know now, once +and for all, the essential difference between a Gothic church and one +of Wren's building. And further, since Mrs. Woods is writing of an age +that slighted Gothic for the architecture of Wren and his followers, +we get a brilliant side-flash to help our comprehension. It is a hint +only, but it assures us as we read that we are in the eighteenth +century, when men and women were of more account than soaring +aspirations. + +And the conclusion is that if Mrs. Woods could not conquer the +difficulties which beset any attempt to make protagonists of two +historical characters, if she was obliged to follow the facts to the +detriment of composition, she has vitalized and recreated a dead age +in a fashion to make us all wonder. _Esther Vanhomrigh_ is a great +feat, and its authoress is one of the few of whom almost anything may +be expected. + + * * * * * + +Jan. 26, 1895. "The Vagabonds." + +In her latest book,[A] Mrs. Woods returns to that class of life--so +far as life may be classified--which she handled so memorably in _A +Village Tragedy_. There are differences, though. As the titles +indicate, the life in the earlier story was stationary: in the latter +it is nomadic--the characters are artistes in a travelling show. This +at once suggests comparison with M. Edmond de Goncourt's _Les Frères +Zemganno_; or rather a contrast: for the two stories, conceived in +very similar surroundings, differ in at least two vital respects. + + +Compared with "Les Frères Zemganno." + +For what, in short, is the story of _Les Frères Zemganno_? Two +brothers, Gianni and Nello, tumblers in a show that travels round the +village fairs and small country towns of France, are seized with an +ambition to excel in their calling. They make their way to England, +where they spend some years clowning in various circuses. Then they +return to make their _debut_ in Paris. Gianni has invented at length a +trick act, a feat that will make the brothers famous. They are +performing it for the first time in public, when a circus girl, who +has a spite against Nello, causes him to fall and break both his legs. +He can perform no more: and henceforward, as he watches his brother +performing, a strange jealousy awakes and grows in him, causing him +agony whenever Gianni touches a trapèze. Gianni discovers this and +renounces his art. + +Now here in the first place it is to be noted that the whole story +depends upon the circus profession, and the brothers' love for it and +desire to excel in it. The catastrophe; Nello's jealousy; Gianni's +self-sacrifice; are inseparable from the atmosphere of the book. The +catastrophe is a professional catastrophe; the jealousy a professional +jealousy; the sacrifice a sacrifice of a profession. And in the second +place we know, even if we had not his own word for it, that M. de +Goncourt--contrary to his habit--deliberately etherealized the +atmosphere of the circus-ring and idealized the surroundings. He calls +his tale an essay in poetic realism, "Je me suis trouvé dans une de +ces heures de la vie, vieillissantes, maladives, lâches devant le +travail poignant et angoisseux de mes autres livres, en un état de +l'âme où la vérité trop vraie m'était antipathique à moi aussi!--et +j'ai fait cette fois de l'imagination dans du rêve mêlé à du +souvenir." We know from the Goncourt Journals exactly what is meant by +"du souvenir." We know that M. Edmond de Goncourt is but translating +into the language of the circus-ring and symbolizing in the story of +Gianni and Nello the story of his own literary collaboration with his +brother Jules--a collaboration of quite singular intimacy, that ceased +only with Jules's death in 1870. Possibly, as M. Zola once suggested, +M. Edmond de Goncourt did at first intend to depict the circus-life, +after his wont, in true "naturalistic" manner, softening and +extenuating nothing: but "par une délicatesse qui s'explique, il a +reculé devant le milieu brutal de cirques, devant certaines laideurs +et certaines monstruosités des personnages qu'il choisis-sait." The +two facts remain that in _Les Frères Zemganno_ M. de Goncourt (1) made +professional life in a circus the very blood and tissue of his story; +and (2) that he softened the details of that life, and to a certain +degree idealized it. + +Turning to Mrs. Woods's book and taking these two points in reverse +order, we find to begin with that she idealizes nothing and softens +next to nothing. Where she does soften, she softens only for literary +effect--to give a word its due force, or a picture its proper values. +She does not, for instance, accurately report the oaths and +blasphemies:-- + + "The tents and booths of the show were disappearing rapidly like + stage scenery. The red-faced Manager, Joe, and several others in + authority, ran hither and thither shouting their orders to a + crowd of workmen in jackets and fustian trousers, who were piling + rolls of canvas, and heavy chests, and mountains of planks and + long vibrating poles, on the great waggons. Others were + harnessing the big powerful horses to the carts, horses that were + mostly white, and wore large red collars. The scene was so busy, + so full of movement, that it would have been exhilarating had not + the fresh morning air been full of senseless blasphemies and + other deformities of speech, uttered casually and constantly, + without any apparent consciousness on the part of the speakers + that they were using strong language. Probably the lady who + dropped toads and vipers from her lips whenever she opened them + came in process of time to consider them the usual accompaniments + of conversation." + +There are a great many reasons against copious profanity of speech. +Here you have the artistic reason, and, by implication, that which +forbids its use in literature--namely, its ineffectiveness. But though +she selects, Mrs. Woods does not refine. She exhibits the life of the +travelling show in its habitual squalor as well as in its occasional +brightness. How she has managed it passes my understanding: but her +book leaves the impression of confident familiarity with this kind of +life, of knowledge not merely accumulated, but assimilated. Knowing as +we do that Mrs. Woods was not brought up in a circus, we infer that +she must have spent much labor in research: but, taken by itself, her +book permits no such inference. The truth is that in the case of a +genuine artist no line can be drawn between knowledge and imagination. +Probably--almost certainly--Mrs. Woods has to a remarkable degree that +gift which Mr. Henry James describes as "the faculty which when you +give it an inch takes an ell, and which for an artist is a much +greater source of strength than any accident of residence or of place +in the social scale ... the power to guess the unseen from the seen, +to trace the implication of things, to judge the whole piece by the +pattern; the condition of feeling life in general so completely that +you are well on your way to knowing a particular corner of it." Be +this as it may, Mrs. Woods has written a novel which, for mastery of +an unfamiliar _milieu_, is almost fit to stand beside _Esther Waters_. +I say "almost": for, although Mrs. Woods's mastery is easier and less +conscious than Mr. Moore's, it neither goes so deep to the springs of +action nor bears so intimately on the conduct of the story. But of +this later. + +If one thing more than another convinces me that Mrs. Woods has +thoroughly realized these queer characters of hers, it is that she +makes them so much like other people. Whatever our profession may be, +we are generally silent upon the instincts that led us to adopt +it--unless, indeed, we happen to be writers and make a living out of +self-analysis. So these strollers are silent upon the attractiveness +of their calling. But they crave as openly as any of us for +distinction, and they worship "respectability" as heartily and +outspokenly as any of the country-folk for whose amusement they tumble +and pull faces. It is no small merit in this book that it reveals how +much and yet how very little divides the performers in the ring from +the audience in the sixpenny seats. I wish I had space to quote a +particularly fine passage--you will find it on pp. 72-74--in which +Mrs. Woods describes the progress of these motley characters through +Midland lanes on a fresh spring morning; the shambling white horses +with their red collars, the painted vans, the cages "where bears paced +uneasily and strange birds thrust uncouth heads out into the +sunshine," the two elephants and the camel padding through the dust +and brushing the dew off English hedges, the hermetically sealed +omnibus in which the artistes bumped and dozed, while the +wardrobe-woman, Mrs. Thompson, held forth undeterred on "those +advantages of birth, house-rent, and furniture, which made her +discomforts of real importance, whatever those of the other ladies in +the show might be." + +But in bringing her Vagabonds into relation with ordinary English +life, Mrs. Woods loses all, or nearly all, of that esoteric +professional interest which, at first sight, would seem the chief +reason for choosing circus people to write about. The story of _Les +Frères Zemganno_ has, as I have said, this esoteric professional +interest. The story of _The Vagabonds_ is the story of a husband and +of a young wife who does not love him, but discovers that she loves +another man--a story as old as the hills and common to every rank and +every calling. Mrs. Woods has made the husband a middle-aged clown, +the wife a girl with strict notions about respectability, and the +lover, Fritz, a handsome young German gymnast. But there was no +fundamental reason for this choice of professions. The tale might be +every bit as true of a grocer, and a grocer's wife, and a grocer's +assistant. Once or twice, indeed, in the earlier chapters we have +promise of a more peculiar story when we read of Mrs. Morris's +objection to seeing her husband play the clown. "No woman," she says, +"that hadn't been brought up to the business would like to see her +husband look like that." And of Joe Morris we read that he took an +artistic pride in his clowning. But there follows no serious struggle +between love and art--no such struggle, for instance, as Zola has +worked out to tragic issues in his _L'Œuvre_. Mrs. Morris's shame at +her husband's ridiculous appearance merely heightens the contrast in +her eyes between him and the handsome young gymnast. + +But though the circus-business is not essential, Mrs. Woods makes most +effective use of it. I will select one notable illustration of this. +When Mrs. Morris at length makes her confession--it is in the wagon, +and at night--the unhappy husband wraps her up carefully in her bed +and creeps away with his grief to the barn where Chang, a ferocious +elephant amenable only to him, has been stabled:-- + + "He opened the door; the barn was pitch dark, but as he entered + he could hear the noise of the chain which had been fastened to + the elephant's legs being suddenly dragged. He spoke to Chang, + and the noise ceased. Then running up a short ladder which was + close to the door, he threw himself down on the straw and stared + up into the darkness, which to his aching eyes seemed spangled + with many colours. Presently he was startled by something warm + touching him on the face. + + "'Who's there?' he called out. + + "There was no answer, but the soft thing, something like a hand, + felt him cautiously and caressingly all over. + + "'Oh, it's you, Chang, my boy, is it?' said Joe. 'What! are you + glad to have me, old chappie? No humbug about yer, are yer sure? + No lies?'" + +The circus-business is employed again in the catastrophe: but, to my +mind, far less happily. In spite of very admirable writing, there +remains something ridiculous in the spectacle of an injured husband, +armed with a Winchester rifle and mounted on a frantic elephant, +pursuing his wife's lover by moonlight across an English common and +finally "treeing" him up a sign-post. Mrs. Woods, indeed, means it to +be grotesque: but I think it is something more. + +The problem of the story is the commonest in fiction. And when I add +that the injured husband has been married before and that his first +wife, honestly supposed to be dead, returns to threaten his happiness, +you will see that Mrs. Woods sets forth upon a path trodden by many +hundreds of thousands of incompetent feet. To start with such a +situation almost suggests bravado. If it be bravado, it is entirely +justified as the tale proceeds: for amid the crowd of failures Mrs. +Woods's solution wears the singular distinction of truth. That the +book is written in restrained and beautiful English goes without +saying: but the best tribute one can pay to the writing of it is to +say that its style and its truthfulness are at one. If complaint must +be made, it is the vulgar complaint against truth--that it leaves one +a trifle cold. A less perfect story might have aroused more emotion. +Yet I for one would not barter the pages that tell of Joe Morris's +final surrender of his wife--with their justness of imagination and +sobriety of speech--for any amount of pity and terror. + +A word on the few merely descriptive passages in the book. Mrs. +Woods's scene-painting has all a Frenchman's accomplishment with the +addition of that open-air feeling and intimate knowledge of the +phenomena of "out-of-doors" which a Frenchman seldom or never attains +to. Though not, perhaps, her strongest gift, it is the one by which +she stands most conspicuously above her contemporaries. The more +credit, then, that she uses it so temperately. + +FOOTNOTES: + +[A] _The Vagabonds_. By Margaret L. Woods. London: Smith, Elder & Co. + + + + +MR. HALL CAINE + + +August 11, 1894. "The Manxman." + +Mr. Hall Caine's new novel _The Manxman_ (London: William Heinemann) +is a big piece of work altogether. But, on finishing the tale, I +turned back to the beginning and read the first 125 pages over again, +and then came to a stop. I wish that portion of the book could be +dealt with separately. It cannot: for it but sets the problem in human +passion and conduct which the remaining 300 pages have to solve. +Nevertheless the temptation is too much for me. + +As one who thought he knew how good Mr. Hall Caine can be at his best, +I must confess to a shock of delight, or rather a growing sense of +delighted amazement, while reading those 125 pages. Yet the story is a +very simple one--a story of two friends and a woman. The two friends +are Philip Christian and Pete Quilliam: Philip talented, accomplished, +ambitious, of good family, and eager to win back the social position +which his father had lost by an imprudent marriage; Pete a nameless +boy--the bastard son of Philip's uncle and a gawky country-girl--ignorant, +brave, simple-minded, and incurably generous. The boys have grown up +together, and in love are almost more than brothers when the time comes +for them to part for a while--Philip leaving home for school, while +Pete goes as mill-boy to one Cæsar Cregeen, who combined the occupations +of miller and landlord of "The Manx Fairy" public-house. And now enters +the woman--a happy child when first we make her acquaintance--in the +shape of Katherine Cregeen, the daughter of Pete's employer. With her +poor simple Pete falls over head and ears in love. Philip, too, when +home for his holidays, is drawn by the same dark eyes; but stands aside +for his friend. Naturally, the miller will not hear of Pete, a landless, +moneyless, nameless, lad, as a suitor for his daughter; and so Pete sails +for Kimberley to make his fortune, confiding Kitty to Philip's care. + +It seems that the task undertaken by Philip--that of watching over his +friend's sweetheart--is a familiar one in the Isle of Man, and he who +discharges it is known by a familiar name. + + "They call him the _Dooiney Molla_--literally, the 'man-praiser'; + and his primary function is that of an informal, unmercenary, + purely friendly and philanthropic match-maker, introduced by the + young man to persuade the parents of the young woman that he is a + splendid fellow, with substantial possessions or magnificent + prospects, and entirely fit to marry her. But he has a secondary + function, less frequent, though scarcely less familiar; and it is + that of a lover by proxy, or intended husband by deputy, with + duties of moral guardianship over the girl while the man himself + is off 'at the herrings,' or away 'at the mackerel,' or abroad on + wider voyages." + +And now, of course, begins Philip Christian's ordeal: for Kitty +discovers that she loves him and not Pete, and he that he loves Kitty +madly. On the other hand there is the imperative duty to keep faith +with his absent friend; and more than this. His future is full of high +hope; the eyes of his countrymen and of the Governor himself are +beginning to fasten on him as the most promising youth in the island; +it is even likely that he will be made Deemster, and so win back all +the position that his father threw away. But to marry Kitty--even if +he can bring himself to break faith with Pete--will be to marry +beneath him, to repeat his father's disaster, and estrange the favor +of all the high "society" of the island. Therefore, even when the +first line of resistance is broken down by a report that Pete is dead, +Philip determines to cut himself free from the temptation. But the +girl, who feels that he is slipping away from her, now takes fate into +her own hands. It is the day of harvest-home--the "Melliah"--on her +father's farm. Philip has come to put an end to her hopes, and she +knows it. The "Melliah" is cut and the usual frolic begins: + + "Then the young fellows went racing over the field, vaulting the + stooks, stretching a straw rope for the girls to jump over, + heightening and tightening it to trip them up, and slackening it + and twirling it to make them skip. And the girls were falling + with a laugh, and, leaping up again and flying off like the dust, + tearing their frocks and dropping their sun-bonnets as if the + barley-grains they had been reaping had got into their blood. + + "In the midst of this maddening frolic, while Cæsar and the + others were kneeling by the barley-stack, Kate snatched Philip's + hat from his head and shot like a gleam into the depths of the + glen. + + "Philip dragged up his coat by one of its arms and fled after + her." + +Here, then, in Sulby Glen, the girl stakes her last throw--the last +throw of every woman--and wins. It is the woman--a truly Celtic +touch--who wooes the man, and secures her love and, in the end, her +shame. + + "When a good woman falls from honour, is it merely that she is + the victim of a momentary intoxication, of stress of passion, of + the fever of instinct? No. It is mainly that she is the slave of + the sweetest, tenderest, most spiritual, and pathetic of all + human fallacies--the fallacy that by giving herself to the man + she loves she attaches him to herself for ever. This is the real + betrayer of nearly all good women that are betrayed. It lies at + the root of tens of thousands of the cases that make up the + merciless story of man's sin and woman's weakness. Alas! it is + only the woman who clings the closer. The impulse of the man is + to draw apart. He must conquer it, or she is lost. Such is the + old cruel difference and inequality of man and woman as Nature + made them--the old trick, the old tragedy." + +And meanwhile Pete is not dead; but recovered, and coming home. + +Here, on p. 125, ends the second act of the drama: and the telling has +been quite masterly. The passage quoted above has hitherto been the +author's solitary comment. Everything has been presented in that fine +objective manner which is the triumph of story-telling. As I read, I +began to say to myself, "This is good"; and in a little while, "Ah, +but this is very good"; and at length, "But this is amazing. If he can +only keep this up, he will have written one of the finest novels of +his time." The whole story was laid out so easily; with such humor, +such apparent carelessness, such an instinct for the right stroke in +the right place, and no more than the right stroke; the big +scenes--Pete's love-making in the dawn and Kate's victory in Sulby +Glen--were so poetically conceived (I use the adverb in its strictest +sense) and so beautifully written; above all, the story remained so +true to the soil on which it was constructed. A sworn admirer of Mr. +Brown's _Betsy Lee_ and _The Doctor_ has no doubt great advantage over +other people in approaching _The Manxman_. Who, that has read his +_Fo'c's'le Yarns_ worthily, can fail to feel kindly towards the little +island and its shy, home-loving folk? And--by what means I do not +know--Mr. Hall Caine has managed from time to time to catch Mr. +Brown's very humor and set it to shine on his page. The secret, I +suppose, is their common possession as Manxmen: and, like all the best +art, theirs is true to its country and its material. + +Pete comes home, suspecting no harm; still childish of heart and loud +of voice--a trifle too loud, by the way; his shouts begin to irritate +the reader, and the reader begins to feel how sorely they must have +irritated his wife: for the unhappy Kate is forced, after all, into +marrying Pete. And so the tragedy begins. + +I wish, with my heart, I could congratulate Mr. Hall Caine as warmly +upon the remainder of the book as upon its first two parts. He is too +sure an artist to miss the solution--the only adequate solution--of +the problem. The purification of Philip Christian and Kitty must come, +if at all, "as by fire"; and Mr. Hall Caine is not afraid to take us +through the deepest fire. No suffering daunts him--neither the anguish +of Kitty, writhing against her marriage with Pete, nor the desperate +pathos of Pete after his wife has run away, pretending to the +neighbors that she has only gone to Liverpool for her health, and +actually writing letters and addressing parcels to himself and posting +them from out-of-the-way towns to deceive the local postman; nor the +moral ruination of Philip, with whom Kitty is living in hiding; nor +his final redemption by the ordeal of a public confession before the +great company assembled to see him reach the height of worldly +ambition and be appointed governor of his native island. + +And yet--I have a suspicion that Mr. Hall Caine, who deals by +preference with the elemental emotions, would rejoice in the epithet +"Æschylean" applied to his work. The epithet would not be unwarranted: +but it is precisely when most consciously Æschylean that Mr. Hall +Caine, in my poor judgment, comes to grief. This is but to say that he +possesses the defects of his qualities. There is altogether too much +of the "Go to: let me be Titanic" about the book. Æschylus has grown a +trifle too well aware of his reputation, has taken to underscoring his +points, and tends to prolixity in consequence. Mr. Hall Caine has not +a little of Hugo's audacity, but, with it, not a little of Hugo's +diffuseness. Standing, like Destiny, with scourge lifted over the +naked backs of his two poor sinners, he spares them no single +stroke--not so much as a little one. Every detail that can possibly +heighten their suffering is brought out in its place, until we feel +that Life, after all, is more careless, and tell ourselves that Fate +does not measure out her revenge with an inch rule. We see the +machinery of pathos at work: and we are rather made incredulous than +moved when the machinery works so accurately that Philip is made to +betray Pete on the very night when Pete goes out to beat a big drum in +Philip's honor. Nor is this by any means the only harrowing +coincidence of the kind. Worse than this--for its effect upon us as a +work of art--our emotions are so flogged and out-tired by detail after +detail that they cannot rise at the last big fence, and so the scene +of Philip's confession in the Courthouse misses half its effect. It is +a fine scene. I am no bigoted admirer of Hawthorne--a very cold one, +indeed--and should be the last to say that the famous scene in _The +Scarlet Letter_ cannot be improved upon. Nor do I make any doubt that, +as originally conceived by Mr. Hall Caine, the story had its duly +effective climax here. But still less do I doubt that the climax, and +therefore the whole story, would have been twice as impressive had the +book, from p. 125 onwards, contained just half its present number of +words. But whether this opinion be right or wrong, the book remains a +big book, and its story a beautiful story. + + + + +MR. ANTHONY HOPE + + +Oct. 27, 1894. "The God in the Car" and "The Indiscretion +of the Duchess." + +As I set down the titles of these two new stories by Mr. Anthony Hope, +it occurs to me that combined they would make an excellent title for a +third story yet to be written. For Mr. Hope's duchess, if by any +chance she found herself travelling with a god in a car, would +infallibly seize the occasion for a _tour de force_ in charming +indiscretion. That the car would travel for some part of the distance +in that position of unstable equilibrium known to skaters as the +"outside edge" may, I think, be taken for granted. But far be it from +me to imagine bungling developments of the situation I here suggest to +Mr. Hope's singular and agreeable talents. Like Mr. Stevenson's +smatterer, who was asked, "What would be the result of putting a pound +of potassium in a pot of porter?" I content myself with anticipating +"that there would probably be a number of interesting bye-products." + +Be it understood that I suggest only a combination of the titles--not +of the two stories as Mr. Hope has written them: for these move on +levels altogether different. The constant reader of _The Speaker's_ +"Causeries" will be familiar with the two propositions--not in the +least contradictory--that a novel should be true to life, and that it +is quite impossible for a novel to be true to life. He will also know +how they are reconciled. A story, of whatever kind, must follow life +at a certain remove. It is a good and consistent story if it keep at +that remove from first till last. Let us have the old tag once more: + + "Servetur ad inum + Qualis ab incepto processerit, et sibi constet." + +A good story and real life are such that, being produced in either +direction and to any extent, they never meet. The distance between the +parallels does not count: or rather, it is just a matter for the +author to choose. It is here that Mr. Howells makes his mistake, who +speaks contemptuously of Romance as _Puss in Boots_. _Puss in Boots_ +is a masterpiece in its way, and in its way just as true to +life--_i.e._, to its distance from life--as that very different +masterpiece _Silas Lapham_. When Mr. Howells objects to the figure of +Vautrin in _Le Père Goriot_, he criticizes well: Vautrin in that tale +is out of drawing and therefore monstrous. But to bring a similar +objection against Porthos in _Le Vicomte de Bragelonne_ would be very +bad criticism; for it would ignore all the postulates of the story. In +real life Vautrin and Porthos would be equally monstrous: in the +stories Vautrin is monstrous and Porthos is not. + +But though the distance from real life at which an author conducts his +tale is just a matter for his own choice, it usually happens to him +after a while, either from taste or habit, to choose a particular +distance and stick to it, or near it, henceforth in all his writings. +Thus Scott has his own distance, and Jane Austen hers. Balzac, Hugo, +Charlotte Brontë, Dickens, Tolstoi, Mr. Howells himself--all these +have their favorite distances, and all are different and cannot be +confused. But a young writer usually starts in some uncertainty on +this point. He has to find his range, and will quite likely lead off +with a miss or a ricochet, as Mr. Hardy led off with _Desperate +Remedies_ before finding the target with _Under the Greenwood Tree_. +Now Mr. Hope--the application of these profound remarks is coming at +last--being a young writer, hovers in choice between two ranges. He +has found the target with both, and cannot make up his mind between +them: and I for one hope he will keep up his practice at both: for his +experiments are most interesting, and in the course of them he is +giving us capital books. Of the two before me, _The God in the Car_ +belongs to the same class as his earliest work--his _Father Stafford_, +for instance, a novel that did not win one-tenth of the notice it +deserved. It is practice at short range. It moves very close to real +life. Real people, of course, do not converse as briskly and wittily +as do Mr. Hope's characters: but these have nothing of the impossible +in them, and even in the whole business of Omofaga there is nothing +more fantastic than its delightful name. The book is genuinely tragic; +but the tragedy lies rather in what the reader is left to imagine than +in what actually occurs upon the stage. That it never comes to a more +explicit and vulgar issue stands not so much to the credit of the +heroine (as I suppose we must call Mrs. Dennison) as to the force of +circumstances as manipulated in the tactful grasp of Mr. Hope. Nor is +it to be imputed to him for a fault that the critical chapter xvii. +reminds us in half a dozen oddly indirect ways of a certain chapter in +_Richard Feverel_. The place, the situation, the reader's suspense, +are similar; but the actors, their emotions, their purposes are vastly +different. It is a fine chapter, and the page with which it opens is +the worst in the book--a solitary purple patch of "fine writing." I +observe without surprise that the reviewers--whose admiring attention +is seldom caught but by something out of proportion--have been +fastening upon it and quoting it ecstatically. + +_The Indiscretion of the Duchess_ is the tale in Mr. Hope's second +manner--the manner of _The Prisoner of Zenda_. Story for story, it +falls a trifle sort of _The Prisoner of Zenda_. As a set-off, the +telling is firmer, surer, more accomplished. In each an aimless, +superficially cynical, but naturally amiable English gentleman finds +himself casually involved in circumstances which appeal first to his +sportsmanlike love of adventure, and so by degrees to his chivalry, +his sense of honor, and his passions. At first amused, then perplexed, +then nettled, then involved heart and soul, he is left to fight his +way through with the native weapons of his order--courage, tact, +honesty, wit, strength of self-sacrifice, aptitude for affairs. The +_donnée_ of these tales, their spirit, their postulates, are nakedly +romantic. In them the author deliberately lends enchantment to his +view by withdrawing to a convenient distance from real life. But, once +more, the enchantment is everything and the distance nothing. If I +must find fault with the later of the stories, it will not be with its +general extravagance--for extravagance is part of the secret of +Romance--but with the sordid and very nasty Madame Delhasse. She would +be repulsive enough in any case: but as Marie's mother she is +peculiarly repulsive and, let me add, improbable. Nobody looks for +heredity in a tale of this sort: but even in the fairy tales it is +always the heroine's _step_-mother who ends very fitly with a roll +downhill in a barrel full of spikes. + +But great as are the differences between _The God in the Car_ and _The +Indiscretion of the Duchess_--and I ought to say that the former +carries (as it ought) more weight of metal--they have their points of +similarity. Both illustrate conspicuously Mr. Hope's gift of +advancing the action of his story by the sprightly conversation of his +characters. There is a touch of Dumas in their talk, and more than a +touch of Sterne--the Sterne of the _Sentimental Journey_. + + "I beg your pardon, madame," said I, with a whirl of my hat. + + "I beg your pardon, sir," said the lady, with an inclination of + her head. + + "One is so careless in entering rooms hurriedly," I observed. + + "Oh, but it is stupid to stand just by the door!" insisted the + lady. + +To sum up, these are two most entertaining books by one of the writers +for whose next book one searches eagerly in the publishers' lists. If, +however, he will not resent one small word of caution, it is that he +should not let us find his name there too often. As far as we can see, +he cannot write too much for us. But he may very easily write too much +for his own health. + + + + +"TRILBY" + + +Sept. 14, 1895. Hypnotic Fiction. + +A number of people--and I am one--cannot "abide" hypnotism in fiction. +In my own case the dislike has been merely instinctive, and I have +never yet found time to examine the instinct and discover whether or +not it is just and reasonable. The appearance of a one-volume edition +of _Trilby_--undoubtedly the most successful tale that has ever dealt +with hypnotism--and the success of the dramatic version of _Trilby_ +presented a few days ago by Mr. Tree, invite one to apply the test. +Clearly there are large numbers of people who enjoy hypnotic fiction, +or whose prejudices have been effectively subdued by Mr. du Maurier's +tact and talent. Must we then confess that our instinct has been +unjust and unreasonable, and give it up? Or--since we _must_ like +_Trilby_, and there is no help for it--shall we enjoy the tale under +protest and in spite of its hypnotism? + + +Analysis of an Aversion. + +I think my first objection to these hypnotic tales is the terror they +inspire. I am not talking of ordinary human terror, which, of course, +is the basis of much of the best tragedy. We are terrified by the +story of Macbeth; but it is with a rational and a salutary terror. We +are aware all the while that the moral laws are at work. We see a +hideous calamity looming, approaching, imminent: but we can see that +it is the effect of causes which have been duly exhibited to us. We +can reason it out: we know where we stand: our conscience approves the +punishment even while our pity calls out against it. And when the blow +falls, it shakes away none of our belief in the advantages of virtuous +conduct. It leaves the good old impregnable position, "Be virtuous and +you will be happy," stronger than ever. But the terror of these +hypnotic stories resembles that of a child in a dark room. For +artistic reasons too obvious to need pointing out, the hypnotizer in +these stories is always the villain of the piece. For the same or +similar reasons, the "subject" is always a person worthy of our +sympathy, and is usually a woman. Let us suppose it to be a good and +beautiful woman--for that is the commonest case. The gives us to +understand that by hypnotism this good and beautiful woman is for a +while completely in the power of a man who is _ex hypothesi_ a beast, +and who _ex hypothesi_ can make her commit any excesses that his +beastliness may suggest. Obviously we are removed outside the moral +order altogether; and in its place we are presented with a state of +things in which innocence, honesty, love, and the rest are entirely at +the disposal and under the rule of malevolent brutality; the result, +as presented to us, being qualified only by such tact as the author +may choose to display. That Mr. du Maurier has displayed great tact is +extremely creditable to Mr. du Maurier, and might have been predicted +of him. But it does not alter the fact that a form of fiction which +leaves us at the mercy of an author's tact is a very dangerous form in +a world which contains so few Du Mauriers. It is lamentable enough to +have to exclaim--as we must over so much of human history-- + + "Ah! what avails the sceptred race + And what the form divine?..." + +But it must be quite intolerable when a story leaves us demanding, +"What avail native innocence, truthfulness, chastity, when all these +can be changed into guile and uncleanliness at the mere suggestion of +a dirty mesmerist?" + +The answer to this, I suppose, will be, "But hypnotism is a scientific +fact. People can be hypnotized, and are hypnotized. Are you one of +those who would exclude the novelist from this and that field of human +experience?" And then I am quite prepared to hear the old tag, "_Homo +sum_," etc., once more misapplied. + + +Limitation of Hypnotic Fiction. + +Let us distinguish. Hypnotism is a proved fact: people are hypnotized. +Hypnotism is not a delimited fact: nobody yet knows precisely its +conditions or its effects; or, if the discovery has been made, it has +certainly not yet found its way to the novelists. For them it is as +yet chiefly a field of fancy. They invent vagaries for it as they +invent ghosts. And as for the "_humananum nihil a me alienum_" +defence, my strongest objection to hypnotic fiction is its inhumanity. +An experience is not human in the proper artistic sense (with which +alone we are concerned) merely because it has befallen a man or a +woman. There was an Irishman, the other day, who through mere +inadvertence cut off his own head with a scythe. But the story is +rather inhuman than not. Still less right have we to call everything +human which can be supposed by the most liberal stretch of the +imagination to have happened to a man or a woman. A story is only +human in so far as it is governed by the laws which are recognized as +determining human action. Now according as we regard human action, its +two great determinants will be free will or necessity. But hypnotism +entirely does away with free will: and for necessity, fatal or +circumstantial, it substitutes the lawless and irresponsible +imperative of a casual individual man, who (in fiction) usually +happens to be a scoundrel. + +A story may be human even though it discard one or more of the +recognized conditions of human life. Thus in the confessedly +supernatural story of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, the conflict between +the two Jekylls is human enough and morally significant, because it +answers to a conflict which is waged day by day--though as a rule less +tremendously--in the soul of every human being. But the double Trilby +signifies nothing. She is naturally in love with Little Billee: she is +also in love with Svengali, but quite unnaturally and irresponsibly. +There is no real conflict. As Gecko says of Svengali-- + + "He had but to say '_Dors!_' and she suddenly became an + unconscious Trilby of marble, who could produce wonderful + sounds--just the sounds he wanted and nothing else--and think his + thoughts and wish his wishes--and love him at his bidding with a + strange, unreal, factitious love ... just his own love for + himself turned inside out--à l'envers--and reflected back on him + as from a mirror ... un écho, un simulacre, quoi? pas autre + chose!... It was not worth having! I was not even jealous!" + +This last passage, I think, suggests that Mr. du Maurier would have +produced a much less charming story, indeed, but a vastly more +artistic one, had he directed his readers' attention rather upon the +tragedy of Svengali than upon the tragedy of Trilby. For Svengali's +position as complete master of a woman's will and yet unable to call +forth more than a factitious love--"just his own love for himself +turned inside out and reflected back on him as from a mirror"--is a +really tragic one, and a fine variation on the old Frankenstein +_motif_. The tragedy of Frankenstein resides in Frankenstein himself, +not in his creature. + + +An Incongruous Story. + +In short, _Trilby_ seems--as _Peter Ibbetson_ seemed--to fall into two +parts, the natural and supernatural, which will not join. They might +possibly join if Mr. du Maurier had not made the natural so +exceedingly domestic, had he been less successful with the Trilby, and +Little Billee, and Taffy, and the Laird, for all of whom he has taught +us so extravagant a liking. But his very success with these domestic +(if oddly domestic) figures, and with the very domestic tale of Little +Billee's affair of the heart, proves our greatest stumbling-block when +we are invited to follow the machinations of the superlative Svengali. +That the story of Svengali and of Trilby's voice is a good story only +a duffer would deny. So is Gautier's _La Morte Amoureuse_; perhaps the +best story of its kind ever written. But suppose Thackeray had taken +_La Morte Amoureuse_ and tried to write it into _Pendennis!_ + + + + +MR. STOCKTON + + +Sept. 21, 1895. Stevenson's Testimony. + +In his chapter of "Personal Memories," printed in the _Century +Magazine_ of July last, Mr. Gosse speaks of the peculiar esteem in +which Mr. Frank R. Stockton's stories were held by Robert Louis +Stevenson. "When I was going to America to lecture, he was +particularly anxious that I should lay at the feet of Mr. Frank R. +Stockton his homage, couched in the following lines:-- + + My Stockton if I failed to like, + It were a sheer depravity; + For I went down with the 'Thomas Hyke,' + And up with the 'Negative Gravity.' + +He adored these tales of Mr. Stockton's, a taste which must be shared +by all good men." + +It is shared at any rate by some thousands of people on this side of +the Atlantic. Only, one is not quite sure how far their admiration +extends. As far as can be guessed--for I have never come across any +British attempt at a serious appreciation of Mr. Stockton--the +general disposition is to regard him as an amusing kind of "cuss" with +a queer kink in his fancy, who writes puzzling little stories that +make you smile. As for taking him seriously, "why he doesn't even +profess to write seriously"--an absurd objection, of course; but good +enough for the present-day reviewer, who sits up all night in order +that the public may have his earliest possible opinion on the +Reminiscences of Bishop A, or the Personal Recollections of +Field-Marshal B, or a Tour taken in Ireland by the Honorable Mrs. C. +For criticism just now, as a mere matter of business convenience, +provides a relative importance for books before they appear; and in +this classification the space allotted to fiction and labelled +"important" is crowded for the moment with works dealing with +religious or sexual difficulties. Everyone has read _Rudder Grange_, +_The Lady or the Tiger?_ and _A Borrowed Month_; but somehow few +people seem to think of them as subjects for serious criticism. + + +"Classical" qualities. + +And yet these stories are almost classics. That is to say, they have +the classical qualities, and only need time to ripen them into +classics: for nothing but age divides a story of the quality of _The +Lady or the Tiger?_ (for instance) from a story of the quality of _Rip +Van Winkle_. They are full of wit; but the wit never chokes the style, +which is simple and pellucid. Their fanciful postulates being granted, +they are absolutely rational. And they are in a high degree original. +Originality, good temper, good sense, moderation, wit--these are +classical qualities: and he is a rare benefactor who employs them all +for the amusement of the world. + + +A Comparison. + +At first sight it may seem absurd to compare Mr. Stockton with Defoe. +You can scarcely imagine two men with more dissimilar notions of the +value of gracefulness and humor, or with more divergent aims in +writing. Mr. Stockton is nothing if not fanciful, and Defoe is hardly +fanciful at all. Nevertheless in reading one I am constantly reminded +of the other. You must remember Mr. Stockton's habit is to confine his +eccentricities of fancy to the postulates of a tale. He starts with +some wildly unusual--but, as a rule, not impossible--conjuncture of +circumstances. This being granted, however, he deduces his story +logically and precisely, appealing never to our passions and almost +constantly to our common sense. His people are as full of common-sense +as Defoe's. They may have more pluck than the average man or woman, +and they usually have more adaptability; but they apply to +extraordinary circumstances the good unsentimental reasoning of +ordinary life, and usually with the happiest results. The shipwreck of +Mrs. Lecks and Mrs. Aleshine was extraordinary enough, but their +subsequent conduct was rational almost to precision: and in +story-telling rationality does for fancy what economy of emotional +utterances does for emotion. We may apply to Mr. Stockton's tales a +remark which Mr. Saintsbury let fall some years ago upon +dream-literature. He was speaking particularly of Flaubert's +_Tentation de Saint Antoine_:-- + + "The capacities of dreams and hallucinations for literary + treatment are undoubted. But most writers, including even De + Quincey, who have tried this style, have erred, inasmuch as they + have endeavoured to throw a portion of the mystery with which the + waking mind invests dreams over the dream itself. Anyone's + experience is sufficient to show that this is wrong. The events + of dreams as they happen are quite plain and matter-of-fact, and + it is only in the intervals, and, so to speak, the + scene-shifting of dreaming, that any suspicion of strangeness + occurs to the dreamer." + +A dream, however wild, is quite plain and matter-of-fact to the +dreamer; therefore, for verisimilitude, the narrative of a dream +should be quite plain and matter-of-fact. In the same way the narrator +of an extremely fanciful tale should--since verisimilitude is the +first aim of story-telling--attempt to exclude all suspicion of the +unnatural from his reader's mind. And this is only done by persuading +him that no suspicion of the unnatural occurred to the actors in the +story. And this again is best managed by making his characters persons +of sound every-day common sense. "If _these_ are not upset by what +befalls them, why"--is the unconscious inference--"why in the world +should _I_ be upset?" + +So, in spite of the enormous difference between the two writers, there +has been no one since Defoe who so carefully as Mr. Stockton regulates +the actions of his characters by strict common sense. Nor do I at the +moment remember any writer who comes closer to Defoe in mathematical +care for detail. In the case of the True-born Englishman this +carefulness was sometimes overdone--as when he makes Colonel Jack +remember with exactness the lists of articles he stole as a boy, and +their value. In the _Adventures of Captain Horn_ the machinery which +conceals and guards the Peruvian treasure is so elaborately described +that one is tempted to believe Mr. Stockton must have constructed a +working model of it with his own hands before he sat down to write the +book. In a way, this accuracy of detail is part of the common-sense +character of the narrative, and undoubtedly helps the verisimilitude +enormously. + + +A Genuine American. + +But to my mind Mr. Stockton's characters are even more original than +the machinery of his stories. And in their originality they reflect +not only Mr. Stockton himself, but the race from which they and their +author spring. In fact, they seem to me about the most genuinely +American things in American fiction. After all, when one comes to +think of it, Mrs. Lecks and Captain Horn merely illustrate that ready +adaptation of Anglo-Saxon pluck and businesslike common sense to +savage and unusual circumstances which has been the real secret of the +colonization of the North American Continent. Captain Horn's +discovery and winning of the treasure may differ accidentally, but do +not differ in essence, from a thousand true tales of commercial +triumph in the great Central Plain or on the Pacific Slope. And in the +heroine of the book we recognize those very qualities and aptitudes +for which we have all learnt to admire and esteem the American girl. +They are hero and heroine, and so of course we are presented with the +better side of a national character; but then it has been the better +side which has done the business. The bitterest critic of things +American will not deny that Mr. Stockton's characters are typical +Americans, and could not belong to any other nation in the world. Nor +can he deny that they combine sobriety with pluck, and businesslike +behavior with good feeling; that they are as full of honor as of +resource, and as sportsmanlike as sagacious. That people with such +characteristics should be recognizable by us as typical Americans is a +sufficient answer to half the nonsense which is being talked just now +_à propos_ of a recent silly contest for the America Cup. + +Nationality apart, if anyone wants a good stirring story, _Captain +Horn_ is the story for his money. It has loose ends, and the +concluding chapter ties up an end that might well have been left +loose; but if a better story of adventure has been written of late I +wish somebody would tell me its name. + + + + +BOW-WOW + + +August 26, 1893. Dauntless Anthology. + +It is really very difficult to know what to say to Mr. Maynard +Leonard, editor of _The Dog in British Poetry_ (London: David Nutt). +His case is something the same as Archdeacon Farrar's. The critic who +desires amendment in the Archdeacon's prose, and suggests that +something might be done by a study of Butler or Hume or Cobbett or +Newman, is met with the cheerful retort, "But I have studied these +writers, and admire them even more than you do." The position is +impregnable; and the Archdeacon is only asserting that two and two +make four when he goes on to confess that, "with the best will in the +world to profit by the criticisms of his books, he has never profited +in the least by any of them." + +Now, Mr. Leonard has at least this much in common with Archdeacon +Farrar, that before him criticism must sit down with folded hands. In +the lightness of his heart he accepts every fresh argument against +such and such a course as an added reason for following it:-- + + "While this collection of poems was being made," he tells us, "a + well-known author and critic took occasion to gently ridicule + (_sic_) anthologies and anthologists. He suggested, as if the + force of foolishness could no further go, that the next anthology + would deal with dogs." + +"Undismayed by this," to use his own words, Mr. Leonard proceeded to +prove it. Now it is obvious that no man can set a term to literary +activity if it depend on the Briton's notorious unwillingness to +recognize that he is beaten. I might dare, for instance, a Scotsman to +compile an anthology on "The Eel in British Poetry"; but of what avail +is it to challenge an indomitable race? + +I am sorry Mr. Leonard has not given the name of this critic; but have +a notion it must be Mr. Andrew Lang, though I am sure he is innocent +of the split infinitive quoted above. It really ought to be Mr. Lang, +if only for the humor of the means by which Mr. Leonard proposes to +silence him. "I am confident," says he, "that the voice of the great +dog-loving public in this country would drown that of the critic in +question." Mr. Leonard's metaphors, you see, like the dyer's hand, are +subdued to what they work in. But is not the picture delightful? Mr. +Lang, the gentle of speech; who, with his master Walton, "studies to +be quiet"; who tells us in his very latest verse + + "I've maistly had my fill + O' this world's din"-- + +--Mr. Lang set down in the midst of a really representative dog show, +say at Birmingham or the Crystal Palace, and there howled down! His +_blandi susurri_ drowned in the combined clamor of mongrel, puppy, +whelp, and hound, and "the great dog-loving public in this country"! + +"_Solvitur ululando_," hopes Mr. Leonard; and we will wait for the +voice of the great dog-loving public to uplift itself and settle the +question. Here, at any rate, is the book, beautiful in shape, and +printed by the Constables upon sumptuous paper. And the title-page +bears a rubric and a reference to Tobias' dog. "It is no need," says +Wyclif in one of his sermons, "to busy us what hight Tobies' hound"; +but Wyclif had never to reckon with a great dog-loving public. And Mr. +Leonard, having considered his work and dedicated it "To the +Cynics"--which, I suppose, is Greek for "dog-loving public"--observes, +"It is rather remarkable that no one has yet published such a book as +this." Perhaps it is. + +But if we take it for granted (1) that it was worth doing, and (2) +that whatever be worth doing is worth doing well, then Mr. Leonard has +reason for his complacency. "It was never my intention," he says, "to +gather together a complete collection of even British poems about +dogs."--When will _that_ come, I wonder?--"I have sought to secure a +representative rather than an exhaustive anthology." His selections +from a mass of poetry ranging from Homer to Mr. Mallock are judicious. +He is not concerned (he assures us) to defend the poetical merits of +all this verse:-- + + "--O, the wise contentment + Th' anthologist doth find!" + +--but he has provided it with notes--and capital notes they are--with +a magnificent Table of Contents, an Index of Authors, an Index of +First Lines, an Index of Dogs Mentioned by Name in the Poems, and an +Index of the Species of Dogs Mentioned. So that, even if he miss +transportation to an equal sky, the dog has better treatment on earth +than most authors. And Mr. Nutt and the Messrs. Constable have done +their best; and everyone knows how good is that best. And the wonder +is, as Dr. Johnson remarked (concerning a dog, by the way), not that +the thing is done so well, but that it should be done at all. + + + + +OF SEASONABLE NUMBERS: + +_A Baconian Essay_ + + +Dec. 26, 1891. + +That was a Wittie Invective made by _Montaigny_ upon the _Antipodean_, +Who said they must be Thieves that pulled on their breeches when +Honest Folk were scarce abed. So is it Obnoxious to them that purvey +_Christmas Numbers_, _Annuals_, and the like, that they commonly write +under _Sirius_ his star as it were _Capricornus_, feigning to Scate +and Carol and blow warm upon their Fingers, while yet they might be +culling of Strawberries. And all to this end, that Editors may take +the cake. I know One, the Father of a long Family, that will sit a +whole June night without queeching in a Vessell of Refrigerated Water +till he be Ingaged with hard Ice, that the _Publick_ may be docked no +pennyweight of the Sentiments incident to the _Nativity_. For we be +like Grapes, and goe to Press in August. But methinks these rigours do +postulate a _Robur Corporis_ more than ordinary (whereas 'tis but one +in ten if a Novelist overtop in Physique); and besides will often fail +of the effect. As I _myself_ have asked--the Pseudonym being but +gauze-- + + "O! Who can hold a fire in his hand + By thinking on the frosty Caucasus?" + +Yet sometimes, because some things are in kind very Casuall, which if +they escape prove Excellent (as the man who by Inadvertence inherited +the throne of the _Grand Turk_ with all appertayning) so that the kind +is inferiour, being subject to Perill, but that which is Excellent +being proved superiour, as the Blossom of March and the Blossom of +May, whereof the French verse goeth:-- + + "Bourgeon de Mars, enfant de Paris; + Si un eschape, il en vaut dix." + +--so, as I was saying (till the Mischief infected my Protasis), albeit +the gross of writings will moulder between _St. John's_ feast and _St. +Stephen's_, yet, if one survive, 'tis odds he will prove Money in your +Pocket. Therefore I counsel that you preoccupate and tie him, by +Easter at the latest, to _Forty thousand words_, naming a Figure in +excess: for Operation shrinketh all things, as was observed by +Galenus, who said to his Friend, "I will cut off your Leg, and then +you will be lesse by a Foot." Also you will do well to provide a +_Pictura_ in Chromo-Lithography. For the Glaziers like it, and no harm +done if they blush not: which is easily avoided by making it out of a +little Child and a Puppy-dog, or else a Mother, or some such trivial +Accompaniment. But Phryne marrs all. It was even rashly done of that +Editor who issued a Coloured Plate, calling it "_Phryne Behind the +Areopagus_": for though nothing was Seen, the pillars and Grecian +elders intervening, yet 'twas Felt a great pity. And the Fellow ran +for it, saying flimsily:-- + + "Populus me sibilat. At mihi plaudo." + +Whereas I rather praise the dictum of that other writer, who said, "In +this house I had sooner be turned over on the Drawing-room Table than +roll under that in the Dining-room," meaning to reflect on the wine, +but the Hostess took it for a compliment. + +But to speak of the Letter Press. For the Sea you will use Clark +Russell; for the East, Rudyard Kipling; for _Blood_, Haggard; for +neat pastorall Subjects, Thomas Hardy, so he be within Bounds. I +mislike his "Noble Dames." Barrie has a prettier witt; but Besant will +keep in all weathers, and serve as right _Pemmican_. As for conundrums +and poetry, they are but Toys: I have seen as good in crackers; which +we pull, not as meaning to read or guess, but read and guess to cover +the Shame of our Employment. Yet for Conundrums, if you hold the +Answers till your next issue they Raise the Wind among Fools. + +He that hath _Wife and Children_ hath given Hostages to _Little +Folks_: he will hardly redeem but by sacrifice of a Christmas Tree. +The learned Poggius, that had twelve Sons and Daughters, used to note +ruefully that he might never escape but by purchase of a _dozen +Annuals_, citing this to prove how greatly Tastes will diverge among +the Extreamely Young, even though they come of the same geniture. So +will Printed Matter multiply faster than our Parents. Yet 'tis +discutable that this phrensy of _Annuals_ groweth staler by +Recurrence. As that Helvetian lamented, whose Cuckoo-clock failed of +a ready Purchaser, and he had to live with it. "_What Again?_" said +he, and "_Surely Spring is not come yet, dash it?_" Also I cannot +stomach that our Authors portend a Severity of Weather unseasonable in +these Muggy Latitudes. I will eat my Hat if for these twenty +Christmasses I have made six Slides worthy the Mention. Yet I know an +Author that had his _Hero and Heroine_ consent together very prettily; +but 'twas in a _Thaw_, and the Editor being stout, the match was +broken off unblessedly, till a Pact was made that it should indeed be +a Thaw, but sufficient only to let the Heroine drop through the Ice +and be Rescewed. + +Without _Ghosts_, we twiddle thumbs.... + + + + +***END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK ADVENTURES IN CRITICISM*** + + +******* This file should be named 17452-0.txt or 17452-0.zip ******* + + +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: +http://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/1/7/4/5/17452 + + + +Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions +will be renamed. + +Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no +one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation +(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without +permission and without paying copyright royalties. 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You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at <a href = "http://www.gutenberg.org">www.gutenberg.org</a></pre> +<p>Title: Adventures in Criticism</p> +<p>Author: Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch</p> +<p>Release Date: January 3, 2006 [eBook #17452]</p> +<p>Language: English</p> +<p>Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1</p> +<p>***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK ADVENTURES IN CRITICISM***</p> +<p> </p> +<h4>E-text prepared by Geetu Melwani<br /> + and the Project Gutenberg Online Distributed Proofreading Team<br /> + (http://www.pgdp.net/)</h4> +<p> </p> +<hr class="full" /> +<p> </p> +<p> </p> + + +<h1>ADVENTURES IN +CRITICISM</h1> + +<h3>BY</h3> +<h2>A. T. QUILLER-COUCH</h2> +<p> </p> +<p> </p> +<p> </p> + +<p class="center">NEW YORK +CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS</p> + +<p class="center">COPYRIGHT, 1896</p> + +<p class="center">TROW DIRECTORY<br /> +PRINTING AND BOOKBINDING COMPANY<br /> +NEW YORK</p> + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_v" id="Page_v">Pg v</a></span></p><div class="blockquot"><p>To</p> + +<p>A. B. WALKLEY</p> + + +<p><span class="smcap">My dear A. B. W.</span></p> + +<p>The short papers which follow have been reprinted, with a few +alterations, from <i>The Speaker</i>. Possibly you knew this without +my telling you. Possibly, too, you have sat in a theatre before +now and seen the curtain rise on two characters exchanging +information which must have been their common property for years. +So this dedication is partly designed to save me the trouble of +writing a formal preface.</p> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_vi" id="Page_vi">Pg vi</a></span></p><p>As I remember then, Adam, it was upon this fashion bequeathed us +by destiny to write side by side in <i>The Speaker</i> every week, you +about Plays and I about Books. Three years ago you found time to +arrange a few of your writings in a notable volume of <i>Playhouse +Impressions</i>. Some months ago I searched the files of the paper +with a similar design, and read my way through an astonishing +amount of my own composition. Noble edifice of toil! It stretched +away in imposing proportions and vanishing perspective—week upon +week—two columns to the week! The mischief was, it did not +appear to lead to anything: and for the first mile or two even +the casual graces of the colonnade were hopelessly marred through +that besetting fault of the young journalist, who finds no +satisfaction in his business of making bricks without straw +unless he can go straightway and heave them at somebody.</p> + +<p>Still (to drop metaphor), I have chosen some papers which I hope +may be worth a second reading. They are fragmentary, by force of +the conditions under which they were produced: but perhaps the +fragments may here and there suggest the outline of a first +principle. And I dedicate the book to you because it would be +strange if the time during which we have appeared in print side +by side had brought no sense of comradeship. Though, in fact, we +live far apart and seldom get speech together, more than one of +these papers—ostensibly addressed to anybody whom they might +concern—has been privately, if but sub-consciously, intended +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_vii" id="Page_vii">Pg vii</a></span>for you.</p> + +<p>A. T. Q. C.</p></div> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2>CONTENTS.</h2> + +<table border="0" cellpadding="4" width="65%" cellspacing="0" summary="TABLE OF CONTENTS"> + +<tr><td align='left'>CHAUCER</td><td align='right'><a href='#Page_1'><b>1</b></a></td></tr> +<tr><td align='left'>"THE PASSIONATE PILGRIM"</td><td align='right'><a href='#Page_29'><b>29</b></a></td></tr> +<tr><td align='left'>SHAKESPEARE'S LYRICS</td><td align='right'><a href='#Page_39'><b>39</b></a></td></tr> +<tr><td align='left'>SAMUEL DANIEL</td><td align='right'><a href='#Page_48'><b>48</b></a></td></tr> +<tr><td align='left'>WILLIAM BROWNE</td><td align='right'><a href='#Page_59'><b>59</b></a></td></tr> +<tr><td align='left'>THOMAS CAREW</td><td align='right'><a href='#Page_67'><b>67</b></a></td></tr> +<tr><td align='left'>"ROBINSON CRUSOE"</td><td align='right'><a href='#Page_75'><b>75</b></a></td></tr> +<tr><td align='left'>LAWRENCE STERNE</td><td align='right'><a href='#Page_90'><b>90</b></a></td></tr> +<tr><td align='left'>SCOTT AND BURNS</td><td align='right'><a href='#Page_103'><b>103</b></a></td></tr> +<tr><td align='left'>CHARLES READE</td><td align='right'><a href='#Page_124'><b>124</b></a></td></tr> +<tr><td align='left'>HENRY KINGSLEY</td><td align='right'><a href='#Page_131'><b>131</b></a></td></tr> +<tr><td align='left'>ALEXANDER WILLIAM KINGLAKE</td><td align='right'><a href='#Page_141'><b>141</b></a></td></tr> +<tr><td align='left'>C.S.C. AND J.K.S</td><td align='right'><a href='#Page_147'><b>147</b></a></td></tr> +<tr><td align='left'>ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON</td><td align='right'><a href='#Page_156'><b>156</b></a></td></tr> +<tr><td align='left'>M. ZOLA</td><td align='right'><a href='#Page_192'><b>192</b></a></td></tr> +<tr><td align='left'>SELECTION</td><td align='right'><a href='#Page_198'><b>198</b></a></td></tr> +<tr><td align='left'>EXTERNALS</td><td align='right'><a href='#Page_204'><b>204</b></a></td></tr> +<tr><td align='left'>CLUB TALK</td><td align='right'><a href='#Page_222'><b>222</b></a></td></tr> +<tr><td align='left'>EXCURSIONISTS IN POETRY</td><td align='right'><a href='#Page_229'><b>229</b></a></td></tr> +<tr><td align='left'>THE POPULAR CONCEPTION OF A POET</td><td align='right'><a href='#Page_235'><b>235</b></a></td></tr> +<tr><td align='left'>POETS ON THEIR OWN ART</td><td align='right'><a href='#Page_245'><b>245</b></a></td></tr> +<tr><td align='left'>THE ATTITUDE OF THE PUBLIC TOWARDS LETTERS</td><td align='right'><a href='#Page_254'><b>254</b></a></td></tr> +<tr><td align='left'>A CASE OF BOOKSTALL CENSORSHIP</td><td align='right'><a href='#Page_267'><b>267</b></a></td></tr> +<tr><td align='left'>THE POOR LITTLE PENNY DREADFUL</td><td align='right'><a href='#Page_276'><b>276</b></a></td></tr> +<tr><td align='left'>IBSEN'S "PEER GYNT"</td><td align='right'><a href='#Page_283'><b>283</b></a></td></tr> +<tr><td align='left'>MR. SWINBURNE'S LATER MANNER</td><td align='right'><a href='#Page_297'><b>297</b></a></td></tr> +<tr><td align='left'>A MORNING WITH A BOOK</td><td align='right'><a href='#Page_306'><b>306</b></a></td></tr> +<tr><td align='left'>MR. JOHN DAVIDSON</td><td align='right'><a href='#Page_314'><b>314</b></a></td></tr> +<tr><td align='left'>BJÖRNSTERNE BJÖRNSON</td><td align='right'><a href='#Page_332'><b>332</b></a></td></tr> +<tr><td align='left'>MR. GEORGE MOORE</td><td align='right'><a href='#Page_341'><b>341</b></a></td></tr> +<tr><td align='left'>MRS. MARGARET L. WOODS</td><td align='right'><a href='#Page_349'><b>349</b></a></td></tr> +<tr><td align='left'>MR. HALL CAINE</td><td align='right'><a href='#Page_368'><b>368</b></a></td></tr> +<tr><td align='left'>MR. ANTHONY HOPE</td><td align='right'><a href='#Page_377'><b>377</b></a></td></tr> +<tr><td align='left'>"TRILBY"</td><td align='right'><a href='#Page_384'><b>384</b></a></td></tr> +<tr><td align='left'>MR. STOCKTON</td><td align='right'><a href='#Page_391'><b>391</b></a></td></tr> +<tr><td align='left'>BOW-WOW</td><td align='right'><a href='#Page_399'><b>399</b></a></td></tr> +<tr><td align='left'>OF SEASONABLE NUMBERS</td><td align='right'><a href='#Page_404'><b>404</b></a></td></tr> +</table> + + + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_1" id="Page_1">Pg 1</a></span></p> +<h2><a name="ADVENTURES_IN_CRITICISM" id="ADVENTURES_IN_CRITICISM"></a>ADVENTURES IN CRITICISM</h2> + + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="CHAUCER" id="CHAUCER"></a>CHAUCER</h2> + + +<p class="left"><b><i>March 17, 1894. Professor Skeat's Chaucer.</i></b></p> +<p>After twenty-five years of close toil, Professor Skeat has completed +his great edition of Chaucer.<a name="FNanchor_A_1" id="FNanchor_A_1"></a><a href="#Footnote_A_1" class="fnanchor">[A]</a> It is obviously easier to be +dithyrambic than critical in chronicling this event; to which indeed +dithyrambs are more appropriate than criticism. For when a man writes +<i>Opus vitæ meæ</i> at the conclusion of such a task as this, and so lays +down his pen, he must be a churl (even if he be also a competent +critic) who will allow no pause for admiration. And where, churl or no +churl, is the competent critic to be found? The Professor has here +compiled an entirely new text of Chaucer, founded solely on the +manuscripts and the earliest printed editions that are accessible. +Where Chaucer has translated, the originals have been <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_2" id="Page_2">Pg 2</a></span>carefully +studied: "the requirements of metre and grammar have been carefully +considered throughout": and "the phonology and spelling of every word +have received particular attention." We may add that all the materials +for a Life of Chaucer have been sought out, examined, and pieced +together with exemplary care.</p> + +<p>All this has taken Professor Skeat twenty-five years, and in order to +pass competent judgment on his conclusions the critic must follow him +step by step through his researches—which will take the critic (even +if we are charitable enough to suppose his mental equipment equal to +Professor Skeat's) another ten years at least. For our time, then, and +probably for many generations after, this edition of Chaucer will be +accepted as final.</p> + +<hr style='width: 45%;' /> + +<p class="left"><b><i>And the Clarendon Press.</i></b></p> + +<p>And I seem to see in this edition of Chaucer the beginning of the +realization of a dream which I have cherished since first I stood +within the quadrangle of the Clarendon Press—that fine combination of +the factory and the palace. The aspect of the Press itself repeats, as +it were, the characteristics of its government, which is con<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_3" id="Page_3">Pg 3</a></span>ducted by +an elected body as an honorable trust. Its delegates are not intent +only on money-getting. And yet the Clarendon Press makes money, and +the University can depend upon it for handsome subsidies. It may well +depend upon it for much more. As the Bank of England—to which in its +system of government it may be likened—is the focus of all the other +banks, private or joint-stock, in the kingdom, and the treasure-house, +not only of the nation's gold, but of its commercial honor, so the +Clarendon Press—traditionally careful in its selections and +munificent in its rewards—might become the academy or central temple +of English literature. If it would but follow up Professor Skeat's +Chaucer with a resolution to publish, at a pace suitable to so large +an undertaking, <i>all the great English classics</i>, edited with all the +scholarship its wealth can command, I believe that before long the +Clarendon Press would be found to be exercising an influence on +English letters which is at present lacking, and the lack of which +drives many to call, from time to time, for the institution in this +country of something corresponding to the French Academy. I need only +cite the examples of the Royal Society and the Marylebone Cricket +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_4" id="Page_4">Pg 4</a></span>Club to show that to create an authority in this manner is consonant +with our national practice. We should have that centre of correct +information, correct judgment, correct taste—that intellectual +metropolis, in short—which is the surest check upon provinciality in +literature; we should have a standard of English scholarship and an +authoritative dictionary of the English language; and at the same time +we should escape all that business of the green coat and palm branches +which has at times exposed the French Academy to much vulgar intrigue.</p> + +<p>Also, I may add, we should have the books. Where now is the great +edition of Bunyan, of Defoe, of Gibbon? The Oxford Press did once +publish an edition of Gibbon, worthy enough as far as type and paper +could make it worthy. But this is only to be found in second-hand +book-shops. Why are two rival London houses now publishing editions of +Scott, the better illustrated with silly pictures "out of the artists' +heads"? Where is the final edition of Ben Jonson?</p> + +<p>These and the rest are to come, perhaps. Of late we have had from +Oxford a great Bos<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_5" id="Page_5">Pg 5</a></span>well and a great Chaucer, and the magnificent +Dictionary is under weigh. So that it may be the dream is in process +of being realized, though none of us shall live to see its full +realization. Meanwhile such a work as Professor Skeat's Chaucer is not +only an answer to much chatter that goes up from time to time about +nine-tenths of the work on English literature being done out of +England. This and similar works are the best of all possible answers +to those gentlemen who so often interrupt their own chrematistic +pursuits to point out in the monthly magazines the short-comings of +our two great Universities as nurseries of chrematistic youth. In this +case it is Oxford that publishes, while Cambridge supplies the +learning: and from a natural affection I had rather it were always +Oxford that published, attracting to her service the learning, +scholarship, intelligence of all parts of the kingdom, or, for that +matter, of the world. So might she securely found new Schools of +English Literature—were she so minded, a dozen every year. They would +do no particular harm; and meanwhile, in Walton Street, out of earshot +of the New Schools, the Clarendon Press would go on serenely +performing its great work.</p> + +<hr style='width: 45%;' /> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_6" id="Page_6">Pg 6</a></span></p><p class="left"><b><i>March 23, 1895. Essentials and Accidents of Poetry.</i></b></p> + +<p>A work such as Professor Skeat's Chaucer puts the critic into a frame +of mind that lies about midway between modesty and cowardice. One +asks—"What right have I, who have given but a very few hours of my +life to the enjoying of Chaucer; who have never collated his MSS.; who +have taken the events of his life on trust from his biographers; who +am no authority on his spelling, his rhythms, his inflections, or the +spelling, rhythms, inflections of his age; who have read him only as I +have read other great poets, for the pleasure of reading—what right +have I to express any opinion on a work of this character, with its +imposing commentary, its patient research, its enormous accumulation +of special information?"</p> + +<p>Nevertheless, this diffidence, I am sure, may be carried too far. +After all is said and done, we, with our average life of three-score +years and ten, are the heirs of all the poetry of all the ages. We +must do our best in our allotted time, and Chaucer is but one of the +poets. He did not write for specialists in his own age, and his main +value for succeeding ages resides, not in his vocabulary, nor in his +inflections, nor in his indebtedness to foreign originals, nor in the +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_7" id="Page_7">Pg 7</a></span>metrical uniformities or anomalies that may be discovered in his +poems; but in his <i>poetry</i>. Other things are accidental; his poetry is +essential. Other interests—historical, philological, +antiquarian—must be recognized; but the poetical, or (let us say) the +spiritual, interest stands first and far ahead of all others. By +virtue of it Chaucer, now as always, makes his chief and his +convincing appeal to that which is spiritual in men. He appeals by the +poetical quality of such lines as these, from Emilia's prayer to +Diana:</p> + +<p> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">"Chaste goddesse, wel wostow that I</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">Desire to been a mayden al my lyf,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">Ne never wol I be no love ne wyf.</span><br /> +<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">I am, thou woost, yet of thy companye,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">A mayde, and love hunting and venerye,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">And for to walken in the wodes wilde,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">And noght to been a wyf, and be with childe..."</span><br /> +</p> + +<p>Or of these two from the Prioresses' Prologue:</p> + +<p> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">"O moder mayde! O mayde moder free!</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">O bush unbrent, brenninge in Moyses sighte..."</span><br /> +</p> + +<p>Or of these from the general Prologue—also thoroughly poetical, +though the quality differs:</p> + +<p> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">"Ther was also a Nonne, a Prioresse,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">That of hir smyling was ful simple and coy;</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">Hir gretteste ooth was but by sëynt Loy;</span><br /> +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_8" id="Page_8">Pg 8</a></span><span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">And she was cleped madame Eglentyne.</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">Ful wel she song the service divyne,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">Entuned in hir nose ful semely;</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">And Frensh she spak ful faire and fetisly,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">After the scole of Stratford atte Bowe,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">For Frensh of Paris was to hir unknowe..."</span><br /> +</p> + +<p>Now the essential quality of this and of all very great poetry is also +what we may call a <i>universal</i> quality; it appeals to those sympathies +which, unequally distributed and often distorted or suppressed, are +yet the common possessions of our species. This quality is the real +antiseptic of poetry: this it is that keeps a line of Homer +perennially fresh and in bloom:—</p> + +<p><a name="greek_1" id="greek_1"></a> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;" +title="Hôs phato tous d' êdê katechen physizoos aia">" Ὥς +φάτο +τοὺς +δ’ +ἤδη +κατέχεν +φυσίζοος +αἷα</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;" +title="en Lakedaimoni authi, philê en patridi gaiê.">ἐν +Λακεδαίμονι +αὖθι, +φίλῃ +ἐν +πατρίδι +γαιῃ."</span></p> + +<p>These lines live because they contain something which is also +permanent in man: they depend confidently on us, and will as +confidently depend on our great-grandchildren. I was glad to see this +point very courageously put the other day by Professor Hiram Corson, +of Cornell University, in an address on "The Aims of Literary +Study"—an address which Messrs. Macmillan have printed and published +here and in America. "All works of genius," says <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_9" id="Page_9">Pg 9</a></span>Mr. Corson, "render +the best service, in literary education, when they are first +assimilated in their absolute character. It is, of course, important +to know their relations to the several times and places in which they +were produced; but such knowledge is not for the tyro in literary +study. He must first know literature, if he is constituted so to know +it, in its absolute character. He can go into the philosophy of its +relationships later, if he like, when he has a true literary +education, and when the 'years that bring the philosophic mind' have +been reached. Every great production of genius is, in fact, in its +essential character, no more related to one age than to another. It is +only in its phenomenal character (its outward manifestations) that it +has a <i>special</i> relationship." And Mr. Corson very appositely quotes +Mr. Ruskin on Shakespeare's historical plays—</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>"If it be said that Shakespeare wrote perfect historical plays on +subjects belonging to the preceding centuries, I answer that they +<i>are</i> perfect plays just because there is no care about centuries +in them, but a life which all men recognize for the human life of +all time; and this it is, not because Shakespeare sought to give +universal truth, but because, painting honestly and completely +from the men about him, he painted that human nature which is, +indeed, constant enough—a rogue in <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_10" id="Page_10">Pg 10</a></span>the fifteenth century being +<i>at heart</i> what a rogue is in the nineteenth century and was in +the twelfth; and an honest or knightly man being, in like manner, +very similar to other such at any other time. And the work of +these great idealists is, therefore, always universal: not +because it is <i>not portrait</i>, but because it is <i>complete</i> +portrait down to the heart, which is the same in all ages; and +the work of the mean idealists is <i>not</i> universal, not because it +is portrait, but because it is <i>half</i> portrait—of the outside, +the manners and the dress, not of the heart. Thus Tintoret and +Shakespeare paint, both of them, simply Venetian and English +nature as they saw it in their time, down to the root; and it +does for <i>all</i> time; but as for any care to cast themselves into +the particular ways of thought, or custom, of past time in their +historical work, you will find it in neither of them, nor in any +other perfectly great man that I know of."—<i>Modern Painters.</i></p></div> + +<p>It will be observed that Mr. Corson, whose address deals primarily +with literary training, speaks of these absolute qualities of the +great masterpieces as the <i>first</i> object of study. But his words, and +Ruskin's words, fairly support my further contention that they remain +the <i>most important</i> object of study, no matter how far one's literary +training may have proceeded. To the most erudite student of Chaucer in +the wide world Chaucer's poetry should be the dominant object of +interest in connection with Chaucer.</p> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_11" id="Page_11">Pg 11</a></span></p><p>But when the elaborate specialist confronts us, we are apt to forget +that poetry is meant for mankind, and that its appeal is, or should +be, universal. We pay tribute to the unusual: and so far as this +implies respect for protracted industry and indefatigable learning, we +do right. But in so far as it implies even a momentary confusion of +the essentials with the accidentals of poetry, we do wrong. And the +specialist himself continues admirable only so long as he keeps them +distinct.</p> + +<p>I hasten to add that Professor Skeat <i>does</i> keep them distinct very +successfully. In a single sentence of admirable brevity he tells us +that of Chaucer's poetical excellence "it is superfluous to speak; +Lowell's essay on Chaucer in 'My Study Windows' gives a just estimate +of his powers." And with this, taking the poetical excellence for +granted, he proceeds upon his really invaluable work of preparing a +standard text of Chaucer and illustrating it out of the stores of his +apparently inexhaustible learning. The result is a monument to +Chaucer's memory such as never yet was reared to English poet. Douglas +Jerrold assured Mrs. Cowden Clarke that, when her time came to <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_12" id="Page_12">Pg 12</a></span>enter +Heaven, Shakespeare would advance and greet her with the first kiss of +welcome, "<i>even</i> should her husband happen to be present." One can +hardly with decorum imagine Professor Skeat being kissed; but Chaucer +assuredly will greet him with a transcendent smile.</p> + +<p>The Professor's genuine admiration, however, for the poetical +excellence of his poet needs to be insisted upon, not only because the +nature of his task keeps him reticent, but because his extraordinary +learning seems now and then to stand between him and the natural +appreciation of a passage. It was not quite at haphazard that I chose +just now the famous description of the Prioresse as an illustration of +Chaucer's poetical quality. The Professor has a long note upon the +French of Stratford atte Bowe. Most of us have hitherto believed the +passage to be an example, and a very pretty one, of Chaucer's +playfulness. The Professor almost loses his temper over this: he +speaks of it as a view "commonly adopted by newspaper-writers who know +only this one line of Chaucer, and cannot forbear to use it in jest." +"Even Tyrwhitt and Wright," he adds more in sorrow than in anger, +"have thoughtlessly <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_13" id="Page_13">Pg 13</a></span>given currency to this idea." "Chaucer," the +Professor explains, "merely states a <i>fact</i>" (the italics are his +own), "viz., that the Prioress spoke the usual Anglo-French of the +English Court, of the English law-courts, and of the English +ecclesiastics of higher ranks. The poet, however, had been himself in +France, and knew precisely the difference between the two dialects; +but he had no special reason for thinking <i>more highly</i>" (the +Professor's italics again) "of the Parisian than of the +Anglo-French.... Warton's note on the line is quite sane. He shows +that Queen Philippa wrote business letters in French (doubtless +Anglo-French) with 'great propriety'" ... and so on. You see, there +was a Benedictine nunnery at Stratford-le-Bow; and as "Mr. Cutts says, +very justly, 'She spoke French correctly, though with an accent which +savored of the Benedictine Convent at Stratford-le-Bow, where she had +been educated, rather than of Paris.'" So there you have a fact.</p> + +<p>And, now you have it, doesn't it look rather like Bitzer's horse?</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>"Bitzer," said Thomas Gradgrind. "Your definition of a horse?"</p> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_14" id="Page_14">Pg 14</a></span></p><p>"Quadruped. Graminivorous. Forty teeth, namely twenty-four +grinders, four eye-teeth, and twelve incisive. Sheds coat in the +spring; in marshy countries sheds hoofs too. Hoofs hard, but +requiring to be shod with iron. Age known by marks in mouth." +Thus (and much more) Bitzer.</p></div> + +<hr style='width: 45%;' /> + +<p class="left"><b><i>March 30, 1895. The Texts of the "Canterbury Tales."</i></b></p> + +<p>It follows, I hope, from what I said last week, that by far the most +important service an editor can render to Chaucer and to us is to give +us a pure text, through which the native beauty of the poetry may best +shine. Such a text Professor Skeat has been able to prepare, in part +by his own great industry, in part because he has entered into the +fruit of other men's labors. The epoch-making event in the history of +the Canterbury Tales (with which alone we are concerned here) was Dr. +Furnivall's publication for the Chaucer Society of the famous +"Six-Text Edition." Dr. Furnivall set to work upon this in 1868.</p> + +<p>The Six Texts were these:—</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>1. The great "Ellesmere" MS. (so called after its owner, the Earl +of Ellesmere). "The finest and best of all the MSS. now extant."</p> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_15" id="Page_15">Pg 15</a></span></p><p>2. The "Hengwrt" MS., belonging to Mr. William W.E. Wynne, of +Peniarth; very closely agreeing with the "Ellesmere."</p> + +<p>3. The "Cambridge" MS. Gg 4.27, in the University Library. The +best copy in any public library. This also follows the +"Ellesmere" closely.</p> + +<p>4. The "Corpus" MS., in the library of Corpus Christi College, +Oxford.</p> + +<p>5. The "Petworth" MS., belonging to Lord Leconfield.</p> + +<p>6. The "Lansdowne" MS. in the British Museum. "Not a good MS., +being certainly the worst of the six; but worth reprinting owing +to the frequent use that has been made of it by editors."</p></div> + +<p>In his Introduction, Professor Skeat enumerates no fewer than +fifty-nine MSS. of the Tales: but of these the above six (and a +seventh to be mentioned presently) are the most important. The most +important of all is the "Ellesmere"—the great "find" of the Six-Text +Edition. "The best in nearly every <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_16" id="Page_16">Pg 16</a></span>respect," says Professor Skeat. +"It not only gives good lines and good sense, but is also (usually) +grammatically accurate and thoroughly well spelt. The publication of +it has been a great boon to all Chaucer students, for which Dr. +Furnivall will be ever gratefully remembered.... This splendid MS. has +also the great merit of being complete, requiring no supplement from +any other source, except in a few cases when a line or two has been +missed."</p> + +<p>Professor Skeat has therefore chiefly employed the Six-Text Edition, +supplemented by a seventh famous MS., the "Harleian 7334"—printed in +full for the Chaucer Society in 1885—a MS. of great importance, +differing considerably from the "Ellesmere." But the Professor judges +it "a most dangerous MS. to trust to, unless constantly corrected by +others, and not at all fitted to be taken as the basis of a text." For +the basis of his text, then, he takes the Ellesmere MS., correcting it +freely by the other seven MSS. mentioned.</p> + +<p>Now, as fate would have it, in the year 1888 Dr. Furnivall invited Mr. +Alfred W. Pollard to collaborate with him in an edition of Chaucer +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_17" id="Page_17">Pg 17</a></span>which he had for many years promised to bring out for Messrs. +Macmillan. The basis of their text of the Tales was almost precisely +that chosen by Professor Skeat, <i>i.e.</i> a careful collation of the Six +Texts and the Harleian 7334, due preponderance being given to the +Ellesmere MS., and all variations from it stated in the notes. "A +beginning was made," says Mr. Pollard, "but the giant in the +partnership had been used for a quarter of a century to doing, for +nothing, all the hard work for other people, and could not spare from +his pioneering the time necessary to enter into the fruit of his own +Chaucer labors. Thus the partner who was not a giant was left to go on +pretty much by himself. When I had made some progress, Professor Skeat +informed us that the notes which he had been for years accumulating +encouraged him to undertake an edition on a large scale, and I gladly +abandoned, in favor of an editor of so much greater width of reading, +the Library Edition which had been arranged for in the original +agreement of Dr. Furnivall and myself with Messrs. Macmillan. I +thought, however, that the work which I had done might fairly be used +for an edition on a less extensive plan and intended for a less +stalwart class of <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_18" id="Page_18">Pg 18</a></span>readers, and of this the present issue of the +Canterbury Tales is an instalment."<a name="FNanchor_B_2" id="FNanchor_B_2"></a><a href="#Footnote_B_2" class="fnanchor">[B]</a></p> + +<p>So it comes about that we have two texts before us, each based on a +collation of the Six-Text edition and the Harleian MS. 7334—the chief +difference being that Mr. Pollard adheres closely to the Ellesmere +MS., while Professor Skeat allows himself more freedom. This is how +they start—</p> + +<p> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">"Whán that Apríllė with híse shourės soote</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">The droghte of March hath percėd to the roote,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">And bathed every veyne in swich licóur</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">Of which vertú engendred is the flour;</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">Whan Zephirus eck with his swetė breeth 5</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">Inspirėd hath in every holt and heeth</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">The tendrė croppės, and the yongė sonne</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">Hath in the Ram his halfė cours y-ronne,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">And smalė fowelės maken melodye</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">That slepen al the nvght with open eye,— 10</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">So priketh hem Natúre in hir coráges,—</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">Thanne longen folk to goon on pilgrimages ..."</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 15em;">(<i>Pollard</i>.)</span><br /></p> + +<p> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">"Whan that Aprille with his shoures sote</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">The droghte of Marche hath perced to the rote,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">And bathed every veyne in swich licour</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">Of which vertu engendred is the flour;</span><br /> +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_19" id="Page_19">Pg 19</a></span><span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">Whan Zephirus eek with his swete breeth 5</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">Inspired hath in every holt and heeth</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">The tendre croppes, and the yong sonne</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">Hath in the Ram his halfe cours y ronne,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">And smale fowles maken melodye,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">That slepen al the night with open yë, 10</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">(So priketh hem nature in hir corages:)</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">Than longen folk to goon on pilgrimages..."</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 15em;">(<i>Skeat.</i>)</span><br /></p> + +<p>On these two extracts it must be observed (1) that the accents and the +dotted e's in the first are Mr. Pollard's own contrivances for helping +the scansion; (2) in the second, l. 10, "yë" is a special contrivance +of Professor Skeat. "The scribes," he says (Introd. Vol. IV. p. xix.), +"usually write <i>eye</i> in the middle of a line, but when they come to it +at the end of one, they are fairly puzzled. In l. 10, the scribe of Hn +('Hengwrt') writes <i>lye</i>, and that of Ln ('Lansdowne') writes <i>yhe</i>; +and the variations on this theme are curious. The spelling <i>ye</i> (= yë) +is, however, common.... I print it 'yë' to distinguish it from <i>ye</i>, +the pl. pronoun." The other differences are accounted for by the +varying degrees in which the two editors depend on the Ellesmere MS. +Mr. Pollard sticks to the Ellesmere. Professor Skeat corrects it by +the others. Obviously the <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_20" id="Page_20">Pg 20</a></span>editor who allows himself the wider range +lays himself open to more criticism, point by point. He has to justify +himself in each particular case, while the other's excuse is set down +once for all in his preface. But after comparing the two texts in over +a dozen passages, I have had to vote in almost every case for +Professor Skeat.</p> + +<p class="left"><b><i>The Alleged Difficulty of Reading Chaucer.</i></b></p> + +<p>The differences, however, are always trifling. The reader will allow +that in each case we have a clear, intelligible text: a text that +allows Chaucer to be read and enjoyed without toil or vexation. For my +part, I hope there is no presumption in saying that I could very well +do without Mr. Pollard's accents and dotted e's. Remove them, and I +contend that any Englishman with an ear for poetry can read either of +the two texts without difficulty. A great deal too much fuss is made +over the pronunciation and scansion of Chaucer. After all, we are +Englishmen, with an instinct for understanding the language we +inherit; in the evolution of our language we move on the same lines as +our fathers; and Chaucer's English is at least no further removed from +us than the Lowland dialect of Scott's novels. Moreover, <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_21" id="Page_21">Pg 21</a></span>we have in +reading Chaucer what we lack in reading Scott—the assistance of +rhythm; and the rhythm of Chaucer is as clearly marked as that of +Tennyson. Professor Skeat might very well have allowed his admirable +text to stand alone. For his rules of pronunciation, with their +elaborate system of signs and symbols, seem to me (to put it coarsely) +phonetics gone mad. This, for instance, is how he would have us read +the Tales:—</p> + +<p> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">"Whán-dhat Ápríllə/wídh iz-shúurez sóotə</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">dhə-drúuht' ov-Márchə/hath pérsed tóo dhə róotə,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">ənd-báadhed év'ri véinə/in-swích likúur,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">ov-whích vertýy/enjéndred iz dhə flúur...."</span><br /> +</p> + +<p>—and so on? I think it may safely be said that if a man need this +sort of assistance in reading or pronouncing Chaucer, he had better +let Chaucer alone altogether, or read him in a German prose +translation.</p> + +<hr style='width: 45%;' /> + +<p class="left"><b><i>April 6, 1895.</i></b></p> + +<p>Why is Chaucer so easy to read? At a first glance a page of the +"Canterbury Tales" appears more formidable than a page of the "Faërie +Queene." As a matter of fact, it is less formidable; or, if this be +denied, everyone <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_22" id="Page_22">Pg 22</a></span>will admit that twenty pages of the "Canterbury +Tales" are less formidable than twenty pages of the "Faërie Queene." I +might bring several recent editors and critics to testify that, after +the first shock of the archaic spelling and the final "e," an +intelligent public will soon come to terms with Chaucer; but the +unconscious testimony of the intelligent public itself is more +convincing. Chaucer is read year after year by a large number of men +and women. Spenser, in many respects a greater poet, is also read; but +by far fewer. Nobody, I imagine, will deny this. But what is the +reason of it?</p> + +<p>The first and chief reason is this—Forms of language change, but the +great art of narrative appeals eternally to men, and its rules rest on +principles older than Homer. And whatever else may be said of Chaucer, +he is a superb narrator. To borrow a phrase from another venerable +art, he is always "on the ball." He pursues the story—the story, and +again the story. Mr. Ward once put this admirably—</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>"The vivacity of joyousness of Chaucer's poetic temperament ... +make him amusingly impatient of epical lengths, abrupt in his +transitions, and anxious, with an anxiety usually manifested by +readers rather than <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_23" id="Page_23">Pg 23</a></span>by writers, to come to the point, 'to the +great effect,' as he is wont to call it. 'Men,' he says, 'may +overlade a ship or barge, and therefore I will skip at once to +the effect, and let all the rest slip.' And he unconsciously +suggests a striking difference between himself and the great +Elizabethan epic poet who owes so much to him, when he declines +to make as long a tale of the chaff or of the straw as of the +corn, and to describe all the details of a marriage-feast +<i>seriatim</i>:</p> + +<p> +'The fruit of every tale is for to say:<br /> +They eat and drink, and dance and sing and play.'<br /> +</p> + +<p>This may be the fruit; but epic poets, from Homer downward, have +been generally in the habit of not neglecting the foliage. +Spenser in particular has that impartial copiousness which we +think it our duty to admire in the Ionic epos, but which, if +truth were told, has prevented generations of Englishmen from +acquiring an intimate personal acquaintance with the 'Fairy +Queen.' With Chaucer the danger certainly rather lay in the +opposite direction."</p></div> + +<p>Now, if we are once interested in a story, small difficulties of +speech or spelling will not readily daunt us in the time-honored +pursuit of "what happens next"—certainly not if we know enough of our +author to feel sure he will come to the point and tell us what happens +next with the least possible palaver. We have a definite want and a +certainty of being satisfied promptly. But with Spenser this +satisfac<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_24" id="Page_24">Pg 24</a></span>tion may, and almost certainly will, be delayed over many +pages: and though in the meanwhile a thousand casual beauties may +appeal to us, the main thread of our attention is sensibly relaxed. +Chaucer is the minister and Spenser the master: and the difference +between pursuing what we want and pursuing we-know-not-what must +affect the ardor of the chase. Even if we take the future on trust, +and follow Spenser to the end, we cannot look back on a book of the +"Faërie Queene" as on part of a good story: for it is admittedly an +unsatisfying and ill-constructed story. But my point is that an +ordinary reader resents being asked to take the future on trust while +the author luxuriates in casual beauties of speech upon every mortal +subject but the one in hand. The first principle of good narrative is +to stick to the subject; the second, to carry the audience along in a +series of small surprises—satisfying expectation and going just a +little beyond. If it were necessary to read fifty pages before +enjoying Chaucer, though the sum of eventual enjoyment were as great +as it now is, Chaucer would never be read. We master small +difficulties line by line because our recompense comes line by line.</p> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_25" id="Page_25">Pg 25</a></span></p><p>Moreover, it is as certain as can be that we read Chaucer to-day more +easily than our fathers read him one hundred, two hundred, three +hundred years ago. And I make haste to add that the credit of this +does not belong to the philologists.</p> + +<p>The Elizabethans, from Spenser onward, found Chaucer distressingly +archaic. When Sir Francis Kynaston, <i>temp</i>. Charles I., translated +"Troilus and Criseyde," Cartwright congratulated him that he had at +length made it possible to read Chaucer without a dictionary. And from +Dryden's time to Wordsworth's he was an "uncouthe unkiste" barbarian, +full of wit, but only tolerable in polite paraphrase. Chaucer himself +seems to have foreboded this, towards the close of his "Troilus and +Criseyde," when he addresses his "litel book"—</p> + +<p> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">"And for there is so great diversitee</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">In English, and in wryting of our tonge,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">So preye I God that noon miswryte thee,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">Ne thee mismetre for defaute of tonge.</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">And red wher-so thou be, or elles songe,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">That thou be understoude I God beseche!..."</span><br /> +</p> + +<p>And therewith, as though on purpose to defeat his fears, he proceeded +to turn three stanzas of <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_26" id="Page_26">Pg 26</a></span>Boccaccio into English that tastes almost as +freshly after five hundred years as on the day it was written. He is +speaking of Hector's death:—</p> + +<p> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">"And whan that he was slayn in this manere,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">His lighte goost ful blisfully it went</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">Up to the holownesse of the seventh spere</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">In convers leting every element;</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">And ther he saugh, with ful avysement,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">The erratik starres, herkening armonye</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">With sownes ful of hevenish melodye.</span><br /> +<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">"And down from thennes faste he gan avyse</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">This litel spot of erthe, that with the see</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">Embraced is, and fully gan despyse</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">This wrecched world, and held al vanitee</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">To respect of the pleyn felicitee</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">That is in hevene above; and at the laste,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">Ther he was slayn, his loking down he caste;</span><br /> +<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">"And in himself he lough right at the wo</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">Of hem that wepten for his death so faste;</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">And dampned al our werk that folweth so</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">The blinde lust, the which that may not laste,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">And sholden al our harte on hevene caste.</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">And forth he wente, shortly for to telle,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">Ther as Mercurie sorted him to dwelle...."</span><br /> +</p> + +<p>Who have prepared our ears to admit this passage, and many as fine? +Not the editors, who point out very properly that it is a close +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_27" id="Page_27">Pg 27</a></span>translation from Boccaccio's "Teseide," xi. 1-3. The information is +valuable, as far as it goes; but what it fails to explain is just the +marvel of the passage—viz., the abiding "Englishness" of it, the +native ring of it in our ears after five centuries of linguistic and +metrical development. To whom, besides Chaucer himself, do we owe +this? For while Chaucer has remained substantially the same, +apparently we have an aptitude that our grandfathers and +great-grandfathers had not. The answer surely is: We owe it to our +nineteenth century poets, and particularly to Tennyson, Swinburne, and +William Morris. Years ago Mr. R.H. Horne said most acutely that the +principle of Chaucer's rhythm is "inseparable from a full and fair +exercise of the genius of our language in versification." This "full +and fair exercise" became a despised, almost a lost, tradition after +Chaucer's death. The rhythms of Skelton, of Surrey, and Wyatt, were +produced on alien and narrower lines. Revived by Shakespeare and the +later Elizabethans, it fell into contempt again until Cowper once more +began to claim freedom for English rhythm, and after him Coleridge, +and the despised Leigh Hunt. But never has its full liberty been so +triumphantly <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_28" id="Page_28">Pg 28</a></span>asserted as by the three poets I have named above. If we +are at home as we read Chaucer, it is because they have instructed us +in the liberty which Chaucer divined as the only true way.</p> + +<div class="footnotes"><h3>FOOTNOTES:</h3> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_A_1" id="Footnote_A_1"></a><a href="#FNanchor_A_1"><span class="label">[A]</span></a> The Complete Works of Geoffrey Chaucer. Edited, from +numerous manuscripts, by the Rev. Walter W. Skeat, Litt. D., LL.D., +M.A. In six volumes. Oxford: At the Clarendon Press. 1894.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_B_2" id="Footnote_B_2"></a><a href="#FNanchor_B_2"><span class="label">[B]</span></a> Chaucer's Canterbury Tales. Edited, with Notes and +Introduction, by Alfred W. Pollard. London: Macmillan & Co.</p></div> +</div> + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_29" id="Page_29">Pg 29</a></span></p> +<h2><a name="THE_PASSIONATE_PILGRIM" id="THE_PASSIONATE_PILGRIM"></a>"THE PASSIONATE PILGRIM."</h2> + + +<p class="left"><b><i>January 5, 1805. "The Passionate Pilgrim."</i></b></p> + +<p><i>The Passionate Pilgrim</i> (1599). <i>Reprinted with a Note about the +Book, by Arthur L. Humphreys. London: Privately Printed by Arthur L. +Humphreys, of</i> 187, <i>Piccadilly. MDCCCXCIV.</i></p> + +<p>I was about to congratulate Mr. Humphreys on his printing when, upon +turning to the end of this dainty little volume, I discovered the +well-known colophon of the Chiswick Press—"Charles Whittingham & Co., +Took's Court, Chancery Lane, London." So I congratulate Messrs. +Charles Whittingham & Co. instead, and suggest that the imprint should +have run "Privately Printed <i>for</i> Arthur L. Humphreys."</p> + +<p>This famous (or, if you like it, infamous) little anthology of thirty +leaves has been singularly unfortunate in its title-pages. It was +first published in 1599 as <i>The Passionate Pilgrims. By W. +Shakespeare. At London. Printed <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_30" id="Page_30">Pg 30</a></span>for W. Jaggard, and are to be sold by +W. Leake, at the Greyhound in Paules Churchyard.</i> This, of course, was +disingenuous. Some of the numbers were by Shakespeare: but the +authorship of some remains doubtful to this day, and others the +enterprising Jaggard had boldly conveyed from Marlowe, Richard +Barnefield, and Bartholomew Griffin. In short, to adapt a famous line +upon a famous lexicon, "the best part was Shakespeare, the rest was +not." For this, Jaggard has been execrated from time to time with +sufficient heartiness. Mr. Swinburne, in his latest volume of Essays, +calls him an "infamous pirate, liar, and thief." Mr. Humphreys +remarks, less vivaciously, that "He was not careful and prudent, or he +would not have attached the name of Shakespeare to a volume which was +only partly by the bard—that was his crime. Had Jaggard foreseen the +tantrums and contradictions he caused some commentators—Mr. Payne +Collier, for instance—he would doubtless have substituted 'By William +Shakespeare <i>and others</i>' for 'By William Shakespeare.' Thus he might +have saved his reputation, and this hornets' nest which now and then +rouses itself afresh around his aged ghost of three centuries ago."</p> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_31" id="Page_31">Pg 31</a></span></p><p>That a ghost can suffer no inconvenience from hornets I take to be +indisputable: but as a defence of Jaggard the above hardly seems +convincing. One might as plausibly justify a forger on the ground +that, had he foreseen the indignation of the prosecuting counsel, he +would doubtless have saved his reputation by forbearing to forge. But +before constructing a better defence, let us hear the whole tale of +the alleged misdeeds. Of the second edition of <i>The Passionate +Pilgrim</i> no copy exists. Nothing whatever is known of it, and the +whole edition may have been but an ideal construction of Jaggard's +sportive fancy. But in 1612 appeared <i>The Passionate Pilgrime, or +certaine amorous Sonnets between Venus and Adonis, newly corrected and +augmented. By W. Shakespeare. The third edition. Whereunto is newly +added two Love Epistles, the first from Paris to Hellen, and Hellen's +answere back again to Paris. Printed by W. Jaggard.</i> (These "two Love +Epistles" were really by Thomas Heywood.) This title-page was very +quickly cancelled, and Shakespeare's name omitted.<br /></p> + +<p class="left"><i><b>Mr. Humphrey's Hypothesis.</b></i></p> + +<p>These are the bare facts. Now observe how they appear when set forth +by Mr. Humphreys:—</p> +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_32" id="Page_32">Pg 32</a></span></p> +<div class="blockquot"><p>"Shakespeare, who, when the first edition was issued, was aged +thirty-five, acted his part as a great man very well, for he with +dignity took no notice of the error on the title-page of the +first edition, attributing to him poems which he had never +written. But when Jaggard went on sinning, and the third edition +appeared under Shakespeare's name <i>solely</i>, though it had poems +by Thomas Heywood, and others as well, Jaggard was promptly +pulled up by both Shakespeare and Heywood. Upon this the +publisher appears very properly to have printed a new title-page, +omitting the name of Shakespeare."</p></div> + +<p>Upon this I beg leave to observe—(1) That although it may very likely +have been at Shakespeare's own request that his name was removed from +the title-page of the third edition, Mr. Humphreys has no right to +state this as an ascertained fact. (2) That I fail to understand, if +Shakespeare acted properly in case of the third edition, why we should +talk nonsense about his "acting the part of a great man very well" and +"with dignity taking no notice of the error" in the first edition. In +the first edition he was wrongly credited with pieces that be<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_33" id="Page_33">Pg 33</a></span>longed +to Marlowe, Barnefield, Griffin, and some authors unknown. In the +third he was credited with these and some pieces by Heywood as well. +In the name of common logic I ask why, if it were "dignified" to say +nothing in the case of Marlowe and Barnefield, it suddenly became +right and proper to protest in the case of Heywood? But (3) what right +have we to assume that Shakespeare "took no notice of the error on the +title-page of the first edition"? We know this only—that if he +protested, he did not prevail as far as the first edition was +concerned. That edition may have been already exhausted. It is even +possible that he <i>did</i> prevail in the matter of the second edition, +and that Jaggard reverted to his old courses in the third. I don't for +a moment suppose this was the case. I merely suggest that where so +many hypotheses will fit the scanty data known, it is best to lay down +no particular hypothesis as fact.</p> + +<p class="left"><i><b>Another.</b></i></p> + +<p>For I imagine that anyone can, in five minutes, fit up an hypothesis +quite as valuable as Mr. Humphreys'. Here is one which at least has +the merit of not making Shakespeare look a fool:—W. Jaggard, +publisher, <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_34" id="Page_34">Pg 34</a></span>comes to William Shakespeare, poet, with the information +that he intends to bring out a small miscellany of verse. If the poet +has an unconsidered trifle or so to spare, Jaggard will not mind +giving a few shillings for them. "You may have, if you like," says +Shakespeare, "the rough copies of some songs in my <i>Love's Labour's +Lost</i>, published last year"; and, being further encouraged, searches +among his rough MSS., and tosses Jaggard a lyric or two and a couple +of sonnets. Jaggard pays his money, and departs with the verses. When +the miscellany appears, Shakespeare finds his name alone upon the +title-page, and remonstrates. But, of the defrauded ones, Marlowe is +dead; Barnefield has retired to live the life of a country gentleman +in Shropshire; Griffin dwells in Coventry (where he died, three years +later). These are the men injured; and if they cannot, or will not, +move in the business, Shakespeare (whose case at law would be more +difficult) can hardly be expected to. So he contents himself with +strong expressions at The Mermaid. But in 1612 Jaggard repeats his +offence, and is indiscreet enough to add Heywood to the list of the +spoiled. Heywood lives in London, on the spot; and Shakespeare, now +retired to Strat<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_35" id="Page_35">Pg 35</a></span>ford, is of more importance than he was in 1599. +Armed with Shakespeare's authority Heywood goes to Jaggard and +threatens; and the publisher gives way.</p> + +<p>Whatever our hypothesis, we cannot maintain that Jaggard behaved well. +On the other hand, it were foolish to judge his offence as if the man +had committed it the day before yesterday. Conscience in matters of +literary copyright has been a plant of slow growth. But a year or two +ago respectable citizens of the United States were publishing our +books "free of authorial expenses," and even corrected our imperfect +works without consulting us. We must admit that Jaggard acted up to +Luther's maxim, "<i>Pecca fortiter</i>." He went so far as to include a +piece so well known as Marlowe's <i>Live with me and be my love</i>—which +proves at any rate his indifference to the chances of detection. But +to speak of him as one would speak of a similar offender in this New +Year of Grace is simply to forfeit one's claim to an historical sense.</p> + +<p class="left"><i><b>The Book.</b></i></p> + +<p>What further palliation can we find? Mr. Swinburne calls the book "a +worthless little <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_36" id="Page_36">Pg 36</a></span>volume of stolen and mutilated poetry, patched up +and padded out with dirty and dreary doggrel, under the senseless and +preposterous title of <i>The Passionate Pilgrim</i>." On the other hand, +Mr. Humphreys maintains that "Jaggard, at any rate, had very good +taste. This is partly seen in the choice of a title. Few books have so +charming a name as <i>The Passionate Pilgrim</i>. It is a perfect title. +Jaggard also set up a good precedent, for this collection was +published a year before <i>England's Helicon</i>, and, of course, very many +years before any authorized collection of Shakespeare's 'Poems' was +issued. We see in <i>The Passionate Pilgrim</i> a forerunner of <i>The Golden +Treasury</i> and other anthologies."</p> + +<p>Now, as for the title, if the value of a title lie in its application, +Mr. Swinburne is right. It has little relevance to the verses in the +volume. On the other hand, as a portly and attractive mouthful of +syllables <i>The Passionate Pilgrim</i> can hardly be surpassed. If not "a +perfect title," it is surely "a charming name." But Mr. Humphreys' +contention that Jaggard "set up a good precedent" and produced a +"forerunner" of English anthologies becomes <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_37" id="Page_37">Pg 37</a></span>absurd when we remember +that <i>Tottel's Miscellany</i> was published in June, 1557 (just forty-two +years before <i>The Passionate Pilgrim</i>), and had reached an eighth +edition by 1587; that <i>The Paradise of Dainty Devices</i> appeared in +1576; <i>A Gorgeous Gallery of Gallant Inventions</i> in 1578; <i>A Handfull +of Pleasant Delights</i> in 1584; and <i>The Phoenix' Nest</i> in 1593.</p> + +<p>Almost as wide of the mark is Mr. Swinburne's description of the +volume as "worthless." It contains twenty-one numbers, besides that +lofty dirge, so unapproachably solemn, <i>The Phoenix and the Turtle</i>. +Of these, five are undoubtedly by Shakespeare. A sixth (<i>Crabbed age +and youth</i>), if not by Shakespeare, is one of the loveliest lyrics in +the language, and I for my part could give it to no other man. Note +also that but for Jaggard's enterprise this jewel had been irrevocably +lost to us, since it is known only through <i>The Passionate Pilgrim</i>. +Marlowe's <i>Live with me and be my love</i>, and Barnefield's <i>As it fell +upon a day</i>, make numbers seven and eight. And I imagine that even Mr. +Swinburne cannot afford to scorn <i>Sweet rose, fair flower, untimely +pluck'd, soon vaded</i>—which again only occurs in <i>The Passionate +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_38" id="Page_38">Pg 38</a></span>Pilgrim</i>. These nine numbers, with <i>The Phoenix and the Turtle</i>, make +up more than half the book. Among the rest we have the pretty and +respectable lyrics, <i>If music and sweet poetry agree; Good night, good +rest; Lord, how mine eyes throw gazes to the east. When as thine eye +hath chose the dame</i>, and the gay little song, <i>It was a Lording's +daughter</i>. There remain the <i>Venus and Adonis</i> sonnets and <i>My flocks +feed not</i>. Mr. Swinburne may call these "dirty and dreary doggrel," an +he list, with no more risk than of being held a somewhat over-anxious +moralist. But to call the whole book worthless is mere abuse of words.</p> + +<p>It is true, nevertheless, that one of the only two copies existing of +the first edition was bought for three halfpence.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_39" id="Page_39">Pg 39</a></span></p> +<h2><a name="SHAKESPEARES_LYRICS" id="SHAKESPEARES_LYRICS"></a>SHAKESPEARE'S LYRICS</h2> + + +<p class="left"><i><b>August 25, 1894. Shakespeare's Lyrics.</b></i></p> + +<p>In their re-issue of <i>The Aldine Poets</i>, Messrs. George Bell & Sons +have made a number of concessions to public taste. The new binding is +far more pleasing than the old; and in some cases, where the notes and +introductory memoirs had fallen out of date, new editors have been set +to work, with satisfactory results. It is therefore no small +disappointment to find that the latest volume, "The Poems of +Shakespeare," is but a reprint from stereotyped plates of the Rev. +Alexander Dyce's text, notes and memoir.</p> + +<p class="left"><i><b>The Rev. A. Dyce.</b></i></p> + +<p>Now, of the Rev. Alexander Dyce it may be fearlessly asserted that his +criticism is not for all time. Even had he been less prone to accept +the word of John Payne Collier for gospel; even had Shakespearian +criticism made no perceptible advance during the last quarter of a +century, yet there is that in the Rev. Alexander Dyce's treatment of +his poet which would warn us to pause before accepting his word as +final. <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_40" id="Page_40">Pg 40</a></span>As a test of his æsthetic judgment we may turn to the "Songs +from the Plays of Shakespeare" with which this volume concludes. It +had been as well, in a work of this sort, to include all the songs; +but he gives us a selection only, and an uncommonly bad selection. I +have tried in vain to discover a single principle of taste underlying +it. On what principle, for instance, can a man include the song "Come +away, come away, death" from <i>Twelfth Night</i>, and omit "O mistress +mine, where are you roaming?"; or include Amiens' two songs from <i>As +you Like It</i>, and omit the incomparable "It was a lover and his lass"? +Or what but stark insensibility can explain the omission of "Take, O +take those lips away," and the bridal song "Roses, their sharp spines +being gone," that opens <i>The Two Noble Kinsmen</i>? But stay: the Rev. +Alexander Dyce may attribute this last pair to Fletcher. "Take, O take +those lips away" certainly occurs (with a second and inferior stanza) +in Fletcher's <i>The Bloody Brother</i>, first published in 1639; but Dyce +gives no hint of his belief that Fletcher wrote it. We are, therefore, +left to conclude that Dyce thought it unworthy of a place in his +collection. On <i>The Two Noble Kinsmen</i> (first published in 1634) <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_41" id="Page_41">Pg 41</a></span>Dyce +is more explicit. In a footnote to the Memoir he says: "The title-page +of the first edition of Fletcher's <i>Two Noble Kinsmen</i> attributes the +play partly to Shakespeare; I do not think our poet had any share in +its composition; but I must add that Mr. C. Lamb (a great authority in +such matters) inclines to a different opinion." When "Mr. C. Lamb" and +the Rev. Alexander Dyce hold opposite opinions, it need not be +difficult to choose. And surely, if internal evidence count for +anything at all, the lines</p> + +<p> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">"Maiden pinks, of odour faint,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">Daisies smell-less, yet most quaint,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 6em;">And sweet thyme true."</span><br /> +</p> + +<p>or—</p> + +<p> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">"Oxlips in their cradles growing"</span><br /> +</p> + +<p>or—</p> + +<p> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">"Not an angel of the air,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">Bird melodious, or bird fair,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 6em;">Be absent hence."</span><br /> +</p> + +<p>—were written by Shakespeare and not by Fletcher. Nor is it any +detraction from Fletcher to take this view. Shakespeare himself has +left songs hardly finer than Fletcher wrote at his best—hardly finer, +for instance, than that magnificent pair from <i>Valentinian</i>. Only the +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_42" id="Page_42">Pg 42</a></span>note of Shakespeare happens to be different from the note of +Fletcher: and it is Shakespeare's note—the note of</p> + +<p> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">"The cowslips tall her pensioners be"</span><br /> +</p> + +<p>(also omitted by the inscrutable Dyce) and of</p> + +<p> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">"When daisies pied, and violets blue,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">And lady-smocks all silver-white,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">And cuckoo buds of yellow hue</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">Do paint the meadows with delight ..."</span><br /> +</p> + +<p>—that we hear repeated in this Bridal Song.<a name="FNanchor_A_3" id="FNanchor_A_3"></a><a href="#Footnote_A_3" class="fnanchor">[A]</a> And if this be so, it +is but another proof for us that Dyce was not a critic for all time.</p> + + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_43" id="Page_43">Pg 43</a></span></p><p>Nor is the accent of finality conspicuous in such passages as this +from the Memoir:—</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>"Wright had heard that Shakespeare 'was a much better poet than +player'; and Rowe tells us that soon after his admission into the +company, he became distinguished, 'if not as an extraordinary +actor, yet as an excellent writer.' Perhaps his execution did not +equal his conception of a character, but we may rest assured that +he who wrote the incomparable instructions to the player in +<i>Hamlet</i> would never offend his audience by an injudicious +performance."</p></div> + +<p>I have no more to urge against writing of this order than that it has +passed out of fashion, and that something different might reasonably +have been looked for in a volume that bears the date 1894 on its +title-page. The public owes Messrs. Bell & Sons a heavy debt; but at +the same time the public has a peculiar interest in such a series as +that of <i>The Aldine Poets</i>. A purchaser who finds several of these +books to <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_44" id="Page_44">Pg 44</a></span>his mind, and is thereby induced to embark upon the purchase +of the entire series, must feel a natural resentment if succeeding +volumes drop below the implied standard. He cannot go back: and to +omit the offending volumes is to spoil his set. And I contend that the +action taken by Messrs. Bell & Sons in improving several of their more +or less obsolete editions will only be entirely praiseworthy if we may +take it as an earnest of their desire to place the whole series on a +level with contemporary knowledge and criticism.</p> + +<p>Nor can anyone who knows how much the industry and enthusiasm of Dyce +did, in his day, for the study of Shakespeare, do more than urge that +while, viewed historically, Dyce's criticism is entirely respectable, +it happens to be a trifle belated in the year 1894. The points of +difference between him and Charles Lamb are perhaps too obvious to +need indication; but we may sum them up by saying that whereas Lamb, +being a genius, belongs to all time, Dyce, being but an industrious +person, belongs to a period. It was a period of rapid development, no +doubt—how rapid we may learn for ourselves by the easy process of +taking down <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_45" id="Page_45">Pg 45</a></span>Volume V. of Chalmers's "English Poets," and turning to +that immortal passage on Shakespeare's poems which Chalmers put forth +in the year 1810:—</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>"The peremptory decision of Mr. Steevens on the merits of these +poems must not be omitted. 'We have not reprinted the Sonnets, +etc., of Shakespeare, because the strongest Act of Parliament +that could be framed would fail to compel readers into their +service. Had Shakespeare produced no other works than these, his +name would have reached us with as little celebrity as time has +conferred upon that of Thomas Watson, an older and much more +elegant sonnetteer.' Severe as this may appear, it only amounts +to the general conclusion which modern critics have formed. +Still, it cannot be denied that there are many scattered beauties +among his Sonnets, and in the Rape of Lucrece; enough, it is +hoped, to justify their admission into the present collection, +especially as the Songs, etc., from his plays have been added, +and a few smaller pieces selected by Mr. Ellis...."</p></div> + +<p>No comment can add to, or take from, the stupendousness of this. And +yet it was the criticism proper to its time. "I have only to hope," +writes Chalmers in his preface, "that my criticisms will not be found +destitute of candour, or improperly interfering with the general and +acknowledged principles of taste." Indeed they are not. They were the +right opinions <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_46" id="Page_46">Pg 46</a></span>for Chalmers; as Dyce's were the right opinions for +Dyce: and if, as we hope, ours is a larger appreciation of +Shakespeare, we probably hold it by no merit of our own, but as the +common possession of our generation, derived through the chastening +experiences of our grandfathers. That, however, is no reason why we +should not insist on having such editions of Shakespeare as fulfil our +requirements, and refuse to study Dyce except as an historical figure.</p> + +<p>It is an unwise generation that declines to take all its inheritance. +I have heard once or twice of late that English poets in the future +will set themselves to express emotions more complex and subtle than +have ever yet been treated in poetry. I shall be extremely glad, of +course, if this happen in my time. But at present I incline to rejoice +rather in an assured inheritance, and, when I hear talk of this kind, +to say over to myself one particular sonnet which for mere subtlety of +thought seems to me unbeaten by anything that I can select from the +poetry of this century:—</p> + +<p> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">Thy bosom is endeared of all hearts</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">Which I by lacking have supposed dead;</span><br /> +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_47" id="Page_47">Pg 47</a></span><span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">And there reigns Love and all Love's loving parts,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">And all those friends which I thought buried.</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">How many a holy and obsequious Tear</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">Hath dear religious love stol'n from mine eye,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">As interest of the dead, which now appear</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">But things remov'd that hidden in thee lie!</span><br /> +<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">Thou art the grave where buried love doth live,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">Hung with the trophies of my lovers gone,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">Who all their parts of me to thee did give;</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">That due of many now is thine alone!</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 4.5em;">Their images I lov'd I view in thee,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 4.5em;">And thou, all they, hast all the all of me.</span><br /> +</p> + +<div class="footnotes"><h3>FOOTNOTES:</h3> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_A_3" id="Footnote_A_3"></a><a href="#FNanchor_A_3"><span class="label">[A]</span></a> The opening lines of the second stanza of this poem have +generally been printed thus: +</p><p><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">"Primrose, firstborn child of Ver,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">Merry springtime's harbinger,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">With her bells dim...."</span><br /> +</p> +<p> +And many have wondered how Shakespeare or Fletcher came to write of +the "bells" of a primrose. Mr. W.J. Linton proposed "With harebell +slim": although if we must read "harebell" or "harebells," "dim" would +be a pretty and proper word for the color of that flower. The +conjecture takes some little plausibility from Shakespeare's elsewhere +linking primrose and harebell together: +</p><p><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 13.5em;">"Thou shalt not lack</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">The flower that's like thy face, pale primrose, nor</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">The azured harebell, like thy veins...."</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 13em;"><i>Cymbeline</i>, iv. 2.</span><br /> +</p> +<p> +I have always suspected, however, that there should be a semicolon +after "Ver," and that "Merry springtime's harbinger, with her bells +dim," refers to a totally different flower—the snowdrop, to wit. And +I have lately learnt from Dr. Grosart, who has carefully examined the +1634 edition (the only early one), that the text actually gives a +semicolon. The snowdrop may very well come after the primrose in this +song, which altogether ignores the process of the seasons.</p></div> +</div> + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_48" id="Page_48">Pg 48</a></span></p> +<h2><a name="SAMUEL_DANIEL" id="SAMUEL_DANIEL"></a>SAMUEL DANIEL</h2> + +<p class="left"><i><b>February 24, 1894. Samuel Daniel.</b></i></p> + + +<p>The writings of Samuel Daniel and the circumstances of his life are of +course well enough known to all serious students of English poetry. +And, though I cannot speak on this point with any certainty, I imagine +that our younger singers hold to the tradition of all their fathers, +and that Daniel still</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p><i>renidet in angulo</i></p></div> + +<p>of their affections, as one who in his day did very much, though +quietly, to train the growth of English verse; and proved himself, in +everything he wrote, an artist to the bottom of his conscience. As +certainly as Spenser, he was a "poet's poet" while he lived. A couple +of pages might be filled almost offhand with the genuine compliments +of his contemporaries, and he will probably remain a "poet's poet" as +long as poets write in English. But the average reader of culture—the +person who is honestly moved by good poetry and goes from time <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_49" id="Page_49">Pg 49</a></span>to +time to his bookshelves for an antidote to the common cares and +trivialities of this life—seems to neglect Daniel almost utterly. I +judge from the wretched insufficiency of his editions. It is very hard +to obtain anything beyond the two small volumes published in 1718 (an +imperfect collection), and a volume of selections edited by Mr. John +Morris and published by a Bath bookseller in 1855; and even these are +only to be picked up here and there. I find it significant, too, that +in Mr. Palgrave's <i>Golden Treasury</i> Daniel is represented by one +sonnet only, and that by no means his best. This neglect will appear +the more singular to anyone who has observed how apt is the person +whom I have called the "average reader of culture" to be drawn to the +perusal of an author's works by some attractive idiosyncrasy in the +author's private life or character. Lamb is a staring instance of this +attraction. How we all love Lamb, to be sure! Though he rejected it +and called out upon it, "gentle" remains Lamb's constant epithet. And, +curiously enough, in the gentleness and dignified melancholy of his +life, Daniel stands nearer to Lamb than any other English writer, with +the possible exception of Scott. His circumstances were less gloomily +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_50" id="Page_50">Pg 50</a></span>picturesque. But I defy any feeling man to read the scanty narrative +of Daniel's life and think of him thereafter without sympathy and +respect.</p> + +<p class="left"><i><b>Life.</b></i></p> + +<p>He was born in 1562—Fuller says in Somersetshire, not far from +Taunton; others say at Beckington, near Philip's Norton, or at +Wilmington in Wiltshire. Anthony Wood tells us that he came "of a +wealthy family;" Fuller that "his father was a master of music." Of +his earlier years next to nothing is known; but in 1579 he was entered +as a commoner at Magdalen Hall, Oxford, and left the university three +years afterwards without taking a degree. His first book—a +translation of Paola Giovio's treatise on Emblems—appeared in 1585, +when he was about twenty-two. In 1590 or 1591 he was travelling in +Italy, probably with a pupil, and no doubt busy with those studies +that finally made him the first Italian scholar of his time. In 1592 +he published his "Sonnets to Delia," which at once made his +reputation; in 1594 his "Complaint of Rosamond" and "Tragedy of +Cleopatra;" and in 1595 four books of his "Civil Wars." On Spenser's +death, in 1599, Daniel is said to have succeeded to the office of +poet-laureate.</p> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_51" id="Page_51">Pg 51</a></span></p><p> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">"That wreath which, in Eliza's golden days,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 4em;">My master dear, divinist Spenser, wore;</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">That which rewarded Drayton's learned lays,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 4em;">Which thoughtful Ben and gentle Daniel wore...."</span><br /> +</p> + +<p>But history traces the Laureateship, as an office, no further back +than Jonson, and we need not follow Southey into the mists. It is +certain, however, that Daniel was a favorite at Elizabeth's Court, and +in some way partook of her bounty. In 1600 he was appointed tutor to +the Lady Anne Clifford, a little girl of about eleven, daughter of +Margaret, Countess of Cumberland; and his services were gratefully +remembered by mother and daughter during his life and after. But +Daniel seems to have tired of living in great houses as private tutor +to the young. The next year, when presenting his works to Sir Thomas +Egerton, he writes:—"Such hath been my misery that whilst I should +have written the actions of men, I have been constrained to bide with +children, and, contrary to mine own spirit, put out of that sense +which nature had made my part."</p> + +<p class="left"><i><b>Self-distrust.</b></i></p> + +<p>Now there is but one answer to this—that a man of really strong +spirit does not suffer himself to be "put out of that sense which +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_52" id="Page_52">Pg 52</a></span>nature had made my part." Daniel's words indicate the weakness that +in the end made futile all his powers: they indicate a certain +"donnish" timidity (if I may use the epithet), a certain distrust of +his own genius. Such a timidity and such a distrust often accompany +very exquisite faculties: indeed, they may be said to imply a certain +exquisiteness of feeling. But they explain why, of the two +contemporaries, the robust Ben Jonson is to-day a living figure in +most men's conception of those times, while Samuel Daniel is rather a +fleeting ghost. And his self-distrust was even then recognized as well +as his exquisiteness. He is indeed "well-languaged Daniel," "sweet +honey-dropping Daniel," "Rosamund's trumpeter, sweet as the +nightingale," revered and admired by all his compeers. But the note of +apprehension was also sounded, not only by an unknown contributor to +that rare collection of epigrams, <i>Skialetheia, or the Shadow of +Truth</i>.</p> + +<p> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">"Daniel (as some hold) might mount, <i>if he list</i>;</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">But others say he is a Lucanist"</span><br /> +</p> + +<p>—but by no meaner a judge than Spenser himself, who wrote in his +"Colin Clout's Come Home Again":</p> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_53" id="Page_53">Pg 53</a></span></p><p> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">"And there is a new shepherd late upsprung</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">The which doth all afore him far surpass:</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">Appearing well in that well-tunéd song</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">Which late he sung unto a scornful lass.</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;"><i>Yet doth his trembling Muse but lowly fly,</i></span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;"><i>As daring not too rashly mount on height</i>;</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">And doth her tender plumes as yet but try</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">In love's soft lays, and looser thoughts delight.</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">Then rouse thy feathers quickly, <span class="smcap">Daniel</span>,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">And to what course thou please thyself advance;</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">But most, meseems, thy accent will excel</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">In tragic plaints and passionate mischance."</span><br /> +</p> + +<p>Moreover, there is a significant passage in the famous "Return from +Parnassus," first acted at Cambridge during the Christmas of 1601:</p> + +<p> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">"Sweet honey-dropping Daniel doth wage</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">War with the proudest big Italian</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">That melts his heart in sugar'd sonneting,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;"><i>Only let him more sparingly make use</i></span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;"><i>Of others' wit and use his own the more.</i>"</span><br /> +</p> + +<p class="left"><i><b>The 'mauvais pas' of Parnassus.</b></i></p> + +<p>Now it has been often pointed out that considerable writers fall into +two classes—(1) those who begin, having something to say, and are +from the first rather occupied with their matter than with the manner +of expressing it; and (2) those who begin with the love of expression +and intent to be artists in words, <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_54" id="Page_54">Pg 54</a></span><i>and come through expression to +profound thought</i>. It is fashionable just now, for some reason or +another, to account Class 1 as the more respectable; a judgment to +which, considering that Shakespeare and Milton belonged undeniably to +Class 2, I refuse to assent. The question, however, is not to be +argued here. I have only to point out in this place that the early +work of all poets in Class 2 is largely imitative. Virgil was +imitative, Keats was imitative—to name but a couple of sufficiently +striking examples. And Daniel, who belongs to this class, was also +imitative. But for a poet of this class to reach the heights of song, +there must come a time when out of imitation he forms a genuine style +of his own, <i>and loses no mental fertility in the transformation</i>. +This, if I may use the metaphor, is the <i>mauvais pas</i> in the ascent of +Parnassus: and here Daniel broke down. He did indeed acquire a style +of his own; but the effort exhausted him. He was no longer prolific; +his ardor had gone: and his innate self-distrustfulness made him quick +to recognize his sterility.</p> + +<p>Soon after the accession of James I., Daniel, <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_55" id="Page_55">Pg 55</a></span>at the recommendation +of his brother-in-law, John Florio, possibly furthered by the interest +of the Earl of Pembroke, was given a post as gentleman extraordinary +and groom of the privy chamber to Anne of Denmark; and a few months +after was appointed to take the oversight of the plays and shows that +were performed by the children of the Queen's revels, or children of +the Chapel, as they were called under Elizabeth. He had thus a snug +position at Court, and might have been happy, had it been another +Court. But in nothing was the accession of James more apparent than in +the almost instantaneous blasting of the taste, manners, and serious +grace that had marked the Court of Elizabeth. The Court of James was a +Court of bad taste, bad manners, and no grace whatever: and +Daniel—"the remnant of another time," as he calls himself—looked +wistfully back upon the days of Elizabeth.</p> + +<p> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">"But whereas he came planted in the spring,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">And had the sun before him of respect;</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">We, set in th' autumn, in the withering</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">And sullen season of a cold defect,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">Must taste those sour distastes the times do bring</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">Upon the fulness of a cloy'd neglect.</span><br /> +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_56" id="Page_56">Pg 56</a></span><span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">Although the stronger constitutions shall</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">Wear out th' infection of distemper'd days ... "</span><br /> +</p> + +<p>And so he stood dejected, while the young men of "stronger +constitutions" passed him by.</p> + +<p>In this way it happened that Daniel, whom at the outset his +contemporaries had praised with wide consent, and who never wrote a +loose or unscholarly line, came to pen, in the dedicatory epistle +prefixed to his tragedy of "Philotas," these words—perhaps the most +pathetic ever uttered by an artist upon his work:</p> + +<p> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">"And therefore since I have outlived the date</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">Of former grace, acceptance and delight.</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">I would my lines, late born beyond the fate</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">Of her<a name="FNanchor_A_4" id="FNanchor_A_4"></a><a href="#Footnote_A_4" class="fnanchor">[A]</a> spent line, had never come to light;</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">So had I not been tax'd for wishing well,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">Nor now mistaken by the censuring Stage,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">Nor in my fame and reputation fell,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">Which I esteem more than what all the age</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">Or the earth can give. <i>But years hath done this wrong,</i></span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;"><i>To make me write too much, and live too long</i>."</span><br /> +</p> + +<p class="left"><i><b>Ease of his verse.</b></i></p> + +<p>I said just now that Daniel had done much, though quietly, to train +the growth of English verse. He not only stood up successfully for +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_57" id="Page_57">Pg 57</a></span>its natural development at a time when the clever but less largely +informed Campion and others threatened it with fantastic changes. He +probably did as much as Waller to introduce polish of line into our +poetry. Turn to the famous "Ulysses and the Siren," and read. Can +anyone tell me of English verses that run more smoothly off the +tongue, or with a more temperate grace?</p> + +<p> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">"Well, well, Ulysses, then I see</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 3.5em;">I shall not have thee here:</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">And, therefore, I will come to thee,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 3.5em;">And take my fortune there.</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">I must be won that cannot win,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 3.5em;">Yet lost were I not won;</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">For beauty hath created been</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 3.5em;">T'undo or be undone."</span><br /> +</p> + +<p>To speak familiarly, this is as easy as an old shoe. To speak yet more +familiarly, it looks as if any fool could turn off lines like these. +Let the fool try.</p> + +<p>And yet to how many anthologies do we not turn in vain for "Ulysses +and the Siren"; or for the exquisite spring song, beginning—</p> + +<p> +<span style="margin-left: 2em;">"Now each creature joys the other,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">Passing happy days and hours;</span><br /> +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_58" id="Page_58">Pg 58</a></span><span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">One bird reports unto another</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">In the fall of silver showers ..."</span><br /> +</p> + +<p>—or for that lofty thing, the "Epistle to the Countess of +Cumberland"?—which Wordsworth, who quoted it in his "Excursion," +declares to be "an admirable picture of the state of a wise man's mind +in a time of public commotion." Certainly if ever a critic shall arise +to deny poetry the virtue we so commonly claim for her, of fortifying +men's souls against calamity, this noble Epistle will be all but the +last post from which he will extrude her defenders.</p> + +<div class="footnotes"><h3>FOOTNOTES:</h3> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_A_4" id="Footnote_A_4"></a><a href="#FNanchor_A_4"><span class="label">[A]</span></a> Sc. Elizabeth's.</p></div> +</div> + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_59" id="Page_59">Pg 59</a></span></p> +<h2><a name="WILLIAM_BROWNE" id="WILLIAM_BROWNE"></a>WILLIAM BROWNE</h2> + + +<p class="left"><i><b>April 21, 1894. William Browne of Tavistock.</b></i></p> + +<p>It has been objected to the author of <i>Britannia's Pastorals</i> that +their perusal sends you to sleep. It had been subtler criticism, as +well as more amiable, to observe that you can wake up again and, +starting anew at the precise point where you dropped off, continue the +perusal with as much pleasure as ever, neither ashamed of your +somnolence nor imputing it as a fault to the poet. For William Browne +is perhaps the easiest figure in our literature. He lived easily, he +wrote easily, and no doubt he died easily. He no more expected to be +read through at a sitting than he tried to write all the story of +Marina at a sitting. He took up his pen and composed: when he felt +tired he went off to bed, like a sensible man: and when you are tired +of reading he expects you to be sensible and do the same.</p> + +<p class="left"><i><b>A placid life.</b></i></p> + +<p>He was born at Tavistock, in Devon, about the year 1590; and after the +manner of mild <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_60" id="Page_60">Pg 60</a></span>and sensible men cherished a particular love for his +birth-place to the end of his days. From Tavistock Grammar School he +passed to Exeter College, Oxford—the old west-country college—and +thence to Clifford's Inn and the Inner Temple. His first wife died +when he was twenty-three or twenty-four. He took his second courtship +quietly and leisurely, marrying the lady at length in 1628, after a +wooing of thirteen years. "He seems," says Mr. A.H. Bullen, his latest +biographer, "to have acquired in some way a modest competence, which +secured him immunity from the troubles that weighed so heavily on men +of letters." His second wife also brought him a portion. More than +four years before this marriage he had returned to Exeter College, as +tutor to the young Robert Dormer, who in due time became Earl of +Carnarvon and was killed in Newbury fight. By his +fellow-collegians—as by everybody with whom he came into contact—he +was highly beloved and esteemed, and in the public Register of the +University is styled, "vir omni humana literarum et bonarum artium +cognitione instructus." He gained the especial favor of William +Herbert, Earl of Pembroke, whom Aubrey calls "the greatest Mæcenas to +learned <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_61" id="Page_61">Pg 61</a></span>men of any peer of his time or since," and of whom Clarendon +says, "He was a great lover of his country, and of the religion and +justice, which he believed could only support it; and his friendships +were only with men of those principles,"—another tribute to the +poet's character. He was familiarly received at Wilton, the home of +the Herberts. After his second marriage he moved to Dorking and there +settled. He died in or before the year 1645. In the letters of +administration granted to his widow (November, 1645) he is described +as "late of Dorking, in the county of Surrey, Esquire." But there is +no entry of his death in the registers at Dorking or Horsham: so +perhaps he went back to lay his bones in his beloved Devon. A William +Browne was buried at Tavistock on March 27th, 1643. This may or may +not have been our author. "Tavistock,—Wilton,—Dorking," says Mr. +Bullen,—"Surely few poets have had a more tranquil journey to the +Elysian Fields."</p> + +<p class="left"><i><b>An amiable poet.</b></i></p> + +<p>As with his life, so with his poetry—he went about it quietly, +contentedly. He learned his art, as he confesses, from Spenser and +Sidney; and he took it over ready-made, with all the conventions and +pastoral stock-in-trade—swains <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_62" id="Page_62">Pg 62</a></span>languishing for hard-hearted nymphs, +nymphs languishing for hard-hearted swains; sheep-cotes, rustic +dances, junketings, anadems, and true-love knots; monsters invented +for the perpetual menace of chastity; chastity undergoing the most +surprising perils, but always saved in the nick of time, if not by an +opportune shepherd, then by an equally opportune river-god or +earthquake; episodes innumerable, branching off from the main stem of +the narrative at the most critical point, and luxuriating in endless +ramifications. Beauty, eluding unwelcome embraces, is never too hotly +pressed to dally with an engaging simile or choose the most agreeable +words for depicting her tribulation. Why indeed should she hurry? It +is all a polite and pleasant make-believe; and when Marina and Doridon +are tired, they stand aside and watch the side couples, Fida and +Remond, and get their breath again for the next figure. As for the +finish of the tale, there is no finish. The narrator will stop when he +is tired; just then and no sooner. What became of Marina after Triton +rolled away the stone and released her from the Cave of Famine? I am +sure I don't know. I have followed her adventures up to that point +(though I should be very sorry <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_63" id="Page_63">Pg 63</a></span>to attempt a <i>précis</i> of them without +the book) through some 370 pages of verse. Does this mean that I am +greatly interested in her? Not in the least. I am quite content to +hear no more about her. Let us have the lamentations of Celadyne for a +change—though "for a change" is much too strong an expression. The +author is quite able to invent more adventures for Marina, if he +chooses to, by the hour together. If he does not choose to, well and +good.</p> + +<p>Was the composition of <i>Britannia's Pastorals</i> then, a useless or +inconsiderable feat? Not at all: since to read them is to taste a mild +but continuous pleasure. In the first place, it is always pleasant to +see a good man thoroughly enjoying himself: and that Browne thoroughly +"relisht versing"—to use George Herbert's pretty phrase—would be +patent enough, even had he not left us an express assurance:—</p> + +<p> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">"What now I sing is but to pass away</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">A tedious hour, as some musicians play;</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">Or make another my own griefs bemoan—"</span><br /> +</p> + +<p>—rather affected, that, one suspects:</p> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_64" id="Page_64">Pg 64</a></span></p><p> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">"Or to be least alone when most alone,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">In this can I, as oft as I will choose,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">Hug sweet content by my retirèd Muse,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">And in a study find as much to please</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">As others in the greatest palaces.</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">Each man that lives, according to his power,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">On what he loves bestows an idle hour.</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">Instead of hounds that make the wooded hills</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">Talk in a hundred voices to the rills,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">I like the pleasing cadence of a line</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">Struck by the consort of the sacred Nine.</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">In lieu of hawks ..."</span><br /> +</p> + +<p>—and so on. Indeed, unless it be Wither, there is no poet of the time +who practised his art with such entire cheerfulness: though Wither's +satisfaction had a deeper note, as when he says of his Muse—</p> + +<p> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">"Her true beauty leaves behind</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">Apprehensions in the mind,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">Of more sweetness than all art</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">Or inventions can impart;</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">Thoughts too deep to be express'd,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">And too strong to be suppressed."</span><br /> +</p> + +<p>Yet Charles Lamb's nice observation—</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>"Fame, and that too after death, was all which hitherto the poets +had promised themselves from their art. It seems to have been +left to Wither to discover that poetry was a present possession +as well as a rich rever<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_65" id="Page_65">Pg 65</a></span>sion, and that the muse had promise of +both lives—of this, and of that which was to come."</p></div> + +<p>—must be extended by us, after reading his lines quoted above, to +include William Browne. He, at least, had no doubt of the Muse as an +earthly companion.</p> + +<p>As for posthumous fame, Browne confides to us his aspirations in that +matter also:—</p> + +<p> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">"And Time may be so kind to these weak lines</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">To keep my name enroll'd past his that shines</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">In gilded marble, or in brazen leaves:</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">Since verse preserves, when stone and brass deceives.</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">Or if (as worthless) Time not lets it live</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">To those full days which others' Muses give,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">Yet I am sure I shall be heard and sung</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">Of most severest eld and kinder young</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">Beyond my days; and maugre Envy's strife,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">Add to my name some hours beyond my life."</span><br /> +</p> + +<p>This is the amiable hope of one who lived an entirely amiable life in</p> + +<p> +<span style="margin-left: 16.5em;">"homely towns,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">Sweetly environ'd with the daisied downs:"</span><br /> +</p> + +<p>and who is not the less to be beloved because at times his amiability +prevents him from attacking even our somnolence too fiercely. If <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_66" id="Page_66">Pg 66</a></span>the +casual reader but remember Browne as a poet who had the honor to +supply Keats with inspiration,<a name="FNanchor_A_5" id="FNanchor_A_5"></a><a href="#Footnote_A_5" class="fnanchor">[A]</a> there will always be others, and +enough of them, to prize his ambling Muse for her own qualities.</p> + +<div class="footnotes"><h3>FOOTNOTES:</h3> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_A_5" id="Footnote_A_5"></a><a href="#FNanchor_A_5"><span class="label">[A]</span></a> <i>Cf.</i> his lament for William Ferrar (brother of Nicholas +Ferrar, of Little Gidding), drowned at sea— +</p><p> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">"Glide soft, ye silver floods,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 3.5em;">And every spring:</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">Within the shady woods</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 3.5em;">Let no bird sing...."</span><br /> +</p> +</div> +</div> + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_67" id="Page_67">Pg 67</a></span></p> +<h2><a name="THOMAS_CAREW" id="THOMAS_CAREW"></a>THOMAS CAREW</h2> + + +<p class="left"><i><b>July 28, 1894. A Note on his Name.</b></i></p> + +<p>Even as there is an M alike in Macedon and Monmouth, so Thomas Carew +and I have a common grievance—that our names are constantly +mispronounced. It is their own fault, of course; on the face of it +they ought to rhyme with "few" and "vouch." And if it be urged +(impolitely but with a fair amount of plausibility) that what my name +may or may not rhyme with is of no concern to anybody, I have only to +reply that, until a month or so back, I cheerfully shared this opinion +and acquiesced in the general error. Had I dreamed then of becoming a +subject for poetry, I had pointed out—as I do now—for the benefit of +all intending bards, that I do not legitimately rhyme with "vouch" (so +liable is human judgment to err, even in trifles), unless they +pronounce it "vooch," which is awkward. I believe, indeed (speaking as +one who has never had occasion to own a Rhyming Dictionary), that the +number of English words consonant <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_68" id="Page_68">Pg 68</a></span>with my name is exceedingly small; +but leave the difficulty to the ingenious Dr. Alexander H. Japp, +LL.D., F.R.S.E., who has lately been at the pains to compose and put +into private circulation a sprightly lampoon upon me. As it is not my +intention to reply with a set of verses upon Dr. Japp, it seems +superfluous to inquire if <i>his</i> name should be pronounced as it is +spelt.</p> + +<p>But Carew's case is rather important; and it is really odd that his +latest and most learned editor, the Rev. J.F. Ebsworth, should fall +into the old error. In a "dedicatory prelude" to his edition of "The +Poems and Masque of Thomas Carew" (London: Reeves & Turner), Mr. +Ebsworth writes as follows:—</p> + +<p> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">"Hearken strains from one who knew</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">How to praise and how to sue:</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;"><i>Celia's</i> lover, <span class="smcap">Tom Carew</span>."</span><br /> +</p> + +<p>Thomas Carew (born April 3d, 1590, at Wickham, in Kent) was the son of +Sir Matthew Carew, Master in Chancery, and the grandson of Sir Wymond +Carew, of East Antony, or Antony St. Jacob, between the Lynher and +Tamar rivers in Cornwall, where the family of <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_69" id="Page_69">Pg 69</a></span>Pole-Carew lives to +this day. Now, the Cornish Carews have always pronounced their name as +"Carey," though, as soon as you cross the Tamar and find yourself (let +us say) as far east as Haccombe in South Devon, the name becomes +"Carew"—pronounced as it is written. The two forms are both of great +age, as the old rhyme bears witness—</p> + +<p> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">"Carew, Carey and Courtenay,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">When the Conqueror came, were here at play"—</span><br /> +</p> + +<p>and the name was often written "Carey" or "Cary," as in the case of +the famous Lucius Carey, Lord Falkland, and his descendants. In +Cornwall, however, where spelling is often an untrustworthy guide to +pronunciation (I have known people to write their name "Hix" and +pronounce it as "Hic"—when sober, too), it was written "Carew" and +pronounced as "Carey"; and there is not the slightest doubt that this +was the case with our poet's name. If anyone deny it, let him consider +the verse in which Carew is mentioned by his contemporaries: and +attempt, for instance, to scan the lines in Robert Baron's "Pocula +Castalia," 1650—</p> + +<p> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">"Sweet <i>Suckling</i> then, the glory of the Bower</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">Wherein I've wanton'd many a genial hour,</span><br /> +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_70" id="Page_70">Pg 70</a></span><span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">Fair Plant! whom I have seen <i>Minerva</i> wear</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">An ornament to her well-plaited hair,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">On highest days; remove a little from</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">Thy excellent <i>Carew</i>! and thou, dearest <i>Tom</i>,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;"><i>Love's Oracle</i>! lay thee a little off</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">Thy flourishing <i>Suckling</i>, that between you both</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">I may find room...."</span><br /> +</p> + +<p>Or this by Suckling—</p> + +<p> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">"<i>Tom Carew</i> was next, but he had a fault,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">That would not well stand with a Laureat;</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">His Muse was hard-bound, and th' issue of 's brain</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">Was seldom brought forth but with trouble and pain."</span><br /> +</p> + +<p>Or this, by Lord Falkland himself (who surely may be supposed to have +known how the name was pronounced), in his "Eclogue on the Death of +Ben Jonson"—</p> + +<p> +<span style="margin-left: 2em;">"<i>Let Digby, Carew, Killigrew</i> and <i>Maine,</i></span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;"><i>Godolphin, Waller</i>, that inspired train—</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;"><i>Or whose rare pen beside deserves the grace</i></span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;"><i>Or of an equal, or a neighbouring place—</i></span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;"><i>Answer thy wish, for none so fit appears</i></span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;"><i>To raise his Tomb, as who are left his heirs."</i></span><br /> +</p> + +<p>In each case "Carey" scans admirably, while "Carew" gives the line an +intolerable limp.</p> + +<p class="left"><i><b>Mr. Ebsworth's championship.</b></i></p> + +<p>This mistake of Mr. Ebsworth's is the less easy to understand inasmuch +as he has been very <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_71" id="Page_71">Pg 71</a></span>careful to clear up the popular confusion of our +poet Thomas Carew, "gentleman of the Privy Chamber to King Charles I., +and cup-bearer to His Majesty," with another Thomas Gary (also a +poet), son of the Earl of Monmouth and groom of His Majesty's +bed-chamber. But it is one thing to prove that this second Thomas Gary +is the original of the "medallion portrait" commonly supposed to be +Carew's: it is quite another thing to saddle him, merely upon +guess-work, with Carew's reputed indiscretions. Indeed, Mr. Ebsworth +lets his enthusiasm for his author run clean away with his sense of +fairness. He heads his Introductory Memoir with the words of Pallas in +Tennyson's "Œnone"—</p> + +<p> +<span style="margin-left: 2em;">"Again she said—'I woo thee not with gifts:</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">Sequel of guerdon could not alter me</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">To fairer. Judge thou me by what I am,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">So shalt thou find me fairest.'"—</span><br /> +</p> + +<p>from which I take it that Mr. Ebsworth claims his attitude towards +Carew to be much the same as Thackeray's towards Pendennis. But in +fact he proves himself a thorough-going partisan, and anyone less +enthusiastic may think himself lucky if dismissed by Mr. Ebsworth +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_72" id="Page_72">Pg 72</a></span>with nothing worse than a smile of pity mingled with contempt. Now, +so long as an editor confines this belligerent enthusiasm to the +defence of his author's writings, it is at worst but an amiable +weakness; and every word he says in their praise tends indirectly to +justify his own labor in editing these meritorious compositions. But +when he extends this championship over the author's private life, he +not unfrequently becomes something of a nuisance. We may easily +forgive such talk as "There must assuredly have been a singular +frankness and affectionate simplicity in the disposition of Carew:" +talk which is harmless, though hardly more valuable than the +reflection beloved of local historians—"If these grey old walls could +speak, what a tale might they not unfold!" It is less easy to forgive +such a note as this:—</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>"Sir John Suckling was incapable of understanding Carew in his +final days of sickness and depression, as he had been (and this +is conceding much) in their earlier days of reckless gallantry. +His vile address 'to T—— C——,' etc., 'Troth, <i>Tom</i>, I must +confess I much admire ...' is nothing more than coarse badinage +without foundation; in any case not necessarily addressed to +Carew, although they were of close acquaintance; but many other +Toms were open to a similar <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_73" id="Page_73">Pg 73</a></span>expression, since 'T.C.' might apply +to Thomas Carey, to Thomas Crosse, and other T.C. poets."</p></div> + +<p>It is not pleasant to rake up any man's faults; but when an editor +begins to suggest some new man against whom nothing is known (except +that he wrote indifferent verse)—who is not even known to have been +on speaking terms with Suckling—as the proper target of Suckling's +coarse raillery, we have a right not only to protest, but to point out +that even Clarendon, who liked Carew, wrote of him that, "after fifty +years of his life spent with less severity and exactness than it ought +to have been, he died with great remorse for that license, and with +the greatest manifestation of Christianity that his best friends could +desire." If Carew thought fit to feel remorse for that license, it +scarcely becomes Mr. Ebsworth to deny its existence, much less to hint +that the sinfulness was another's.</p> + +<p class="left"><i><b>A correction.</b></i></p> + +<p>As a minor criticism, I may point out that the song, "Come, my Celia, +let us prove ..." (included by Mr. Ebsworth, with the remark that +"there is no external evidence to confirm the attribution of this song +to Carew") was <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_74" id="Page_74">Pg 74</a></span>written by Ben Jonson, and is to be found in +<i>Volpone</i>, Act III., sc. 7, 1607.</p> + +<p>But, with some imperfections, this is a sound edition—sadly +needed—of one of the most brilliant lyrical writers of his time. It +contains a charming portrait; and the editor's enthusiasm, when it +does not lead him too far, is also charming.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_75" id="Page_75">Pg 75</a></span></p> +<h2><a name="ROBINSON_CRUSOE" id="ROBINSON_CRUSOE"></a>"ROBINSON CRUSOE"</h2> + + +<p class="left"><i><b>April 13, 1895. Robinson Crusoe.</b></i></p> + +<p>Many a book has produced a wide and beneficent effect and won a great +reputation, and yet this effect and this reputation have been +altogether wide of its author's aim. Swift's <i>Gulliver</i> is one +example. As Mr. Birrell put it the other day, "Swift's gospel of +hatred, his testament of woe—his <i>Gulliver</i>, upon which he expended +the treasures of his wit, and into which he instilled the concentrated +essence of his rage—has become a child's book, and has been read with +wonder and delight by generations of innocents."</p> + +<p class="left"><i><b>How far is the tale a parable?</b></i></p> + +<p>Generations of innocents in like manner have accepted <i>Robinson +Crusoe</i> as a delightful tale about a castaway mariner, a story of +adventure pure and simple, without sub-intention of any kind. But we +know very well that Defoe in writing it intended a parable—a parable +of his own life. In the first place, he distinctly <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_76" id="Page_76">Pg 76</a></span>affirms this in +his preface to the <i>Serious Reflections</i> which form Part iii. of his +great story:—</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>"As the design of everything is said to be first in the +intention, and last in the execution, so I come now to +acknowledge to my reader that the present work is not merely a +product of the two first volumes, but the two first volumes may +rather be called the product of this. The fable is always made +for the moral, not the moral for the fable...."</p></div> + +<p>He goes on to say that whereas "the envious and ill-disposed part of +the world" have accused the story of being feigned, and "all a +romance, formed and embellished by invention to impose upon the +world," he declares this objection to be an invention scandalous in +design, and false in fact, and affirms that the story, "though +allegorical, is also historical"; that it is</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>"the beautiful representation of a life of unexampled +misfortunes, and of a variety not to be met with in the world, +sincerely adapted to and intended for the common good of mankind, +and <i>designed at first</i>, as it is now further applied, to the +most serious use possible. Farther, that there is a man alive, +and well known too, the actions of whose life are the just +subject of these volumes, <i>and to whom all or most part of the +story most directly alludes</i>; this may be depended upon, for +truth, and to this I set my name."</p></div> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_77" id="Page_77">Pg 77</a></span></p><p>He proceeds to assert this in detail of several important passages in +the book, and obviously intends us to infer that the adventures of +Robinson Crusoe of York, Mariner, were throughout and from the +beginning designed as a story in parable of the life and adventures of +Daniel Defoe, Gentleman. "But Defoe may have been lying?" This was +never quite flatly asserted. Even his enemy Gildon admitted an analogy +between the tale of Crusoe and the stormy life of Defoe with its +frequent shipwrecks "more by land than by sea." Gildon admitted this +implicitly in the title of his pamphlet, <i>The Life and Strange +Surprising Adventures of Mr. D—— De F——, of London, Hosier, who +has lived above Fifty Years by himself in the Kingdoms of North and +South Britain.</i> But the question has always been, To what extent are +we to accept Defoe's statement that the story is an allegory? Does it +agree step by step and in detail with the circumstances of Defoe's +life? Or has it but a general allegorical resemblance?</p> + +<p>Hitherto, critics have been content with the general resemblance, and +have agreed that it would be a mistake to accept Defoe's statement +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_78" id="Page_78">Pg 78</a></span>too literally, to hunt for minute allusions in <i>Robinson Crusoe</i>, and +search for exact resemblances between incidents in the tale and events +in the author's life. But this at any rate may be safely affirmed, +that recent discoveries have proved the resemblance to be a great deal +closer than anyone suspected a few years ago.</p> + +<p class="left"><i><b>Mr. Wright's hypothesis.</b></i></p> + +<p>Mr. Aitken supplied the key when he announced in the <i>Athenæum</i> for +August 23rd, 1890, his discovery that Daniel Defoe was born, not in +1661 (as had hitherto been supposed), but earlier, and probably in the +latter part of the year 1659. The story dates Crusoe's birth September +30th, 1632, or just twenty-seven years earlier. Now Mr. Wright, +Defoe's latest biographer,<a name="FNanchor_A_6" id="FNanchor_A_6"></a><a href="#Footnote_A_6" class="fnanchor">[A]</a> maintains that if we add these +twenty-seven years to the date of any event in Crusoe's life we shall +have the date of the corresponding event in Defoe's life. By this +simple calculation he finds that Crusoe's running away to sea +corresponds in time with Defoe's departure from the academy at +Newington Green; Crusoe's early period on the island <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_79" id="Page_79">Pg 79</a></span>(south side) +with the years Defoe lived at Tooting; Crusoe's visit to the other +side of the island with a journey of Defoe's into Scotland; the +footprint and the arrival of the savages with the threatening letters +received by Defoe, and the physical assaults made on him after the +Sacheverell trial; while Friday stands for a collaborator who helped +Defoe with his work.</p> + +<p>Defoe expressly states in his <i>Serious Reflections</i> that the story of +Friday is historical and true in fact—</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>"It is most real that I had ... such a servant, a savage, and +afterwards a Christian, and that his name was called Friday, and +that he was ravished from me by force, and died in the hands that +took him, which I represent by being killed; this is all +literally true, and should I enter into discoveries many alive +can testify them. His other conduct and assistance to me also +have just references in all their parts to the helps I had from +that faithful savage in my real solitudes and disasters."</p></div> + +<p>It may be added that there are strong grounds for believing Defoe to +have had about this time assistance in his literary work.</p> + +<p>All this is very neatly worked out; but of course the really important +event in Crusoe's <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_80" id="Page_80">Pg 80</a></span>life is his great shipwreck and his long solitude +on the island. Now of what events in Defoe's life are these +symbolical?</p> + +<p class="left"><i><b>The 'Silence.'</b></i></p> + +<p>Well, in the very forefront of his <i>Serious Reflections</i>, and in +connection with his long confinement in the island, Defoe makes Crusoe +tell the following story:—</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>"I have heard of a man that, upon some extraordinary disgust +which he took at the unsuitable conversation of some of his +nearest relations, whose society he could not avoid, suddenly +resolved never to speak any more. He kept his resolution most +rigorously many years; not all the tears or entreaties of his +friends—no, not of his wife and children—could prevail with him +to break his silence. It seems it was their ill-behaviour to him, +at first, that was the occasion of it; for they treated him with +provoking language, which frequently put him into undecent +passions, and urged him to rash replies; and he took this severe +way to punish himself for being provoked, and to punish them for +provoking him. But the severity was unjustifiable; it ruined his +family and broke up his house. His wife could not bear it, and +after endeavouring, by all the ways possible, to alter his rigid +silence, went first away from him, and afterwards from herself, +turning melancholy and distracted. His children separated, some +one way and some another way; and only one daughter, who loved +her father above all the rest, kept with him, tended him, talked +to him by signs, and lived almost dumb like her <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_81" id="Page_81">Pg 81</a></span>father <i>near +twenty-nine years with him; till being very sick, and in a high +fever, delirious as we call it, or light-headed, he broke his +silence</i>, not knowing when he did it, and spoke, though wildly at +first. He recovered of his illness afterwards, and frequently +talked with his daughter, but not much, and very seldom to +anybody else."</p></div> + +<p>I italicise some very important words in the above story. Crusoe was +wrecked on his island on September 30th, 1659, his twenty-seventh +birthday. We are told that he remained on the island twenty-eight +years, two months and nineteen days. (Compare with duration of the +man's silence in the story.) This puts the date of his departure at +December 19th, 1687.</p> + +<p>Now add twenty-seven years. We find that Defoe left <i>his</i> +solitude—whatever that may have been—on December 19th, 1714. Just at +that date, as all his biographers record, Defoe was struck down by a +fit of apoplexy and lay ill for six weeks. Compare this again with the +story.</p> + +<p>You divine what is coming. Astounding as it may be, Mr. Wright +contends that Defoe himself was the original of the story: that Defoe, +provoked by his wife's irritating tongue, <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_82" id="Page_82">Pg 82</a></span>made a kind of vow to live +a life of silence—and kept it for more than twenty-eight years!</p> + +<p>So far back as 1859 the egregious Chadwick nibbled at this theory in +his <i>Life and Times of Daniel Defoe, with Remarks Digressive and +Discursive</i>. The story, he says, "would be very applicable" to Defoe +himself, and again, "is very likely to have been taken from his own +life"; but at this point Chadwick maunders off with the remark that +"perhaps the domestic fireside of the poet or book-writer is not the +place we should go to in search of domestic happiness." Perhaps not; +but Chadwick, tallyhoing after domestic happiness, misses the scent. +Mr. Wright sticks to the scent and rides boldly; but is he after the +real fox?</p> + +<hr style='width: 45%;' /> + +<p class="left"><i><b>April 20, 1895.</b></i></p> + +<p>Can we believe it? Can we believe that on the 30th of September, 1686, +Defoe, provoked by his wife's nagging tongue, made a vow to live a +life of complete silence; that for twenty-eight years and a month or +two he never addressed a word to his wife or children; and that his +resolution was only broken down by a severe illness in the winter of +1714?</p> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_83" id="Page_83">Pg 83</a></span></p><p class="left"><i><b>Mr. Aitken on Mr. Wright's hypothesis.</b></i></p> + +<p>Mr. Aitken,.<a name="FNanchor_B_7" id="FNanchor_B_7"></a><a href="#Footnote_B_7" class="fnanchor">[B]</a> who has handled this hypothesis of Mr. Wright's, brings +several arguments against it, which, taken together, seem to me quite +conclusive. To begin with, several children were born to Defoe during +this period. He paid much attention to their education, and in 1713, +the penultimate year of this supposed silence, we find his sons +helping him in his work. Again, in 1703 Mrs. Defoe was interceding for +her husband's release from Newgate. Let me add that it was an age in +which personalities were freely used in public controversy; that Defoe +was continuously occupied with public controversy during these +twenty-eight years, and managed to make as many enemies as any man +within the four seas; and I think the silence of his adversaries upon +a matter which, if proved, would be discreditable in the extreme, is +the best of all evidence that Mr. Wright's hypothesis cannot be +sustained. Nor do I see how Mr. Wright makes it square with his own +conception of Defoe's character. "Of a forgiving temper himself," says +Mr. Wright <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_84" id="Page_84">Pg 84</a></span>on p. 86, "he (Defoe) was quite incapable of understanding +how another person could nourish resentment." This of a man whom the +writer asserts to have sulked in absolute silence with his wife and +family for twenty-eight years, two months, and nineteen days!</p> + + +<p class="left"><i><b>An inherent improbability.</b></i></p> + +<p>At all events it will not square with <i>our</i> conception of Defoe's +character. Those of us who have an almost unlimited admiration for +Defoe as a master of narrative, and next to no affection for him as a +man, might pass the heartlessness of such conduct. "At first sight," +Mr. Wright admits, "it may appear monstrous that a man should for so +long a time abstain from speech with his own family." Monstrous, +indeed—but I am afraid we could have passed that. Mr. Wright, who has +what I may call a purfled style, tells us that—</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>"To narrate the career of Daniel Defoe is to tell a tale of +wonder and daring, of high endeavour and marvellous success. To +dwell upon it is to take courage and to praise God for the +splendid possibilities of life.... Defoe is always the hero; his +career is as thick with events as a cornfield with corn; his +fortunes change as quickly and as completely as the shapes in a +kaleidoscope—he is up, he is down, he is courted, he is spurned; +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_85" id="Page_85">Pg 85</a></span>it is shine, it is shower, it is <i>couleur de rose</i>, it is +Stygian night. Thirteen times he was rich and poor. Achilles was +not more audacious, Ulysses more subtle, Æneas more pious."</p></div> + +<p>That is one way of putting it. Here is another way (as the cookery +books say):—"To narrate the career of Daniel Defoe is to tell a tale +of a hosier and pantile maker, who had a hooked nose and wrote tracts +indefatigably—he was up, he was down, he was in the Pillory, he was +at Tooting; it was <i>poule de soie</i>, it was leather and prunella; and +it was always tracts. Æneas was not so pious a member of the Butchers' +Company; and there are a few milestones on the Dover Road; but Defoe's +life was as thick with tracts as a cornfield with corn." These two +estimates may differ here and there; but on one point they agree—that +Defoe was an extremely restless, pushing, voluble person, who could as +soon have stood on his head for twenty-eight years, two months, and +nineteen days as have kept silence for that period with any man or +woman in whose company he found himself frequently alone. Unless we +have entirely misjudged his character—and, I may add, unless Mr. +Wright has completely misrepresented the rest of his life—it simply +was not <i>in</i> the man to keep this foolish vow for twenty-four hours.</p> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_86" id="Page_86">Pg 86</a></span></p><p>No, I am afraid Mr. Wright's hypothesis will not do. And yet his plan +of adding twenty-seven years to each important date in Crusoe's +history has revealed so many coincident events in the life of Defoe +that we cannot help feeling he is "hot," as they say in the children's +game; that the wreck upon the island and Crusoe's twenty-eight years +odd of solitude do really correspond with some great event and +important period of Defoe's life. The wreck is dated 30th September, +1659. Add the twenty-seven years, and we come to September 30th, 1686. +Where was Defoe at that date, and what was he doing? Mr. Wright has to +confess that of his movements in 1686 and the two following years "we +know little that is definite." Certainly we know of nothing that can +correspond with Crusoe's shipwreck.</p> + +<p class="left"><i><b>A suggestion.</b></i></p> + +<p>But wait a moment—The <i>original</i> editions of <i>Robinson Crusoe</i> (and +most, if not all, later editions) give the date of Crusoe's departure +from the island as December 19th, 1686, instead of 1687. Mr. Wright +suggests that this is a misprint; and, to be sure, it does not agree +with the statement respecting the length of Crusoe's stay on the +island, <i>if we <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_87" id="Page_87">Pg 87</a></span>assume the date of the wreck to be correct</i>. But, (as +Mr. Aitken points out) the mistake must be the author's, not the +printer's, because in the next paragraph we are told that Crusoe +reached England in June, 1687, not 1688. I agree with Mr. Aitken; and +I suggest <i>that the date of Crusoe's arrival at the island, not the +date of his departure, is the date misprinted</i>. Assume for a moment +that the date of departure (December 19th, 1686) is correct. Subtract +the twenty-eight years, two months, and nineteen days of Crusoe's stay +on the island, and we get September 30th, 1658, as the date of the +wreck and his arrival at the island. Now add the twenty-seven years +which separate Crusoe's experiences from Defoe's, and we come to +September 30th, 1685. What was happening in England at the close of +September, 1685? Why, Jeffreys was carrying through his Bloody Assize.</p> + +<p>"Like many other Dissenters," says Mr. Wright on p. 21, "Defoe +sympathised with Monmouth; and, to his misfortune, took part in the +rising." His comrades perished in it, and he himself, in Mr. Wright's +words, "probably had to lie low." There is no doubt that the Monmouth +affair was the be<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_88" id="Page_88">Pg 88</a></span>ginning of Defoe's troubles: and I suggest that +certain passages in the story of Crusoe's voyage (<i>e.g.</i> the "secret +proposal" of the three merchants who came to Crusoe) have a peculiar +significance if read in this connection. I also think it possible +there may be a particular meaning in the several waves, so carefully +described, through which Crusoe made his way to dry land; and in the +simile of the reprieved malefactor (p. 50 in Mr. Aitken's delightful +edition); and in the several visits to the wreck.</p> + +<p>I am no specialist in Defoe, but put this suggestion forward with the +utmost diffidence. And yet, right or wrong, I feel it has more +plausibility than Mr. Wright's. Defoe undoubtedly took part in the +Monmouth rising, and was a survivor of that wreck "on the south side +of the island": and undoubtedly it formed the turning-point of his +career. If we could discover how he escaped Kirke and Jeffreys, I am +inclined to believe we should have a key to the whole story of the +shipwreck. I should not be sorry to find this hypothesis upset; for +the story of Robinson Crusoe is quite good enough for me as it stands, +and without any sub-intention. But whatever be the <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_89" id="Page_89">Pg 89</a></span>true explanation +of the parable, if time shall discover it, I confess I expect it will +be a trifle less recondite than Mr. Wright's, and a trifle more +creditable to the father of the English novel.<a name="FNanchor_C_8" id="FNanchor_C_8"></a><a href="#Footnote_C_8" class="fnanchor">[C]</a></p> + +<div class="footnotes"><h3>FOOTNOTES:</h3> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_A_6" id="Footnote_A_6"></a><a href="#FNanchor_A_6"><span class="label">[A]</span></a> "The Life of Daniel Defoe." By Thomas Wright, Principal +of Cowper School, Olney. London: Cassell & Co.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_B_7" id="Footnote_B_7"></a><a href="#FNanchor_B_7"><span class="label">[B]</span></a> <i>Romances and Narratives by Daniel Defoe</i>. Edited by +George A. Aitken. Vols. i., ii., and iii. Containing the Life and +Adventures, Farther Adventures, and Serious Reflections of Robinson +Crusoe. With a General Introduction by the Editor. London: J.M. Dent & +Co.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_C_8" id="Footnote_C_8"></a><a href="#FNanchor_C_8"><span class="label">[C]</span></a> Upon this suggestion Mr. Aitken, in a postscript to his +seventh volume of the <i>Romances and Narratives</i>, has since remarked as +follows:—</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>"In a discussion in <i>The Speaker</i> upon Defoe's supposed period of +'silence,' published since the appearance of the first volume of +this edition, Mr. Quiller Couch, while agreeing, for the reasons +I have given (vol. i. p. lvii.), that there is no mistake in the +date of Robinson Crusoe's departure from his island (December, +1686), has suggested that perhaps the error in the chronology +lies, not in the length of time Crusoe is said to have lived on +the island, but in the date given for his landing (September, +1659). That this suggestion is right appears from a passage which +has hitherto escaped notice. Crusoe was born in 1632, and Defoe +makes him say (vol. i. p. 147), 'The same day of the year I was +born on, viz. the 30th of September, that same day I had my life +so miraculously saved twenty-six years after, when I was cast +ashore on this island.' Crusoe must, therefore, have reached his +island on September 30, 1658, not 1659, as twice stated by Defoe; +and by adding twenty-eight years to 1658 we get 1686, the date +given for Crusoe's departure. +</p><p> +"It is, however, questionable whether this rectification helps us +to interpret the allegory in <i>Robinson Crusoe</i>. It is true that +if, in accordance with the 'key' suggested by Mr. Wright, we add +twenty-seven years to the date of the shipwreck (1658) in order +to find the corresponding event in Defoe's life, we arrive at +September, 1685, when Jeffreys was sentencing many of those +who—like Defoe—took part in Monmouth's rising. But we have no +evidence that Defoe suffered seriously in consequence of the part +he took in this rebellion; and the addition of twenty-seven years +to the date of Crusoe's departure from the island (December, +1686) does not bring us to any corresponding event in Defoe's own +story. Those who are curious will find the question discussed at +greater length in <i>The Speaker</i> for April 13 and 20, and May 4, +1895."</p></div> +</div> +</div> + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_90" id="Page_90">Pg 90</a></span></p> +<h2><a name="LAWRENCE_STERNE" id="LAWRENCE_STERNE"></a>LAWRENCE STERNE</h2> + + +<p class="left"><i><b>Dec. 10, 1891. Sterne and Thackeray.</b></i></p> + +<p>It is told by those who write scraps of Thackeray's biography that a +youth once ventured to speak disrespectfully of Scott in his presence. +"You and I, sir," said the great man, cutting him short, "should lift +our hats at the mention of that great name."</p> + +<p>An admirable rebuke!—if only Thackeray had remembered it when he sat +down to write those famous Lectures on the English Humorists, or at +least before he stood up in Willis's Rooms to inform a polite audience +concerning his great predecessors. Concerning their work? No. +Concerning their genius? No. Concerning the debt owed to them by +mankind? Not a bit of it. Concerning their <i>lives</i>, ladies and +gentlemen; and whether their lives were pure and respectable and free +from scandal and such as men ought to have led whose works you would +like your sons and daughters to <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_91" id="Page_91">Pg 91</a></span>handle. Mr. Frank T. Marzials, +Thackeray's latest biographer, finds the matter of these Lectures +"excellent":—</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>"One feels in the reading that Thackeray is a peer among his +peers—a sort of elder brother,<a name="FNanchor_A_9" id="FNanchor_A_9"></a><a href="#Footnote_A_9" class="fnanchor">[A]</a> kindly, appreciative and +tolerant—as he discourses of Addison, Steele, Swift, Pope, +Sterne, Fielding, Goldsmith. I know of no greater contrast in +criticism—a contrast, be it said, not to the advantage of the +French critic—than Thackeray's treatment of Pope and that of M. +Taine. What allowance the Englishman makes for the physical ills +that beset the 'gallant little cripple'; with what a gentle hand +he touches the painful places in that poor twisted body! M. +Taine, irritated apparently that Pope will not fit into his +conception of English literature, exhibits the same deformities +almost savagely."</p></div> + +<p>I am sorry that I cannot read this kindliness, this appreciation, this +tolerance, into the Lectures—into those, for instance, of Sterne and +Fielding: that the simile of the "elder brother" carries different +suggestions for Mr. Marzials and for me: and that the lecturer's +attitude is to me less suggestive of a peer among his peers than of a +tall "bobby"—a volunteer constable—determined to warn his polite +hearers what sort of men these were whose books they had hitherto read +unsuspectingly.</p> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_92" id="Page_92">Pg 92</a></span></p><p>And even so—even though the lives and actions of men who lived too +early to know Victorian decency must be held up to shock a crowd in +Willis's Rooms, yet it had been but common generosity to tell the +whole truth. Then the story of Fielding's <i>Voyage to Lisbon</i> might +have touched the heart to sympathy even for the purely fictitious low +comedian whom Thackeray presented: and Sterne's latest letters might +have infused so much pity into the polite audience that they, like his +own Recording Angel, might have blotted out his faults with a tear. +But that was not Thackeray's way. Charlotte Brontë found "a finished +taste and ease" in the Lectures, a "something high bred." Motley +describes their style as "hovering," and their method as "the +perfection of lecturing to high-bred audiences." Mr. Marzials quotes +this expression "hovering" as admirably descriptive. It is. By +judicious selection, by innuendo, here a pitying aposiopesis, there an +indignant outburst, the charges are heaped up. Swift was a toady at +heart, and used Stella vilely for the sake of that hussy Vanessa. +Congreve had captivating manners—of course he had, the dog! And we +all know what that meant in those days. Dick Steele drank and <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_93" id="Page_93">Pg 93</a></span>failed +to pay his creditors. Sterne—now really I know what Club life is, +ladies and gentlemen, and I might tell you a thing or two if I would: +but really, speaking as a gentleman before a polite audience, I warn +you against Sterne.</p> + +<p>I do not suppose for a moment that Thackeray consciously defamed these +men. The weaknesses, the pettinesses of humanity interested him, and +he treated them with gusto, even as he spares us nothing of that +horrible scene between Mrs. Mackenzie and Colonel Newcome. And of +course poor Sterne was the easiest victim. The fellow was so full of +his confounded sentiments. You ring a choice few of these on the +counter and prove them base metal. You assume that the rest of the bag +is of equal value. You "go one better" than Sir Peter Teazle and damn +all sentiment, and lo! the fellow is no better than a smirking jester, +whose antics you can expose till men and women, who had foolishly +laughed and wept as he moved them, turn from him, loathing him as a +swindler. So it is that although <i>Tristram Shandy</i> continues one of +the most popular classics in the language, nobody dares to confess his +debt to Sterne except in discreet terms of apology.</p> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_94" id="Page_94">Pg 94</a></span></p><p>But the fellow wrote the book. You can't deny <i>that</i>, though +Thackeray may tempt you to forget it. (What proportion does my Uncle +Toby hold in that amiable Lecture?) The truth is that the elemental +simplicity of Captain Shandy and Corporal Trim did not appeal to the +author of <i>The Book of Snobs</i> in the same degree as the pettiness of +the man Sterne appealed to him: and his business in Willis's Rooms was +to talk, not of Captain Shandy, but of the man Sterne, to whom his +hearers were to feel themselves superior as members of society. I +submit that this was not a worthy task for a man of letters who was +also a man of genius. I submit that it was an inversion of the true +critical method to wreck Sterne's <i>Sentimental Journey</i> at the outset +by picking Sterne's life to pieces, holding up the shreds and warning +the reader that any nobility apparent in his book will be nothing +better than a sham. Sterne is scarcely arrived at Calais and in +conversation with the Monk before you are cautioned how you listen to +the impostor. "Watch now," says the critic; "he'll be at his tricks in +a moment. Hey, <i>paillasse</i>! There!—didn't I tell you?" And yet I am +as sure that the opening pages of the <i>Sentimental <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_95" id="Page_95">Pg 95</a></span>Journey</i> are full +of genuine feeling as I am that if Jonathan Swift had entered the room +while the Lecture upon him was going forward, he would have eaten +William Makepeace Goliath, white waistcoat and all.</p> + +<p>Frenchmen, who either are less awed than we by lecturers in white +waistcoats, or understand the methods of criticism somewhat better, +cherish the <i>Sentimental Journey</i> (in spite of its indifferent French) +and believe in the genius that created it. But the Briton reads it +with shyness, and the British critic speaks of Sterne with bated +breath, since Thackeray told it in Gath that Sterne was a bad man, and +the daughters of Philistia triumphed.</p> + +<hr style='width: 45%;' /> + +<p class="left"><i><b>October 6, 1894. Mr. Whibley's Edition of "Tristram +Shandy."</b></i></p> + +<p>We are a strenuous generation, with a New Humor and a number of +interesting by-products; but a new <i>Tristram Shandy</i> stands not yet +among our achievements. So Messrs. Henley and Whibley have made the +best of it and given us a new edition of the old <i>Tristram</i>—two +handsome volumes, with shapely pages, fair type, and an Introduction. +Mr. Whibley supplies the Introduction, and that he writes <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_96" id="Page_96">Pg 96</a></span>lucidly and +forcibly needs not to be said. His position is neither that so +unfairly taken up by Thackeray; nor that of Allibone, who, writing for +Heaven knows how many of Allibone's maiden aunts, summed up Sterne +thus:—</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>"A standing reproach to the profession which he disgraced, +grovelling in his tastes, indiscreet, if not licentious, in his +habits, he lived unhonoured and died unlamented, save by those +who found amusement in his wit or countenance in his +immorality."<a name="FNanchor_B_10" id="FNanchor_B_10"></a><a href="#Footnote_B_10" class="fnanchor">[B]</a></p></div> + + + +<p>But though he avoids these particular excesses; though he goes +straight for the book, as a critic should; Mr. Whibley cannot get quit +of the bad tradition of patronizing Sterne:—</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>"He failed, as only a sentimentalist can fail, in the province of +pathos.... There is no trifle, animate or inanimate, he will not +bewail, if he be but in the mood; nor does it shame him to dangle +before the public gaze those poor shreds of sensibility he calls +his feelings. Though he seldom deceives the reader into sympathy, +none will turn from his choicest agony without a thrill of +disgust. The <i>Sentimental Journey</i>, despite its interludes of +tacit humour and excellent narrative, is the last extravagance of +irrelevant grief.... Genuine sentiment was as strange to Sterne +the writer as to Sterne the man; and he conjures up no tragic +figure that is not <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_97" id="Page_97">Pg 97</a></span>stuffed with sawdust and tricked out in the +rags of the green-room. Fortunately, there is scant opportunity +for idle tears in <i>Tristram Shandy</i>.... Yet no occasion is +lost.... Yorick's death is false alike to nature and art. The +vapid emotion is properly matched with commonness of expression, +and the bad taste is none the more readily excused by the +suggestion of self-defence. Even the humour of My Uncle Toby is +something: degraded by the oft-quoted platitude: 'Go, poor +devil,' says he, to an overgrown fly which had buzzed about his +nose; 'get thee gone. Why should I hurt thee? This world surely +is big enough to hold both thee and me.'"</p></div> + +<p>But here Mr. Whibley's notorious hatred of sentiment leads him into +confusion. That the passage has been over-quoted is no fault of +Sterne's. Of My Uncle Toby, if of any man, it might have been +predicted that he would not hurt a fly. To me this trivial action of +his is more than merely sentimental. But, be this as it may, I am sure +it is honestly characteristic.</p> + +<p>Still, on the whole Mr. Whibley has justice. Sterne <i>is</i> a +sentimentalist. Sterne <i>is</i> indecent by reason of his reticence—more +indecent than Rabelais, because he uses a hint where Rabelais would +have said what he meant, and prints a dash where Rabelais would have +plumped out with a coarse word and a laugh. Sterne <i>is</i> a <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_98" id="Page_98">Pg 98</a></span>convicted +thief. On a famous occasion Charles Reade drew a line between plagiary +and justifiable borrowing. To draw material from a heterogeneous +work—to found, for instance, the play of <i>Coriolanus</i> upon Plutarch's +<i>Life</i>—is justifiable: to take from a homogeneous work—to enrich +your drama from another man's drama—is plagiary. But even on this +interpretation of the law Sterne must be condemned; for in decking out +<i>Tristram</i> with feathers from the history of Gargantua he was +pillaging a homogeneous work. Nor can it be pleaded in extenuation +that he improved upon his originals—though it can, I think, be +pleaded that he made his borrowings his own. I do not think much of +Mr. Whibley's instance of Servius Sulpicius' letter. No doubt Sterne +took his translation of it from Burton; but the letter is a very well +known one, and Burton's translation happened to be uncommonly good, +and the borrowing of a good rendering without acknowledgment was not, +as far as I know, then forbidden by custom. In any case, the whole +passage is intended merely to lead up to the beautiful perplexity of +My Uncle Toby. And that is Sterne's own, and could never have been +another man's. "After all," says Mr. <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_99" id="Page_99">Pg 99</a></span>Whibley, "all the best in Sterne +is still Sterne's own."</p> + +<p>But the more I agree with Mr. Whibley's strictures the more I desire +to remove them from an Introduction to <i>Tristram Shandy</i>, and to read +them in a volume of Mr. Whibley's collected essays. Were it not +better, in reading <i>Tristram Shandy</i>, to take Sterne for once (if only +for a change) at his own valuation, or at least to accept the original +postulates of the story? If only for the entertainment he provides we +owe him the effort. There will be time enough afterwards to turn to +the cold judgment of this or that critic, or to the evidence of this +or that thief-taker. For the moment he claims to be heard without +prejudice; he has genius enough to make it worth our while to listen +without prejudice; and the most lenient "appreciation" of his sins, if +we read it beforehand, is bound to raise prejudice and infect our +enjoyment as we read. And, as a corollary of this demand, let us ask +that he shall be allowed to present his book to us exactly as he +chooses. Mr. Whibley says, "He set out upon the road of authorship +with a false ideal: 'Writing,' said he, 'when properly <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_100" id="Page_100">Pg 100</a></span>managed, is +but a different name for conversation.' It would be juster to assert +that writing is never properly managed, unless it be removed from +conversation as far as possible." Very true; or, at least, very +likely. But since Sterne <i>had</i> this ideal, let us grant him full +liberty to make his spoon or spoil his horn, and let us judge +afterwards concerning the result. The famous blackened page and the +empty pages (all omitted in this new edition) are part of Sterne's +method. They may seem to us trick-work and foolery; but, if we +consider, they link on to his notion that writing is but a name for +conversation; they are included in his demand that in writing a book a +man should be allowed to "go cluttering away like hey-go mad." "You +may take my word"—it is Sterne who speaks, and in his very first +chapter—</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>"You may take my word that nine parts in ten of a man's sense or +his nonsense, his success and miscarriages in this world, depend +upon their motions and activity, and the different tracks and +trains you put them into, so that when they are once set +going—whether right or wrong, 'tis not a halfpenny matter—away +they go cluttering like hey-go mad; and by treading the same +steps over and over again, they presently make a road of it, as +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_101" id="Page_101">Pg 101</a></span>plain and smooth as a garden walk, which, when once they are +used to, the devil himself sometimes shall not be able to drive +them off it."</p></div> + +<p>This, at any rate, is Sterne's own postulate. And I had rather judge +him with all his faults after reading the book than be prepared +beforehand to make allowances.</p> + +<hr style='width: 45%;' /> + +<p class="left"><i><b>Nov. 12, 1895. Sterne's Good-nature.</b></i></p> + +<p>Let one thing be recorded to the credit of this much-abused man. He +wrote two masterpieces of fiction (one of them a work of considerable +length), and in neither will you find an ill-natured character or an +ill-natured word. On the admission of all critics My Father, My +Mother, My Uncle Toby, Corporal Trim, and Mrs. Wadman are immortal +creations. To the making of them there has gone no single sour or +uncharitable thought. They are essentially amiable: and the same may +be said of all the minor characters and of the author's disquisitions. +Sterne has given us a thousand occasions to laugh, but never an +occasion to laugh on the wrong side of the mouth. For savagery or +bitterness you will search his books in vain. He is obscene, to be +sure. But who, pray, was ever the worse for having read him? Alas, +poor Yorick! He had his <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_102" id="Page_102">Pg 102</a></span>obvious and deplorable failings. I never +heard that he communicated them. Good-humor he has been communicating +now for a hundred and fifty years.</p> + +<div class="footnotes"><h3>FOOTNOTES:</h3> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_A_9" id="Footnote_A_9"></a><a href="#FNanchor_A_9"><span class="label">[A]</span></a> But why "elder"?</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_B_10" id="Footnote_B_10"></a><a href="#FNanchor_B_10"><span class="label">[B]</span></a> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">"Pan might <i>indeed</i> be proud if ever he begot</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2em;">Such an Allibone . . . " <i>Spenser (revised).</i></span><br /> +</p> +</div> +</div> + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_103" id="Page_103">Pg 103</a></span></p> +<h2><a name="SCOTT_AND_BURNS" id="SCOTT_AND_BURNS"></a>SCOTT AND BURNS</h2> + + +<p class="left"><i><b>Dec. 9, 1893. Scott's Letters.</b></i></p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>"<i>All Balzac's novels occupy one shelf. The new edition fifty +volumes long"</i></p></div> + +<p>—says Bishop Blougram. But for Scott the student will soon have to +hire a room. The novels and poems alone stretch away into just sixty +volumes in Cadell's edition; and this is only the beginning. At this +very moment two new editions (one of which, at least, is +indispensable) are unfolding their magnificent lengths, and report +says that Messrs. Hodder and Stoughton already project a third, with +introductory essays by Mr. Barrie. Then the Miscellaneous Prose Works +by that untiring hand extend to some twenty-eight or thirty volumes. +And when Scott stops, his biographer and his commentators begin, and +all with like liberal notions of space and time. Nor do they deceive +themselves. We take all they give, and call for more. Three years ago, +and fifty-eight from the date of Scott's death, his Journal was +pub<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_104" id="Page_104">Pg 104</a></span>lished; and although Lockhart had drawn upon it for one of the +fullest biographies in the language, the little that Lockhart had left +unused was sufficient to make its publication about the most important +literary event of the year 1890.</p> + +<p>And now Mr. David Douglas, the publisher of the "Journal," gives us in +two volumes a selection from the familiar letters preserved at +Abbotsford. The period covered by this correspondence is from 1797, +the year of Sir Walter's marriage, to 1825, when the "Journal" +begins—"covered," however, being too large a word for the first seven +years, which are represented by seven letters only; it is only in 1806 +that we start upon something like a consecutive story. Mr. Douglas +speaks modestly of his editorial work. "I have done," he says, "little +more than arrange the correspondence in chronological order, supplying +where necessary a slight thread of continuity by annotation and +illustration." It must be said that Mr. Douglas has done this +exceedingly well. There is always a note where a note is wanted, and +never where information would be superfluous. On the taste and +judgment of his se<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_105" id="Page_105">Pg 105</a></span>lection one who has not examined the whole mass of +correspondence at Abbotsford can only speak on <i>a priori</i> grounds. But +it is unlikely that the writer of these exemplary footnotes has made +many serious mistakes in compiling his text.</p> + +<p>Man's perennial and pathetic curiosity about virtue has no more +striking example than the public eagerness to be acquainted with every +detail of Scott's life. For what, as a mere story, is that life?—a +level narrative of many prosperous years; a sudden financial crash; +and the curtain falls on the struggle of a tired and dying gentleman +to save his honor. Scott was born in 1771 and died in 1832, and all +that is special in his life belongs to the last six years of it. Even +so the materials for the story are of the simplest—enough, perhaps, +under the hand of an artist to furnish forth a tale of the length of +Trollope's <i>The Warden</i>. In picturesqueness, in color, in wealth of +episode and +<a name="greek_2" id="greek_2"></a><span title="peripeteia">περιπέτεια</span>, +Scott's career will not compare for a +moment with the career of Coleridge, for instance. Yet who could +endure to read the life of Coleridge in six volumes? De Quincey, in an +essay first published the other day by Dr. <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_106" id="Page_106">Pg 106</a></span>Japp, calls the story of +the Coleridges "a perfect romance ... a romance of beauty, of +intellectual power, of misfortune suddenly illuminated from heaven, of +prosperity suddenly overcast by the waywardness of the individual." +But the "romance" has been written twice and thrice, and desperately +dull reading it makes in each case. Is it then an accident that +Coleridge has been unhappy in his biographers, while Lockhart +succeeded once for all, and succeeded so splendidly?</p> + +<p>It is surely no accident. Coleridge is an ill man to read about just +as certainly as Scott is a good man to read about; and the secret is +just that Scott had character and Coleridge had not. In writing of the +man of the "graspless hand," the biographer's own hand in time grows +graspless on the pen; and in reading of him our hands too grow +graspless on the page. We pursue the man and come upon group after +group of his friends; and each as we demand "What have you done with +Coleridge?" answers "He was here just now, and we helped him forward a +little way." Our best biographies are all of men and women of +character—and, it may be added, <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_107" id="Page_107">Pg 107</a></span>of beautiful character—of Johnson, +Scott, and Charlotte Brontë.</p> + +<p>There are certain people whose biographies <i>ought</i> to be long. Who +could learn too much concerning Lamb? And concerning Scott, who will +not agree with Lockhart's remark in the preface to his abridged +edition of 1848:—"I should have been more willing to produce an +enlarged edition; for the interest of Sir Walter's history lies, I +think, peculiarly in its minute details"? You may explore here, and +explore there, and still you find pure gold; for the man was gold +right through.</p> + +<p>So in the present volume every line is of interest because we refer it +to Scott's known character and test it thereby. The result is always +the same; yet the employment does not weary. In themselves the letters +cannot stand, as mere writing, beside the letters of Cowper, or of +Lamb. They are just the common-sense epistles of a man who to his last +day remained too modest to believe in the extent of his own genius. +The letters in this collection which show most acuteness on literary +matters are not Scott's, but Lady Louisa Stuart's, who appre<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_108" id="Page_108">Pg 108</a></span>ciated +the Novels on their appearance (their faults as well as their merits) +with a judiciousness quite wonderful in a contemporary. Scott's +literary observations (with the exception of one passage where the +attitude of an English gentleman towards literature is stated +thus—"he asks of it that it shall arouse him from his habitual +contempt of what goes on about him") are much less amusing; and his +letters to Joanna Baillie the dullest in the volume, unless it be the +answers which Joanna Baillie sent. Best of all, perhaps, is the +correspondence (scarcely used by Lockhart) between Scott and Lady +Abercorn, with its fitful intervals of warmth and reserve. This alone +would justify Mr. Douglas's volumes. But, indeed, while nothing can be +found now to alter men's conception of Scott, any book about him is +justified, even if it do no more than heap up superfluous testimony to +the beauty of his character.</p> + +<hr style='width: 45%;' /> + +<p class="left"><i><b>June 15, 1895. A racial disability.</b></i></p> + +<p>Since about one-third of the number of my particular friends happen to +be Scotsmen, it has always distressed and annoyed me that, with the +best will in the world, I have never been able to understand on what +principle that <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_109" id="Page_109">Pg 109</a></span>perfervid race conducts its enthusiasms. Mine is a +racial disability, of course; and the converse has been noted by no +less a writer than Stevenson, in the story of his journey "Across the +Plains":—</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>"There were no emigrants direct from Europe—save one German +family and a knot of Cornish miners who kept grimly by +themselves, one reading the New Testament all day long through +steel spectacles, the rest discussing privately the secrets of +their old-world mysterious race. Lady Hester Stanhope believed +she could make something great of the Cornish; for my part I can +make nothing of them at all. A division of races, older and more +original than that of Babel, keeps this dose, esoteric family +apart from neighbouring Englishmen."</p></div> + +<p>The loss on my side, to be sure, would be immensely the greater, were +it not happily certain that I <i>can</i> make something of Scotsmen; can, +and indeed do, make friends of them.</p> + +<p class="left"><i><b>The Cult of Burns.</b></i></p> + +<p>All the same, this disability weighs me down with a sense of hopeless +obtuseness when I consider the deportment of the average intelligent +Scot at a Burns banquet, or a Burns <i>conversazione</i>, or a Burns +festival, or the unveiling of a Burns statue, or the putting up of a +pillar on <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_110" id="Page_110">Pg 110</a></span>some spot made famous by Burns. All over the world—and all +under it, too, when their time comes—Scotsmen are preparing +after-dinner speeches about Burns. The great globe swings round out of +the sun into the dark; there is always midnight somewhere; and always +in this shifting region the eye of imagination sees orators +gesticulating over Burns; companies of heated exiles with crossed arms +shouting "Auld Lang Syne"; lesser groups—if haply they be +lesser—reposing under tables, still in honor of Burns. And as the +vast continents sweep "eastering out of the high shadow which reaches +beyond the moon," and as new nations, with <i>their</i> cities and +villages, their mountains and seashores, rise up on the morning-side, +lo! fresh troops, and still fresh troops, and yet again fresh troops, +wend or are carried out of action with the dawn.</p> + +<p class="left"><i><b>Scott and Burns.</b></i></p> + +<p>None but a churl would wish this enthusiasm abated. But why is it all +lavished on Burns? That is what gravels the Southron. Why Burns? Why +not Sir Walter? Had I the honor to be a fellow-countryman of Scott, +and had I command of the racial tom-tom, it seems to me that I would +tund upon it in honor of that <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_111" id="Page_111">Pg 111</a></span>great man until I dropped. To me, a +Southron, Scott is the most imaginative, and at the same time the +justest, writer of our language since Shakespeare died. To say this is +not to suggest that he is comparable with Shakespeare. Scott himself, +sensible as ever, wrote in his <i>Journal</i>, "The blockheads talk of my +being like Shakespeare—not fit to tie his brogues." "But it is also +true," said Mr. Swinburne, in his review of the <i>Journal</i>, "that if +there were or could be any man whom it would +not be a monstrous absurdity to compare with Shakespeare as a creator +of men and inventor of circumstance, that man could be none other than +Scott." Greater poems than his have been written; and, to my mind, one +or two novels better than his best. But when one considers the huge +mass of his work, and its quality in the mass; the vast range of his +genius, and its command over that range; who shall be compared with +him?</p> + +<p>These are the reflections which occur, somewhat obviously, to the +Southron. As for character, it is enough to say that Scott was one of +the best men who ever walked on this planet; and that Burns was not. +But Scott was not <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_112" id="Page_112">Pg 112</a></span>merely good: he was winningly good: of a character +so manly, temperate, courageous that men read his Life, his Journal, +his Letters with a thrill, as they might read of Rorke's Drift or +Chitral. How then are we to account for the undeniable fact that his +countrymen, in public at any rate, wax more enthusiastic over Burns? +Is it that the <i>homeliness</i> of Burns appeals to them as a wandering +race? Is it because, in farthest exile, a line of Burns takes their +hearts straight back to Scotland?—as when Luath the collie, in "The +Twa Dogs," describes the cotters' New Year's Day:—</p> + +<p> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">"That merry day the year begins,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">They bar the door on frosty winds;</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">The nappy reeks wi' mantling ream,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">An' sheds a heart-inspirin' steam;</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">The luntin' pipe an' sneeshin' mill</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">Are handed round wi' richt guid will;</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">The cantie auld folks crackin' crouse,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">The young anes rantin' through the house,—</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">My heart has been sae fain to see them,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">That I for joy hae barkit wi' them."</span><br /> +</p> + +<p>That is one reason, no doubt. But there is another, I suspect. With +all his immense range Scott saw deeply into character; but he did not, +I think, see very deeply into feeling. You <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_113" id="Page_113">Pg 113</a></span>may extract more of the +<i>lacrimæ rerum</i> from the story of his own life than from all his +published works put together. The pathos of Lammermoor is +taken-for-granted pathos. If you deny this, you will not deny, at any +rate, that the pathos of the last scene of <i>Lear</i> is quite beyond his +scope. Yet this is not more certainly beyond his scope than is the +feeling in many a single line or stanza of Burns'. Verse after verse, +line after line, rise up for quotation—</p> + +<p> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">"Thou'lt break my heart, thou bonnie bird</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 3.5em;">That sings beside thy mate;</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">For sae I sat, and sae I sang,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 3.5em;">And wist na o' my fate."</span><br /> +</p> + +<p>Or,</p> + +<p> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">"O pale, pale now, those rosy lips</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 3.5em;">I aft hae kissed sae fondly!</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">And closed for aye the sparkling glance</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 3.5em;">That dwelt on me sae kindly!</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">And mouldering now in silent dust</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 3.5em;">The heart that lo'ed me dearly—</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">But still within my bosom's core</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 3.5em;">Shall live my Highland Mary."</span><br /> +</p> + +<p>Or,</p> + +<p> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">"Had we never loved sae kindly,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 3.5em;">Had we never loved sae blindly,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">Never met—or never parted,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 3.5em;">We had ne'er been broken-hearted."</span><br /> +</p> + +<p>Sco<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_114" id="Page_114">Pg 114</a></span>tt left an enormous mass of writing behind him, and almost all of +it is good. Burns left very much less, and among it a surprising +amount of inferior stuff. But such pathos as the above Scott cannot +touch. I can understand the man who holds that these deeps of pathos +should not be probed in literature: and am not sure that I wholly +disagree with him. The question certainly is discutable and worth +discussing. But such pathos, at any rate, is immensely popular: and +perhaps this will account for the hold which Burns retains on the +affections of a race which has a right to be at least thrice as proud +of Scott.</p> + +<p>However, if Burns is honored at the feast, Scott is read by the +fireside. Hardly have the rich Dryburgh and Border editions issued +from the press before Messrs. Archibald Constable and Co. are bringing +out their reprint of the famous 48-volume edition of the Novels; and +Mr. Barrie is supposed to be meditating another, with introductory +notes of his own upon each Novel. In my own opinion nothing has ever +beaten, or come near to beat, the 48-volume "Waverley" of 1829; and +Messrs. Constable and Co. were happily inspired when <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_115" id="Page_115">Pg 115</a></span>they decided to +make this the basis of their new edition. They have improved upon it +in two respects. The paper is lighter and better. And each novel is +kept within its own covers, whereas in the old editions a volume would +contain the end of one novel and beginning of another. The original +illustrations, by Wilkie, Landseer, Leslie, Stanfield, Bonington, and +the rest, have been retained, in order to make the reprint complete. +But this seems to me a pity; for a number of them were bad to begin +with, and will be worse than ever now, being reproduced (as I +understand) from impressions of the original plates. To do without +illustrations were a counsel of perfection. But now that the novels +have become historical, surely it were better to illustrate them with +authentic portraits of Scott, pictures of scenery, facsimiles of MSS., +and so on, than with (<i>e.g.</i>) a worn reproduction of what Mr. F.P. +Stephanoff thought that Flora Mac-Ivor looked like while playing the +harp and introducing a few irregular strains which harmonized well +with the distant waterfall and the soft sigh of the evening breeze in +the rustling leaves of an aspen which overhung the fair +harpress—especially as F.P. Stephanoff does not seem <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_116" id="Page_116">Pg 116</a></span>to have known +the difference between an aspen and a birch.</p> + +<p>In short, did it not contain the same illustrations, this edition +would probably excel even that of 1828. As it is, after many +disappointments, we now have a cheap Waverley on what has always been +the best model.</p> + +<p class="left"><i><b>A Protest.</b></i></p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>'<span class="smcap">Sir</span>,—In your 'Literary Causerie' of last week ... the question +is discussed why the name of Burns raises in Scotsmen such +unbounded enthusiasm while that of Scott falls comparatively +flat. This question has puzzled many another Englishman besides +'A.T.Q.C.' And yet the explanation is not far to seek: Burns +appeals to the hearts and feelings of the masses in a way Scott +never does. 'A.T.Q.C.' admits this, and gives quotations in +support. These quotations, however excellent in their way, are +not those that any Scotsman would trust to in support of the +above proposition. A Scotsman would at once appeal to 'Scots wha +hae,' 'Auld Lang Syne,' and 'A man's a man for a' that.' The very +familiarity of these quotations has bred the proverbial contempt. +Think of the soul-inspiring, 'fire-eyed fury' of 'Scots wha hae'; +the glad, kind, ever fresh greeting of 'Auld Lang Syne'; the +manly, sturdy independence of 'A man's a man for a' that,' and +who can wonder at the ever-increasing enthusiasm for Burns' name?</p></div> + +<p> +<span style="margin-left: 4em;">Is there for honest poverty</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 5em;">That hangs his head and a' that?</span><br /> +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_117" id="Page_117">Pg 117</a></span><span style="margin-left: 4em;">The coward slave we pass him by—</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 5em;">We dare be poor for a' that.'</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 5.5em;">* * * * *</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 4em;">'The rank is but the guinea stamp—</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 5em;">The man's the gowd for a' that.'</span><br /> +</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>"Nor is it in his patriotism, independence, and conviviality +alone that Burns touches every mood of a Scotsman's heart. There +is an enthusiasm of humanity about Burns which you will hardly +find equalled in any other author, and which most certainly does +not exist in Scott.</p></div> + +<p> +<span style="margin-left: 4em;">'Man's inhumanity to man</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Makes countless thousands mourn.'</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 5.5em;">* * * * *</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 4em;">'Why has man this will and power</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 5em;">To make his fellow mourn?'</span><br /> +</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>"These quotations might be multiplied were it necessary; but I +think enough has been said to explain what puzzles 'A.T.Q.C.' I +have an unbounded admiration of Sir W. Scott—quite as great as +'A.T.Q.C.' Indeed, I think him the greatest of all novelists; +but, as a Scot, somewhat Anglicised by a residence in London of +more than a quarter of a century, I unhesitatingly say that I +would rather be the author of the above three lyrics of Burns' +than I would be the author of all Scott's novels. Certain I am +that if immortality were my aim I should be much surer of it in +the one case than the other. I cannot conceive 'Scots wha hae,' +'Auld Lang Syne,' etc., ever dying. Are there any of Scott's +writings of which the same could be said? I doubt it....</p></div> + +<p> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">—I am yours, etc., "J.B.</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">"London, June 18th, 1895."</span><br /> +</p> + + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_118" id="Page_118">Pg 118</a></span></p><p>The hopelessness of the difficulty is amusingly, if rather +distressingly, illustrated by this letter. Here again you have the +best will in the world. Nothing could be kindlier than "J.B.'s" tone. +As a Scot he has every reason to be impatient of stupidity on the +subject of Burns: yet he takes real pains to set me right. Alas! his +explanations leave me more than ever at sea, more desperate than ever +of understanding <i>what exactly it is</i> in Burns that kindles this +peculiar enthusiasm in Scotsmen and drives them to express it in +feasting and oratory.</p> + +<p>After casting about for some time, I suggested that Burns—though in +so many respects immeasurably inferior to Scott—frequently wrote with +a depth of feeling which Scott could not command. On second thoughts, +this was wrongly put. Scott may have <i>possessed</i> the feeling, together +with notions of his own, on the propriety of displaying it in his +public writings. Indeed, after reading some of his letters again, I am +sure he did possess it. Hear, for instance, how he speaks of Dalkeith +Palace, in one of his letters to Lady Louisa Stuart:—</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>"I am delighted my dear little half god-daughter is turning out +beautiful. I was at her christening, poor<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_119" id="Page_119">Pg 119</a></span> soul, and took the +oaths as representing I forget whom. That was in the time when +Dalkeith was Dalkeith; how changed alas! I was forced there the +other day by some people who wanted to see the house, and I felt +as if it would have done me a great deal of good to have set my +manhood aside, to get into a corner and cry like a schoolboy. +Every bit of furniture, now looking old and paltry, had some +story and recollections about it, and the deserted gallery, which +I have seen so happily filled, seemed waste and desolate like +Moore's</p> + +<p> +'Banquet hall deserted,<br /> +Whose flowers are dead,<br /> +Whose odours fled,<br /> +And all but I departed.'<br /> +</p> + +<p>But it avails not either sighing or moralising; to have known the +good and the great, the wise and the witty, is still, on the +whole, a pleasing reflection, though saddened by the thought that +their voices are silent and their halls empty."</p></div> + +<p>Yes, indeed, Scott possessed deep feelings, though he did not exhibit +them to the public.</p> + +<p>Now Burns does exhibit his deep feelings, as I demonstrated by +quotations. And I suggested that it is just his strength of emotion, +his command of pathos and readiness to employ it, by which Burns +appeals to the mass of his countrymen. On this point "J.B." expressly +agrees with me; but—he will have nothing to<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_120" id="Page_120">Pg 120</a></span> do with my quotations! +"However excellent in their way" these quotations may be, they "are +not those that any Scotsman would trust to in support of the above +proposition"; the above proposition being that "Burns appeals to the +hearts and feelings of the masses in a way that Scott never does."</p> + +<p>You see, I have concluded rightly; but on wrong evidence. Let us see, +then, what evidence a Scotsman will call to prove that Burns is a +writer of deep feeling. "A Scotsman," says "J.B." "would at once +appeal to "Scots wha hae," "Auld Lang Syne," and "A man's a man for a' +that." ... Think of the soul-inspiring, 'fire-eyed fury' of 'Scots wha +hae'; the glad, kind, ever fresh greeting of 'Auld Lang Syne'; the +manly, sturdy independence of 'A man's a man for a' that,' and who can +wonder at the ever-increasing enthusiasm for Burns' name?... I would +rather," says "J.B.," "be the author of the above three lyrics than I +would be the author of all Scott's novels."</p> + +<p>Here, then, is the point at which I give up my attempts, and admit my +stupidity to be <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_121" id="Page_121">Pg 121</a></span>incurable. I grant "J.B." his "Auld Lang Syne." I +grant the poignancy of—</p> + +<p> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">"We twa hae paidl't i' the burn,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 3.5em;">Frae morning sun till dine:</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">But seas between us braid hae roar'd</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 3.5em;">Sin auld lang syne."</span><br /> +</p> + +<p>I see poetry and deep feeling in this. I can see exquisite poetry and +deep feeling in "Mary Morison"—</p> + +<p> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">"Yestreen when to the trembling string,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 3.5em;">The dance ga'ed thro' the lighted ha',</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">To thee my fancy took its wing,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 3.5em;">I sat, but neither heard nor saw:</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">Tho' this was fair, and that was braw,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 3.5em;">And yor the toast a' the town,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">I sigh'd and said amang them a'</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 3em;">'Ye are na Mary Morison.'"</span><br /> +</p> + +<p>I see exquisite poetry and deep feeling in the Lament for the Earl of +Glencairn—</p> + +<p> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">"The bridegroom may forget the bride</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 3.5em;">Was made his wedded wife yestreen;</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">The monarch may forget the crown</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 3.5em;">That on his head an hour has been;</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">The mother may forget the child</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 3.5em;">That smiles sae sweetly on her knee;</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">But I'll remember thee, Glencairn,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 3.5em;">And a' that thou hast done for me!"</span><br /> +</p> + +<p>But—it is only honest to speak one's opinion and to hope, if it be +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_122" id="Page_122">Pg 122</a></span>wrong, for a better mind—I do <i>not</i> find poetry of any high order +either in "Scots wha hae" or "A man's a man for a' that." The former +seems to me to be very fine rant—inspired rant, if you will—hovering +on the borders of poetry. The latter, to be frank, strikes me as +rather poor rant, neither inspired nor even quite genuine, and in no +proper sense poetry at all. And "J.B." simply bewilders my Southron +intelligence when he quotes it as an instance of deeply emotional +song.</p> + +<p> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">"Ye see yon birkie, ca'd a lord,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 3.5em;">Wha struts, and stares, and a' that;</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">Tho' hundreds worship at his word,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 3.5em;">He's but a coof for a' that:</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">For a' that, and a' that,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 3.5em;">His riband, star and a' that.</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">The man of independent mind,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 3.5em;">He looks and laughs at a' that."</span><br /> +</p> + +<p>The proper attitude, I should imagine, for a man "of independent mind" +in these circumstances—assuming for the moment that ribands and stars +<i>are</i> bestowed on imbeciles—would be a quiet disdain. The above +stanza reminds me rather of ill-bred barking. People of assured +self-respect do not call other people "birkies" and "coofs," or "look +and <i>laugh</i> at a' that"—at least, not so loudly. <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_123" id="Page_123">Pg 123</a></span>Compare these +verses of Burns with Samuel Daniel's "Epistle to the Countess of +Cumberland," and you will find a higher manner altogether—</p> + +<p> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">"He that of such a height hath built his mind,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">And reared the dwelling of his thoughts so strong,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">As neither fear nor hope can shake the frame</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">Of his resolved powers; nor all the wind</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">Of vanity and malice pierce to wrong</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">His settled peace, or to disturb the same;</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">What a fair seat hath he, from whence he may</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">The boundless wastes and wilds of men survey?</span><br /> +<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">"And with how free an eye doth he look down</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">Upon these lower regions of turmoil?" ...</span><br /> +</p> + +<p>As a piece of thought, "A man's a man for a' that" unites the two +defects of obviousness and inaccuracy. As for the deep feeling, I +hardly see where it comes in—unless it be a feeling of wounded and +blatant but militant self-esteem. As for the <i>poetry</i>—well, "J.B." +had rather have written it than have written one-third of Scott's +novels. Let us take him at less than his word: he would rather have +written "A man's a man for a' that" than "Ivanhoe," "Redgauntlet," and +"The Heart of Midlothian."</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p><i>Ma sonties!</i></p></div> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_124" id="Page_124">Pg 124</a></span></p> +<h2><a name="CHARLES_READE" id="CHARLES_READE"></a>CHARLES READE</h2> + + +<p class="left"><i><b>March 10, 1894. "The Cloister and the Hearth."</b></i></p> + +<p>There is a venerable proposition—I never heard who invented it—that +an author is finally judged by his best work. This would be comforting +to authors if true: but is it true? A day or two ago I picked up on a +railway bookstall a copy of Messrs. Chatto & Windus's new sixpenny +edition of <i>The Cloister and the Hearth</i>, and a capital edition it is. +I think I must have worn out more copies of this book than of any +other; but somebody robbed me of the pretty "Elzevir edition" as soon +as it came out, and so I have only just read Mr. Walter Besant's +Introduction, which the publishers have considerately reprinted and +thrown in with one of the cheapest sixpennyworths that ever came from +the press. Good wine needs no bush, and the bush which Mr. Besant +hangs out is a very small one. But one sentence at least has +challenged attention.</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>"I do not say that the whole of life, as it was at the end of the +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_125" id="Page_125">Pg 125</a></span>fourteenth century, may be found in the <i>Cloister and the +Hearth</i>; but I do say that there is portrayed so vigorous, +lifelike, and truthful a picture of a time long gone by, and +differing, in almost every particular from our own, that the +world has never seen its like. To me it is a picture of the past +more faithful than anything in the works of Scott."</p></div> + +<p>This last sentence—if I remember rightly—was called a very bold one +when it first appeared in print. To me it seems altogether moderate. +Go steadily through Scott, and which of the novels can you choose to +compare with the <i>Cloister</i> as a "vigorous, lifelike, and truthful +picture of a time long gone by"?</p> + +<p>Is it <i>Ivanhoe</i>?—a gay and beautiful romance, no doubt; but surely, +as the late Mr. Freeman was at pains to point out, not a "lifelike and +truthful picture" of any age that ever was. Is it <i>Old Mortality</i>? +Well, but even if we here get something more like a "vigorous, +lifelike, and truthful picture of a time gone by," we are bound to +consider the scale of the two books. Size counts, as Aristotle pointed +out, and as we usually forget. It is the whole of Western Europe that +Reade reconstructs for the groundwork of his simple story.</p> + +<p>Mr. Besant might have said more. He might have pointed out that no +novel of <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_126" id="Page_126">Pg 126</a></span>Scott's approaches the <i>Cloister</i> in lofty humanity, in +sublimity of pathos. The last fifty pages of the tale reach an +elevation of feeling that Scott never touched or dreamed of touching. +And the sentiment is sane and honest, too: the author reaches to the +height of his great argument easily and without strain. It seems to me +that, as an appeal to the feelings, the page that tells of Margaret's +death is the finest thing in fiction. It appeals for a score of +reasons, and each reason is a noble one. We have brought together in +that page extreme love, self-sacrifice, resignation, courage, +religious feeling: we have the end of a beautiful love-tale, the end +of a good woman, and the last earthly trial of a good man. And with +all this, there is no vulgarization of sacred ground, no cheap parade +of the heart's secrets; but a deep sobriety relieved with the most +delicate humor. Moreover, the language is Charles Reade's at its +best—which is almost as good as at its worst it is abominable.</p> + +<p>That Scott could never reach the emotional height of Margaret's +death-scene, or of the scene in Clement's cave, is certain. Moreover +in the <i>Cloister</i> Reade challenges comparison with <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_127" id="Page_127">Pg 127</a></span>Scott on Scott's +own ground—the ground of sustained adventurous narrative—and the +advantage is not with Scott. Once more, take all the Waverley Novels +and search them through for two passages to beat the adventures of +Gerard and Denis the Burgundian (1) with the bear and (2) at "The Fair +Star" Inn, by the Burgundian Frontier. I do not think you will +succeed, even then. Indeed, I will go so far as to say that to match +these adventures of Gerard and Denis you must go again to Charles +Reade, to the homeward voyage of the <i>Agra</i> in <i>Hard Cash</i>. For these +and for sundry other reasons which, for lack of space, cannot be +unfolded here, <i>The Cloister and the Hearth</i> seems to me a finer +achievement than the finest novel of Scott's.</p> + +<p>And now we come to the proposition that an author must be judged by +his best work. If this proposition be true, then I must hold Reade to +be a greater novelist than Scott. But do I hold this? Does anyone hold +this? Why, the contention would be an absurdity.</p> + +<p>Reade wrote some twenty novels beside <i>The Cloister and the Hearth</i>, +and not one of the <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_128" id="Page_128">Pg 128</a></span>twenty approaches it. One only—<i>Griffith +Gaunt</i>—is fit to be named in the same day with it; and <i>Griffith +Gaunt</i> is marred by an insincerity in the plot which vitiates, and is +at once felt to vitiate, the whole work. On everything he wrote before +and after <i>The Cloister</i> Reade's essential vulgarity of mind is +written large. That he shook it off in that great instance is one of +the miracles of literary history. It may be that the sublimity of his +theme kept him throughout in a state of unnatural exaltation. If the +case cannot be explained thus, it cannot be explained at all. Other of +his writings display the same, or at any rate a like, capacity for +sustained narrative. <i>Hard Cash</i> displays it; parts of <i>It is Never +Too Late to Mend</i> display it. But over much of these two novels lies +the trail of that defective taste which makes <i>A Simpleton</i>, for +instance, a prodigy of cheap ineptitude.</p> + +<p>But if Reade be hopelessly Scott's inferior in manner and taste, what +shall we say of the invention of the two men? Mr. Barrie once affirmed +very wisely in an essay on Robert Louis Stevenson, "Critics have said +enthusiastically—for it is difficult to write of Mr. Steven<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_129" id="Page_129">Pg 129</a></span>son +without enthusiasm—that Alan Breck is as good as anything in Scott. +Alan Breck is certainly a masterpiece, quite worthy of the greatest of +all story-tellers, <i>who, nevertheless, it should be remembered, +created these rich side characters by the score, another before +dinner-time</i>." Inventiveness, is, I suppose, one of the first +qualities of a great novelist: and to Scott's invention there was no +end. But set aside <i>The Cloister</i>; and Reade's invention will be found +to be extraordinarily barren. Plot after plot turns on the same old +tiresome trick. Two young people are in love: by the villainy of a +third person they are separated for a while, and one of the lovers is +persuaded that the other is dead. The missing one may be kept missing +by various devices; but always he is supposed to be dead, and always +evidence is brought of his death, and always he turns up in the end. +It is the same in <i>The Cloister</i>, in <i>It is Never Too Late to Mend</i>, +in <i>Put Yourself in His Place</i>, in <i>Griffith Gaunt</i>, in <i>A Simpleton</i>. +Sometimes, as in <i>Hard Cash</i> and <i>A Terrible Temptation</i>, he is +wrongfully incarcerated as a madman; but this is obviously a variant +only on the favorite trick. Now the device is good enough in a tale of +the fourteenth century, when news <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_130" id="Page_130">Pg 130</a></span>travelled slowly, and when by the +suppression of a letter, or by a piece of false news, two lovers, the +one in Holland, the other in Rome, could easily be kept apart. But in +a tale of modern life no trick could well be stagier. Besides the +incomparable Margaret—of whom it does one good to hear Mr. Besant +say, "No heroine in fiction is more dear to me"—Reade drew some +admirable portraits of women; but his men, to tell the truth—and +especially his priggish young heroes—seem remarkably ill invented. +Again, of course, I except <i>The Cloister</i>. Omit that book, and you +would say that such a character as Bailie Nicol Jarvie or Dugald +Dalgetty were altogether beyond Reade's range. Open <i>The Cloister</i> and +you find in Denis the Burgundian a character as good as the Bailie and +Dalgetty rolled into one.</p> + +<p>Other authors have been lifted above themselves. But was there ever a +case of one sustained at such an unusual height throughout a long, +intricate and arduous work?</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_131" id="Page_131">Pg 131</a></span></p> +<h2><a name="HENRY_KINGSLEY" id="HENRY_KINGSLEY"></a>HENRY KINGSLEY</h2> + + +<p class="left"><i><b>Feb. 9, 1895. Henry Kingsley.</b></i></p> + +<p>Mr. Shorter begins his Memoir of the author of <i>Ravenshoe</i> with this +paragraph:—</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>"The story of Henry Kingsley's life may well be told in a few +words, because that life was on the whole a failure. The world +will not listen very tolerantly to a narrative of failure +unaccompanied by the halo of remoteness. To write the life of +Charles Kingsley would be a quite different task. Here was +success, victorious success, sufficient indeed to gladden the +heart even of Dr. Smiles—success in the way of Church +preferment, success in the way of public veneration, success, +above all, as a popular novelist, poet, and preacher. Canon +Kingsley's life has been written in two substantial volumes +containing abundant letters and no indiscretions. In this +biography the name of Henry Kingsley is absolutely ignored. And +yet it is not too much to say that, when time has softened his +memory for us, as it has softened for us the memories of Marlowe +and Burns and many another, the public interest in Henry Kingsley +will be stronger than in his now more famous brother."<a name="FNanchor_A_11" id="FNanchor_A_11"></a><a href="#Footnote_A_11" class="fnanchor">[A]</a></p></div> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_132" id="Page_132">Pg 132</a></span></p><p class="left"><i><b>A prejudice confessed.</b></i></p> + +<p>I almost wish I could believe this. If one cannot get rid of a +prejudice, the wisest course is to acknowledge it candidly: and +therefore I confess myself as capable of jumping over the moon as of +writing fair criticism on Charles or Henry Kingsley. As for Henry, I +worshipped his books as a boy; to-day I find them full of +faults—often preposterous, usually ill-constructed, at times +unnatural beyond belief. John Gilpin never threw the Wash about on +both sides of the way more like unto a trundling mop or a wild goose +at play than did Henry Kingsley the decent flow of fiction when the +mood was on him. His notion of constructing a novel was to take equal +parts of wooden melodrama and low comedy and stick them boldly +together in a paste of impertinent drollery and serious but entirely +irrelevant moralizing. And yet each time I read <i>Ravenshoe</i>—and I +must be close upon "double figures"—I like it better. Henry did my +green unknowing youth engage, and I find it next to impossible to give +him up, and quite impossible to choose the venerated Charles as a +substitute in my riper age. For here crops up a prejudice I find quite +ineradicable. To put it plainly, I cannot like Charles Kingsley. Those +who have had <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_133" id="Page_133">Pg 133</a></span>opportunity to study the deportment of a certain class +of Anglican divine at a foreign <i>table d'hôte</i> may perhaps understand +the antipathy. There was almost always a certain sleek offensiveness +about Charles Kingsley when he sat down to write. He had a knack of +using the most insolent language, and attributing the vilest motives +to all poor foreigners and Roman Catholics and other extra-parochial +folk, and would exhibit a pained and completely ludicrous surprise on +finding that he had hurt the feelings of these unhappy inferiors—a +kind of indignant wonder that Providence should have given them any +feelings to hurt. At length, encouraged by popular applause, this very +second-rate man attacked a very first-rate man. He attacked with every +advantage and with utter unscrupulousness; and the first-rate man +handled him; handled him gently, scrupulously, decisively; returned +him to his parish; and left him there, a trifle dazed, feeling his +muscles.</p> + +<p class="left"><i><b>Charles and Henry.</b></i></p> + +<p>Still, one may dislike the man and his books without thinking it +probable that his brother Henry will supersede him in the public +interest; nay, without thinking it right that he <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_134" id="Page_134">Pg 134</a></span>should. Dislike him +as you will, you must acknowledge that Charles Kingsley had a lyrical +gift that—to set all his novels aside—carries him well above Henry's +literary level. It is sufficient to say that Charles wrote "The +Pleasant Isle of Avès" and "When all the world is young, lad," and the +first two stanzas of "The Sands of Dee." Neither in prose nor in verse +could Henry come near such excellence. But we may go farther. Take the +novels of each, and, novel for novel, you must acknowledge—I say it +regretfully—that Charles carries the heavier guns. If you ask me +whether I prefer <i>Westward Ho!</i> or <i>Ravenshoe</i>, I answer without +difficulty that I find <i>Ravenshoe</i> almost wholly delightful, and +<i>Westward Ho!</i> as detestable in some parts as it is admirable in +others; that I have read <i>Ravenshoe</i> again and again merely for +pleasure, and that I can never read a dozen pages of <i>Westward Ho!</i> +without wishing to put the book in the fire. But if you ask me which I +consider the greater novel, I answer with equal readiness that +<i>Westward Ho!</i> is not only the greater, but much the greater. It is a +truth too seldom recognized that in literary criticism, as in +politics, one may detest a man's work while admitting his greatness. +Even <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_135" id="Page_135">Pg 135</a></span>in his episodes it seems to me that Charles stands high above +Henry. Sam Buckley's gallop on Widderin in <i>Geoffry Hamlyn</i> is (I +imagine) Henry Kingsley's finest achievement in vehement narrative: +but if it can be compared for one moment with Amyas Leigh's quest of +the Great Galleon then I am no judge of narrative. The one point—and +it is an important one—in which Henry beats Charles as an artist is +his sustained vivacity. Charles soars far higher at times; but Charles +is often profoundly dull. Now, in all Henry's books I have not found a +single dull page. He may be trivial, inconsequent, irrelevant, absurd; +but he never wearies. It is a great merit: but it is not enough in +itself to place a novelist even in the second rank. In a short sketch +of Henry Kingsley, contributed by his nephew, Mr. Maurice Kingsley, to +Messrs. Scribner's paper, <i>The Bookbuyer</i>, I find that the younger +brother was considered at home "undoubtedly the novelist of the +family; the elder being more of the poet, historian, and prophet." +(Prophet!) "My father only wrote one novel pure and simple—viz. <i>Two +Years Ago</i>—his other works being either historical novels or 'signs +of the times.'" Now why an "historical novel" <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_136" id="Page_136">Pg 136</a></span>should not be a "novel +pure and simple," and what kind of literary achievement a "sign of the +times" may be, I leave the reader to guess. The whole passage seems to +suggest a certain confusion in the Kingsley family with regard to the +fundamental divisions of literature. And it seems clear that the +Kingsley family considered novel-writing "pure and simple"—in so far +as they differentiated this from other kinds of novel-writing—to be +something not entirely respectable.</p> + +<p>Their opinion of Henry Kingsley in particular is indicated in no +uncertain manner. In Mrs. Charles Kingsley's life of her husband, +Henry's existence is completely ignored. The briefest biographical +note was furnished forth for Mr. Leslie Stephen's <i>Dictionary of +National Biography</i>: and Mr. Stephen dismisses our author with a few +curt lines. This disposition to treat Henry as an awful warning and +nothing more, while sleek Charles is patted on the back for a saint, +inclines one to take up arms on the other side and assert, with Mr. +Shorter, that "when time has softened his memory for us, the public +interest in Henry Kingsley will be stronger than in his now more +famous brother." <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_137" id="Page_137">Pg 137</a></span>But can we look forward to this reversal of the +public verdict? Can we consent with it if it ever comes? The most we +can hope is that future generations will read Henry Kingsley, and will +love him in spite of his faults.</p> + +<p>Henry, the third son of the Rev. Charles Kingsley, was born in +Northamptonshire on the 2nd of January, 1830, his brother Charles +being then eleven years old. In 1836 his father became rector of St. +Luke's Church, Chelsea—the church of which such effective use is made +in <i>The Hillyars and the Burtons</i>—and his boyhood was passed in that +famous old suburb. He was educated at King's College School and +Worcester College, Oxford, where he became a famous oarsman, rowing +bow of his College boat; also bow of a famous light-weight University +"four," which swept everything before it in its time. He wound up his +racing career by winning the Diamond Sculls at Henley. From 1853 to +1858 his life was passed in Australia, whence after some variegated +experiences he returned to Chelsea in 1858, bringing back nothing but +good "copy," which he worked into <i>Geoffry Hamlyn</i>, his first romance. +<i>Ravenshoe</i> was written in 1861; <i>Austin Elliot</i> in <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_138" id="Page_138">Pg 138</a></span>1863; <i>The +Hillyars and the Burtons</i> in 1865; <i>Silcote of Silcotes</i> in 1867; +<i>Mademoiselle Mathilde</i> (admired by few, but a favorite of mine) in +1868. He was married in 1864, and settled at Wargrave-on-Thames. In +1869 he went north to edit the <i>Edinburgh Daily Review</i>, and made a +mess of it; in 1870 he represented that journal as field-correspondent +in the Franco-Prussian War, was present at Sedan, and claimed to have +been the first Englishman to enter Metz. In 1872 he returned to London +and wrote novels in which his powers appeared to deteriorate steadily. +He removed to Cuckfield, in Sussex, and there died in May, 1876. +Hardly a man of letters followed him to the grave, or spoke, in print, +a word in his praise.</p> + +<p>And yet, by all accounts, he was a wholly amiable ne'er-do-well—a +wonderful flyfisher, an extremely clever amateur artist, a lover of +horses and dogs and children (surely, if we except a chapter of Victor +Hugo's, the children in <i>Ravenshoe</i> are the most delightful in +fiction), and a joyous companion.</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>"To us children," writes Mr. Maurice Kingsley, "Uncle Henry's +settling in Eversley was a great event.... At times he fairly<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_139" id="Page_139">Pg 139</a></span> +bubbled over with humour; while his knowledge of slang—Burschen, +Bargee, Parisian, Irish, Cockney, and English provincialisms—was +awful and wonderful. Nothing was better than to get our uncle on +his 'genteel behaviour,' which, of course, meant exactly the +opposite, and brought forth inimitable stories, scraps of old +songs and impromptu conversations, the choicest of which were +between children, Irishwomen, or cockneys. He was the only man, I +believe, who ever knew by heart the famous <i>Irish Court +Scenes</i>—naughtiest and most humorous of tales—unpublished, of +course, but handed down from generation to generation of the +faithful. Most delightful was an interview between his late +Majesty George the Fourth and an itinerant showman, which ended +up with, 'No, George the Fourth, you shall not have my +Rumptifoozle!' What said animal was, or the authenticity of the +story, he never would divulge."</p></div> + +<p>I think it is to the conversational quality of their style—its +ridiculous and good-humored impertinences and surprises—that his best +books owe a great deal of their charm. The footnotes are a study in +themselves, and range from the mineral strata of Australia to the best +way of sliding down banisters. Of the three tales already republished +in this pleasant edition, <i>Ravenshoe</i> has always seemed to me the best +in every respect; and in spite of its feeble plot and its impossible +lay-figures—Erne, Sir George <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_140" id="Page_140">Pg 140</a></span>Hillyar, +and the painfully inane Gerty—I should rank <i>The Hillyars and the Burtons</i> above the more +terrifically imagined and more neatly constructed <i>Geoffry Hamlyn</i>. +But this is an opinion on which I lay no stress.</p> + +<div class="footnotes"><h3>FOOTNOTES:</h3> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_A_11" id="Footnote_A_11"></a><a href="#FNanchor_A_11"><span class="label">[A]</span></a> <i>The Recollections of Geoffry Hamlyn</i>. By Henry Kingsley. +New Edition, with a Memoir by Clement Shorter. London: Ward, Lock & +Bowden.</p></div> +</div> + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_141" id="Page_141">Pg 141</a></span></p> +<h2><a name="ALEXANDER_WILLIAM_KINGLAKE" id="ALEXANDER_WILLIAM_KINGLAKE"></a>ALEXANDER WILLIAM KINGLAKE</h2> + + +<p class="left"><i><b>January 10, 1891. His Life.</b></i></p> + +<p>Alexander William Kinglake was born in 1812, the son of a country +gentleman—Mr. W. Kinglake, of Wilton House, Taunton—and received a +country gentleman's education at Eton and Trinity College, Cambridge. +From college he went to Lincoln's Inn, and in 1837 was called to the +Chancery Bar, where he practised with fair but not eminent success. In +1844 he published <i>Eothen</i>, and having startled the town, quietly +resumed his legal work and seemed willing to forget the achievement. +Ten years later he accompanied his friend, Lord Raglan, to the Crimea. +He retired from the Bar in 1856, and entered Parliament next year as +member for Bridgwater. Re-elected in 1868, he was unseated on petition +in 1869, and thenceforward gave himself up to the work of his life. He +had consented, after Lord Raglan's death, to write a history of <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_142" id="Page_142">Pg 142</a></span>the +Invasion of the Crimea. The two first volumes appeared in 1863; the +last was published but two years before he succumbed, in the first +days of 1891, to a slow incurable disease. In all, the task had +occupied thirty years. Long before these years ran out, the world had +learnt to regard the Crimean struggle in something like its true +perspective; but over Kinglake's mind it continued to loom in all its +original proportions. To adapt a phrase of M. Jules Lemaître's, "<i>le +monde a changé en trente ans: lui ne bouge; il ne lève plus de dessus +son papier à copie sa face congestionné</i>." And yet Kinglake was no +cloistered scribe. Before his last illness he dined out frequently, +and was placed by many among the first half-a-dozen talkers in London. +His conversation, though delicate and finished, brimmed full of +interest in life and affairs: but let him enter his study, and its +walls became a hedge. Without, the world was moving: within, it was +always 1854, until by slow toiling it turned into 1855.</p> + +<p class="left"><i><b>Style.</b></i></p> + +<p>His style is hard, elaborate, polished to brilliance. Its difficult +labor recalls Thucydides. In effect it charms at first by its accuracy +and vividness: but with continuous perusal it be<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_143" id="Page_143">Pg 143</a></span>gins to weigh upon +the reader, who feels the strain, the unsparing effort that this +glittering fabric must have cost the builder, and at length ceases to +sympathize with the story and begins to sympathize with the author. +Kinglake started by disclaiming "composition." "My narrative," he +says, in the famous preface to <i>Eothen</i>, "conveys not those +impressions which <i>ought to have been</i> produced upon any +well-constituted mind, but those which were really and truly received, +at the time of his rambles, by a headstrong and not very amiable +traveller.... As I have felt, so I have written."</p> + +<p class="left"><i><b>"Eothen."</b></i></p> + +<p>For all this, page after page of <i>Eothen</i> gives evidence of deliberate +calculation of effect. That book is at once curiously like and +curiously unlike Borrows' <i>Bible in Spain</i>. The two belong to the same +period and, in a sense, to the same fashion. Each combines a +tantalizing personal charm with a strong, almost fierce, coloring of +circumstance. The central figure in each is unmistakably an +Englishman, and quite as unmistakably a singular Englishman. Each +bears witness to a fine eye for theatrical arrangement. But whereas +Borrow <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_144" id="Page_144">Pg 144</a></span>stood for ever fortified by his wayward nature and atrocious +English against the temptation of writing as he ought, Kinglake +commenced author with a respect for "composition," ingrained perhaps +by his Public School and University training. Borrow arrays his page +by instinct, Kinglake by study. His irony (as in the interview with +the Pasha) is almost too elaborate; his artistic judgment (as in the +Plague chapter) almost too sure; the whole book almost too clever. The +performance was wonderful; the promise a trifle dangerous.</p> + +<p class="left"><i><b>The "Invasion."</b></i></p> + +<p>"Composition" indeed proved the curse of the <i>Invasion of the Crimea</i>: +for Kinglake was a slow writer, and composed with his eye on the page, +the paragraph, the phrase, rather than on the whole work. Force and +accuracy of expression are but parts of a good prose style; indeed +are, strictly speaking, inseparable from perspective, balance, logical +connection, rise and fall of emotion. It is but an indifferent +landscape that contains no pedestrian levels: and his desire for the +immediate success of each paragraph as it came helped Kinglake to miss +the broad effect. He must always be vivid; and when the strain told, +he exaggerated and <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_145" id="Page_145">Pg 145</a></span>sounded—as Matthew Arnold accused him of +sounding—the note of provinciality. There were other causes. He was, +as we have seen, an English country gentleman—<i>avant tout je suis +gentilhomme anglais</i>, as the Duke of Wellington wrote to Louis XVIII. +His admiration of the respectable class to which he belonged is +revealed by a thousand touches in his narrative—we can find half a +score in the description of Codrington's assault on the Great Redoubt +in the battle of the Alma; nor, when some high heroic action is in +progress, do we often miss an illustration, or at least a metaphor, +from the hunting-field. Undoubtedly he had the distinction of his +class; but its narrowness was his as surely. Also the partisanship of +the eight volumes grows into a weariness. The longevity of the English +Bench is notorious; but it comes of hearing both sides of every +question.</p> + +<p>After all, he was a splendid artist. He tamed that beautiful and +dangerous beast, the English sentence, with difficulty indeed, but +having tamed, worked it to high achievements. The great occasion +always found him capable, and his treatment of it is not of the sort +to be forgotten: witness the picture of the Prince <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_146" id="Page_146">Pg 146</a></span>President cowering +in an inner chamber during the bloodshed of the <i>Coup d'État</i>, the +short speech of Sir Colin Campbell to his Highlanders before the Great +Redoubt (given in the exact manner of Thucydides), or the narrative of +the Heavy Brigade's charge at Balaclava, culminating thus—</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>"The difference that there was in the temperaments of the two +comrade regiments showed itself in the last moments of the onset. +The Scots Greys gave no utterance except to a low, eager, fierce +moan of rapture—the moan of outbursting desire. The +Inniskillings went in with a cheer. With a rolling prolongation +of clangour which resulted from the bends of a line now deformed +by its speed, the 'three hundred' crashed in upon the front of +the column."</p></div> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_147" id="Page_147">Pg 147</a></span></p> +<h2><a name="CSC_and_JKS" id="CSC_and_JKS"></a>C.S.C. and J.K.S.</h2> + + +<p class="left"><i><b>Dec. 5, 1891. Cambridge Baras.</b></i></p> + +<p>What I am about to say will, no doubt, be set down to tribal +malevolence; but I confess that if Cambridge men appeal to me less at +one time than another it is when they begin to talk about their poets. +The grievance is an old one, of course—at least as old as Mr. +Birrell's "<i>Obiter Dicta</i>": but it has been revived by the little book +of verse ("<i>Quo Musa Tendis</i>?") that I have just been reading. I laid +it down and thought of Mr. Birrell's essay on Cambridge Poets, as he +calls them: and then of another zealous gentleman, hailing from the +same University, who arranged all the British bards in a tripos and +brought out the Cambridge men at the top. This was a very +characteristic performance: but Mr. Birrell's is hardly less so in +these days when (to quote the epistolary parent) so much prominence is +given to athleticism in our seats of learning. For he picks out a team +of light<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_148" id="Page_148">Pg 148</a></span>blue singers as though he meant to play an inter-University +match, and challenges Oxford to "come on." He gives Milton a "blue," +and says we oughtn't to play Shelley because Shelley isn't in +residence.</p> + +<p>Now to me this is as astonishing as if my butcher were to brag about +Kirke White. My doctor might retort with Keats; and my scrivener—if I +had one—might knock them both down with the name of Milton. It would +be a pretty set-to; but I cannot see that it would affect the relative +merits of mutton and laudanum and the obscure products of scrivenage. +Nor, conversely (as they say at Cambridge), is it certain, or even +likely, that the difference between a butcher or a doctor is the +difference between Kirke White and Keats. And this talk about +"University" poets seems somewhat otiose unless it can be shown that +Cambridge and Oxford directly encourage poesy, or aim to do so. I am +aware that somebody wins the Newdigate every year at Oxford, and that +the same thing happens annually at Cambridge with respect to the +Chancellor's Prize. But—to hark back to the butcher and +apothecary—verses are perennially made upon <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_149" id="Page_149">Pg 149</a></span>Mr. Lipton's Hams and +Mrs. Allen's Hair Restorer. Obviously some incentive is needed beyond +a prize for stanzas on a given subject. I can understand Cambridge men +when they assert that they produce more Wranglers than Oxford: that is +a justifiable boast. But how does Cambridge encourage poets?</p> + +<p class="left"><i><b>Calverley.</b></i></p> + +<p>Oxford expelled Shelley: Cambridge whipped Milton.<a name="FNanchor_A_13" id="FNanchor_A_13"></a><a href="#Footnote_A_13" class="fnanchor">[A]</a><i>Facit +indignatio versus</i>. If we press this misreading of Juvenal, Oxford +erred only on the side of thoroughness. But that, notoriously, is +Oxford's way. She expelled Landor, Calverley, and some others. My +contention is that to expel a man is—however you look at it—better +for his poesy than to make a don of him. Oxford says, "You are a poet; +therefore this is no place for you. Go elsewhere; we set your aspiring +soul at large." Cambridge says: "You are a poet. Let us employ you to +fulfil other functions. Be a don." She made a don of Gray, of +Calverley. Cambridge men are for ever casting Calverley in our teeth; +whereas, in truth, he is specially to be quoted against them. As +everybody knows, he was at both Universi<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_150" id="Page_150">Pg 150</a></span>ties, so over him we have a +fair chance of comparing methods. As everybody knows, he went to +Balliol first, and his ample cabin'd spirit led him to climb a wall, +late at night. Something else caused him to be discovered, and +Blaydes—he was called Blaydes then—was sent down.</p> + +<p>Nobody can say what splendid effect this might have had upon his +poetry. But he changed his name and went to Cambridge. And Cambridge +made a don of him. If anybody thinks this was an intelligent stroke, +let him consider the result. Calverley wrote a small amount of verse +that, merely as verse, is absolutely faultless. To compare great +things with little, you might as well try to alter a line of Virgil's +as one of Calverley's. Forget a single epithet and substitute another, +and the result is certain disaster. He has the perfection of the +phrase—and there it ends. I cannot remember a single line of +Calverley's that contains a spark of human feeling. Mr. Birrell +himself has observed that Calverley is just a bit inhuman. But the +cause of it does not seem to have occurred to him. Nor does the +biography explain it. If we are to believe the common report of all +who knew Calverley, he <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_151" id="Page_151">Pg 151</a></span>was a man of simple mind and sincere, of quick +and generous emotions. His biographers tell us also that he was one +who seemed to have the world at his feet, one who had only to choose a +calling to excel in it. Yet he never fulfilled his friends' high +expectations. What was the reason of it all?</p> + +<p>The accident that cut short his career is not wholly to blame, I +think. At any rate, it will not explain away the exception I have +taken to his verse. Had that been destined to exhibit the humanity +which we seek, some promise of it would surely be discoverable; for he +was a full-grown man at the time of that unhappy tumble on the ice. +But there is none. It is all sheer wit, impish as a fairy +changeling's, and always barren of feeling. Mr. Birrell has not +supplied the explanatory epithet, so I will try to do so. It is +"donnish." Cambridge, fondly imagining that she was showing right +appreciation of Calverley thereby, gave him a Fellowship. Mr. Walter +Besant, another gentleman from Calverley's college, complained, the +other day, that literary distinction was never marked with a peerage. +It is the same sort of error. And now Cambridge, having made +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_152" id="Page_152">Pg 152</a></span>Calverley a don, claims him as a Cambridge poet; and the claim is +just, if the epithet be intended to mark the limitations imposed by +that University on his achievement.</p> + +<p class="left"><i><b>"J.K.S."</b></i></p> + +<p>Of "J.K.S.," whose second volume, <i>Quo Musa Tendis?</i> (Macmillan & +Bowles), has just come from the press, it is fashionable to say that +he follows after Calverley, at some distance. To be sure, he himself +has encouraged this belief by coming from Cambridge and writing about +Cambridge, and invoking C.S.C. on the first page of his earlier +volume, <i>Lapsus Calami</i>. But, except that J.K.S. does his talent some +violence by constraining it to imitate Calverley's form, the two men +have little in common. The younger has a very different wit. He is +more than academical. He thinks and feels upon subjects that were far +outside Calverley's scope. Among the dozen themes with which he deals +under the general heading of <i>Paullo Majora Canamus</i>, there is not one +which would have interested his "master" in the least. Calverley +appears to have invited his soul after this fashion—"Come, let us go +into the King's Parade and view the undergraduate as he walks about +having no knowledge of <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_153" id="Page_153">Pg 153</a></span>good or evil. Let us make a jest of the books +he admires and the schools for which he is reading." And together they +manage it excellently. They talk Cambridge "shop" in terms of the +wittiest scholarship. But of the very existence of a world of grown-up +men and women they seem to have no inkling, or, at least, no care.</p> + +<p>The problems of J.K.S. are very much more grown-up. You have only to +read <i>Paint and Ink</i> (a humorous, yet quite serious, address to a +painter upon the scope of his art) or <i>After the Golden Wedding</i> +(wherein are given the soliloquies of the man and the woman who have +been married for fifty years) to assure yourself that if J.K.S. be not +Calverley's equal, it is only because his mind is vexed with problems +bigger than ever presented themselves to the Cambridge don. To C.S.C., +Browning was a writer of whose eccentricities of style delicious sport +might be made. J.K.S. has parodied Browning too; but he has also +perpended Browning, and been moulded by him. There are many stanzas in +this small volume that, had Browning not lived, had never been +written. Take this, from a writer to a painter:—</p> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_154" id="Page_154">Pg 154</a></span></p><p> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">"So I do dare claim to be kin with you,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 3.5em;">And I hold you higher than if your task</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">Were doing no more than you say you do:</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 3.5em;">We shall live, if at all, we shall stand or fall,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">As men before whom the world doffs its mask</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">And who answer the questions our fellows ask."</span><br /> +</p> + +<p>Many such lines prove our writer's emancipation from servitude to the +Calverley fetish, a fetish that, I am convinced, has done harm to many +young men of parts. It is pretty, in youth, to play with style as a +puppy plays with a bone, to cut teeth upon it. But words are, after +all, a poor thing without matter. J.K.S.'s emancipation has come +somewhat late; but he has depths in him which he has not sounded yet, +and it is quite likely that when he sounds them he may astonish the +world rather considerably. Now, if we may interpret the last poem in +his book, he is turning towards prose. "I go," he says—</p> + +<p> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">"I go to fly at higher game:</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 3.5em;">At prose as good as I can make it;</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">And though it brings nor gold nor fame,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 3.5em;">I will not, while I live, forsake it."</span><br /> +</p> + +<p>It is no disparagement to his verse to rejoice over this resolve of +his. For a young man who begins with epic may end with good epic; but +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_155" id="Page_155">Pg 155</a></span>a young man who begins with imitating Calverley will turn in time to +prose if he means to write in earnest. And J.K.S. may do well or ill, +but that he is to be watched has been evident since the days when he +edited the <i>Reflector</i>.<a name="FNanchor_B_13" id="FNanchor_B_13"></a><a href="#Footnote_B_13" class="fnanchor">[B]</a></p> + +<div class="footnotes"><h3>FOOTNOTES:</h3> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_A_13" id="Footnote_A_13"></a><a href="#FNanchor_A_13"><span class="label">[A]</span></a> I am bound to admit that the only authority for this is +a note written into the text of Aubrey's <i>Lives</i>.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_B_13" id="Footnote_B_13"></a><a href="#FNanchor_B_13"><span class="label">[B]</span></a> The reader will refer to the date at the head of this +paper:—<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">"Heu miserande puer! signa fata aspera rumpas,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">Tu Marcellus eris.</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 7.5em;">* * * * * *</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">Sed nox atra caput tristi circumvolat umbra."</span><br /></p> +</div></div> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_156" id="Page_156">Pg 156</a></span></p> +<h2><a name="ROBERT_LOUIS_STEVENSON" id="ROBERT_LOUIS_STEVENSON"></a>ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON</h2> + + +<p class="left"><i><b>April 15, 1893. The "Island Nights' Entertainments."</b></i></p> + +<p>I wish Mr. Stevenson had given this book another title. It covers but +two out of the three stories in the volume; and, even so, it has the +ill-luck to be completely spoilt by its predecessor, the <i>New Arabian +Nights</i>.</p> + +<p>The <i>New Arabian Nights</i> was in many respects a parody of the Eastern +book. It had, if we make a few necessary allowances for the difference +between East and West, the same, or very near the same, atmosphere of +gallant, extravagant, intoxicated romance. The characters had the same +adventurous irresponsibility, and exhibit the same irrelevancies and +futilities. The Young Man with the Cream Cakes might well have sprung +from the same brain as the facetious Barmecide, and young Scrymgeour +sits helpless before his destiny as sat that other young man while the +inexorable Barber sang the song and danced the dance of Zantout. +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_157" id="Page_157">Pg 157</a></span>Indeed Destiny in these books resembles nothing so much as a Barber +with forefinger and thumb nipping his victims by the nose. It is as +omnipotent, as irrational, as humorous and almost as cruel in the +imitation as in the original. Of course I am not comparing these in +any thing but their general presentment of life, or holding up <i>The +Rajah's Diamond</i> against <i>Aladdin</i>. I am merely pointing out that life +is presented to us in Galland and in Mr. Stevenson's first book of +tales under very similar conditions—the chief difference being that +Mr. Stevenson has to abate something of the supernatural, or to handle +it less frankly.</p> + +<p>But several years divide the <i>New Arabian Nights</i> from the <i>Island +Nights' Entertainments</i>; and in the interval our author has written +<i>The Master of Ballantrae</i> and his famous <i>Open Letter</i> on Father +Damien. That is to say, he has grown in his understanding of the human +creature and in his speculations upon his creature's duties and +destinies. He has travelled far, on shipboard and in emigrant trains; +has passed through much sickness; has acquired property and +responsibility; has mixed in public affairs; has written <i>A Footnote +to History</i>, and sundry <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_158" id="Page_158">Pg 158</a></span>letters to the <i>Times</i>; and even, as his +latest letter shows, stands in some danger of imprisonment. Therefore, +while the title of his new volume would seem to refer us once more to +the old Arabian models, we are not surprised to find this apparent +design belied by the contents. The third story, indeed, <i>The Isle of +Voices</i>, has affinity with some of the Arabian tales—with Sindbad's +adventures, for instance. But in the longer <i>Beach of Falesá</i> and <i>The +Bottle Imp</i> we are dealing with no debauch of fancy, but with the +problems of real life.</p> + +<p>For what is the knot untied in the <i>Beach of Falesá</i>? If I mistake +not, our interest centres neither in Case's dirty trick of the +marriage, nor in his more stiff-jointed trick of the +devil-contraptions. The first but helps to construct the problem, the +second seems a superfluity. The problem is (and the author puts it +before us fair and square), How is Wiltshire a fairly loose moralist +with some generosity of heart, going to treat the girl he has wronged? +And I am bound to say that as soon as Wiltshire answers that question +before the missionary—an excellent scene and most dramatically +managed—my interest in the story, which is but half<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_159" id="Page_159">Pg 159</a></span>told at this +point, begins to droop. As I said, the "devil-work" chapter strikes me +as stiff, and the conclusion but rough-and-tumble. And I feel certain +that the story itself is to blame, and neither the scenery nor the +persons, being one of those who had as lief Mr. Stevenson spake of the +South Seas as of the Hebrides, so that he speak and I listen. Let it +be granted that the Polynesian names are a trifle hard to distinguish +at first—they are easier than Russian by many degrees—yet the +difficulty vanishes as you read the <i>Song of Rahéro</i>, or the <i>Footnote +to History</i>. And if it comes to habits, customs, scenery, etc., I +protest a man must be exacting who can find no romance in these while +reading Melville's <i>Typee</i>. No, the story itself is to blame.</p> + +<p>But what is the human problem in <i>The Bottle Imp</i>? (Imagine +Scheherazadé with a human problem!) Nothing less, if you please than +the problem of Alcestis—nothing less and even something more; for in +this case when the wife has made her great sacrifice of self, it is no +fortuitous god but her own husband who wins her release, and at a +price no less fearful than she herself has paid. Keawe being in +possession <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_160" id="Page_160">Pg 160</a></span>of a bottle which must infallibly bring him to hell-flames +unless he can dispose of it at a certain price, Kokua his wife by a +stratagem purchases the bottle from him, and stands committed to the +doom he has escaped. She does her best to hide this from Keawe, but +he, by accident discovering the truth, by another stratagem wins back +the curse upon his own head, and is only rescued by a <i>deus ex +machinâ</i> in the shape of a drunken boatswain.</p> + +<p>Two or three reviewers have already given utterance upon this volume; +and they seem strangely unable to determine which is the best of its +three tales. I vote for <i>The Bottle Imp</i> without a second's doubt; +and, if asked my reasons, must answer (1), that it deals with a high +and universal problem, whereas in <i>The Isle of Voices</i> there is no +problem at all, and in the <i>Beach of Falesá</i> the problem is less +momentous and perhaps (though of this I won't be sure) more closely +restricted by the accidents of circumstance and individual character; +(2) as I have hinted, the <i>Beach of Falesá</i> has faults of +construction, one of which is serious, if not vital, while <i>The Isle +of Voices</i>, though beautifully composed, is tied down by the +triviality of <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_161" id="Page_161">Pg 161</a></span>its subject. But <i>The Bottle Imp</i> is perfectly +constructed: the last page ends the tale, and the tale is told with a +light grace, sportive within restraint, that takes nothing from the +seriousness of the subject. Some may think this extravagant praise for +a little story which, after all (they will say), is flimsy as a soap +bubble. But let them sit down and tick off on their fingers the names +of living authors who could have written it, and it may begin to dawn +on them that a story has other dimensions than length and thickness.</p> + +<hr style='width: 45%;' /> + +<p class="left"><i><b>Sept. 9, 1893. First thoughts on "Catriona."</b></i></p> + +<p>Some while ago Mr. Barrie put together in a little volume eleven +sketches of eleven men whose fame has travelled far beyond the +University of Edinburgh. For this reason, I believe, he called them +"An Edinburgh Eleven"—as fond admirers speak of Mr. Arthur Shrewsbury +(upon whose renown it is notorious that the sun never sets) as "the +Notts Professional," and of a yet more illustrious cricketer by his +paltry title of "Doctor"—</p> + +<p> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">"Not so much honouring thee,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 3.5em;">As giving it a hope that there</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">It could not wither'd be."</span><br /> +</p> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_162" id="Page_162">Pg 162</a></span></p><p>Of the Eleven referred to, Mr. Robert Louis Stevenson was sent in at +eighth wicket down to face this cunning "delivery":—"He experiments +too long; he is still a boy wondering what he is going to be. With +Cowley's candor he tells us that he wants to write something by which +he may be for ever known. His attempts in this direction have been in +the nature of trying different ways, and he always starts off +whistling. Having gone so far without losing himself, he turns back to +try another road. Does his heart fail him, despite his jaunty bearing, +<i>or is it because there is no hurry?</i> ... But it is quite time the +great work was begun."</p> + +<p>I have taken the liberty to italicise a word or two, because in them +Mr. Barrie supplied an answer to his question. "The lyf so short, the +craft so long to lerne!" is not an exhortation to hurry: and in Mr. +Stevenson's case, at any rate, there was not the least need to hurry. +There was, indeed, a time when Mr. Stevenson had not persuaded himself +of this. In <i>Across the Plains</i> he tells us how, at windy Anstruther +and an extremely early age, he used to draw his chair to the table and +pour forth literature "at such a speed, and with such intimations of +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_163" id="Page_163">Pg 163</a></span>early death and immortality, as I now look back upon with wonder. +Then it was that I wrote <i>Voces Fidelium</i>, a series of dramatic +monologues in verse; then that I indited the bulk of a Covenanting +novel—like so many others, never finished. Late I sat into the night, +toiling (as I thought) under the very dart of death, toiling to leave +a memory behind me. I feel moved to thrust aside the curtain of the +years, to hail that poor feverish idiot, to bid him go to bed and clap +<i>Voces Fidelium</i> on the fire before he goes, so clear does he appear +to me, sitting there between his candles in the rose-scented room and +the late night; so ridiculous a picture (to my elderly wisdom) does +the fool present!"</p> + +<p>There was no hurry then, as he now sees: and there never was cause to +hurry, I repeat. "But how is this? Is, then, the great book written?" +I am sure I don't know. Probably not: for human experience goes to +show that <i>The</i> Great Book (like <i>The</i> Great American Novel) never +gets written. But that <i>a</i> great story has been written is certain +enough: and one of the curious points about this story is its title.</p> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_164" id="Page_164">Pg 164</a></span></p><p>It is not <i>Catriona</i>; nor is it <i>Kidnapped</i>. <i>Kidnapped</i> is a taking +title, and <i>Catriona</i> beautiful in sound and suggestion of romance: +and <i>Kidnapped</i> (as everyone knows) is a capital tale, though +imperfect; and <i>Catriona</i> (as the critics began to point out, the day +after its issue) a capital tale with an awkward fissure midway in it. +"It is the fate of sequels"—thus Mr. Stevenson begins his +Dedication—"to disappoint those who have waited for them"; and it is +possible that the boys of Merry England (who, it may be remembered, +thought more of <i>Treasure Island</i> than of <i>Kidnapped</i>) will take but +lukewarmly to <i>Catriona</i>, having had five years in which to forget its +predecessor. No: the title of the great story is <i>The Memoirs of David +Balfour</i>. Catriona has a prettier name than David, and may give it to +the last book of her lover's adventures: but the Odyssey was not +christened after Penelope.</p> + +<p>Put <i>Kidnapped</i> and <i>Catriona</i> together within the same covers, with +one title-page, one dedication (here will be the severest loss) and +one table of contents, in which the chapters are numbered straight +away from <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_165" id="Page_165">Pg 165</a></span>I. to LX.: and—this above all things—read the tale right +through from David's setting forth from the garden gate at Essendean +to his homeward voyage, by Catriona's side, on the Low Country ship. +And having done this, be so good as to perceive how paltry are the +objections you raised against the two volumes when you took them +separately. Let me raise again one or two of them.</p> + +<p>(1.) <i>Catriona</i> is just two stories loosely hitched together—the one +of David's vain attempt to save James Stewart, the other of the loves +of David and Catriona: and in case the critic should be too stupid to +detect this, Mr. Stevenson has been at the pains to divide his book +into Part I. and Part II. Now this, which is a real fault in a book +called <i>Catriona</i>, is no fault at all in <i>The Memoirs of David +Balfour</i>, which by its very title claims to be constructed loosely. In +an Odyssey the road taken by the wanderer is all the nexus required; +and the continuity of his presence (if the author know his business) +is warrant enough for the continuity of our interest in his +adventures. That the history of Gil Blas of Santillane consists +chiefly of episodes is not a serious criticism upon Lesage's novel.</p> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_166" id="Page_166">Pg 166</a></span></p><p>(2.) In <i>Catriona</i> more than a few of the characters are suffered to +drop out of sight just as we have begun to take an interest in them. +There is Mr. Rankeillor, for instance, whose company in the concluding +chapter of <i>Kidnapped</i> was too good to be spared very easily; and +there is Lady Allardyce—a wonderfully clever portrait; and Captain +Hoseason—we tread for a moment on the verge of re-acquaintance, but +are disappointed; and Balfour of Pilrig; and at the end of Part I. +away into darkness goes the Lord Advocate Preston-grange, with his +charming womenkind.</p> + +<p>Well, if this be an objection to the tale, it is one urged pretty +often against life itself—that we scarce see enough of the men and +women we like. And here again that which may be a fault in <i>Catriona</i> +is no fault at all in <i>The Memoirs of David Balfour</i>. Though novelists +may profess in everything they write to hold a mirror up to life, the +reflection must needs be more artificial in a small book than in a +large. In the one, for very clearness, they must isolate a few human +beings and cut off the currents (so to speak) bearing upon them from +the outside world: in the other, with a larger canvas they <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_167" id="Page_167">Pg 167</a></span>are able +to deal with life more frankly. Were the Odyssey cut down to one +episode—say that of Nausicäa—we must round it off and have everyone +on the stage and provided with his just portion of good and evil +before we ring the curtain down. As it is, Nausicäa goes her way. And +as it is, Barbara Grant must go her way at the end of Chapter XX.; and +the pang we feel at parting with her is anything rather than a +reproach against the author.</p> + +<p>(3.) It is very certain, as the book stands, that the reader must +experience some shock of disappointment when, after 200 pages of the +most heroical endeavoring, David fails in the end to save James +Stewart of the Glens. Were the book concerned wholly with James +Stewart's fate, the cheat would be intolerable: and as a great deal +more than half of <i>Catriona</i> points and trembles towards his fate like +a magnetic needle, the cheat is pretty bad if we take <i>Catriona</i> +alone. But once more, if we are dealing with <i>The Memoirs of David +Balfour</i>—if we bear steadily in mind that David Balfour is our +concern—not James Stewart—the disappointment is far more easily +forgiven. Then, and then only, we get the right perspective of +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_168" id="Page_168">Pg 168</a></span>David's attempt, and recognize how inevitable was the issue when this +stripling engaged to turn back the great forces of history.</p> + +<p>It is more than a lustre, as the Dedication reminds us, since David +Balfour, at the end of the last chapter of <i>Kidnapped</i>, was left to +kick his heels in the British Linen Company's office. Five years have +a knack of making people five years older; and the wordy, politic +intrigue of <i>Catriona</i> is at least five years older than the +rough-and-tumble intrigue of <i>Kidnapped</i>; of the fashion of the +<i>Vicomte de Bragelonne</i> rather than of the <i>Three Musketeers</i>. But +this is as it should be; for older and astuter heads are now mixed up +in the case, and Preston-grange is a graduate in a very much higher +school of diplomacy than was Ebenezer Balfour. And if no word was said +in <i>Kidnapped</i> of the love of women, we know now that this matter was +held over until the time came for it to take its due place in David +Balfour's experience. Everyone knew that Mr. Stevenson would draw a +woman beautifully as soon as he was minded. Catriona and her situation +have their foreshadowing in <i>The Pavilion on the Links</i>. But for all +that she is a surprise. She begins to be a <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_169" id="Page_169">Pg 169</a></span>surprise—a beautiful +surprise—when in Chapter X. she kisses David's hand "with a higher +passion than the common kind of clay has any sense of;" and she is a +beautiful surprise to the end of the book. The loves of these two make +a moving story—old, yet not old: and I pity the heart that is not +tender for Catriona when she and David take their last walk together +in Leyden, and "the knocking of her little shoes upon the way sounded +extraordinarily pretty and sad."</p> + +<hr style='width: 45%;' /> + +<p class="left"><i><b>Nov. 3, 1894. "The Ebb Tide."</b></i></p> + +<p>A certain Oxford lecturer, whose audience demurred to some trivial +mistranslation from the Greek, remarked: "I perceive, gentlemen, that +you have been taking a mean advantage of me. You have been looking it +out in the Lexicon."</p> + +<p>The pleasant art of reasoning about literature on internal evidence +suffers constant discouragement from the presence and activity of +those little people who insist upon "looking it out in the Lexicon." +Their brutal methods will upset in two minutes the nice calculations +of months. Your logic, your taste, your palpi<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_170" id="Page_170">Pg 170</a></span>tating sense of style, +your exquisite ear for rhythm and cadence—what do these avail against +the man who goes straight to Stationers' Hall or the Parish Register?</p> + +<p> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">"Two thousand pounds of education</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 4em;">Drops to a ten-rupee jezail,"</span><br /> +</p> + +<p>as Mr. Kipling sings. The answer, of course, is that the beauty of +reasoning upon internal evidence lies in the process rather than the +results. You spend a month in studying a poet, and draw some +conclusion which is entirely wrong: within a week you are set right by +some fellow with a Parish Register. Well, but meanwhile you have been +reading poetry, and he has not. Only the uninstructed judge criticism +by its results alone.</p> + +<p>If, then, after studying Messrs. Stevenson and Osbourne's <i>The +Ebb-Tide</i> (London: Heinemann) I hazard a guess or two upon its +authorship; and if somebody take it into his head to write out to +Samoa and thereby elicit the information that my guesses are entirely +wrong—why then we shall have been performing each of us his proper +function in life; and there's an end of the matter.</p> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_171" id="Page_171">Pg 171</a></span></p><p>Let me begin though—after reading a number of reviews of the +book—by offering my sympathy to Mr. Lloyd Osbourne. Very possibly he +does not want it. I guess him to be a gentleman of uncommonly cheerful +heart. I hope so, at any rate: for it were sad to think that +indignation had clouded even for a minute the gay spirit that gave us +<i>The Wrong Box</i>—surely the funniest book written in the last ten +years. But he has been most shamefully served. Writing with him, Mr. +Stevenson has given us <i>The Wrecker</i> and <i>The Ebb-Tide</i>. Faults +may be found in these, apart from the criticism that they are freaks in the +development of Mr. Stevenson's genius. Nobody denies that they are +splendid tales: nobody (I imagine) can deny that they are tales of a +singular and original pattern. Yet no reviewer praises them on their +own merits or points out their own defects. They are judged always in +relation to Mr. Stevenson's previous work, and the reviewers +concentrate their censure upon the point that they are freaks in Mr. +Stevenson's development—that he is not continuing as the public +expected him to continue.</p> + +<p>Now there are a number of esteemed novel<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_172" id="Page_172">Pg 172</a></span>ists about the land who earn +comfortable incomes by doing just what the public expects of them. But +of Mr. Stevenson's genius—always something wayward—freaks might have +been predicted from the first. A genius so consciously artistic, so +quick in sympathy with other men's writings, however diverse, was +bound from the first to make many experiments. Before the public took +his career in hand and mapped it out for him, he made such an +experiment with <i>The Black Arrow</i>; and it was forgiven easily enough. +But because he now takes Mr. Osbourne into partnership for a new set +of experiments, the reviewers—not considering that these, whatever +their faults, are vast improvements on <i>The Black Arrow</i>—ascribe all +those faults to the new partner.</p> + +<p>But that is rough criticism. Moreover it is almost demonstrably false. +For the weakness of <i>The Wrecker</i>, such as it was, lay in the Paris +and Barbizon business and the author's failure to make this of one +piece with the main theme, with the romantic histories of the +<i>Currency Lass</i> and the <i>Flying Scud</i>. But which of the two partners +stands responsible for this Paris-Barbizon business? Mr. Stevenson +be<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_173" id="Page_173">Pg 173</a></span>yond a doubt. If you shut your eyes to Mr. Stevenson's confessed +familiarity with the Paris and the Barbizon of a certain era; if you +choose to deny that he wrote that chapter on Fontainebleau in <i>Across +the Plains</i>; if you go on to deny that he wrote the opening of Chapter +XXI. of <i>The Wrecker</i>; why then you are obliged to maintain that it +was Mr. Osbourne, and not Mr. Stevenson, who wrote that famous chapter +on the Roussillon Wine—which is absurd. And if, in spite of its +absurdity, you stick to this also, why, then you are only +demonstrating that Mr. Lloyd Osbourne is one of the greatest living +writers of fiction: and your conception of him as a mere imp of +mischief jogging the master's elbow is wider of the truth than ever.</p> + +<p>No; the vital defect of <i>The Wrecker</i> must be set down to Mr. +Stevenson's account. Fine story as that was, it failed to assimilate +the Paris-Barbizon business. <i>The Ebb-Tide</i>, on the other hand, is all +of one piece. It has at any rate one atmosphere, and one only. And who +can demand a finer atmosphere of romance than that of the South +Pacific?</p> + +<p><i>The Ebb-Tide</i>, so far as atmosphere goes, is <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_174" id="Page_174">Pg 174</a></span>all of one piece. And +the story, too, is all of one piece—until we come to Attwater: I own +Attwater beats me. As Mr. Osbourne might say, "I have no use for" that +monstrous person. I wish, indeed, Mr. Osbourne <i>had</i> said so: for +again I cannot help feeling that the offence of Attwater lies at Mr. +Stevenson's door. He strikes me as a bad dream of Mr. Stevenson's—a +General Gordon out of the <i>Arabian Nights</i>. Do you remember a drawing +of Mr. du Maurier's in <i>Punch</i>, wherein, seizing upon a locution of +Miss Rhoda Broughton's, he gave us a group of "magnificently ugly" +men? I seem to see Attwater in that group.</p> + +<p>But if Mr. Stevenson is responsible for Attwater, surely also he +contributed the two splendid surprises of the story. I am the more +certain because they occur in the same chapter, and within three pages +of each other. I mean, of course, Captain Davis's sudden confession +about his "little Adar," and the equally startling discovery that the +cargo of the <i>Farallone</i> schooner, supposed to be champagne, is mostly +water. These are the two triumphant surprises of the book: and I shall +continue to be<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_175" id="Page_175">Pg 175</a></span>lieve that only one living man could have contrived +them, until somebody writes to Samoa and obtains the assurance that +they are among Mr. Osbourne's contributions to the tale.</p> + +<p>Two small complaints I have to make. The first is of the rather +inartistically high level of profanity maintained by the speech of +Davis and Huish. It is natural enough, of course; but that is no +excuse if the frequency of the swearing prevent its making its proper +impression in the right place. And the name "Robert Herrick," bestowed +on one of the three beach-loafers, might have been shunned. You may +call an ordinary negro "Julius Cæsar": for out of such extremes you +get the legitimately grotesque. But the Robert Herrick, loose writer +of the lovely <i>Hesperides</i>, and the Robert Herrick, shameful haunter +of Papeete beach, are not extremes: and it was so very easy to avoid +the association of ideas.</p> + +<hr style='width: 45%;' /> + +<p class="left"><i><b>Dec. 22, 1894. R.L.S. In Memorium.</b></i></p> + +<p>The Editor asks me to speak of Stevenson this week: because, since the +foundation of <span class="smcap">The Speaker</span>, as each new book of Stevenson's appeared, I +have had the privilege of writing <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_176" id="Page_176">Pg 176</a></span>about it here. So this column, too, +shall be filled; at what cost ripe journalists will understand, and +any fellow-cadet of letters may guess.</p> + +<p>For when the telegram came, early on Monday morning, what was our +first thought, as soon as the immediate numbness of sorrow passed and +the selfish instinct began to reassert itself (as it always does) and +whisper "What have <i>I</i> lost? What is the difference to <i>me</i>?" Was it +not something like this—"Put away books and paper and pen. Stevenson +is dead. Stevenson is dead, and now there is nobody left to write +for." Our children and grandchildren shall rejoice in his books; but +we of this generation possessed in the living man something that they +will not know. So long as he lived, though it were far from +Britain—though we had never spoken to him and he, perhaps, had barely +heard our names—we always wrote our best for Stevenson. To him each +writer amongst us—small or more than small—had been proud to have +carried his best. That best might be poor enough. So long as it was +not slipshod, Stevenson could forgive. While he lived, he moved men to +put their utmost even into writings that quite certainly <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_177" id="Page_177">Pg 177</a></span>would never +meet his eye. Surely another age will wonder over this curiosity of +letters—that for five years the needle of literary endeavor in Great +Britain has quivered towards a little island in the South Pacific, as +to its magnetic pole.</p> + +<p>Yet he founded no school, though most of us from time to time have +poorly tried to copy him. He remained altogether inimitable, yet never +seemed conscious of his greatness. It was native in him to rejoice in +the successes of other men at least as much as in his own triumphs. +One almost felt that, so long as good books were written, it was no +great concern to him whether he or others wrote them. Born with an +artist's craving for beauty of expression, he achieved that beauty +with infinite pains. Confident in romance and in the beneficence of +joy, he cherished the flame of joyous romance with more than Vestal +fervor, and kept it ardent in a body which Nature, unkind from the +beginning, seemed to delight in visiting with more unkindness—a +"soul's dark cottage, battered and decayed" almost from birth. And his +books leave the impression that he did this chiefly from a sense of +duty: that he labored and kept <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_178" id="Page_178">Pg 178</a></span>the lamp alight chiefly because, for +the time, other and stronger men did not.</p> + +<p>Had there been another Scott, another Dumas—if I may change the +image—to take up the torch of romance and run with it, I doubt if +Stevenson would have offered himself. I almost think in that case he +would have consigned with Nature and sat at ease, content to read of +new Ivanhoes and new D'Artagnans: for—let it be said again—no man +had less of the ignoble itch for merely personal success. Think, too, +of what the struggle meant for him: how it drove him unquiet about the +world, if somewhere he might meet with a climate to repair the +constant drain upon his feeble vitality; and how at last it flung him, +as by a "sudden freshet," upon Samoa—to die "far from Argos, dear +land of home."</p> + +<p>And then consider the brave spirit that carried him—the last of a +great race—along this far and difficult path; for it is the man we +must consider now, not, for the moment, his writings. Fielding's +voyage to Lisbon was long and tedious enough; but almost the whole of +Stevenson's life has been a voyage to Lisbon, a voyage in the <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_179" id="Page_179">Pg 179</a></span>very +penumbra of death. Yet Stevenson spoke always as gallantly as his +great predecessor. Their "cheerful stoicism," which allies his books +with the best British breeding, will keep them classical as long as +our nation shall value breeding. It shines to our dim eyes now, as we +turn over the familiar pages of <i>Virginibus Puerisque</i>, and from page +after page—in sentences and fragments of sentences—"It is not +altogether ill with the invalid after all" ... "Who would project a +serial novel after Thackeray and Dickens had each fallen in +mid-course." [<i>He</i> had two books at least in hand and uncompleted, the +papers say.] "Who would find heart enough to begin to live, if he +dallied with the consideration of death?" ... "What sorry and pitiful +quibbling all this is!" ... "It is better to live and be done with it, +than to die daily in the sick-room. By all means begin your folio; +even if the doctor does not give you a year, even if he hesitates over +a month, make one brave push and see what can be accomplished in a +week.... For surely, at whatever age it overtake the man, this is to +die young.... The noise of the mallet and chisel is scarcely quenched, +the trumpets are hardly done blowing, when, trailing with him <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_180" id="Page_180">Pg 180</a></span>clouds +of glory, this happy-starred, full-blooded spirit shoots into the +spiritual land."</p> + +<p>As it was in <i>Virginibus Puerisque</i>, so is it in the last essay in his +last book of essays:—</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>"And the Kingdom of Heaven is of the childlike, of those who are +easy to please, who love and who give pleasure. Mighty men of +their hands, the smiters, and the builders, and the judges, have +lived long and done sternly, and yet preserved this lovely +character; and among our carpet interests and two-penny concerns, +the shame were indelible if <i>we</i> should lose it. <i>Gentleness and +cheerfulness, these come before all morality; they are the +perfect duties</i>...."</p></div> + +<p>I remember now (as one remembers little things at such times) that, +when first I heard of his going to Samoa, there came into my head +(Heaven knows why) a trivial, almost ludicrous passage from his +favorite, Sir Thomas Browne: a passage beginning "He was fruitlessly +put in hope of advantage by change of Air, and imbibing the pure +Aerial Nitre of those Parts; and therefore, being so far spent, he +quickly found Sardinia in Tivoli, and the most healthful air of little +effect, where Death had set her Broad Arrow...." A statelier sentence +of the same author occurs to me now—</p> +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_181" id="Page_181">Pg 181</a></span></p> +<div class="blockquot"><p>"To live indeed, is to be again ourselves, which being not only a +hope, but an evidence in noble believers, it is all one to lie in St. +Innocent's Churchyard, as in the sands of Egypt. Ready to be anything +in the ecstacy of being ever, and as content with six foot as the +<i>moles</i> of Adrianus."</p></div> + +<p>This one lies, we are told, on a mountain-top, overlooking the +Pacific. At first it seemed so much easier to distrust a News Agency +than to accept Stevenson's loss. "O captain, my captain!" ... One +needs not be an excellent writer to feel that writing will be +thankless work, now that Stevenson is gone. But the papers by this +time leave no room for doubt. "A grave was dug on the summit of Mount +Vaea, 1,300 feet above the sea. The coffin was carried up the hill by +Samoans with great difficulty, a track having to be cut through the +thick bush which covers the side of the hill from the base to the +peak." For the good of man, his father and grandfather planted the +high sea-lights upon the Inchcape and the Tyree Coast. He, the last of +their line, nursed another light and tended it. Their lamps still +shine upon the Bell Rock and the Skerryvore; <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_182" id="Page_182">Pg 182</a></span>and—though in alien +seas, upon a rock of exile—this other light shall continue, +unquenchable by age, beneficent, serene.</p> + +<hr style='width: 45%;' /> + +<p class="left"><i><b>Nov. 2, 1895. The "Vailima Letters."</b></i></p> + +<p>Eagerly as we awaited this volume, it has proved a gift exceeding all +our hopes—a gift, I think, almost priceless. It unites in the rarest +manner the value of a familiar correspondence with the value of an +intimate journal: for these Samoan letters to his friend Mr. Sidney +Colvin form a record, scarcely interrupted, of Stevenson's thinkings +and doings from month to month, and often from day to day, during the +last four romantic years of his life. The first is dated November 2nd, +1890, when he and his household were clearing the ground for their +home on the mountain-side of Vaea: the last, October 6th, 1894, just +two months before his grave was dug on Vaea top. During his Odyssey in +the South Seas (from August, 1888, to the spring of 1890) his letters, +to Mr. Colvin at any rate, were infrequent and tantalizingly vague; +but soon after settling on his estate in Samoa, "he for the first +time, to my infinite gratification, took to writing me long and +regular monthly budgets as full and particular as <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_183" id="Page_183">Pg 183</a></span>heart could wish; +and this practice he maintained until within a few weeks of his +death." These letters, occupying a place quite apart in Stevenson's +correspondence, Mr. Colvin has now edited with pious care and given to +the public.</p> + +<p>But the great, the happy surprise of the <i>Vailima Letters</i> is neither +their continuity nor their fulness of detail—although on each of +these points they surpass our hopes. The great, the entirely happy +surprise is their intimacy. We all knew—who could doubt it?—that +Stevenson's was a clean and transparent mind. But we scarcely allowed +for the innocent zest (innocent, because wholly devoid of vanity or +selfishness) which he took in observing its operations, or for the +child-like confidence with which he held out the crystal for his +friend to gaze into.</p> + +<p>One is at first inclined to say that had these letters been less +open-hearted they had made less melancholy reading—the last few of +them, at any rate. For, as their editor says, "the tenor of these last +letters of Stevenson's to me, and of others written to several of his +friends at <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_184" id="Page_184">Pg 184</a></span>the same time, seemed to give just cause for anxiety. +Indeed, as the reader will have perceived, a gradual change had during +the past months been coming over the tone of his correspondence.... To +judge by these letters, his old invincible spirit of cheerfulness was +beginning to give way to moods of depression and overstrained feeling, +although to those about him, it seems, his charming, habitual +sweetness and gaiety of temper were undiminished." Mr. Colvin is +thinking, no doubt, of passages such as this, from the very last +letter:—</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>"I know I am at a climacteric for all men who live by their wits, +so I do not despair. But the truth is, I am pretty nearly useless +at literature.... Were it not for my health, which made it +impossible, I could not find it in my heart to forgive myself +that I did not stick to an honest, commonplace trade when I was +young, which might have now supported me during these ill years. +But do not suppose me to be down in anything else; only, for the +nonce, my skill deserts me, such as it is, or was. It was a very +little dose of inspiration, and a pretty little trick of style, +long lost, improved by the most heroic industry. So far, I have +managed to please the journalists. But I am a fictitious article, +and have long known it. I am read by journalists, by my +fellow-novelists, and by boys; with these <i>incipit et explicit</i> +my vogue."</p></div> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_185" id="Page_185">Pg 185</a></span></p><p>I appeal to all who earn their living by pen or brush—Who does not +know moods such as this? Who has not experience of those dark days +when the ungrateful canvas refuses to come right, and the artist sits +down before it and calls himself a fraud? We may even say that these +fits of incapacity and blank despondency are part of the cost of all +creative work. They may be intensified by terror for the family +exchequer. The day passes in strenuous but futile effort, and the man +asks himself, "What will happen to me and mine if this kind of thing +continues?" Stevenson, we are allowed to say (for the letters tell +us), did torment himself with these terrors. And we may say further +that, by whatever causes impelled, he certainly worked too hard during +the last two years of his life. With regard to the passage quoted, +what seems to me really melancholy is not the baseless self-distrust, +for that is a transitory malady most incident to authorship; but that, +could a magic carpet have transported Stevenson at that moment to the +side of the friend he addressed—could he for an hour or two have +visited London—all this apprehension had been at once dispelled. He +left England before achieving his full conquest of the public <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_186" id="Page_186">Pg 186</a></span>heart, +and the extent of that conquest he, in his exile, never quite +realized. When he visited Sydney, early in 1893, it was to him a new +and disconcerting experience—but not, I fancy altogether +unpleasing—<i>digito monstrari</i>, or, as he puts it elsewhere, to "do +the affable celebrity life-sized." Nor do I think he quite realized +how large a place he filled in the education, as in the affections, of +the younger men—the Barries and Kiplings, the Weymans, Doyles and +Crocketts—whose courses began after he had left these shores. An +artist gains much by working alone and away from chatter and criticism +and adulation: but his gain has this corresponding loss, that he must +go through his dark hours without support. Even a master may take +benefit at times—if it be only a physical benefit—from some closer +and handier assurance than any letters can give of the place held by +his work in the esteem of "the boys."</p> + +<p>We must not make too much of what he wrote in this dark mood. A few +days later he was at work on <i>Weir of Hermiston</i>, laboring "at the +full pitch of his powers and in the conscious happiness of their +exercise." Once more he felt himself to be working at his best. <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_187" id="Page_187">Pg 187</a></span>The +result the world has not yet been allowed to see: for the while we are +satisfied and comforted by Mr. Colvin's assurances. "The fragment on +which he wrought during the last month of his life gives to my mind +(as it did to his own) for the first time the true measure of his +powers; and if in the literature of romance there is to be found work +more masterly, of more piercing human insight and more concentrated +imaginative wisdom, I do not know it."</p> + +<p>On the whole, these letters from Vailima give a picture of a serene +and—allowance being made for the moods—a contented life. It is, I +suspect, the genuine Stevenson that we get in the following passage +from the letter of March, 1891:—</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>"Though I write so little, I pass all my hours of field-work in +continual converse and imaginary correspondence. I scarce pull up +a weed, but I invent a sentence on the matter to yourself; it +does not get written; <i>autant en emportent les vents</i>; but the +intent is there, and for me (in some sort) the companionship. +To-day, for instance, we had a great talk. I was toiling, the +sweat dripping from my nose, in the hot fit after a squall of +rain; methought you asked me—frankly, was I happy? Happy (said +I); I was only happy once; that was at<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_188" id="Page_188">Pg 188</a></span> Hyères; it came to an end +from a variety of reasons—decline of health, change of place, +increase of money, age with his stealing steps; since then, as +before then, I know not what it means. But I know pleasures +still; pleasure with a thousand faces and none perfect, a +thousand tongues all broken, a thousand hands, and all of them +with scratching nails. High among these I place the delight of +weeding out here alone by the garrulous water, under the silence +of the high wood, broken by incongruous sounds of birds. And take +my life all through, look at it fore and back, and upside down—I +would not change my circumstances, unless it were to bring you +here. And yet God knows perhaps this intercourse of writing +serves as well; and I wonder, were you here indeed, would I +commune so continually with the thought of you. I say 'I wonder' +for a form; I know, and I know I should not."</p></div> + +<p>In a way the beauty of these letters is this, that they tell us so +much of Stevenson that is new, and nothing that is strange—nothing +that we have difficulty in reconciling with the picture we had already +formed in our own minds. Our mental portraits of some other writers, +drawn from their deliberate writings, have had to be readjusted, and +sometimes most cruelly readjusted, as soon as their private +correspondence came to be published. If any of us dreamed of this +danger in Stevenson's case (and I doubt if anyone did), the danger at +any <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_189" id="Page_189">Pg 189</a></span>rate is past. The man of the letters is the man of the books—the +same gay, eager, strenuous, lovable spirit, curious as ever about life +and courageous as ever in facing its chances. Profoundly as he +deplores the troubles in Samoa, when he hears that war has been +declared he can hardly repress a boyish excitement. "War is a huge +<i>entraînement</i>," he writes in June, 1893; "there is no other +temptation to be compared to it, not one. We were all wet, we had been +five hours in the saddle, mostly riding hard; and we came home like +schoolboys, with such a lightness of spirits, and I am sure such a +brightness of eye, as you could have lit a candle at."</p> + +<p>And that his was not by any means mere "literary" courage one more +extract will prove. One of his boys, Paatalise by name, had suddenly +gone mad:—</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>"I was busy copying David Balfour, with my left hand—a most +laborious task—Fanny was down at the native house superintending +the floor, Lloyd down in Apia, and Bella in her own house +cleaning, when I heard the latter calling on my name. I ran out +on the verandah; and there on the lawn beheld my crazy boy with +an axe in his hand and dressed out in green ferns, dancing. I ran +downstairs and found all my house boys <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_190" id="Page_190">Pg 190</a></span>on the back verandah, +watching him through the dining-room. I asked what it +meant?—'Dance belong his place,' they said.—'I think this is no +time to dance,' said I. 'Has he done his work?'—'No,' they told +me, 'away bush all morning.' But there they all stayed in the +back verandah. I went on alone through the dining-room and bade +him stop. He did so, shouldered the axe, and began to walk away; +but I called him back, walked up to him, and took the axe out of +his unresisting hands. The boy is in all things so good, that I +can scarce say I was afraid; only I felt it had to be stopped ere +he could work himself up by dancing to some craziness. Our house +boys protested they were not afraid; all I know is they were all +watching him round the back door, and did not follow me till I +had the axe. As for the out-boys, who were working with Fanny in +the native house, they thought it a bad business, and made no +secret of their fears."</p></div> + +<p>But indeed all the book is manly, with the manliness of Scott's +<i>Journal</i> or of Fielding's <i>Voyage to Lisbon</i>. "To the +English-speaking world," concludes Mr. Colvin, "he has left behind a +treasure which it would be vain as yet to attempt to estimate; to the +profession of letters one of the most ennobling and inspiriting of +examples; and to his friends an image of memory more vivid and more +dear than are the presences of almost any of the living." Very few men +of our time have been followed <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_191" id="Page_191">Pg 191</a></span>out of this world with the same +regret. None have repined less at their own fate—</p> + +<p> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">"This be the verse you grave for me:—</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">'Here he lies where he longed to be;</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">Home is the sailor, home from the sea,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">And the hunter home from the hill.'"</span><br /> +</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_192" id="Page_192">Pg 192</a></span></p> +<h2><a name="M_ZOLA" id="M_ZOLA"></a>M. ZOLA</h2> + + +<p class="left"><i><b>Sept. 23, 1892. La Débâcle.</b></i></p> + +<p>To what different issues two men will work the same notion! Imagine +this world to be a flat board accurately parcelled out into squares, +and you have the basis at once of <i>Alice through the Looking-Glass</i> +and of <i>Les Rougon-Macquart</i>. But for the mere fluke that the +Englishman happened to be whimsical and the Frenchman entirely without +humor (and the chances were perhaps against this), we might have had +the Rougon-Macquart family through the looking-glass, and a natural +and social history of Alice in <i>parterres</i> of existence labelled +<i>Drink, War, Money</i>, etc. As it is, in drawing up any comparison of +these two writers we should remember that Mr. Carroll sees the world +in sections because he chooses, M. Zola because he cannot help it.</p> + +<p>If life were a museum, M. Zola would stand a reasonable chance of +being a Balzac. But I invite the reader who has just laid down <i>La +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_193" id="Page_193">Pg 193</a></span>Débâcle</i> to pick up <i>Eugénie Grandet</i> again and say if that little +Dutch picture has not more sense of life, even of the storm and stir +and big furies of life, than the detonating <i>Débâcle</i>. The older +genius</p> + +<p> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">"Saw life steadily and saw it whole"</span><br /> +</p> + +<p>—No matter how small the tale, he draws no curtain around it; it +stands in the midst of a real world, set in the white and composite +light of day. M. Zola sees life in sections and by one or another of +those colors into which daylight can be decomposed by the prism. He is +like a man standing at the wings with a limelight apparatus. The rays +fall now here, now there, upon the stage; are luridly red or vividly +green; but neither mix nor pervade.</p> + +<p>I am aware that the tone of the above paragraph is pontifical and its +substance a trifle obvious, and am eager to apologize for both. +Speaking as an impressionist, I can only say that <i>La Débâcle</i> stifles +me. And this is the effect produced by all his later books. Each has +the exclusiveness of a dream; its subject—be it drink or war or +money—possesses the reader as a nightmare possesses the dreamer. <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_194" id="Page_194">Pg 194</a></span>For +the time this place of wide prospect, the world, puts up its shutters; +and life becomes all drink, all war, all money, while M. Zola +(adaptable Bacchanal!) surrenders his brain to the intoxication of his +latest theme. He will drench himself with ecclesiology, or veterinary +surgery, or railway technicalities—everything by turns and everything +long; but, like the gentleman in the comic opera, he "never mixes." Of +late he almost ceased to add even a dash of human interest.</p> + +<p>Mr. George Moore, reviewing <i>La Débâcle</i> in the <i>Fortnightly</i> last +month, laments this. He reminds us of the splendid opportunity M. Zola +has flung away in his latest work.</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>"Jean and Maurice," says Mr. Moore, "have fought side by side; +they have alternately saved each other's lives; war has united +them in a bond of inseparable friendship; they have grasped each +other's hands, and looked in each other's eyes, overpowered with +a love that exceeds the love that woman ever gave to man; now +they are ranged on different sides, armed one against the other. +The idea is a fine one, and it is to be deeply regretted that M. +Zola did not throw history to the winds and develop the beautiful +human story of the division of friends in civil war. Never would +history have tempted Balzac away from the human passion of such a +subject...."</p></div> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_195" id="Page_195">Pg 195</a></span></p><p>But it is just fidelity to the human interest of every subject that +gives the novelist his rank; that makes—to take another instance—a +page or two of Balzac, when Balzac is dealing with money, of more +value than the whole of <i>l'Argent</i>.</p> + +<p>Of Burke it has been said by a critic with whom it is a pleasure for +once in a way to agree, that he knew how the whole world lived.</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>"It was Burke's peculiarity and his glory to apply the +imagination of a poet of the first order to the facts and +business of life.... Burke's imagination led him to look over the +whole land: the legislator devising new laws, the judge +expounding and enforcing old ones, the merchant despatching all +his goods and extending his credit, the banker advancing the +money of his customers upon the credit of the merchant, the +frugal man slowly accumulating the store which is to support him +in old age, the ancient institutions of Church and University +with their seemly provisions for sound learning and true +religion, the parson in his pulpit, the poet pondering his +rhymes, the farmer eyeing his crops, the painter covering his +canvases, the player educating the feelings. Burke saw all this +with the fancy of a poet, and dwelt on it with the eye of a +lover."</p></div> + +<p>Now all this, which is true of Burke, is true of the very first +literary artists—of Shakespeare <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_196" id="Page_196">Pg 196</a></span>and Balzac. All this, and more—for +they not only see all this immense activity of life, but the emotions +that animate each of the myriad actors.</p> + +<p>Suppose them to treat of commerce: they see not only the goods and +money changing hands, but the ambitions, dangers, fears, delights, the +fierce adventures by desert and seas, the slow toil at home, upon +which the foundations of commerce are set. Like the Gods,</p> + +<p> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">"They see the ferry</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">On the broad, clay-laden</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">Lone Chorasmian stream;—thereon,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">With snort and strain,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">Two horses, strongly swimming, tow</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">The ferry-boat, with woven ropes</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">To either bow</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">Firm-harness'd by the mane; a chief,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">With shout and shaken spear,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">Stands at the prow, and guides them; but astern</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">The cowering merchants, in long robes,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">Sit pale beside their wealth...."</span><br /> +</p> + +<p>Like the Gods, they see all this; but, unlike the Gods, they must feel +also:—</p> + +<p> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">"They see the merchants</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">On the Oxus stream;—<i>but care</i></span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;"><i>Must visit first them too, and make them pale</i>.</span><br /> +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_197" id="Page_197">Pg 197</a></span><span style="margin-left: 2.5em;"><i>Whether, through whirling sand,</i></span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;"><i>A cloud of desert robber-horse have burst</i></span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;"><i>Upon their caravan; or greedy kings,</i></span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;"><i>In the wall'd cities the way passes through,</i></span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;"><i>Crush'd them with tolls; or fever-airs,</i></span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;"><i>On some great river's marge,</i></span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;"><i>Mown them down, far from home."</i></span><br /> +</p> + +<p>Mr. Moore speaks of M. Zola's vast imagination. It is vast in the +sense that it sees one thing at a time, and sees it a thousand times +as big as it appears to most men. But can the imagination that sees a +whole world under the influence of one particular fury be compared +with that which surveys this planet and sees its inhabitants busy with +a million diverse occupations? Drink, Money, War—these may be +usefully personified as malignant or beneficent angels, for pulpit +purposes. But the employment of these terrific spirits in the harrying +of the Rougon-Macquart family recalls the announcement that</p> + +<p> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">"The Death-Angel smote Alexander McGlue...."</span><br /> +</p> + +<p>while the methods of the <i>Roman Expérimental</i> can hardly be better +illustrated than by the rest of the famous stanza—</p> + +<p> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">"—And gave him protracted repose:</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">He wore a check shirt and a Number 9 shoe,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">And he had a pink wart on his nose."</span><br /> +</p> + + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_198" id="Page_198">Pg 198</a></span></p> +<h2><a name="SELECTION" id="SELECTION"></a>SELECTION</h2> + + +<p class="left"><i><b>May 4, 1895. Hazlitt.</b></i></p> + +<p>"Coming forward and seating himself on the ground in his white dress +and tightened turban, the chief of the Indian jugglers begins with +tossing up two brass balls, which is what any of us could do, and +concludes with keeping up four at the same time, which is what none of +us could do to save our lives." ... You remember Hazlitt's essay on +the Indian Jugglers, and how their performance shook his self-conceit. +"It makes me ashamed of myself. I ask what there is that I can do as +well as this. Nothing..... Is there no one thing in which I can +challenge competition, that I can bring as an instance of exact +perfection, in which others cannot find a flaw? The utmost I can +pretend to is to write a description of what this fellow can do. I can +write a book; so can many others who have not even learned to spell. +What abortions are these essays! What errors, what ill-pieced +transi<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_199" id="Page_199">Pg 199</a></span>tions, what crooked reasons, what lame conclusions! How little +is made out, and that little how ill! Yet they are the best I can do."</p> + +<p>Nevertheless a play of Shakespeare's, or a painting by Reynolds, or an +essay by Hazlitt, imperfect though it be, is of more rarity and worth +than the correctest juggling or tight-rope walking. Hazlitt proceeds +to examine why this should be, and discovers a number of good reasons. +But there is one reason, omitted by him, or perhaps left for the +reader to infer, on which we may profitably spend a few minutes. It +forms part of a big subject, and tempts to much abstract talk on the +universality of the Fine Arts; but I think we shall be putting it +simply enough if we say that an artist is superior to an "artiste" +because he does well what ninety-nine people in a hundred are doing +poorly all their lives.</p> + +<p class="left"><i><b>Selection.</b></i></p> + +<p>When people compare fiction with "real life," they start with +asserting "real life" to be a conglomerate of innumerable details of +all possible degrees of pertinence and importance, and go on to show +that the novelist selects from this mass those which are the most +im<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_200" id="Page_200">Pg 200</a></span>portant and pertinent to his purpose. (I speak here particularly of +the novelist, but the same is alleged of all practitioners of the fine +arts.) And, in a way, this is true enough. But who (unless in an idle +moment, or with a view to writing a treatise in metaphysics) ever +takes this view of the world? Who regards it as a conglomerate of +innumerable details? Critics say that the artist's difficulty lies in +selecting the details proper to his purpose, and his justification +rests on the selection he makes. But where lives the man whose +difficulty and whose justification do not lie just here?—who is not +consciously or unconsciously selecting from morning until night? You +take the most ordinary country walk. How many millions of leaves and +stones and blades of grass do you pass without perceiving them at all? +How many thousands of others do you perceive, and at once allow to +slip into oblivion? Suppose you have walked four miles with the +express object of taking pleasure in country sights. I dare wager the +objects that have actually engaged your attention for two seconds are +less than five hundred, and those that remain in your memory, when you +reach home, as few as a dozen. All the way you have been, quite +unconsciously, <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_201" id="Page_201">Pg 201</a></span>selecting and rejecting. And it is the brain's +bedazzlement over this work, I suggest, and not merely the rhythmical +physical exertion, that lulls the more ambitious walker and induces +that phlegmatic mood so prettily described by Stevenson—the mood in +which</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>"we can think of this or that, lightly or laughingly, as a child +thinks, or as we think in a morning doze; we can make puns or +puzzle out acrostics, and trifle in a thousand ways with words +and rhymes; but when it comes to honest work, when we come to +gather ourselves together for an effort, we may sound the trumpet +as long and loud as we please; the great barons of the mind will +not rally to the standard, but sit, each one at home, warming his +hands over his own fire and brooding on his own private thought!"</p></div> + +<p>Again, certain critics never seem tired of pelting the novelist with +comparisons drawn between painting and photography. "Mr. So-and-So's +fidelity to life suggests the camera rather than the brush and +palette"; and the implication is that Mr. So-and-So and the camera +resemble each other in their tendency to reproduce irrelevant detail. +The camera, it is assumed, repeats this irrelevant detail. The +photographer does not select. But is this true? I have known many +enthusiasts in photography whose enthusiasm I could not share. But I +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_202" id="Page_202">Pg 202</a></span>never knew one, even among amateurs, who wished to photograph +everything he saw, from every possible point of view. Even the amateur +selects—wrongly as a rule: still he selects. The mere act of setting +up a camera in any particular spot implies a process of selection. And +when the deed is done, the scenery has been libelled. Our eyes behold +the photograph, and go through another process of selection. In short, +whatever they look upon, men and women are selecting ceaselessly.</p> + +<p>The artist therefore does well and consciously, and for a particular +end, what every man or woman does poorly, and unconsciously, and +casually. He differs in the photographer in that he has more licence +to eliminate. When once the camera is set up, it's owner's power over +the landscape has come to an end. The person who looks on the +resultant photograph must go through the same process of choosing and +rejecting that he would have gone through in contemplating the natural +landscape. The sole advantage is that the point of view has been +selected for him, and that he can enjoy it without fatigue in any +place and at any time.</p> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_203" id="Page_203">Pg 203</a></span></p><p>The truth seems to be that the human brain abhors the complexity—the +apparently aimless complexity—of nature and real life, and is for +ever trying to get away from it by selecting this and ignoring that. +And it contrives so well that I suppose the average man is not +consciously aware twice a year of that conglomerate of details which +the critics call real life. He holds one stout thread, at any rate, to +guide him through the maze—the thread of self-interest.</p> + +<p>The justification of the poet or the novelist is that he discovers a +better thread. He follows up a universal where the average man follows +only a particular. But in following it, he does but use those +processes by which the average man arrives, or attempts to arrive, at +pleasure.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_204" id="Page_204">Pg 204</a></span></p> +<h2><a name="EXTERNALS" id="EXTERNALS"></a>EXTERNALS</h2> + + +<p class="left"><i><b>Nov. 18, 1893. Story and Anecdote.</b></i></p> + +<p>I suppose I am no more favored than most people who write stories in +receiving from unknown correspondents a variety of suggestions, +outlines of plots, sketches of situations, characters, and so forth. +One cannot but feel grateful for all this spontaneous beneficence. The +mischief is that in ninety-nine cases out of a hundred (the fraction +is really much smaller) these suggestions are of no possible use.</p> + +<p>Why should this be? Put briefly, the reason is that a story differs +from an anecdote. I take the first two instances that come into my +head: but they happen to be striking ones, and, as they occur in a +book of Mr. Kipling's, are safe to be well known to all my +correspondents. In Mr. Kipling's fascinating book, <i>Life's Handicap, +On Greenhow Hill</i> is a story; <i>The Lang Men o' Larut</i> is an anecdote. +<i>On Greenhow Hill</i> is founded on a study of the human heart, and it is +upon the human heart <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_205" id="Page_205">Pg 205</a></span>that the tale constrains one's interest. <i>The +Lang Men o' Larut</i> is just a yarn spun for the yarn's sake: it informs +us of nothing, and is closely related (if I may use some of Mr. +Howells' expressive language for the occasion) to "the lies swapped +between men after the ladies have left the table." And the reason why +the story-teller, when (as will happen at times) his invention runs +dry, can take no comfort in the generous outpourings of his unknown +friends, is just this—that the plots are merely plots, and the +anecdotes merely anecdotes, and the difference between these and a +story that shall reveal something concerning men and women is just the +difference between bad and good art.</p> + +<p>Let us go a step further. At first sight it seems a superfluous +contention that a novelist's rank depends upon what he can see and +what he can tell us of the human heart. But, as a matter of fact, you +will find that four-fifths at least of contemporary criticism is +devoted to matters quite different—to what I will call Externals, or +the Accidents of Story-telling: and that, as a consequence, our +novelists are spending a quite unreasonable proportion of their <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_206" id="Page_206">Pg 206</a></span>labor +upon Externals. I wrote "as a consequence" hastily, because it is +always easier to blame the critics. If the truth were known, I dare +say the novelists began it with their talk about "documents," "the +scientific method," "observation and experiment," and the like.</p> + +<p class="left"><i><b>The Fallacy of "Documents."</b></i></p> + +<p>Now you may observe a man until you are tired, and then you may begin +and observe him over again: you may photograph him and his +surroundings: you may spend years in studying what he eats and drinks: +you may search out what his uncles died of, and the price he pays for +his hats, and—know nothing at all about him. At least, you may know +enough to insure his life or assess him for Income Tax: but you are +not even half-way towards writing a novel about him. You are still +groping among externals. His unspoken ambitions; the stories he tells +himself silently, at midnight, in his bed; the pain he masks with a +dull face and the ridiculous fancies he hugs in secret—these are the +Essentials, and you cannot get them by Observation. If you can +discover these, you are a Novelist born: if not, you may as well shut +up your note-book and turn to some more remunerative trade. You will +never surprise <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_207" id="Page_207">Pg 207</a></span>the secret of a soul by accumulating notes upon +Externals.</p> + +<p class="left"><i><b>Local Color.</b></i></p> + +<p>Then, again, we have Local Color, an article inordinately bepraised +just now; and yet an External. For human nature, when every possible +allowance has been made for geographical conditions, undergoes +surprisingly little change as we pass from one degree of latitude or +longitude to another. The Story of Ruth is as intelligible to an +Englishman as though Ruth had gleaned in the stubble behind Tess +Durbeyfield. Levine toiling with the mowers, Achilles sulking in his +tent, Iphigeneia at the altar, Gil Blas before the Archbishop of +Granada have as close a claim on our sympathy as if they lived but a +few doors from us. Let me be understood. I hold it best that a +novelist should be intimately acquainted with the country in which he +lays his scene. But, none the less, the study of local color is not of +the first importance. And the critic who lavishes praise upon a writer +for "introducing us to an entirely new atmosphere," for "breaking new +ground," and "wafting us to scenes with which the jaded novel-reader +is scarcely acquainted," and for "giving us work which bears every +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_208" id="Page_208">Pg 208</a></span>trace of minute local research," is praising that which is of +secondary importance. The works of Richard Jefferies form a +considerable museum of externals of one particular kind; and this is +possibly the reason why the Cockney novelist waxes eloquent over +Richard Jefferies. He can now import the breath of the hay-field into +his works at no greater expense of time and trouble than taking down +the <i>Gamekeeper at Home</i> from his club bookshelf and perusing a +chapter or so before settling down to work. There is not the slightest +harm in his doing this: the mistake lies in thinking local color +(however acquired) of the first importance.</p> + +<p>In judging fiction there is probably no safer rule than to ask one's +self, How far does the pleasure excited in me by this book depend upon +the transitory and trivial accidents that distinguish this time, this +place, this character, from another time, another place, another +character? And how far upon the abiding elements of human life, the +constant temptations, the constant ambitions, and the constant +nobility and weakness of the human heart? These are the essentials, +and no amount of documents or local color can fill their room.</p> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_209" id="Page_209">Pg 209</a></span></p><p class="left"><i><b>Sept. 30, 1893. The Country as "Copy."</b></i></p> + +<p>The case of a certain small volume of verse in which I take some +interest, and its treatment at the hands of the reviewers, seems to me +to illustrate in a sufficiently amusing manner a trick that the +British critic has been picking up of late. In a short account of Mr. +Hosken, the postman poet, written by way of preface to his <i>Verses by +the Way</i> (Methuen & Co.), I took occasion to point out that he is not +what is called in the jargon of these days a "nature-poet"; that his +poetic bent inclines rather to meditation than to description; and +that though his early struggles in London and elsewhere have made him +acquainted with many strange people in abnormal conditions of life, +his interest has always lain, not in these striking anomalies, but in +the destiny of humanity as a whole and its position in the great +scheme of things.</p> + +<p>These are simple facts. I found them, easily enough, in Mr. Hosken's +verse—where anybody else may find them. They also seem to me to be, +for a critic's purpose, ultimate facts. It is an ultimate fact that +Publius Virgilius Maro wore his buskins somewhat higher in the heel +than did Quintus Horatius Flaccus: and no <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_210" id="Page_210">Pg 210</a></span>critic, to my knowledge, +has been impertinent enough to point out that, since Horace had some +experience of the tented field, while Virgil was a stay-at-home +courtier, therefore Horace should have essayed to tell the martial +exploits of Trojan and Rutulian while Virgil contented himself with +the gossip of the Via Sacra. Yet—to compare small things with +great—this is the mistake into which our critics have fallen in Mr. +Hosken's case; and I mention it because the case is typical. They try +to get behind the ultimate facts and busy themselves with questions +they have no proper concern with. Some ask petulantly why Mr. Hosken +is not a "nature-poet." Some are gravely concerned that "local talent" +(<i>i.e.</i> the talent of a man who happens to dwell in some locality +other than the critic's) should not concern itself with local affairs; +and remind him—</p> + +<p> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">"To thine orchard edge belong</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">All the brass and plume of song."</span><br /> +</p> + +<p>As if a man may not concern himself with the broader problems of life +and attack them with all the apparatus of recorded experience, unless +he happen to live on one bank or other of the Fleet Ditch! If a man +have the gift, he can <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_211" id="Page_211">Pg 211</a></span>find all the "brass and plume of song" in his +orchard edge. If he have not, he may (provided he be a <i>bonâ fide</i> +traveller) find it elsewhere. What, for instance, were the use of +telling Keats: "To thy surgery belong all the brass and plume of +song"? He couldn't find it there, so he betook himself to Chapman and +Lempriere. If you ask, "What right has a country postman to be +handling questions that vexed the brain of Plato?"—I ask in return, +"What right had John Keats, who knew no Greek, to busy himself with +Greek mythology?" And the answer is that each has a perfect right to +follow his own bent.</p> + +<p>The assumption of many critics that only within the metropolitan cab +radius can a comprehensive system of philosophy be constructed, and +that only through the plate-glass windows of two or three clubs is it +possible to see life steadily, and see it whole, is one that I have +before now had occasion to dispute. It is joined in this case to +another yet more preposterous—that from a brief survey of an author's +circumstances we can dictate to him what he ought to write about, and +how he ought to write it. And I have observed particularly that if a +writer <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_212" id="Page_212">Pg 212</a></span>be a countryman, or at all well acquainted with country life, +all kinds of odd entertainment is expected of him in the way of notes +on the habits of birds, beasts, and fishes, on the growth of all kinds +of common plants, on the proper way to make hay, to milk a cow, and so +forth.</p> + +<p class="left"><i><b>Richard Jefferies.</b></i></p> + +<p>Now it is just the true countryman who would no more think of noting +these things down in a book than a Londoner would think of stating in +a novel that Bond Street joins Oxford Street and Piccadilly: simply +because they have been familiar to him from boyhood. And to my mind it +is a small but significant sign of a rather lamentable movement—of +none other, indeed, than the "Rural Exodus," as Political Economists +call it—that each and every novelist of my acquaintance, while +assuming as a matter of course that his readers are tolerably familiar +with the London Directory, should, equally as a matter of course, +assume them to be ignorant of the commonest features of open-air life. +I protest there are few things more pitiable than the transports of +your Cockney critic over Richard Jefferies. Listen, for instance, to +this kind of thing:—</p> +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_213" id="Page_213">Pg 213</a></span></p> +<div class="blockquot"><p>"Here and there upon the bank wild gooseberry and currant bushes +may be found, planted by birds carrying off ripe fruit from the +garden. A wild gooseberry may sometimes be seen growing out of +the decayed 'touchwood' on the top of a hollow withy-pollard. +Wild apple trees, too, are not uncommon in the hedges.</p> + +<p>"The beautiful rich colour of the horse-chestnut, when quite ripe +and fresh from its prickly green shell, can hardly be surpassed; +underneath the tree the grass is strewn with shells where they +have fallen and burst. Close to the trunk the grass is worn away +by the restless trampling of horses, who love the shade its +foliage gives in summer. The oak apples which appear on the oaks +in spring—generally near the trunk—fall off in summer, and lie +shrivelled on the ground, not unlike rotten cork, or black as if +burned. But the oak-galls show thick on some of the trees, light +green, and round as a ball; they will remain on the branches +after the leaves have fallen, turning brown and hard, and hanging +there till the spring comes again."—<i>Wild Life in a Southern +County</i>, pp. 224-5.</p></div> + +<p>I say it is pitiable that people should need to read these things in +print. Let me apply this method to some district of south-west +London—say the Old Brompton Road:—</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>"Here and there along the street Grocery Stores and shops of +Italian Warehousemen may be observed, opened here as branches of +bigger establishments in the City. Three gilt balls may +occasionally be seen hanging out under the first-floor windows of +a 'pawnbroker's' res<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_214" id="Page_214">Pg 214</a></span>idence. House-agents, too, are not uncommon +along the line of route.</p> + +<p>"The appearance of a winkle, when extracted from its shell with +the aid of a pin, is extremely curious. There is a winkle-stall +by the South Kensington Station of the Underground Railway. +Underneath the stall the pavement is strewn with shells, where +they have fallen and continue to lie. Close to the stall is a +cab-stand, paved with a few cobbles, lest the road be worn +overmuch by the restless trampling of cab-horses, who stand here +because it is a cab-stand. The thick woollen goods which appear +in the haberdashers' windows through the winter—generally +<i>inside</i> the plate glass—give way to garments of a lighter +texture as the summer advances, and are put away or exhibited at +decreased prices. But collars continue to be shown, quite white +and circular in form; they will probably remain, turning grey as +the dust settles on them, until they are sold."</p></div> + +<p>This is no travesty. It is a hasty, but I believe a pretty exact +application of Jefferies' method. And I ask how it would look in a +book. If the critics really enjoy, as they profess to, all this +trivial country lore, why on earth don't they come into the fresh air +and find it out for themselves? There is no imperative call for their +presence in London. Ink will stain paper in the country as well as in +town, and the Post will convey their articles to their editors. As it +is, they do but <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_215" id="Page_215">Pg 215</a></span>overheat already overheated clubs. Mr. Henley has +suggested concerning Jefferies' works that</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>"in years to be, when the whole island is one vast congeries of +streets, and the fox has gone down to the bustard and the dodo, +and outside museums of comparative anatomy the weasel is not, and +the badger has ceased from the face of the earth, it is not +doubtful that the <i>Gamekeeper</i> and <i>Wild Life</i> and the +<i>Poacher</i>—epitomising, as they will, the rural England of +certain centuries before—will be serving as material authority +for historical descriptions, historical novels, historical epics, +historical pictures, and will be honoured as the most useful +stuff of their kind in being."</p></div> + +<p>Let me add that the movement has begun. These books are already +supplying the club-novelist with his open-air effects: and, therefore, +the club-novelist worships them. From them he gathers that "wild +apple-trees, too, are not uncommon in the hedges," and straightway he +informs the public of this wonder. But it is hard on the poor +countryman who, for the benefit of a street-bred reading public, must +cram his books with solemn recitals of his A, B, C, and impressive +announcements that two and two make four and a hedge-sparrow's egg is +blue.</p> + + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_216" id="Page_216">Pg 216</a></span></p><p class="left"><i><b>Aug. 18, 1894. A Defence of "Local Fiction."</b></i></p> + +<p>Under the title "Three Years of American Copyright" the <i>Daily +Chronicle</i> last Tuesday published an account of an interview with Mr. +Brander Matthews, who holds (among many titles to distinction) the +Professorship of Literature in Columbia College, New York. Mr. +Matthews is always worth listening to, and has the knack of speaking +without offensiveness even when chastising us Britons for our national +peculiarities. His conversation with the <i>Daily Chronicle's</i> +interviewer contained a number of good things; but for the moment I am +occupied with his answer to the question "What form of literature +should you say is at present in the ascendant in the United States?" +"Undoubtedly," said Mr. Matthews, "what I may call local fiction."</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>"Every district of the country is finding its 'sacred poet.' Some +of them have only a local reputation, but all possess the common +characteristic of starting from fresh, original, and loving study +of local character and manners. You know what Miss Mary E. +Wilkins has done for New England, and you probably know, too, +that she was preceded in the same path by Miss Sarah Orne Jewett +and the late Mrs. Rose Terry Cooke. Mr. Harold Frederic is +performing much the same service for rural New York, Miss Murfree +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_217" id="Page_217">Pg 217</a></span>(Charles Egbert Craddock) for the mountains of Tennessee, Mr. +James Lane Allen for Kentucky, Mr. Joel Chandler Harris for +Georgia, Mr. Cable for Louisiana, Miss French (Octave Thanet) for +Iowa, Mr. Hamlin Garland for the western prairies, and so forth. +Of course, one can trace the same tendency, more or less clearly, +in English fiction...."</p></div> + +<p>And Mr. Matthews went on to instance several living novelists, Scotch, +Irish, and English to support this last remark.</p> + +<p>The matter, however, is not in doubt. With Mr. Barrie in the North, +and Mr. Hardy in the South; with Mr. Hall Caine in the Isle of Man, +Mr. Crockett in Galloway, Miss Barlow in Lisconnell; with Mr. Gilbert +Parker in the territory of the H.B.C., and Mr. Hornung in Australia; +with Mr. Kipling scouring the wide world, but returning always to +India when the time comes to him to score yet another big artistic +success; it hardly needs elaborate proof to arrive at the conclusion +that 'locality' is playing a strong part in current fiction.</p> + +<p>The thing may possibly be overdone. Looking at it from the artistic +point of view as dispassionately as I may, I think we are <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_218" id="Page_218">Pg 218</a></span>overdoing +it. But that, for the moment, is not the point of view I wish to take. +If for the moment we can detach ourselves from the prejudice of +fashion and look at the matter from the historical point of view—if +we put ourselves into the position of the conscientious gentleman who, +fifty or a hundred years hence, will be surveying us and our works—I +think we shall find this elaboration of "locality" in fiction to be +but a swing-back of the pendulum, a natural revolt from the +thin-spread work of the "carpet-bagging" novelist who takes the whole +world for his province, and imagines he sees life steadily and sees it +whole when he has seen a great deal of it superficially.</p> + +<p>The "carpet-bagger" still lingers among us. We know him, with his +"tourist's return" ticket, and the ready-made "plot" in his head, and +his note-book and pencil for jotting down "local color." We still find +him working up the scenery of Bolivia in the Reading Room of the +British Museum. But he is going rapidly out of fashion; and it is as +well to put his features on record and pigeon-hole them, if only that +we may recog<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_219" id="Page_219">Pg 219</a></span>nize him on that day when the pendulum shall swing him +triumphantly back into our midst, and "locality" shall in its turn +pass out of vogue.</p> + +<p>I submit this simile of the pendulum with some diffidence to those +eager theorists who had rather believe that their art is advancing +steadily, but at a fair rate of speed, towards perfection. My own less +cheerful—yet not altogether cheerless view—is that the various +fashions in art swing to and fro upon intersecting curves. Some of the +points of intersection are fortunate points—others are obviously the +reverse; and generally the fortunate points lie near the middle of +each arc, or the mean; while the less fortunate ones lie towards the +ends, that is, towards excess upon one side or another. I have already +said that, in the amount of attention they pay to locality just now, +the novelists seem to be running into excess. If I must choose between +one excess and the other—between the carpet-bagger and the writer of +"dialect-stories," each at his worst—I unhesitatingly choose the +latter. But that is probably because I happened to be born in the +'sixties.</p> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_220" id="Page_220">Pg 220</a></span></p><p>Let us get back (I hear you implore) to the historical point of view, +if possible: anywhere, anywhere, out of the <i>Poetics!</i> And I admit +that a portion of the preceding paragraph reads like a bad parody of +that remarkable work. Well, then, I believe that our imaginary +historian—I suppose he will be a German: but we need not let our +imagination dwell upon <i>that</i>—will find a dozen reasons in +contemporary life to account for the attention now paid by novelists +to "locality." He will find one of them, no doubt, in the development +of locomotion by steam. He will point out that any cause which makes +communication easier between two given towns is certain to soften the +difference in the characteristics of their inhabitants: that the +railway made communication easier and quicker year by year; and its +tendency was therefore to obliterate local peculiarities. He will +describe how at first the carpet-bagger went forth in railway-train +and steamboat, rejoicing in his ability to put a girdle round the +world in a few weeks, and disposed to ignore those differences of race +and region which he had no time to consider and which he was daily +softening into uniformity. He will then relate that towards the close +of the <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_221" id="Page_221">Pg 221</a></span>nineteenth century, when these differences were rapidly +perishing, people began to feel the loss of them and recognize their +scientific and romantic value; and that a number of writers entered +into a struggle against time and the carpet-bagger, to study these +differences and place them upon record, before all trace of them +should disappear. And then I believe our historian, though he may find +that in 1894 we paid too much attention to the <i>minutiæ</i> of dialect, +folk-lore and ethnic differences, and were inclined to overlay with +these the more catholic principles of human conduct, will acknowledge +that in our hour we did the work that was most urgent. Our hour, no +doubt, is not the happiest; but, since this is the work it brings, +there can be no harm in going about it zealously.</p> + + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_222" id="Page_222">Pg 222</a></span></p> +<h2><a name="CLUB_TALK" id="CLUB_TALK"></a>CLUB TALK</h2> + + +<p class="left"><i><b>Nov. 12, 1892. Mr. Gilbert Parker.</b></i></p> + +<p>Mr. Gilbert Parker's book of Canadian tales, "Pierre and His People" +(Methuen and Co.), is delightful for more than one reason. To begin +with, the tales themselves are remarkable, and the language in which +they are told, though at times it overshoots the mark by a long way +and offends by what I may call an affected virility, is always +distinguished. You feel that Mr. Parker considers his sentences, not +letting his bolts fly at a venture, but aiming at his effects +deliberately. It is the trick of promising youth to shoot high and +send its phrases in parabolic curves over the target. But a slight +wildness of aim is easily corrected, and to see the target at all is a +more conspicuous merit than the public imagines. Now Mr. Parker sees +his target steadily; he has a thoroughly good notion of what a short +story ought to be: and more than two or three stories in his book are +as good as can be.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_223" id="Page_223">Pg 223</a></span></p> + +<p class="left"><i><b>Open Air v. Clubs.</b></i></p> + +<p>But to me the most pleasing quality in the book is its open-air +flavor. Here is yet another young author, and one of the most +promising, joining the healthy revolt against the workshops. Though +for my sins I have to write criticism now and then, and use the +language of the workshops, I may claim to be one of the rebels, having +chosen to pitch a small tent far from cities and to live out of doors: +and it rejoices me to see the movement growing, as it undoubtedly has +grown during the last few years, and find yet one more of the younger +men refusing, in Mr. Stevenson's words, to cultivate restaurant fat, +to fall in mind "to a thing perhaps as low as many types of +<i>bourgeois</i>—the implicit or exclusive artist." London is an alluring +dwelling-place for an author, even for one who desires to write about +the country. He is among the paragraph-writers, and his reputation +swells as a cucumber under glass. Being in sight of the newspaper men, +he is also in their mind. His prices will stand higher than if he go +out into the wilderness. Moreover, he has there the stimulating talk +of the masters in his profession, and will be apt to think that his +intelligence is developing amazingly, whereas in fact he is developing +all <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_224" id="Page_224">Pg 224</a></span>on one side; and the end of him is—the Exclusive Artist:—</p> + +<p> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">"<i>When the flicker of London sun falls faint on the</i></span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 6em;"><i>Club-room's green and gold</i></span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;"><i>The sons of Adam sit them down and scratch with their</i></span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 6em;"><i>pens in the mould—</i></span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;"><i>They scratch with their pens in the mould of their</i></span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 6em;"><i>graves and the ink and the anguish start,</i></span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;"><i>For the Devil mutters behind the leaves: 'It's pretty,</i></span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 6em;"><i>but is it Art?'</i> "</span><br /> +</p> + +<p>The spirit of our revolt is indicated clearly enough on that page of +Mr. Stevenson's "Wrecker," from which I have already quoted a +phrase:—</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>"That was a home word of Pinkerton's, deserving to be writ in +letters of gold on the portico of every School of Art: 'What I +can't see is why you should want to do nothing else.' The dull +man is made, not by the nature, but by the degree of his +immersion in a single business. And all the more if that be +sedentary, uneventful, and ingloriously safe. More than half of +him will then remain unexercised and undeveloped; the rest will +be distended and deformed by over-nutrition, over-cerebration and +the heat of rooms. And I have often marvelled at the impudence of +gentlemen who describe and pass judgment on the life of man, in +almost perfect ignorance of all its necessary elements and +natural careers. Those who dwell in clubs and studios may paint +excellent pictures or write enchanting novels. There is one thing +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_225" id="Page_225">Pg 225</a></span>that they should not do: they should pass no judgment on man's +destiny, for it is a thing with which they are unacquainted. +Their own life is an excrescence of the moment, doomed, in the +vicissitude of history, to pass and disappear. The eternal life +of man, spent under sun and rain and in rude physical effort, +lies upon one side, scarce changed since the beginning."</p></div> + +<p>A few weeks ago our novelists were discussing the reasons why they +were novelists and not playwrights. The discussion was sterile enough, +in all conscience: but one contributor—it was "Lucas Malet"—managed +to make it clear that English fiction has a character to lose. "If +there is one thing," she said, "which as a nation we understand, it is +<i>out-of-doors</i> by land and sea." Heaven forbid that, with only one +Atlantic between me and Mr. W.D. Howells, I should enlarge upon any +merit of the English novel: but I do suggest that this open-air +quality is a characteristic worth preserving, and that nothing is so +likely to efface it as the talk of workshops. It is worth preserving +because it tends to keep us in sight of the elemental facts of human +nature. After all, men and women depend for existence on the earth and +on the sky that makes earth fertile; and man's last act will be, as it +was his first, to till the soil. All empires, cities, tumults, civil +and re<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_226" id="Page_226">Pg 226</a></span>ligious wars, are transitory in comparison. The slow toil of +the farm-laborer, the endurance of the seaman, outlast them all.</p> + +<p class="left"><i><b>Open Air in Criticism.</b></i></p> + +<p>That studio-talk tends to deaden this sense of the open-air is just as +certain. It runs not upon Nature, but upon the presentation of Nature. +I am almost ready to assert that it injures a critic as surely as it +spoils a creative writer. Certainly I remember that the finest +appreciation of Carlyle—a man whom every critic among +English-speaking races had picked to pieces and discussed and +reconstructed a score of times—was left to be uttered by an inspired +loafer in Camden, New Jersey. I love to read of Whitman dropping the +newspaper that told him of Carlyle's illness, and walking out under +the stars—</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>"Every star dilated, more vitreous, larger than usual. Not as in +some clear nights when the larger stars entirely outshine the +rest. Every little star or cluster just as distinctly visible and +just as high. Berenice's hair showing every gem, and new ones. To +the north-east and north the Sickle, the Goat and Kids, +Cassiopeia, Castor and Pollux, and the two Dippers. While through +the whole of this silent indescribable show, inclosing and +bathing my whole receptivity, ran the thought of Carlyle dying."</p></div><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_227" id="Page_227">Pg 227</a></span></p> + +<p>In such a mood and place—not in a club after a dinner unearned by +exercise—a man is likely, if ever, to utter great criticism as well +as to conceive great poems. It is from such a mood and place that we +may consider the following fine passage fitly to issue:—</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>"The way to test how much he has left his country were to +consider, or try to consider, for a moment the array of British +thought, the resultant <i>ensemble</i> of the last fifty years, as +existing to-day, <i>but with Carlyle left out.</i> It would be like an +army with no artillery. The show were still a gay and rich +one—Byron, Scott, Tennyson, and many more—horsemen and rapid +infantry, and banners flying—but the last heavy roar so dear to +the ear of the trained soldier, and that settles fate and +victory, would be lacking."</p></div> + +<p>For critic and artist, as for their fellow-creatures, I believe an +open-air life to be the best possible. And that is why I am glad to +read in certain newspaper paragraphs that Mr. Gilbert Parker is at +this moment on the wide seas, and bound for Quebec, where he starts to +collect material for a new series of short stories. His voyage will +loose him, in all likelihood, from the little he retains of club art.</p> + +<p>Of course, a certain proportion of our novelists must write of town +life: and to do this <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_228" id="Page_228">Pg 228</a></span>fitly they must live in town. But they must +study in the town itself, not in a club. Before anyone quotes Dickens +against me, let him reflect, first on the immensity of Dickens' +genius, and next on the conditions under which Dickens studied London. +If every book be a part of its writer's autobiography I invite the +youthful author who now passes his evenings in swapping views about +Art with his fellow cockneys to pause and reflect if he is indeed +treading in Dickens' footsteps or stands in any path likely to lead +him to results such as Dickens achieved.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_229" id="Page_229">Pg 229</a></span></p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="EXCURSIONISTS_IN_POETRY" id="EXCURSIONISTS_IN_POETRY"></a>EXCURSIONISTS IN POETRY</h2> + + +<p class="left"><i><b>Nov. 5, 1892. An Itinerary.</b></i></p> + +<p>Besides the glorious exclusiveness of it, there is a solid advantage +just now, in not being an aspirant for the Laureateship. You can go +out into the wilderness for a week without troubling to leave an +address. A week or so back I found with some difficulty a friend who +even in his own judgment has no claim to the vacant office, and we set +out together across Dartmoor, Exmoor, the Quantocks, by eccentric +paths over the southern ranges of Wales to the Wye, and homewards by +canoe between the autumn banks of that river. The motto of the voyage +was Verlaine's line—</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>"Et surtout ne parlons pas littérature"</p></div> + +<p>—especially poetry. I think we felt inclined to congratulate each +other after passing the Quantocks in heroic silence; but were content +to read respect in each other's eyes.</p> + +<p class="left"><i><b>The Return to Literature.</b></i></p> + +<p>On our way home we fell across a casual <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_230" id="Page_230">Pg 230</a></span>copy of the <i>Globe</i> +newspaper, and picked up a scrap of information about the Blorenge, a +mountain we had climbed three days before. It is (said the <i>Globe</i>) +the only thing in the world that rhymes with orange. From this we +inferred that the Laureate had not been elected during our wanderings, +and that the Anglo-Saxon was still taking an interest in poetry. It +was so.</p> + +<p class="left"><i><b>Public Excursions in Verse.</b></i></p> + +<p>The progress of this amusing epidemic may be traced in the <i>Times</i>. +It started mildly and decorously with the death of a politician. The +writer of Lord Sherbrooke's obituary notice happened to remember and +transcribe the rather flat epigram beginning—</p> + +<p> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">"Here lie the bones of Robert Lowe,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">Where he's gone to I don't know...."</span><br /> +</p> + +<p>with Lowe's own Latin translation of the same. At once the <i>Times</i> was +flooded with other versions by people who remembered the lines more or +less imperfectly, who had clung each to his own version since +childhood, who doubted if the epigram were originally written on Lord +Sherbrooke, who had seen it on an eighteenth-century tombstone in +several parts <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_231" id="Page_231">Pg 231</a></span>of England, and so on. London Correspondents took up +the game and carried it into the provincial press. Then country +clergymen bustled up and tried to recall the exact rendering; while +others who had never heard of the epigram waxed emulous and produced +translations of their own, with the Latin of which the local +compositor made sport after his kind. For weeks there continued quite +a pretty rivalry among these decaying scholars.</p> + +<p>The gentle thunders of this controversy had scarcely died down when +the <i>Times</i> quoted a four-lined epigram about Mr. Leech making a +speech, and Mr. Parker making something darker that was dark enough +without; and another respectable profession, which hitherto had +remained cold, began to take fire and dispute with ardor. The Church, +the Legislature, the Bar, were all excited by this time. They strained +on the verge of surpassing feats, should the occasion be given. From +men in this mood the occasion is rarely withheld. Lord Tennyson died. +He had written at Cambridge a prize poem on Timbuctoo. Somebody else, +at Cambridge or elsewhere, had also written about Timbuctoo and a +Cassowary that ate a mission<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_232" id="Page_232">Pg 232</a></span>ary with his this and his that and his +hymn-book too. Who was this somebody? Did he write it at Cambridge +(home of poets)? And what were the "trimmings," as Mr. Job Trotter +would say, with which the missionary was eaten?</p> + +<p>Poetry was in the air by this time. It would seem that those treasures +which the great Laureate had kept close were by his death unlocked and +spread over England, even to the most unexpected corners. "All have +got the seed," and already a dozen gentlemen were busily growing the +flower in the daily papers. It was not to be expected that our +senators, barristers, stockbrokers, having proved their strength, +would stop short at Timbuctoo and the Cassowary. Very soon a bold +egregious wether jumped the fence into the Higher Criticism, and gave +us a new and amazing interpretation of the culminating line in +<i>Crossing the Bar</i>. The whole flock was quick upon his heels. "Allow +me to remind the readers of your valuable paper that there are <i>two</i> +kinds of pilot" is the sentence that now catches our eyes as we open +the <i>Times</i>. And according to the <i>Globe</i> if you need a rhyme +for orange you must use <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_233" id="Page_233">Pg 233</a></span>Blorenge. And the press exists to supply the real +wants of the public.<a name="FNanchor_A_14" id="FNanchor_A_14"></a><a href="#Footnote_A_14" class="fnanchor">[A]</a></p> + +<p>They talk of decadence. But who will deny the future to a race capable +of producing, on the one hand, <i>Crossing the Bar</i>—and on the other, +this comment upon it, signed "T.F.W." and sent to the <i>Times</i> from +Cambridge, October 27th, 1892?—</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>" ... a poet so studious of fitness of language as Tennyson would +hardly, I suspect, have thrown off such words on such an occasion +haphazard. If the analogy is to be inexorably criticised, may it +not be urged that, having in his mind not the mere passage 'o'er +life's solemn main,' which we all are taking, with or without +reflection, but the near approach to an unexplored<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_234" id="Page_234">Pg 234</a></span>ocean beyond +it, he was mentally assigning to the pilot in whom his confidence +was fast the <i>status</i> of the navigator of old days, the +sailing-master, on whose knowledge and care crews and captains +engaged in expeditions alike relied? Columbus himself married the +daughter of such a man, <i>un piloto Italiano famoso navigante</i>. +Camoens makes the people of Mozambique offer Vasco da Gama a +<i>piloto</i> by whom his fleet shall be deftly (<i>sabiamente</i>) +conducted across the Indian Ocean. In the following century +(1520-30) Sebastian Cabot, then in the service of Spain, +commanded a squadron which was to pass through the Straits of +Magellan to the Moluccas, having been appointed by Charles V. +Grand Pilot of Castile. The French still call the mates of +merchant vessels—that is, the officers who watch about, take +charge of the deck—<i>pilotes</i>, and this designation is not +impossibly reserved to them as representing the <i>pilote +hauturier</i> of former times, the scientific guide of ships <i>dans +la haute mer</i>, as distinguished from the <i>pilote côtier</i>, who +simply hugged the shore. The last class of pilot, it is almost +superfluous to observe, is still with us and does take our ships, +inwards or outwards, across the bar, if there be one, and does no +more. The <i>hauturier</i> has long been replaced in all countries by +the captain, and it must be within the experience of some of us +that when outward bound the captain as often as not has been the +last man to come on board. We did not meet him until the ship, +which until his arrival was in the hands of the <i>côtier</i>, was +well out of harbour. Then our <i>côtier</i> left us."</p></div> + +<p>Prodigious!</p> + + +<div class="footnotes"><h3>FOOTNOTES:</h3> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_A_14" id="Footnote_A_14"></a><a href="#FNanchor_A_14"><span class="label">[A]</span></a> <i>Note</i>, Oct. 21, 1893.—The nuisance revived again when +Mr. Nettleship the younger perished on Mont Blanc. And again, the +friend of Lowe and Nettleship, the great Master of Balliol, had hardly +gone to his grave before a dispute arose, not only concerning his +parentage (about which any man might have certified himself at the +smallest expense of time and trouble), but over an unusually pointless +epigram that was made at Cambridge many years ago, and neither on him, +nor on his father, but on an entirely different Jowett, <i>Semper ego +auditor tantum?</i>— +</p><p><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">If a funny "Cantab" write a dozen funny rhymes,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">Need a dozen "Cantabs" write about it to the <i>Times</i>?</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">Need they write, at any rate, a generation after,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">Stating cause and date of joke and reasons for their laughter?</span><br /> +</p></div> +</div> + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_235" id="Page_235">Pg 235</a></span></p><h2><a name="THE_POPULAR_CONCEPTION_OF_A_POET" id="THE_POPULAR_CONCEPTION_OF_A_POET"></a>THE POPULAR CONCEPTION OF A POET</h2> + + +<p class="left"><i><b>June 24, 1893. March 4, 1804. In what respect Remarkable.</b></i></p> + +<p>What seems to me chiefly remarkable in the popular conception of a +Poet is its unlikeness to the truth. Misconception in this case has +been flattered, I fear, by the poets themselves:—</p> + +<p> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">"The poet in a golden Clime was born,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 3.5em;">With golden stars above;</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">Dowered with the hate of hate, the scorn of scorn,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 3.5em;">The love of love.</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">He saw thro' life and death, thro' good and ill;</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 3.5em;">He saw thro' his own soul.</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">The marvel of the Everlasting Will,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 3.5em;">An open scroll,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">Before him lay...."</span><br /> +</p> + +<p>I should be sorry to vex any poet's mind with my shallow wit; but this +passage always reminds me of the delusions of the respectable +Glendower:—</p> + +<p> +<span style="margin-left: 8em;">"At my birth</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">The frame and huge foundation of the earth</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">Shak'd like a coward."</span><br /> +</p> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_236" id="Page_236">Pg 236</a></span></p><p>—and Hotspur's interpretation (slightly petulant, to be sure), "Why, +so it would have done at the time if your mother's cat had but +kittened, though you yourself had never been born." I protest that I +reverence poetry and the poets: but at the risk of being warned off +the holy ground as a "dark-browed sophist," must declare my plain +opinion that the above account of the poet's birth and native gifts +does not consist with fact.</p> + +<p>Yet it consents with the popular notion, which you may find presented +or implied month by month and week by week, in the reviews; and even +day by day—for it has found its way into the newspapers. Critics have +observed that considerable writers fall into two classes—</p> + +<p class="left"><i><b>Two lines of Poetic Development.</b></i></p> + +<p>(1) Those who start with their heads full of great thoughts, and are +from the first occupied rather with their matter than with the manner +of expressing it.</p> + +<p>(2) Those who begin with the love of expression and intent to be +artists in words, <i>and come through expression to profound thought</i>.</p> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_237" id="Page_237">Pg 237</a></span></p><p class="left"><i><b>The Popular Type.</b></i></p> + +<p>Now, for some reason it is fashionable just now to account Class 1 the +more respectable; a judgment to which, considering that Virgil and +Shakespeare belong to Class 2, I refuse my assent. It is fashionable +to construct an imaginary figure out of the characteristics of Class +1, and set him up as the Typical Poet. The poet at whose nativity +Tennyson assists in the above verses of course belongs to Class 1. A +babe so richly dowered can hardly help his matter overcrowding his +style; at least, to start with.</p> + +<p>But this is not all. A poet who starts with this tremendous equipment +can hardly help being something too much for the generation in which +he is born. Consequently, the Typical Poet is misunderstood by his +contemporaries, and probably persecuted. In his own age his is a voice +crying in the wilderness; in the wilderness he speeds the "viewless +arrows of his thought"; which fly far, and take root as they strike +earth, and blossom; and so Truth multiplies, and in the end (most +likely after his death) the Typical Poet comes by his own.</p> + +<p>Such is the popular conception of the Typi<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_238" id="Page_238">Pg 238</a></span>cal Poet, and I observe +that it fascinates even educated people. I have in mind the recent +unveiling of Mr. Onslow Ford's Shelley Memorial at University College, +Oxford. Those who assisted at that ceremony were for the most part men +and women of high culture. Excesses such as affable Members of +Parliament commit when distributing school prizes or opening free +public libraries were clearly out of the question. Yet even here, and +almost within the shadow of Bodley's great library, speaker after +speaker assumed as axiomatic this curious fallacy—that a Poet is +necessarily a thinker in advance of his age, and therefore peculiarly +liable to persecution at the hands of his contemporaries.</p> + +<p class="left"><i><b>How supported by History.</b></i></p> + +<p>But logic, I believe, still flourishes in Oxford; and induction still +has its rules. Now, however many different persons Homer may have +been, I cannot remember that one of him suffered martyrdom, or even +discomfort, on account of his radical doctrine. I seem to remember +that Æchylus enjoyed the esteem of his fellow-citizens, sided with the +old aristocratic party, and lived long enough to find his own +tragedies considered archaic; that Soph<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_239" id="Page_239">Pg 239</a></span>ocles, towards the end of a +very prosperous life, was charged with senile decay and consequent +inability to administer his estates—two infirmities which even his +accusers did not seek to connect with advanced thinking; and that +Euripides, though a technical innovator, stood hardly an inch ahead of +the fashionable dialectic of his day, and suffered only from the +ridicule of his comic contemporaries and the disdain of his +wife—misfortunes incident to the most respectable. Pindar and Virgil +were court favorites, repaying their patrons in golden song. Dante, +indeed, suffered banishment; but his banishment was just a move in a +political (or rather a family) game. Petrarch and Ariosto were not +uncomfortable in their generations. Chaucer and Shakespeare lived +happy lives and sang in the very key of their own times. Puritanism +waited for its hour of triumph to produce its great poet, who lived +unmolested when the hour of triumph passed and that of reprisals +succeeded. Racine was a royal pensioner; Goethe a chamberlain and the +most admired figure of his time. Of course, if you hold that these +poets one and all pale their ineffectual fires before the radiant +Shelley, our argument must go a few steps farther back. I <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_240" id="Page_240">Pg 240</a></span>have +instanced them as acknowledged kings of song.</p> + +<p class="left"><i><b>The Case of Tennyson.</b></i></p> + +<p>Tennyson was not persecuted. He was not (and more honor to him for his +clearness) even misunderstood. I have never met with the contention +that he stood an inch ahead of the thought of his time. As for seeing +through death and life and his own soul, and having the marvel of the +everlasting will spread before him like an open scroll,—well, to +begin with, I doubt if these things ever happened to any man. Heaven +surely has been, and is, more reticent than the verse implies. But if +they ever happened, Tennyson most certainly was not the man they +happened to. What Tennyson actually sang, till he taught himself to +sing better, was:—</p> + +<p> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">"Airy, fairy Lilian,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">Flitting fairy Lilian,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">When I ask her if she love me,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">Claps her tiny hands above me,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 4.5em;">Laughing all she can;</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">She'll not tell me if she love me,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 4.5em;">Cruel little Lilian."</span><br /> +</p> + +<p>There is not much of the scorn of scorn, or the love of love, or the +open scroll of the everlasting will, about <i>Cruel Little Lilian</i>. But +there <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_241" id="Page_241">Pg 241</a></span><i>is</i> a distinct striving after style—a striving that, as +everyone knows, ended in mastery: and through style Tennyson reached +such heights of thought as he was capable of. To the end his thought +remained inferior to his style: and to the end the two in him were +separable, whereas in poets of the very first rank they are +inseparable. But that towards the end his style lifted his thought to +heights of which even <i>In Memoriam</i> gave no promise cannot, I think, +be questioned by any student of his collected works.</p> + +<p>Tennyson belongs, if ever poet belonged, to Class 2: and it is the +prettiest irony of fate that, having unreasonably belauded Class 1, he +is now being found fault with for not conforming to the supposed +requirements of that Class. He, who spoke of the poet as of a seër +"through life and death," is now charged with seeing but a short way +beyond his own nose. The Rev. Stopford Brooke finds that he had little +sympathy with the aspirations of the struggling poor; that he bore +himself coldly towards the burning questions of the hour; that, in +short, he stood anywhere but in advance of his age. As if plenty of +people were not interested in these things! Why, I cannot step out +into the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_242" id="Page_242">Pg 242</a></span> street without running against somebody who is in advance of +the times on some point or another.</p> + +<p class="left"><i><b>Of Virgil and Shakespeare.</b></i></p> + +<p>Virgil and Shakespeare were neither martyrs nor preachers despised in +their generation. I have said that as poets they also belong to Class +2. Will a champion of the Typical Poet (new style) dispute this, and +argue that Virgil and Shakespeare, though they escaped persecution, +yet began with matter that overweighted their style—with deep +stuttered thoughts—in fine, with a Message to their Time? I think +that view can hardly be maintained. We have the <i>Eclogues</i> before the +<i>Æneid</i>; and <i>The Comedy of Errors</i> before <i>As You Like It</i>. +Expression comes first; and through expression, thought. These are the +greatest names, or of the greatest: and they belong to Class 2.</p> + +<p class="left"><i><b>Of Milton.</b></i></p> + +<p>Again, no English poetry is more thoroughly informed with thought than +Milton's. Did he find big thoughts hustling within him for utterance? +And did he at an early age stutter in numbers till his oppressed soul +found relief? And was it thus that he attained the glorious manner of</p> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_243" id="Page_243">Pg 243</a></span></p><p> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">"Seasons return, but not to me returns</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">Day, or the sweet approach of even or morn...."</span><br /> +</p> + +<p>—and so on. No, to be short, it was not. At the age of twenty-four, +or thereabouts, he deliberately proposed to himself to be a great +poet. To this end he practised and studied, and travelled unweariedly +until his thirty-first year. Then he tried to make up his mind what to +write about. He took some sheets of paper—they are to be seen at this +day in the Library of Trinity College, Cambridge—and set down no less +than ninety-nine subjects for his proposed <i>magnum opus</i>, before he +could decide upon <i>Paradise Lost</i>. To be sure, when the <i>magnum opus</i> +was written it fetched £5 only. But even this does not prove that +Milton was before his age. Perhaps he was behind it. <i>Paradise Lost</i> +appeared in 1667: in 1657 it might have fetched considerably more than +£5.</p> + +<p>If the Typical Poet have few points in common with Shakespeare or +Milton, I fear that the Typical Poet begins to be in a bad way.</p> + +<p class="left"><i><b>Of Coleridge.</b></i></p> + +<p>Shall we try Coleridge? He had "great thoughts"—thousands of them. On +the other hand, he never had the slightest difficulty in <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_244" id="Page_244">Pg 244</a></span>uttering +them, in prose. His great achievements in verse—his <i>Genevieve</i>, his +<i>Christabel</i>, his <i>Kubla Khan</i>, his <i>Ancient Mariner</i>—are +achievements of expression. When they appeal from the senses to the +intellect their appeal is usually quite simple.</p> + +<p> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">"He prayeth best who loveth best</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">All things both great and small."</span><br /> +</p> + +<p>No, I am afraid Coleridge is not the Typical Poet.</p> + +<p>On the whole I suspect the Typical Poet to be a hasty generalization +from Shelley.</p> + + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_245" id="Page_245">Pg 245</a></span></p> +<h2><a name="POETS_ON_THEIR_OWN_ART" id="POETS_ON_THEIR_OWN_ART"></a>POETS ON THEIR OWN ART</h2> + + +<p class="left"><i><b>May 11, 1895. A Prelude to Poetry.</b></i></p> + +<p>"To those who love the poets most, who care most for their ideals, +this little book ought to be the one indispensable book of devotion, +the <i>credo</i> of the poetic faith." "This little book" is the volume +with which Mr. Ernest Rhys prefaces the pretty series of Lyrical Poets +which he is editing for Messrs. Dent & Co. He calls it <i>The Prelude to +Poetry</i>, and in it he has brought together the most famous arguments +stated from time to time by the English poets in defence and praise of +their own art. Sidney's magnificent "Apologie" is here, of course, and +two passages from Ben Jonson's "Discoveries," Wordsworth's preface to +the second edition of "Lyrical Ballads," the fourteenth chapter of the +"Biographia Literaria," and Shelley's "Defence."</p> + +<p class="left"><i><b>Poets as Prose-writers.</b></i></p> + +<p>What admirable prose these poets write! <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_246" id="Page_246">Pg 246</a></span>Southey, to be sure, is not +represented in this volume. Had he written at length upon his art—in +spite of his confession that, when writing prose, "of what is now +called style not a thought enters my head at any time"—we may be sure +the reflection would have been even more obvious than it is. But +without him this small collection makes out a splendid case against +all that has been said in disparagement of the prose style of poets. +Let us pass what Hazlitt said of Coleridge's prose; or rather let us +quote it once again for its vivacity, and so pass on—</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>"One of his (Coleridge's) sentences winds its 'forlorn way +obscure' over the page like a patriarchal procession with camels +laden, wreathed turbans, household wealth, the whole riches of +the author's mind poured out upon the barren waste of his +subject. The palm tree spreads its sterile branches overhead, and +the land of promise is seen in the distance."</p></div> + +<p>All this is very neatly malicious, and particularly the last +co-ordinate sentence. But in the chapter chosen by Mr. Rhys from the +"Biographia Literaria" Coleridge's prose is seen at its +best—obedient, pertinent, at once imaginative and restrained—as in +the conclusion—</p> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_247" id="Page_247">Pg 247</a></span></p><div class="blockquot"><p>"Finally, good sense is the body of poetic genius, fancy its +drapery, motion its life, and imagination the soul that is +everywhere, and in each; and forms all into one graceful and +intelligent whole."</p></div> + +<p>The prose of Sidney's <i>Apologie</i> is Sidney's best; and when that has +been said, nothing remains but to economize in quoting. I will take +three specimens only. First then, for beauty:—</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>"Nature never set forth the earth in so rich tapistry, as divers +Poets have done, neither with plesant rivers, fruitful trees, +sweet-smelling flowers: nor whatsoever else may make the too much +loved earth more lovely. Her world is brasen, the Poets only +deliver a golden: but let those things alone and goe to man, for +whom as the other things are, so it seemeth in him her uttermost +cunning is imployed, and know whether shee have brought forth so +true a lover as <i>Theagines</i>, so constant a friende as <i>Pilades</i>, +so valiant a man as <i>Orlando</i>, so right a Prince as <i>Xenophon's +Cyrus</i>; so excellent a man every way as <i>Virgil's Aeneas</i>...."</p></div> + +<p>Next for wit—roguishness, if you like the term better:—</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>"And therefore, if <i>Cato</i> misliked <i>Fulvius</i>, for carrying +<i>Ennius</i> with him to the field, it may be answered, that if +<i>Cato</i> misliked it, the noble <i>Fulvius</i> liked it, or else he had +not done it."</p></div> + +<p>And lastly for beauty and wit combined:—</p> +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_248" id="Page_248">Pg 248</a></span></p> +<div class="blockquot"><p>"For he (the Poet) doth not only show the way, but giveth so +sweete a prospect into the way, as will intice any man to enter +into it. Nay he doth, as if your journey should lye through a +fayre Vineyard, at the first give you a cluster of Grapes: that +full of that taste, you may long to passe further. He beginneth +not with obscure definitions, which must blur the margent with +interpretations, and load the memory with doubtfulnesse: but he +cometh to you with words set in delightful proportion, either +accompanied with or prepared for the well inchanting skill of +Musicke: and with a tale forsooth he cometh unto you: with a tale +which holdeth children from play, and old men from the chimney +corner."</p></div> + +<p>"Is not this a glorious way to talk?" demanded the Rev. T.E. Brown of +this last passage, when he talked about Sidney, the other day, in Mr. +Henley's <i>New Review</i>. "No one can fail," said Mr. Brown, amiably +assuming the fineness of his own ear to be common to all mankind—"no +one can fail to observe the sweetness and the strength, the +outspokenness, the downrightness, and, at the same time, the nervous +delicacy of pausation, the rhythm all ripple and suspended fall, the +dainty <i>but</i>, the daintier <i>and forsooth</i>, as though the +pouting of a proud reserve curved the fine lip of him, and had to be +atoned for by the homeliness of <i>the chimney-corner."</i><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_249" id="Page_249">Pg 249</a></span></p> + +<p>Everybody admires Sidney's prose. But how of this?—</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>"Poetry is the breath and finer spirit of all knowledge; it is +the impassioned expression which is in the countenance of all +science. Emphatically it may be said of the Poet, as Shakespeare +has said of man, 'that he looks before and after.' He is the rock +of defence of human nature; an upholder and preserver, carrying +everywhere with him relationship and love. In spite of difference +of soil and climate, of language and manners, of laws and +customs, <i>in spite of things silently gone out of mind, and +things violently destroyed</i>, the Poet binds together by passion +and knowledge the vast empire of human society, as it is spread +over the whole earth, and over all time."</p></div> + +<p>It is Wordsworth who speaks—too rhetorically, perhaps. At any rate, +the prose will not compare with Sidney's. But it is good prose, +nevertheless; and the phrase I have ventured to italicise is superb.</p> + +<p class="left"><i><b>Their high claims for Poesy.</b></i></p> + +<p>As might be expected, the poets in this volume agree in pride of their +calling. We have just listened to Wordsworth. Shelley quotes Tasso's +proud sentence—"Non c'è in mondo chi merita nome di creatore, se non +Iddio ed il Poeta": and himself says, "The jury which sits in judgment +upon a poet, belonging as he <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_250" id="Page_250">Pg 250</a></span>does to all time, must be composed of +his peers: it must be impanelled by Time from the selectest of the +wise of many generations." Sidney exalts the poet above the historian +and the philosopher; and Coleridge asserts that "no man was ever yet a +great poet without being at the same time a profound philosopher." Ben +Jonson puts it characteristically: "Every beggarly corporation affords +the State a mayor or two bailiffs yearly; but <i>Solus rex, aut poeta, +non quotannis nascitur</i>." The longer one lives, the more cause one +finds to rejoice that different men have different ways of saying the +same thing.</p> + +<p class="left"><i><b>Inspiration not Improvisation.</b></i></p> + +<p>The agreement of all these poets on some other matters is more +remarkable. Most of them claim <i>inspiration</i> for the great +practitioners of their art; but wonderful is the unanimity with which +they dissociate this from <i>improvisation</i>. They are sticklers for the +rules of the game. The Poet does not pour his full heart</p> + +<p> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">"In profuse strains of <i>unpremeditated</i> art."</span><br /> +</p> + +<p>On the contrary, his rapture is the sudden result of long +premeditation. The first and most <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_251" id="Page_251">Pg 251</a></span>conspicuous lesson of this volume +seems to be that Poetry is an <i>art</i>, and therefore has rules. Next +after this, one is struck with the carefulness with which these +practitioners, when it comes to theory, stick to their Aristotle.</p> + +<p class="left"><i><b>Poetry not mere Metrical Composition.</b></i></p> + +<p>For instance, they are practically unanimous in accepting Aristotle's +contention that it is not the metrical form that makes the poem. +"Verse," says Sidney, "is an ornament and no cause to poetry, since +there have been many most excellent poets that never versified, and +now swarm many versifiers that need never answer to the name of +poets." Wordsworth apologizes for using the word "Poetry" as +synonymous with metrical composition. "Much confusion," he says, "has +been introduced into criticism by this contradistinction of Poetry and +Prose, instead of the more philosophical one of Poetry and Matter of +Fact or Science. The only strict antithesis to Prose is Metre: nor is +this, in truth, a <i>strict</i> antithesis, because lines and passages of +metre so naturally occur in writing prose that it would be scarcely +possible to avoid them, even were it desirable." And Shelley—"It is +by no means essential that a poet should accom<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_252" id="Page_252">Pg 252</a></span>modate his language to +this traditional form, so that the harmony, which is its spirit, be +observed.... The distinction between poets and prose writers is a +vulgar error." Shelley goes on to instance Plato and Bacon as true +poets, though they wrote in prose. "The popular division into prose +and verse," he repeats, "is inadmissible in accurate philosophy."</p> + +<p class="left"><i><b>Its philosophic function.</b></i></p> + +<p>Then again, upon what Wordsworth calls "the more philosophical +distinction" between Poetry and Matter of Fact—quoting, of course, +the famous <a name="greek_3" id="greek_3"></a> +<span title="Philosophteron kai spoudaioteron">Φιλοσοφώτερον +καὶ +σπουδαιότερον</span> +passage in the <i>Poetics</i>—it is wonderful with what hearty consent our poets pounce +upon this passage, and paraphrase it, and expand it, as the great +justification of their art: which indeed it is. Sidney gives the +passage at length. Wordsworth writes, "Aristotle, I have been told, +hath said that Poetry is the most philosophic of all writings: it is +so." Coleridge quotes Sir John Davies, who wrote of Poesy (surely with +an eye on the <i>Poetics</i>):</p> + +<p> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">"From their gross matter she abstracts their forms,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">And draws a kind of quintessence from things;</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">Which to her proper nature she transforms</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">To bear them light on her celestial wings.</span><br /> +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_253" id="Page_253">Pg 253</a></span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">"Thus does she, when from individual states</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 3.5em;">She doth abstract the universal kinds;</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">Which then reclothed in divers names and fates</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 3.5em;">Steal access through our senses to our minds."</span><br /> +</p> + +<p>And Shelley has a remarkable paraphrase, ending, "The story of +particular facts is as a mirror which obscures and distorts that which +should be beautiful: poetry is a mirror which makes beautiful that +which is distorted."</p> + +<p>In fine, this book goes far to prove of poetry, as it has been proved +over and over again of other arts, that it is the men big enough to +break the rules who accept and observe them most cheerfully.</p> + + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_254" id="Page_254">Pg 254</a></span></p> +<h2><a name="THE_ATTITUDE_OF_THE_PUBLIC_TOWARDS_LETTERS" id="THE_ATTITUDE_OF_THE_PUBLIC_TOWARDS_LETTERS"></a>THE ATTITUDE OF THE PUBLIC TOWARDS LETTERS</h2> + + +<p class="left"><i><b>Sept. 29, 1894. The "Great Heart" of the Public.</b></i></p> + +<p>I observe that our hoary friend, the Great Heart of the Public, has +been taking his annual outing in September. Thanks to the German +Emperor and the new head of the House of Orleans, he has had the +opportunity of a stroll through the public press arm in arm with his +old crony and adversary, the Divine Right of Kings. And the two have +gone once more a-roaming by the light of the moon, to drop a tear, +perchance, on the graves of the Thin End of the Wedge and the Stake in +the Country. You know the unhappy story?—how the Wedge drove its thin +end into the Stake, with fatal results: and how it died of remorse and +was buried at the cross-roads with the Stake in its inside! It is a +pathetic tale, and the Great Heart of the Public can always be trusted +to discriminate true pathos from false.</p> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_255" id="Page_255">Pg 255</a></span></p><p class="left"><i><b>Miss Marie Corelli's Opinion of it.</b></i></p> + +<p>It was Mr. G.B. Burgin, in the September number of the <i>Idler</i>, who +let the Great Heart loose this time—unwittingly, I am sure; for Mr. +Burgin, when he thinks for himself (as he usually does), writes sound +sense and capital English. But in the service of Journalism Mr. Burgin +called on Miss Marie Corelli, the authoress of <i>Barabbas</i>, and asked +what she thought of the value of criticism. Miss Corelli "idealised +the subject by the poetic manner in which she mingled tea and +criticism together." She said—</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>"I think authors do not sufficiently bear in mind the important +fact that, in this age of ours, the public <i>thinks for itself</i> +much more extensively than we give it credit for. It is a +cultured public, and its great brain is fully capable of deciding +things. It rather objects to be treated like a child and told +'what to read and what to avoid'; and, moreover, we must not fail +to note that it mistrusts criticism generally, and seldom reads +'reviews.' And why? Simply 'logrolling.' It is perfectly aware, +for instance, that Mr. Theodore Watts is logroller-in-chief to +Mr. Swinburne; that Mr. Le Gallienne 'rolls' greatly for Mr. +Norman Gale; and that Mr. Andrew Lang tumbles his logs along over +everything for as many as his humour fits...."</p></div> + +<p>—I don't know the proportion of tea to criti<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_256" id="Page_256">Pg 256</a></span>cism in all this: but +Miss Corelli can hardly be said to "idealise the subject" here:—</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>" ... The public is the supreme critic; and though it does not +write in the <i>Quarterly</i> or the <i>Nineteenth Century</i>, it thinks +and talks independently of everything and everybody, and on its +thought and word alone depends the fate of any piece of +literature."</p></div> + +<p class="left"><i><b>Mr. Hall Caine's View.</b></i></p> + +<p>Then Mr. Burgin called on Mr. Hall Caine, who "had just finished +breakfast." Mr. Hall Caine gave reasons which compelled him to believe +that "for good or bad, criticism is a tremendous force." But he, too, +confessed that in his opinion the public is the "ultimate critic." "It +often happens that the public takes books on trust from the professed +guides of literature, but if the books are not <i>right</i>, it drops +them." And he proceeded to make an observation, with which we may most +cordially agree. "I am feeling," he said, "increasingly, day by day, +that <i>rightness</i> in imaginative writing is more important than +subject, or style, or anything else. If a story is right in its theme, +and the evolution of its theme, it will live; if it is not right, it +will die, whatever its secondary literary qualities."</p> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_257" id="Page_257">Pg 257</a></span></p><p class="left"><i><b>In what sense the Public is the "Ultimate Critic."</b></i></p> + +<p>I say that we may agree with this most cordially: and it need not cost +us much to own that the public is the "ultimate critic," if we mean no +more than this, that, since the public holds the purse, it rests +ultimately with the public to buy, or neglect to buy, an author's +books. That, surely, is obvious enough without the aid of fine +language. But if Mr. Hall Caine mean that the public, without +instruction from its betters, is the best judge of a book; if he +consent with Miss Corelli that the general public is a cultured public +with a great brain, and by the exercise of that great brain approves +itself an infallible judge of the rightness or wrongness of a book, +then I would respectfully ask for evidence. The poets and critics of +his time united in praising Campion as a writer of lyrics: the Great +Brain and Heart of the Public neglected him utterly for three +centuries: then a scholar and critic arose and persuaded the public +that Campion was a great lyrical writer: and now the public accepts +him as such. Shall we say, then, the Great Heart of the Public is the +"ultimate judge" of Campion's lyrics? Perhaps: but we might as well +praise for his cleanliness a boy who has been held under the pump. +When Martin Farquhar Tupper wrote, the Great Heart of the Public +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_258" id="Page_258">Pg 258</a></span>expanded towards him at once. The public bought his effusions by tens +of thousands. Gradually the small voice of skilled criticism made +itself heard, and the public grew ashamed of itself; and, at length, +laughed at Tupper. Shall we, then, call the public the ultimate judge +of Tupper? Perhaps: but we might as well praise the continence of a +man who turns in disgust from drink on the morning after a drunken +fit.<a name="FNanchor_A_15" id="FNanchor_A_15"></a><a href="#Footnote_A_15" class="fnanchor">[A]</a></p> +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_259" id="Page_259">Pg 259</a></span></p> +<p class="left"><i><b>What is "The Public"?</b></i></p> + +<p>The proposition that the Man in the Street is a better judge of +literature than the Critic—the man who knows little than the man who +knows more—wears (to my mind, at least) a slightly imbecile air on +the face of it. It also appears to me that people are either confusing +thought or misusing language when they confer the title of "supreme +critic" on the last person to be persuaded. And, again, what is "the +public?" I gather that Miss Corelli's story of <i>Barabbas</i> has had an +immense popular success. <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_260" id="Page_260">Pg 260</a></span>But so, I believe, has the <i>Deadwood Dick</i> +series of penny dreadfuls. And the gifted author of <i>Deadwood Dick</i> +may console himself (as I daresay he does) for the neglect of the +critics by the thought that the Great Brain<a name="FNanchor_B_16" id="FNanchor_B_16"></a><a href="#Footnote_B_16" class="fnanchor">[B]</a> of the Public is the +supreme judge of literature. But obviously he and Miss Corelli will +not have the same Public in their mind. If for "the Great Brain of the +Public" we substitute "the Great Brain of that Part of the Public +which subscribes to Mudie's," we may lose something of impressiveness, +but we shall at least know what we are talking about.</p> + +<hr style='width: 45%;' /> + +<p class="left"><i><b>June 17, 1893. Mr. Gosse's View.</b></i></p> + +<p>Astounding as the statement must appear to any constant reader of the +Monthly Reviews, it is mainly because Mr. Gosse happens to be a man of +letters that his opinion upon literary questions is worth listening +to. In his new book<a name="FNanchor_C_17" id="FNanchor_C_17"></a><a href="#Footnote_C_17" class="fnanchor">[C]</a> he discusses a dozen or so: and one of +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_261" id="Page_261">Pg 261</a></span>them—the question, "What Influence has Democracy upon +Literature?"—not only has a chapter to itself, but seems to lie at +the root of all the rest. I may add that Mr. Gosse's answer is a +trifle gloomy.</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>"As we filed slowly out of the Abbey on the afternoon of +Wednesday, the 12th of October, 1892, there must have occurred to +others, I think, as to myself, a whimsical and half-terrifying +sense of the symbolic contrast between what we had left and what +we had emerged upon. Inside, the grey and vitreous atmosphere, +the reverberations of music moaning somewhere out of sight, the +bones and monuments of the noble dead, reverence, antiquity, +beauty, rest. Outside, in the raw air, a tribe of hawkers urging +upon the edges of a dense and inquisitive crowd a large sheet of +pictures of the pursuit of a flea by a 'lady,' and more insidious +salesmen doing a brisk trade in what they falsely pretended to be +'Tennyson's last poem.' Next day we read in our newspapers +affecting accounts of the emotion displayed by the vast crowd +outside the Abbey—horny hands dashing away the tear, +seamstresses holding 'the little green volumes' to their faces to +hide their agitation. Happy for those who could see these with +their fairy telescopes out of the garrets of Fleet Street. I, +alas!—though I sought assiduously—could mark nothing of the +kind."</p></div> + +<p>Nothing of the kind was there. Why should anything of the kind be +there? Her poetry has been one of England's divinest treasures:<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_262" id="Page_262">Pg 262</a></span> but +of her population a very few understand it; and the shrine has always +been guarded by the elect who happen to possess, in varying degrees, +certain qualities of mind and ear. It is, as Mr. Gosse puts it, by a +sustained effort of bluff on the part of these elect that English +poetry is kept upon its high pedestal of honor. The worship of it as +one of the glories of our birth and state is imposed upon the masses +by a small aristocracy of intelligence and taste.</p> + +<p class="left"><i><b>Mr. Gissing's Testimony.</b></i></p> + +<p>What do the "masses" care for poetry? In an appendix Mr. Gosse prints +a letter from Mr. George Gissing, who, as everyone knows, has studied +the popular mind assiduously, and with startling results. Here are a +few sentences from his letter:—</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>(1) "After fifteen years' observation of the poorer classes of +English folk, chiefly in London and the south, I am pretty well +assured that, whatever civilising agencies may be at work among +the democracy, poetry is not one of them."</p> + +<p>(2) "The custodian of a Free Library in a southern city informs +me that 'hardly once in a month' does a volume of verse pass over +his counter; that the exceptional applicant (seeking Byron or +Longfellow) is generally 'the wife of a tradesman;' and that an +offer of <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_263" id="Page_263">Pg 263</a></span>verse to man or woman who comes simply for 'a book' is +invariably rejected; 'they won't even look at it.'"</p> + +<p>(3) "It was needless folly to pretend that, because one or two of +Tennyson's poems became largely known through popular recitation, +therefore Tennyson was dear to the heart of the people, a subject +of their pride whilst he lived, of their mourning when he died. +My point is that <i>no</i> poet holds this place in the esteem of the +English lower orders."</p> + +<p>(4) "Some days before (the funeral) I was sitting in a public +room, where two men, retired shopkeepers, exchanged an occasional +word as they read the morning's news. 'A great deal here about +Lord Tennyson' said one. The 'Lord' was significant. I listened +anxiously for his companion's reply. 'Ah, yes.' The man moved +uneasily, and added at once: 'What do you think about this +long-distance ride?' In that room (I frequented it on successive +days with this object) not a syllable did I hear regarding +Tennyson save the sentence faithfully recorded."</p></div> + +<p class="left"><i><b>Poetry not beloved by any one Class.</b></i></p> + +<p>Mr. Gissing, be it observed, speaks only of the class which he has +studied: but in talking of "demos," or, more loosely, of "democracy," +we must be careful not to limit these terms to the "lower" and +"lower-middle" classes. For Poetry, who draws her priests and warders +from all classes of society, is generally beloved of none. The average +country magnate, the average church dignitary, the average +professional man, the average commer<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_264" id="Page_264">Pg 264</a></span>cial traveller—to all these she +is alike unknown: at least, the insensibility of each is +differentiated by shades so fine that we need not trouble ourselves to +make distinctions. A public school and university education does as +little for the Squire Westerns one meets at country dinner-tables as a +three-guinea subscription to a circulating library for the kind of +matron one comes upon at a <i>table d'hôte</i>. Five minutes after hearing +the news of Browning's death I stopped an acquaintance in the street, +a professional man of charming manner, and repeated it to him. He +stared for a moment, and then murmured that he was sorry to hear it. +Clearly he did not wish to hurt my feelings by confessing that he +hadn't the vaguest idea who Browning might be. And if anybody think +this an extreme case, let him turn to the daily papers and read the +names of those who were at Newmarket on that same afternoon when our +great poet was laid in the Abbey with every pretence of national +grief. The pursuit of one horse by another is doubtless a more +elevating spectacle than "the pursuit of a flea by a 'lady,'" but on +that afternoon even a tepid lover of letters must have found an equal +incongruity in both entertainments.</p> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_265" id="Page_265">Pg 265</a></span></p><p>I do not say that the General Public hates Poetry. But I say that +those who care about it are few, and those who know about it are +fewer. Nor do these assert their right of interference as often as +they might. Just once or twice in the last ten or fifteen years they +have pulled up some exceptionally coarse weed on which the General +Public had every disposition to graze, and have pitched it over the +hedge to Lethe wharf, to root itself and fatten there; and terrible as +those of Polydorus have been the shrieks of the avulsed root. But as a +rule they have sat and piped upon the stile and considered the good +cow grazing, confident that in the end she must "bite off more than +she can chew."</p> + +<p class="left"><i><b>The "Outsiders."</b></i></p> + +<p>Still, the aristocracy of letters exists: and in it, if nowhere else, +titles, social advantages, and commercial success alike count for +nothing; while Royalty itself sits in the Court of the Gentiles. And I +am afraid we must include in the crowd not only those affable +politicians who from time to time open a Public Library and oblige us +with their views upon literature, little realizing what Hecuba is to +them, and still less what they are to Hecuba, but also those affable +teachers of religion, philosophy, <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_266" id="Page_266">Pg 266</a></span>and science, who condescend +occasionally to amble through the garden of the Muses, and rearrange +its labels for us while drawing our attention to the rapid +deterioration of the flowerbeds. The author of <i>The Citizen of the +World</i> once compared the profession of letters in England to a Persian +army, "where there are many pioneers, several suttlers, numberless +servants, women and children in abundance, and but few soldiers." Were +he alive to-day he would be forced to include the Volunteers.</p> + +<div class="footnotes"><h3>FOOTNOTES:</h3> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_A_15" id="Footnote_A_15"></a><a href="#FNanchor_A_15"><span class="label">[A]</span></a> In a private letter, from which I am allowed to quote, +Mr. Hall Caine (October 2nd, 1894) explains and (as I think) amends +his position:—"If I had said <i>time</i> instead of <i>the public</i>, I should +have expressed myself exactly. It is impossible for me to work up any +enthusiasm for the service done to literature by criticism as a whole. +I have, no doubt, the unenviable advantage over you of having wasted +three mortal months in reading all the literary criticism extant of +the first quarter of this century. It would be difficult to express my +sense of its imbecility, its blundering, and its bad passions. But the +good books it assailed are not lost, and the bad ones it glorified do +not survive. It is not that the public has been the better judge, but +that good work has the seeds of life, while bad work carries with it +the seeds of dissolution. This is the key to the story of Wordsworth +on the one hand, and to the story of Tupper on the other. Tupper did +not topple down because James Hannay smote him. Fifty James Hannays +had shouted him up before. And if there had not been a growing sense +that the big mountain was a mockery, five hundred James Hannays would +not have brought it down. The truth is that it is not the 'critic who +knows' or the public which does not know that determines the ultimate +fate of a book—the immediate fate they may both influence. The book +must do that for itself. If it is right, it lives; if it is wrong, it +dies. And the critic who re-establishes a neglected poet is merely +articulating the growing sense. There have always been a few good +critics, thank God ... but the finest critic is the untutored +sentiment of the public, not of to-day or to-morrow or the next day, +but of all days together—a sentiment which tells if a thing is right +or wrong by holding on to it or letting it drop." +</p><p> +Of course, I agree that a book must ultimately depend for its fate +upon its own qualities. But when Mr. Hall Caine talks of "a growing +sense," I ask, In whom does this sense first grow? And I answer, In +the cultured few who enforce it upon the many—as in this very case of +Wordsworth. And I hold the credit of the result (apart from the +author's share) belongs rather to those few persistent advocates than +to those judges who are only "ultimate" in the sense that they are the +last to be convinced.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_B_16" id="Footnote_B_16"></a><a href="#FNanchor_B_16"><span class="label">[B]</span></a> If the reader object that I am using the Great Heart and +Great Brain of the Public as interchangeable terms, I would refer him +to Mr. Du Maurier's famous Comic Alphabet, letter Z:— +</p><p> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">"Z is a Zoophyte, whose heart's in his head,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">And whose head's in his turn—rudimentary Z!"</span><br /> +</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_C_17" id="Footnote_C_17"></a><a href="#FNanchor_C_17"><span class="label">[C]</span></a> <i>Questions at Issue</i>; by Edmund Gosse. London: William +Heinemann.</p></div> + +</div> + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_267" id="Page_267">Pg 267</a></span></p> +<h2><a name="A_CASE_OF_BOOKSTALL_CENSORSHIP" id="A_CASE_OF_BOOKSTALL_CENSORSHIP"></a>A CASE OF BOOKSTALL CENSORSHIP</h2> + + +<p class="left"><i><b>March 16, 1895. The "Woman Who Did," and Mr. Eason who +wouldn't.</b></i></p> + +<p> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">"In the romantic little town of 'Ighbury,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">My father kept a Succulating Libary...."</span><br /> +</p> + +<p>—and, I regret to say, gave himself airs on the strength of it.</p> + +<p>The persons in my instructive little story are—</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>H.H. Prince Francis of Teck.</p> + +<p>Mr. Grant Allen, author of <i>The Woman Who Did</i>.</p> + +<p>Mr. W.T. Stead, Editor of <i>The Review of Reviews</i>.</p> + +<p>Messrs. Eason & Son, booksellers and newsvendors, possessing on +the railways of Ireland a monopoly similar to that enjoyed by +Messrs. W.H. Smith & Son on the railways of Great Britain.</p> + +<p>Mr. James O'Hara, of 18, Cope Street, Dublin.</p> + +<p>A Clerk.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_268" id="Page_268">Pg 268</a></span></p></div> + + +<p>Now, on the appearance of Mr. Grant Allen's <i>The Woman Who Did</i>, Mr. +Stead conceived the desire of criticising it as the "Book of the +Month" in <i>The Review of Reviews</i> for February, 1895. He strongly +dissents from the doctrine of <i>The Woman Who Did</i>, and he also +believes that the book indicts, and goes far to destroy, its own +doctrine. This opinion, I may say, is shared by many critics. He says +"Wedlock is to Mr. Grant Allen <i>Nehushtan</i>. And the odd thing about it +is that the net effect of the book which he has written with his +heart's blood to destroy this said <i>Nehushtan</i> can hardly fail to +strengthen the foundation of reasoned conviction upon which marriage +rests." And again—"Those who do not know the author, but who take +what I must regard as the saner view of the relations of the sexes, +will rejoice at what might have been a potent force for evil has been +so strangely overruled as to become a reinforcement of the garrison +defending the citadel its author desires so ardently to overthrow. +From the point of view of the fervent apostle of Free Love, this is a +Boomerang of a Book."</p> + +<p>Believing this—that the book would be its <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_269" id="Page_269">Pg 269</a></span>own best antidote—Mr. +Stead epitomized it in his <i>Review</i>, printed copious extracts, and +wound up by indicating his own views and what he deemed the true moral +of the discussion. The <i>Review</i> was published and, so far as Messrs. +W.H. Smith & Son were concerned, passed without comment. But to the +Editor's surprise (he tells the story in the <i>Westminster Gazette</i> of +the 2nd inst.), no sooner was it placed on the market in Ireland than +he received word that every copy had been recalled from the +bookstalls, and that Messrs. Eason had refused to sell a single copy. +On telegraphing for more information, Mr. Stead was sent the following +letter:—</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>"<span class="smcap">Dear Sir</span>,—Allen's book is an avowed defence of Free Love, and a +direct attack upon the Christian view of marriage. Mr. Stead +criticises Allen's views adversely, but we do not think the +antidote can destroy the ill-effects of the poison, and we +decline to be made the vehicle for the distribution of attacks +upon the most fundamental institution of the Christian +state.—Yours faithfully,</p> + +<p> +——."<br /> +</p></div> + +<p>Mr. Stead thereupon wrote to the managing Director of Messrs. Eason & +Son, and received this reply:—</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>"<span class="smcap">Dear Sir</span>,—We have considered afresh the character of the +February number of your <i>Review</i> so far as <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_270" id="Page_270">Pg 270</a></span>it relates to the +notice of Grant Allen's book, and we are more and more confirmed +in the belief that its influence has been, and is, most +pernicious.</p> + +<p>"Grant Allen is not much heard of in Ireland, and the laudations +you pronounce on him as a writer, so far as we know him, appear +wholly unmerited.</p> + +<p>"At any rate, he appears in your <i>Review</i> as the advocate for +Free Love, and it seems to us strange that you should place his +work in the exaggerated importance of 'The Book of the Month,' +accompanied by eighteen pages of comment and quotation, in which +there is a publicity given to the work out of all proportion to +its merits.</p> + +<p>"I do not doubt that the topic of Free Love engages the attention +of the corrupt Londoner. There are plenty of such persons who are +only too glad to get the sanction of writers for the maintenance +and practice of their evil thoughts, but the purest and best +lives in all parts of the field of Christian philanthropy will +mourn the publicity you have given to this evil book. It is not +even improbable that the perusal of Grant Allen's book, which you +have lifted into importance as 'The Book of the Month,' may +determine the action of souls to their spiritual ruin.</p> + +<p>"The problem of indirect influence is full of mystery, but, as +the hour of our departure comes near, the possible consequences +to other minds of the example and teaching of our lives may +quicken our perceptions, and we may see and deeply regret our +actions when not directed by the highest authority, the will of +God.—We are, dear Sir, yours very truly (for Eason & Son, +Limited),</p> + +<p>"<span class="smcap">Charles Eason</span>, Managing Director."</p></div><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_271" id="Page_271">Pg 271</a></span></p> + +<p>Exception may be taken to this letter on many points, some trivial and +some important. Of the trivial points we may note with interest Mr. +Eason's assumption that his opinion is wanted on the literary merits +of the ware he vends; and, with concern, the rather slipshod manner in +which he allows himself and his assistants to speak of a gentleman as +"Allen," or "Grant Allen," without the usual prefix. But no one can +fail to see that this is an honest letter—the production of a man +conscious of responsibility and struggling to do his best in +circumstances he imperfectly understands. Nor do I think this view of +Mr. Eason need be seriously modified upon perusal of a letter received +by Mr. Stead from a Mr. James O'Hara, of 18, Cope Street, Dublin, and +printed in the <i>Westminster Gazette</i> of March 11th. Mr. O'Hara +writes:—</p> + +<p class="left"><i><b>Mr. Eason in Two Attitudes.</b></i></p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>"<span class="smcap">Dear Sir</span>,—The following may interest you and your readers. I +was a subscriber to the library owned by C. Eason & Co., Limited, +and in December asked them for <i>Napoleon and the Fair Sex</i>, by +Masson. The librarian informed me Mr. Eason had decided not to +circulate it, as it contained improper details, which Mr. Eason +considered immoral. A copy was also refused to one of the +best-known pressmen in Dublin, a man of mature years and +experience.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_272" id="Page_272">Pg 272</a></span></p> + +<p>"Three days afterwards I saw a young man ask the librarian for +the same book, and Eason's manager presented it to him with a low +bow. I remarked on this circumstance to Mr. Charles Eason, who +told me that he had issued it to this one subscriber only, +because he was Prince Francis of Teck.</p> + +<p>"I told him it was likely, from the description he had given me +of it, to be more injurious to a young man such as Prince Francis +of Teck than to me; but he replied: 'Oh, these high-up people +<i>are different</i>. Besides, they are so influential we cannot +refuse them. However, if you wish, you can now have the book.'</p> + +<p>"I told Mr. Eason that I did not wish to read it ever since he +had told me when I first applied for it that it was quite +improper."</p></div> + +<p>The two excuses produced by Mr. Eason do not agree very well together. +The first gives us to understand that, in Mr. Eason's opinion, +ordinary moral principles cannot be applied to persons of royal blood. +The second gives us to understand that though, in Mr. Eason's opinion, +ordinary moral principles <i>can</i> be applied to princes, the application +would involve more risk than Mr. Eason cares to undertake. Each of his +excuses, taken apart, is intelligible enough. Taken together they can +hardly be called consistent. But the effects of royal and semi-royal +splendor upon the moral eyesight are well known, and need not be dwelt +on <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_273" id="Page_273">Pg 273</a></span>here. After all, what concerns us is not Mr. Eason's attitude +towards Prince Francis of Teck, but Mr. Eason's attitude towards the +reading public. And in this respect, from one point of view—which +happens to be his own—Mr. Eason's attitude seems to me +irreproachable. He is clearly alive to his responsibility, and is +honestly concerned that the goods he purveys to the public shall be +goods of which his conscience approves. Here is no grocer who sands +his sugar before hurrying to family prayer. Here is a man who carries +his religion into his business, and stakes his honor on the purity of +his wares. I think it would be wrong in the extreme to deride Mr. +Eason's action in the matter of <i>The Woman Who Did</i> and Mr. Stead's +review. He is doing his best, as Mr. Stead cheerfully allows.</p> + +<p class="left"><i><b>The reasonable Objection to Bookstall Censorship.</b></i></p> + +<p>But, as I said above, he is doing his best under circumstances he +imperfectly understands—and, let me add here, in a position which is +unfair to him. That Mr. Eason imperfectly understands his position +will be plain (I think) to anyone who studies his reply to Mr. Stead. +But let me make the point clear; for it is the crucial point in the +discussion of the modern <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_274" id="Page_274">Pg 274</a></span>Bookstall Censorship. A great deal may be +said against setting up a censorship of literature. A great deal may +be said in favor of a censorship. But if a censorship there must be, +the censor should be deliberately chosen for his office, and, in +exercising his power, should be directly responsible to the public +conscience. If a censorship there must be, let the community choose a +man whose qualifications have been weighed, a man in whose judgment it +decides that it can rely. But that Tom or Dick or Harry, or Tom Dick +Harry & Co. (Limited), by the process of collaring a commercial +monopoly from the railway companies, should be exalted into the +supreme arbiters of what men or women may or may not be allowed to +read—this surely is unjustifiable by any argument? Mr. Eason may on +the whole be doing more good than harm. He is plainly a very +well-meaning man of business. If he knows a good book from a bad—and +the public has no reason to suppose that he does—I can very well +believe that when his moral and literary judgment came into conflict +with his business interests, he would sacrifice his business +interests. But the interests of good literature and profitable +business cannot always be identi<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_275" id="Page_275">Pg 275</a></span>cal; and whenever they conflict they +put Mr. Eason into a false position. As managing director of Messrs. +Eason & Son, he must consider his shareholders; as supreme arbiter of +letters, he stands directly answerable to the public conscience. I +protest, therefore, that these functions should never be combined in +one man. As readers of <span class="smcap">The Speaker</span> know, I range myself on the side of +those who would have literature free. But even our opponents, who +desire control, must desire a form of control such as reason +approves.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_276" id="Page_276">Pg 276</a></span></p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="THE_POOR_LITTLE_PENNY_DREADFUL" id="THE_POOR_LITTLE_PENNY_DREADFUL"></a>THE POOR LITTLE PENNY DREADFUL</h2> + + +<p class="left"><i><b>Oct. 5, 1895. Our "Crusaders."</b></i></p> + +<p>The poor little Penny Dreadful has been catching it once more. Once +more the British Press has stripped to its massive waist and solemnly +squared up to this hardened young offender. It calls this remarkable +performance a "Crusade."</p> + +<p>I like these Crusades. They remind one of that merry passage in +<i>Pickwick</i> (p. 254 in the first edition):—</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>"Whether Mr. Winkle was seized with a temporary attack of that +species of insanity which originates in a sense of injury, or +animated by this display of Mr. Weller's valour, is uncertain; +but certain it is, that he no sooner saw Mr. Grummer fall, than +<i>he made a terrific onslaught on a small boy who stood next to +him</i>; whereupon Mr. Snodgrass—"</p></div> + +<p>[Pay attention to Mr. Snodgrass, if you please, and cast your memories +back a year or two, to <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_277" id="Page_277">Pg 277</a></span>the utterances of a famous Church Congress on +the National Vice of Gambling.]</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>"—whereupon Mr. Snodgrass, in a truly Christian spirit, and in +order that he might take no one unawares, announced in a very +loud tone that he was going to begin, and proceeded to take off +his coat with the utmost deliberation. He was immediately +surrounded and secured; and it is but common justice both to him +and to Mr. Winkle to say that they did not make the slightest +attempt to rescue either themselves or Mr. Weller, who, after a +most vigorous resistance, was overpowered by numbers and taken +prisoner. The procession then reformed, the chairmen resumed +their stations, and the march was re-commenced."</p></div> + +<p>"The chairmen resumed their stations, and the march was re-commenced." +Is it any wonder that Dickens and Labiche have found no fit +successors? One can imagine the latter laying down his pen and +confessing himself beaten at his own game; for really this periodical +"crusade" upon the Penny Dreadful has all the qualities of the very +best vaudeville—the same bland exhibition of <i>bourgeois</i> logic, the +same wanton appreciation of evidence, the same sententious alacrity in +seizing the immediate explanation—the more trivial the better—the +same inability to reach the remote cause, the same profound +unconsciousness of absurdity.</p> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_278" id="Page_278">Pg 278</a></span></p><p>You remember <i>La Grammaire</i>? Caboussat's cow has eaten a piece of +broken glass, with fatal results. Machut, the veterinary, comes:—</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p><i>Caboussat.</i> "Un morceau de verre ... est-ce drole? Une vache de +quatre ans."</p> + +<p><i>Machut.</i> "Ah! monsieur, les vaches ... ça avale du verre à tout +âge. J'en ai connu une qui a mangé une éponge à laver les +cabriolets ... à sept ans! Elle en est morte."</p> + +<p><i>Caboussat.</i> "Ce que c'est que notre pauvre humanité!"</p></div> + +<p class="left"><i><b>Penny Dreadfuls and Matricide.</b></i></p> + +<p>Our friends have been occupied with the case of a half-witted boy who +consumed Penny Dreadfuls and afterwards went and killed his mother. +They infer that he killed his mother because he had read Penny +Dreadfuls (<i>post hoc ergo propter hoc</i>) and they conclude very +naturally that Penny Dreadfuls should be suppressed. But before +roundly pronouncing the doom of this—to me unattractive—branch of +fiction, would it not be well to inquire a trifle more deeply into +cause and effect? In the first place matricide is so utterly unnatural +a crime that there must be something abominably peculiar in a form of +literature that persuades to it. But a year or two back, on the +occasion of a former crusade, I took the pains to study a +con<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_279" id="Page_279">Pg 279</a></span>siderable number of Penny Dreadfuls. My reading embraced all +those—I believe I am right in saying all—which were reviewed, a few +days back, in the <i>Daily Chronicle</i>; and some others. I give you my +word I could find nothing peculiar about them. They were even rather +ostentatiously on the side of virtue. As for the bloodshed in them, it +would not compare with that in many of the five-shilling adventure +stories at that time read so eagerly by boys of the middle and upper +classes. The style was ridiculous, of course: but a bad style excites +nobody but a reviewer, and does not even excite him to deeds of the +kind we are now trying to account for. The reviewer in the <i>Daily +Chronicle</i> thinks worse of these books than I do. But he certainly +failed to quote anything from them that by the wildest fancy could be +interpreted as sanctioning such a crime as matricide.</p> + +<p class="left"><i><b>The Cause to be sought in the Boy rather than in the +Book.</b></i></p> + +<p>Let us for a moment turn our attention from the Penny Dreadful to the +boy—from the <i>éponge á laver les cabriolets</i> to <i>notre pauvre +humanité</i>. Now—to speak quite seriously—it is well known to every +doctor and every schoolmaster (and should be known, if it is <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_280" id="Page_280">Pg 280</a></span>not, to +every parent), that all boys sooner or later pass through a crisis in +growth during which absolutely nothing can be predicted of their +behavior. At such times honest boys have given way to lying and theft, +gentle boys have developed an unexpected savagery, ordinary boys—"the +small apple-eating urchins whom we know"—have fallen into morbid +brooding upon unhealthy subjects. In the immense majority of cases the +crisis is soon over and the boy is himself again; but while it lasts, +the disease will draw its sustenance from all manner of +things—things, it may be, in themselves quite innocent. I avoid +particularizing for many reasons; but any observant doctor will +confirm what I have said. Now the moderately affluent boy who reads +five-shilling stories of adventure has many advantages at this period +over the poor boy who reads Penny Dreadfuls. To begin with, the crisis +has a tendency to attack him later. Secondly, he meets it fortified by +a better training and more definite ideas of the difference between +right and wrong, virtue and vice. Thirdly (and this is very +important), he is probably under school discipline at the time—which +means, that he is to some extent watched and <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_281" id="Page_281">Pg 281</a></span>shielded. When I think +of these advantages, I frankly confess that the difference in the +literature these two boys read seems to me to count for very little. I +myself have written "adventure-stories" before now: stories which, I +suppose—or, at any rate, hope—would come into the class of "Pure +Literature," as the term is understood by those who have been writing +on this subject in the newspapers. They were, I hope, better written +than the run of Penny Dreadfuls, and perhaps with more discrimination +of taste in the choice of adventures. But I certainly do not feel able +to claim that their effect upon a perverted mind would be innocuous.</p> + +<p class="left"><i><b>Fallacy of the "Crusade."</b></i></p> + +<p>For indeed it is not possible to name any book out of which a +perverted mind will not draw food for its disease. The whole fallacy +lies in supposing literature the cause of the disease. Evil men are +not evil because they read bad books: they read bad books because they +are evil: and being evil, or diseased, they are quickly able to +extract evil or disease even from very good books. There is talk of +disseminating the works of our best authors, at a cheap rate, in the +hope that they will drive the Penny <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_282" id="Page_282">Pg 282</a></span>Dreadful out of the market. But +has good literature at the cheapest driven the middle classes from +their false gods? And let it be remembered, to the credit of these +poor boys, that they do buy their books. The middle classes take +<i>their</i> poison on hire or exchange.</p> + +<p>But perhaps the full enormity of the cant about Penny Dreadfuls can +best be perceived by travelling to and fro for a week between London +and Paris and observing the books read by those who travel with +first-class tickets. I think a fond belief in +Ivanhoe-within-the-reach-of-all would not long survive that +experiment.</p> + + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_283" id="Page_283">Pg 283</a></span></p> +<h2><a name="IBSENS_PEER_GYNT" id="IBSENS_PEER_GYNT"></a>IBSEN'S "PEER GYNT"</h2> + + +<p class="left"><i><b>Oct. 7, 1892. A Masterpiece.</b></i></p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>"<i>Peer Gynt</i> takes its place, as we hold, on the summits of +literature precisely because it means so much more than the poet +consciously intended. Is not this one of the characteristics of +the masterpiece, that everyone can read in it his own secret? In +the material world (though Nature is very innocent of symbolic +intention) each of us finds for himself the symbols that have +relevance and value for him; and so it is with the poems that are +instinct with true vitality."</p></div> + +<p>I was glad to come across the above passage in Messrs. William and +Charles Archer's introduction to their new translation of Ibsen's +<i>Peer Gynt</i> (London: Walter Scott), because I can now, with a clear +conscience, thank the writers for their book, even though I fail to +find some of the things they find in it. The play's the thing after +all. <i>Peer Gynt</i> is a great poem: let us shake hands over that. It +will remain a great poem when we have ceased pulling it about to find +what is inside or search out texts <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_284" id="Page_284">Pg 284</a></span>for homilies in defence of our own +particular views of life. The world's literature stands unaffected, +though Archdeacon Farrar use it for chapter-headings and Sir John +Lubbock wield it as a mallet to drive home self-evident truths.</p> + +<p class="left"><i><b>Not a Pamphlet.</b></i></p> + +<p><i>Peer Gynt</i> is an extremely modern story founded on old Norwegian +folk-lore—the folk-lore which Asbjörnsen and Moe collected, and +Dasent translated for our delight in childhood. Old and new are +curiously mixed; but the result is piquant and not in the least +absurd, because the story rests on problems which are neither old nor +new, but eternal, and on emotions which are neither older nor newer +than the breast of man. To be sure, the true devotee of Ibsen will not +be content with this. You will be told by Herr Jaeger, Ibsen's +biographer, that <i>Peer Gynt</i> is an attack on Norwegian romanticism. +The poem, by the way, is romantic to the core—so romantic, indeed, +that the culminating situation, and the page for which everything has +been a preparation, have to be deplored by Messrs. Archer as "a mere +commonplace of romanticism, which Ibsen had not outgrown when he wrote +<i>Peer Gynt</i>." But your true votary is for ever taking his god off the +ped<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_285" id="Page_285">Pg 285</a></span>estal of the true artist to set him on the tub of the +hot-gospeller; even so genuine a specimen of impressionist work as +<i>Hedda Gabler</i> being claimed by him for a sermon. And if ever you have +been moved by <i>Ghosts</i>, or <i>Brand</i>, or <i>Peer Gynt</i> to exclaim "This is +poetry!" you have only to turn to Herr Jaeger—whose criticism, like +his namesake's underclothing, should be labelled "All Pure Natural +Wool"—to find that you were mistaken and that it is really +pamphleteering.</p> + +<p class="left"><i><b>Yet Enforcing a Moral.</b></i></p> + +<p>To be sure, in one sense <i>Peer Gynt</i> is a sermon upon a text. That is +to say, it is written primarily to expound one view of man's duty, not +to give a mere representation of life. The problem, not the picture, +is the main thing. But then the problem, not the picture, is the main +thing in <i>Alcestis</i>, <i>Hamlet</i>, <i>Faust</i>. In <i>Peer Gynt</i> the poet's own +solution of the problem is presented with more insistence than in +<i>Alcestis</i>, <i>Hamlet</i>, or <i>Faust</i>: but the problem is wider, too.</p> + +<p>The problem is, What is self? and how shall a man be himself? And the +poet's answer is, "Self is only found by being lost, gained by <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_286" id="Page_286">Pg 286</a></span>being +given away": an answer at least as old as the gospels. The eponymous +hero of the story is a man essentially half-hearted, "the incarnation +of a compromising dread of self-committal to any one course," a fellow +who says,</p> + +<p> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">"Ay, think of it—wish it done—<i>will</i> it to boot,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">But <i>do</i> it——. No, that's past my understanding!"</span><br /> +</p> + +<p>—who is only stung to action by pique, or by what is called the +"instinct of self-preservation," an instinct which, as Ibsen shows, is +the very last that will preserve self.</p> + +<p class="left"><i><b>The Story.</b></i></p> + +<p>This fellow, Peer Gynt, wins the love of Solveig, a woman essentially +whole-hearted, who has no dread of self-committal, who surrenders +self. Solveig, in short, stands in perfect antithesis to Peer. When +Peer is an outlaw she deserts her father's house and follows him to +his hut in the forest. The scene in which she presents herself before +Peer and claims to share his lot is worthy to stand beside the ballad +of the Nut-browne Mayde: indeed, as a confessed romantic I must own to +thinking Solveig one of the most beautiful figures in poetry. Peer +deserts her, and she lives in the hut alone and <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_287" id="Page_287">Pg 287</a></span>grows an old woman +while her lover roams the world, seeking everywhere and through the +wildest adventures the satisfaction of his Self, acting everywhere on +the Troll's motto, "To thyself be enough," and finding everywhere his +major premiss turned against him, to his own discomfiture, by an +ironical fate. We have one glimpse of Solveig, meanwhile, in a little +scene of eight lines. She is now a middle-aged woman, up in her forest +hut in the far north. She sits spinning in the sunshine outside her +door and sings:—</p> + +<p> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;"><i>"Maybe both the winter and spring will pass by,</i></span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;"><i>And the next summer too, and the whole of the year;</i></span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;"><i>But thou wilt come one day....</i></span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 7.5em;">* * * * * *</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;"><i>God strengthen thee, whereso thou goest in the world!</i></span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;"><i>God gladden thee, if at His footstool thou stand!</i></span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;"><i>Here will I await thee till thou comest again;</i></span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;"><i>And if thou wait up yonder, then there we'll meet, my friend!"</i></span><br /> +</p> + +<p>At last Peer, an old man, comes home. On the heath around his old hut +he finds (in a passage which the translators call "fantastic," +intending, I hope, approval by this word) the thoughts he has missed +thinking, the watchword he has failed to utter, the tears he has +missed <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_288" id="Page_288">Pg 288</a></span>shedding, the deed he has missed doing. The thoughts are +thread-balls, the watchword withered leaves, the tears dewdrops, etc. +Also he finds on that heath a Button-Moulder with an immense ladle. +The Button-Moulder explains to Peer that he must go into this ladle, +for his time has come. He has neither been a good man nor a sturdy +sinner, but a half-and-half fellow without any real self in him. Such +men are dross, badly cast buttons with no loops to them, and must go, +by the Master's orders, into the melting-pot again. Is there no +escape? None, unless Peer can find the loop of the button, his real +Self, the Peer Gynt that God made. After vain and frantic searching +across the heath, Peer reaches the door of his own old hut. Solveig +stands on the threshold.</p> + +<p>As Peer flings himself to earth before her, calling out upon her to +denounce him, she sits down by his side and says—</p> + +<p> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">"<i>Thou hast made all my life as a beautiful song.</i></span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 3em;"><i>Blessed be thou that at last thou hast come!</i></span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 3em;"><i>Blessed, thrice-blessed our Whitsun-morn meeting</i>!"</span><br /> +</p> + + +<p>"But," says Peer, "I am lost, unless thou canst answer riddles." "Tell +me them," tran<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_289" id="Page_289">Pg 289</a></span>quilly answers Solveig. And Peer asks, while the +Button-Moulder listens behind the hut—</p> + +<p> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">"<i>Canst thou tell me where Peer Gynt has been since we parted</i>?"</span><br /> +<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">Solveig.—<i>Been</i>?</span><br /> +<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">Peer.— <i>With his destiny's seal on his brow;</i></span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 5.5em;"><i>Been, as in God's thought he first sprang forth?</i></span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 5.5em;"><i>Canst thou tell me? If not, I must get me home</i>,—</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 4.5em;"><i>Go down to the mist-shrouded regions</i>.</span><br /> +<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">Solveig (smiling).—<i>Oh, that riddle is easy</i>.</span><br /> +<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">Peer.— <i>Then tell what thou knowest!</i></span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 6em;"><i>Where was I, as myself, as the whole man, the true man?</i></span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 6em;"><i>Where was I, with God's sigil upon my brow</i>?</span><br /> +<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">Solveig.—<i>In my faith, in my hope, in my love</i>.</span><br /> +</p> + +<p class="left"><i><b>A Shirking of the Ethical Problem?</b></i></p> + +<p>"This," says the Messrs. Archer, in effect, "may be—indeed +is—magnificent: but it is not Ibsen." To quote their very words—</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>"The redemption of the hero through a woman's love ... we take to +be a mere commonplace of romanticism, which Ibsen, though he +satirised it, had by no means fully outgrown when he wrote <i>Peer +Gynt</i>. Peer's return to Solveig is (in the original) a passage of +the most poignant lyric beauty, but it is surely a shirking, not +a solution, of the ethical problem. It would be impossible to the +Ibsen of to-day, who knows (none better) that <i>No man can save +his brother's soul, or pay his brother's debt</i>."</p></div> + + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_290" id="Page_290">Pg 290</a></span></p><p>In a footnote to the italicized words Messrs. Archer add the +quotation—</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>"No, nor woman, neither."</p></div> + +<hr style='width: 45%;' /> + +<p class="left"><i><b>Oct. 22, 1892. The main Problem.</b></i></p> + +<p>"Peer's return to Solveig is surely a shirking, not a solution of the +ethical problem." Of what ethical problem? The main ethical problem of +the poem is, What is self? And how shall a man be himself? As Mr. +Wicksteed puts it in his "Four Lectures on Henrik Ibsen," "What is it +to be one's self? God <i>meant something</i> when He made each one of us. +For a man to embody that meaning of God in his words and deeds, and so +become, in a degree, 'a word of God made flesh' is to be himself. But +thus to be himself he must slay himself. That is to say, he must slay +the craving to make himself the centre round which others revolve, and +must strive to find his true orbit, and swing, self poised, round the +great central light. But what if a poor devil can never puzzle out +what God <i>did</i> mean when He made him? Why, then he must <i>feel</i> it. But +how often your 'feeling' misses fire! Ay, there you have it. The devil +has no stancher ally than <i>want of perception</i>."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_291" id="Page_291">Pg 291</a></span></p> + +<p class="left"><i><b>And its Solution.</b></i></p> + +<p>This is a fair statement of Ibsen's problem and his solution of it. In +the poem he solves it by the aid of two characters, two diagrams we +may say. Diagram I. is Peer Gynt, a man who is always striving to make +himself the centre round which others revolve, who never sacrifices +his Self generously for another's good, nor surrenders it to a decided +course of action. Diagram II. is Solveig, a woman who has no dread of +self-committal, who surrenders Self and is, in short, Peer's perfect +antithesis. When Peer is an outlaw she forsakes all and follows him to +his hut in the forest. Peer deserts her and roams the world, where he +finds his theory of Self upset by one adventure after another and at +last reduced to absurdity in the madhouse at Cairo. But though his own +theory is discredited, he has not yet found the true one. To find this +he must be brought face to face in the last scene with his deserted +wife. There, for the first time, he asks the question and receives the +answer. "Where," he asks, "has Peer Gynt's true self been since we +parted:—</p> + +<p> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">"Where was I, as myself, as the whole man, the true man?</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 3em;">Where was I with God's sigil upon my brow?"</span><br /> +</p> +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_292" id="Page_292">Pg 292</a></span></p> + +<p>And Solveig answers:—</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>"In my faith, in my hope, in my love."</p></div> + +<p>In these words we have the main ethical problem solved; and Peer's +<i>perception</i> of the truth (<i>vide</i> Mr. Wicksteed's remarks quoted +above) is the one necessary climax of the poem. We do not care a +farthing—at least, I do not care a farthing—whether Peer escape the +Button-Moulder or not. It may be too late for him, or there may be yet +time to live another life; but whatever the case may be, it doesn't +alter what Ibsen set out to prove. The problem which Ibsen shirks (if +indeed he does shirk it) is a subsidiary problem—a rider, so to +speak. Can Solveig by her love redeem Peer Gynt? Can the woman save +the man's soul? Will she, after all, cheat the Button-Moulder of his +victim?</p> + +<p>The poet, by giving Solveig the last word, seems to think it possible. +According to Mr. Archer, the Ibsen of to-day would know it to be +impossible. He knows (none better) that "No man can save his brother's +soul or pay his brother's debt." "No, nor women neither," adds Mr. +Archer.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_293" id="Page_293">Pg 293</a></span></p> + +<p class="left"><i><b>Is Peer's Redemption a romantic Fallacy?</b></i></p> + +<p>But is this so? <i>Peer Gynt</i> was published in 1867. I turn to <i>A Doll's +House</i>, written twelve years later, and I find there a woman preparing +to redeem a man just as Solveig prepares to redeem Peer. I find in Mr. +Archer's translation of that play the following page of dialogue:—</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p><i>Mrs. Linden</i>: There's no happiness in working for oneself, Nils; +give me somebody and something to work for.</p> + +<p><i>Krogstad</i>: No, no; that can never be. It's simply a woman's +romantic notion of self-sacrifice.</p> + +<p><i>Mrs. Linden</i>: Have you ever found me romantic?</p> + +<p><i>Krogstad</i>: Would you really—? Tell me, do you know my past?</p> + +<p><i>Mrs. Linden</i>: Yes.</p> + +<p><i>Krogstad</i>: And do you know what people say of me?</p> + +<p><i>Mrs. Linden</i>: Didn't you say just now that with me you could +have been another man?</p> + +<p><i>Krogstad</i>: I am sure of it.</p> + +<p><i>Mrs. Linden</i>: Is it too late?</p> + +<p><i>Krogstad</i>: Christina, do you know what you are doing? Yes, you +do; I see it in your face. Have you the courage—?</p> + +<p><i>Mrs. Linden</i>: I need someone to tend, and your children need a +mother. You need me, and I—I need you. Nils, I believe in your +better self. With you I fear nothing.</p></div> + +<p class="left"><i><b>Ibsen's hopes of Enfranchised Women.</b></i></p> + +<p>Again, we are not told if Mrs. Linden's ex<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_294" id="Page_294">Pg 294</a></span>periment is successful; but +Ibsen certainly gives no hint that she is likely to fail. This was in +1879. In 1885 Ibsen paid a visit to Norway and made a speech to some +workingmen at Drontheim, in which this passage occurred:—</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>"Democracy by itself cannot solve the social question. We must +introduce an aristocratic element into our life. I am not +referring, of course, to an aristocracy of birth, or of purse, or +even of intellect. I mean an aristocracy of character, of will, +of mind. That alone can make us free. From two classes will this +aristocracy I desire come to us—<i>from our women and our +workmen</i>. The social revolution, now preparing in Europe, is +chiefly concerned with the future of the workers and the women. +On this I set all my hopes and expectations...."</p></div> + +<p>I think it would be easy to multiply instances showing that, though +Ibsen may hold that no man can save his brother's soul, he does not +extend this disability to women, but hopes and believes, on the +contrary, that women will redeem mankind. On men he builds little +hope. To speak roughly, men are all in Peer Gynt's case, or Torvald +Helmer's. They are swathed in timid conventions, blindfolded with +selfishness, so that they cannot perceive, and unable with their own +hands to tear off these bandages. They are incapable of the highest +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_295" id="Page_295">Pg 295</a></span>renunciation. "No man," says Torvald Helmer, "sacrifices his honor, +even for one he loves." Those who heard Miss Achurch deliver Nora's +reply will not easily forget it. "Millions of women have done so." The +effect in the theatre was tremendous. This sentence clinched the whole +play.</p> + +<p>Millions of women are, like Solveig, capable of renouncing all for +love, of surrendering self altogether; and, as I read Ibsen, it is +precisely on this power of renunciation that he builds his hope of +man's redemption. So that, unless I err greatly, the scene in <i>Peer +Gynt</i> which Mr. Archer calls a shirking of the ethical problem, is +just the solution which Ibsen has been persistent in presenting to the +world.</p> + +<p>Let it be understood, of course, that it is only your Solveigs and +Mrs. Lindens who can thus save a brother's soul: women who have made +their own way in the world, thinking for themselves, working for +themselves, freed from the conventions which man would impose on them. +I know Mr. Archer will not retort on me with Nora, who leaves her +husband and children, and claims that her first <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_296" id="Page_296">Pg 296</a></span>duty is to herself. +Nora is just the woman who cannot redeem a man. Her Doll's House +training is the very opposite of Solveig's and Mrs. Linden's. She is a +silly girl brought up amid conventions, and awakened, by one blow, to +the responsibilities of life. That she should at once know the right +course to take would be incredible in real life, and impossible in a +play the action of which has been evolved as inevitably as real life. +Many critics have supposed Ibsen to commend Nora's conduct in the last +act of the play. He neither sanctions nor condemns. But he does +contrast her in the play with Mrs. Linden, and I do not think that +contrast can be too carefully studied.</p> + + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_297" id="Page_297">Pg 297</a></span></p> +<h2><a name="MR_SWINBURNES_LATER_MANNER" id="MR_SWINBURNES_LATER_MANNER"></a>MR. SWINBURNE'S LATER MANNER</h2> + + +<p class="left"><i><b>May 5, 1894. Aloofness of Mr. Swinburne's Muse.</b></i></p> + +<p>There was a time—let us say, in the early seventies—when many young +men tried to write like Mr. Swinburne. Remarkably small success waited +on their efforts. Still their numbers and their youth and (for a while +also) their persistency seemed to promise a new school of poesy, with +Mr. Swinburne for its head and great exemplar: exemplar rather than +head, for Mr. Swinburne's attitude amid all this devotion was rather +that of the god than of the priest. He sang, and left the worshippers +to work up their own enthusiasm. And to this attitude he has been +constant. Unstinting, and occasionally unmeasured, in praise and +dispraise of other men, he has allowed his own reputation the noble +liberty to look after itself. Nothing, for instance, could have been +finer than the careless, almost disdainful, dignity of his bearing in +the months that followed <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_298" id="Page_298">Pg 298</a></span>Tennyson's death. The cats were out upon the +tiles, then, and his was the luminous, expressive silence of a sphere. +One felt, "whether he received it or no, here is the man who can wear +the crown."</p> + +<p class="left"><i><b>And Her Tendency towards Abstractions.</b></i></p> + +<p>It was not, however, the aloofness of Mr. Swinburne's bearing that +checked the formation of a Swinburnian school of poetry. The cause lay +deeper, and has come more and more into the light in the course of Mr. +Swinburne's poetic development—let me say, his thoroughly normal +development. We can see now that from the first such a school, such a +successful following, was an impossibility. The fact is that Mr. +Swinburne has not only genius, but an extremely rare and individual +genius. The germ of this individuality may be found, easily enough, in +"Atalanta" and the Ballads; but it luxuriates in his later poems and +throughout them—flower and leaf and stem. It was hardly more natural +in 1870 to confess the magic of the great chorus, "Before the +beginning of years," or of "Dolores," than to embark upon the vain +adventure of imitating them. I cannot imagine a youth in all Great +Britain so green or unknowing as to attempt an imitation <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_299" id="Page_299">Pg 299</a></span>of "A +Nympholept," perhaps the finest poem in the volume before me.</p> + +<p>I say "in Great Britain;" because peculiar as Mr. Swinburne's genius +would be in any country, it is doubly peculiar as the endowment of an +English poet. If there be one quality beloved above others by the +inhabitants of this island, it is concreteness; and I suppose there +never was a poet in the world who used less concreteness of speech +than Mr. Swinburne. Mr. Palgrave once noted that the landscape of +Keats falls short of the landscape of Shelley in its comparative lack +of the larger features of sky and earth; Keats's was "foreground work" +for the most part. But what shall be said of Shelley's universe after +the immense vague regions inhabited by Mr. Swinburne's muse? She sings +of the sea; but we never behold a sail, never a harbor: she sings of +passion—among the stars. We seem never to touch earth; page after +page is full of thought—for, vast as the strain may be, it is never +empty—but we cannot apply it. And all this is extremely distressing +to the Briton, who loves practice as his birthright. He comes on a +Jacobite song. "Now, at any rate," he tells <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_300" id="Page_300">Pg 300</a></span>himself, "we arrive at +something definite: some allusion, however small, to Bonny Prince +Charlie." He reads—</p> + +<p> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">"Faith speaks when hope dissembles;</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 3.5em;">Faith lives when hope lies dead:</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">If death as life dissembles,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">And all that night assembles</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 3.5em;">Of stars at dawn lie dead,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">Faint hope that smiles and trembles</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 3.5em;">May tell not well for dread:</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 3.5em;">But faith has heard it said."</span><br /> +</p> + +<p>"Very beautiful," says the Briton; "but why call this a 'Jacobite +Song'?" Some thorough-going admirer of Mr. Swinburne will ask, no +doubt, if I prefer gush about Bonny Prince Charlie. Most decidedly I +do not. I am merely pointing out that the poet cares so little for the +common human prejudice in favor of concreteness of speech as to give +us a Jacobite song which, for all its indebtedness to the historical +facts of the Jacobite Risings, might just as well have been put in the +mouth of Judas Maccabæus.</p> + +<p>Somebody—I forget for the moment who it was—compared Poetry with +Antæus, who was strong when his feet touched Earth, his mother; +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_301" id="Page_301">Pg 301</a></span>weaker when held aloft in air. The justice of this criticism I have +no space here to discuss; but the difference is patent enough between +poetry such as this of Herrick—</p> + +<p> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">"When as in silks my Julia goes,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">Then, then, methinks, how sweetly flows</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">The liquefaction of her clothes."</span><br /> +</p> + +<p>Or this, of Burns—</p> + +<p> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">"The boat rocks at the pier o' Leith,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 3.5em;">Fu' loud the wind blaws frae the ferry,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">The boat rides by the Berwick-law,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 3.5em;">And I maun leave my bonny Mary."</span><br /> +</p> + +<p>Or this, of Shakespeare—</p> + +<p> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">"When daisies pied, and violets blue,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 3.5em;">And lady smocks all silver-white,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">And cuckoo-buds of yellow hue</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 3.5em;">Do paint the meadows with delight."</span><br /> +</p> + +<p>Or this, of Milton—</p> + +<p> +<span style="margin-left: 10em;">"the broad circumference</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">Hung on his shoulders like the moon, whose orb,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">Through optic glass the Tuscan artist views</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">At evening from the top of Fesolé,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">Or in Valdarno...."</span><br /> +</p> + +<p>And such lines as these by Mr. Swinburne—</p> + +<p> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">"The dark dumb godhead innate in the fair world's life</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 3.5em;">Imbues the rapture of dawn and of noon with dread,</span><br /> +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_302" id="Page_302">Pg 302</a></span><span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">Infects the peace of the star-shod night with strife,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 3.5em;">Informs with terror the sorrow that guards the dead.</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 3.5em;">No service of bended knee or of humbled head</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">May soothe or subdue the God who has change to wife:</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 3.5em;">And life with death is as morning with evening wed."</span><br /> +</p> + +<p>Take Burns's song, "It was a' for our right-fu' King," and set it +beside the Jacobite song quoted above, and it is clear at once that +with Mr. Swinburne we pass from the particular and concrete to the +general and abstract. And in this direction Mr. Swinburne's muse has +steadily marched. In his "Erechtheus" he tells how the gods gave +Pallas the lordship of Athens—</p> + +<p> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">"The lordship and love of the lovely land,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">The grace of the town that hath on it for crown</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 4.5em;">But a headband to wear</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 3.5em;">Of violets one-hued with her hair."</span><br /> +</p> + +<p>Here at least we were allowed a picture of Athens: the violet crown +was something definite. But now, when Mr. Swinburne sings of England, +we have to precipitate our impressions from lines fluid as these:—</p> + +<p> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">"Things of night at her glance took flight: the</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 3.5em;">strengths of darkness recoiled and sank:</span><br /> +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_303" id="Page_303">Pg 303</a></span><span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">Sank the fires of the murderous pyres whereon wild</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 3.5em;">agony writhed and shrank:</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">Rose the light of the reign of right from gulfs of</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 3.5em;">years that the darkness drank."</span><br /> +</p> + +<p>Or—</p> + +<p> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">"Change darkens and lightens around her, alternate</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 4.5em;">in hope and in fear to be:</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">Hope knows not if fear speak truth, nor fear whether</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 4.5em;">hope be not blind as she:</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">But the sun is in heaven that beholds her immortal,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 4.5em;">and girdled with life by the sea."</span><br /> +</p> + +<p>I suspect, then, that a hundred years hence, when criticism speaks +calm judgment upon all Mr. Swinburne's writings, she will find that +his earlier and more definite poems are the edge of his blade, and +such volumes as "Astrophel" the heavy metal behind it. The former +penetrated the affections of his countrymen with ease: the latter +followed more difficultly through the outer tissues of a people +notoriously pachydermatous to abstract speech. And criticism will then +know if Mr. Swinburne brought sufficient impact to drive the whole +mass of metal deep.</p> + +<p class="left"><i><b>A Voice chanting in the Void.</b></i></p> + +<p>At present in these later volumes his must seem to us a godlike voice +chanting in the void. <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_304" id="Page_304">Pg 304</a></span>For, fit or unfit as we may be to grasp the +elusive substance of his strains, all must confess the voice of the +singer to be divine. At once in the range and suppleness of his music +he is not merely the first of our living poets, but incomparable. In +learning he has Robert Bridges for a rival, and no other. But no +amount of learning could give us 228 pages of music that from first to +last has not a flaw. Rather, his marvellous ear has taken him safely +through metres set by his learning as so many traps. There is one +metre, for instance, that recurs again and again in this volume. Here +is a specimen of it:—</p> + +<p> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">"Music bright as the soul of light, for wings an eagle,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 5.5em;">for notes a dove,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">Leaps and shines from the lustrous lines wherethrough</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 5.5em;">thy soul from afar above</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">Shone and sang till the darkness rang with light whose</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 5.5em;">fire is the fount of love."</span><br /> +</p> + +<p>These lines are written of Sir Philip Sidney. Could another man have +written them they had stood even better for Mr. Swinburne. But we are +considering the metre, not the meaning. Now the metre may have great +merits. I am disposed to say that, having fascinated Mr. Swinburne, it +must have great merits. That I <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_305" id="Page_305">Pg 305</a></span>dislike it is, no doubt, my fault, or +rather my misfortune. But undoubtedly it is a metre that no man but +Mr. Swinburne could handle without producing a monotony varied only by +discords.</p> + + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_306" id="Page_306">Pg 306</a></span></p> +<h2><a name="A_MORNING_WITH_A_BOOK" id="A_MORNING_WITH_A_BOOK"></a>A MORNING WITH A BOOK</h2> + + +<p class="left"><i><b>April 29, 1893. Hazlitt's Stipulation.</b></i></p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>"Food, warmth, sleep, and a book; these are all I at present +ask—the <i>Ultima Thule</i> of my wandering desires. Do you not then +wish for—</p> + +<p> +<i>a friend in your retreat<br /> +Whom you may whisper, 'Solitude is sweet'?</i><br /> +</p> + +<p>Expected, well enough: gone, still better. Such attractions are +strengthened by distance."</p></div> + +<p>So Hazlitt wrote in his <i>Farewell to Essay Writing</i>. There never was +such an epicure of his moods as Hazlitt. Others might add Omar's +stipulation—</p> + +<p> +<span style="margin-left: 13.5em;">"—and Thou</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">Beside me singing in the wilderness."</span><br /> +</p> + +<p>But this addition would have spoiled Hazlitt's enjoyment. Let us +remember that his love affairs had been unprosperous. "Such +attractions," he would object, "are strengthened by distance." In any +case, the book and singer go ill together, and most of us will declare +for a spell of each in turn.</p> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_307" id="Page_307">Pg 307</a></span></p><p class="left"><i><b>What are "The Best Books"?</b></i></p> + +<p>Suppose we choose the book. What kind of book shall it be? Shall it be +an old book which we have forgotten just sufficiently to taste +surprise as its felicities come back to us, and remember just +sufficiently to escape the attentive strain of a first reading? Or +shall it be a new book by an author we love, to be glanced through +with no critical purpose (this may be deferred to the second reading), +but merely for the lazy pleasure of recognizing the familiar brain at +work, and feeling happy, perhaps, at the success of a friend? There is +no doubt which Hazlitt would have chosen; he has told us in his essay +<i>On Reading Old Books</i>. But after a recent experience I am not sure +that I agree with him.</p> + +<p>That your taste should approve only the best thoughts of the best +minds is a pretty counsel, but one of perfection, and is found in +practice to breed prigs. It sets a man sailing round in a vicious +circle. What is the best thought of the best minds? That approved by +the man of highest culture. Who is the man of highest culture? He +whose taste approves the best thoughts of the best minds. To escape +from this foolish whirlpool, some of our stoutest bot<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_308" id="Page_308">Pg 308</a></span>toms run for +that discredited harbor of refuge—Popular Acceptance: a harbor full +of shoals, of which nobody has provided even the sketch of a chart.</p> + +<p>Some years ago, when the <i>Pall Mall Gazette</i> sent round to all sorts +and conditions of eminent men, inviting lists of "The Hundred Best +Books"—the first serious attempt to introduce a decimal system into +Great Britain—I remember that these eminent men's replies disclosed +nothing so wonderful as their unanimity. We were prepared for Sir John +Lubbock, but not, I think, for the host of celebrities who followed +his hygienic example, and made a habit of taking the Rig Vedas to bed +with them. Altogether their replies afforded plenty of material for a +theory that to have every other body's taste in literature is the +first condition of eminence in every branch of the public service. But +in one of the lists—I think it was Sir Monier Williams's—the +unexpected really happened. Sir Monier thought that Mr. T.E. Brown's +<i>The Doctor</i> was one of the best books in the world.</p> + +<p>Now, the poems of Mr. T.E. Brown are not <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_309" id="Page_309">Pg 309</a></span>known to the million. But, +like Mr. Robert Bridges, Mr. Brown has always had a band of readers to +whom his name is more than that of many an acknowledged classic. I +fancy it is a case of liking deeply or scarce at all. Those of us who +are not celebrities may be allowed to have favorites who are not the +favorites of others, writers who (fortuitously, perhaps) have helped +us at some crisis of our life, have spoken to us the appropriate word +at the moment of need, and for that reason sit cathedrally enthroned +in our affections. To explain why the author of <i>Betsy Lee</i>, <i>Tommy +Big-Eyes</i> and <i>The Doctor</i> is more to me than most poets—why to open +a new book of his is one of the most exciting literary events that can +befall me in now my twenty-ninth year—would take some time, and the +explanation might poorly satisfy the reader after all.</p> + +<p class="left"><i><b>My Morning with a Book.</b></i></p> + +<p>But I set out to describe a morning with a book. The book was Mr. +Brown's <i>Old John, and other Poems</i>, published but a few days back by +Messrs. Macmillan & Co. The morning was spent in a very small garden +overlooking a harbor. Hazlitt's conditions were fulfilled. I had +enjoyed enough food and sleep <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_310" id="Page_310">Pg 310</a></span>to last me for some little time: few +people, I imagine, have complained of the cold, these last few weeks: +and the book was not only new to me for the most part, but certain to +please. Moreover, a small incident had already put me in the best of +humors. Just as I was settling down to read, a small tug came down the +harbor with a barque in tow whose nationality I recognized before she +cleared a corner and showed the Norwegian colors drooping from her +peak. I reached for the field-glass and read her name—<i>Henrik Ibsen</i>! +I imagined Mr. William Archer applauding as I ran to my own flag-staff +and dipped the British ensign to that name. The Norwegians on deck +stood puzzled for a moment, but, taking the compliment to themselves, +gave me a cheerful hail, while one or two ran aft and dipped the +Norwegian flag in response. It was still running frantically up and +down the halliards when I returned to my seat, and the lines of the +bark were softening to beauty in the distance—for, to tell the truth, +she had looked a crazy and not altogether seaworthy craft—as I opened +my book, and, by a stroke of luck, at that fine poem, <i>The Schooner</i>.</p> + +<p> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">"Just mark that schooner westward far at sea—</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 3.5em;">'Tis but an hour ago</span><br /> +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_311" id="Page_311">Pg 311</a></span><span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">When she was lying hoggish at the quay,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 3.5em;">And men ran to and fro</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">And tugged, and stamped, and shoved, and pushed, and swore.</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">And ever an anon, with crapulous glee,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 3.5em;">Grinned homage to viragoes on the shore.</span><br /> +<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">"So to the jetty gradual she was hauled:</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 3.5em;">Then one the tiller took,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">And chewed, and spat upon his hand, and bawled;</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 3.5em;">And one the canvas shook</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">Forth like a mouldy bat; and one, with nods</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">And smiles, lay on the bowsprit end, and called</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">And cursed the Harbour-master by his gods.</span><br /> +<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">"And rotten from the gunwale to the keel,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 3.5em;">Rat riddled, bilge bestank,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">Slime-slobbered, horrible, I saw her reel</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 3.5em;">And drag her oozy flank,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">And sprawl among the deft young waves, that laughed</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 3.5em;">And leapt, and turned in many a sportive wheel</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">As she thumped onward with her lumbering draught.</span><br /> +<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">"And now, behold! a shadow of repose</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 3.5em;">Upon a line of gray</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">She sleeps, that transverse cuts the evening rose,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 3.5em;">She sleeps and dreams away,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">Soft blended in a unity of rest</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">All jars, and strifes obscene, and turbulent throes</span><br /> +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_312" id="Page_312">Pg 312</a></span><span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">'Neath the broad benediction of the West—</span><br /> +<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2em;">"Sleeps; and methinks she changes as she sleeps,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 3.5em;">And dies, and is a spirit pure;</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">Lo! on her deck, an angel pilot keeps</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 3.5em;">His lonely watch secure;</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">And at the entrance of Heaven's dockyard waits</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 3.5em;">Till from night's leash the fine-breathed morning leaps</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">And that strong hand within unbars the gates."</span><br /> +</p> + +<p>It is very far from being the finest poem in the volume. It has not +the noble humanity of <i>Catherine Kinrade</i>—and if this be not a great +poem I know nothing about poetry—nor the rapture of <i>Jessie</i>, nor the +awful pathos of <i>Mater Dolorosa</i>, nor the gentle pathos of <i>Aber +Stations</i>, nor the fine religious feeling of <i>Planting</i> and +<i>Disguises</i>. But it came so pat to the occasion, and used the occasion +so deftly to take hold of one's sympathy, that these other poems were +read in the very mood that, I am sure, their author would have asked +for them. One has not often such luck in reading—"Never the time and +the place and the author all together," if I may do this violence to +Browning's line. Yet I trust that in any mood I should have had the +sense to pay its meed of admiration to this volume.</p> + +<p>Now, having carefully read the opinions of <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_313" id="Page_313">Pg 313</a></span>some half-a-dozen +reviewers upon it, I can only wonder and leave the question to my +reader, warning him by no means to miss <i>Mater Dalorosa</i> and +<i>Catherine Kinrade</i>. If he remain cold to these two poems, then I +shall still preserve my own opinion.</p> + + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_314" id="Page_314">Pg 314</a></span></p> +<h2><a name="MR_JOHN_DAVIDSON" id="MR_JOHN_DAVIDSON"></a>MR. JOHN DAVIDSON</h2> + + +<p class="left"><i><b>April 7, 1894. His Plays.</b></i></p> + +<p>For some weeks now I have been meaning to write about Mr. John +Davidson's "Plays" (Elkin Mathews and John Lane), and always shirking +the task at the last moment. The book is an exceedingly difficult one +to write about, and I am not at all sure that after a few sentences I +shall not stick my hands in my pockets and walk off to something +easier. The recent fine weather has, however, made me desperate. The +windows of the room in which I sit face S. and S.-E.; consequently a +deal of sunshine comes in upon my writing-table. In ninety-nine cases +out of the hundred this makes for idleness; in this, the hundredth +case, it constrains to energy, because it is rapidly bleaching the +puce-colored boards in which Mr. Davidson's plays are bound—and +(which is worse) bleaching them unevenly. I have tried (let the +miserable truth be confessed) turning the book daily, as one turns a +piece of <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_315" id="Page_315">Pg 315</a></span>toast—But this is not criticism of Mr. Davidson's "Plays."</p> + +<p class="left"><i><b>His Style full of Imagination and Wit.</b></i></p> + +<p>Now it would be easy and pleasant to express my great admiration of +Mr. Davidson's Muse, and justify it by a score of extracts and so make +an end: and nobody (except perhaps Mr. Davidson himself) would know my +dishonesty. For indeed and out of doubt he is in some respects the +most richly-endowed of all our younger poets. Of wit and of +imagination he has almost a plethora: they crowd this book, and all +his books, from end to end. And his frequent felicity of phrase is +hardly less remarkable. You may turn page after page, and with each +page the truth of this will become more obvious. Let me add his quick +eye for natural beauty, his penetrating instinct for the principles +that lie beneath its phenomena, his sympathy with all men's more +generous emotions—and still I have a store of satisfactory +illustrations at hand for the mere trouble of turning the leaves. +Consider, for instance, the imagery in his description of the fight by +Bannockburn—</p> + +<p> +<span style="margin-left: 17em;">Now are they hand to hand!</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">How short a front! How close! <i>They're sewn together</i></span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;"><i>with steel cross-stitches, halbert over sword,</i></span><br /> +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_316" id="Page_316">Pg 316</a></span><span style="margin-left: 2.5em;"><i>Spear across lance and death the purfled seam!</i></span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">I never saw so fierce, so lock'd a fight.</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">That tireless brand that like a pliant flail</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">Threshes the lives from sheaves of Englishmen—</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">Know you who wields it? Douglas, who but he!</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">A noble meets him now. Clifford it is!</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">No bitterer foes seek out each other there.</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">Parried! That told! And that! Clifford, good night!</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">And Douglas shouts to Randolf; Edward Bruce</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">Cheers on the Steward; while the King's voice rings</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">In every Scotch ear: such a narrow strait</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">Confines this firth of war!</span><br /> +<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;"><i>Young Friar</i>: "God gives me strength</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">Again to gaze with eyes unseared. <i>Jewels!</i></span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;"><i>These must be jewels peering in the grass.</i></span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;"><i>Cloven from helms, or on them: dead men's eyes</i></span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;"><i>Scarce shine so bright. The banners dip and mount</i></span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;"><i>Like masts at sea....</i>"</span><br /> +</p> + +<p>Or consider the fanciful melody of the Fairies' song in <i>An +Unhistorical Pastoral</i>—</p> + +<p> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">"Weave the dance and sing the song;</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;"><i>Subterranean depths prolong</i></span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;"><i>The rainy patter of our feet;</i></span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">Heights of air are rendered sweet</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">By our singing. Let us sing,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 3.5em;">Breathing softly, fairily,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 3.5em;">Swelling sweetly, airily,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">Till earth and sky our echo ring.</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 3.5em;">Rustling leaves chime with our song:</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 3.5em;">Fairy bells its close prolong</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 4.5em;">Ding-dong, ding-dong."</span><br /> +</p> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_317" id="Page_317">Pg 317</a></span></p><p>—Or the closely-packed wit in such passages as these—</p> + +<p> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;"><i>Brown</i>: "This world,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 5.5em;">This oyster with its valves of toil and play,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 5.5em;">Would round his corners for its own good ease,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 5.5em;">And make a pearl of him if he'd plunge in.</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 7.5em;">* * * * * *</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;"><i>Jones</i>: And in this matter we may all be pearls.</span><br /> +<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;"><i>Smith</i>: Be worldlings, truly. I would rather be</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 5.5em;">A shred of glass that sparkles in the sun,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 5.5em;">And keeps a lowly rainbow of its own,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 5.5em;">Than one of these so trim and patent pearls</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 5.5em;">With hearts of sand veneered, sewed up and down</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 5.5em;">The stiff brocade society affects."</span><br /> +</p> + +<p>I have opened the book at random for these quotations. Its pages are +stuffed with scores as good. Nor will any but the least intelligent +reviewer upbraid Mr. Davidson for deriving so much of his inspiration +directly from Shakespeare. Mr. Davidson is still a young man; but the +first of these plays, <i>An Unhistorical Pastoral</i>, was first printed so +long ago as 1877; and the last, <i>Scaramouch in Naxos; a Pantomime</i>, in +1888. They are the work therefore of a very young man, who must use +models while feeling his way to a style and method of his own.</p> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_318" id="Page_318">Pg 318</a></span></p><p class="left"><i><b>Lack of "Architectonic" Quality.</b></i></p> + +<p>But—there is a "but"; and I am coming at length to my difficulty with +Mr. Davidson's work. Oddly enough, this difficulty may be referred to +the circumstance that Mr. Davidson's poetry touches Shakespeare's +great circle at a second point. Wordsworth, it will be remembered, +once said that Shakespeare <i>could</i> not have written an Epic +(Wordsworth, by the way, was rather fond of pointing out the things +that Shakespeare could not have done). "Shakespeare <i>could</i> not have +written an Epic; he would have died of plethora of thought." +Substitute "wit" for "thought," and you have my difficulty with Mr. +Davidson. It is given to few men to have great wit: it is given to +fewer to carry a great wit lightly. In Mr. Davidson's case it +luxuriates over the page and seems persistently to choke his sense of +form. One image suggests another, one phrase springs under the very +shadow of another until the fabric of his poem is completely hidden +beneath luxuriant flowers of speech. Either they hide it from the +author himself; or, conscious of his lack of architectonic skill, he +deliberately trails these creepers over his ill-constructed walls. I +think the former is the true explanation, but am not sure.</p> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_319" id="Page_319">Pg 319</a></span></p><p>Let me be cautious here, or some remarks I made the other day upon +another poet—Mr. Hosken, author of <i>Phaon and Sappho</i>, and <i>Verses by +the Way</i>—will be brought up against me. Defending Mr. Hosken against +certain critics who had complained of the lack of dramatic power in +his tragedies, I said, "Be it allowed that he has little dramatic +power, and that (since the poem professed to be a tragedy) dramatic +power was what you reasonably looked for. But an alert critic, +considering the work of a beginner, will have an eye for the +bye-strokes as well as the main ones: and if the author, while missing +the main, prove effective with the bye—if Mr. Hosken, while failing +to construct a satisfactory drama, gave evidence of strength in many +fine meditative passages—then at the worst he stands convicted of a +youthful error in choosing a literary form unsuited to convey his +thought."</p> + +<p class="left"><i><b>Not in the "Plays" only.</b></i></p> + +<p>These observations I believe to be just, and having entered the +<i>caveat</i> in Mr. Hosken's case, I should observe it in Mr. Davidson's +also, did these five youthful plays stand alone. But Mr. Davidson has +published much since these plays first appeared—works both in prose +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_320" id="Page_320">Pg 320</a></span>and verse—<i>Fleet Street Eclogues</i>, <i>Ninian Jamieson</i>, <i>A Practical +Novelist</i>, <i>A Random Itinerary</i>, <i>Baptist Lake</i>: and because I have +followed his writings (I think from his first coming to London) with +the greatest interest, I may possibly be excused for speaking a word +of warning. I am quite certain that Mr. Davidson will never bore me: +but I wish I could be half so certain that he will in time produce +something in true perspective; a fabric duly proportioned, each line +of which from the beginning shall guide the reader to an end which the +author has in view; something which</p> + +<p> +<span style="margin-left: 19em;">"<i>Servetur ad imum</i></span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;"><i>Qualis ab incepto processerit, et sibi constet.</i>"</span><br /> +</p> + +<p><i>Sibi constet</i>, be it remarked. A work of art may stand very far from +Nature, provided its own parts are consistent. Heaven forbid that a +critic should decry an author for being fantastic, so long as he is +true to his fantasy.</p> + +<p>But Mr. Davidson's wit is so brilliant within the circles of its +temporary coruscation as to leave the outline of his work in a +constant penumbra. Indeed, when he wishes to unburden his mind of an +idea, he seems to have <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_321" id="Page_321">Pg 321</a></span>less capacity than many men of half his +ability to determine the form best suited for conveying it. If +anything can be certain which has not been tried, it is that his story +<i>A Practical Novelist</i> should have been cast in dramatic form. His +vastly clever <i>Perfervid</i>: or <i>the Career of Ninian Jamieson</i> is cast +in two parts which neither unite to make a whole, nor are sufficiently +independent to stand complete in themselves. I find it characteristic +that his <i>Random Itinerary</i>—that fresh and agreeable narrative of +suburban travel—should conclude with a crashing poem, magnificent in +itself, but utterly out of key with the rest of the book. Turn to the +<i>Compleat Angler</i>, and note the exquisite congruity of the songs +quoted by Walton with the prose in which they are set, and the +difference will be apparent at once. Fate seems to dog Mr. Davidson +even into his illustrations. <i>A Random Itinerary</i> and this book of +<i>Plays</i> (both published by Messrs. Mathews and Lane) have each a +conspicuously clever frontispiece. But the illustrator of <i>A Random +Itinerary</i> has chosen as his subject the very poem which I have +mentioned as out of harmony with the book; and I must protest that the +vilely sensual faces in Mr. Beardsley's <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_322" id="Page_322">Pg 322</a></span>frontispiece to these <i>Plays</i> +are hopelessly out of keeping with the sunny paganism of <i>Scaramouch +in Naxos</i>. There is nothing Greek about Mr. Beardsley's figures: their +only relationship with the Olympians is derived through the goddess +Aselgeia.</p> + +<p>With all this I have to repeat that Mr. Davidson is in some respects +the most richly endowed of all the younger poets. The grand manner +comes more easily to him than to any other: and if he can cultivate a +sense of form and use this sense as a curb upon his wit, he has all +the qualities that take a poet far.</p> + +<hr style='width: 45%;' /> + +<p class="left"><i><b>Nov. 24, 1984. "Ballads and Songs."</b></i></p> + +<p>At last there is no mistake about it: Mr. John Davidson has come by +his own. And by "his own" I do not mean popularity—though I hope +that in time he will have enough of this and to spare—but mastery of +his poetic method. This new volume of "Ballads and Songs" (London: +John Lane) justifies our hopes and removes our chief fear. You +remember Mr. T.E. Brown's fine verses on "Poets and Poets"?—</p> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_323" id="Page_323">Pg 323</a></span></p><p> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">He fishes in the night of deep sea pools:</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 3.5em;">For him the nets hang long and low,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">Cork-buoyed and strong; the silver-gleaming schools</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 3.5em;">Come with the ebb and flow</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">Of universal tides, and all the channels glow.</span><br /> +<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">Or holding with his hand the weighted line</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 3.5em;">He sounds the languor of the neaps,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">Or feels what current of the springing brine</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 3.5em;">The cord divergent sweeps,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">The throb of what great heart bestirs the middle deeps.</span><br /> +<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">Thou also weavest meshes, fine and thin,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 3.5em;">And leaguer'st all the forest ways;</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">But of that sea and the great heart therein</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 3.5em;">Thou knowest nought; whole days</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">Thou toil'st, and hast thy end—good store of pies and jays.</span><br /> +</p> + +<p>Mr. Davidson has never allowed us to doubt to which of these two +classes he belongs. "For him the nets hang long and low." But though +it may satisfy the Pumblechook within us to recall our pleasant +prophesyings, we shall find it more salutary to remember our fears. We +watched Mr. Davidson struggling in the thicket of his own fancies, and +saw him too often break his shins over his own wit. We asked: Will he +in the end overcome the defect of his qualities? Will he remain unable +to see the wood for the trees? Or will he some day be giving <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_324" id="Page_324">Pg 324</a></span>us poems +of which the whole conception and structure shall be as beautiful as +the casual fragment or the single line? For this architectonic quality +is just that "invidious distinction" which the fabled undergraduate +declined to draw between the major and minor prophets.</p> + +<p class="left"><i><b>The "Ballad of a Nun."</b></i></p> + +<p>Since its appearance, a few weeks back, all the critics have spoken of +"A Ballad of a Nun," and admitted its surprising strength and beauty. +They have left me in the plight of that belated fiddle in "Rejected +Addresses," or of the gentleman who had to be content with saying +"ditto" to Mr. Burke. For once they seem unanimous, and for once they +are right. The poem is beautiful indeed in detail:</p> + +<p> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">"The adventurous sun took Heaven by storm;</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 3.5em;">Clouds scattered largesses of rain;</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">The sounding cities, rich and warm,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 3.5em;">Smouldered and glittered in the plain."</span><br /> +</p> + +<p>Dickens, reading for the first time Tennyson's "Dream of Fair Women," +laid down the book, saying, "What a treat it is to come across a +fellow who can <i>write</i>!" The verse that moved him to exclaim it was +this—</p> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_325" id="Page_325">Pg 325</a></span></p><p> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">"Squadrons and squares of men in brazen plates,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 3.5em;">Scaffolds, still sheets of water, divers woes,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">Ranges of glimmering vaults with iron grates;</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 3.5em;">And hushed seraglios."</span><br /> +</p> + +<p>It is not necessary to compare these two stanzas. Tennyson's depicts a +confused and moving dream; Mr. Davidson's a wide earthly prospect. The +point to notice in each is the superlative skill with which the poet +chooses the essential points of the picture and presents them so as to +convey their full meaning, appealing at once to the senses and the +intelligence. Tennyson, who is handling a mental condition in which +the sensations are less sharply and logically separated than in a +waking vision, can enforce this second appeal—this appeal to the +intelligence—by introducing the indefinite "divers woes" between the +definite "sheets of water" and the definite "ranges of glimmering +vaults with iron grates": just as Wordsworth, to convey the vague +unanalyzed charm of singing, combines the indefinite "old unhappy +far-off things" with the definite "battles long ago." Mr. Davidson, on +the other hand, is describing what the eye sees, and conveying what +the mind suspects, in their waking hours, and is therefore restricted +in his use of the abstract and indefi<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_326" id="Page_326">Pg 326</a></span>nite. Notice, therefore, how he +qualifies that which can be seen—the sun, the clouds, the plain, the +cities that "smoulder" and "glitter"—with the epithets "sounding," +"rich," and "warm," each an inference rather than a direct sensation: +for nobody imagines that the sound of the cities actually rang in the +ear of the Nun who watched them from the mountain-side. The whole +picture has the effect of one of those wide conventional landscapes +which old painters delighted to spread beyond the court-yard of +Nazareth, or behind the pillars of the temple at Jerusalem. My attempt +to analyze it is something of a folly; to understand it is impossible:</p> + +<p> +<span style="margin-left: 5.5em;">"but <i>if</i> I could understand</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">What you are, root and all, and all in all,"—</span><br /> +</p> + +<p>I should at length comprehend the divine and inexplicable gift of +song.</p> + +<p class="left"><i><b>The "Ballad of the Making of a Poet."</b></i></p> + +<p>But beautiful as it is in detail, this poem, and at least one other in +the little volume, have the great merit which has hitherto been +lacking in the best of Mr. Davidson's work. They are thoroughly +considered; seen as solid wholes; seen not only in front but round at +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_327" id="Page_327">Pg 327</a></span>the back. In fact, they are natural growths of Mr. Davidson's +philosophy of life. In his "Ballad of the Making of a Poet" Mr. +Davidson lets us know his conception of the poet's proper function.</p> + +<p> +<span style="margin-left: 9.5em;">"I am a man apart:</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">A mouthpiece for the creeds of all the world;</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">A soulless life that angels may possess</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">Or demons haunt, wherein the foulest things</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">May loll at ease beside the loveliest;</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">A martyr for all mundane moods to tear;</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">The slave of every passion; and the slave</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">Of heat and cold, of darkness and of light;</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">A trembling lyre for every wind to sound.</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 7.5em;">* * * * * *</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 10em;">Within my heart</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">I'll gather all the universe, and sing</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">As sweetly as the spheres; and I shall be</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">The first of men to understand himself...."</span><br /> +</p> + +<p>Making, of course, full concessions to the demands of poetical +treatment, we may assume pretty confidently that Mr. Davidson intended +this "Ballad in Blank Verse of the Making of a Poet" for a soul's +autobiography, of a kind. If so, I trust he will forgive me for +doubting if he is at all likely to fulfil the poet's office <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_328" id="Page_328">Pg 328</a></span>as he +conceives it here, or even to approach within measurable distance of +his ideal—</p> + +<p> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">"A trembling lyre for every wind to sound."</span><br /> +</p> + +<p>That it is one way in which a poet may attain, I am not just now +denying. But luckily men attain in many ways: and the man who sits +himself down of fixed purpose to be an Æolian harp for the winds of +the world, is of all men the least likely to be merely Æolian. For the +first demand of Æolian sound is that the instrument should have no +theories of its own; and explicitly to proclaim yourself Æolian is +implicitly to proclaim yourself didactic. As a matter of fact, both +the "Ballad of the Making of a Poet" and the "Ballad of a Nun" contain +sharply pointed morals very stoutly driven home. In each the poet has +made up his mind; he has a theory of life, and presents that theory to +us under cover of a parable. The beauty of the "Ballad of a Nun"—or +so much of it as stands beyond and above mere beauty of +language—consists in this, that it is informed, and consciously +informed, by a spirit of tolerance so exceedingly wide that to match +it I can find one poem and one only among those of recent years: I +mean <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_329" id="Page_329">Pg 329</a></span>"Catherine Kinrade." In Mr. Brown's poem the Bishop is welcomed +into Heaven by the half-wilted harlot he had once condemned to painful +and public punishment. In Mr. Davidson's poem, Mary, the Mother of +Heaven, herself takes the form and place of the wandering nun and +fills it until the penitent returns. Take either poem: take Mr. +Brown's—</p> + +<p> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">"Awe-stricken, he was 'ware</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">How on the Emerald stair</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 3.5em;">A woman sat divinely clothed in white,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 3.5em;">And at her knees four cherubs bright.</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 4.5em;">That laid</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 3.5em;">Their heads within their lap. Then, trembling, he essayed</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 4.5em;">To speak—'Christ's mother, pity me!'</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 4.5em;">Then answered she—</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 3.5em;">'Sir, I am Catherine Kinrade.'"</span><br /> +</p> + +<p>Or take Mr. Davidson's—in a way, its converse—</p> + +<p> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">"The wandress raised her tenderly;</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 3.5em;">She touched her wet and fast-shut eyes;</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">'Look, sister; sister, look at me;</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 3.5em;">Look; can you see through my disguise?'</span><br /> +<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">She looked and saw her own sad face,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 3.5em;">And trembled, wondering, 'Who art thou?'</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">'God sent me down to fill your place;</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 3.5em;">I am the Virgin Mary now.'</span><br /> +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_330" id="Page_330">Pg 330</a></span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">And with the word, God's mother shone;</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 3.5em;">The wanderer whispered 'Mary, hail!'</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">The vision helped her to put on</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 3.5em;">Bracelet and fillet, ring and veil.</span><br /> +<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">'You are sister to the mountains now,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 3.5em;">And sister to the day and night;</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">Sister to God.' And on her brow</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 3.5em;">She kissed her thrice and left her sight."</span><br /> +</p> + +<p>The voice in each case is that of a prophet rather than that of a reed +shaken by the wind, or an Æolian harp played upon by the same.</p> + + +<p class="left"><i><b>March, 1895. Second Thoughts.</b></i></p> + +<p>I have to add that, apart from the beautiful language in which they +are presented, Mr. Davidson's doctrines do not appeal to me. I cannot +accept his picture of the poet's as "a soulless life ... wherein the +foulest things may loll at ease beside the loveliest." It seems to me +at least as obligatory on a poet as on other men to keep his garden +weeded and his conscience active. Indeed, I believe some asceticism of +soul to be a condition of all really great poetry. Also Mr. Davidson +appears to be confusing charity with an approbation of things in the +strict sense damnable when he makes the Mother of Christ abet a Nun +whose wanderings have no nobler excuse <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_331" id="Page_331">Pg 331</a></span>than a carnal desire—<i>savoir +enfin ce que c'est un homme</i>. Between forgiving a lapsed man or woman +and abetting the lapse I now, in a cooler hour, see an immense, an +essential, moral difference. But I confess that the foregoing paper +was written while my sense of this difference was temporarily blinded +under the spell of Mr. Davidson's beautiful verse.</p> + +<p>It may still be that his Nun had some nobler motive than I am able, +after two or three readings of the ballad, to discover. In that case I +can only ask pardon for my obtuseness.</p> + + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_332" id="Page_332">Pg 332</a></span></p> +<h2><a name="BJORNSTERNE_BJORNSON" id="BJORNSTERNE_BJORNSON"></a>BJÖRNSTERNE BJÖRNSON</h2> + + +<p class="left"><i><b>June 1, 1895. Björnson's First Manner.</b></i></p> + +<p>I see that the stories promised in Mr. Heinemann's new series of +translations of Björnson are <i>Synnövé Solbakken</i>, <i>Arne</i>, <i>A Happy +Boy</i>, <i>The Fisher Maiden</i>, <i>The Bridal March</i>, <i>Magnhild</i>, and +<i>Captain Mansana</i>. The first, <i>Synnövé Solbakken</i>, appeared in 1857. +The others are dated thus:—<i>Arne</i> in 1858, <i>A Happy Boy</i> in 1860, +<i>The Fisher Maiden</i> in 1868, <i>The Bridal March</i> in 1873, <i>Magnhild</i> in +1877, and <i>Captain Mansana</i> in 1879. There are some very significant +gaps here, the most important being the eight years' gap between <i>A +Happy Boy</i> and <i>The Fisher Maiden</i>. Again, after 1879 Björnson ceased +to write novels for a while, returning to the charge in 1884 with +<i>Flags are Flying in Town and Haven</i>, and following up with <i>In God's +Way</i>, 1889. Translations of these two novels have also been published +by Mr. Heinemann (the former under an altered title, <i>The Heritage of</i> +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_333" id="Page_333">Pg 333</a></span><i>the Kurts</i>) and, to use Mr. Gosse's words, are the works, by which +Björnson is best known to the present generation of Englishmen. "They +possess elements which have proved excessively attractive to certain +sections of our public; indeed, in the case of <i>In God's Way</i>, a novel +which was by no means successful in its own country at its original +publication, has enjoyed an aftermath of popularity in Scandinavia, +founded on reflected warmth from its English admirers."</p> + +<p>Taking, then, Björnson's fiction apart from his other writings (with +which I confess myself unacquainted), we find that it falls into three +periods, pretty sharply divided. The earliest is the idyllic period, +pure and simple, and includes <i>Synnövé</i>, <i>Arne</i>, and <i>A Happy Boy</i>. +Then with <i>The Fisher Maiden</i> we enter on a stage of transition. It is +still the idyll; but it grows self-conscious, elaborate, confused by +the realism that was coming into fashion all over Europe; and the +trouble and confusion grow until we reach <i>Magnhild</i>. With <i>Flags are +Flying</i> and <i>In God's Way</i> we reach a third stage—the stage of +realism, some readers would say. I should not agree. But these tales +cer<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_334" id="Page_334">Pg 334</a></span>tainly differ remarkably from their predecessors. They are much +longer, to begin with; in them, too, realism at length preponderates; +and they are probably as near to pure realism as Björnson will ever +get.</p> + +<p>If asked to label these three periods, I should call them the periods +of (1) Simplicity, (2) Confusion, (3) Dire Confusion.</p> + +<p>I speak, of course, as a foreigner, obliged to read Björnson in +translations. But perhaps the disability is not so important as it +seems at first sight. Translations cannot hide Björnson's genius; nor +obscure the truth that his genius is essentially idyllic. Now if one +form of literary expression suffers more than another by translation +it is the idyll. Its bloom is peculiarly delicate; its freshness +peculiarly quick to disappear under much handling of any kind. But all +the translations leave <i>Arne</i> a masterpiece, and <i>Synnövé</i> and <i>The +Happy Boy</i>.</p> + +<p>How many artists have been twisted from their natural bent by the long +vogue of "naturalism" we shall never know. We must make <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_335" id="Page_335">Pg 335</a></span>the best of +the great works which have been produced under its influence, and be +content with that. But we may say with some confidence that Björnson's +genius was unfortunate in the date of its maturity. He was born on the +8th of December, 1832, in a lonely farmhouse among the mountains, at +the head of the long valley called Osterdalen; his father being priest +of Kvikne parish, one of the most savage in all Norway. After six +years the family removed to Naesset, in the Romsdal, "a spot as +enchanting and as genial as Kvikne is the reverse." Mr. Gosse, who +prefaces Mr. Heinemann's new series with a study of Björnson's +writings, quotes a curious passage in which Björnson records the +impression of physical beauty made upon his childish mind by the +physical beauty of Naesset:—</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>"Here in the parsonage of Naesset—one of the loveliest places in +Norway, where the land lies broadly spreading where two fjords +meet, with the green braeside above it, with waterfalls and +farmhouses on the opposite shore, with billowy meadows and cattle +away towards the foot of the valley, and, far overhead, along the +line of the fjord, mountains shooting promontory after promontory +out into the lake, a big farmhouse at the extremity of each—here +in the parsonage of Naesset, where I would stand at the close of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_336" id="Page_336">Pg 336</a></span> +the day and gaze at the sunlight playing over mountain and +fjord, until I wept, as though I had done something wrong; and +where I, descending on my snow-shoes into some valley, would +pause as though bewitched by a loveliness, by a longing, which I +had not the power to explain, but which was so great that above +the highest ecstasy of joy I would feel the deepest apprehension +and distress—here in the parsonage of Naesset were awakened my +earliest sensations."</p></div> + +<p>The passage is obviously important. And Björnson shows how much +importance he attaches to the experience by introducing it, or +something like it, time after time into his stories. Readers of <i>In +God's Way</i>—the latest of the novels under discussion—will remember +its opening chapter well.</p> + +<p>It was good fortune indeed that a boy of such gifts should pass his +early boyhood in such surroundings. Nor did the luck end here. While +the young Björnson accumulated these impressions, the peasant-romance, +or idyll of country life, was taking its place and growing into favor +as one of the most beautiful forms of modern prose-fiction. Immermann +wrote <i>Der Oberhof</i> in 1839. Weill and Auerbach took up the running in +1841 and 1843. George Sand followed, and Fritz Reuter. Björn<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_337" id="Page_337">Pg 337</a></span>son began +to write in 1856. <i>Synnövé Solbakken</i> and <i>Arne</i> came in on the high +flood of this movement. "These two stories," writes Mr. Gosse, "seem +to me to be almost perfect; they have an enchanting lyrical quality, +without bitterness or passion, which I look for elsewhere in vain in +the prose literature of the second half of the century." To my mind, +without any doubt, they and <i>A Happy Boy</i> are the best work Björnson +has ever done in fiction, or is ever likely to do. For they are +simple, direct, congruous; all of one piece as a flower is of a piece +with its root. And never since has Björnson written a tale altogether +of one piece.</p> + +<p class="left"><i><b>His later Manner.</b></i></p> + +<p>For here the luck ended. All over Europe there began to spread +influences that may have been good for some artists, but were (we may +say) peculiarly injurious to so <i>naïf</i> and, at the same time, so +personal a writer as Björnson. I think another age will find much the +same cause to mourn over Daudet when it compares his later novels with +the promise of <i>Lettres de Mon Moulin</i> and <i>Le Petit Chose</i>. +Naturalism demands nothing more severely than an impersonal treatment +of its themes. Of three very personal and romantic writers, <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_338" id="Page_338">Pg 338</a></span>our own +Stevenson escaped the pit into which both Björnson and Daudet +stumbled. You may say the temptation came later to him. But the +temptation to follow an European fashion does, as a rule, befall a +Briton last of all men, for reasons of which we need not feel proud: +and the date of Mr. Hardy's stumbling is fairly recent, after all. +Björnson, at any rate, began very soon to be troubled. Between 1864 +and 1874, from his thirty-second to his forty-second year, his +invention seemed, to some extent, paralyzed. <i>The Fisher Maiden</i>, the +one story written during that time, starts as beautifully as <i>Arne</i>; +but it grows complicated and introspective: the psychological +experiences of the stage-struck heroine are not in the same key as the +opening chapters. Passing over nine years, we find <i>Magnhild</i> much +more vague and involved—</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>"Here he is visibly affected by French models, and by the methods +of the naturalists, but he is trying to combine them with his own +simpler traditions of rustic realism.... The author felt himself +greatly moved by fermenting ideas and ambitions which he had not +completely mastered.... There is a kind of uncomfortable +discrepancy between the scene and the style, a breath of Paris +and the boulevards blowing through the pine-trees of a +puritanical Nor<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_339" id="Page_339">Pg 339</a></span>wegian village.... But the book is a most +interesting link between the early peasant-stories and the great +novels of his latest period."</p></div> + +<p>Well, of these same "great novels"—of <i>Flags are Flying</i> and <i>In +God's Way</i>—people must speak as they think. They seem to me the +laborious productions of a man forcing himself still further and +further from his right and natural bent. In them, says Mr. Gosse, +"Björnson returns, in measure, to the poetical elements of his youth. +He is now capable again, as for instance in the episode of Ragni's +symbolical walk in the woodlands, <i>In God's Way</i>, of passages of pure +idealism." Yes, he returns—"in measure." He is "capable of idyllic +passages." In other words, his nature reasserts itself, and he remains +an imperfect convert. "He has striven hard to be a realist, and at +times he has seemed to acquiesce altogether in the naturalistic +formula, but in truth he has never had anything essential in common +with M. Zola." In other words, he has fallen between two stools. He +has tried to expel nature with a pitchfork and still she runs back +upon him. He has put his hand to the plough and has looked back: or +(if you take my view of "the naturalistic formula") he has sinned, but +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_340" id="Page_340">Pg 340</a></span>has not sinned with his whole heart. For to produce a homogeneous +story, either the acquired Zola or the native Björnson must have been +cast out utterly.</p> + +<p class="left"><i><b>Value of Early Impressions to a Novelist.</b></i></p> + +<p>I have quoted an example of the impressions of Björnson's childhood. I +do not think critics have ever quite realized the extent to which +writers of fiction—especially those who use a personal style—depend +upon the remembered impressions of childhood. Such impressions—no +matter how fantastic—are an author's firsthand stock: and in using +them he comes much closer to nature than when he collects any number +of scientifically approved data to maintain some view of life which he +has derived from books. Compare <i>Flags are Flying</i> with <i>Arne</i>, and +you will see my point. The longer book is ten times as realistic in +treatment, and about one-tenth as true to life.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_341" id="Page_341">Pg 341</a></span></p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="MR_GEORGE_MOORE" id="MR_GEORGE_MOORE"></a>MR. GEORGE MOORE</h2> + +<p class="left"><i><b>March 31, 1894. "Esther Waters."</b></i></p> + +<p>It is good, after all, to come across a novel written by a man who can +write a novel. We have been much in the company of the Amateur of +late, and I for one am very weary of him—weary of his preposterous +goings-out and comings-in, of his smart ineptitudes, of his solemn +zeal in reforming the decayed art of fiction, of his repeated failures +to discover beneficence in all those institutions, from the Common Law +of England to the Scheme of the Universe, which have managed to leave +him and his aspirations out of count. I am weary of him and of his +deceased wife's sister, and of their fell determination to discover +each other's soul in a bottle of hay. Above all, I am weary of his +writings, because he cannot write, neither has he the humility to sit +down and learn.</p> + +<p>Mr. George Moore, on the other hand, has steadily labored to make +himself a fine artist, and his training has led him through many +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_342" id="Page_342">Pg 342</a></span>strange places. I should guess that among living novelists few have +started with so scant an equipment. As far as one can tell he had, to +begin with, neither a fertile invention nor a subtle dramatic +instinct, nor an accurate ear for language. A week ago I should have +said this very confidently: after reading <i>Esther Waters</i> I say it +less confidently, but believe it to be true, nevertheless. Mr. Moore +has written novels that are full of faults. These faults have been +exposed mercilessly, for Mr. Moore has made many enemies. But he has +always possessed an artistic conscience and an immense courage. He +answered his critics briskly enough at the time, but an onlooker of +common sagacity could perceive that the really convincing answer was +held in reserve—that, as they say in America, Mr. Moore "allowed" he +was going to write a big novel one of these days, and meanwhile we had +better hold our judgment upon Mr. Moore's capacity open to revision.</p> + +<p>What, then, is to be said of <i>Esther Waters</i>, this volume of a modest +377 pages, upon which Mr. Moore has been at work for at least two +years?<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_343" id="Page_343">Pg 343</a></span></p> + +<p class="left"><i><b>"Esther" and Mr. Hardy's "Tess."</b></i></p> + +<p>Well, in the first place, I say, without hesitation, that <i>Esther +Waters</i> is the most important novel published in England during these +two years. We have been suffering from the Amateur during that period, +and no doubt (though it seems hard) every nation has the Amateur it +deserves. To find a book to compare with <i>Esther Waters</i> we must go +back to December, 1891, and to Mr. Hardy's <i>Tess of the +D'Urbervilles</i>. It happens that a certain similarity in the motives of +these two stories makes comparison easy. Each starts with the +seduction of a young girl; and each is mainly concerned with her +subsequent adventures. From the beginning the advantage of probability +is with the younger novelist. Mr. Moore's "William Latch" is a +thoroughly natural figure, and remains a natural figure to the end of +the book: an uneducated man and full of failings, but a man always, +and therefore to be forgiven by the reader only a little less readily +than Esther herself forgives him. Mr. Hardy's "Alec D'Urberville" is a +grotesque and violent lay figure, a wholly incredible cad. Mr. Hardy, +by killing Tess's child, takes away the one means by which his heroine +could have been led to return to D'Urberville <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_344" id="Page_344">Pg 344</a></span>without any loss of the +reader's sympathy. Mr. Moore allows Esther's child to live, and thus +has at hand the material for one of the most beautiful stories of +maternal love ever imagined by a writer. I dislike extravagance of +speech, and would run my pen through these words could I remember, in +any novel I have read, a more heroic story than this of Esther Waters, +a poor maid-of-all-work, without money, friends, or character, +fighting for her child against the world, and in the end dragging +victory out of the struggle. In spite of the Æschylean gloom in which +Mr. Hardy wraps the story of Tess, I contend that Esther's fight is, +from end to end, the more heroic.</p> + +<p>Also Esther's story seems to me informed with a saner philosophy of +life. There is gloom in her story; and many of the circumstances are +sordid enough; but throughout I see the recognition that man and woman +can at least improve and dignify their lot in this world. Many people +believe <i>Tess</i> to be the finest of its author's achievements. A +devoted admirer of Mr. Hardy's genius, I decline altogether to +consent. To my mind, among recent developments of the English novel +nothing is more <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_345" id="Page_345">Pg 345</a></span>lamentable than the manner in which this +distinguished writer has allowed himself of late to fancy that the +riddles of life are solved by pulling mouths at Providence (or +whatever men choose to call the Supreme Power) and depicting it as a +savage and omnipotent bully, directing human affairs after the fashion +of a practical joker fresh from a village ale-house. For to this +teaching his more recent writings plainly tend; and alike in <i>Tess</i> +and <i>Life's Little Ironies</i> the part played by the "President of the +Immortals" is no sublimer—save in the amount of force exerted—than +that of a lout who pulls a chair suddenly from under an old woman. +Now, by wedding Necessity with uncouth Jocularity, Mr. Hardy may have +found an hypothesis that solves for him all the difficulties of life. +I am not concerned in this place to deny that it may be the true +explanation. I have merely to point out that art and criticism must +take some time in getting accustomed to it, and that meanwhile the +traditions of both are so far agreed in allowing a certain amount of +free will to direct the actions of men and women that a tale which +should be all necessity and no free will would, in effect, be +necessity's own contrary—a merely wanton freak.</p> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_346" id="Page_346">Pg 346</a></span></p><p>For, in effect, it comes to this:—The story of Tess, in which +attention is so urgently directed to the hand of Destiny, is not felt +to be inevitable, but freakish. The story of Esther Waters, in which a +poor servant-girl is allowed to grapple with her destiny and, after a +fashion, to defeat it, is felt (or has been felt by one reader, at any +rate) to be absolutely inevitable. To reconcile us to the black flag +above Wintoncester prison as to the appointed end of Tess's career, a +curse at least as deep as that of Pelops should have been laid on the +D'Urberville family. Tess's curse does not lie by nature on all women; +nor on all Dorset women; nor on all Dorset women who have illegitimate +children; for a very few even of these are hanged. We feel that we are +not concerned with a type, but with an individual case deliberately +chosen by the author; and no amount of talk about the "President of +the Immortals" and his "Sport" can persuade us to the contrary. With +Esther Waters, on the other hand, we feel we are assisting in the +combat of a human life against its natural destiny; we perceive that +the woman has a chance of winning; we are happy when she wins; and we +are the better for helping her with our sym<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_347" id="Page_347">Pg 347</a></span>pathy in the struggle. +That is why, using the word in the Aristotelian sense, I maintain that +<i>Esther Waters</i> is a more "philosophical" work than <i>Tess</i>.</p> + +<p>The atmosphere of the low-class gambling in which Mr. Moore's +characters breathe and live is no doubt a result of his careful study +of Zola. It is, as everyone knows, M. Zola's habit to take one of the +many pursuits of men—from War and Religion down to Haberdashery and +Veterinary Surgery—and expand it into an atmosphere for a novel. But +in Mr. Moore's case it may safely be urged that gambling on racehorses +actually is the atmosphere in which a million or two of Londoners pass +their lives. Their hopes, their very chances of a satisfying meal, +hang from day to day on the performances of horses they have never +seen. I cannot profess to judge with what accuracy Mr. Moore has +reproduced the niceties of handicapping, bookmaking, place-betting, +and the rest, the fluctuations of the gambling market, and their +causes. I gather that extraordinary care has been bestowed upon these +details; but criticism here must be left to experts, I only know that, +not once or twice only in the course of <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_348" id="Page_348">Pg 348</a></span>his narrative, Mr. Moore +makes us study the odds against a horse almost as eagerly as if it +carried our own money: because it does indeed carry for a while the +destiny of Esther Waters—and yet for a while only. We feel that, +whichever horse wins the ultimate issues are inevitable.</p> + +<p>It will be gathered from what I have said that Mr. Moore has vastly +outstripped his own public form, even as shown in <i>A Mummer's Wife</i>. +But it may be as well to set down, beyond possibility of +misapprehension, my belief that in <i>Esther Waters</i> we have the most +artistic, the most complete, and the most inevitable work of fiction +that has been written in England for at least two years. Its plainness +of speech may offend many. It may not be a favorite in the circulating +libraries or on the bookstalls. But I shall be surprised if it fails +of the place I predict for it in the esteem of those who know the true +aims of fiction and respect the conscientious practice of that great +art.</p> + + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_349" id="Page_349">Pg 349</a></span></p> +<h2><a name="MRS_MARGARET_L_WOODS" id="MRS_MARGARET_L_WOODS"></a>MRS. MARGARET L. WOODS</h2> + + +<p class="left"><i><b>Nov. 28, 1891. "Esther Vanhomrigh."</b></i></p> + +<p>Among considerable novelists who have handled historical +subjects—that is to say, who have brought into their story men and +women who really lived and events which have really taken place—you +will find one rule strictly observed, and no single infringement of it +that has been followed by success. This rule is that the historical +characters and events should be mingled with poetical characters and +events, and <i>made subservient to them</i>. And it holds of books as +widely dissimilar as <i>La Vicomte de Bragelonne</i> and <i>La Guerre et la +Paix</i>; <i>The Abbot</i> and <i>John Inglesant</i>. In history Louis XIV. and +Napoleon are the most salient men of their time: in fiction they fall +back and give prominence to D'Artagnan and the Prince André. They may +be admirably painted, but unless they take a subordinate place in the +composition, the artist scores a failure.</p> + +<p class="left"><i><b>A Disability of "Historical Fiction."</b></i></p> + +<p>The reason of this is, of course, very <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_350" id="Page_350">Pg 350</a></span>simple. If an artist is to +have full power over his characters, to know their hearts, to govern +their emotions and sway them at his will, they must be his own +creatures and the life in them derived from him. He must have an +entirely free hand with them. But the personages of history have an +independent life of their own, and with them his hand is tied. +Thackeray has a freehold on the soul of Beatrix Esmond, but he takes +the soul of Marlborough furnished, on a short lease, and has to render +an account to the Muse of History. He is lord of one and mere occupier +of the other. Nor will it do to say that an artist by sympathetic and +intelligent study can master the motives of any group of historical +characters sufficiently for his purpose. For, since they have +anticipated him and lived their lives without his help, they leave him +but a choice between two poor courses. If he narrate their lives and +adventures as they really befel, he is writing history. If, on the +other hand, he disregard historical accuracy, he might just as well +have used another set of characters or have given his characters other +names. Indeed, it would be much better. For if Alcibiades went as a +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_351" id="Page_351">Pg 351</a></span>matter of fact to Sparta and as a matter of fiction you make him stay +at home, you merely advertise to the world that there was something in +Alcibiades you don't understand. And if you are writing about an +Alcibiades whom you don't quite understand, you will save your readers +some risk of confusion by calling him Charicles.</p> + +<p>Now Jonathan Swift and Esther Johnson and Esther Vanhomrigh really +lived; and by living, became historical. But Mrs. Woods sets forth to +translate them back into fiction, not as subordinate characters, but +as protagonists. She has chosen to work within the difficult limits I +have indicated. But there are others which might easily have cramped +her hand even more closely.</p> + +<p class="left"><i><b>A Tale of Passion to be told in Terms of Reason.</b></i></p> + +<p>The story of Swift and Esther Vanhomrigh is a story of passion, and +runs on the confines of madness. But it happened in the Age of Reason. +Doubtless men and women felt madness and passion in that age: +doubtless, too, they spoke of madness and passion, but not in their +literature. And now that the lips are dust and the fiery conversations +lost, Mrs. <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_352" id="Page_352">Pg 352</a></span>Woods has only their written prose to turn to for help. To +satisfy the pedant she must tell her story of passion in terms of +reason. In one respect Thackeray had a more difficult task in +<i>Esmond</i>; for he aimed to make his book a reflection, in every page +and line, of the days of Queen Anne. Not only had he, like Mrs. Woods, +to make his characters and their talk consistent with that age; but +every word of the story is supposed to be told by a gentleman of that +age, whereas Mrs. Woods in her narrative prose may use the language of +her own century. On the other hand, the story of <i>Esmond</i> deals with +comparatively temperate emotions. There is nothing in Thackeray's +masterpiece to strain the prose of the Age of Reason. It is pitched in +the key of those times, and the prose of those times is sufficient and +exactly sufficient for it. That it should be so is all the more to +Thackeray's honor, for the artist is to be praised in the conception +as duly as in the execution of his work. But, the conception being +granted, I think <i>Esther Vanhomrigh</i> must have been a harder book than +<i>Esmond</i> to write.</p> + +<p>For even the prose of Swift himself is in<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_353" id="Page_353">Pg 353</a></span>adequate to Swift. He was a +great and glaring anomaly who never fell into perspective with his age +while he lived, and can hardly be pulled into perspective now with the +drawing materials which are left to us. Men of like abundant genius +are rarely measurable in language used by their contemporaries; and +this is perhaps the reason why they disquiet their contemporaries so +confoundedly. Where in the books written by tye-bewigged gentlemen, or +in the letters written by Swift himself, can you find words to explain +that turbulent and potent man? He bursts the capacity of Addison's +phrase and Pope's couplet. He was too big for a bishop's chair, and +now, if a novelist attempt to clothe him in the garments of his time, +he splits them down the back.</p> + +<p>It is in meeting this difficulty that Mrs. Woods seems to me to +display the courage and intelligence of a true artist. She is bound to +be praised by many for her erudition; but perhaps she will let me +thank her for having trodden upon her erudition. In the first volume +it threatened to overload and sink her. But no sooner does she begin +to catch the wind of her subject than she tosses all this <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_354" id="Page_354">Pg 354</a></span>superfluous +cargo overboard. From the point where passion creeps into the story +this learning is carried lightly and seems to be worn unconsciously. +Instead of cataloguing the age, she comprehends it.</p> + +<p>To me the warmth and pathos she packs into her eighteenth-century +conversation, without modernizing it thereby, is something amazing. +For this alone the book would be notable; and it can be proved to come +of divination, simply because nothing exists from which she could have +copied it. More obvious, though not more wonderful, is her feminine +gift of rendering a scene vivid for us by describing it, not as it is, +but as it excites her own intelligence or feelings. Let me explain +myself: for it is the sorry fate of a book so interesting and +suggestive as <i>Esther Vanhomrigh</i> to divert the critic from praise of +the writer to consider a dozen problems which the writer raises.</p> + +<p class="left"><i><b>Women and "le don pittoresque."</b></i></p> + +<p>Well, then, M. Jules Lemaître has said somewhere—and with +considerable truth—that women when they write have not <i>le don +pittoresque</i>. By this he means that they do not strive to depict a +scene exactly as it strikes upon <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_355" id="Page_355">Pg 355</a></span>their senses, but as they perceive +it after testing its effect upon their emotions and experience. +Suppose now we have to describe a moonlit night in May. Mrs. Woods +begins as a man might begin, thus—</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>"The few and twinkling lights disappeared from the roadside +cottages. The full white moon was high in the cloudless deep of +heaven, and the sounds of the warm summer night were all about +their path; the splash of leaping fish, the sleepy chirrup of +birds disturbed by some night-wandering creature; the song of the +reed-warbler, the persistent churring of the night jar, and the +occasional hoot of the owl, far off on some ancestral tree."</p></div> + +<p>Now all this, except, perhaps, the "ancestral" tree, is a direct +picture, and with it some men might stop. But no woman could stop +here, and Mrs. Woods does not. She goes on—</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>"It was such an exquisite May night, full of the mystery and +beauty of moonlight and the scent of hawthorn, as makes the earth +an Eden in which none but lovers should walk—happy lovers or +young poets, whose large eyes, so blind in the daylight world of +men, can see God walking in the Garden." ...</p></div> + +<p>You see it is sensation no longer, but reflection and emotion.</p> + +<p>Now I am only saying that women cannot <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_356" id="Page_356">Pg 356</a></span>avoid this. I am not +condemning it. On the contrary, it is beautiful in Mrs. Woods's hand, +and sometimes luminously true. Take this, for instance, of the +interior of a city church:—</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>"It had none of the dim impressiveness of a mediæval church, that +seems reared with a view to Heaven rather than Earth, and whose +arches, massive or soaring, neither gain nor lose by the +accidental presence of ephemeral human creatures below them. No, +the building seemed to cry out for a congregation, and the mind's +eye involuntarily peopled it with its Sunday complement of +substantial citizens and their families."</p></div> + +<p>This is not a picturesque but a reflective description. Yet how it +illuminates! If we had never thought of it before we know now, once +and for all, the essential difference between a Gothic church and one +of Wren's building. And further, since Mrs. Woods is writing of an age +that slighted Gothic for the architecture of Wren and his followers, +we get a brilliant side-flash to help our comprehension. It is a hint +only, but it assures us as we read that we are in the eighteenth +century, when men and women were of more account than soaring +aspirations.</p> + +<p>And the conclusion is that if Mrs. Woods could not conquer the +difficulties which beset <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_357" id="Page_357">Pg 357</a></span>any attempt to make protagonists of two +historical characters, if she was obliged to follow the facts to the +detriment of composition, she has vitalized and recreated a dead age +in a fashion to make us all wonder. <i>Esther Vanhomrigh</i> is a great +feat, and its authoress is one of the few of whom almost anything may +be expected.</p> + +<hr style='width: 45%;' /> + +<p class="left"><i><b>Jan. 26, 1895. "The Vagabonds."</b></i></p> + +<p>In her latest book,<a name="FNanchor_A_18" id="FNanchor_A_18"></a><a href="#Footnote_A_18" class="fnanchor">[A]</a> Mrs. Woods returns to that class of life—so +far as life may be classified—which she handled so memorably in <i>A +Village Tragedy</i>. There are differences, though. As the titles +indicate, the life in the earlier story was stationary: in the latter +it is nomadic—the characters are artistes in a travelling show. This +at once suggests comparison with M. Edmond de Goncourt's <i>Les Frères +Zemganno</i>; or rather a contrast: for the two stories, conceived in +very similar surroundings, differ in at least two vital respects.</p> + + +<p class="left"><i><b>Compared with "Les Frères Zemganno."</b></i></p> + +<p>For what, in short, is the story of <i>Les Frères Zemganno</i>? Two +brothers, Gianni and Nello, <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_358" id="Page_358">Pg 358</a></span>tumblers in a show that travels round the +village fairs and small country towns of France, are seized with an +ambition to excel in their calling. They make their way to England, +where they spend some years clowning in various circuses. Then they +return to make their <i>debut</i> in Paris. Gianni has invented at length a +trick act, a feat that will make the brothers famous. They are +performing it for the first time in public, when a circus girl, who +has a spite against Nello, causes him to fall and break both his legs. +He can perform no more: and henceforward, as he watches his brother +performing, a strange jealousy awakes and grows in him, causing him +agony whenever Gianni touches a trapèze. Gianni discovers this and +renounces his art.</p> + +<p>Now here in the first place it is to be noted that the whole story +depends upon the circus profession, and the brothers' love for it and +desire to excel in it. The catastrophe; Nello's jealousy; Gianni's +self-sacrifice; are inseparable from the atmosphere of the book. The +catastrophe is a professional catastrophe; the jealousy a professional +jealousy; the sacrifice a sacrifice of a profession. And in the second +place we <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_359" id="Page_359">Pg 359</a></span>know, even if we had not his own word for it, that M. de +Goncourt—contrary to his habit—deliberately etherealized the +atmosphere of the circus-ring and idealized the surroundings. He calls +his tale an essay in poetic realism, "Je me suis trouvé dans une de +ces heures de la vie, vieillissantes, maladives, lâches devant le +travail poignant et angoisseux de mes autres livres, en un état de +l'âme où la vérité trop vraie m'était antipathique à moi aussi!—et +j'ai fait cette fois de l'imagination dans du rêve mêlé à du +souvenir." We know from the Goncourt Journals exactly what is meant by +"du souvenir." We know that M. Edmond de Goncourt is but translating +into the language of the circus-ring and symbolizing in the story of +Gianni and Nello the story of his own literary collaboration with his +brother Jules—a collaboration of quite singular intimacy, that ceased +only with Jules's death in 1870. Possibly, as M. Zola once suggested, +M. Edmond de Goncourt did at first intend to depict the circus-life, +after his wont, in true "naturalistic" manner, softening and +extenuating nothing: but "par une délicatesse qui s'explique, il a +reculé devant le milieu brutal de cirques, devant certaines laideurs +et certaines <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_360" id="Page_360">Pg 360</a></span>monstruosités des personnages qu'il choisis-sait." The +two facts remain that in <i>Les Frères Zemganno</i> M. de Goncourt (1) made +professional life in a circus the very blood and tissue of his story; +and (2) that he softened the details of that life, and to a certain +degree idealized it.</p> + +<p>Turning to Mrs. Woods's book and taking these two points in reverse +order, we find to begin with that she idealizes nothing and softens +next to nothing. Where she does soften, she softens only for literary +effect—to give a word its due force, or a picture its proper values. +She does not, for instance, accurately report the oaths and +blasphemies:—</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>"The tents and booths of the show were disappearing rapidly like +stage scenery. The red-faced Manager, Joe, and several others in +authority, ran hither and thither shouting their orders to a +crowd of workmen in jackets and fustian trousers, who were piling +rolls of canvas, and heavy chests, and mountains of planks and +long vibrating poles, on the great waggons. Others were +harnessing the big powerful horses to the carts, horses that were +mostly white, and wore large red collars. The scene was so busy, +so full of movement, that it would have been exhilarating had not +the fresh morning air been full of senseless blasphemies and +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_361" id="Page_361">Pg 361</a></span>other deformities of speech, uttered casually and constantly, +without any apparent consciousness on the part of the speakers +that they were using strong language. Probably the lady who +dropped toads and vipers from her lips whenever she opened them +came in process of time to consider them the usual accompaniments +of conversation."</p></div> + +<p>There are a great many reasons against copious profanity of speech. +Here you have the artistic reason, and, by implication, that which +forbids its use in literature—namely, its ineffectiveness. But though +she selects, Mrs. Woods does not refine. She exhibits the life of the +travelling show in its habitual squalor as well as in its occasional +brightness. How she has managed it passes my understanding: but her +book leaves the impression of confident familiarity with this kind of +life, of knowledge not merely accumulated, but assimilated. Knowing as +we do that Mrs. Woods was not brought up in a circus, we infer that +she must have spent much labor in research: but, taken by itself, her +book permits no such inference. The truth is that in the case of a +genuine artist no line can be drawn between knowledge and imagination. +Probably—almost certainly—Mrs. Woods has to a remarkable degree that +gift which Mr. Henry James describes as "the <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_362" id="Page_362">Pg 362</a></span>faculty which when you +give it an inch takes an ell, and which for an artist is a much +greater source of strength than any accident of residence or of place +in the social scale ... the power to guess the unseen from the seen, +to trace the implication of things, to judge the whole piece by the +pattern; the condition of feeling life in general so completely that +you are well on your way to knowing a particular corner of it." Be +this as it may, Mrs. Woods has written a novel which, for mastery of +an unfamiliar <i>milieu</i>, is almost fit to stand beside <i>Esther Waters</i>. +I say "almost": for, although Mrs. Woods's mastery is easier and less +conscious than Mr. Moore's, it neither goes so deep to the springs of +action nor bears so intimately on the conduct of the story. But of +this later.</p> + +<p>If one thing more than another convinces me that Mrs. Woods has +thoroughly realized these queer characters of hers, it is that she +makes them so much like other people. Whatever our profession may be, +we are generally silent upon the instincts that led us to adopt +it—unless, indeed, we happen to be writers and make a living out of +self-analysis. So these <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_363" id="Page_363">Pg 363</a></span>strollers are silent upon the attractiveness +of their calling. But they crave as openly as any of us for +distinction, and they worship "respectability" as heartily and +outspokenly as any of the country-folk for whose amusement they tumble +and pull faces. It is no small merit in this book that it reveals how +much and yet how very little divides the performers in the ring from +the audience in the sixpenny seats. I wish I had space to quote a +particularly fine passage—you will find it on pp. 72-74—in which +Mrs. Woods describes the progress of these motley characters through +Midland lanes on a fresh spring morning; the shambling white horses +with their red collars, the painted vans, the cages "where bears paced +uneasily and strange birds thrust uncouth heads out into the +sunshine," the two elephants and the camel padding through the dust +and brushing the dew off English hedges, the hermetically sealed +omnibus in which the artistes bumped and dozed, while the +wardrobe-woman, Mrs. Thompson, held forth undeterred on "those +advantages of birth, house-rent, and furniture, which made her +discomforts of real importance, whatever those of the other ladies in +the show might be."</p> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_364" id="Page_364">Pg 364</a></span></p><p>But in bringing her Vagabonds into relation with ordinary English +life, Mrs. Woods loses all, or nearly all, of that esoteric +professional interest which, at first sight, would seem the chief +reason for choosing circus people to write about. The story of <i>Les +Frères Zemganno</i> has, as I have said, this esoteric professional +interest. The story of <i>The Vagabonds</i> is the story of a husband and +of a young wife who does not love him, but discovers that she loves +another man—a story as old as the hills and common to every rank and +every calling. Mrs. Woods has made the husband a middle-aged clown, +the wife a girl with strict notions about respectability, and the +lover, Fritz, a handsome young German gymnast. But there was no +fundamental reason for this choice of professions. The tale might be +every bit as true of a grocer, and a grocer's wife, and a grocer's +assistant. Once or twice, indeed, in the earlier chapters we have +promise of a more peculiar story when we read of Mrs. Morris's +objection to seeing her husband play the clown. "No woman," she says, +"that hadn't been brought up to the business would like to see her +husband look like that." And of Joe Morris we read that he took an +artistic pride in his <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_365" id="Page_365">Pg 365</a></span>clowning. But there follows no serious struggle +between love and art—no such struggle, for instance, as Zola has +worked out to tragic issues in his <i>L'Œuvre</i>. Mrs. Morris's shame at +her husband's ridiculous appearance merely heightens the contrast in +her eyes between him and the handsome young gymnast.</p> + +<p>But though the circus-business is not essential, Mrs. Woods makes most +effective use of it. I will select one notable illustration of this. +When Mrs. Morris at length makes her confession—it is in the wagon, +and at night—the unhappy husband wraps her up carefully in her bed +and creeps away with his grief to the barn where Chang, a ferocious +elephant amenable only to him, has been stabled:—</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>"He opened the door; the barn was pitch dark, but as he entered +he could hear the noise of the chain which had been fastened to +the elephant's legs being suddenly dragged. He spoke to Chang, +and the noise ceased. Then running up a short ladder which was +close to the door, he threw himself down on the straw and stared +up into the darkness, which to his aching eyes seemed spangled +with many colours. Presently he was startled by something warm +touching him on the face.</p> + +<p>"'Who's there?' he called out.</p> + +<p>"There was no answer, but the soft thing, something like a hand, +felt him cautiously and caressingly all over.</p> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_366" id="Page_366">Pg 366</a></span>"'Oh, it's you, Chang, my boy, is it?' said Joe. 'What! are you +glad to have me, old chappie? No humbug about yer, are yer sure? +No lies?'"</p></div> + +<p>The circus-business is employed again in the catastrophe: but, to my +mind, far less happily. In spite of very admirable writing, there +remains something ridiculous in the spectacle of an injured husband, +armed with a Winchester rifle and mounted on a frantic elephant, +pursuing his wife's lover by moonlight across an English common and +finally "treeing" him up a sign-post. Mrs. Woods, indeed, means it to +be grotesque: but I think it is something more.</p> + +<p>The problem of the story is the commonest in fiction. And when I add +that the injured husband has been married before and that his first +wife, honestly supposed to be dead, returns to threaten his happiness, +you will see that Mrs. Woods sets forth upon a path trodden by many +hundreds of thousands of incompetent feet. To start with such a +situation almost suggests bravado. If it be bravado, it is entirely +justified as the tale proceeds: for amid the crowd of failures Mrs. +Woods's solution wears the singular distinction of truth. That the +book <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_367" id="Page_367">Pg 367</a></span>is written in restrained and beautiful English goes without +saying: but the best tribute one can pay to the writing of it is to +say that its style and its truthfulness are at one. If complaint must +be made, it is the vulgar complaint against truth—that it leaves one +a trifle cold. A less perfect story might have aroused more emotion. +Yet I for one would not barter the pages that tell of Joe Morris's +final surrender of his wife—with their justness of imagination and +sobriety of speech—for any amount of pity and terror.</p> + +<p>A word on the few merely descriptive passages in the book. Mrs. +Woods's scene-painting has all a Frenchman's accomplishment with the +addition of that open-air feeling and intimate knowledge of the +phenomena of "out-of-doors" which a Frenchman seldom or never attains +to. Though not, perhaps, her strongest gift, it is the one by which +she stands most conspicuously above her contemporaries. The more +credit, then, that she uses it so temperately.</p> + +<div class="footnotes"><h3>FOOTNOTES:</h3> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_A_18" id="Footnote_A_18"></a><a href="#FNanchor_A_18"><span class="label">[A]</span></a> <i>The Vagabonds</i>. By Margaret L. Woods. London: Smith, +Elder & Co.</p></div> + +</div> + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_368" id="Page_368">Pg 368</a></span></p> +<h2><a name="MR_HALL_CAINE" id="MR_HALL_CAINE"></a>MR. HALL CAINE</h2> + + +<p class="left"><i><b>August 11, 1894. "The Manxman."</b></i></p> + +<p>Mr. Hall Caine's new novel <i>The Manxman</i> (London: William Heinemann) +is a big piece of work altogether. But, on finishing the tale, I +turned back to the beginning and read the first 125 pages over again, +and then came to a stop. I wish that portion of the book could be +dealt with separately. It cannot: for it but sets the problem in human +passion and conduct which the remaining 300 pages have to solve. +Nevertheless the temptation is too much for me.</p> + +<p>As one who thought he knew how good Mr. Hall Caine can be at his best, +I must confess to a shock of delight, or rather a growing sense of +delighted amazement, while reading those 125 pages. Yet the story is a +very simple one—a story of two friends and a woman. The two friends +are Philip Christian and Pete Quilliam: Philip talented, accomplished, +ambitious, <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_369" id="Page_369">Pg 369</a></span>of good family, and eager to win back the social position +which his father had lost by an imprudent marriage; Pete a nameless +boy—the bastard son of Philip's uncle and a gawky +country-girl—ignorant, brave, simple-minded, and incurably generous. +The boys have grown up together, and in love are almost more than +brothers when the time comes for them to part for a while—Philip +leaving home for school, while Pete goes as mill-boy to one Cæsar +Cregeen, who combined the occupations of miller and landlord of "The +Manx Fairy" public-house. And now enters the woman—a happy child when +first we make her acquaintance—in the shape of Katherine Cregeen, the +daughter of Pete's employer. With her poor simple Pete falls over head +and ears in love. Philip, too, when home for his holidays, is drawn by +the same dark eyes; but stands aside for his friend. Naturally, the +miller will not hear of Pete, a landless, moneyless, nameless, lad, as +a suitor for his daughter; and so Pete sails for Kimberley to make his +fortune, confiding Kitty to Philip's care.</p> + +<p>It seems that the task undertaken by Philip—that of watching over his +friend's sweetheart<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_370" id="Page_370">Pg 370</a></span>—is a familiar one in the Isle of Man, and he who +discharges it is known by a familiar name.</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>"They call him the <i>Dooiney Molla</i>—literally, the 'man-praiser'; +and his primary function is that of an informal, unmercenary, +purely friendly and philanthropic match-maker, introduced by the +young man to persuade the parents of the young woman that he is a +splendid fellow, with substantial possessions or magnificent +prospects, and entirely fit to marry her. But he has a secondary +function, less frequent, though scarcely less familiar; and it is +that of a lover by proxy, or intended husband by deputy, with +duties of moral guardianship over the girl while the man himself +is off 'at the herrings,' or away 'at the mackerel,' or abroad on +wider voyages."</p></div> + +<p>And now, of course, begins Philip Christian's ordeal: for Kitty +discovers that she loves him and not Pete, and he that he loves Kitty +madly. On the other hand there is the imperative duty to keep faith +with his absent friend; and more than this. His future is full of high +hope; the eyes of his countrymen and of the Governor himself are +beginning to fasten on him as the most promising youth in the island; +it is even likely that he will be made Deemster, and so win back all +the position that his father threw away. But to marry Kitty—even if +he can bring himself to break faith with Pete—will <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_371" id="Page_371">Pg 371</a></span>be to marry +beneath him, to repeat his father's disaster, and estrange the favor +of all the high "society" of the island. Therefore, even when the +first line of resistance is broken down by a report that Pete is dead, +Philip determines to cut himself free from the temptation. But the +girl, who feels that he is slipping away from her, now takes fate into +her own hands. It is the day of harvest-home—the "Melliah"—on her +father's farm. Philip has come to put an end to her hopes, and she +knows it. The "Melliah" is cut and the usual frolic begins:</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>"Then the young fellows went racing over the field, vaulting the +stooks, stretching a straw rope for the girls to jump over, +heightening and tightening it to trip them up, and slackening it +and twirling it to make them skip. And the girls were falling +with a laugh, and, leaping up again and flying off like the dust, +tearing their frocks and dropping their sun-bonnets as if the +barley-grains they had been reaping had got into their blood.</p> + +<p>"In the midst of this maddening frolic, while Cæsar and the +others were kneeling by the barley-stack, Kate snatched Philip's +hat from his head and shot like a gleam into the depths of the +glen.</p> + +<p>"Philip dragged up his coat by one of its arms and fled after +her."</p></div> + +<p>Here, then, in Sulby Glen, the girl stakes her <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_372" id="Page_372">Pg 372</a></span>last throw—the last +throw of every woman—and wins. It is the woman—a truly Celtic +touch—who wooes the man, and secures her love and, in the end, her +shame.</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>"When a good woman falls from honour, is it merely that she is +the victim of a momentary intoxication, of stress of passion, of +the fever of instinct? No. It is mainly that she is the slave of +the sweetest, tenderest, most spiritual, and pathetic of all +human fallacies—the fallacy that by giving herself to the man +she loves she attaches him to herself for ever. This is the real +betrayer of nearly all good women that are betrayed. It lies at +the root of tens of thousands of the cases that make up the +merciless story of man's sin and woman's weakness. Alas! it is +only the woman who clings the closer. The impulse of the man is +to draw apart. He must conquer it, or she is lost. Such is the +old cruel difference and inequality of man and woman as Nature +made them—the old trick, the old tragedy."</p></div> + +<p>And meanwhile Pete is not dead; but recovered, and coming home.</p> + +<p>Here, on p. 125, ends the second act of the drama: and the telling has +been quite masterly. The passage quoted above has hitherto been the +author's solitary comment. Everything has been presented in that fine +objective manner which is the triumph of story-telling. As <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_373" id="Page_373">Pg 373</a></span>I read, I +began to say to myself, "This is good"; and in a little while, "Ah, +but this is very good"; and at length, "But this is amazing. If he can +only keep this up, he will have written one of the finest novels of +his time." The whole story was laid out so easily; with such humor, +such apparent carelessness, such an instinct for the right stroke in +the right place, and no more than the right stroke; the big +scenes—Pete's love-making in the dawn and Kate's victory in Sulby +Glen—were so poetically conceived (I use the adverb in its strictest +sense) and so beautifully written; above all, the story remained so +true to the soil on which it was constructed. A sworn admirer of Mr. +Brown's <i>Betsy Lee</i> and <i>The Doctor</i> has no doubt great advantage over +other people in approaching <i>The Manxman</i>. Who, that has read his +<i>Fo'c's'le Yarns</i> worthily, can fail to feel kindly towards the little +island and its shy, home-loving folk? And—by what means I do not +know—Mr. Hall Caine has managed from time to time to catch Mr. +Brown's very humor and set it to shine on his page. The secret, I +suppose, is their common possession as Manxmen: and, like all the best +art, theirs is true to its country and its material.</p> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_374" id="Page_374">Pg 374</a></span></p><p>Pete comes home, suspecting no harm; still childish of heart and loud +of voice—a trifle too loud, by the way; his shouts begin to irritate +the reader, and the reader begins to feel how sorely they must have +irritated his wife: for the unhappy Kate is forced, after all, into +marrying Pete. And so the tragedy begins.</p> + +<p>I wish, with my heart, I could congratulate Mr. Hall Caine as warmly +upon the remainder of the book as upon its first two parts. He is too +sure an artist to miss the solution—the only adequate solution—of +the problem. The purification of Philip Christian and Kitty must come, +if at all, "as by fire"; and Mr. Hall Caine is not afraid to take us +through the deepest fire. No suffering daunts him—neither the anguish +of Kitty, writhing against her marriage with Pete, nor the desperate +pathos of Pete after his wife has run away, pretending to the +neighbors that she has only gone to Liverpool for her health, and +actually writing letters and addressing parcels to himself and posting +them from out-of-the-way towns to deceive the local postman; nor the +moral ruination of Philip, with whom Kitty is living in hiding; nor +his final redemption by the ordeal of a public confession before <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_375" id="Page_375">Pg 375</a></span>the +great company assembled to see him reach the height of worldly +ambition and be appointed governor of his native island.</p> + +<p>And yet—I have a suspicion that Mr. Hall Caine, who deals by +preference with the elemental emotions, would rejoice in the epithet +"Æschylean" applied to his work. The epithet would not be unwarranted: +but it is precisely when most consciously Æschylean that Mr. Hall +Caine, in my poor judgment, comes to grief. This is but to say that he +possesses the defects of his qualities. There is altogether too much +of the "Go to: let me be Titanic" about the book. Æschylus has grown a +trifle too well aware of his reputation, has taken to underscoring his +points, and tends to prolixity in consequence. Mr. Hall Caine has not +a little of Hugo's audacity, but, with it, not a little of Hugo's +diffuseness. Standing, like Destiny, with scourge lifted over the +naked backs of his two poor sinners, he spares them no single +stroke—not so much as a little one. Every detail that can possibly +heighten their suffering is brought out in its place, until we feel +that Life, after all, is more careless, and tell ourselves that Fate +does not measure out her <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_376" id="Page_376">Pg 376</a></span>revenge with an inch rule. We see the +machinery of pathos at work: and we are rather made incredulous than +moved when the machinery works so accurately that Philip is made to +betray Pete on the very night when Pete goes out to beat a big drum in +Philip's honor. Nor is this by any means the only harrowing +coincidence of the kind. Worse than this—for its effect upon us as a +work of art—our emotions are so flogged and out-tired by detail after +detail that they cannot rise at the last big fence, and so the scene +of Philip's confession in the Courthouse misses half its effect. It is +a fine scene. I am no bigoted admirer of Hawthorne—a very cold one, +indeed—and should be the last to say that the famous scene in <i>The +Scarlet Letter</i> cannot be improved upon. Nor do I make any doubt that, +as originally conceived by Mr. Hall Caine, the story had its duly +effective climax here. But still less do I doubt that the climax, and +therefore the whole story, would have been twice as impressive had the +book, from p. 125 onwards, contained just half its present number of +words. But whether this opinion be right or wrong, the book remains a +big book, and its story a beautiful story.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_377" id="Page_377">Pg 377</a></span></p> +<h2><a name="MR_ANTHONY_HOPE" id="MR_ANTHONY_HOPE"></a>MR. ANTHONY HOPE</h2> + + +<p class="left"><i><b>Oct. 27, 1894. "The God in the Car" and "The Indiscretion +of the Duchess."</b></i></p> + +<p>As I set down the titles of these two new stories by Mr. Anthony Hope, +it occurs to me that combined they would make an excellent title for a +third story yet to be written. For Mr. Hope's duchess, if by any +chance she found herself travelling with a god in a car, would +infallibly seize the occasion for a <i>tour de force</i> in charming +indiscretion. That the car would travel for some part of the distance +in that position of unstable equilibrium known to skaters as the +"outside edge" may, I think, be taken for granted. But far be it from +me to imagine bungling developments of the situation I here suggest to +Mr. Hope's singular and agreeable talents. Like Mr. Stevenson's +smatterer, who was asked, "What would be the result of putting a pound +of potassium in a pot of porter?" I content myself with anticipating +"that there would probably be a number of interesting bye-products."</p> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_378" id="Page_378">Pg 378</a></span></p><p>Be it understood that I suggest only a combination of the titles—not +of the two stories as Mr. Hope has written them: for these move on +levels altogether different. The constant reader of <i>The Speaker's</i> +"Causeries" will be familiar with the two propositions—not in the +least contradictory—that a novel should be true to life, and that it +is quite impossible for a novel to be true to life. He will also know +how they are reconciled. A story, of whatever kind, must follow life +at a certain remove. It is a good and consistent story if it keep at +that remove from first till last. Let us have the old tag once more:</p> + +<p> +<span style="margin-left: 11em;">"Servetur ad inum</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">Qualis ab incepto processerit, et sibi constet."</span><br /> +</p> + +<p>A good story and real life are such that, being produced in either +direction and to any extent, they never meet. The distance between the +parallels does not count: or rather, it is just a matter for the +author to choose. It is here that Mr. Howells makes his mistake, who +speaks contemptuously of Romance as <i>Puss in Boots</i>. <i>Puss in Boots</i> +is a masterpiece in its way, and in its way just as true to +life—<i>i.e.</i>, to its distance from life—as that very <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_379" id="Page_379">Pg 379</a></span>different +masterpiece <i>Silas Lapham</i>. When Mr. Howells objects to the figure of +Vautrin in <i>Le Père Goriot</i>, he criticizes well: Vautrin in that tale +is out of drawing and therefore monstrous. But to bring a similar +objection against Porthos in <i>Le Vicomte de Bragelonne</i> would be very +bad criticism; for it would ignore all the postulates of the story. In +real life Vautrin and Porthos would be equally monstrous: in the +stories Vautrin is monstrous and Porthos is not.</p> + +<p>But though the distance from real life at which an author conducts his +tale is just a matter for his own choice, it usually happens to him +after a while, either from taste or habit, to choose a particular +distance and stick to it, or near it, henceforth in all his writings. +Thus Scott has his own distance, and Jane Austen hers. Balzac, Hugo, +Charlotte Brontë, Dickens, Tolstoi, Mr. Howells himself—all these +have their favorite distances, and all are different and cannot be +confused. But a young writer usually starts in some uncertainty on +this point. He has to find his range, and will quite likely lead off +with a miss or a ricochet, as Mr. Hardy led off with <i>Desperate +Remedies</i> before <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_380" id="Page_380">Pg 380</a></span>finding the target with <i>Under the Greenwood Tree</i>. +Now Mr. Hope—the application of these profound remarks is coming at +last—being a young writer, hovers in choice between two ranges. He +has found the target with both, and cannot make up his mind between +them: and I for one hope he will keep up his practice at both: for his +experiments are most interesting, and in the course of them he is +giving us capital books. Of the two before me, <i>The God in the Car</i> +belongs to the same class as his earliest work—his <i>Father Stafford</i>, +for instance, a novel that did not win one-tenth of the notice it +deserved. It is practice at short range. It moves very close to real +life. Real people, of course, do not converse as briskly and wittily +as do Mr. Hope's characters: but these have nothing of the impossible +in them, and even in the whole business of Omofaga there is nothing +more fantastic than its delightful name. The book is genuinely tragic; +but the tragedy lies rather in what the reader is left to imagine than +in what actually occurs upon the stage. That it never comes to a more +explicit and vulgar issue stands not so much to the credit of the +heroine (as I suppose we must call Mrs. Dennison) as to the force of +circumstances as <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_381" id="Page_381">Pg 381</a></span>manipulated in the tactful grasp of Mr. Hope. Nor is +it to be imputed to him for a fault that the critical chapter xvii. +reminds us in half a dozen oddly indirect ways of a certain chapter in +<i>Richard Feverel</i>. The place, the situation, the reader's suspense, +are similar; but the actors, their emotions, their purposes are vastly +different. It is a fine chapter, and the page with which it opens is +the worst in the book—a solitary purple patch of "fine writing." I +observe without surprise that the reviewers—whose admiring attention +is seldom caught but by something out of proportion—have been +fastening upon it and quoting it ecstatically.</p> + +<p><i>The Indiscretion of the Duchess</i> is the tale in Mr. Hope's second +manner—the manner of <i>The Prisoner of Zenda</i>. Story for story, it +falls a trifle sort of <i>The Prisoner of Zenda</i>. As a set-off, the +telling is firmer, surer, more accomplished. In each an aimless, +superficially cynical, but naturally amiable English gentleman finds +himself casually involved in circumstances which appeal first to his +sportsmanlike love of adventure, and so by degrees to his chivalry, +his sense of honor, and his passions. At first amused, then perplexed, +then nettled, <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_382" id="Page_382">Pg 382</a></span>then involved heart and soul, he is left to fight his +way through with the native weapons of his order—courage, tact, +honesty, wit, strength of self-sacrifice, aptitude for affairs. The +<i>donnée</i> of these tales, their spirit, their postulates, are nakedly +romantic. In them the author deliberately lends enchantment to his +view by withdrawing to a convenient distance from real life. But, once +more, the enchantment is everything and the distance nothing. If I +must find fault with the later of the stories, it will not be with its +general extravagance—for extravagance is part of the secret of +Romance—but with the sordid and very nasty Madame Delhasse. She would +be repulsive enough in any case: but as Marie's mother she is +peculiarly repulsive and, let me add, improbable. Nobody looks for +heredity in a tale of this sort: but even in the fairy tales it is +always the heroine's <i>step</i>-mother who ends very fitly with a roll +downhill in a barrel full of spikes.</p> + +<p>But great as are the differences between <i>The God in the Car</i> and <i>The +Indiscretion of the Duchess</i>—and I ought to say that the former +carries (as it ought) more weight of metal—they have their points of +similarity. Both <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_383" id="Page_383">Pg 383</a></span>illustrate conspicuously Mr. Hope's gift of +advancing the action of his story by the sprightly conversation of his +characters. There is a touch of Dumas in their talk, and more than a +touch of Sterne—the Sterne of the <i>Sentimental Journey</i>.</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>"I beg your pardon, madame," said I, with a whirl of my hat.</p> + +<p>"I beg your pardon, sir," said the lady, with an inclination of +her head.</p> + +<p>"One is so careless in entering rooms hurriedly," I observed.</p> + +<p>"Oh, but it is stupid to stand just by the door!" insisted the +lady.</p></div> + +<p>To sum up, these are two most entertaining books by one of the writers +for whose next book one searches eagerly in the publishers' lists. If, +however, he will not resent one small word of caution, it is that he +should not let us find his name there too often. As far as we can see, +he cannot write too much for us. But he may very easily write too much +for his own health.</p> + + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_384" id="Page_384">Pg 384</a></span></p> +<h2><a name="TRILBY" id="TRILBY"></a>"TRILBY"</h2> + + +<p class="left"><i><b>Sept. 14, 1895. Hypnotic Fiction.</b></i></p> + +<p>A number of people—and I am one—cannot "abide" hypnotism in fiction. +In my own case the dislike has been merely instinctive, and I have +never yet found time to examine the instinct and discover whether or +not it is just and reasonable. The appearance of a one-volume edition +of <i>Trilby</i>—undoubtedly the most successful tale that has ever dealt +with hypnotism—and the success of the dramatic version of <i>Trilby</i> +presented a few days ago by Mr. Tree, invite one to apply the test. +Clearly there are large numbers of people who enjoy hypnotic fiction, +or whose prejudices have been effectively subdued by Mr. du Maurier's +tact and talent. Must we then confess that our instinct has been +unjust and unreasonable, and give it up? Or—since we <i>must</i> like +<i>Trilby</i>, and there is no help for it—shall we enjoy the tale under +protest and in spite of its hypnotism?</p> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_385" id="Page_385">Pg 385</a></span></p><p class="left"><i><b>Analysis of an Aversion.</b></i></p> + +<p>I think my first objection to these hypnotic tales is the terror they +inspire. I am not talking of ordinary human terror, which, of course, +is the basis of much of the best tragedy. We are terrified by the +story of Macbeth; but it is with a rational and a salutary terror. We +are aware all the while that the moral laws are at work. We see a +hideous calamity looming, approaching, imminent: but we can see that +it is the effect of causes which have been duly exhibited to us. We +can reason it out: we know where we stand: our conscience approves the +punishment even while our pity calls out against it. And when the blow +falls, it shakes away none of our belief in the advantages of virtuous +conduct. It leaves the good old impregnable position, "Be virtuous and +you will be happy," stronger than ever. But the terror of these +hypnotic stories resembles that of a child in a dark room. For +artistic reasons too obvious to need pointing out, the hypnotizer in +these stories is always the villain of the piece. For the same or +similar reasons, the "subject" is always a person worthy of our +sympathy, and is usually a woman. Let us suppose it to be a good and +beautiful woman—for that is the commonest case. The <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_386" id="Page_386">Pg 386</a></span>gives us to +understand that by hypnotism this good and beautiful woman is for a +while completely in the power of a man who is <i>ex hypothesi</i> a beast, +and who <i>ex hypothesi</i> can make her commit any excesses that his +beastliness may suggest. Obviously we are removed outside the moral +order altogether; and in its place we are presented with a state of +things in which innocence, honesty, love, and the rest are entirely at +the disposal and under the rule of malevolent brutality; the result, +as presented to us, being qualified only by such tact as the author +may choose to display. That Mr. du Maurier has displayed great tact is +extremely creditable to Mr. du Maurier, and might have been predicted +of him. But it does not alter the fact that a form of fiction which +leaves us at the mercy of an author's tact is a very dangerous form in +a world which contains so few Du Mauriers. It is lamentable enough to +have to exclaim—as we must over so much of human history—</p> + +<p> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">"Ah! what avails the sceptred race</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 4em;">And what the form divine?..."</span><br /> +</p> + +<p>But it must be quite intolerable when a story leaves us demanding, +"What avail native inno<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_387" id="Page_387">Pg 387</a></span>cence, truthfulness, chastity, when all these +can be changed into guile and uncleanliness at the mere suggestion of +a dirty mesmerist?"</p> + +<p>The answer to this, I suppose, will be, "But hypnotism is a scientific +fact. People can be hypnotized, and are hypnotized. Are you one of +those who would exclude the novelist from this and that field of human +experience?" And then I am quite prepared to hear the old tag, "<i>Homo +sum</i>," etc., once more misapplied.</p> + +<p class="left"><i><b>Limitation of Hypnotic Fiction.</b></i></p> + +<p>Let us distinguish. Hypnotism is a proved fact: people are hypnotized. +Hypnotism is not a delimited fact: nobody yet knows precisely its +conditions or its effects; or, if the discovery has been made, it has +certainly not yet found its way to the novelists. For them it is as +yet chiefly a field of fancy. They invent vagaries for it as they +invent ghosts. And as for the "<i>humananum nihil a me alienum</i>" +defence, my strongest objection to hypnotic fiction is its inhumanity. +An experience is not human in the proper artistic sense (with which +alone we are concerned) merely because it has befallen a man or a +woman. There was an Irishman, the other day, who through mere +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_388" id="Page_388">Pg 388</a></span>inadvertence cut off his own head with a scythe. But the story is +rather inhuman than not. Still less right have we to call everything +human which can be supposed by the most liberal stretch of the +imagination to have happened to a man or a woman. A story is only +human in so far as it is governed by the laws which are recognized as +determining human action. Now according as we regard human action, its +two great determinants will be free will or necessity. But hypnotism +entirely does away with free will: and for necessity, fatal or +circumstantial, it substitutes the lawless and irresponsible +imperative of a casual individual man, who (in fiction) usually +happens to be a scoundrel.</p> + +<p>A story may be human even though it discard one or more of the +recognized conditions of human life. Thus in the confessedly +supernatural story of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, the conflict between +the two Jekylls is human enough and morally significant, because it +answers to a conflict which is waged day by day—though as a rule less +tremendously—in the soul of every human being. But the double Trilby +signifies nothing. She is naturally in love with Little Billee: she is +also in <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_389" id="Page_389">Pg 389</a></span>love with Svengali, but quite unnaturally and irresponsibly. +There is no real conflict. As Gecko says of Svengali—</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>"He had but to say '<i>Dors!</i>' and she suddenly became an +unconscious Trilby of marble, who could produce wonderful +sounds—just the sounds he wanted and nothing else—and think his +thoughts and wish his wishes—and love him at his bidding with a +strange, unreal, factitious love ... just his own love for +himself turned inside out—à l'envers—and reflected back on him +as from a mirror ... un écho, un simulacre, quoi? pas autre +chose!... It was not worth having! I was not even jealous!"</p></div> + +<p>This last passage, I think, suggests that Mr. du Maurier would have +produced a much less charming story, indeed, but a vastly more +artistic one, had he directed his readers' attention rather upon the +tragedy of Svengali than upon the tragedy of Trilby. For Svengali's +position as complete master of a woman's will and yet unable to call +forth more than a factitious love—"just his own love for himself +turned inside out and reflected back on him as from a mirror"—is a +really tragic one, and a fine variation on the old Frankenstein +<i>motif</i>. The tragedy of Frankenstein resides in Frankenstein himself, +not in his creature.</p> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_390" id="Page_390">Pg 390</a></span></p><p class="left"><i><b>An Incongruous Story.</b></i></p> + +<p>In short, <i>Trilby</i> seems—as <i>Peter Ibbetson</i> seemed—to fall into two +parts, the natural and supernatural, which will not join. They might +possibly join if Mr. du Maurier had not made the natural so +exceedingly domestic, had he been less successful with the Trilby, and +Little Billee, and Taffy, and the Laird, for all of whom he has taught +us so extravagant a liking. But his very success with these domestic +(if oddly domestic) figures, and with the very domestic tale of Little +Billee's affair of the heart, proves our greatest stumbling-block when +we are invited to follow the machinations of the superlative Svengali. +That the story of Svengali and of Trilby's voice is a good story only +a duffer would deny. So is Gautier's <i>La Morte Amoureuse</i>; perhaps the +best story of its kind ever written. But suppose Thackeray had taken +<i>La Morte Amoureuse</i> and tried to write it into <i>Pendennis!</i></p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_391" id="Page_391">Pg 391</a></span></p> +<h2><a name="MR_STOCKTON" id="MR_STOCKTON"></a>MR. STOCKTON</h2> + + +<p class="left"><i><b>Sept. 21, 1895. Stevenson's Testimony.</b></i></p> + +<p>In his chapter of "Personal Memories," printed in the <i>Century +Magazine</i> of July last, Mr. Gosse speaks of the peculiar esteem in +which Mr. Frank R. Stockton's stories were held by Robert Louis +Stevenson. "When I was going to America to lecture, he was +particularly anxious that I should lay at the feet of Mr. Frank R. +Stockton his homage, couched in the following lines:—</p> + +<p> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">My Stockton if I failed to like,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 3.5em;">It were a sheer depravity;</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">For I went down with the 'Thomas Hyke,'</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 3.5em;">And up with the 'Negative Gravity.'</span><br /> +</p> + +<p>He adored these tales of Mr. Stockton's, a taste which must be shared +by all good men."</p> + +<p>It is shared at any rate by some thousands of people on this side of +the Atlantic. Only, one is not quite sure how far their admiration +extends. As far as can be guessed—for I have never come across any +British attempt at a <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_392" id="Page_392">Pg 392</a></span>serious appreciation of Mr. Stockton—the +general disposition is to regard him as an amusing kind of "cuss" with +a queer kink in his fancy, who writes puzzling little stories that +make you smile. As for taking him seriously, "why he doesn't even +profess to write seriously"—an absurd objection, of course; but good +enough for the present-day reviewer, who sits up all night in order +that the public may have his earliest possible opinion on the +Reminiscences of Bishop A, or the Personal Recollections of +Field-Marshal B, or a Tour taken in Ireland by the Honorable Mrs. C. +For criticism just now, as a mere matter of business convenience, +provides a relative importance for books before they appear; and in +this classification the space allotted to fiction and labelled +"important" is crowded for the moment with works dealing with +religious or sexual difficulties. Everyone has read <i>Rudder Grange</i>, +<i>The Lady or the Tiger?</i> and <i>A Borrowed Month</i>; but somehow few +people seem to think of them as subjects for serious criticism.</p> + +<p class="left"><i><b>"Classical" qualities.</b></i></p> + +<p>And yet these stories are almost classics. That is to say, they have +the classical qualities, <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_393" id="Page_393">Pg 393</a></span>and only need time to ripen them into +classics: for nothing but age divides a story of the quality of <i>The +Lady or the Tiger?</i> (for instance) from a story of the quality of <i>Rip +Van Winkle</i>. They are full of wit; but the wit never chokes the style, +which is simple and pellucid. Their fanciful postulates being granted, +they are absolutely rational. And they are in a high degree original. +Originality, good temper, good sense, moderation, wit—these are +classical qualities: and he is a rare benefactor who employs them all +for the amusement of the world.</p> + +<p class="left"><i><b>A Comparison.</b></i></p> + +<p>At first sight it may seem absurd to compare Mr. Stockton with Defoe. +You can scarcely imagine two men with more dissimilar notions of the +value of gracefulness and humor, or with more divergent aims in +writing. Mr. Stockton is nothing if not fanciful, and Defoe is hardly +fanciful at all. Nevertheless in reading one I am constantly reminded +of the other. You must remember Mr. Stockton's habit is to confine his +eccentricities of fancy to the postulates of a tale. He starts with +some wildly unusual—but, as a rule, not impossible—conjuncture of +circumstances. This being granted, however, <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_394" id="Page_394">Pg 394</a></span>he deduces his story +logically and precisely, appealing never to our passions and almost +constantly to our common sense. His people are as full of common-sense +as Defoe's. They may have more pluck than the average man or woman, +and they usually have more adaptability; but they apply to +extraordinary circumstances the good unsentimental reasoning of +ordinary life, and usually with the happiest results. The shipwreck of +Mrs. Lecks and Mrs. Aleshine was extraordinary enough, but their +subsequent conduct was rational almost to precision: and in +story-telling rationality does for fancy what economy of emotional +utterances does for emotion. We may apply to Mr. Stockton's tales a +remark which Mr. Saintsbury let fall some years ago upon +dream-literature. He was speaking particularly of Flaubert's +<i>Tentation de Saint Antoine</i>:—</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>"The capacities of dreams and hallucinations for literary +treatment are undoubted. But most writers, including even De +Quincey, who have tried this style, have erred, inasmuch as they +have endeavoured to throw a portion of the mystery with which the +waking mind invests dreams over the dream itself. Anyone's +experience is sufficient to show that this is wrong. The events +of dreams as they happen are quite plain and matter-of-fact, and +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_395" id="Page_395">Pg 395</a></span>it is only in the intervals, and, so to speak, the +scene-shifting of dreaming, that any suspicion of strangeness +occurs to the dreamer."</p></div> + +<p>A dream, however wild, is quite plain and matter-of-fact to the +dreamer; therefore, for verisimilitude, the narrative of a dream +should be quite plain and matter-of-fact. In the same way the narrator +of an extremely fanciful tale should—since verisimilitude is the +first aim of story-telling—attempt to exclude all suspicion of the +unnatural from his reader's mind. And this is only done by persuading +him that no suspicion of the unnatural occurred to the actors in the +story. And this again is best managed by making his characters persons +of sound every-day common sense. "If <i>these</i> are not upset by what +befalls them, why"—is the unconscious inference—"why in the world +should <i>I</i> be upset?"</p> + +<p>So, in spite of the enormous difference between the two writers, there +has been no one since Defoe who so carefully as Mr. Stockton regulates +the actions of his characters by strict common sense. Nor do I at the +moment remember any writer who comes closer to Defoe in mathematical +care for detail. In the case of the True-born Englishman this +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_396" id="Page_396">Pg 396</a></span>carefulness was sometimes overdone—as when he makes Colonel Jack +remember with exactness the lists of articles he stole as a boy, and +their value. In the <i>Adventures of Captain Horn</i> the machinery which +conceals and guards the Peruvian treasure is so elaborately described +that one is tempted to believe Mr. Stockton must have constructed a +working model of it with his own hands before he sat down to write the +book. In a way, this accuracy of detail is part of the common-sense +character of the narrative, and undoubtedly helps the verisimilitude +enormously.</p> + +<p class="left"><i><b>A Genuine American.</b></i></p> + +<p>But to my mind Mr. Stockton's characters are even more original than +the machinery of his stories. And in their originality they reflect +not only Mr. Stockton himself, but the race from which they and their +author spring. In fact, they seem to me about the most genuinely +American things in American fiction. After all, when one comes to +think of it, Mrs. Lecks and Captain Horn merely illustrate that ready +adaptation of Anglo-Saxon pluck and businesslike common sense to +savage and unusual circumstances which has been the real secret of the +colonization of the North <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_397" id="Page_397">Pg 397</a></span>American Continent. Captain Horn's +discovery and winning of the treasure may differ accidentally, but do +not differ in essence, from a thousand true tales of commercial +triumph in the great Central Plain or on the Pacific Slope. And in the +heroine of the book we recognize those very qualities and aptitudes +for which we have all learnt to admire and esteem the American girl. +They are hero and heroine, and so of course we are presented with the +better side of a national character; but then it has been the better +side which has done the business. The bitterest critic of things +American will not deny that Mr. Stockton's characters are typical +Americans, and could not belong to any other nation in the world. Nor +can he deny that they combine sobriety with pluck, and businesslike +behavior with good feeling; that they are as full of honor as of +resource, and as sportsmanlike as sagacious. That people with such +characteristics should be recognizable by us as typical Americans is a +sufficient answer to half the nonsense which is being talked just now +<i>à propos</i> of a recent silly contest for the America Cup.</p> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_398" id="Page_398">Pg 398</a></span></p><p>Nationality apart, if anyone wants a good stirring story, <i>Captain +Horn</i> is the story for his money. It has loose ends, and the +concluding chapter ties up an end that might well have been left +loose; but if a better story of adventure has been written of late I +wish somebody would tell me its name.</p> + + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_399" id="Page_399">Pg 399</a></span></p> +<h2><a name="BOW-WOW" id="BOW-WOW"></a>BOW-WOW</h2> + + +<p class="left"><i><b>August 26, 1893. Dauntless Anthology.</b></i></p> + +<p>It is really very difficult to know what to say to Mr. Maynard +Leonard, editor of <i>The Dog in British Poetry</i> (London: David Nutt). +His case is something the same as Archdeacon Farrar's. The critic who +desires amendment in the Archdeacon's prose, and suggests that +something might be done by a study of Butler or Hume or Cobbett or +Newman, is met with the cheerful retort, "But I have studied these +writers, and admire them even more than you do." The position is +impregnable; and the Archdeacon is only asserting that two and two +make four when he goes on to confess that, "with the best will in the +world to profit by the criticisms of his books, he has never profited +in the least by any of them."</p> + +<p>Now, Mr. Leonard has at least this much in common with Archdeacon +Farrar, that before him criticism must sit down with folded hands. <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_400" id="Page_400">Pg 400</a></span>In +the lightness of his heart he accepts every fresh argument against +such and such a course as an added reason for following it:—</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>"While this collection of poems was being made," he tells us, "a +well-known author and critic took occasion to gently ridicule +(<i>sic</i>) anthologies and anthologists. He suggested, as if the +force of foolishness could no further go, that the next anthology +would deal with dogs."</p></div> + +<p>"Undismayed by this," to use his own words, Mr. Leonard proceeded to +prove it. Now it is obvious that no man can set a term to literary +activity if it depend on the Briton's notorious unwillingness to +recognize that he is beaten. I might dare, for instance, a Scotsman to +compile an anthology on "The Eel in British Poetry"; but of what avail +is it to challenge an indomitable race?</p> + +<p>I am sorry Mr. Leonard has not given the name of this critic; but have +a notion it must be Mr. Andrew Lang, though I am sure he is innocent +of the split infinitive quoted above. It really ought to be Mr. Lang, +if only for the humor of the means by which Mr. Leonard proposes to +silence him. "I am confident," says he, "that the voice of the great +dog-loving <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_401" id="Page_401">Pg 401</a></span>public in this country would drown that of the critic in +question." Mr. Leonard's metaphors, you see, like the dyer's hand, are +subdued to what they work in. But is not the picture delightful? Mr. +Lang, the gentle of speech; who, with his master Walton, "studies to +be quiet"; who tells us in his very latest verse</p> + +<p> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">"I've maistly had my fill</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 4.5em;">O' this world's din"—</span><br /> +</p> + +<p>—Mr. Lang set down in the midst of a really representative dog show, +say at Birmingham or the Crystal Palace, and there howled down! His +<i>blandi susurri</i> drowned in the combined clamor of mongrel, puppy, +whelp, and hound, and "the great dog-loving public in this country"!</p> + +<p>"<i>Solvitur ululando</i>," hopes Mr. Leonard; and we will wait for the +voice of the great dog-loving public to uplift itself and settle the +question. Here, at any rate, is the book, beautiful in shape, and +printed by the Constables upon sumptuous paper. And the title-page +bears a rubric and a reference to Tobias' dog. "It is no need," says +Wyclif in one of <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_402" id="Page_402">Pg 402</a></span>his sermons, "to busy us what hight Tobies' hound"; +but Wyclif had never to reckon with a great dog-loving public. And Mr. +Leonard, having considered his work and dedicated it "To the +Cynics"—which, I suppose, is Greek for "dog-loving public"—observes, +"It is rather remarkable that no one has yet published such a book as +this." Perhaps it is.</p> + +<p>But if we take it for granted (1) that it was worth doing, and (2) +that whatever be worth doing is worth doing well, then Mr. Leonard has +reason for his complacency. "It was never my intention," he says, "to +gather together a complete collection of even British poems about +dogs."—When will <i>that</i> come, I wonder?—"I have sought to secure a +representative rather than an exhaustive anthology." His selections +from a mass of poetry ranging from Homer to Mr. Mallock are judicious. +He is not concerned (he assures us) to defend the poetical merits of +all this verse:—</p> + +<p> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">"—O, the wise contentment</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 4em;">Th' anthologist doth find!"</span><br /> +</p> + +<p>—but he has provided it with notes—and capital notes they are—with +a magnificent Table of <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_403" id="Page_403">Pg 403</a></span>Contents, an Index of Authors, an Index of +First Lines, an Index of Dogs Mentioned by Name in the Poems, and an +Index of the Species of Dogs Mentioned. So that, even if he miss +transportation to an equal sky, the dog has better treatment on earth +than most authors. And Mr. Nutt and the Messrs. Constable have done +their best; and everyone knows how good is that best. And the wonder +is, as Dr. Johnson remarked (concerning a dog, by the way), not that +the thing is done so well, but that it should be done at all.</p> + + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_404" id="Page_404">Pg 404</a></span></p> +<h2><a name="OF_SEASONABLE_NUMBERS" id="OF_SEASONABLE_NUMBERS"></a>OF SEASONABLE NUMBERS:</h2> + +<h3><i>A Baconian Essay</i></h3> + + +<p class="left"><i><b>Dec. 26, 1891.</b></i></p> + +<p>That was a Wittie Invective made by <i>Montaigny</i> upon the <i>Antipodean</i>, +Who said they must be Thieves that pulled on their breeches when +Honest Folk were scarce abed. So is it Obnoxious to them that purvey +<i>Christmas Numbers</i>, <i>Annuals</i>, and the like, that they commonly write +under <i>Sirius</i> his star as it were <i>Capricornus</i>, feigning to Scate +and Carol and blow warm upon their Fingers, while yet they might be +culling of Strawberries. And all to this end, that Editors may take +the cake. I know One, the Father of a long Family, that will sit a +whole June night without queeching in a Vessell of Refrigerated Water +till he be Ingaged with hard Ice, that the <i>Publick</i> may be docked no +pennyweight of the Sentiments incident to the <i>Nativity</i>. For we be +like Grapes, and goe to Press in August. But methinks these rigours do +postulate a <i>Robur Corporis</i> <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_405" id="Page_405">Pg 405</a></span>more than ordinary (whereas 'tis but one +in ten if a Novelist overtop in Physique); and besides will often fail +of the effect. As I <i>myself</i> have asked—the Pseudonym being but +gauze—</p> + +<p> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">"O! Who can hold a fire in his hand</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">By thinking on the frosty Caucasus?"</span><br /> +</p> + +<p>Yet sometimes, because some things are in kind very Casuall, which if +they escape prove Excellent (as the man who by Inadvertence inherited +the throne of the <i>Grand Turk</i> with all appertayning) so that the kind +is inferiour, being subject to Perill, but that which is Excellent +being proved superiour, as the Blossom of March and the Blossom of +May, whereof the French verse goeth:—</p> + +<p> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">"Bourgeon de Mars, enfant de Paris;</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 3em;">Si un eschape, il en vaut dix."</span><br /> +</p> + +<p>—so, as I was saying (till the Mischief infected my Protasis), albeit +the gross of writings will moulder between <i>St. John's</i> feast and <i>St. +Stephen's</i>, yet, if one survive, 'tis odds he will prove Money in your +Pocket. Therefore I counsel that you preoccupate and tie him, by +Easter at the latest, to <i>Forty thousand words</i>, naming a Figure in +excess: for Operation <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_406" id="Page_406">Pg 406</a></span>shrinketh all things, as was observed by +Galenus, who said to his Friend, "I will cut off your Leg, and then +you will be lesse by a Foot." Also you will do well to provide a +<i>Pictura</i> in Chromo-Lithography. For the Glaziers like it, and no harm +done if they blush not: which is easily avoided by making it out of a +little Child and a Puppy-dog, or else a Mother, or some such trivial +Accompaniment. But Phryne marrs all. It was even rashly done of that +Editor who issued a Coloured Plate, calling it "<i>Phryne Behind the +Areopagus</i>": for though nothing was Seen, the pillars and Grecian +elders intervening, yet 'twas Felt a great pity. And the Fellow ran +for it, saying flimsily:—</p> + +<p> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">"Populus me sibilat. At mihi plaudo."</span><br /> +</p> + +<p>Whereas I rather praise the dictum of that other writer, who said, "In +this house I had sooner be turned over on the Drawing-room Table than +roll under that in the Dining-room," meaning to reflect on the wine, +but the Hostess took it for a compliment.</p> + +<p>But to speak of the Letter Press. For the Sea you will use Clark +Russell; for the East, <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_407" id="Page_407">Pg 407</a></span>Rudyard Kipling; for <i>Blood</i>, Haggard; for +neat pastorall Subjects, Thomas Hardy, so he be within Bounds. I +mislike his "Noble Dames." Barrie has a prettier witt; but Besant will +keep in all weathers, and serve as right <i>Pemmican</i>. As for conundrums +and poetry, they are but Toys: I have seen as good in crackers; which +we pull, not as meaning to read or guess, but read and guess to cover +the Shame of our Employment. Yet for Conundrums, if you hold the +Answers till your next issue they Raise the Wind among Fools.</p> + +<p>He that hath <i>Wife and Children</i> hath given Hostages to <i>Little +Folks</i>: he will hardly redeem but by sacrifice of a Christmas Tree. +The learned Poggius, that had twelve Sons and Daughters, used to note +ruefully that he might never escape but by purchase of a <i>dozen +Annuals</i>, citing this to prove how greatly Tastes will diverge among +the Extreamely Young, even though they come of the same geniture. So +will Printed Matter multiply faster than our Parents. Yet 'tis +discutable that this phrensy of <i>Annuals</i> groweth staler by +Recurrence. As that Helvetian lamented, whose Cuckoo-clock <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_408" id="Page_408">Pg 408</a></span>failed of +a ready Purchaser, and he had to live with it. "<i>What Again?</i>" said +he, and "<i>Surely Spring is not come yet, dash it?</i>" Also I cannot +stomach that our Authors portend a Severity of Weather unseasonable in +these Muggy Latitudes. I will eat my Hat if for these twenty +Christmasses I have made six Slides worthy the Mention. Yet I know an +Author that had his <i>Hero and Heroine</i> consent together very prettily; +but 'twas in a <i>Thaw</i>, and the Editor being stout, the match was +broken off unblessedly, till a Pact was made that it should indeed be +a Thaw, but sufficient only to let the Heroine drop through the Ice +and be Rescewed.</p> + +<p>Without <i>Ghosts</i>, we twiddle thumbs....<br /><br /></p> + + +<h3>The End.</h3> +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> + +<p><b>Transcriber's Note</b></p> + +<p>Brief Greek phrases appear in the original text in three places on <a href="#greek_1">page 8</a>, <a href="#greek_2">page 106</a>, +and <a href="#greek_3">page 252</a>. These have been rendered using HTML entities, with a +'hover-over' transliteration for this project.</p> + +<p> </p> +<p> </p> +<hr class="full" /> +<p>***END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK ADVENTURES IN CRITICISM***</p> +<p>******* This file should be named 17452-h.txt or 17452-h.zip *******</p> +<p>This and all associated files of various formats will be found in:<br /> +<a href="http://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/1/7/4/5/17452">http://www.gutenberg.org/1/7/4/5/17452</a></p> +<p>Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions +will be renamed.</p> + +<p>Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no +one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation +(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without +permission and without paying copyright royalties. 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You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + + + + + +Title: Adventures in Criticism + + +Author: Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch + + + +Release Date: January 3, 2006 [eBook #17452] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ISO-646-US (US-ASCII) + + +***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK ADVENTURES IN CRITICISM*** + + +E-text prepared by Geetu Melwani and the Project Gutenberg Online +Distributed Proofreading Team (http://www.pgdp.net/) + + + +Transcriber's Note: Brief Greek phrases appear in the original + text in three places. They have been + transliterated and placed between +marks+. + + + + +ADVENTURES IN CRITICISM + +by + +A. T. QUILLER-COUCH + + + + + + + +New York +Charles Scribner's Sons +Copyright, 1896 +Trow Directory Printing and Bookbinding Company +New York + + + + + To + + A.B. WALKLEY + + + MY DEAR A.B.W. + + The short papers which follow have been reprinted, with a few + alterations, from _The Speaker_. Possibly you knew this without + my telling you. Possibly, too, you have sat in a theatre before + now and seen the curtain rise on two characters exchanging + information which must have been their common property for years. + So this dedication is partly designed to save me the trouble of + writing a formal preface. + + As I remember then, Adam, it was upon this fashion bequeathed us + by destiny to write side by side in _The Speaker_ every week, you + about Plays and I about Books. Three years ago you found time to + arrange a few of your writings in a notable volume of _Playhouse + Impressions_. Some months ago I searched the files of the paper + with a similar design, and read my way through an astonishing + amount of my own composition. Noble edifice of toil! It stretched + away in imposing proportions and vanishing perspective--week upon + week--two columns to the week! The mischief was, it did not + appear to lead to anything: and for the first mile or two even + the casual graces of the colonnade were hopelessly marred through + that besetting fault of the young journalist, who finds no + satisfaction in his business of making bricks without straw + unless he can go straightway and heave them at somebody. + + Still (to drop metaphor), I have chosen some papers which I hope + may be worth a second reading. They are fragmentary, by force of + the conditions under which they were produced: but perhaps the + fragments may here and there suggest the outline of a first + principle. And I dedicate the book to you because it would be + strange if the time during which we have appeared in print side + by side had brought no sense of comradeship. Though, in fact, we + live far apart and seldom get speech together, more than one of + these papers--ostensibly addressed to anybody whom they might + concern--has been privately, if but sub-consciously, intended + for you. + + A.T.Q.C. + + + + + CONTENTS + + CHAUCER 1 + "THE PASSIONATE PILGRIM" 29 + SHAKESPEARE'S LYRICS 39 + SAMUEL DANIEL 48 + WILLIAM BROWNE 59 + THOMAS CAREW 67 + "ROBINSON CRUSOE" 75 + LAWRENCE STERNE 90 + SCOTT AND BURNS 103 + CHARLES READE 124 + HENRY KINGSLEY 131 + ALEXANDER WILLIAM KINGLAKE 141 + C.S.C. AND J.K.S 147 + ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON 156 + M. ZOLA 192 + SELECTION 198 + EXTERNALS 204 + CLUB TALK 222 + EXCURSIONISTS IN POETRY 229 + THE POPULAR CONCEPTION OF A POET 235 + POETS ON THEIR OWN ART 245 + THE ATTITUDE OF THE + PUBLIC TOWARDS LETTERS 254 + A CASE OF BOOKSTALL CENSORSHIP 267 + THE POOR LITTLE PENNY DREADFUL 276 + IBSEN'S "PEER GYNT" 283 + MR. SWINBURNE'S LATER MANNER 297 + A MORNING WITH A BOOK 306 + MR. JOHN DAVIDSON 314 + BJOERNSTERNE BJOERNSON 332 + MR. GEORGE MOORE 341 + MRS. MARGARET L. WOODS 349 + MR. HALL CAINE 368 + MR. ANTHONY HOPE 377 + "TRILBY" 384 + MR. STOCKTON 391 + BOW-WOW 399 + OF SEASONABLE NUMBERS 404 + + + + +ADVENTURES IN CRITICISM + + + + +CHAUCER + + +March 17, 1894. Professor Skeat's Chaucer. + +After twenty-five years of close toil, Professor Skeat has completed +his great edition of Chaucer.[A] It is obviously easier to be +dithyrambic than critical in chronicling this event; to which indeed +dithyrambs are more appropriate than criticism. For when a man writes +_Opus vitae meae_ at the conclusion of such a task as this, and so lays +down his pen, he must be a churl (even if he be also a competent +critic) who will allow no pause for admiration. And where, churl or no +churl, is the competent critic to be found? The Professor has here +compiled an entirely new text of Chaucer, founded solely on the +manuscripts and the earliest printed editions that are accessible. +Where Chaucer has translated, the originals have been carefully +studied: "the requirements of metre and grammar have been carefully +considered throughout": and "the phonology and spelling of every word +have received particular attention." We may add that all the materials +for a Life of Chaucer have been sought out, examined, and pieced +together with exemplary care. + +All this has taken Professor Skeat twenty-five years, and in order to +pass competent judgment on his conclusions the critic must follow him +step by step through his researches--which will take the critic (even +if we are charitable enough to suppose his mental equipment equal to +Professor Skeat's) another ten years at least. For our time, then, and +probably for many generations after, this edition of Chaucer will be +accepted as final. + + * * * * * + +And the Clarendon Press. + +And I seem to see in this edition of Chaucer the beginning of the +realization of a dream which I have cherished since first I stood +within the quadrangle of the Clarendon Press--that fine combination of +the factory and the palace. The aspect of the Press itself repeats, as +it were, the characteristics of its government, which is conducted by +an elected body as an honorable trust. Its delegates are not intent +only on money-getting. And yet the Clarendon Press makes money, and +the University can depend upon it for handsome subsidies. It may well +depend upon it for much more. As the Bank of England--to which in its +system of government it may be likened--is the focus of all the other +banks, private or joint-stock, in the kingdom, and the treasure-house, +not only of the nation's gold, but of its commercial honor, so the +Clarendon Press--traditionally careful in its selections and +munificent in its rewards--might become the academy or central temple +of English literature. If it would but follow up Professor Skeat's +Chaucer with a resolution to publish, at a pace suitable to so large +an undertaking, _all the great English classics_, edited with all the +scholarship its wealth can command, I believe that before long the +Clarendon Press would be found to be exercising an influence on +English letters which is at present lacking, and the lack of which +drives many to call, from time to time, for the institution in this +country of something corresponding to the French Academy. I need only +cite the examples of the Royal Society and the Marylebone Cricket +Club to show that to create an authority in this manner is consonant +with our national practice. We should have that centre of correct +information, correct judgment, correct taste--that intellectual +metropolis, in short--which is the surest check upon provinciality in +literature; we should have a standard of English scholarship and an +authoritative dictionary of the English language; and at the same time +we should escape all that business of the green coat and palm branches +which has at times exposed the French Academy to much vulgar intrigue. + +Also, I may add, we should have the books. Where now is the great +edition of Bunyan, of Defoe, of Gibbon? The Oxford Press did once +publish an edition of Gibbon, worthy enough as far as type and paper +could make it worthy. But this is only to be found in second-hand +book-shops. Why are two rival London houses now publishing editions of +Scott, the better illustrated with silly pictures "out of the artists' +heads"? Where is the final edition of Ben Jonson? + +These and the rest are to come, perhaps. Of late we have had from +Oxford a great Boswell and a great Chaucer, and the magnificent +Dictionary is under weigh. So that it may be the dream is in process +of being realized, though none of us shall live to see its full +realization. Meanwhile such a work as Professor Skeat's Chaucer is not +only an answer to much chatter that goes up from time to time about +nine-tenths of the work on English literature being done out of +England. This and similar works are the best of all possible answers +to those gentlemen who so often interrupt their own chrematistic +pursuits to point out in the monthly magazines the short-comings of +our two great Universities as nurseries of chrematistic youth. In this +case it is Oxford that publishes, while Cambridge supplies the +learning: and from a natural affection I had rather it were always +Oxford that published, attracting to her service the learning, +scholarship, intelligence of all parts of the kingdom, or, for that +matter, of the world. So might she securely found new Schools of +English Literature--were she so minded, a dozen every year. They would +do no particular harm; and meanwhile, in Walton Street, out of earshot +of the New Schools, the Clarendon Press would go on serenely +performing its great work. + + * * * * * + +March 23, 1895. Essentials and Accidents of Poetry. + +A work such as Professor Skeat's Chaucer puts the critic into a frame +of mind that lies about midway between modesty and cowardice. One +asks--"What right have I, who have given but a very few hours of my +life to the enjoying of Chaucer; who have never collated his MSS.; who +have taken the events of his life on trust from his biographers; who +am no authority on his spelling, his rhythms, his inflections, or the +spelling, rhythms, inflections of his age; who have read him only as I +have read other great poets, for the pleasure of reading--what right +have I to express any opinion on a work of this character, with its +imposing commentary, its patient research, its enormous accumulation +of special information?" + +Nevertheless, this diffidence, I am sure, may be carried too far. +After all is said and done, we, with our average life of three-score +years and ten, are the heirs of all the poetry of all the ages. We +must do our best in our allotted time, and Chaucer is but one of the +poets. He did not write for specialists in his own age, and his main +value for succeeding ages resides, not in his vocabulary, nor in his +inflections, nor in his indebtedness to foreign originals, nor in the +metrical uniformities or anomalies that may be discovered in his poems; +but in his _poetry_. Other things are accidental; his poetry is +essential. Other interests--historical, philological, antiquarian--must +be recognized; but the poetical, or (let us say) the spiritual, interest +stands first and far ahead of all others. By virtue of it Chaucer, now +as always, makes his chief and his convincing appeal to that which is +spiritual in men. He appeals by the poetical quality of such lines as +these, from Emilia's prayer to Diana: + + "Chaste goddesse, wel wostow that I + Desire to been a mayden al my lyf, + Ne never wol I be no love ne wyf. + + I am, thou woost, yet of thy companye, + A mayde, and love hunting and venerye, + And for to walken in the wodes wilde, + And noght to been a wyf, and be with childe..." + +Or of these two from the Prioresses' Prologue: + + "O moder mayde! O mayde moder free! + O bush unbrent, brenninge in Moyses sighte..." + +Or of these from the general Prologue--also thoroughly poetical, +though the quality differs: + + "Ther was also a Nonne, a Prioresse, + That of hir smyling was ful simple and coy; + Hir gretteste ooth was but by seynt Loy; + And she was cleped madame Eglentyne. + Ful wel she song the service divyne, + Entuned in hir nose ful semely; + And Frensh she spak ful faire and fetisly, + After the scole of Stratford atte Bowe, + For Frensh of Paris was to hir unknowe..." + +Now the essential quality of this and of all very great poetry is also +what we may call a _universal_ quality; it appeals to those sympathies +which, unequally distributed and often distorted or suppressed, are +yet the common possessions of our species. This quality is the real +antiseptic of poetry: this it is that keeps a line of Homer +perennially fresh and in bloom:-- + + +"Hos phato tous d' ede katechen physizoos aia + en Lakedaimoni authi, phile en patridi gaie."+ + +These lines live because they contain something which is also +permanent in man: they depend confidently on us, and will as +confidently depend on our great-grandchildren. I was glad to see this +point very courageously put the other day by Professor Hiram Corson, +of Cornell University, in an address on "The Aims of Literary +Study"--an address which Messrs. Macmillan have printed and published +here and in America. "All works of genius," says Mr. Corson, "render +the best service, in literary education, when they are first +assimilated in their absolute character. It is, of course, important +to know their relations to the several times and places in which they +were produced; but such knowledge is not for the tyro in literary +study. He must first know literature, if he is constituted so to know +it, in its absolute character. He can go into the philosophy of its +relationships later, if he like, when he has a true literary +education, and when the 'years that bring the philosophic mind' have +been reached. Every great production of genius is, in fact, in its +essential character, no more related to one age than to another. It is +only in its phenomenal character (its outward manifestations) that it +has a _special_ relationship." And Mr. Corson very appositely quotes +Mr. Ruskin on Shakespeare's historical plays-- + + "If it be said that Shakespeare wrote perfect historical plays on + subjects belonging to the preceding centuries, I answer that they + _are_ perfect plays just because there is no care about centuries + in them, but a life which all men recognize for the human life of + all time; and this it is, not because Shakespeare sought to give + universal truth, but because, painting honestly and completely + from the men about him, he painted that human nature which is, + indeed, constant enough--a rogue in the fifteenth century being + _at heart_ what a rogue is in the nineteenth century and was in + the twelfth; and an honest or knightly man being, in like manner, + very similar to other such at any other time. And the work of + these great idealists is, therefore, always universal: not + because it is _not portrait_, but because it is _complete_ + portrait down to the heart, which is the same in all ages; and + the work of the mean idealists is _not_ universal, not because it + is portrait, but because it is _half_ portrait--of the outside, + the manners and the dress, not of the heart. Thus Tintoret and + Shakespeare paint, both of them, simply Venetian and English + nature as they saw it in their time, down to the root; and it + does for _all_ time; but as for any care to cast themselves into + the particular ways of thought, or custom, of past time in their + historical work, you will find it in neither of them, nor in any + other perfectly great man that I know of."--_Modern Painters._ + +It will be observed that Mr. Corson, whose address deals primarily +with literary training, speaks of these absolute qualities of the +great masterpieces as the _first_ object of study. But his words, and +Ruskin's words, fairly support my further contention that they remain +the _most important_ object of study, no matter how far one's literary +training may have proceeded. To the most erudite student of Chaucer in +the wide world Chaucer's poetry should be the dominant object of +interest in connection with Chaucer. + +But when the elaborate specialist confronts us, we are apt to forget +that poetry is meant for mankind, and that its appeal is, or should +be, universal. We pay tribute to the unusual: and so far as this +implies respect for protracted industry and indefatigable learning, we +do right. But in so far as it implies even a momentary confusion of +the essentials with the accidentals of poetry, we do wrong. And the +specialist himself continues admirable only so long as he keeps them +distinct. + +I hasten to add that Professor Skeat _does_ keep them distinct very +successfully. In a single sentence of admirable brevity he tells us +that of Chaucer's poetical excellence "it is superfluous to speak; +Lowell's essay on Chaucer in 'My Study Windows' gives a just estimate +of his powers." And with this, taking the poetical excellence for +granted, he proceeds upon his really invaluable work of preparing a +standard text of Chaucer and illustrating it out of the stores of his +apparently inexhaustible learning. The result is a monument to +Chaucer's memory such as never yet was reared to English poet. Douglas +Jerrold assured Mrs. Cowden Clarke that, when her time came to enter +Heaven, Shakespeare would advance and greet her with the first kiss of +welcome, "_even_ should her husband happen to be present." One can +hardly with decorum imagine Professor Skeat being kissed; but Chaucer +assuredly will greet him with a transcendent smile. + +The Professor's genuine admiration, however, for the poetical +excellence of his poet needs to be insisted upon, not only because the +nature of his task keeps him reticent, but because his extraordinary +learning seems now and then to stand between him and the natural +appreciation of a passage. It was not quite at haphazard that I chose +just now the famous description of the Prioresse as an illustration of +Chaucer's poetical quality. The Professor has a long note upon the +French of Stratford atte Bowe. Most of us have hitherto believed the +passage to be an example, and a very pretty one, of Chaucer's +playfulness. The Professor almost loses his temper over this: he +speaks of it as a view "commonly adopted by newspaper-writers who know +only this one line of Chaucer, and cannot forbear to use it in jest." +"Even Tyrwhitt and Wright," he adds more in sorrow than in anger, +"have thoughtlessly given currency to this idea." "Chaucer," the +Professor explains, "merely states a _fact_" (the italics are his +own), "viz., that the Prioress spoke the usual Anglo-French of the +English Court, of the English law-courts, and of the English +ecclesiastics of higher ranks. The poet, however, had been himself in +France, and knew precisely the difference between the two dialects; +but he had no special reason for thinking _more highly_" (the +Professor's italics again) "of the Parisian than of the +Anglo-French.... Warton's note on the line is quite sane. He shows +that Queen Philippa wrote business letters in French (doubtless +Anglo-French) with 'great propriety'" ... and so on. You see, there +was a Benedictine nunnery at Stratford-le-Bow; and as "Mr. Cutts says, +very justly, 'She spoke French correctly, though with an accent which +savored of the Benedictine Convent at Stratford-le-Bow, where she had +been educated, rather than of Paris.'" So there you have a fact. + +And, now you have it, doesn't it look rather like Bitzer's horse? + + "Bitzer," said Thomas Gradgrind. "Your definition of a horse?" + + "Quadruped. Graminivorous. Forty teeth, namely twenty-four + grinders, four eye-teeth, and twelve incisive. Sheds coat in the + spring; in marshy countries sheds hoofs too. Hoofs hard, but + requiring to be shod with iron. Age known by marks in mouth." + Thus (and much more) Bitzer. + + * * * * * + +March 30, 1895. The Texts of the "Canterbury Tales." + +It follows, I hope, from what I said last week, that by far the most +important service an editor can render to Chaucer and to us is to give +us a pure text, through which the native beauty of the poetry may best +shine. Such a text Professor Skeat has been able to prepare, in part +by his own great industry, in part because he has entered into the +fruit of other men's labors. The epoch-making event in the history of +the Canterbury Tales (with which alone we are concerned here) was Dr. +Furnivall's publication for the Chaucer Society of the famous +"Six-Text Edition." Dr. Furnivall set to work upon this in 1868. + +The Six Texts were these:-- + + 1. The great "Ellesmere" MS. (so called after its owner, the Earl + of Ellesmere). "The finest and best of all the MSS. now extant." + + 2. The "Hengwrt" MS., belonging to Mr. William W.E. Wynne, of + Peniarth; very closely agreeing with the "Ellesmere." + + 3. The "Cambridge" MS. Gg 4.27, in the University Library. The + best copy in any public library. This also follows the + "Ellesmere" closely. + + 4. The "Corpus" MS., in the library of Corpus Christi College, + Oxford. + + 5. The "Petworth" MS., belonging to Lord Leconfield. + + 6. The "Lansdowne" MS. in the British Museum. "Not a good MS., + being certainly the worst of the six; but worth reprinting owing + to the frequent use that has been made of it by editors." + +In his Introduction, Professor Skeat enumerates no fewer than +fifty-nine MSS. of the Tales: but of these the above six (and a +seventh to be mentioned presently) are the most important. The most +important of all is the "Ellesmere"--the great "find" of the Six-Text +Edition. "The best in nearly every respect," says Professor Skeat. +"It not only gives good lines and good sense, but is also (usually) +grammatically accurate and thoroughly well spelt. The publication of +it has been a great boon to all Chaucer students, for which Dr. +Furnivall will be ever gratefully remembered.... This splendid MS. has +also the great merit of being complete, requiring no supplement from +any other source, except in a few cases when a line or two has been +missed." + +Professor Skeat has therefore chiefly employed the Six-Text Edition, +supplemented by a seventh famous MS., the "Harleian 7334"--printed in +full for the Chaucer Society in 1885--a MS. of great importance, +differing considerably from the "Ellesmere." But the Professor judges +it "a most dangerous MS. to trust to, unless constantly corrected by +others, and not at all fitted to be taken as the basis of a text." For +the basis of his text, then, he takes the Ellesmere MS., correcting it +freely by the other seven MSS. mentioned. + +Now, as fate would have it, in the year 1888 Dr. Furnivall invited Mr. +Alfred W. Pollard to collaborate with him in an edition of Chaucer +which he had for many years promised to bring out for Messrs. +Macmillan. The basis of their text of the Tales was almost precisely +that chosen by Professor Skeat, _i.e._ a careful collation of the Six +Texts and the Harleian 7334, due preponderance being given to the +Ellesmere MS., and all variations from it stated in the notes. "A +beginning was made," says Mr. Pollard, "but the giant in the +partnership had been used for a quarter of a century to doing, for +nothing, all the hard work for other people, and could not spare from +his pioneering the time necessary to enter into the fruit of his own +Chaucer labors. Thus the partner who was not a giant was left to go on +pretty much by himself. When I had made some progress, Professor Skeat +informed us that the notes which he had been for years accumulating +encouraged him to undertake an edition on a large scale, and I gladly +abandoned, in favor of an editor of so much greater width of reading, +the Library Edition which had been arranged for in the original +agreement of Dr. Furnivall and myself with Messrs. Macmillan. I +thought, however, that the work which I had done might fairly be used +for an edition on a less extensive plan and intended for a less +stalwart class of readers, and of this the present issue of the +Canterbury Tales is an instalment."[B] + +So it comes about that we have two texts before us, each based on a +collation of the Six-Text edition and the Harleian MS. 7334--the chief +difference being that Mr. Pollard adheres closely to the Ellesmere +MS., while Professor Skeat allows himself more freedom. This is how +they start-- + + "Whan that Aprill? with hise shour?s soote + The droghte of March hath perc?d to the roote, + And bathed every veyne in swich licour + Of which vertu engendred is the flour; + Whan Zephirus eck with his swet? breeth 5 + Inspir?d hath in every holt and heeth + The tendr? cropp?s, and the yong? sonne + Hath in the Ram his half? cours y-ronne, + And smal? fowel?s maken melodye + That slepen al the nvght with open eye,-- 10 + So priketh hem Nature in hir corages,-- + Thanne longen folk to goon on pilgrimages ..." + + (_Pollard_.) + + + "Whan that Aprille with his shoures sote + The droghte of Marche hath perced to the rote, + And bathed every veyne in swich licour + Of which vertu engendred is the flour; + Whan Zephirus eek with his swete breeth 5 + Inspired hath in every holt and heeth + The tendre croppes, and the yong sonne + Hath in the Ram his halfe cours y ronne, + And smale fowles maken melodye, + That slepen al the night with open ye, 10 + (So priketh hem nature in hir corages:) + Than longen folk to goon on pilgrimages..." + + (_Skeat._) + +On these two extracts it must be observed (1) that the accents and the +dotted e's in the first are Mr. Pollard's own contrivances for helping +the scansion; (2) in the second, l. 10, "ye" is a special contrivance +of Professor Skeat. "The scribes," he says (Introd. Vol. IV. p. xix.), +"usually write _eye_ in the middle of a line, but when they come to it +at the end of one, they are fairly puzzled. In l. 10, the scribe of Hn +('Hengwrt') writes _lye_, and that of Ln ('Lansdowne') writes _yhe_; +and the variations on this theme are curious. The spelling _ye_ (= ye) +is, however, common.... I print it 'ye' to distinguish it from _ye_, +the pl. pronoun." The other differences are accounted for by the +varying degrees in which the two editors depend on the Ellesmere MS. +Mr. Pollard sticks to the Ellesmere. Professor Skeat corrects it by +the others. Obviously the editor who allows himself the wider range +lays himself open to more criticism, point by point. He has to justify +himself in each particular case, while the other's excuse is set down +once for all in his preface. But after comparing the two texts in over +a dozen passages, I have had to vote in almost every case for +Professor Skeat. + + +The Alleged Difficulty of Reading Chaucer. + +The differences, however, are always trifling. The reader will allow +that in each case we have a clear, intelligible text: a text that +allows Chaucer to be read and enjoyed without toil or vexation. For my +part, I hope there is no presumption in saying that I could very well +do without Mr. Pollard's accents and dotted e's. Remove them, and I +contend that any Englishman with an ear for poetry can read either of +the two texts without difficulty. A great deal too much fuss is made +over the pronunciation and scansion of Chaucer. After all, we are +Englishmen, with an instinct for understanding the language we +inherit; in the evolution of our language we move on the same lines as +our fathers; and Chaucer's English is at least no further removed from +us than the Lowland dialect of Scott's novels. Moreover, we have in +reading Chaucer what we lack in reading Scott--the assistance of +rhythm; and the rhythm of Chaucer is as clearly marked as that of +Tennyson. Professor Skeat might very well have allowed his admirable +text to stand alone. For his rules of pronunciation, with their +elaborate system of signs and symbols, seem to me (to put it coarsely) +phonetics gone mad. This, for instance, is how he would have us read +the Tales:-- + + "Whan-dhat Aprill?/widh iz-shuurez soot? + dh?-druuht' ov-March?/hath persed too dh? root?, + ?nd-baadhed ev'ri vein?/in-swich likuur, + ov-which vertyy/enjendred iz dh? fluur...." + +--and so on? I think it may safely be said that if a man need this +sort of assistance in reading or pronouncing Chaucer, he had better +let Chaucer alone altogether, or read him in a German prose +translation. + + * * * * * + +April 6, 1895. + +Why is Chaucer so easy to read? At a first glance a page of the +"Canterbury Tales" appears more formidable than a page of the "Faerie +Queene." As a matter of fact, it is less formidable; or, if this be +denied, everyone will admit that twenty pages of the "Canterbury +Tales" are less formidable than twenty pages of the "Faerie Queene." I +might bring several recent editors and critics to testify that, after +the first shock of the archaic spelling and the final "e," an +intelligent public will soon come to terms with Chaucer; but the +unconscious testimony of the intelligent public itself is more +convincing. Chaucer is read year after year by a large number of men +and women. Spenser, in many respects a greater poet, is also read; but +by far fewer. Nobody, I imagine, will deny this. But what is the +reason of it? + +The first and chief reason is this--Forms of language change, but the +great art of narrative appeals eternally to men, and its rules rest on +principles older than Homer. And whatever else may be said of Chaucer, +he is a superb narrator. To borrow a phrase from another venerable +art, he is always "on the ball." He pursues the story--the story, and +again the story. Mr. Ward once put this admirably-- + + "The vivacity of joyousness of Chaucer's poetic temperament ... + make him amusingly impatient of epical lengths, abrupt in his + transitions, and anxious, with an anxiety usually manifested by + readers rather than by writers, to come to the point, 'to the + great effect,' as he is wont to call it. 'Men,' he says, 'may + overlade a ship or barge, and therefore I will skip at once to + the effect, and let all the rest slip.' And he unconsciously + suggests a striking difference between himself and the great + Elizabethan epic poet who owes so much to him, when he declines + to make as long a tale of the chaff or of the straw as of the + corn, and to describe all the details of a marriage-feast + _seriatim_: + + 'The fruit of every tale is for to say: + They eat and drink, and dance and sing and play.' + + This may be the fruit; but epic poets, from Homer downward, have + been generally in the habit of not neglecting the foliage. + Spenser in particular has that impartial copiousness which we + think it our duty to admire in the Ionic epos, but which, if + truth were told, has prevented generations of Englishmen from + acquiring an intimate personal acquaintance with the 'Fairy + Queen.' With Chaucer the danger certainly rather lay in the + opposite direction." + +Now, if we are once interested in a story, small difficulties of +speech or spelling will not readily daunt us in the time-honored +pursuit of "what happens next"--certainly not if we know enough of our +author to feel sure he will come to the point and tell us what happens +next with the least possible palaver. We have a definite want and a +certainty of being satisfied promptly. But with Spenser this +satisfaction may, and almost certainly will, be delayed over many +pages: and though in the meanwhile a thousand casual beauties may +appeal to us, the main thread of our attention is sensibly relaxed. +Chaucer is the minister and Spenser the master: and the difference +between pursuing what we want and pursuing we-know-not-what must +affect the ardor of the chase. Even if we take the future on trust, +and follow Spenser to the end, we cannot look back on a book of the +"Faerie Queene" as on part of a good story: for it is admittedly an +unsatisfying and ill-constructed story. But my point is that an +ordinary reader resents being asked to take the future on trust while +the author luxuriates in casual beauties of speech upon every mortal +subject but the one in hand. The first principle of good narrative is +to stick to the subject; the second, to carry the audience along in a +series of small surprises--satisfying expectation and going just a +little beyond. If it were necessary to read fifty pages before +enjoying Chaucer, though the sum of eventual enjoyment were as great +as it now is, Chaucer would never be read. We master small +difficulties line by line because our recompense comes line by line. + +Moreover, it is as certain as can be that we read Chaucer to-day more +easily than our fathers read him one hundred, two hundred, three +hundred years ago. And I make haste to add that the credit of this +does not belong to the philologists. + +The Elizabethans, from Spenser onward, found Chaucer distressingly +archaic. When Sir Francis Kynaston, _temp_. Charles I., translated +"Troilus and Criseyde," Cartwright congratulated him that he had at +length made it possible to read Chaucer without a dictionary. And from +Dryden's time to Wordsworth's he was an "uncouthe unkiste" barbarian, +full of wit, but only tolerable in polite paraphrase. Chaucer himself +seems to have foreboded this, towards the close of his "Troilus and +Criseyde," when he addresses his "litel book"-- + + "And for there is so great diversitee + In English, and in wryting of our tonge, + So preye I God that noon miswryte thee, + Ne thee mismetre for defaute of tonge. + And red wher-so thou be, or elles songe, + That thou be understoude I God beseche!..." + +And therewith, as though on purpose to defeat his fears, he proceeded +to turn three stanzas of Boccaccio into English that tastes almost as +freshly after five hundred years as on the day it was written. He is +speaking of Hector's death:-- + + "And whan that he was slayn in this manere, + His lighte goost ful blisfully it went + Up to the holownesse of the seventh spere + In convers leting every element; + And ther he saugh, with ful avysement, + The erratik starres, herkening armonye + With sownes ful of hevenish melodye. + + "And down from thennes faste he gan avyse + This litel spot of erthe, that with the see + Embraced is, and fully gan despyse + This wrecched world, and held al vanitee + To respect of the pleyn felicitee + That is in hevene above; and at the laste, + Ther he was slayn, his loking down he caste; + + "And in himself he lough right at the wo + Of hem that wepten for his death so faste; + And dampned al our werk that folweth so + The blinde lust, the which that may not laste, + And sholden al our harte on hevene caste. + And forth he wente, shortly for to telle, + Ther as Mercurie sorted him to dwelle...." + +Who have prepared our ears to admit this passage, and many as fine? +Not the editors, who point out very properly that it is a close +translation from Boccaccio's "Teseide," xi. 1-3. The information is +valuable, as far as it goes; but what it fails to explain is just the +marvel of the passage--viz., the abiding "Englishness" of it, the +native ring of it in our ears after five centuries of linguistic and +metrical development. To whom, besides Chaucer himself, do we owe +this? For while Chaucer has remained substantially the same, +apparently we have an aptitude that our grandfathers and +great-grandfathers had not. The answer surely is: We owe it to our +nineteenth century poets, and particularly to Tennyson, Swinburne, and +William Morris. Years ago Mr. R.H. Horne said most acutely that the +principle of Chaucer's rhythm is "inseparable from a full and fair +exercise of the genius of our language in versification." This "full +and fair exercise" became a despised, almost a lost, tradition after +Chaucer's death. The rhythms of Skelton, of Surrey, and Wyatt, were +produced on alien and narrower lines. Revived by Shakespeare and the +later Elizabethans, it fell into contempt again until Cowper once more +began to claim freedom for English rhythm, and after him Coleridge, +and the despised Leigh Hunt. But never has its full liberty been so +triumphantly asserted as by the three poets I have named above. If we +are at home as we read Chaucer, it is because they have instructed us +in the liberty which Chaucer divined as the only true way. + +FOOTNOTES: + +[A] The Complete Works of Geoffrey Chaucer. Edited, from numerous +manuscripts, by the Rev. Walter W. Skeat, Litt. D., LL.D., M.A. In six +volumes. Oxford: At the Clarendon Press. 1894. + +[B] Chaucer's Canterbury Tales. Edited, with Notes and Introduction, +by Alfred W. Pollard. London: Macmillan & Co. + + + + +"THE PASSIONATE PILGRIM." + + +January 5, 1805. "The Passionate Pilgrim." + +_The Passionate Pilgrim_ (1599). _Reprinted with a Note about the +Book, by Arthur L. Humphreys. London: Privately Printed by Arthur L. +Humphreys, of 187, Piccadilly. MDCCCXCIV._ + +I was about to congratulate Mr. Humphreys on his printing when, upon +turning to the end of this dainty little volume, I discovered the +well-known colophon of the Chiswick Press--"Charles Whittingham & Co., +Took's Court, Chancery Lane, London." So I congratulate Messrs. +Charles Whittingham & Co. instead, and suggest that the imprint should +have run "Privately Printed _for_ Arthur L. Humphreys." + +This famous (or, if you like it, infamous) little anthology of thirty +leaves has been singularly unfortunate in its title-pages. It was +first published in 1599 as _The Passionate Pilgrims. By W. +Shakespeare. At London. Printed for W. Jaggard, and are to be sold by +W. Leake, at the Greyhound in Paules Churchyard._ This, of course, was +disingenuous. Some of the numbers were by Shakespeare: but the +authorship of some remains doubtful to this day, and others the +enterprising Jaggard had boldly conveyed from Marlowe, Richard +Barnefield, and Bartholomew Griffin. In short, to adapt a famous line +upon a famous lexicon, "the best part was Shakespeare, the rest was +not." For this, Jaggard has been execrated from time to time with +sufficient heartiness. Mr. Swinburne, in his latest volume of Essays, +calls him an "infamous pirate, liar, and thief." Mr. Humphreys +remarks, less vivaciously, that "He was not careful and prudent, or he +would not have attached the name of Shakespeare to a volume which was +only partly by the bard--that was his crime. Had Jaggard foreseen the +tantrums and contradictions he caused some commentators--Mr. Payne +Collier, for instance--he would doubtless have substituted 'By William +Shakespeare _and others_' for 'By William Shakespeare.' Thus he might +have saved his reputation, and this hornets' nest which now and then +rouses itself afresh around his aged ghost of three centuries ago." + +That a ghost can suffer no inconvenience from hornets I take to be +indisputable: but as a defence of Jaggard the above hardly seems +convincing. One might as plausibly justify a forger on the ground +that, had he foreseen the indignation of the prosecuting counsel, he +would doubtless have saved his reputation by forbearing to forge. But +before constructing a better defence, let us hear the whole tale of +the alleged misdeeds. Of the second edition of _The Passionate +Pilgrim_ no copy exists. Nothing whatever is known of it, and the +whole edition may have been but an ideal construction of Jaggard's +sportive fancy. But in 1612 appeared _The Passionate Pilgrime, or +certaine amorous Sonnets between Venus and Adonis, newly corrected and +augmented. By W. Shakespeare. The third edition. Whereunto is newly +added two Love Epistles, the first from Paris to Hellen, and Hellen's +answere back again to Paris. Printed by W. Jaggard._ (These "two Love +Epistles" were really by Thomas Heywood.) This title-page was very +quickly cancelled, and Shakespeare's name omitted. + + +Mr. Humphrey's Hypothesis. + +These are the bare facts. Now observe how they appear when set forth +by Mr. Humphreys:-- + + "Shakespeare, who, when the first edition was issued, was aged + thirty-five, acted his part as a great man very well, for he with + dignity took no notice of the error on the title-page of the + first edition, attributing to him poems which he had never + written. But when Jaggard went on sinning, and the third edition + appeared under Shakespeare's name _solely_, though it had poems + by Thomas Heywood, and others as well, Jaggard was promptly + pulled up by both Shakespeare and Heywood. Upon this the + publisher appears very properly to have printed a new title-page, + omitting the name of Shakespeare." + +Upon this I beg leave to observe--(1) That although it may very likely +have been at Shakespeare's own request that his name was removed from +the title-page of the third edition, Mr. Humphreys has no right to +state this as an ascertained fact. (2) That I fail to understand, if +Shakespeare acted properly in case of the third edition, why we should +talk nonsense about his "acting the part of a great man very well" and +"with dignity taking no notice of the error" in the first edition. In +the first edition he was wrongly credited with pieces that belonged +to Marlowe, Barnefield, Griffin, and some authors unknown. In the +third he was credited with these and some pieces by Heywood as well. +In the name of common logic I ask why, if it were "dignified" to say +nothing in the case of Marlowe and Barnefield, it suddenly became +right and proper to protest in the case of Heywood? But (3) what right +have we to assume that Shakespeare "took no notice of the error on the +title-page of the first edition"? We know this only--that if he +protested, he did not prevail as far as the first edition was +concerned. That edition may have been already exhausted. It is even +possible that he _did_ prevail in the matter of the second edition, +and that Jaggard reverted to his old courses in the third. I don't for +a moment suppose this was the case. I merely suggest that where so +many hypotheses will fit the scanty data known, it is best to lay down +no particular hypothesis as fact. + + +Another. + +For I imagine that anyone can, in five minutes, fit up an hypothesis +quite as valuable as Mr. Humphreys'. Here is one which at least has +the merit of not making Shakespeare look a fool:--W. Jaggard, +publisher, comes to William Shakespeare, poet, with the information +that he intends to bring out a small miscellany of verse. If the poet +has an unconsidered trifle or so to spare, Jaggard will not mind +giving a few shillings for them. "You may have, if you like," says +Shakespeare, "the rough copies of some songs in my _Love's Labour's +Lost_, published last year"; and, being further encouraged, searches +among his rough MSS., and tosses Jaggard a lyric or two and a couple +of sonnets. Jaggard pays his money, and departs with the verses. When +the miscellany appears, Shakespeare finds his name alone upon the +title-page, and remonstrates. But, of the defrauded ones, Marlowe is +dead; Barnefield has retired to live the life of a country gentleman +in Shropshire; Griffin dwells in Coventry (where he died, three years +later). These are the men injured; and if they cannot, or will not, +move in the business, Shakespeare (whose case at law would be more +difficult) can hardly be expected to. So he contents himself with +strong expressions at The Mermaid. But in 1612 Jaggard repeats his +offence, and is indiscreet enough to add Heywood to the list of the +spoiled. Heywood lives in London, on the spot; and Shakespeare, now +retired to Stratford, is of more importance than he was in 1599. +Armed with Shakespeare's authority Heywood goes to Jaggard and +threatens; and the publisher gives way. + +Whatever our hypothesis, we cannot maintain that Jaggard behaved well. +On the other hand, it were foolish to judge his offence as if the man +had committed it the day before yesterday. Conscience in matters of +literary copyright has been a plant of slow growth. But a year or two +ago respectable citizens of the United States were publishing our +books "free of authorial expenses," and even corrected our imperfect +works without consulting us. We must admit that Jaggard acted up to +Luther's maxim, "_Pecca fortiter_." He went so far as to include a +piece so well known as Marlowe's _Live with me and be my love_--which +proves at any rate his indifference to the chances of detection. But +to speak of him as one would speak of a similar offender in this New +Year of Grace is simply to forfeit one's claim to an historical sense. + + +The Book. + +What further palliation can we find? Mr. Swinburne calls the book "a +worthless little volume of stolen and mutilated poetry, patched up +and padded out with dirty and dreary doggrel, under the senseless and +preposterous title of _The Passionate Pilgrim_." On the other hand, +Mr. Humphreys maintains that "Jaggard, at any rate, had very good +taste. This is partly seen in the choice of a title. Few books have so +charming a name as _The Passionate Pilgrim_. It is a perfect title. +Jaggard also set up a good precedent, for this collection was +published a year before _England's Helicon_, and, of course, very many +years before any authorized collection of Shakespeare's 'Poems' was +issued. We see in _The Passionate Pilgrim_ a forerunner of _The Golden +Treasury_ and other anthologies." + +Now, as for the title, if the value of a title lie in its application, +Mr. Swinburne is right. It has little relevance to the verses in the +volume. On the other hand, as a portly and attractive mouthful of +syllables _The Passionate Pilgrim_ can hardly be surpassed. If not "a +perfect title," it is surely "a charming name." But Mr. Humphreys' +contention that Jaggard "set up a good precedent" and produced a +"forerunner" of English anthologies becomes absurd when we remember +that _Tottel's Miscellany_ was published in June, 1557 (just forty-two +years before _The Passionate Pilgrim_), and had reached an eighth +edition by 1587; that _The Paradise of Dainty Devices_ appeared in +1576; _A Gorgeous Gallery of Gallant Inventions_ in 1578; _A Handfull +of Pleasant Delights_ in 1584; and _The Phoenix' Nest_ in 1593. + +Almost as wide of the mark is Mr. Swinburne's description of the +volume as "worthless." It contains twenty-one numbers, besides that +lofty dirge, so unapproachably solemn, _The Phoenix and the Turtle_. +Of these, five are undoubtedly by Shakespeare. A sixth (_Crabbed age +and youth_), if not by Shakespeare, is one of the loveliest lyrics in +the language, and I for my part could give it to no other man. Note +also that but for Jaggard's enterprise this jewel had been irrevocably +lost to us, since it is known only through _The Passionate Pilgrim_. +Marlowe's _Live with me and be my love_, and Barnefield's _As it fell +upon a day_, make numbers seven and eight. And I imagine that even Mr. +Swinburne cannot afford to scorn _Sweet rose, fair flower, untimely +pluck'd, soon vaded_--which again only occurs in _The Passionate +Pilgrim_. These nine numbers, with _The Phoenix and the Turtle_, make +up more than half the book. Among the rest we have the pretty and +respectable lyrics, _If music and sweet poetry agree; Good night, good +rest; Lord, how mine eyes throw gazes to the east. When as thine eye +hath chose the dame_, and the gay little song, _It was a Lording's +daughter_. There remain the _Venus and Adonis_ sonnets and _My flocks +feed not_. Mr. Swinburne may call these "dirty and dreary doggrel," an +he list, with no more risk than of being held a somewhat over-anxious +moralist. But to call the whole book worthless is mere abuse of words. + +It is true, nevertheless, that one of the only two copies existing of +the first edition was bought for three halfpence. + + + + +SHAKESPEARE'S LYRICS + + +August 25, 1894. Shakespeare's Lyrics. + +In their re-issue of _The Aldine Poets_, Messrs. George Bell & Sons +have made a number of concessions to public taste. The new binding is +far more pleasing than the old; and in some cases, where the notes and +introductory memoirs had fallen out of date, new editors have been set +to work, with satisfactory results. It is therefore no small +disappointment to find that the latest volume, "The Poems of +Shakespeare," is but a reprint from stereotyped plates of the Rev. +Alexander Dyce's text, notes and memoir. + + +The Rev. A. Dyce. + +Now, of the Rev. Alexander Dyce it may be fearlessly asserted that his +criticism is not for all time. Even had he been less prone to accept +the word of John Payne Collier for gospel; even had Shakespearian +criticism made no perceptible advance during the last quarter of a +century, yet there is that in the Rev. Alexander Dyce's treatment of +his poet which would warn us to pause before accepting his word as +final. As a test of his aesthetic judgment we may turn to the "Songs +from the Plays of Shakespeare" with which this volume concludes. It +had been as well, in a work of this sort, to include all the songs; +but he gives us a selection only, and an uncommonly bad selection. I +have tried in vain to discover a single principle of taste underlying +it. On what principle, for instance, can a man include the song "Come +away, come away, death" from _Twelfth Night_, and omit "O mistress +mine, where are you roaming?"; or include Amiens' two songs from _As +you Like It_, and omit the incomparable "It was a lover and his lass"? +Or what but stark insensibility can explain the omission of "Take, O +take those lips away," and the bridal song "Roses, their sharp spines +being gone," that opens _The Two Noble Kinsmen_? But stay: the Rev. +Alexander Dyce may attribute this last pair to Fletcher. "Take, O take +those lips away" certainly occurs (with a second and inferior stanza) +in Fletcher's _The Bloody Brother_, first published in 1639; but Dyce +gives no hint of his belief that Fletcher wrote it. We are, therefore, +left to conclude that Dyce thought it unworthy of a place in his +collection. On _The Two Noble Kinsmen_ (first published in 1634) Dyce +is more explicit. In a footnote to the Memoir he says: "The title-page +of the first edition of Fletcher's _Two Noble Kinsmen_ attributes the +play partly to Shakespeare; I do not think our poet had any share in +its composition; but I must add that Mr. C. Lamb (a great authority in +such matters) inclines to a different opinion." When "Mr. C. Lamb" and +the Rev. Alexander Dyce hold opposite opinions, it need not be +difficult to choose. And surely, if internal evidence count for +anything at all, the lines + + "Maiden pinks, of odour faint, + Daisies smell-less, yet most quaint, + And sweet thyme true." + +or-- + + "Oxlips in their cradles growing" + +or-- + + "Not an angel of the air, + Bird melodious, or bird fair, + Be absent hence." + +--were written by Shakespeare and not by Fletcher. Nor is it any +detraction from Fletcher to take this view. Shakespeare himself has +left songs hardly finer than Fletcher wrote at his best--hardly finer, +for instance, than that magnificent pair from _Valentinian_. Only the +note of Shakespeare happens to be different from the note of +Fletcher: and it is Shakespeare's note--the note of + + "The cowslips tall her pensioners be" + +(also omitted by the inscrutable Dyce) and of + + "When daisies pied, and violets blue, + And lady-smocks all silver-white, + And cuckoo buds of yellow hue + Do paint the meadows with delight ..." + +--that we hear repeated in this Bridal Song.[A] And if this be so, it +is but another proof for us that Dyce was not a critic for all time. + +Nor is the accent of finality conspicuous in such passages as this +from the Memoir:-- + + "Wright had heard that Shakespeare 'was a much better poet than + player'; and Rowe tells us that soon after his admission into the + company, he became distinguished, 'if not as an extraordinary + actor, yet as an excellent writer.' Perhaps his execution did not + equal his conception of a character, but we may rest assured that + he who wrote the incomparable instructions to the player in + _Hamlet_ would never offend his audience by an injudicious + performance." + +I have no more to urge against writing of this order than that it has +passed out of fashion, and that something different might reasonably +have been looked for in a volume that bears the date 1894 on its +title-page. The public owes Messrs. Bell & Sons a heavy debt; but at +the same time the public has a peculiar interest in such a series as +that of _The Aldine Poets_. A purchaser who finds several of these +books to his mind, and is thereby induced to embark upon the purchase +of the entire series, must feel a natural resentment if succeeding +volumes drop below the implied standard. He cannot go back: and to +omit the offending volumes is to spoil his set. And I contend that the +action taken by Messrs. Bell & Sons in improving several of their more +or less obsolete editions will only be entirely praiseworthy if we may +take it as an earnest of their desire to place the whole series on a +level with contemporary knowledge and criticism. + +Nor can anyone who knows how much the industry and enthusiasm of Dyce +did, in his day, for the study of Shakespeare, do more than urge that +while, viewed historically, Dyce's criticism is entirely respectable, +it happens to be a trifle belated in the year 1894. The points of +difference between him and Charles Lamb are perhaps too obvious to +need indication; but we may sum them up by saying that whereas Lamb, +being a genius, belongs to all time, Dyce, being but an industrious +person, belongs to a period. It was a period of rapid development, no +doubt--how rapid we may learn for ourselves by the easy process of +taking down Volume V. of Chalmers's "English Poets," and turning to +that immortal passage on Shakespeare's poems which Chalmers put forth +in the year 1810:-- + + "The peremptory decision of Mr. Steevens on the merits of these + poems must not be omitted. 'We have not reprinted the Sonnets, + etc., of Shakespeare, because the strongest Act of Parliament + that could be framed would fail to compel readers into their + service. Had Shakespeare produced no other works than these, his + name would have reached us with as little celebrity as time has + conferred upon that of Thomas Watson, an older and much more + elegant sonnetteer.' Severe as this may appear, it only amounts + to the general conclusion which modern critics have formed. + Still, it cannot be denied that there are many scattered beauties + among his Sonnets, and in the Rape of Lucrece; enough, it is + hoped, to justify their admission into the present collection, + especially as the Songs, etc., from his plays have been added, + and a few smaller pieces selected by Mr. Ellis...." + +No comment can add to, or take from, the stupendousness of this. And +yet it was the criticism proper to its time. "I have only to hope," +writes Chalmers in his preface, "that my criticisms will not be found +destitute of candour, or improperly interfering with the general and +acknowledged principles of taste." Indeed they are not. They were the +right opinions for Chalmers; as Dyce's were the right opinions for +Dyce: and if, as we hope, ours is a larger appreciation of +Shakespeare, we probably hold it by no merit of our own, but as the +common possession of our generation, derived through the chastening +experiences of our grandfathers. That, however, is no reason why we +should not insist on having such editions of Shakespeare as fulfil our +requirements, and refuse to study Dyce except as an historical figure. + +It is an unwise generation that declines to take all its inheritance. +I have heard once or twice of late that English poets in the future +will set themselves to express emotions more complex and subtle than +have ever yet been treated in poetry. I shall be extremely glad, of +course, if this happen in my time. But at present I incline to rejoice +rather in an assured inheritance, and, when I hear talk of this kind, +to say over to myself one particular sonnet which for mere subtlety of +thought seems to me unbeaten by anything that I can select from the +poetry of this century:-- + + Thy bosom is endeared of all hearts + Which I by lacking have supposed dead; + And there reigns Love and all Love's loving parts, + And all those friends which I thought buried. + How many a holy and obsequious Tear + Hath dear religious love stol'n from mine eye, + As interest of the dead, which now appear + But things remov'd that hidden in thee lie! + + Thou art the grave where buried love doth live, + Hung with the trophies of my lovers gone, + Who all their parts of me to thee did give; + That due of many now is thine alone! + Their images I lov'd I view in thee, + And thou, all they, hast all the all of me. + +FOOTNOTES: + +[A] The opening lines of the second stanza of this poem have generally +been printed thus: + + "Primrose, firstborn child of Ver, + Merry springtime's harbinger, + With her bells dim...." + +And many have wondered how Shakespeare or Fletcher came to write of +the "bells" of a primrose. Mr. W.J. Linton proposed "With harebell +slim": although if we must read "harebell" or "harebells," "dim" would +be a pretty and proper word for the color of that flower. The +conjecture takes some little plausibility from Shakespeare's elsewhere +linking primrose and harebell together: + + "Thou shalt not lack + The flower that's like thy face, pale primrose, nor + The azured harebell, like thy veins...." + _Cymbeline_, iv. 2. + +I have always suspected, however, that there should be a semicolon +after "Ver," and that "Merry springtime's harbinger, with her bells +dim," refers to a totally different flower--the snowdrop, to wit. And +I have lately learnt from Dr. Grosart, who has carefully examined the +1634 edition (the only early one), that the text actually gives a +semicolon. The snowdrop may very well come after the primrose in this +song, which altogether ignores the process of the seasons. + + + + +SAMUEL DANIEL + + +February 24, 1894. Samuel Daniel. + +The writings of Samuel Daniel and the circumstances of his life are of +course well enough known to all serious students of English poetry. +And, though I cannot speak on this point with any certainty, I imagine +that our younger singers hold to the tradition of all their fathers, +and that Daniel still + + _renidet in angulo_ + +of their affections, as one who in his day did very much, though +quietly, to train the growth of English verse; and proved himself, in +everything he wrote, an artist to the bottom of his conscience. As +certainly as Spenser, he was a "poet's poet" while he lived. A couple +of pages might be filled almost offhand with the genuine compliments +of his contemporaries, and he will probably remain a "poet's poet" as +long as poets write in English. But the average reader of culture--the +person who is honestly moved by good poetry and goes from time to +time to his bookshelves for an antidote to the common cares and +trivialities of this life--seems to neglect Daniel almost utterly. I +judge from the wretched insufficiency of his editions. It is very hard +to obtain anything beyond the two small volumes published in 1718 (an +imperfect collection), and a volume of selections edited by Mr. John +Morris and published by a Bath bookseller in 1855; and even these are +only to be picked up here and there. I find it significant, too, that +in Mr. Palgrave's _Golden Treasury_ Daniel is represented by one +sonnet only, and that by no means his best. This neglect will appear +the more singular to anyone who has observed how apt is the person +whom I have called the "average reader of culture" to be drawn to the +perusal of an author's works by some attractive idiosyncrasy in the +author's private life or character. Lamb is a staring instance of this +attraction. How we all love Lamb, to be sure! Though he rejected it +and called out upon it, "gentle" remains Lamb's constant epithet. And, +curiously enough, in the gentleness and dignified melancholy of his +life, Daniel stands nearer to Lamb than any other English writer, with +the possible exception of Scott. His circumstances were less gloomily +picturesque. But I defy any feeling man to read the scanty narrative +of Daniel's life and think of him thereafter without sympathy and +respect. + + +Life. + +He was born in 1562--Fuller says in Somersetshire, not far from +Taunton; others say at Beckington, near Philip's Norton, or at +Wilmington in Wiltshire. Anthony Wood tells us that he came "of a +wealthy family;" Fuller that "his father was a master of music." Of +his earlier years next to nothing is known; but in 1579 he was entered +as a commoner at Magdalen Hall, Oxford, and left the university three +years afterwards without taking a degree. His first book--a +translation of Paola Giovio's treatise on Emblems--appeared in 1585, +when he was about twenty-two. In 1590 or 1591 he was travelling in +Italy, probably with a pupil, and no doubt busy with those studies +that finally made him the first Italian scholar of his time. In 1592 +he published his "Sonnets to Delia," which at once made his +reputation; in 1594 his "Complaint of Rosamond" and "Tragedy of +Cleopatra;" and in 1595 four books of his "Civil Wars." On Spenser's +death, in 1599, Daniel is said to have succeeded to the office of +poet-laureate. + + "That wreath which, in Eliza's golden days, + My master dear, divinist Spenser, wore; + That which rewarded Drayton's learned lays, + Which thoughtful Ben and gentle Daniel wore...." + +But history traces the Laureateship, as an office, no further back +than Jonson, and we need not follow Southey into the mists. It is +certain, however, that Daniel was a favorite at Elizabeth's Court, and +in some way partook of her bounty. In 1600 he was appointed tutor to +the Lady Anne Clifford, a little girl of about eleven, daughter of +Margaret, Countess of Cumberland; and his services were gratefully +remembered by mother and daughter during his life and after. But +Daniel seems to have tired of living in great houses as private tutor +to the young. The next year, when presenting his works to Sir Thomas +Egerton, he writes:--"Such hath been my misery that whilst I should +have written the actions of men, I have been constrained to bide with +children, and, contrary to mine own spirit, put out of that sense +which nature had made my part." + + +Self-distrust. + +Now there is but one answer to this--that a man of really strong +spirit does not suffer himself to be "put out of that sense which +nature had made my part." Daniel's words indicate the weakness that +in the end made futile all his powers: they indicate a certain +"donnish" timidity (if I may use the epithet), a certain distrust of +his own genius. Such a timidity and such a distrust often accompany +very exquisite faculties: indeed, they may be said to imply a certain +exquisiteness of feeling. But they explain why, of the two +contemporaries, the robust Ben Jonson is to-day a living figure in +most men's conception of those times, while Samuel Daniel is rather a +fleeting ghost. And his self-distrust was even then recognized as well +as his exquisiteness. He is indeed "well-languaged Daniel," "sweet +honey-dropping Daniel," "Rosamund's trumpeter, sweet as the +nightingale," revered and admired by all his compeers. But the note of +apprehension was also sounded, not only by an unknown contributor to +that rare collection of epigrams, _Skialetheia, or the Shadow of +Truth_. + + "Daniel (as some hold) might mount, _if he list_; + But others say he is a Lucanist" + +--but by no meaner a judge than Spenser himself, who wrote in his +"Colin Clout's Come Home Again": + + "And there is a new shepherd late upsprung + The which doth all afore him far surpass: + Appearing well in that well-tuned song + Which late he sung unto a scornful lass. + _Yet doth his trembling Muse but lowly fly, + As daring not too rashly mount on height_; + And doth her tender plumes as yet but try + In love's soft lays, and looser thoughts delight. + Then rouse thy feathers quickly, DANIEL, + And to what course thou please thyself advance; + But most, meseems, thy accent will excel + In tragic plaints and passionate mischance." + +Moreover, there is a significant passage in the famous "Return from +Parnassus," first acted at Cambridge during the Christmas of 1601: + + "Sweet honey-dropping Daniel doth wage + War with the proudest big Italian + That melts his heart in sugar'd sonneting, + _Only let him more sparingly make use + Of others' wit and use his own the more._" + + +The 'mauvais pas' of Parnassus. + +Now it has been often pointed out that considerable writers fall into +two classes--(1) those who begin, having something to say, and are +from the first rather occupied with their matter than with the manner +of expressing it; and (2) those who begin with the love of expression +and intent to be artists in words, _and come through expression to +profound thought_. It is fashionable just now, for some reason or +another, to account Class 1 as the more respectable; a judgment to +which, considering that Shakespeare and Milton belonged undeniably to +Class 2, I refuse to assent. The question, however, is not to be +argued here. I have only to point out in this place that the early +work of all poets in Class 2 is largely imitative. Virgil was +imitative, Keats was imitative--to name but a couple of sufficiently +striking examples. And Daniel, who belongs to this class, was also +imitative. But for a poet of this class to reach the heights of song, +there must come a time when out of imitation he forms a genuine style +of his own, _and loses no mental fertility in the transformation_. +This, if I may use the metaphor, is the _mauvais pas_ in the ascent of +Parnassus: and here Daniel broke down. He did indeed acquire a style +of his own; but the effort exhausted him. He was no longer prolific; +his ardor had gone: and his innate self-distrustfulness made him quick +to recognize his sterility. + +Soon after the accession of James I., Daniel, at the recommendation +of his brother-in-law, John Florio, possibly furthered by the interest +of the Earl of Pembroke, was given a post as gentleman extraordinary +and groom of the privy chamber to Anne of Denmark; and a few months +after was appointed to take the oversight of the plays and shows that +were performed by the children of the Queen's revels, or children of +the Chapel, as they were called under Elizabeth. He had thus a snug +position at Court, and might have been happy, had it been another +Court. But in nothing was the accession of James more apparent than in +the almost instantaneous blasting of the taste, manners, and serious +grace that had marked the Court of Elizabeth. The Court of James was a +Court of bad taste, bad manners, and no grace whatever: and +Daniel--"the remnant of another time," as he calls himself--looked +wistfully back upon the days of Elizabeth. + + "But whereas he came planted in the spring, + And had the sun before him of respect; + We, set in th' autumn, in the withering + And sullen season of a cold defect, + Must taste those sour distastes the times do bring + Upon the fulness of a cloy'd neglect. + Although the stronger constitutions shall + Wear out th' infection of distemper'd days ..." + +And so he stood dejected, while the young men of "stronger +constitutions" passed him by. + +In this way it happened that Daniel, whom at the outset his +contemporaries had praised with wide consent, and who never wrote a +loose or unscholarly line, came to pen, in the dedicatory epistle +prefixed to his tragedy of "Philotas," these words--perhaps the most +pathetic ever uttered by an artist upon his work: + + "And therefore since I have outlived the date + Of former grace, acceptance and delight. + I would my lines, late born beyond the fate + Of her[A] spent line, had never come to light; + So had I not been tax'd for wishing well, + Nor now mistaken by the censuring Stage, + Nor in my fame and reputation fell, + Which I esteem more than what all the age + Or the earth can give. _But years hath done this wrong, + To make me write too much, and live too long_." + + +Ease of his verse. + +I said just now that Daniel had done much, though quietly, to train +the growth of English verse. He not only stood up successfully for +its natural development at a time when the clever but less largely +informed Campion and others threatened it with fantastic changes. He +probably did as much as Waller to introduce polish of line into our +poetry. Turn to the famous "Ulysses and the Siren," and read. Can +anyone tell me of English verses that run more smoothly off the +tongue, or with a more temperate grace? + + "Well, well, Ulysses, then I see + I shall not have thee here: + And, therefore, I will come to thee, + And take my fortune there. + I must be won that cannot win, + Yet lost were I not won; + For beauty hath created been + T'undo or be undone." + +To speak familiarly, this is as easy as an old shoe. To speak yet more +familiarly, it looks as if any fool could turn off lines like these. +Let the fool try. + +And yet to how many anthologies do we not turn in vain for "Ulysses +and the Siren"; or for the exquisite spring song, beginning-- + + "Now each creature joys the other, + Passing happy days and hours; + One bird reports unto another + In the fall of silver showers ..." + +--or for that lofty thing, the "Epistle to the Countess of +Cumberland"?--which Wordsworth, who quoted it in his "Excursion," +declares to be "an admirable picture of the state of a wise man's mind +in a time of public commotion." Certainly if ever a critic shall arise +to deny poetry the virtue we so commonly claim for her, of fortifying +men's souls against calamity, this noble Epistle will be all but the +last post from which he will extrude her defenders. + +FOOTNOTES: + +[A] Sc. Elizabeth's. + + + + +WILLIAM BROWNE + + +April 21, 1894. William Browne of Tavistock. + +It has been objected to the author of _Britannia's Pastorals_ that +their perusal sends you to sleep. It had been subtler criticism, as +well as more amiable, to observe that you can wake up again and, +starting anew at the precise point where you dropped off, continue the +perusal with as much pleasure as ever, neither ashamed of your +somnolence nor imputing it as a fault to the poet. For William Browne +is perhaps the easiest figure in our literature. He lived easily, he +wrote easily, and no doubt he died easily. He no more expected to be +read through at a sitting than he tried to write all the story of +Marina at a sitting. He took up his pen and composed: when he felt +tired he went off to bed, like a sensible man: and when you are tired +of reading he expects you to be sensible and do the same. + + +A placid life. + +He was born at Tavistock, in Devon, about the year 1590; and after the +manner of mild and sensible men cherished a particular love for his +birth-place to the end of his days. From Tavistock Grammar School he +passed to Exeter College, Oxford--the old west-country college--and +thence to Clifford's Inn and the Inner Temple. His first wife died +when he was twenty-three or twenty-four. He took his second courtship +quietly and leisurely, marrying the lady at length in 1628, after a +wooing of thirteen years. "He seems," says Mr. A.H. Bullen, his latest +biographer, "to have acquired in some way a modest competence, which +secured him immunity from the troubles that weighed so heavily on men +of letters." His second wife also brought him a portion. More than +four years before this marriage he had returned to Exeter College, as +tutor to the young Robert Dormer, who in due time became Earl of +Carnarvon and was killed in Newbury fight. By his fellow-collegians--as +by everybody with whom he came into contact--he was highly beloved and +esteemed, and in the public Register of the University is styled, "vir +omni humana literarum et bonarum artium cognitione instructus." He +gained the especial favor of William Herbert, Earl of Pembroke, whom +Aubrey calls "the greatest Maecenas to learned men of any peer of his +time or since," and of whom Clarendon says, "He was a great lover of +his country, and of the religion and justice, which he believed could +only support it; and his friendships were only with men of those +principles,"--another tribute to the poet's character. He was familiarly +received at Wilton, the home of the Herberts. After his second marriage +he moved to Dorking and there settled. He died in or before the year +1645. In the letters of administration granted to his widow (November, +1645) he is described as "late of Dorking, in the county of Surrey, +Esquire." But there is no entry of his death in the registers at Dorking +or Horsham: so perhaps he went back to lay his bones in his beloved Devon. +A William Browne was buried at Tavistock on March 27th, 1643. This may or +may not have been our author. "Tavistock,--Wilton,--Dorking," says Mr. +Bullen,--"Surely few poets have had a more tranquil journey to the +Elysian Fields." + + +An amiable poet. + +As with his life, so with his poetry--he went about it quietly, +contentedly. He learned his art, as he confesses, from Spenser and +Sidney; and he took it over ready-made, with all the conventions and +pastoral stock-in-trade--swains languishing for hard-hearted nymphs, +nymphs languishing for hard-hearted swains; sheep-cotes, rustic +dances, junketings, anadems, and true-love knots; monsters invented +for the perpetual menace of chastity; chastity undergoing the most +surprising perils, but always saved in the nick of time, if not by an +opportune shepherd, then by an equally opportune river-god or +earthquake; episodes innumerable, branching off from the main stem of +the narrative at the most critical point, and luxuriating in endless +ramifications. Beauty, eluding unwelcome embraces, is never too hotly +pressed to dally with an engaging simile or choose the most agreeable +words for depicting her tribulation. Why indeed should she hurry? It +is all a polite and pleasant make-believe; and when Marina and Doridon +are tired, they stand aside and watch the side couples, Fida and +Remond, and get their breath again for the next figure. As for the +finish of the tale, there is no finish. The narrator will stop when he +is tired; just then and no sooner. What became of Marina after Triton +rolled away the stone and released her from the Cave of Famine? I am +sure I don't know. I have followed her adventures up to that point +(though I should be very sorry to attempt a _precis_ of them without +the book) through some 370 pages of verse. Does this mean that I am +greatly interested in her? Not in the least. I am quite content to +hear no more about her. Let us have the lamentations of Celadyne for a +change--though "for a change" is much too strong an expression. The +author is quite able to invent more adventures for Marina, if he +chooses to, by the hour together. If he does not choose to, well and +good. + +Was the composition of _Britannia's Pastorals_ then, a useless or +inconsiderable feat? Not at all: since to read them is to taste a mild +but continuous pleasure. In the first place, it is always pleasant to +see a good man thoroughly enjoying himself: and that Browne thoroughly +"relisht versing"--to use George Herbert's pretty phrase--would be +patent enough, even had he not left us an express assurance:-- + + "What now I sing is but to pass away + A tedious hour, as some musicians play; + Or make another my own griefs bemoan--" + +--rather affected, that, one suspects: + + "Or to be least alone when most alone, + In this can I, as oft as I will choose, + Hug sweet content by my retired Muse, + And in a study find as much to please + As others in the greatest palaces. + Each man that lives, according to his power, + On what he loves bestows an idle hour. + Instead of hounds that make the wooded hills + Talk in a hundred voices to the rills, + I like the pleasing cadence of a line + Struck by the consort of the sacred Nine. + In lieu of hawks ..." + +--and so on. Indeed, unless it be Wither, there is no poet of the time +who practised his art with such entire cheerfulness: though Wither's +satisfaction had a deeper note, as when he says of his Muse-- + + "Her true beauty leaves behind + Apprehensions in the mind, + Of more sweetness than all art + Or inventions can impart; + Thoughts too deep to be express'd, + And too strong to be suppressed." + +Yet Charles Lamb's nice observation-- + + "Fame, and that too after death, was all which hitherto the poets + had promised themselves from their art. It seems to have been + left to Wither to discover that poetry was a present possession + as well as a rich reversion, and that the muse had promise of + both lives--of this, and of that which was to come." + +--must be extended by us, after reading his lines quoted above, to +include William Browne. He, at least, had no doubt of the Muse as an +earthly companion. + +As for posthumous fame, Browne confides to us his aspirations in that +matter also:-- + + "And Time may be so kind to these weak lines + To keep my name enroll'd past his that shines + In gilded marble, or in brazen leaves: + Since verse preserves, when stone and brass deceives. + Or if (as worthless) Time not lets it live + To those full days which others' Muses give, + Yet I am sure I shall be heard and sung + Of most severest eld and kinder young + Beyond my days; and maugre Envy's strife, + Add to my name some hours beyond my life." + +This is the amiable hope of one who lived an entirely amiable life in + + "homely towns, + Sweetly environ'd with the daisied downs:" + +and who is not the less to be beloved because at times his amiability +prevents him from attacking even our somnolence too fiercely. If the +casual reader but remember Browne as a poet who had the honor to +supply Keats with inspiration,[A] there will always be others, and +enough of them, to prize his ambling Muse for her own qualities. + +FOOTNOTES: + +[A] _Cf._ his lament for William Ferrar (brother of Nicholas Ferrar, +of Little Gidding), drowned at sea-- + + "Glide soft, ye silver floods, + And every spring: + Within the shady woods + Let no bird sing...." + + + + +THOMAS CAREW + + +July 28, 1894. A Note on his Name. + +Even as there is an M alike in Macedon and Monmouth, so Thomas Carew +and I have a common grievance--that our names are constantly +mispronounced. It is their own fault, of course; on the face of it +they ought to rhyme with "few" and "vouch." And if it be urged +(impolitely but with a fair amount of plausibility) that what my name +may or may not rhyme with is of no concern to anybody, I have only to +reply that, until a month or so back, I cheerfully shared this opinion +and acquiesced in the general error. Had I dreamed then of becoming a +subject for poetry, I had pointed out--as I do now--for the benefit of +all intending bards, that I do not legitimately rhyme with "vouch" (so +liable is human judgment to err, even in trifles), unless they +pronounce it "vooch," which is awkward. I believe, indeed (speaking as +one who has never had occasion to own a Rhyming Dictionary), that the +number of English words consonant with my name is exceedingly small; +but leave the difficulty to the ingenious Dr. Alexander H. Japp, +LL.D., F.R.S.E., who has lately been at the pains to compose and put +into private circulation a sprightly lampoon upon me. As it is not my +intention to reply with a set of verses upon Dr. Japp, it seems +superfluous to inquire if _his_ name should be pronounced as it is +spelt. + +But Carew's case is rather important; and it is really odd that his +latest and most learned editor, the Rev. J.F. Ebsworth, should fall +into the old error. In a "dedicatory prelude" to his edition of "The +Poems and Masque of Thomas Carew" (London: Reeves & Turner), Mr. +Ebsworth writes as follows:-- + + "Hearken strains from one who knew + How to praise and how to sue: + _Celia's_ lover, TOM CAREW." + +Thomas Carew (born April 3d, 1590, at Wickham, in Kent) was the son of +Sir Matthew Carew, Master in Chancery, and the grandson of Sir Wymond +Carew, of East Antony, or Antony St. Jacob, between the Lynher and +Tamar rivers in Cornwall, where the family of Pole-Carew lives to +this day. Now, the Cornish Carews have always pronounced their name as +"Carey," though, as soon as you cross the Tamar and find yourself (let +us say) as far east as Haccombe in South Devon, the name becomes +"Carew"--pronounced as it is written. The two forms are both of great +age, as the old rhyme bears witness-- + + "Carew, Carey and Courtenay, + When the Conqueror came, were here at play"-- + +and the name was often written "Carey" or "Cary," as in the case of +the famous Lucius Carey, Lord Falkland, and his descendants. In +Cornwall, however, where spelling is often an untrustworthy guide to +pronunciation (I have known people to write their name "Hix" and +pronounce it as "Hic"--when sober, too), it was written "Carew" and +pronounced as "Carey"; and there is not the slightest doubt that this +was the case with our poet's name. If anyone deny it, let him consider +the verse in which Carew is mentioned by his contemporaries: and +attempt, for instance, to scan the lines in Robert Baron's "Pocula +Castalia," 1650-- + + "Sweet _Suckling_ then, the glory of the Bower + Wherein I've wanton'd many a genial hour, + Fair Plant! whom I have seen _Minerva_ wear + An ornament to her well-plaited hair, + On highest days; remove a little from + Thy excellent _Carew_! and thou, dearest _Tom_, + _Love's Oracle_! lay thee a little off + Thy flourishing _Suckling_, that between you both + I may find room...." + +Or this by Suckling-- + + "_Tom Carew_ was next, but he had a fault, + That would not well stand with a Laureat; + His Muse was hard-bound, and th' issue of 's brain + Was seldom brought forth but with trouble and pain." + +Or this, by Lord Falkland himself (who surely may be supposed to have +known how the name was pronounced), in his "Eclogue on the Death of +Ben Jonson"-- + + "_Let Digby, Carew, Killigrew_ and _Maine, + Godolphin, Waller_, that inspired train-- + Or whose rare pen beside deserves the grace + Or of an equal, or a neighbouring place-- + Answer thy wish, for none so fit appears + To raise his Tomb, as who are left his heirs." + +In each case "Carey" scans admirably, while "Carew" gives the line an +intolerable limp. + + +Mr. Ebsworth's championship. + +This mistake of Mr. Ebsworth's is the less easy to understand inasmuch +as he has been very careful to clear up the popular confusion of our +poet Thomas Carew, "gentleman of the Privy Chamber to King Charles I., +and cup-bearer to His Majesty," with another Thomas Gary (also a +poet), son of the Earl of Monmouth and groom of His Majesty's +bed-chamber. But it is one thing to prove that this second Thomas Gary +is the original of the "medallion portrait" commonly supposed to be +Carew's: it is quite another thing to saddle him, merely upon +guess-work, with Carew's reputed indiscretions. Indeed, Mr. Ebsworth +lets his enthusiasm for his author run clean away with his sense of +fairness. He heads his Introductory Memoir with the words of Pallas in +Tennyson's "OEnone"-- + + "Again she said--'I woo thee not with gifts: + Sequel of guerdon could not alter me + To fairer. Judge thou me by what I am, + So shalt thou find me fairest.'"-- + +from which I take it that Mr. Ebsworth claims his attitude towards +Carew to be much the same as Thackeray's towards Pendennis. But in +fact he proves himself a thorough-going partisan, and anyone less +enthusiastic may think himself lucky if dismissed by Mr. Ebsworth +with nothing worse than a smile of pity mingled with contempt. Now, +so long as an editor confines this belligerent enthusiasm to the +defence of his author's writings, it is at worst but an amiable +weakness; and every word he says in their praise tends indirectly to +justify his own labor in editing these meritorious compositions. But +when he extends this championship over the author's private life, he +not unfrequently becomes something of a nuisance. We may easily +forgive such talk as "There must assuredly have been a singular +frankness and affectionate simplicity in the disposition of Carew:" +talk which is harmless, though hardly more valuable than the +reflection beloved of local historians--"If these grey old walls could +speak, what a tale might they not unfold!" It is less easy to forgive +such a note as this:-- + + "Sir John Suckling was incapable of understanding Carew in his + final days of sickness and depression, as he had been (and this + is conceding much) in their earlier days of reckless gallantry. + His vile address 'to T---- C----,' etc., 'Troth, _Tom_, I must + confess I much admire ...' is nothing more than coarse badinage + without foundation; in any case not necessarily addressed to + Carew, although they were of close acquaintance; but many other + Toms were open to a similar expression, since 'T.C.' might apply + to Thomas Carey, to Thomas Crosse, and other T.C. poets." + +It is not pleasant to rake up any man's faults; but when an editor +begins to suggest some new man against whom nothing is known (except +that he wrote indifferent verse)--who is not even known to have been +on speaking terms with Suckling--as the proper target of Suckling's +coarse raillery, we have a right not only to protest, but to point out +that even Clarendon, who liked Carew, wrote of him that, "after fifty +years of his life spent with less severity and exactness than it ought +to have been, he died with great remorse for that license, and with +the greatest manifestation of Christianity that his best friends could +desire." If Carew thought fit to feel remorse for that license, it +scarcely becomes Mr. Ebsworth to deny its existence, much less to hint +that the sinfulness was another's. + + +A correction. + +As a minor criticism, I may point out that the song, "Come, my Celia, +let us prove ..." (included by Mr. Ebsworth, with the remark that +"there is no external evidence to confirm the attribution of this song +to Carew") was written by Ben Jonson, and is to be found in +_Volpone_, Act III., sc. 7, 1607. + +But, with some imperfections, this is a sound edition--sadly +needed--of one of the most brilliant lyrical writers of his time. It +contains a charming portrait; and the editor's enthusiasm, when it +does not lead him too far, is also charming. + + + + +"ROBINSON CRUSOE" + + +April 13, 1895. Robinson Crusoe. + +Many a book has produced a wide and beneficent effect and won a great +reputation, and yet this effect and this reputation have been +altogether wide of its author's aim. Swift's _Gulliver_ is one +example. As Mr. Birrell put it the other day, "Swift's gospel of +hatred, his testament of woe--his _Gulliver_, upon which he expended +the treasures of his wit, and into which he instilled the concentrated +essence of his rage--has become a child's book, and has been read with +wonder and delight by generations of innocents." + + +How far is the tale a parable? + +Generations of innocents in like manner have accepted _Robinson +Crusoe_ as a delightful tale about a castaway mariner, a story of +adventure pure and simple, without sub-intention of any kind. But we +know very well that Defoe in writing it intended a parable--a parable +of his own life. In the first place, he distinctly affirms this in +his preface to the _Serious Reflections_ which form Part iii. of his +great story:-- + + "As the design of everything is said to be first in the + intention, and last in the execution, so I come now to + acknowledge to my reader that the present work is not merely a + product of the two first volumes, but the two first volumes may + rather be called the product of this. The fable is always made + for the moral, not the moral for the fable...." + +He goes on to say that whereas "the envious and ill-disposed part of +the world" have accused the story of being feigned, and "all a +romance, formed and embellished by invention to impose upon the +world," he declares this objection to be an invention scandalous in +design, and false in fact, and affirms that the story, "though +allegorical, is also historical"; that it is + + "the beautiful representation of a life of unexampled + misfortunes, and of a variety not to be met with in the world, + sincerely adapted to and intended for the common good of mankind, + and _designed at first_, as it is now further applied, to the + most serious use possible. Farther, that there is a man alive, + and well known too, the actions of whose life are the just + subject of these volumes, _and to whom all or most part of the + story most directly alludes_; this may be depended upon, for + truth, and to this I set my name." + +He proceeds to assert this in detail of several important passages in +the book, and obviously intends us to infer that the adventures of +Robinson Crusoe of York, Mariner, were throughout and from the +beginning designed as a story in parable of the life and adventures of +Daniel Defoe, Gentleman. "But Defoe may have been lying?" This was +never quite flatly asserted. Even his enemy Gildon admitted an analogy +between the tale of Crusoe and the stormy life of Defoe with its +frequent shipwrecks "more by land than by sea." Gildon admitted this +implicitly in the title of his pamphlet, _The Life and Strange +Surprising Adventures of Mr. D---- De F----, of London, Hosier, who +has lived above Fifty Years by himself in the Kingdoms of North and +South Britain._ But the question has always been, To what extent are +we to accept Defoe's statement that the story is an allegory? Does it +agree step by step and in detail with the circumstances of Defoe's +life? Or has it but a general allegorical resemblance? + +Hitherto, critics have been content with the general resemblance, and +have agreed that it would be a mistake to accept Defoe's statement +too literally, to hunt for minute allusions in _Robinson Crusoe_, and +search for exact resemblances between incidents in the tale and events +in the author's life. But this at any rate may be safely affirmed, +that recent discoveries have proved the resemblance to be a great deal +closer than anyone suspected a few years ago. + + +Mr. Wright's hypothesis. + +Mr. Aitken supplied the key when he announced in the _Athenaeum_ for +August 23rd, 1890, his discovery that Daniel Defoe was born, not in +1661 (as had hitherto been supposed), but earlier, and probably in the +latter part of the year 1659. The story dates Crusoe's birth September +30th, 1632, or just twenty-seven years earlier. Now Mr. Wright, +Defoe's latest biographer,[A] maintains that if we add these +twenty-seven years to the date of any event in Crusoe's life we shall +have the date of the corresponding event in Defoe's life. By this +simple calculation he finds that Crusoe's running away to sea +corresponds in time with Defoe's departure from the academy at +Newington Green; Crusoe's early period on the island (south side) +with the years Defoe lived at Tooting; Crusoe's visit to the other +side of the island with a journey of Defoe's into Scotland; the +footprint and the arrival of the savages with the threatening letters +received by Defoe, and the physical assaults made on him after the +Sacheverell trial; while Friday stands for a collaborator who helped +Defoe with his work. + +Defoe expressly states in his _Serious Reflections_ that the story of +Friday is historical and true in fact-- + + "It is most real that I had ... such a servant, a savage, and + afterwards a Christian, and that his name was called Friday, and + that he was ravished from me by force, and died in the hands that + took him, which I represent by being killed; this is all + literally true, and should I enter into discoveries many alive + can testify them. His other conduct and assistance to me also + have just references in all their parts to the helps I had from + that faithful savage in my real solitudes and disasters." + +It may be added that there are strong grounds for believing Defoe to +have had about this time assistance in his literary work. + +All this is very neatly worked out; but of course the really important +event in Crusoe's life is his great shipwreck and his long solitude +on the island. Now of what events in Defoe's life are these +symbolical? + + +The 'Silence.' + +Well, in the very forefront of his _Serious Reflections_, and in +connection with his long confinement in the island, Defoe makes Crusoe +tell the following story:-- + + "I have heard of a man that, upon some extraordinary disgust + which he took at the unsuitable conversation of some of his + nearest relations, whose society he could not avoid, suddenly + resolved never to speak any more. He kept his resolution most + rigorously many years; not all the tears or entreaties of his + friends--no, not of his wife and children--could prevail with him + to break his silence. It seems it was their ill-behaviour to him, + at first, that was the occasion of it; for they treated him with + provoking language, which frequently put him into undecent + passions, and urged him to rash replies; and he took this severe + way to punish himself for being provoked, and to punish them for + provoking him. But the severity was unjustifiable; it ruined his + family and broke up his house. His wife could not bear it, and + after endeavouring, by all the ways possible, to alter his rigid + silence, went first away from him, and afterwards from herself, + turning melancholy and distracted. His children separated, some + one way and some another way; and only one daughter, who loved + her father above all the rest, kept with him, tended him, talked + to him by signs, and lived almost dumb like her father _near + twenty-nine years with him; till being very sick, and in a high + fever, delirious as we call it, or light-headed, he broke his + silence_, not knowing when he did it, and spoke, though wildly at + first. He recovered of his illness afterwards, and frequently + talked with his daughter, but not much, and very seldom to + anybody else." + +I italicise some very important words in the above story. Crusoe was +wrecked on his island on September 30th, 1659, his twenty-seventh +birthday. We are told that he remained on the island twenty-eight +years, two months and nineteen days. (Compare with duration of the +man's silence in the story.) This puts the date of his departure at +December 19th, 1687. + +Now add twenty-seven years. We find that Defoe left _his_ +solitude--whatever that may have been--on December 19th, 1714. Just at +that date, as all his biographers record, Defoe was struck down by a +fit of apoplexy and lay ill for six weeks. Compare this again with the +story. + +You divine what is coming. Astounding as it may be, Mr. Wright +contends that Defoe himself was the original of the story: that Defoe, +provoked by his wife's irritating tongue, made a kind of vow to live +a life of silence--and kept it for more than twenty-eight years! + +So far back as 1859 the egregious Chadwick nibbled at this theory in +his _Life and Times of Daniel Defoe, with Remarks Digressive and +Discursive_. The story, he says, "would be very applicable" to Defoe +himself, and again, "is very likely to have been taken from his own +life"; but at this point Chadwick maunders off with the remark that +"perhaps the domestic fireside of the poet or book-writer is not the +place we should go to in search of domestic happiness." Perhaps not; +but Chadwick, tallyhoing after domestic happiness, misses the scent. +Mr. Wright sticks to the scent and rides boldly; but is he after the +real fox? + + * * * * * + +April 20, 1895. + +Can we believe it? Can we believe that on the 30th of September, 1686, +Defoe, provoked by his wife's nagging tongue, made a vow to live a +life of complete silence; that for twenty-eight years and a month or +two he never addressed a word to his wife or children; and that his +resolution was only broken down by a severe illness in the winter of +1714? + + +Mr. Aitken on Mr. Wright's hypothesis. + +Mr. Aitken,[B] who has handled this hypothesis of Mr. Wright's, brings +several arguments against it, which, taken together, seem to me quite +conclusive. To begin with, several children were born to Defoe during +this period. He paid much attention to their education, and in 1713, +the penultimate year of this supposed silence, we find his sons +helping him in his work. Again, in 1703 Mrs. Defoe was interceding for +her husband's release from Newgate. Let me add that it was an age in +which personalities were freely used in public controversy; that Defoe +was continuously occupied with public controversy during these +twenty-eight years, and managed to make as many enemies as any man +within the four seas; and I think the silence of his adversaries upon +a matter which, if proved, would be discreditable in the extreme, is +the best of all evidence that Mr. Wright's hypothesis cannot be +sustained. Nor do I see how Mr. Wright makes it square with his own +conception of Defoe's character. "Of a forgiving temper himself," says +Mr. Wright on p. 86, "he (Defoe) was quite incapable of understanding +how another person could nourish resentment." This of a man whom the +writer asserts to have sulked in absolute silence with his wife and +family for twenty-eight years, two months, and nineteen days! + + +An inherent improbability. + +At all events it will not square with _our_ conception of Defoe's +character. Those of us who have an almost unlimited admiration for +Defoe as a master of narrative, and next to no affection for him as a +man, might pass the heartlessness of such conduct. "At first sight," +Mr. Wright admits, "it may appear monstrous that a man should for so +long a time abstain from speech with his own family." Monstrous, +indeed--but I am afraid we could have passed that. Mr. Wright, who has +what I may call a purfled style, tells us that-- + + "To narrate the career of Daniel Defoe is to tell a tale of + wonder and daring, of high endeavour and marvellous success. To + dwell upon it is to take courage and to praise God for the + splendid possibilities of life.... Defoe is always the hero; his + career is as thick with events as a cornfield with corn; his + fortunes change as quickly and as completely as the shapes in a + kaleidoscope--he is up, he is down, he is courted, he is spurned; + it is shine, it is shower, it is _couleur de rose_, it is + Stygian night. Thirteen times he was rich and poor. Achilles was + not more audacious, Ulysses more subtle, AEneas more pious." + +That is one way of putting it. Here is another way (as the cookery +books say):--"To narrate the career of Daniel Defoe is to tell a tale +of a hosier and pantile maker, who had a hooked nose and wrote tracts +indefatigably--he was up, he was down, he was in the Pillory, he was +at Tooting; it was _poule de soie_, it was leather and prunella; and +it was always tracts. AEneas was not so pious a member of the Butchers' +Company; and there are a few milestones on the Dover Road; but Defoe's +life was as thick with tracts as a cornfield with corn." These two +estimates may differ here and there; but on one point they agree--that +Defoe was an extremely restless, pushing, voluble person, who could as +soon have stood on his head for twenty-eight years, two months, and +nineteen days as have kept silence for that period with any man or +woman in whose company he found himself frequently alone. Unless we +have entirely misjudged his character--and, I may add, unless Mr. +Wright has completely misrepresented the rest of his life--it simply +was not _in_ the man to keep this foolish vow for twenty-four hours. + +No, I am afraid Mr. Wright's hypothesis will not do. And yet his plan +of adding twenty-seven years to each important date in Crusoe's +history has revealed so many coincident events in the life of Defoe +that we cannot help feeling he is "hot," as they say in the children's +game; that the wreck upon the island and Crusoe's twenty-eight years +odd of solitude do really correspond with some great event and +important period of Defoe's life. The wreck is dated 30th September, +1659. Add the twenty-seven years, and we come to September 30th, 1686. +Where was Defoe at that date, and what was he doing? Mr. Wright has to +confess that of his movements in 1686 and the two following years "we +know little that is definite." Certainly we know of nothing that can +correspond with Crusoe's shipwreck. + + +A suggestion. + +But wait a moment--The _original_ editions of _Robinson Crusoe_ (and +most, if not all, later editions) give the date of Crusoe's departure +from the island as December 19th, 1686, instead of 1687. Mr. Wright +suggests that this is a misprint; and, to be sure, it does not agree +with the statement respecting the length of Crusoe's stay on the +island, _if we assume the date of the wreck to be correct_. But, (as +Mr. Aitken points out) the mistake must be the author's, not the +printer's, because in the next paragraph we are told that Crusoe +reached England in June, 1687, not 1688. I agree with Mr. Aitken; and +I suggest _that the date of Crusoe's arrival at the island, not the +date of his departure, is the date misprinted_. Assume for a moment +that the date of departure (December 19th, 1686) is correct. Subtract +the twenty-eight years, two months, and nineteen days of Crusoe's stay +on the island, and we get September 30th, 1658, as the date of the +wreck and his arrival at the island. Now add the twenty-seven years +which separate Crusoe's experiences from Defoe's, and we come to +September 30th, 1685. What was happening in England at the close of +September, 1685? Why, Jeffreys was carrying through his Bloody Assize. + +"Like many other Dissenters," says Mr. Wright on p. 21, "Defoe +sympathised with Monmouth; and, to his misfortune, took part in the +rising." His comrades perished in it, and he himself, in Mr. Wright's +words, "probably had to lie low." There is no doubt that the Monmouth +affair was the beginning of Defoe's troubles: and I suggest that +certain passages in the story of Crusoe's voyage (_e.g._ the "secret +proposal" of the three merchants who came to Crusoe) have a peculiar +significance if read in this connection. I also think it possible +there may be a particular meaning in the several waves, so carefully +described, through which Crusoe made his way to dry land; and in the +simile of the reprieved malefactor (p. 50 in Mr. Aitken's delightful +edition); and in the several visits to the wreck. + +I am no specialist in Defoe, but put this suggestion forward with the +utmost diffidence. And yet, right or wrong, I feel it has more +plausibility than Mr. Wright's. Defoe undoubtedly took part in the +Monmouth rising, and was a survivor of that wreck "on the south side +of the island": and undoubtedly it formed the turning-point of his +career. If we could discover how he escaped Kirke and Jeffreys, I am +inclined to believe we should have a key to the whole story of the +shipwreck. I should not be sorry to find this hypothesis upset; for +the story of Robinson Crusoe is quite good enough for me as it stands, +and without any sub-intention. But whatever be the true explanation +of the parable, if time shall discover it, I confess I expect it will +be a trifle less recondite than Mr. Wright's, and a trifle more +creditable to the father of the English novel.[C] + +FOOTNOTES: + +[A] "The Life of Daniel Defoe." By Thomas Wright, Principal of Cowper +School, Olney. London: Cassell & Co. + +[B] _Romances and Narratives by Daniel Defoe_. Edited by George A. +Aitken. Vols. i., ii., and iii. Containing the Life and Adventures, +Farther Adventures, and Serious Reflections of Robinson Crusoe. With a +General Introduction by the Editor. London: J.M. Dent & Co. + +[C] Upon this suggestion Mr. Aitken, in a postscript to his seventh +volume of the _Romances and Narratives_, has since remarked as +follows:-- + + "In a discussion in _The Speaker_ upon Defoe's supposed + period of 'silence,' published since the appearance of the + first volume of this edition, Mr. Quiller Couch, while + agreeing, for the reasons I have given (vol. i. p. lvii.), + that there is no mistake in the date of Robinson Crusoe's + departure from his island (December, 1686), has suggested + that perhaps the error in the chronology lies, not in the + length of time Crusoe is said to have lived on the island, + but in the date given for his landing (September, 1659). That + this suggestion is right appears from a passage which has + hitherto escaped notice. Crusoe was born in 1632, and Defoe + makes him say (vol. i. p. 147), 'The same day of the year I + was born on, viz. the 30th of September, that same day I had + my life so miraculously saved twenty-six years after, when I + was cast ashore on this island.' Crusoe must, therefore, have + reached his island on September 30, 1658, not 1659, as twice + stated by Defoe; and by adding twenty-eight years to 1658 we + get 1686, the date given for Crusoe's departure. + + "It is, however, questionable whether this rectification + helps us to interpret the allegory in _Robinson Crusoe_. It + is true that if, in accordance with the 'key' suggested by + Mr. Wright, we add twenty-seven years to the date of the + shipwreck (1658) in order to find the corresponding event in + Defoe's life, we arrive at September, 1685, when Jeffreys was + sentencing many of those who--like Defoe--took part in + Monmouth's rising. But we have no evidence that Defoe + suffered seriously in consequence of the part he took in this + rebellion; and the addition of twenty-seven years to the date + of Crusoe's departure from the island (December, 1686) does + not bring us to any corresponding event in Defoe's own story. + Those who are curious will find the question discussed at + greater length in _The Speaker_ for April 13 and 20, and May + 4, 1895." + + + + +LAWRENCE STERNE + + +Dec. 10, 1891. Sterne and Thackeray. + +It is told by those who write scraps of Thackeray's biography that a +youth once ventured to speak disrespectfully of Scott in his presence. +"You and I, sir," said the great man, cutting him short, "should lift +our hats at the mention of that great name." + +An admirable rebuke!--if only Thackeray had remembered it when he sat +down to write those famous Lectures on the English Humorists, or at +least before he stood up in Willis's Rooms to inform a polite audience +concerning his great predecessors. Concerning their work? No. +Concerning their genius? No. Concerning the debt owed to them by +mankind? Not a bit of it. Concerning their _lives_, ladies and +gentlemen; and whether their lives were pure and respectable and free +from scandal and such as men ought to have led whose works you would +like your sons and daughters to handle. Mr. Frank T. Marzials, +Thackeray's latest biographer, finds the matter of these Lectures +"excellent":-- + + "One feels in the reading that Thackeray is a peer among his + peers--a sort of elder brother,[A] kindly, appreciative and + tolerant--as he discourses of Addison, Steele, Swift, Pope, + Sterne, Fielding, Goldsmith. I know of no greater contrast in + criticism--a contrast, be it said, not to the advantage of the + French critic--than Thackeray's treatment of Pope and that of M. + Taine. What allowance the Englishman makes for the physical ills + that beset the 'gallant little cripple'; with what a gentle hand + he touches the painful places in that poor twisted body! M. + Taine, irritated apparently that Pope will not fit into his + conception of English literature, exhibits the same deformities + almost savagely." + +I am sorry that I cannot read this kindliness, this appreciation, this +tolerance, into the Lectures--into those, for instance, of Sterne and +Fielding: that the simile of the "elder brother" carries different +suggestions for Mr. Marzials and for me: and that the lecturer's +attitude is to me less suggestive of a peer among his peers than of a +tall "bobby"--a volunteer constable--determined to warn his polite +hearers what sort of men these were whose books they had hitherto read +unsuspectingly. + +And even so--even though the lives and actions of men who lived too +early to know Victorian decency must be held up to shock a crowd in +Willis's Rooms, yet it had been but common generosity to tell the +whole truth. Then the story of Fielding's _Voyage to Lisbon_ might +have touched the heart to sympathy even for the purely fictitious low +comedian whom Thackeray presented: and Sterne's latest letters might +have infused so much pity into the polite audience that they, like his +own Recording Angel, might have blotted out his faults with a tear. +But that was not Thackeray's way. Charlotte Bronte found "a finished +taste and ease" in the Lectures, a "something high bred." Motley +describes their style as "hovering," and their method as "the +perfection of lecturing to high-bred audiences." Mr. Marzials quotes +this expression "hovering" as admirably descriptive. It is. By +judicious selection, by innuendo, here a pitying aposiopesis, there an +indignant outburst, the charges are heaped up. Swift was a toady at +heart, and used Stella vilely for the sake of that hussy Vanessa. +Congreve had captivating manners--of course he had, the dog! And we +all know what that meant in those days. Dick Steele drank and failed +to pay his creditors. Sterne--now really I know what Club life is, +ladies and gentlemen, and I might tell you a thing or two if I would: +but really, speaking as a gentleman before a polite audience, I warn +you against Sterne. + +I do not suppose for a moment that Thackeray consciously defamed these +men. The weaknesses, the pettinesses of humanity interested him, and +he treated them with gusto, even as he spares us nothing of that +horrible scene between Mrs. Mackenzie and Colonel Newcome. And of +course poor Sterne was the easiest victim. The fellow was so full of +his confounded sentiments. You ring a choice few of these on the +counter and prove them base metal. You assume that the rest of the bag +is of equal value. You "go one better" than Sir Peter Teazle and damn +all sentiment, and lo! the fellow is no better than a smirking jester, +whose antics you can expose till men and women, who had foolishly +laughed and wept as he moved them, turn from him, loathing him as a +swindler. So it is that although _Tristram Shandy_ continues one of +the most popular classics in the language, nobody dares to confess his +debt to Sterne except in discreet terms of apology. + +But the fellow wrote the book. You can't deny _that_, though +Thackeray may tempt you to forget it. (What proportion does my Uncle +Toby hold in that amiable Lecture?) The truth is that the elemental +simplicity of Captain Shandy and Corporal Trim did not appeal to the +author of _The Book of Snobs_ in the same degree as the pettiness of +the man Sterne appealed to him: and his business in Willis's Rooms was +to talk, not of Captain Shandy, but of the man Sterne, to whom his +hearers were to feel themselves superior as members of society. I +submit that this was not a worthy task for a man of letters who was +also a man of genius. I submit that it was an inversion of the true +critical method to wreck Sterne's _Sentimental Journey_ at the outset +by picking Sterne's life to pieces, holding up the shreds and warning +the reader that any nobility apparent in his book will be nothing +better than a sham. Sterne is scarcely arrived at Calais and in +conversation with the Monk before you are cautioned how you listen to +the impostor. "Watch now," says the critic; "he'll be at his tricks in +a moment. Hey, _paillasse_! There!--didn't I tell you?" And yet I am +as sure that the opening pages of the _Sentimental Journey_ are full +of genuine feeling as I am that if Jonathan Swift had entered the room +while the Lecture upon him was going forward, he would have eaten +William Makepeace Goliath, white waistcoat and all. + +Frenchmen, who either are less awed than we by lecturers in white +waistcoats, or understand the methods of criticism somewhat better, +cherish the _Sentimental Journey_ (in spite of its indifferent French) +and believe in the genius that created it. But the Briton reads it +with shyness, and the British critic speaks of Sterne with bated +breath, since Thackeray told it in Gath that Sterne was a bad man, and +the daughters of Philistia triumphed. + + * * * * * + +October 6, 1894. Mr. Whibley's Edition of "Tristram Shandy." + +We are a strenuous generation, with a New Humor and a number of +interesting by-products; but a new _Tristram Shandy_ stands not yet +among our achievements. So Messrs. Henley and Whibley have made the +best of it and given us a new edition of the old _Tristram_--two +handsome volumes, with shapely pages, fair type, and an Introduction. +Mr. Whibley supplies the Introduction, and that he writes lucidly and +forcibly needs not to be said. His position is neither that so +unfairly taken up by Thackeray; nor that of Allibone, who, writing for +Heaven knows how many of Allibone's maiden aunts, summed up Sterne +thus:-- + + "A standing reproach to the profession which he disgraced, + grovelling in his tastes, indiscreet, if not licentious, in his + habits, he lived unhonoured and died unlamented, save by those + who found amusement in his wit or countenance in his + immorality."[B] + +But though he avoids these particular excesses; though he goes +straight for the book, as a critic should; Mr. Whibley cannot get quit +of the bad tradition of patronizing Sterne:-- + + "He failed, as only a sentimentalist can fail, in the province of + pathos.... There is no trifle, animate or inanimate, he will not + bewail, if he be but in the mood; nor does it shame him to dangle + before the public gaze those poor shreds of sensibility he calls + his feelings. Though he seldom deceives the reader into sympathy, + none will turn from his choicest agony without a thrill of + disgust. The _Sentimental Journey_, despite its interludes of + tacit humour and excellent narrative, is the last extravagance of + irrelevant grief.... Genuine sentiment was as strange to Sterne + the writer as to Sterne the man; and he conjures up no tragic + figure that is not stuffed with sawdust and tricked out in the + rags of the green-room. Fortunately, there is scant opportunity + for idle tears in _Tristram Shandy_.... Yet no occasion is + lost.... Yorick's death is false alike to nature and art. The + vapid emotion is properly matched with commonness of expression, + and the bad taste is none the more readily excused by the + suggestion of self-defence. Even the humour of My Uncle Toby is + something: degraded by the oft-quoted platitude: 'Go, poor + devil,' says he, to an overgrown fly which had buzzed about his + nose; 'get thee gone. Why should I hurt thee? This world surely + is big enough to hold both thee and me.'" + +But here Mr. Whibley's notorious hatred of sentiment leads him into +confusion. That the passage has been over-quoted is no fault of +Sterne's. Of My Uncle Toby, if of any man, it might have been +predicted that he would not hurt a fly. To me this trivial action of +his is more than merely sentimental. But, be this as it may, I am sure +it is honestly characteristic. + +Still, on the whole Mr. Whibley has justice. Sterne _is_ a +sentimentalist. Sterne _is_ indecent by reason of his reticence--more +indecent than Rabelais, because he uses a hint where Rabelais would +have said what he meant, and prints a dash where Rabelais would have +plumped out with a coarse word and a laugh. Sterne _is_ a convicted +thief. On a famous occasion Charles Reade drew a line between plagiary +and justifiable borrowing. To draw material from a heterogeneous +work--to found, for instance, the play of _Coriolanus_ upon Plutarch's +_Life_--is justifiable: to take from a homogeneous work--to enrich +your drama from another man's drama--is plagiary. But even on this +interpretation of the law Sterne must be condemned; for in decking out +_Tristram_ with feathers from the history of Gargantua he was +pillaging a homogeneous work. Nor can it be pleaded in extenuation +that he improved upon his originals--though it can, I think, be +pleaded that he made his borrowings his own. I do not think much of +Mr. Whibley's instance of Servius Sulpicius' letter. No doubt Sterne +took his translation of it from Burton; but the letter is a very well +known one, and Burton's translation happened to be uncommonly good, +and the borrowing of a good rendering without acknowledgment was not, +as far as I know, then forbidden by custom. In any case, the whole +passage is intended merely to lead up to the beautiful perplexity of +My Uncle Toby. And that is Sterne's own, and could never have been +another man's. "After all," says Mr. Whibley, "all the best in Sterne +is still Sterne's own." + +But the more I agree with Mr. Whibley's strictures the more I desire +to remove them from an Introduction to _Tristram Shandy_, and to read +them in a volume of Mr. Whibley's collected essays. Were it not +better, in reading _Tristram Shandy_, to take Sterne for once (if only +for a change) at his own valuation, or at least to accept the original +postulates of the story? If only for the entertainment he provides we +owe him the effort. There will be time enough afterwards to turn to +the cold judgment of this or that critic, or to the evidence of this +or that thief-taker. For the moment he claims to be heard without +prejudice; he has genius enough to make it worth our while to listen +without prejudice; and the most lenient "appreciation" of his sins, if +we read it beforehand, is bound to raise prejudice and infect our +enjoyment as we read. And, as a corollary of this demand, let us ask +that he shall be allowed to present his book to us exactly as he +chooses. Mr. Whibley says, "He set out upon the road of authorship +with a false ideal: 'Writing,' said he, 'when properly managed, is +but a different name for conversation.' It would be juster to assert +that writing is never properly managed, unless it be removed from +conversation as far as possible." Very true; or, at least, very +likely. But since Sterne _had_ this ideal, let us grant him full +liberty to make his spoon or spoil his horn, and let us judge +afterwards concerning the result. The famous blackened page and the +empty pages (all omitted in this new edition) are part of Sterne's +method. They may seem to us trick-work and foolery; but, if we +consider, they link on to his notion that writing is but a name for +conversation; they are included in his demand that in writing a book a +man should be allowed to "go cluttering away like hey-go mad." "You +may take my word"--it is Sterne who speaks, and in his very first +chapter-- + + "You may take my word that nine parts in ten of a man's sense or + his nonsense, his success and miscarriages in this world, depend + upon their motions and activity, and the different tracks and + trains you put them into, so that when they are once set + going--whether right or wrong, 'tis not a halfpenny matter--away + they go cluttering like hey-go mad; and by treading the same + steps over and over again, they presently make a road of it, as + plain and smooth as a garden walk, which, when once they are + used to, the devil himself sometimes shall not be able to drive + them off it." + +This, at any rate, is Sterne's own postulate. And I had rather judge +him with all his faults after reading the book than be prepared +beforehand to make allowances. + + * * * * * + +Nov. 12, 1895. Sterne's Good-nature. + +Let one thing be recorded to the credit of this much-abused man. He +wrote two masterpieces of fiction (one of them a work of considerable +length), and in neither will you find an ill-natured character or an +ill-natured word. On the admission of all critics My Father, My +Mother, My Uncle Toby, Corporal Trim, and Mrs. Wadman are immortal +creations. To the making of them there has gone no single sour or +uncharitable thought. They are essentially amiable: and the same may +be said of all the minor characters and of the author's disquisitions. +Sterne has given us a thousand occasions to laugh, but never an +occasion to laugh on the wrong side of the mouth. For savagery or +bitterness you will search his books in vain. He is obscene, to be +sure. But who, pray, was ever the worse for having read him? Alas, +poor Yorick! He had his obvious and deplorable failings. I never +heard that he communicated them. Good-humor he has been communicating +now for a hundred and fifty years. + +FOOTNOTES: + +[A] But why "elder"? + +[B] "Pan might _indeed_ be proud if ever he begot + Such an Allibone ..." + _Spenser (revised)._ + + + + +SCOTT AND BURNS + + +Dec. 9, 1893. Scott's Letters. + + "_All Balzac's novels occupy one shelf. The new edition fifty + volumes long"_ + +--says Bishop Blougram. But for Scott the student will soon have to +hire a room. The novels and poems alone stretch away into just sixty +volumes in Cadell's edition; and this is only the beginning. At this +very moment two new editions (one of which, at least, is +indispensable) are unfolding their magnificent lengths, and report +says that Messrs. Hodder and Stoughton already project a third, with +introductory essays by Mr. Barrie. Then the Miscellaneous Prose Works +by that untiring hand extend to some twenty-eight or thirty volumes. +And when Scott stops, his biographer and his commentators begin, and +all with like liberal notions of space and time. Nor do they deceive +themselves. We take all they give, and call for more. Three years ago, +and fifty-eight from the date of Scott's death, his Journal was +published; and although Lockhart had drawn upon it for one of the +fullest biographies in the language, the little that Lockhart had left +unused was sufficient to make its publication about the most important +literary event of the year 1890. + +And now Mr. David Douglas, the publisher of the "Journal," gives us in +two volumes a selection from the familiar letters preserved at +Abbotsford. The period covered by this correspondence is from 1797, +the year of Sir Walter's marriage, to 1825, when the "Journal" +begins--"covered," however, being too large a word for the first seven +years, which are represented by seven letters only; it is only in 1806 +that we start upon something like a consecutive story. Mr. Douglas +speaks modestly of his editorial work. "I have done," he says, "little +more than arrange the correspondence in chronological order, supplying +where necessary a slight thread of continuity by annotation and +illustration." It must be said that Mr. Douglas has done this +exceedingly well. There is always a note where a note is wanted, and +never where information would be superfluous. On the taste and +judgment of his selection one who has not examined the whole mass of +correspondence at Abbotsford can only speak on _a priori_ grounds. But +it is unlikely that the writer of these exemplary footnotes has made +many serious mistakes in compiling his text. + +Man's perennial and pathetic curiosity about virtue has no more +striking example than the public eagerness to be acquainted with every +detail of Scott's life. For what, as a mere story, is that life?--a +level narrative of many prosperous years; a sudden financial crash; +and the curtain falls on the struggle of a tired and dying gentleman +to save his honor. Scott was born in 1771 and died in 1832, and all +that is special in his life belongs to the last six years of it. Even +so the materials for the story are of the simplest--enough, perhaps, +under the hand of an artist to furnish forth a tale of the length of +Trollope's _The Warden_. In picturesqueness, in color, in wealth of +episode and +peripeteia+, Scott's career will not compare for a +moment with the career of Coleridge, for instance. Yet who could +endure to read the life of Coleridge in six volumes? De Quincey, in an +essay first published the other day by Dr. Japp, calls the story of +the Coleridges "a perfect romance ... a romance of beauty, of +intellectual power, of misfortune suddenly illuminated from heaven, of +prosperity suddenly overcast by the waywardness of the individual." +But the "romance" has been written twice and thrice, and desperately +dull reading it makes in each case. Is it then an accident that +Coleridge has been unhappy in his biographers, while Lockhart +succeeded once for all, and succeeded so splendidly? + +It is surely no accident. Coleridge is an ill man to read about just +as certainly as Scott is a good man to read about; and the secret is +just that Scott had character and Coleridge had not. In writing of the +man of the "graspless hand," the biographer's own hand in time grows +graspless on the pen; and in reading of him our hands too grow +graspless on the page. We pursue the man and come upon group after +group of his friends; and each as we demand "What have you done with +Coleridge?" answers "He was here just now, and we helped him forward a +little way." Our best biographies are all of men and women of +character--and, it may be added, of beautiful character--of Johnson, +Scott, and Charlotte Bronte. + +There are certain people whose biographies _ought_ to be long. Who +could learn too much concerning Lamb? And concerning Scott, who will +not agree with Lockhart's remark in the preface to his abridged +edition of 1848:--"I should have been more willing to produce an +enlarged edition; for the interest of Sir Walter's history lies, I +think, peculiarly in its minute details"? You may explore here, and +explore there, and still you find pure gold; for the man was gold +right through. + +So in the present volume every line is of interest because we refer it +to Scott's known character and test it thereby. The result is always +the same; yet the employment does not weary. In themselves the letters +cannot stand, as mere writing, beside the letters of Cowper, or of +Lamb. They are just the common-sense epistles of a man who to his last +day remained too modest to believe in the extent of his own genius. +The letters in this collection which show most acuteness on literary +matters are not Scott's, but Lady Louisa Stuart's, who appreciated +the Novels on their appearance (their faults as well as their merits) +with a judiciousness quite wonderful in a contemporary. Scott's +literary observations (with the exception of one passage where the +attitude of an English gentleman towards literature is stated +thus--"he asks of it that it shall arouse him from his habitual +contempt of what goes on about him") are much less amusing; and his +letters to Joanna Baillie the dullest in the volume, unless it be the +answers which Joanna Baillie sent. Best of all, perhaps, is the +correspondence (scarcely used by Lockhart) between Scott and Lady +Abercorn, with its fitful intervals of warmth and reserve. This alone +would justify Mr. Douglas's volumes. But, indeed, while nothing can be +found now to alter men's conception of Scott, any book about him is +justified, even if it do no more than heap up superfluous testimony to +the beauty of his character. + + * * * * * + +June 15, 1895. A racial disability. + +Since about one-third of the number of my particular friends happen to +be Scotsmen, it has always distressed and annoyed me that, with the +best will in the world, I have never been able to understand on what +principle that perfervid race conducts its enthusiasms. Mine is a +racial disability, of course; and the converse has been noted by no +less a writer than Stevenson, in the story of his journey "Across the +Plains":-- + + "There were no emigrants direct from Europe--save one German + family and a knot of Cornish miners who kept grimly by + themselves, one reading the New Testament all day long through + steel spectacles, the rest discussing privately the secrets of + their old-world mysterious race. Lady Hester Stanhope believed + she could make something great of the Cornish; for my part I can + make nothing of them at all. A division of races, older and more + original than that of Babel, keeps this dose, esoteric family + apart from neighbouring Englishmen." + +The loss on my side, to be sure, would be immensely the greater, were +it not happily certain that I _can_ make something of Scotsmen; can, +and indeed do, make friends of them. + + +The Cult of Burns. + +All the same, this disability weighs me down with a sense of hopeless +obtuseness when I consider the deportment of the average intelligent +Scot at a Burns banquet, or a Burns _conversazione_, or a Burns +festival, or the unveiling of a Burns statue, or the putting up of a +pillar on some spot made famous by Burns. All over the world--and all +under it, too, when their time comes--Scotsmen are preparing +after-dinner speeches about Burns. The great globe swings round out of +the sun into the dark; there is always midnight somewhere; and always +in this shifting region the eye of imagination sees orators +gesticulating over Burns; companies of heated exiles with crossed arms +shouting "Auld Lang Syne"; lesser groups--if haply they be +lesser--reposing under tables, still in honor of Burns. And as the +vast continents sweep "eastering out of the high shadow which reaches +beyond the moon," and as new nations, with _their_ cities and +villages, their mountains and seashores, rise up on the morning-side, +lo! fresh troops, and still fresh troops, and yet again fresh troops, +wend or are carried out of action with the dawn. + + +Scott and Burns. + +None but a churl would wish this enthusiasm abated. But why is it all +lavished on Burns? That is what gravels the Southron. Why Burns? Why +not Sir Walter? Had I the honor to be a fellow-countryman of Scott, +and had I command of the racial tom-tom, it seems to me that I would +tund upon it in honor of that great man until I dropped. To me, a +Southron, Scott is the most imaginative, and at the same time the +justest, writer of our language since Shakespeare died. To say this is +not to suggest that he is comparable with Shakespeare. Scott himself, +sensible as ever, wrote in his _Journal_, "The blockheads talk of my +being like Shakespeare--not fit to tie his brogues." "But it is also +true," said Mr. Swinburne, in his review of the _Journal_, "that if +there were or could be any man whom it would not be a monstrous +absurdity to compare with Shakespeare as a creator of men and inventor +of circumstance, that man could be none other than Scott." Greater +poems than his have been written; and, to my mind, one or two novels +better than his best. But when one considers the huge mass of his work, +and its quality in the mass; the vast range of his genius, and its +command over that range; who shall be compared with him? + +These are the reflections which occur, somewhat obviously, to the +Southron. As for character, it is enough to say that Scott was one of +the best men who ever walked on this planet; and that Burns was not. +But Scott was not merely good: he was winningly good: of a character +so manly, temperate, courageous that men read his Life, his Journal, +his Letters with a thrill, as they might read of Rorke's Drift or +Chitral. How then are we to account for the undeniable fact that his +countrymen, in public at any rate, wax more enthusiastic over Burns? +Is it that the _homeliness_ of Burns appeals to them as a wandering +race? Is it because, in farthest exile, a line of Burns takes their +hearts straight back to Scotland?--as when Luath the collie, in "The +Twa Dogs," describes the cotters' New Year's Day:-- + + "That merry day the year begins, + They bar the door on frosty winds; + The nappy reeks wi' mantling ream, + An' sheds a heart-inspirin' steam; + The luntin' pipe an' sneeshin' mill + Are handed round wi' richt guid will; + The cantie auld folks crackin' crouse, + The young anes rantin' through the house,-- + My heart has been sae fain to see them, + That I for joy hae barkit wi' them." + +That is one reason, no doubt. But there is another, I suspect. With +all his immense range Scott saw deeply into character; but he did not, +I think, see very deeply into feeling. You may extract more of the +_lacrimae rerum_ from the story of his own life than from all his +published works put together. The pathos of Lammermoor is +taken-for-granted pathos. If you deny this, you will not deny, at any +rate, that the pathos of the last scene of _Lear_ is quite beyond his +scope. Yet this is not more certainly beyond his scope than is the +feeling in many a single line or stanza of Burns'. Verse after verse, +line after line, rise up for quotation-- + + "Thou'lt break my heart, thou bonnie bird + That sings beside thy mate; + For sae I sat, and sae I sang, + And wist na o' my fate." + +Or, + + "O pale, pale now, those rosy lips + I aft hae kissed sae fondly! + And closed for aye the sparkling glance + That dwelt on me sae kindly! + And mouldering now in silent dust + The heart that lo'ed me dearly-- + But still within my bosom's core + Shall live my Highland Mary." + +Or, + + "Had we never loved sae kindly, + Had we never loved sae blindly, + Never met--or never parted, + We had ne'er been broken-hearted." + +Scott left an enormous mass of writing behind him, and almost all of +it is good. Burns left very much less, and among it a surprising +amount of inferior stuff. But such pathos as the above Scott cannot +touch. I can understand the man who holds that these deeps of pathos +should not be probed in literature: and am not sure that I wholly +disagree with him. The question certainly is discutable and worth +discussing. But such pathos, at any rate, is immensely popular: and +perhaps this will account for the hold which Burns retains on the +affections of a race which has a right to be at least thrice as proud +of Scott. + +However, if Burns is honored at the feast, Scott is read by the +fireside. Hardly have the rich Dryburgh and Border editions issued +from the press before Messrs. Archibald Constable and Co. are bringing +out their reprint of the famous 48-volume edition of the Novels; and +Mr. Barrie is supposed to be meditating another, with introductory +notes of his own upon each Novel. In my own opinion nothing has ever +beaten, or come near to beat, the 48-volume "Waverley" of 1829; and +Messrs. Constable and Co. were happily inspired when they decided to +make this the basis of their new edition. They have improved upon it +in two respects. The paper is lighter and better. And each novel is +kept within its own covers, whereas in the old editions a volume would +contain the end of one novel and beginning of another. The original +illustrations, by Wilkie, Landseer, Leslie, Stanfield, Bonington, and +the rest, have been retained, in order to make the reprint complete. +But this seems to me a pity; for a number of them were bad to begin +with, and will be worse than ever now, being reproduced (as I +understand) from impressions of the original plates. To do without +illustrations were a counsel of perfection. But now that the novels +have become historical, surely it were better to illustrate them with +authentic portraits of Scott, pictures of scenery, facsimiles of MSS., +and so on, than with (_e.g._) a worn reproduction of what Mr. F.P. +Stephanoff thought that Flora Mac-Ivor looked like while playing the +harp and introducing a few irregular strains which harmonized well +with the distant waterfall and the soft sigh of the evening breeze in +the rustling leaves of an aspen which overhung the fair +harpress--especially as F.P. Stephanoff does not seem to have known +the difference between an aspen and a birch. + +In short, did it not contain the same illustrations, this edition +would probably excel even that of 1828. As it is, after many +disappointments, we now have a cheap Waverley on what has always been +the best model. + + +A Protest. + + 'SIR,--In your 'Literary Causerie' of last week ... the question + is discussed why the name of Burns raises in Scotsmen such + unbounded enthusiasm while that of Scott falls comparatively + flat. This question has puzzled many another Englishman besides + 'A.T.Q.C.' And yet the explanation is not far to seek: Burns + appeals to the hearts and feelings of the masses in a way Scott + never does. 'A.T.Q.C.' admits this, and gives quotations in + support. These quotations, however excellent in their way, are + not those that any Scotsman would trust to in support of the + above proposition. A Scotsman would at once appeal to 'Scots wha + hae,' 'Auld Lang Syne,' and 'A man's a man for a' that.' The very + familiarity of these quotations has bred the proverbial contempt. + Think of the soul-inspiring, 'fire-eyed fury' of 'Scots wha hae'; + the glad, kind, ever fresh greeting of 'Auld Lang Syne'; the + manly, sturdy independence of 'A man's a man for a' that,' and + who can wonder at the ever-increasing enthusiasm for Burns' name? + + Is there for honest poverty + That hangs his head and a' that? + The coward slave we pass him by-- + We dare be poor for a' that.' + * * * * * + 'The rank is but the guinea stamp-- + The man's the gowd for a' that.' + + "Nor is it in his patriotism, independence, and conviviality + alone that Burns touches every mood of a Scotsman's heart. There + is an enthusiasm of humanity about Burns which you will hardly + find equalled in any other author, and which most certainly does + not exist in Scott. + + 'Man's inhumanity to man + Makes countless thousands mourn.' + * * * * * + 'Why has man this will and power + To make his fellow mourn?' + + "These quotations might be multiplied were it necessary; but I + think enough has been said to explain what puzzles 'A.T.Q.C.' I + have an unbounded admiration of Sir W. Scott--quite as great as + 'A.T.Q.C.' Indeed, I think him the greatest of all novelists; + but, as a Scot, somewhat Anglicised by a residence in London of + more than a quarter of a century, I unhesitatingly say that I + would rather be the author of the above three lyrics of Burns' + than I would be the author of all Scott's novels. Certain I am + that if immortality were my aim I should be much surer of it in + the one case than the other. I cannot conceive 'Scots wha hae,' + 'Auld Lang Syne,' etc., ever dying. Are there any of Scott's + writings of which the same could be said? I doubt it.... + + --I am yours, etc., "J.B. + "London, June 18th, 1895." + +The hopelessness of the difficulty is amusingly, if rather +distressingly, illustrated by this letter. Here again you have the +best will in the world. Nothing could be kindlier than "J.B.'s" tone. +As a Scot he has every reason to be impatient of stupidity on the +subject of Burns: yet he takes real pains to set me right. Alas! his +explanations leave me more than ever at sea, more desperate than ever +of understanding _what exactly it is_ in Burns that kindles this +peculiar enthusiasm in Scotsmen and drives them to express it in +feasting and oratory. + +After casting about for some time, I suggested that Burns--though in +so many respects immeasurably inferior to Scott--frequently wrote with +a depth of feeling which Scott could not command. On second thoughts, +this was wrongly put. Scott may have _possessed_ the feeling, together +with notions of his own, on the propriety of displaying it in his +public writings. Indeed, after reading some of his letters again, I am +sure he did possess it. Hear, for instance, how he speaks of Dalkeith +Palace, in one of his letters to Lady Louisa Stuart:-- + + "I am delighted my dear little half god-daughter is turning out + beautiful. I was at her christening, poor soul, and took the + oaths as representing I forget whom. That was in the time when + Dalkeith was Dalkeith; how changed alas! I was forced there the + other day by some people who wanted to see the house, and I felt + as if it would have done me a great deal of good to have set my + manhood aside, to get into a corner and cry like a schoolboy. + Every bit of furniture, now looking old and paltry, had some + story and recollections about it, and the deserted gallery, which + I have seen so happily filled, seemed waste and desolate like + Moore's + + 'Banquet hall deserted, + Whose flowers are dead, + Whose odours fled, + And all but I departed.' + + But it avails not either sighing or moralising; to have known the + good and the great, the wise and the witty, is still, on the + whole, a pleasing reflection, though saddened by the thought that + their voices are silent and their halls empty." + +Yes, indeed, Scott possessed deep feelings, though he did not exhibit +them to the public. + +Now Burns does exhibit his deep feelings, as I demonstrated by +quotations. And I suggested that it is just his strength of emotion, +his command of pathos and readiness to employ it, by which Burns +appeals to the mass of his countrymen. On this point "J.B." expressly +agrees with me; but--he will have nothing to do with my quotations! +"However excellent in their way" these quotations may be, they "are +not those that any Scotsman would trust to in support of the above +proposition"; the above proposition being that "Burns appeals to the +hearts and feelings of the masses in a way that Scott never does." + +You see, I have concluded rightly; but on wrong evidence. Let us see, +then, what evidence a Scotsman will call to prove that Burns is a +writer of deep feeling. "A Scotsman," says "J.B." "would at once +appeal to "Scots wha hae," "Auld Lang Syne," and "A man's a man for a' +that." ... Think of the soul-inspiring, 'fire-eyed fury' of 'Scots wha +hae'; the glad, kind, ever fresh greeting of 'Auld Lang Syne'; the +manly, sturdy independence of 'A man's a man for a' that,' and who can +wonder at the ever-increasing enthusiasm for Burns' name?... I would +rather," says "J.B.," "be the author of the above three lyrics than I +would be the author of all Scott's novels." + +Here, then, is the point at which I give up my attempts, and admit my +stupidity to be incurable. I grant "J.B." his "Auld Lang Syne." I +grant the poignancy of-- + + "We twa hae paidl't i' the burn, + Frae morning sun till dine: + But seas between us braid hae roar'd + Sin auld lang syne." + +I see poetry and deep feeling in this. I can see exquisite poetry and +deep feeling in "Mary Morison"-- + + "Yestreen when to the trembling string, + The dance ga'ed thro' the lighted ha', + To thee my fancy took its wing, + I sat, but neither heard nor saw: + Tho' this was fair, and that was braw, + And yor the toast a' the town, + I sigh'd and said amang them a' + 'Ye are na Mary Morison.'" + +I see exquisite poetry and deep feeling in the Lament for the Earl of +Glencairn-- + + "The bridegroom may forget the bride + Was made his wedded wife yestreen; + The monarch may forget the crown + That on his head an hour has been; + The mother may forget the child + That smiles sae sweetly on her knee; + But I'll remember thee, Glencairn, + And a' that thou hast done for me!" + +But--it is only honest to speak one's opinion and to hope, if it be +wrong, for a better mind--I do _not_ find poetry of any high order +either in "Scots wha hae" or "A man's a man for a' that." The former +seems to me to be very fine rant--inspired rant, if you will--hovering +on the borders of poetry. The latter, to be frank, strikes me as +rather poor rant, neither inspired nor even quite genuine, and in no +proper sense poetry at all. And "J.B." simply bewilders my Southron +intelligence when he quotes it as an instance of deeply emotional +song. + + "Ye see yon birkie, ca'd a lord, + Wha struts, and stares, and a' that; + Tho' hundreds worship at his word, + He's but a coof for a' that: + For a' that, and a' that, + His riband, star and a' that. + The man of independent mind, + He looks and laughs at a' that." + +The proper attitude, I should imagine, for a man "of independent mind" +in these circumstances--assuming for the moment that ribands and stars +_are_ bestowed on imbeciles--would be a quiet disdain. The above +stanza reminds me rather of ill-bred barking. People of assured +self-respect do not call other people "birkies" and "coofs," or "look +and _laugh_ at a' that"--at least, not so loudly. Compare these +verses of Burns with Samuel Daniel's "Epistle to the Countess of +Cumberland," and you will find a higher manner altogether-- + + "He that of such a height hath built his mind, + And reared the dwelling of his thoughts so strong, + As neither fear nor hope can shake the frame + Of his resolved powers; nor all the wind + Of vanity and malice pierce to wrong + His settled peace, or to disturb the same; + What a fair seat hath he, from whence he may + The boundless wastes and wilds of men survey? + + "And with how free an eye doth he look down + Upon these lower regions of turmoil?" ... + +As a piece of thought, "A man's a man for a' that" unites the two +defects of obviousness and inaccuracy. As for the deep feeling, I +hardly see where it comes in--unless it be a feeling of wounded and +blatant but militant self-esteem. As for the _poetry_--well, "J.B." +had rather have written it than have written one-third of Scott's +novels. Let us take him at less than his word: he would rather have +written "A man's a man for a' that" than "Ivanhoe," "Redgauntlet," and +"The Heart of Midlothian." + + _Ma sonties!_ + + + + +CHARLES READE + + +March 10, 1894. "The Cloister and the Hearth." + +There is a venerable proposition--I never heard who invented it--that +an author is finally judged by his best work. This would be comforting +to authors if true: but is it true? A day or two ago I picked up on a +railway bookstall a copy of Messrs. Chatto & Windus's new sixpenny +edition of _The Cloister and the Hearth_, and a capital edition it is. +I think I must have worn out more copies of this book than of any +other; but somebody robbed me of the pretty "Elzevir edition" as soon +as it came out, and so I have only just read Mr. Walter Besant's +Introduction, which the publishers have considerately reprinted and +thrown in with one of the cheapest sixpennyworths that ever came from +the press. Good wine needs no bush, and the bush which Mr. Besant +hangs out is a very small one. But one sentence at least has +challenged attention. + + "I do not say that the whole of life, as it was at the end of the + fourteenth century, may be found in the _Cloister and the + Hearth_; but I do say that there is portrayed so vigorous, + lifelike, and truthful a picture of a time long gone by, and + differing, in almost every particular from our own, that the + world has never seen its like. To me it is a picture of the past + more faithful than anything in the works of Scott." + +This last sentence--if I remember rightly--was called a very bold one +when it first appeared in print. To me it seems altogether moderate. +Go steadily through Scott, and which of the novels can you choose to +compare with the _Cloister_ as a "vigorous, lifelike, and truthful +picture of a time long gone by"? + +Is it _Ivanhoe_?--a gay and beautiful romance, no doubt; but surely, +as the late Mr. Freeman was at pains to point out, not a "lifelike and +truthful picture" of any age that ever was. Is it _Old Mortality_? +Well, but even if we here get something more like a "vigorous, +lifelike, and truthful picture of a time gone by," we are bound to +consider the scale of the two books. Size counts, as Aristotle pointed +out, and as we usually forget. It is the whole of Western Europe that +Reade reconstructs for the groundwork of his simple story. + +Mr. Besant might have said more. He might have pointed out that no +novel of Scott's approaches the _Cloister_ in lofty humanity, in +sublimity of pathos. The last fifty pages of the tale reach an +elevation of feeling that Scott never touched or dreamed of touching. +And the sentiment is sane and honest, too: the author reaches to the +height of his great argument easily and without strain. It seems to me +that, as an appeal to the feelings, the page that tells of Margaret's +death is the finest thing in fiction. It appeals for a score of +reasons, and each reason is a noble one. We have brought together in +that page extreme love, self-sacrifice, resignation, courage, +religious feeling: we have the end of a beautiful love-tale, the end +of a good woman, and the last earthly trial of a good man. And with +all this, there is no vulgarization of sacred ground, no cheap parade +of the heart's secrets; but a deep sobriety relieved with the most +delicate humor. Moreover, the language is Charles Reade's at its +best--which is almost as good as at its worst it is abominable. + +That Scott could never reach the emotional height of Margaret's +death-scene, or of the scene in Clement's cave, is certain. Moreover +in the _Cloister_ Reade challenges comparison with Scott on Scott's +own ground--the ground of sustained adventurous narrative--and the +advantage is not with Scott. Once more, take all the Waverley Novels +and search them through for two passages to beat the adventures of +Gerard and Denis the Burgundian (1) with the bear and (2) at "The Fair +Star" Inn, by the Burgundian Frontier. I do not think you will +succeed, even then. Indeed, I will go so far as to say that to match +these adventures of Gerard and Denis you must go again to Charles +Reade, to the homeward voyage of the _Agra_ in _Hard Cash_. For these +and for sundry other reasons which, for lack of space, cannot be +unfolded here, _The Cloister and the Hearth_ seems to me a finer +achievement than the finest novel of Scott's. + +And now we come to the proposition that an author must be judged by +his best work. If this proposition be true, then I must hold Reade to +be a greater novelist than Scott. But do I hold this? Does anyone hold +this? Why, the contention would be an absurdity. + +Reade wrote some twenty novels beside _The Cloister and the Hearth_, +and not one of the twenty approaches it. One only--_Griffith +Gaunt_--is fit to be named in the same day with it; and _Griffith +Gaunt_ is marred by an insincerity in the plot which vitiates, and is +at once felt to vitiate, the whole work. On everything he wrote before +and after _The Cloister_ Reade's essential vulgarity of mind is +written large. That he shook it off in that great instance is one of +the miracles of literary history. It may be that the sublimity of his +theme kept him throughout in a state of unnatural exaltation. If the +case cannot be explained thus, it cannot be explained at all. Other of +his writings display the same, or at any rate a like, capacity for +sustained narrative. _Hard Cash_ displays it; parts of _It is Never +Too Late to Mend_ display it. But over much of these two novels lies +the trail of that defective taste which makes _A Simpleton_, for +instance, a prodigy of cheap ineptitude. + +But if Reade be hopelessly Scott's inferior in manner and taste, what +shall we say of the invention of the two men? Mr. Barrie once affirmed +very wisely in an essay on Robert Louis Stevenson, "Critics have said +enthusiastically--for it is difficult to write of Mr. Stevenson +without enthusiasm--that Alan Breck is as good as anything in Scott. +Alan Breck is certainly a masterpiece, quite worthy of the greatest of +all story-tellers, _who, nevertheless, it should be remembered, +created these rich side characters by the score, another before +dinner-time_." Inventiveness, is, I suppose, one of the first +qualities of a great novelist: and to Scott's invention there was no +end. But set aside _The Cloister_; and Reade's invention will be found +to be extraordinarily barren. Plot after plot turns on the same old +tiresome trick. Two young people are in love: by the villainy of a +third person they are separated for a while, and one of the lovers is +persuaded that the other is dead. The missing one may be kept missing +by various devices; but always he is supposed to be dead, and always +evidence is brought of his death, and always he turns up in the end. +It is the same in _The Cloister_, in _It is Never Too Late to Mend_, +in _Put Yourself in His Place_, in _Griffith Gaunt_, in _A Simpleton_. +Sometimes, as in _Hard Cash_ and _A Terrible Temptation_, he is +wrongfully incarcerated as a madman; but this is obviously a variant +only on the favorite trick. Now the device is good enough in a tale of +the fourteenth century, when news travelled slowly, and when by the +suppression of a letter, or by a piece of false news, two lovers, the +one in Holland, the other in Rome, could easily be kept apart. But in +a tale of modern life no trick could well be stagier. Besides the +incomparable Margaret--of whom it does one good to hear Mr. Besant +say, "No heroine in fiction is more dear to me"--Reade drew some +admirable portraits of women; but his men, to tell the truth--and +especially his priggish young heroes--seem remarkably ill invented. +Again, of course, I except _The Cloister_. Omit that book, and you +would say that such a character as Bailie Nicol Jarvie or Dugald +Dalgetty were altogether beyond Reade's range. Open _The Cloister_ and +you find in Denis the Burgundian a character as good as the Bailie and +Dalgetty rolled into one. + +Other authors have been lifted above themselves. But was there ever a +case of one sustained at such an unusual height throughout a long, +intricate and arduous work? + + + + +HENRY KINGSLEY + + +Feb. 9, 1895. Henry Kingsley. + +Mr. Shorter begins his Memoir of the author of _Ravenshoe_ with this +paragraph:-- + + "The story of Henry Kingsley's life may well be told in a few + words, because that life was on the whole a failure. The world + will not listen very tolerantly to a narrative of failure + unaccompanied by the halo of remoteness. To write the life of + Charles Kingsley would be a quite different task. Here was + success, victorious success, sufficient indeed to gladden the + heart even of Dr. Smiles--success in the way of Church + preferment, success in the way of public veneration, success, + above all, as a popular novelist, poet, and preacher. Canon + Kingsley's life has been written in two substantial volumes + containing abundant letters and no indiscretions. In this + biography the name of Henry Kingsley is absolutely ignored. And + yet it is not too much to say that, when time has softened his + memory for us, as it has softened for us the memories of Marlowe + and Burns and many another, the public interest in Henry Kingsley + will be stronger than in his now more famous brother."[A] + + +A prejudice confessed. + +I almost wish I could believe this. If one cannot get rid of a +prejudice, the wisest course is to acknowledge it candidly: and +therefore I confess myself as capable of jumping over the moon as of +writing fair criticism on Charles or Henry Kingsley. As for Henry, I +worshipped his books as a boy; to-day I find them full of +faults--often preposterous, usually ill-constructed, at times +unnatural beyond belief. John Gilpin never threw the Wash about on +both sides of the way more like unto a trundling mop or a wild goose +at play than did Henry Kingsley the decent flow of fiction when the +mood was on him. His notion of constructing a novel was to take equal +parts of wooden melodrama and low comedy and stick them boldly +together in a paste of impertinent drollery and serious but entirely +irrelevant moralizing. And yet each time I read _Ravenshoe_--and I +must be close upon "double figures"--I like it better. Henry did my +green unknowing youth engage, and I find it next to impossible to give +him up, and quite impossible to choose the venerated Charles as a +substitute in my riper age. For here crops up a prejudice I find quite +ineradicable. To put it plainly, I cannot like Charles Kingsley. Those +who have had opportunity to study the deportment of a certain class +of Anglican divine at a foreign _table d'hote_ may perhaps understand +the antipathy. There was almost always a certain sleek offensiveness +about Charles Kingsley when he sat down to write. He had a knack of +using the most insolent language, and attributing the vilest motives +to all poor foreigners and Roman Catholics and other extra-parochial +folk, and would exhibit a pained and completely ludicrous surprise on +finding that he had hurt the feelings of these unhappy inferiors--a +kind of indignant wonder that Providence should have given them any +feelings to hurt. At length, encouraged by popular applause, this very +second-rate man attacked a very first-rate man. He attacked with every +advantage and with utter unscrupulousness; and the first-rate man +handled him; handled him gently, scrupulously, decisively; returned +him to his parish; and left him there, a trifle dazed, feeling his +muscles. + + +Charles and Henry. + +Still, one may dislike the man and his books without thinking it +probable that his brother Henry will supersede him in the public +interest; nay, without thinking it right that he should. Dislike him +as you will, you must acknowledge that Charles Kingsley had a lyrical +gift that--to set all his novels aside--carries him well above Henry's +literary level. It is sufficient to say that Charles wrote "The +Pleasant Isle of Aves" and "When all the world is young, lad," and the +first two stanzas of "The Sands of Dee." Neither in prose nor in verse +could Henry come near such excellence. But we may go farther. Take the +novels of each, and, novel for novel, you must acknowledge--I say it +regretfully--that Charles carries the heavier guns. If you ask me +whether I prefer _Westward Ho!_ or _Ravenshoe_, I answer without +difficulty that I find _Ravenshoe_ almost wholly delightful, and +_Westward Ho!_ as detestable in some parts as it is admirable in +others; that I have read _Ravenshoe_ again and again merely for +pleasure, and that I can never read a dozen pages of _Westward Ho!_ +without wishing to put the book in the fire. But if you ask me which I +consider the greater novel, I answer with equal readiness that +_Westward Ho!_ is not only the greater, but much the greater. It is a +truth too seldom recognized that in literary criticism, as in +politics, one may detest a man's work while admitting his greatness. +Even in his episodes it seems to me that Charles stands high above +Henry. Sam Buckley's gallop on Widderin in _Geoffry Hamlyn_ is (I +imagine) Henry Kingsley's finest achievement in vehement narrative: +but if it can be compared for one moment with Amyas Leigh's quest of +the Great Galleon then I am no judge of narrative. The one point--and +it is an important one--in which Henry beats Charles as an artist is +his sustained vivacity. Charles soars far higher at times; but Charles +is often profoundly dull. Now, in all Henry's books I have not found a +single dull page. He may be trivial, inconsequent, irrelevant, absurd; +but he never wearies. It is a great merit: but it is not enough in +itself to place a novelist even in the second rank. In a short sketch +of Henry Kingsley, contributed by his nephew, Mr. Maurice Kingsley, to +Messrs. Scribner's paper, _The Bookbuyer_, I find that the younger +brother was considered at home "undoubtedly the novelist of the +family; the elder being more of the poet, historian, and prophet." +(Prophet!) "My father only wrote one novel pure and simple--viz. _Two +Years Ago_--his other works being either historical novels or 'signs +of the times.'" Now why an "historical novel" should not be a "novel +pure and simple," and what kind of literary achievement a "sign of the +times" may be, I leave the reader to guess. The whole passage seems to +suggest a certain confusion in the Kingsley family with regard to the +fundamental divisions of literature. And it seems clear that the +Kingsley family considered novel-writing "pure and simple"--in so far +as they differentiated this from other kinds of novel-writing--to be +something not entirely respectable. + +Their opinion of Henry Kingsley in particular is indicated in no +uncertain manner. In Mrs. Charles Kingsley's life of her husband, +Henry's existence is completely ignored. The briefest biographical +note was furnished forth for Mr. Leslie Stephen's _Dictionary of +National Biography_: and Mr. Stephen dismisses our author with a few +curt lines. This disposition to treat Henry as an awful warning and +nothing more, while sleek Charles is patted on the back for a saint, +inclines one to take up arms on the other side and assert, with Mr. +Shorter, that "when time has softened his memory for us, the public +interest in Henry Kingsley will be stronger than in his now more +famous brother." But can we look forward to this reversal of the +public verdict? Can we consent with it if it ever comes? The most we +can hope is that future generations will read Henry Kingsley, and will +love him in spite of his faults. + +Henry, the third son of the Rev. Charles Kingsley, was born in +Northamptonshire on the 2nd of January, 1830, his brother Charles +being then eleven years old. In 1836 his father became rector of St. +Luke's Church, Chelsea--the church of which such effective use is made +in _The Hillyars and the Burtons_--and his boyhood was passed in that +famous old suburb. He was educated at King's College School and +Worcester College, Oxford, where he became a famous oarsman, rowing +bow of his College boat; also bow of a famous light-weight University +"four," which swept everything before it in its time. He wound up his +racing career by winning the Diamond Sculls at Henley. From 1853 to +1858 his life was passed in Australia, whence after some variegated +experiences he returned to Chelsea in 1858, bringing back nothing but +good "copy," which he worked into _Geoffry Hamlyn_, his first romance. +_Ravenshoe_ was written in 1861; _Austin Elliot_ in 1863; _The +Hillyars and the Burtons_ in 1865; _Silcote of Silcotes_ in 1867; +_Mademoiselle Mathilde_ (admired by few, but a favorite of mine) in +1868. He was married in 1864, and settled at Wargrave-on-Thames. In +1869 he went north to edit the _Edinburgh Daily Review_, and made a +mess of it; in 1870 he represented that journal as field-correspondent +in the Franco-Prussian War, was present at Sedan, and claimed to have +been the first Englishman to enter Metz. In 1872 he returned to London +and wrote novels in which his powers appeared to deteriorate steadily. +He removed to Cuckfield, in Sussex, and there died in May, 1876. +Hardly a man of letters followed him to the grave, or spoke, in print, +a word in his praise. + +And yet, by all accounts, he was a wholly amiable ne'er-do-well--a +wonderful flyfisher, an extremely clever amateur artist, a lover of +horses and dogs and children (surely, if we except a chapter of Victor +Hugo's, the children in _Ravenshoe_ are the most delightful in +fiction), and a joyous companion. + + "To us children," writes Mr. Maurice Kingsley, "Uncle Henry's + settling in Eversley was a great event.... At times he fairly + bubbled over with humour; while his knowledge of slang--Burschen, + Bargee, Parisian, Irish, Cockney, and English provincialisms--was + awful and wonderful. Nothing was better than to get our uncle on + his 'genteel behaviour,' which, of course, meant exactly the + opposite, and brought forth inimitable stories, scraps of old + songs and impromptu conversations, the choicest of which were + between children, Irishwomen, or cockneys. He was the only man, I + believe, who ever knew by heart the famous _Irish Court + Scenes_--naughtiest and most humorous of tales--unpublished, of + course, but handed down from generation to generation of the + faithful. Most delightful was an interview between his late + Majesty George the Fourth and an itinerant showman, which ended + up with, 'No, George the Fourth, you shall not have my + Rumptifoozle!' What said animal was, or the authenticity of the + story, he never would divulge." + +I think it is to the conversational quality of their style--its +ridiculous and good-humored impertinences and surprises--that his best +books owe a great deal of their charm. The footnotes are a study in +themselves, and range from the mineral strata of Australia to the best +way of sliding down banisters. Of the three tales already republished +in this pleasant edition, _Ravenshoe_ has always seemed to me the best +in every respect; and in spite of its feeble plot and its impossible +lay-figures--Erne, Sir George Hillyar, and the painfully inane +Gerty--I should rank _The Hillyars and the Burtons_ above the more +terrifically imagined and more neatly constructed _Geoffry Hamlyn_. +But this is an opinion on which I lay no stress. + +FOOTNOTES: + +[A] _The Recollections of Geoffry Hamlyn_. By Henry Kingsley. New +Edition, with a Memoir by Clement Shorter. London: Ward, Lock & +Bowden. + + + + +ALEXANDER WILLIAM KINGLAKE + + +January 10, 1891. His Life. + +Alexander William Kinglake was born in 1812, the son of a country +gentleman--Mr. W. Kinglake, of Wilton House, Taunton--and received a +country gentleman's education at Eton and Trinity College, Cambridge. +From college he went to Lincoln's Inn, and in 1837 was called to the +Chancery Bar, where he practised with fair but not eminent success. In +1844 he published _Eothen_, and having startled the town, quietly +resumed his legal work and seemed willing to forget the achievement. +Ten years later he accompanied his friend, Lord Raglan, to the Crimea. +He retired from the Bar in 1856, and entered Parliament next year as +member for Bridgwater. Re-elected in 1868, he was unseated on petition +in 1869, and thenceforward gave himself up to the work of his life. He +had consented, after Lord Raglan's death, to write a history of the +Invasion of the Crimea. The two first volumes appeared in 1863; the +last was published but two years before he succumbed, in the first +days of 1891, to a slow incurable disease. In all, the task had +occupied thirty years. Long before these years ran out, the world had +learnt to regard the Crimean struggle in something like its true +perspective; but over Kinglake's mind it continued to loom in all its +original proportions. To adapt a phrase of M. Jules Lemaitre's, "_le +monde a change en trente ans: lui ne bouge; il ne leve plus de dessus +son papier a copie sa face congestionne_." And yet Kinglake was no +cloistered scribe. Before his last illness he dined out frequently, +and was placed by many among the first half-a-dozen talkers in London. +His conversation, though delicate and finished, brimmed full of +interest in life and affairs: but let him enter his study, and its +walls became a hedge. Without, the world was moving: within, it was +always 1854, until by slow toiling it turned into 1855. + + +Style. + +His style is hard, elaborate, polished to brilliance. Its difficult +labor recalls Thucydides. In effect it charms at first by its accuracy +and vividness: but with continuous perusal it begins to weigh upon +the reader, who feels the strain, the unsparing effort that this +glittering fabric must have cost the builder, and at length ceases to +sympathize with the story and begins to sympathize with the author. +Kinglake started by disclaiming "composition." "My narrative," he +says, in the famous preface to _Eothen_, "conveys not those +impressions which _ought to have been_ produced upon any +well-constituted mind, but those which were really and truly received, +at the time of his rambles, by a headstrong and not very amiable +traveller.... As I have felt, so I have written." + + +"_Eothen_." + +For all this, page after page of _Eothen_ gives evidence of deliberate +calculation of effect. That book is at once curiously like and +curiously unlike Borrows' _Bible in Spain_. The two belong to the same +period and, in a sense, to the same fashion. Each combines a +tantalizing personal charm with a strong, almost fierce, coloring of +circumstance. The central figure in each is unmistakably an +Englishman, and quite as unmistakably a singular Englishman. Each +bears witness to a fine eye for theatrical arrangement. But whereas +Borrow stood for ever fortified by his wayward nature and atrocious +English against the temptation of writing as he ought, Kinglake +commenced author with a respect for "composition," ingrained perhaps +by his Public School and University training. Borrow arrays his page +by instinct, Kinglake by study. His irony (as in the interview with +the Pasha) is almost too elaborate; his artistic judgment (as in the +Plague chapter) almost too sure; the whole book almost too clever. The +performance was wonderful; the promise a trifle dangerous. + + +The "Invasion." + +"Composition" indeed proved the curse of the _Invasion of the Crimea_: +for Kinglake was a slow writer, and composed with his eye on the page, +the paragraph, the phrase, rather than on the whole work. Force and +accuracy of expression are but parts of a good prose style; indeed +are, strictly speaking, inseparable from perspective, balance, logical +connection, rise and fall of emotion. It is but an indifferent +landscape that contains no pedestrian levels: and his desire for the +immediate success of each paragraph as it came helped Kinglake to miss +the broad effect. He must always be vivid; and when the strain told, +he exaggerated and sounded--as Matthew Arnold accused him of +sounding--the note of provinciality. There were other causes. He was, +as we have seen, an English country gentleman--_avant tout je suis +gentilhomme anglais_, as the Duke of Wellington wrote to Louis XVIII. +His admiration of the respectable class to which he belonged is +revealed by a thousand touches in his narrative--we can find half a +score in the description of Codrington's assault on the Great Redoubt +in the battle of the Alma; nor, when some high heroic action is in +progress, do we often miss an illustration, or at least a metaphor, +from the hunting-field. Undoubtedly he had the distinction of his +class; but its narrowness was his as surely. Also the partisanship of +the eight volumes grows into a weariness. The longevity of the English +Bench is notorious; but it comes of hearing both sides of every +question. + +After all, he was a splendid artist. He tamed that beautiful and +dangerous beast, the English sentence, with difficulty indeed, but +having tamed, worked it to high achievements. The great occasion +always found him capable, and his treatment of it is not of the sort +to be forgotten: witness the picture of the Prince President cowering +in an inner chamber during the bloodshed of the _Coup d'Etat_, the +short speech of Sir Colin Campbell to his Highlanders before the Great +Redoubt (given in the exact manner of Thucydides), or the narrative of +the Heavy Brigade's charge at Balaclava, culminating thus-- + + "The difference that there was in the temperaments of the two + comrade regiments showed itself in the last moments of the onset. + The Scots Greys gave no utterance except to a low, eager, fierce + moan of rapture--the moan of outbursting desire. The + Inniskillings went in with a cheer. With a rolling prolongation + of clangour which resulted from the bends of a line now deformed + by its speed, the 'three hundred' crashed in upon the front of + the column." + + + + +C.S.C. and J.K.S. + + +Dec. 5, 1891. Cambridge Baras. + +What I am about to say will, no doubt, be set down to tribal +malevolence; but I confess that if Cambridge men appeal to me less at +one time than another it is when they begin to talk about their poets. +The grievance is an old one, of course--at least as old as Mr. +Birrell's "_Obiter Dicta_": but it has been revived by the little book +of verse ("_Quo Musa Tendis_?") that I have just been reading. I laid +it down and thought of Mr. Birrell's essay on Cambridge Poets, as he +calls them: and then of another zealous gentleman, hailing from the +same University, who arranged all the British bards in a tripos and +brought out the Cambridge men at the top. This was a very +characteristic performance: but Mr. Birrell's is hardly less so in +these days when (to quote the epistolary parent) so much prominence is +given to athleticism in our seats of learning. For he picks out a team +of lightblue singers as though he meant to play an inter-University +match, and challenges Oxford to "come on." He gives Milton a "blue," +and says we oughtn't to play Shelley because Shelley isn't in +residence. + +Now to me this is as astonishing as if my butcher were to brag about +Kirke White. My doctor might retort with Keats; and my scrivener--if I +had one--might knock them both down with the name of Milton. It would +be a pretty set-to; but I cannot see that it would affect the relative +merits of mutton and laudanum and the obscure products of scrivenage. +Nor, conversely (as they say at Cambridge), is it certain, or even +likely, that the difference between a butcher or a doctor is the +difference between Kirke White and Keats. And this talk about +"University" poets seems somewhat otiose unless it can be shown that +Cambridge and Oxford directly encourage poesy, or aim to do so. I am +aware that somebody wins the Newdigate every year at Oxford, and that +the same thing happens annually at Cambridge with respect to the +Chancellor's Prize. But--to hark back to the butcher and +apothecary--verses are perennially made upon Mr. Lipton's Hams and +Mrs. Allen's Hair Restorer. Obviously some incentive is needed beyond +a prize for stanzas on a given subject. I can understand Cambridge men +when they assert that they produce more Wranglers than Oxford: that is +a justifiable boast. But how does Cambridge encourage poets? + + +Calverley. + +Oxford expelled Shelley: Cambridge whipped Milton.[A] _Facit +indignatio versus_. If we press this misreading of Juvenal, Oxford +erred only on the side of thoroughness. But that, notoriously, is +Oxford's way. She expelled Landor, Calverley, and some others. My +contention is that to expel a man is--however you look at it--better +for his poesy than to make a don of him. Oxford says, "You are a poet; +therefore this is no place for you. Go elsewhere; we set your aspiring +soul at large." Cambridge says: "You are a poet. Let us employ you to +fulfil other functions. Be a don." She made a don of Gray, of +Calverley. Cambridge men are for ever casting Calverley in our teeth; +whereas, in truth, he is specially to be quoted against them. As +everybody knows, he was at both Universities, so over him we have a +fair chance of comparing methods. As everybody knows, he went to +Balliol first, and his ample cabin'd spirit led him to climb a wall, +late at night. Something else caused him to be discovered, and +Blaydes--he was called Blaydes then--was sent down. + +Nobody can say what splendid effect this might have had upon his +poetry. But he changed his name and went to Cambridge. And Cambridge +made a don of him. If anybody thinks this was an intelligent stroke, +let him consider the result. Calverley wrote a small amount of verse +that, merely as verse, is absolutely faultless. To compare great +things with little, you might as well try to alter a line of Virgil's +as one of Calverley's. Forget a single epithet and substitute another, +and the result is certain disaster. He has the perfection of the +phrase--and there it ends. I cannot remember a single line of +Calverley's that contains a spark of human feeling. Mr. Birrell +himself has observed that Calverley is just a bit inhuman. But the +cause of it does not seem to have occurred to him. Nor does the +biography explain it. If we are to believe the common report of all +who knew Calverley, he was a man of simple mind and sincere, of quick +and generous emotions. His biographers tell us also that he was one +who seemed to have the world at his feet, one who had only to choose a +calling to excel in it. Yet he never fulfilled his friends' high +expectations. What was the reason of it all? + +The accident that cut short his career is not wholly to blame, I +think. At any rate, it will not explain away the exception I have +taken to his verse. Had that been destined to exhibit the humanity +which we seek, some promise of it would surely be discoverable; for he +was a full-grown man at the time of that unhappy tumble on the ice. +But there is none. It is all sheer wit, impish as a fairy +changeling's, and always barren of feeling. Mr. Birrell has not +supplied the explanatory epithet, so I will try to do so. It is +"donnish." Cambridge, fondly imagining that she was showing right +appreciation of Calverley thereby, gave him a Fellowship. Mr. Walter +Besant, another gentleman from Calverley's college, complained, the +other day, that literary distinction was never marked with a peerage. +It is the same sort of error. And now Cambridge, having made +Calverley a don, claims him as a Cambridge poet; and the claim is +just, if the epithet be intended to mark the limitations imposed by +that University on his achievement. + + +"J.K.S." + +Of "J.K.S.," whose second volume, _Quo Musa Tendis?_ (Macmillan & +Bowles), has just come from the press, it is fashionable to say that +he follows after Calverley, at some distance. To be sure, he himself +has encouraged this belief by coming from Cambridge and writing about +Cambridge, and invoking C.S.C. on the first page of his earlier +volume, _Lapsus Calami_. But, except that J.K.S. does his talent some +violence by constraining it to imitate Calverley's form, the two men +have little in common. The younger has a very different wit. He is +more than academical. He thinks and feels upon subjects that were far +outside Calverley's scope. Among the dozen themes with which he deals +under the general heading of _Paullo Majora Canamus_, there is not one +which would have interested his "master" in the least. Calverley +appears to have invited his soul after this fashion--"Come, let us go +into the King's Parade and view the undergraduate as he walks about +having no knowledge of good or evil. Let us make a jest of the books +he admires and the schools for which he is reading." And together they +manage it excellently. They talk Cambridge "shop" in terms of the +wittiest scholarship. But of the very existence of a world of grown-up +men and women they seem to have no inkling, or, at least, no care. + +The problems of J.K.S. are very much more grown-up. You have only to +read _Paint and Ink_ (a humorous, yet quite serious, address to a +painter upon the scope of his art) or _After the Golden Wedding_ +(wherein are given the soliloquies of the man and the woman who have +been married for fifty years) to assure yourself that if J.K.S. be not +Calverley's equal, it is only because his mind is vexed with problems +bigger than ever presented themselves to the Cambridge don. To C.S.C., +Browning was a writer of whose eccentricities of style delicious sport +might be made. J.K.S. has parodied Browning too; but he has also +perpended Browning, and been moulded by him. There are many stanzas in +this small volume that, had Browning not lived, had never been +written. Take this, from a writer to a painter:-- + + "So I do dare claim to be kin with you, + And I hold you higher than if your task + Were doing no more than you say you do: + We shall live, if at all, we shall stand or fall, + As men before whom the world doffs its mask + And who answer the questions our fellows ask." + +Many such lines prove our writer's emancipation from servitude to the +Calverley fetish, a fetish that, I am convinced, has done harm to many +young men of parts. It is pretty, in youth, to play with style as a +puppy plays with a bone, to cut teeth upon it. But words are, after +all, a poor thing without matter. J.K.S.'s emancipation has come +somewhat late; but he has depths in him which he has not sounded yet, +and it is quite likely that when he sounds them he may astonish the +world rather considerably. Now, if we may interpret the last poem in +his book, he is turning towards prose. "I go," he says-- + + "I go to fly at higher game: + At prose as good as I can make it; + And though it brings nor gold nor fame, + I will not, while I live, forsake it." + +It is no disparagement to his verse to rejoice over this resolve of +his. For a young man who begins with epic may end with good epic; but +a young man who begins with imitating Calverley will turn in time to +prose if he means to write in earnest. And J.K.S. may do well or ill, +but that he is to be watched has been evident since the days when he +edited the _Reflector_.[B] + +FOOTNOTES: + +[A] I am bound to admit that the only authority for this is +a note written into the text of Aubrey's _Lives_. + +[B] The reader will refer to the date at the head of this paper:-- + + "Heu miserande puer! signa fata aspera rumpas, + Tu Marcellus eris. + * * * * * + Sed nox atra caput tristi circumvolat umbra." + + + + +ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON + + +April 15, 1893. The "Island Nights' Entertainments." + +I wish Mr. Stevenson had given this book another title. It covers but +two out of the three stories in the volume; and, even so, it has the +ill-luck to be completely spoilt by its predecessor, the _New Arabian +Nights_. + +The _New Arabian Nights_ was in many respects a parody of the Eastern +book. It had, if we make a few necessary allowances for the difference +between East and West, the same, or very near the same, atmosphere of +gallant, extravagant, intoxicated romance. The characters had the same +adventurous irresponsibility, and exhibit the same irrelevancies and +futilities. The Young Man with the Cream Cakes might well have sprung +from the same brain as the facetious Barmecide, and young Scrymgeour +sits helpless before his destiny as sat that other young man while the +inexorable Barber sang the song and danced the dance of Zantout. +Indeed Destiny in these books resembles nothing so much as a Barber +with forefinger and thumb nipping his victims by the nose. It is as +omnipotent, as irrational, as humorous and almost as cruel in the +imitation as in the original. Of course I am not comparing these in +any thing but their general presentment of life, or holding up _The +Rajah's Diamond_ against _Aladdin_. I am merely pointing out that life +is presented to us in Galland and in Mr. Stevenson's first book of +tales under very similar conditions--the chief difference being that +Mr. Stevenson has to abate something of the supernatural, or to handle +it less frankly. + +But several years divide the _New Arabian Nights_ from the _Island +Nights' Entertainments_; and in the interval our author has written +_The Master of Ballantrae_ and his famous _Open Letter_ on Father +Damien. That is to say, he has grown in his understanding of the human +creature and in his speculations upon his creature's duties and +destinies. He has travelled far, on shipboard and in emigrant trains; +has passed through much sickness; has acquired property and +responsibility; has mixed in public affairs; has written _A Footnote +to History_, and sundry letters to the _Times_; and even, as his +latest letter shows, stands in some danger of imprisonment. Therefore, +while the title of his new volume would seem to refer us once more to +the old Arabian models, we are not surprised to find this apparent +design belied by the contents. The third story, indeed, _The Isle of +Voices_, has affinity with some of the Arabian tales--with Sindbad's +adventures, for instance. But in the longer _Beach of Falesa_ and _The +Bottle Imp_ we are dealing with no debauch of fancy, but with the +problems of real life. + +For what is the knot untied in the _Beach of Falesa_? If I mistake +not, our interest centres neither in Case's dirty trick of the +marriage, nor in his more stiff-jointed trick of the devil-contraptions. +The first but helps to construct the problem, the second seems a +superfluity. The problem is (and the author puts it before us fair +and square), How is Wiltshire a fairly loose moralist with some +generosity of heart, going to treat the girl he has wronged? And I +am bound to say that as soon as Wiltshire answers that question +before the missionary--an excellent scene and most dramatically +managed--my interest in the story, which is but halftold at this +point, begins to droop. As I said, the "devil-work" chapter strikes me +as stiff, and the conclusion but rough-and-tumble. And I feel certain +that the story itself is to blame, and neither the scenery nor the +persons, being one of those who had as lief Mr. Stevenson spake of the +South Seas as of the Hebrides, so that he speak and I listen. Let it +be granted that the Polynesian names are a trifle hard to distinguish +at first--they are easier than Russian by many degrees--yet the +difficulty vanishes as you read the _Song of Rahero_, or the _Footnote +to History_. And if it comes to habits, customs, scenery, etc., I +protest a man must be exacting who can find no romance in these while +reading Melville's _Typee_. No, the story itself is to blame. + +But what is the human problem in _The Bottle Imp_? (Imagine +Scheherazade with a human problem!) Nothing less, if you please than +the problem of Alcestis--nothing less and even something more; for in +this case when the wife has made her great sacrifice of self, it is no +fortuitous god but her own husband who wins her release, and at a +price no less fearful than she herself has paid. Keawe being in +possession of a bottle which must infallibly bring him to hell-flames +unless he can dispose of it at a certain price, Kokua his wife by a +stratagem purchases the bottle from him, and stands committed to the +doom he has escaped. She does her best to hide this from Keawe, but +he, by accident discovering the truth, by another stratagem wins back +the curse upon his own head, and is only rescued by a _deus ex +machina_ in the shape of a drunken boatswain. + +Two or three reviewers have already given utterance upon this volume; +and they seem strangely unable to determine which is the best of its +three tales. I vote for _The Bottle Imp_ without a second's doubt; +and, if asked my reasons, must answer (1), that it deals with a high +and universal problem, whereas in _The Isle of Voices_ there is no +problem at all, and in the _Beach of Falesa_ the problem is less +momentous and perhaps (though of this I won't be sure) more closely +restricted by the accidents of circumstance and individual character; +(2) as I have hinted, the _Beach of Falesa_ has faults of +construction, one of which is serious, if not vital, while _The Isle +of Voices_, though beautifully composed, is tied down by the +triviality of its subject. But _The Bottle Imp_ is perfectly +constructed: the last page ends the tale, and the tale is told with a +light grace, sportive within restraint, that takes nothing from the +seriousness of the subject. Some may think this extravagant praise for +a little story which, after all (they will say), is flimsy as a soap +bubble. But let them sit down and tick off on their fingers the names +of living authors who could have written it, and it may begin to dawn +on them that a story has other dimensions than length and thickness. + + * * * * * + +Sept. 9, 1893. First thoughts on "Catriona." + +Some while ago Mr. Barrie put together in a little volume eleven +sketches of eleven men whose fame has travelled far beyond the +University of Edinburgh. For this reason, I believe, he called them +"An Edinburgh Eleven"--as fond admirers speak of Mr. Arthur Shrewsbury +(upon whose renown it is notorious that the sun never sets) as "the +Notts Professional," and of a yet more illustrious cricketer by his +paltry title of "Doctor"-- + + "Not so much honouring thee, + As giving it a hope that there + It could not wither'd be." + +Of the Eleven referred to, Mr. Robert Louis Stevenson was sent in at +eighth wicket down to face this cunning "delivery":--"He experiments +too long; he is still a boy wondering what he is going to be. With +Cowley's candor he tells us that he wants to write something by which +he may be for ever known. His attempts in this direction have been in +the nature of trying different ways, and he always starts off +whistling. Having gone so far without losing himself, he turns back to +try another road. Does his heart fail him, despite his jaunty bearing, +_or is it because there is no hurry?_ ... But it is quite time the +great work was begun." + +I have taken the liberty to italicise a word or two, because in them +Mr. Barrie supplied an answer to his question. "The lyf so short, the +craft so long to lerne!" is not an exhortation to hurry: and in Mr. +Stevenson's case, at any rate, there was not the least need to hurry. +There was, indeed, a time when Mr. Stevenson had not persuaded himself +of this. In _Across the Plains_ he tells us how, at windy Anstruther +and an extremely early age, he used to draw his chair to the table and +pour forth literature "at such a speed, and with such intimations of +early death and immortality, as I now look back upon with wonder. +Then it was that I wrote _Voces Fidelium_, a series of dramatic +monologues in verse; then that I indited the bulk of a Covenanting +novel--like so many others, never finished. Late I sat into the night, +toiling (as I thought) under the very dart of death, toiling to leave +a memory behind me. I feel moved to thrust aside the curtain of the +years, to hail that poor feverish idiot, to bid him go to bed and clap +_Voces Fidelium_ on the fire before he goes, so clear does he appear +to me, sitting there between his candles in the rose-scented room and +the late night; so ridiculous a picture (to my elderly wisdom) does +the fool present!" + +There was no hurry then, as he now sees: and there never was cause to +hurry, I repeat. "But how is this? Is, then, the great book written?" +I am sure I don't know. Probably not: for human experience goes to +show that _The_ Great Book (like _The_ Great American Novel) never +gets written. But that _a_ great story has been written is certain +enough: and one of the curious points about this story is its title. + +It is not _Catriona_; nor is it _Kidnapped_. _Kidnapped_ is a taking +title, and _Catriona_ beautiful in sound and suggestion of romance: +and _Kidnapped_ (as everyone knows) is a capital tale, though +imperfect; and _Catriona_ (as the critics began to point out, the day +after its issue) a capital tale with an awkward fissure midway in it. +"It is the fate of sequels"--thus Mr. Stevenson begins his +Dedication--"to disappoint those who have waited for them"; and it is +possible that the boys of Merry England (who, it may be remembered, +thought more of _Treasure Island_ than of _Kidnapped_) will take but +lukewarmly to _Catriona_, having had five years in which to forget its +predecessor. No: the title of the great story is _The Memoirs of David +Balfour_. Catriona has a prettier name than David, and may give it to +the last book of her lover's adventures: but the Odyssey was not +christened after Penelope. + +Put _Kidnapped_ and _Catriona_ together within the same covers, with +one title-page, one dedication (here will be the severest loss) and +one table of contents, in which the chapters are numbered straight +away from I. to LX.: and--this above all things--read the tale right +through from David's setting forth from the garden gate at Essendean +to his homeward voyage, by Catriona's side, on the Low Country ship. +And having done this, be so good as to perceive how paltry are the +objections you raised against the two volumes when you took them +separately. Let me raise again one or two of them. + +(1.) _Catriona_ is just two stories loosely hitched together--the one +of David's vain attempt to save James Stewart, the other of the loves +of David and Catriona: and in case the critic should be too stupid to +detect this, Mr. Stevenson has been at the pains to divide his book +into Part I. and Part II. Now this, which is a real fault in a book +called _Catriona_, is no fault at all in _The Memoirs of David +Balfour_, which by its very title claims to be constructed loosely. In +an Odyssey the road taken by the wanderer is all the nexus required; +and the continuity of his presence (if the author know his business) +is warrant enough for the continuity of our interest in his +adventures. That the history of Gil Blas of Santillane consists +chiefly of episodes is not a serious criticism upon Lesage's novel. + +(2.) In _Catriona_ more than a few of the characters are suffered to +drop out of sight just as we have begun to take an interest in them. +There is Mr. Rankeillor, for instance, whose company in the concluding +chapter of _Kidnapped_ was too good to be spared very easily; and +there is Lady Allardyce--a wonderfully clever portrait; and Captain +Hoseason--we tread for a moment on the verge of re-acquaintance, but +are disappointed; and Balfour of Pilrig; and at the end of Part I. +away into darkness goes the Lord Advocate Preston-grange, with his +charming womenkind. + +Well, if this be an objection to the tale, it is one urged pretty +often against life itself--that we scarce see enough of the men and +women we like. And here again that which may be a fault in _Catriona_ +is no fault at all in _The Memoirs of David Balfour_. Though novelists +may profess in everything they write to hold a mirror up to life, the +reflection must needs be more artificial in a small book than in a +large. In the one, for very clearness, they must isolate a few human +beings and cut off the currents (so to speak) bearing upon them from +the outside world: in the other, with a larger canvas they are able +to deal with life more frankly. Were the Odyssey cut down to one +episode--say that of Nausicaea--we must round it off and have everyone +on the stage and provided with his just portion of good and evil +before we ring the curtain down. As it is, Nausicaea goes her way. And +as it is, Barbara Grant must go her way at the end of Chapter XX.; and +the pang we feel at parting with her is anything rather than a +reproach against the author. + +(3.) It is very certain, as the book stands, that the reader must +experience some shock of disappointment when, after 200 pages of the +most heroical endeavoring, David fails in the end to save James +Stewart of the Glens. Were the book concerned wholly with James +Stewart's fate, the cheat would be intolerable: and as a great deal +more than half of _Catriona_ points and trembles towards his fate like +a magnetic needle, the cheat is pretty bad if we take _Catriona_ +alone. But once more, if we are dealing with _The Memoirs of David +Balfour_--if we bear steadily in mind that David Balfour is our +concern--not James Stewart--the disappointment is far more easily +forgiven. Then, and then only, we get the right perspective of +David's attempt, and recognize how inevitable was the issue when this +stripling engaged to turn back the great forces of history. + +It is more than a lustre, as the Dedication reminds us, since David +Balfour, at the end of the last chapter of _Kidnapped_, was left to +kick his heels in the British Linen Company's office. Five years have +a knack of making people five years older; and the wordy, politic +intrigue of _Catriona_ is at least five years older than the +rough-and-tumble intrigue of _Kidnapped_; of the fashion of the +_Vicomte de Bragelonne_ rather than of the _Three Musketeers_. But +this is as it should be; for older and astuter heads are now mixed up +in the case, and Preston-grange is a graduate in a very much higher +school of diplomacy than was Ebenezer Balfour. And if no word was said +in _Kidnapped_ of the love of women, we know now that this matter was +held over until the time came for it to take its due place in David +Balfour's experience. Everyone knew that Mr. Stevenson would draw a +woman beautifully as soon as he was minded. Catriona and her situation +have their foreshadowing in _The Pavilion on the Links_. But for all +that she is a surprise. She begins to be a surprise--a beautiful +surprise--when in Chapter X. she kisses David's hand "with a higher +passion than the common kind of clay has any sense of;" and she is a +beautiful surprise to the end of the book. The loves of these two make +a moving story--old, yet not old: and I pity the heart that is not +tender for Catriona when she and David take their last walk together +in Leyden, and "the knocking of her little shoes upon the way sounded +extraordinarily pretty and sad." + + * * * * * + +Nov. 3, 1894. "The Ebb Tide." + +A certain Oxford lecturer, whose audience demurred to some trivial +mistranslation from the Greek, remarked: "I perceive, gentlemen, that +you have been taking a mean advantage of me. You have been looking it +out in the Lexicon." + +The pleasant art of reasoning about literature on internal evidence +suffers constant discouragement from the presence and activity of +those little people who insist upon "looking it out in the Lexicon." +Their brutal methods will upset in two minutes the nice calculations +of months. Your logic, your taste, your palpitating sense of style, +your exquisite ear for rhythm and cadence--what do these avail against +the man who goes straight to Stationers' Hall or the Parish Register? + + "Two thousand pounds of education + Drops to a ten-rupee jezail," + +as Mr. Kipling sings. The answer, of course, is that the beauty of +reasoning upon internal evidence lies in the process rather than the +results. You spend a month in studying a poet, and draw some +conclusion which is entirely wrong: within a week you are set right by +some fellow with a Parish Register. Well, but meanwhile you have been +reading poetry, and he has not. Only the uninstructed judge criticism +by its results alone. + +If, then, after studying Messrs. Stevenson and Osbourne's _The +Ebb-Tide_ (London: Heinemann) I hazard a guess or two upon its +authorship; and if somebody take it into his head to write out to +Samoa and thereby elicit the information that my guesses are entirely +wrong--why then we shall have been performing each of us his proper +function in life; and there's an end of the matter. + +Let me begin though--after reading a number of reviews of the +book--by offering my sympathy to Mr. Lloyd Osbourne. Very possibly he +does not want it. I guess him to be a gentleman of uncommonly cheerful +heart. I hope so, at any rate: for it were sad to think that +indignation had clouded even for a minute the gay spirit that gave us +_The Wrong Box_--surely the funniest book written in the last ten +years. But he has been most shamefully served. Writing with him, Mr. +Stevenson has given us _The Wrecker_ and _The Ebb-Tide_. Faults +may be found in these, apart from the criticism that they are freaks in +the development of Mr. Stevenson's genius. Nobody denies that they are +splendid tales: nobody (I imagine) can deny that they are tales of a +singular and original pattern. Yet no reviewer praises them on their +own merits or points out their own defects. They are judged always in +relation to Mr. Stevenson's previous work, and the reviewers +concentrate their censure upon the point that they are freaks in Mr. +Stevenson's development--that he is not continuing as the public +expected him to continue. + +Now there are a number of esteemed novelists about the land who earn +comfortable incomes by doing just what the public expects of them. But +of Mr. Stevenson's genius--always something wayward--freaks might have +been predicted from the first. A genius so consciously artistic, so +quick in sympathy with other men's writings, however diverse, was +bound from the first to make many experiments. Before the public took +his career in hand and mapped it out for him, he made such an +experiment with _The Black Arrow_; and it was forgiven easily enough. +But because he now takes Mr. Osbourne into partnership for a new set +of experiments, the reviewers--not considering that these, whatever +their faults, are vast improvements on _The Black Arrow_--ascribe all +those faults to the new partner. + +But that is rough criticism. Moreover it is almost demonstrably false. +For the weakness of _The Wrecker_, such as it was, lay in the Paris +and Barbizon business and the author's failure to make this of one +piece with the main theme, with the romantic histories of the +_Currency Lass_ and the _Flying Scud_. But which of the two partners +stands responsible for this Pais-Barbizon business? Mr. Stevenson +beyond a doubt. If you shut your eyes to Mr. Stevenson's confessed +familiarity with the Paris and the Barbizon of a certain era; if you +choose to deny that he wrote that chapter on Fontainebleau in _Across +the Plains_; if you go on to deny that he wrote the opening of Chapter +XXI. of _The Wrecker_; why then you are obliged to maintain that it +was Mr. Osbourne, and not Mr. Stevenson, who wrote that famous chapter +on the Roussillon Wine--which is absurd. And if, in spite of its +absurdity, you stick to this also, why, then you are only +demonstrating that Mr. Lloyd Osbourne is one of the greatest living +writers of fiction: and your conception of him as a mere imp of +mischief jogging the master's elbow is wider of the truth than ever. + +No; the vital defect of _The Wrecker_ must be set down to Mr. +Stevenson's account. Fine story as that was, it failed to assimilate +the Paris-Barbizon business. _The Ebb-Tide_, on the other hand, is all +of one piece. It has at any rate one atmosphere, and one only. And who +can demand a finer atmosphere of romance than that of the South +Pacific? + +_The Ebb-Tide_, so far as atmosphere goes, is all of one piece. And +the story, too, is all of one piece--until we come to Attwater: I own +Attwater beats me. As Mr. Osbourne might say, "I have no use for" that +monstrous person. I wish, indeed, Mr. Osbourne _had_ said so: for +again I cannot help feeling that the offence of Attwater lies at Mr. +Stevenson's door. He strikes me as a bad dream of Mr. Stevenson's--a +General Gordon out of the _Arabian Nights_. Do you remember a drawing +of Mr. du Maurier's in _Punch_, wherein, seizing upon a locution of +Miss Rhoda Broughton's, he gave us a group of "magnificently ugly" +men? I seem to see Attwater in that group. + +But if Mr. Stevenson is responsible for Attwater, surely also he +contributed the two splendid surprises of the story. I am the more +certain because they occur in the same chapter, and within three pages +of each other. I mean, of course, Captain Davis's sudden confession +about his "little Adar," and the equally startling discovery that the +cargo of the _Farallone_ schooner, supposed to be champagne, is mostly +water. These are the two triumphant surprises of the book: and I shall +continue to believe that only one living man could have contrived +them, until somebody writes to Samoa and obtains the assurance that +they are among Mr. Osbourne's contributions to the tale. + +Two small complaints I have to make. The first is of the rather +inartistically high level of profanity maintained by the speech of +Davis and Huish. It is natural enough, of course; but that is no +excuse if the frequency of the swearing prevent its making its proper +impression in the right place. And the name "Robert Herrick," bestowed +on one of the three beach-loafers, might have been shunned. You may +call an ordinary negro "Julius Caesar": for out of such extremes you +get the legitimately grotesque. But the Robert Herrick, loose writer +of the lovely _Hesperides_, and the Robert Herrick, shameful haunter +of Papeete beach, are not extremes: and it was so very easy to avoid +the association of ideas. + + * * * * * + +Dec. 22, 1894. R.L.S. In Memorium. + +The Editor asks me to speak of Stevenson this week: because, since the +foundation of THE SPEAKER, as each new book of Stevenson's appeared, I +have had the privilege of writing about it here. So this column, too, +shall be filled; at what cost ripe journalists will understand, and +any fellow-cadet of letters may guess. + +For when the telegram came, early on Monday morning, what was our +first thought, as soon as the immediate numbness of sorrow passed and +the selfish instinct began to reassert itself (as it always does) and +whisper "What have _I_ lost? What is the difference to _me_?" Was it +not something like this--"Put away books and paper and pen. Stevenson +is dead. Stevenson is dead, and now there is nobody left to write +for." Our children and grandchildren shall rejoice in his books; but +we of this generation possessed in the living man something that they +will not know. So long as he lived, though it were far from +Britain--though we had never spoken to him and he, perhaps, had barely +heard our names--we always wrote our best for Stevenson. To him each +writer amongst us--small or more than small--had been proud to have +carried his best. That best might be poor enough. So long as it was +not slipshod, Stevenson could forgive. While he lived, he moved men to +put their utmost even into writings that quite certainly would never +meet his eye. Surely another age will wonder over this curiosity of +letters--that for five years the needle of literary endeavor in Great +Britain has quivered towards a little island in the South Pacific, as +to its magnetic pole. + +Yet he founded no school, though most of us from time to time have +poorly tried to copy him. He remained altogether inimitable, yet never +seemed conscious of his greatness. It was native in him to rejoice in +the successes of other men at least as much as in his own triumphs. +One almost felt that, so long as good books were written, it was no +great concern to him whether he or others wrote them. Born with an +artist's craving for beauty of expression, he achieved that beauty +with infinite pains. Confident in romance and in the beneficence of +joy, he cherished the flame of joyous romance with more than Vestal +fervor, and kept it ardent in a body which Nature, unkind from the +beginning, seemed to delight in visiting with more unkindness--a +"soul's dark cottage, battered and decayed" almost from birth. And his +books leave the impression that he did this chiefly from a sense of +duty: that he labored and kept the lamp alight chiefly because, for +the time, other and stronger men did not. + +Had there been another Scott, another Dumas--if I may change the +image--to take up the torch of romance and run with it, I doubt if +Stevenson would have offered himself. I almost think in that case he +would have consigned with Nature and sat at ease, content to read of +new Ivanhoes and new D'Artagnans: for--let it be said again--no man +had less of the ignoble itch for merely personal success. Think, too, +of what the struggle meant for him: how it drove him unquiet about the +world, if somewhere he might meet with a climate to repair the +constant drain upon his feeble vitality; and how at last it flung him, +as by a "sudden freshet," upon Samoa--to die "far from Argos, dear +land of home." + +And then consider the brave spirit that carried him--the last of a +great race--along this far and difficult path; for it is the man we +must consider now, not, for the moment, his writings. Fielding's +voyage to Lisbon was long and tedious enough; but almost the whole of +Stevenson's life has been a voyage to Lisbon, a voyage in the very +penumbra of death. Yet Stevenson spoke always as gallantly as his +great predecessor. Their "cheerful stoicism," which allies his books +with the best British breeding, will keep them classical as long as +our nation shall value breeding. It shines to our dim eyes now, as we +turn over the familiar pages of _Virginibus Puerisque_, and from page +after page--in sentences and fragments of sentences--"It is not +altogether ill with the invalid after all" ... "Who would project a +serial novel after Thackeray and Dickens had each fallen in +mid-course." [_He_ had two books at least in hand and uncompleted, the +papers say.] "Who would find heart enough to begin to live, if he +dallied with the consideration of death?" ... "What sorry and pitiful +quibbling all this is!" ... "It is better to live and be done with it, +than to die daily in the sick-room. By all means begin your folio; +even if the doctor does not give you a year, even if he hesitates over +a month, make one brave push and see what can be accomplished in a +week.... For surely, at whatever age it overtake the man, this is to +die young.... The noise of the mallet and chisel is scarcely quenched, +the trumpets are hardly done blowing, when, trailing with him clouds +of glory, this happy-starred, full-blooded spirit shoots into the +spiritual land." + +As it was in _Virginibus Puerisque_, so is it in the last essay in his +last book of essays:-- + + "And the Kingdom of Heaven is of the childlike, of those who are + easy to please, who love and who give pleasure. Mighty men of + their hands, the smiters, and the builders, and the judges, have + lived long and done sternly, and yet preserved this lovely + character; and among our carpet interests and two-penny concerns, + the shame were indelible if _we_ should lose it. _Gentleness and + cheerfulness, these come before all morality; they are the + perfect duties_...." + +I remember now (as one remembers little things at such times) that, +when first I heard of his going to Samoa, there came into my head +(Heaven knows why) a trivial, almost ludicrous passage from his +favorite, Sir Thomas Browne: a passage beginning "He was fruitlessly +put in hope of advantage by change of Air, and imbibing the pure +Aerial Nitre of those Parts; and therefore, being so far spent, he +quickly found Sardinia in Tivoli, and the most healthful air of little +effect, where Death had set her Broad Arrow...." A statelier sentence +of the same author occurs to me now-- + +"To live indeed, is to be again ourselves, which being not only a +hope, but an evidence in noble believers, it is all one to lie in St. +Innocent's Churchyard, as in the sands of Egypt. Ready to be anything +in the ecstacy of being ever, and as content with six foot as the +_moles_ of Adrianus." + +This one lies, we are told, on a mountain-top, overlooking the +Pacific. At first it seemed so much easier to distrust a News Agency +than to accept Stevenson's loss. "O captain, my captain!" ... One +needs not be an excellent writer to feel that writing will be +thankless work, now that Stevenson is gone. But the papers by this +time leave no room for doubt. "A grave was dug on the summit of Mount +Vaea, 1,300 feet above the sea. The coffin was carried up the hill by +Samoans with great difficulty, a track having to be cut through the +thick bush which covers the side of the hill from the base to the +peak." For the good of man, his father and grandfather planted the +high sea-lights upon the Inchcape and the Tyree Coast. He, the last of +their line, nursed another light and tended it. Their lamps still +shine upon the Bell Rock and the Skerryvore; and--though in alien +seas, upon a rock of exile--this other light shall continue, +unquenchable by age, beneficent, serene. + + * * * * * + +Nov. 2, 1895. The "Vailima Letters." + +Eagerly as we awaited this volume, it has proved a gift exceeding all +our hopes--a gift, I think, almost priceless. It unites in the rarest +manner the value of a familiar correspondence with the value of an +intimate journal: for these Samoan letters to his friend Mr. Sidney +Colvin form a record, scarcely interrupted, of Stevenson's thinkings +and doings from month to month, and often from day to day, during the +last four romantic years of his life. The first is dated November 2nd, +1890, when he and his household were clearing the ground for their +home on the mountain-side of Vaea: the last, October 6th, 1894, just +two months before his grave was dug on Vaea top. During his Odyssey in +the South Seas (from August, 1888, to the spring of 1890) his letters, +to Mr. Colvin at any rate, were infrequent and tantalizingly vague; +but soon after settling on his estate in Samoa, "he for the first +time, to my infinite gratification, took to writing me long and +regular monthly budgets as full and particular as heart could wish; +and this practice he maintained until within a few weeks of his +death." These letters, occupying a place quite apart in Stevenson's +correspondence, Mr. Colvin has now edited with pious care and given to +the public. + +But the great, the happy surprise of the _Vailima Letters_ is neither +their continuity nor their fulness of detail--although on each of +these points they surpass our hopes. The great, the entirely happy +surprise is their intimacy. We all knew--who could doubt it?--that +Stevenson's was a clean and transparent mind. But we scarcely allowed +for the innocent zest (innocent, because wholly devoid of vanity or +selfishness) which he took in observing its operations, or for the +child-like confidence with which he held out the crystal for his +friend to gaze into. + +One is at first inclined to say that had these letters been less +open-hearted they had made less melancholy reading--the last few of +them, at any rate. For, as their editor says, "the tenor of these last +letters of Stevenson's to me, and of others written to several of his +friends at the same time, seemed to give just cause for anxiety. +Indeed, as the reader will have perceived, a gradual change had during +the past months been coming over the tone of his correspondence.... To +judge by these letters, his old invincible spirit of cheerfulness was +beginning to give way to moods of depression and overstrained feeling, +although to those about him, it seems, his charming, habitual +sweetness and gaiety of temper were undiminished." Mr. Colvin is +thinking, no doubt, of passages such as this, from the very last +letter:-- + + "I know I am at a climacteric for all men who live by their wits, + so I do not despair. But the truth is, I am pretty nearly useless + at literature.... Were it not for my health, which made it + impossible, I could not find it in my heart to forgive myself + that I did not stick to an honest, commonplace trade when I was + young, which might have now supported me during these ill years. + But do not suppose me to be down in anything else; only, for the + nonce, my skill deserts me, such as it is, or was. It was a very + little dose of inspiration, and a pretty little trick of style, + long lost, improved by the most heroic industry. So far, I have + managed to please the journalists. But I am a fictitious article, + and have long known it. I am read by journalists, by my + fellow-novelists, and by boys; with these _incipit et explicit_ + my vogue." + +I appeal to all who earn their living by pen or brush--Who does not +know moods such as this? Who has not experience of those dark days +when the ungrateful canvas refuses to come right, and the artist sits +down before it and calls himself a fraud? We may even say that these +fits of incapacity and blank despondency are part of the cost of all +creative work. They may be intensified by terror for the family +exchequer. The day passes in strenuous but futile effort, and the man +asks himself, "What will happen to me and mine if this kind of thing +continues?" Stevenson, we are allowed to say (for the letters tell +us), did torment himself with these terrors. And we may say further +that, by whatever causes impelled, he certainly worked too hard during +the last two years of his life. With regard to the passage quoted, +what seems to me really melancholy is not the baseless self-distrust, +for that is a transitory malady most incident to authorship; but that, +could a magic carpet have transported Stevenson at that moment to the +side of the friend he addressed--could he for an hour or two have +visited London--all this apprehension had been at once dispelled. He +left England before achieving his full conquest of the public heart, +and the extent of that conquest he, in his exile, never quite +realized. When he visited Sydney, early in 1893, it was to him a new +and disconcerting experience--but not, I fancy altogether +unpleasing--_digito monstrari_, or, as he puts it elsewhere, to "do +the affable celebrity life-sized." Nor do I think he quite realized +how large a place he filled in the education, as in the affections, of +the younger men--the Barries and Kiplings, the Weymans, Doyles and +Crocketts--whose courses began after he had left these shores. An +artist gains much by working alone and away from chatter and criticism +and adulation: but his gain has this corresponding loss, that he must +go through his dark hours without support. Even a master may take +benefit at times--if it be only a physical benefit--from some closer +and handier assurance than any letters can give of the place held by +his work in the esteem of "the boys." + +We must not make too much of what he wrote in this dark mood. A few +days later he was at work on _Weir of Hermiston_, laboring "at the +full pitch of his powers and in the conscious happiness of their +exercise." Once more he felt himself to be working at his best. The +result the world has not yet been allowed to see: for the while we are +satisfied and comforted by Mr. Colvin's assurances. "The fragment on +which he wrought during the last month of his life gives to my mind +(as it did to his own) for the first time the true measure of his +powers; and if in the literature of romance there is to be found work +more masterly, of more piercing human insight and more concentrated +imaginative wisdom, I do not know it." + +On the whole, these letters from Vailima give a picture of a serene +and--allowance being made for the moods--a contented life. It is, I +suspect, the genuine Stevenson that we get in the following passage +from the letter of March, 1891:-- + + "Though I write so little, I pass all my hours of field-work in + continual converse and imaginary correspondence. I scarce pull up + a weed, but I invent a sentence on the matter to yourself; it + does not get written; _autant en emportent les vents_; but the + intent is there, and for me (in some sort) the companionship. + To-day, for instance, we had a great talk. I was toiling, the + sweat dripping from my nose, in the hot fit after a squall of + rain; methought you asked me--frankly, was I happy? Happy (said + I); I was only happy once; that was at Hyeres; it came to an end + from a variety of reasons--decline of health, change of place, + increase of money, age with his stealing steps; since then, as + before then, I know not what it means. But I know pleasures + still; pleasure with a thousand faces and none perfect, a + thousand tongues all broken, a thousand hands, and all of them + with scratching nails. High among these I place the delight of + weeding out here alone by the garrulous water, under the silence + of the high wood, broken by incongruous sounds of birds. And take + my life all through, look at it fore and back, and upside down--I + would not change my circumstances, unless it were to bring you + here. And yet God knows perhaps this intercourse of writing + serves as well; and I wonder, were you here indeed, would I + commune so continually with the thought of you. I say 'I wonder' + for a form; I know, and I know I should not." + +In a way the beauty of these letters is this, that they tell us so +much of Stevenson that is new, and nothing that is strange--nothing +that we have difficulty in reconciling with the picture we had already +formed in our own minds. Our mental portraits of some other writers, +drawn from their deliberate writings, have had to be readjusted, and +sometimes most cruelly readjusted, as soon as their private +correspondence came to be published. If any of us dreamed of this +danger in Stevenson's case (and I doubt if anyone did), the danger at +any rate is past. The man of the letters is the man of the books--the +same gay, eager, strenuous, lovable spirit, curious as ever about life +and courageous as ever in facing its chances. Profoundly as he +deplores the troubles in Samoa, when he hears that war has been +declared he can hardly repress a boyish excitement. "War is a huge +_entrainement_," he writes in June, 1893; "there is no other +temptation to be compared to it, not one. We were all wet, we had been +five hours in the saddle, mostly riding hard; and we came home like +schoolboys, with such a lightness of spirits, and I am sure such a +brightness of eye, as you could have lit a candle at." + +And that his was not by any means mere "literary" courage one more +extract will prove. One of his boys, Paatalise by name, had suddenly +gone mad:-- + + "I was busy copying David Balfour, with my left hand--a most + laborious task--Fanny was down at the native house superintending + the floor, Lloyd down in Apia, and Bella in her own house + cleaning, when I heard the latter calling on my name. I ran out + on the verandah; and there on the lawn beheld my crazy boy with + an axe in his hand and dressed out in green ferns, dancing. I ran + downstairs and found all my house boys on the back verandah, + watching him through the dining-room. I asked what it + meant?--'Dance belong his place,' they said.--'I think this is no + time to dance,' said I. 'Has he done his work?'--'No,' they told + me, 'away bush all morning.' But there they all stayed in the + back verandah. I went on alone through the dining-room and bade + him stop. He did so, shouldered the axe, and began to walk away; + but I called him back, walked up to him, and took the axe out of + his unresisting hands. The boy is in all things so good, that I + can scarce say I was afraid; only I felt it had to be stopped ere + he could work himself up by dancing to some craziness. Our house + boys protested they were not afraid; all I know is they were all + watching him round the back door, and did not follow me till I + had the axe. As for the out-boys, who were working with Fanny in + the native house, they thought it a bad business, and made no + secret of their fears." + +But indeed all the book is manly, with the manliness of Scott's +_Journal_ or of Fielding's _Voyage to Lisbon_. "To the English-speaking +world," concludes Mr. Colvin, "he has left behind a treasure which it +would be vain as yet to attempt to estimate; to the profession of +letters one of the most ennobling and inspiriting of examples; and +to his friends an image of memory more vivid and more dear than are +the presences of almost any of the living." Very few men of our time +have been followed out of this world with the same regret. None have +repined less at their own fate-- + + "This be the verse you grave for me:-- + 'Here he lies where he longed to be; + Home is the sailor, home from the sea, + And the hunter home from the hill.'" + + + + +M. ZOLA + + +Sept. 23, 1892. La Debacle. + +To what different issues two men will work the same notion! Imagine +this world to be a flat board accurately parcelled out into squares, +and you have the basis at once of _Alice through the Looking-Glass_ +and of _Les Rougon-Macquart_. But for the mere fluke that the +Englishman happened to be whimsical and the Frenchman entirely without +humor (and the chances were perhaps against this), we might have had +the Rougon-Macquart family through the looking-glass, and a natural +and social history of Alice in _parterres_ of existence labelled +_Drink, War, Money_, etc. As it is, in drawing up any comparison of +these two writers we should remember that Mr. Carroll sees the world +in sections because he chooses, M. Zola because he cannot help it. + +If life were a museum, M. Zola would stand a reasonable chance of +being a Balzac. But I invite the reader who has just laid down _La +Debacle_ to pick up _Eugenie Grandet_ again and say if that little +Dutch picture has not more sense of life, even of the storm and stir +and big furies of life, than the detonating _Debacle_. The older +genius + + "Saw life steadily and saw it whole" + +--No matter how small the tale, he draws no curtain around it; it +stands in the midst of a real world, set in the white and composite +light of day. M. Zola sees life in sections and by one or another of +those colors into which daylight can be decomposed by the prism. He is +like a man standing at the wings with a limelight apparatus. The rays +fall now here, now there, upon the stage; are luridly red or vividly +green; but neither mix nor pervade. + +I am aware that the tone of the above paragraph is pontifical and its +substance a trifle obvious, and am eager to apologize for both. +Speaking as an impressionist, I can only say that _La Debacle_ stifles +me. And this is the effect produced by all his later books. Each has +the exclusiveness of a dream; its subject--be it drink or war or +money--possesses the reader as a nightmare possesses the dreamer. For +the time this place of wide prospect, the world, puts up its shutters; +and life becomes all drink, all war, all money, while M. Zola +(adaptable Bacchanal!) surrenders his brain to the intoxication of his +latest theme. He will drench himself with ecclesiology, or veterinary +surgery, or railway technicalities--everything by turns and everything +long; but, like the gentleman in the comic opera, he "never mixes." Of +late he almost ceased to add even a dash of human interest. + +Mr. George Moore, reviewing _La Debacle_ in the _Fortnightly_ last +month, laments this. He reminds us of the splendid opportunity M. Zola +has flung away in his latest work. + + "Jean and Maurice," says Mr. Moore, "have fought side by side; + they have alternately saved each other's lives; war has united + them in a bond of inseparable friendship; they have grasped each + other's hands, and looked in each other's eyes, overpowered with + a love that exceeds the love that woman ever gave to man; now + they are ranged on different sides, armed one against the other. + The idea is a fine one, and it is to be deeply regretted that M. + Zola did not throw history to the winds and develop the beautiful + human story of the division of friends in civil war. Never would + history have tempted Balzac away from the human passion of such a + subject...." + +But it is just fidelity to the human interest of every subject that +gives the novelist his rank; that makes--to take another instance--a +page or two of Balzac, when Balzac is dealing with money, of more +value than the whole of _l'Argent_. + +Of Burke it has been said by a critic with whom it is a pleasure for +once in a way to agree, that he knew how the whole world lived. + + "It was Burke's peculiarity and his glory to apply the + imagination of a poet of the first order to the facts and + business of life.... Burke's imagination led him to look over the + whole land: the legislator devising new laws, the judge + expounding and enforcing old ones, the merchant despatching all + his goods and extending his credit, the banker advancing the + money of his customers upon the credit of the merchant, the + frugal man slowly accumulating the store which is to support him + in old age, the ancient institutions of Church and University + with their seemly provisions for sound learning and true + religion, the parson in his pulpit, the poet pondering his + rhymes, the farmer eyeing his crops, the painter covering his + canvases, the player educating the feelings. Burke saw all this + with the fancy of a poet, and dwelt on it with the eye of a + lover." + +Now all this, which is true of Burke, is true of the very first +literary artists--of Shakespeare and Balzac. All this, and more--for +they not only see all this immense activity of life, but the emotions +that animate each of the myriad actors. + +Suppose them to treat of commerce: they see not only the goods and +money changing hands, but the ambitions, dangers, fears, delights, the +fierce adventures by desert and seas, the slow toil at home, upon +which the foundations of commerce are set. Like the Gods, + + "They see the ferry + On the broad, clay-laden + Lone Chorasmian stream;--thereon, + With snort and strain, + Two horses, strongly swimming, tow + The ferry-boat, with woven ropes + To either bow + Firm-harness'd by the mane; a chief, + With shout and shaken spear, + Stands at the prow, and guides them; but astern + The cowering merchants, in long robes, + Sit pale beside their wealth...." + +Like the Gods, they see all this; but, unlike the Gods, they must feel +also:-- + + "They see the merchants + On the Oxus stream;--_but care + Must visit first them too, and make them pale_. + Whether, through whirling sand, + A cloud of desert robber-horse have burst + Upon their caravan; or greedy kings, + In the wall'd cities the way passes through, + Crush'd them with tolls; or fever-airs, + On some great river's marge, + Mown them down, far from home." + +Mr. Moore speaks of M. Zola's vast imagination. It is vast in the +sense that it sees one thing at a time, and sees it a thousand times +as big as it appears to most men. But can the imagination that sees a +whole world under the influence of one particular fury be compared +with that which surveys this planet and sees its inhabitants busy with +a million diverse occupations? Drink, Money, War--these may be +usefully personified as malignant or beneficent angels, for pulpit +purposes. But the employment of these terrific spirits in the harrying +of the Rougon-Macquart family recalls the announcement that + + "The Death-Angel smote Alexander McGlue...." + +while the methods of the _Roman Experimental_ can hardly be better +illustrated than by the rest of the famous stanza-- + + "--And gave him protracted repose: + He wore a check shirt and a Number 9 shoe, + And he had a pink wart on his nose." + + + + +SELECTION + + +May 4, 1895. Hazlitt. + +"Coming forward and seating himself on the ground in his white dress +and tightened turban, the chief of the Indian jugglers begins with +tossing up two brass balls, which is what any of us could do, and +concludes with keeping up four at the same time, which is what none of +us could do to save our lives." ... You remember Hazlitt's essay on +the Indian Jugglers, and how their performance shook his self-conceit. +"It makes me ashamed of myself. I ask what there is that I can do as +well as this. Nothing..... Is there no one thing in which I can +challenge competition, that I can bring as an instance of exact +perfection, in which others cannot find a flaw? The utmost I can +pretend to is to write a description of what this fellow can do. I can +write a book; so can many others who have not even learned to spell. +What abortions are these essays! What errors, what ill-pieced +transitions, what crooked reasons, what lame conclusions! How little +is made out, and that little how ill! Yet they are the best I can do." + +Nevertheless a play of Shakespeare's, or a painting by Reynolds, or an +essay by Hazlitt, imperfect though it be, is of more rarity and worth +than the correctest juggling or tight-rope walking. Hazlitt proceeds +to examine why this should be, and discovers a number of good reasons. +But there is one reason, omitted by him, or perhaps left for the +reader to infer, on which we may profitably spend a few minutes. It +forms part of a big subject, and tempts to much abstract talk on the +universality of the Fine Arts; but I think we shall be putting it +simply enough if we say that an artist is superior to an "artiste" +because he does well what ninety-nine people in a hundred are doing +poorly all their lives. + + +Selection. + +When people compare fiction with "real life," they start with +asserting "real life" to be a conglomerate of innumerable details of +all possible degrees of pertinence and importance, and go on to show +that the novelist selects from this mass those which are the most +important and pertinent to his purpose. (I speak here particularly of +the novelist, but the same is alleged of all practitioners of the fine +arts.) And, in a way, this is true enough. But who (unless in an idle +moment, or with a view to writing a treatise in metaphysics) ever +takes this view of the world? Who regards it as a conglomerate of +innumerable details? Critics say that the artist's difficulty lies in +selecting the details proper to his purpose, and his justification +rests on the selection he makes. But where lives the man whose +difficulty and whose justification do not lie just here?--who is not +consciously or unconsciously selecting from morning until night? You +take the most ordinary country walk. How many millions of leaves and +stones and blades of grass do you pass without perceiving them at all? +How many thousands of others do you perceive, and at once allow to +slip into oblivion? Suppose you have walked four miles with the +express object of taking pleasure in country sights. I dare wager the +objects that have actually engaged your attention for two seconds are +less than five hundred, and those that remain in your memory, when you +reach home, as few as a dozen. All the way you have been, quite +unconsciously, selecting and rejecting. And it is the brain's +bedazzlement over this work, I suggest, and not merely the rhythmical +physical exertion, that lulls the more ambitious walker and induces +that phlegmatic mood so prettily described by Stevenson--the mood in +which + + "we can think of this or that, lightly or laughingly, as a child + thinks, or as we think in a morning doze; we can make puns or + puzzle out acrostics, and trifle in a thousand ways with words + and rhymes; but when it comes to honest work, when we come to + gather ourselves together for an effort, we may sound the trumpet + as long and loud as we please; the great barons of the mind will + not rally to the standard, but sit, each one at home, warming his + hands over his own fire and brooding on his own private thought!" + +Again, certain critics never seem tired of pelting the novelist with +comparisons drawn between painting and photography. "Mr. So-and-So's +fidelity to life suggests the camera rather than the brush and +palette"; and the implication is that Mr. So-and-So and the camera +resemble each other in their tendency to reproduce irrelevant detail. +The camera, it is assumed, repeats this irrelevant detail. The +photographer does not select. But is this true? I have known many +enthusiasts in photography whose enthusiasm I could not share. But I +never knew one, even among amateurs, who wished to photograph +everything he saw, from every possible point of view. Even the amateur +selects--wrongly as a rule: still he selects. The mere act of setting +up a camera in any particular spot implies a process of selection. And +when the deed is done, the scenery has been libelled. Our eyes behold +the photograph, and go through another process of selection. In short, +whatever they look upon, men and women are selecting ceaselessly. + +The artist therefore does well and consciously, and for a particular +end, what every man or woman does poorly, and unconsciously, and +casually. He differs in the photographer in that he has more licence +to eliminate. When once the camera is set up, it's owner's power over +the landscape has come to an end. The person who looks on the +resultant photograph must go through the same process of choosing and +rejecting that he would have gone through in contemplating the natural +landscape. The sole advantage is that the point of view has been +selected for him, and that he can enjoy it without fatigue in any +place and at any time. + +The truth seems to be that the human brain abhors the complexity--the +apparently aimless complexity--of nature and real life, and is for +ever trying to get away from it by selecting this and ignoring that. +And it contrives so well that I suppose the average man is not +consciously aware twice a year of that conglomerate of details which +the critics call real life. He holds one stout thread, at any rate, to +guide him through the maze--the thread of self-interest. + +The justification of the poet or the novelist is that he discovers a +better thread. He follows up a universal where the average man follows +only a particular. But in following it, he does but use those +processes by which the average man arrives, or attempts to arrive, at +pleasure. + + + + +EXTERNALS + + +Nov. 18, 1893. Story and Anecdote. + +I suppose I am no more favored than most people who write stories in +receiving from unknown correspondents a variety of suggestions, +outlines of plots, sketches of situations, characters, and so forth. +One cannot but feel grateful for all this spontaneous beneficence. The +mischief is that in ninety-nine cases out of a hundred (the fraction +is really much smaller) these suggestions are of no possible use. + +Why should this be? Put briefly, the reason is that a story differs +from an anecdote. I take the first two instances that come into my +head: but they happen to be striking ones, and, as they occur in a +book of Mr. Kipling's, are safe to be well known to all my +correspondents. In Mr. Kipling's fascinating book, _Life's Handicap, +On Greenhow Hill_ is a story; _The Lang Men o' Larut_ is an anecdote. +_On Greenhow Hill_ is founded on a study of the human heart, and it is +upon the human heart that the tale constrains one's interest. _The +Lang Men o' Larut_ is just a yarn spun for the yarn's sake: it informs +us of nothing, and is closely related (if I may use some of Mr. +Howells' expressive language for the occasion) to "the lies swapped +between men after the ladies have left the table." And the reason why +the story-teller, when (as will happen at times) his invention runs +dry, can take no comfort in the generous outpourings of his unknown +friends, is just this--that the plots are merely plots, and the +anecdotes merely anecdotes, and the difference between these and a +story that shall reveal something concerning men and women is just the +difference between bad and good art. + +Let us go a step further. At first sight it seems a superfluous +contention that a novelist's rank depends upon what he can see and +what he can tell us of the human heart. But, as a matter of fact, you +will find that four-fifths at least of contemporary criticism is +devoted to matters quite different--to what I will call Externals, or +the Accidents of Story-telling: and that, as a consequence, our +novelists are spending a quite unreasonable proportion of their labor +upon Externals. I wrote "as a consequence" hastily, because it is +always easier to blame the critics. If the truth were known, I dare +say the novelists began it with their talk about "documents," "the +scientific method," "observation and experiment," and the like. + + +The Fallacy of "Documents." + +Now you may observe a man until you are tired, and then you may begin +and observe him over again: you may photograph him and his +surroundings: you may spend years in studying what he eats and drinks: +you may search out what his uncles died of, and the price he pays for +his hats, and--know nothing at all about him. At least, you may know +enough to insure his life or assess him for Income Tax: but you are +not even half-way towards writing a novel about him. You are still +groping among externals. His unspoken ambitions; the stories he tells +himself silently, at midnight, in his bed; the pain he masks with a +dull face and the ridiculous fancies he hugs in secret--these are the +Essentials, and you cannot get them by Observation. If you can +discover these, you are a Novelist born: if not, you may as well shut +up your note-book and turn to some more remunerative trade. You will +never surprise the secret of a soul by accumulating notes upon +Externals. + + +Local Color. + +Then, again, we have Local Color, an article inordinately bepraised +just now; and yet an External. For human nature, when every possible +allowance has been made for geographical conditions, undergoes +surprisingly little change as we pass from one degree of latitude or +longitude to another. The Story of Ruth is as intelligible to an +Englishman as though Ruth had gleaned in the stubble behind Tess +Durbeyfield. Levine toiling with the mowers, Achilles sulking in his +tent, Iphigeneia at the altar, Gil Blas before the Archbishop of +Granada have as close a claim on our sympathy as if they lived but a +few doors from us. Let me be understood. I hold it best that a +novelist should be intimately acquainted with the country in which he +lays his scene. But, none the less, the study of local color is not of +the first importance. And the critic who lavishes praise upon a writer +for "introducing us to an entirely new atmosphere," for "breaking new +ground," and "wafting us to scenes with which the jaded novel-reader +is scarcely acquainted," and for "giving us work which bears every +trace of minute local research," is praising that which is of +secondary importance. The works of Richard Jefferies form a +considerable museum of externals of one particular kind; and this is +possibly the reason why the Cockney novelist waxes eloquent over +Richard Jefferies. He can now import the breath of the hay-field into +his works at no greater expense of time and trouble than taking down +the _Gamekeeper at Home_ from his club bookshelf and perusing a +chapter or so before settling down to work. There is not the slightest +harm in his doing this: the mistake lies in thinking local color +(however acquired) of the first importance. + +In judging fiction there is probably no safer rule than to ask one's +self, How far does the pleasure excited in me by this book depend upon +the transitory and trivial accidents that distinguish this time, this +place, this character, from another time, another place, another +character? And how far upon the abiding elements of human life, the +constant temptations, the constant ambitions, and the constant +nobility and weakness of the human heart? These are the essentials, +and no amount of documents or local color can fill their room. + + * * * * * + +Sept. 30, 1893. The Country as "Copy". + +The case of a certain small volume of verse in which I take some +interest, and its treatment at the hands of the reviewers, seems to me +to illustrate in a sufficiently amusing manner a trick that the +British critic has been picking up of late. In a short account of Mr. +Hosken, the postman poet, written by way of preface to his _Verses by +the Way_ (Methuen & Co.), I took occasion to point out that he is not +what is called in the jargon of these days a "nature-poet"; that his +poetic bent inclines rather to meditation than to description; and +that though his early struggles in London and elsewhere have made him +acquainted with many strange people in abnormal conditions of life, +his interest has always lain, not in these striking anomalies, but in +the destiny of humanity as a whole and its position in the great +scheme of things. + +These are simple facts. I found them, easily enough, in Mr. Hosken's +verse--where anybody else may find them. They also seem to me to be, +for a critic's purpose, ultimate facts. It is an ultimate fact that +Publius Virgilius Maro wore his buskins somewhat higher in the heel +than did Quintus Horatius Flaccus: and no critic, to my knowledge, +has been impertinent enough to point out that, since Horace had some +experience of the tented field, while Virgil was a stay-at-home +courtier, therefore Horace should have essayed to tell the martial +exploits of Trojan and Rutulian while Virgil contented himself with +the gossip of the Via Sacra. Yet--to compare small things with +great--this is the mistake into which our critics have fallen in Mr. +Hosken's case; and I mention it because the case is typical. They try +to get behind the ultimate facts and busy themselves with questions +they have no proper concern with. Some ask petulantly why Mr. Hosken +is not a "nature-poet." Some are gravely concerned that "local talent" +(_i.e._ the talent of a man who happens to dwell in some locality +other than the critic's) should not concern itself with local affairs; +and remind him-- + + "To thine orchard edge belong + All the brass and plume of song." + +As if a man may not concern himself with the broader problems of life +and attack them with all the apparatus of recorded experience, unless +he happen to live on one bank or other of the Fleet Ditch! If a man +have the gift, he can find all the "brass and plume of song" in his +orchard edge. If he have not, he may (provided he be a _bona fide_ +traveller) find it elsewhere. What, for instance, were the use of +telling Keats: "To thy surgery belong all the brass and plume of +song"? He couldn't find it there, so he betook himself to Chapman and +Lempriere. If you ask, "What right has a country postman to be +handling questions that vexed the brain of Plato?"--I ask in return, +"What right had John Keats, who knew no Greek, to busy himself with +Greek mythology?" And the answer is that each has a perfect right to +follow his own bent. + +The assumption of many critics that only within the metropolitan cab +radius can a comprehensive system of philosophy be constructed, and +that only through the plate-glass windows of two or three clubs is it +possible to see life steadily, and see it whole, is one that I have +before now had occasion to dispute. It is joined in this case to +another yet more preposterous--that from a brief survey of an author's +circumstances we can dictate to him what he ought to write about, and +how he ought to write it. And I have observed particularly that if a +writer be a countryman, or at all well acquainted with country life, +all kinds of odd entertainment is expected of him in the way of notes +on the habits of birds, beasts, and fishes, on the growth of all kinds +of common plants, on the proper way to make hay, to milk a cow, and so +forth. + + +Richard Jefferies. + +Now it is just the true countryman who would no more think of noting +these things down in a book than a Londoner would think of stating in +a novel that Bond Street joins Oxford Street and Piccadilly: simply +because they have been familiar to him from boyhood. And to my mind it +is a small but significant sign of a rather lamentable movement--of +none other, indeed, than the "Rural Exodus," as Political Economists +call it--that each and every novelist of my acquaintance, while +assuming as a matter of course that his readers are tolerably familiar +with the London Directory, should, equally as a matter of course, +assume them to be ignorant of the commonest features of open-air life. +I protest there are few things more pitiable than the transports of +your Cockney critic over Richard Jefferies. Listen, for instance, to +this kind of thing:-- + + "Here and there upon the bank wild gooseberry and currant bushes + may be found, planted by birds carrying off ripe fruit from the + garden. A wild gooseberry may sometimes be seen growing out of + the decayed 'touchwood' on the top of a hollow withy-pollard. + Wild apple trees, too, are not uncommon in the hedges. + + "The beautiful rich colour of the horse-chestnut, when quite ripe + and fresh from its prickly green shell, can hardly be surpassed; + underneath the tree the grass is strewn with shells where they + have fallen and burst. Close to the trunk the grass is worn away + by the restless trampling of horses, who love the shade its + foliage gives in summer. The oak apples which appear on the oaks + in spring--generally near the trunk--fall off in summer, and lie + shrivelled on the ground, not unlike rotten cork, or black as if + burned. But the oak-galls show thick on some of the trees, light + green, and round as a ball; they will remain on the branches + after the leaves have fallen, turning brown and hard, and hanging + there till the spring comes again."--_Wild Life in a Southern + County_, pp. 224-5. + +I say it is pitiable that people should need to read these things in +print. Let me apply this method to some district of south-west +London--say the Old Brompton Road:-- + + "Here and there along the street Grocery Stores and shops of + Italian Warehousemen may be observed, opened here as branches of + bigger establishments in the City. Three gilt balls may + occasionally be seen hanging out under the first-floor windows of + a 'pawnbroker's' residence. House-agents, too, are not uncommon + along the line of route. + + "The appearance of a winkle, when extracted from its shell with + the aid of a pin, is extremely curious. There is a winkle-stall + by the South Kensington Station of the Underground Railway. + Underneath the stall the pavement is strewn with shells, where + they have fallen and continue to lie. Close to the stall is a + cab-stand, paved with a few cobbles, lest the road be worn + overmuch by the restless trampling of cab-horses, who stand here + because it is a cab-stand. The thick woollen goods which appear + in the haberdashers' windows through the winter--generally + _inside_ the plate glass--give way to garments of a lighter + texture as the summer advances, and are put away or exhibited at + decreased prices. But collars continue to be shown, quite white + and circular in form; they will probably remain, turning grey as + the dust settles on them, until they are sold." + +This is no travesty. It is a hasty, but I believe a pretty exact +application of Jefferies' method. And I ask how it would look in a +book. If the critics really enjoy, as they profess to, all this +trivial country lore, why on earth don't they come into the fresh air +and find it out for themselves? There is no imperative call for their +presence in London. Ink will stain paper in the country as well as in +town, and the Post will convey their articles to their editors. As it +is, they do but overheat already overheated clubs. Mr. Henley has +suggested concerning Jefferies' works that + + "in years to be, when the whole island is one vast congeries of + streets, and the fox has gone down to the bustard and the dodo, + and outside museums of comparative anatomy the weasel is not, and + the badger has ceased from the face of the earth, it is not + doubtful that the _Gamekeeper_ and _Wild Life_ and the + _Poacher_--epitomising, as they will, the rural England of + certain centuries before--will be serving as material authority + for historical descriptions, historical novels, historical epics, + historical pictures, and will be honoured as the most useful + stuff of their kind in being." + +Let me add that the movement has begun. These books are already +supplying the club-novelist with his open-air effects: and, therefore, +the club-novelist worships them. From them he gathers that "wild +apple-trees, too, are not uncommon in the hedges," and straightway he +informs the public of this wonder. But it is hard on the poor +countryman who, for the benefit of a street-bred reading public, must +cram his books with solemn recitals of his A, B, C, and impressive +announcements that two and two make four and a hedge-sparrow's egg is +blue. + + * * * * * + +Aug. 18, 1894. A Defence of "Local Fiction." + +Under the title "Three Years of American Copyright" the _Daily +Chronicle_ last Tuesday published an account of an interview with Mr. +Brander Matthews, who holds (among many titles to distinction) the +Professorship of Literature in Columbia College, New York. Mr. +Matthews is always worth listening to, and has the knack of speaking +without offensiveness even when chastising us Britons for our national +peculiarities. His conversation with the _Daily Chronicle's_ +interviewer contained a number of good things; but for the moment I am +occupied with his answer to the question "What form of literature +should you say is at present in the ascendant in the United States?" +"Undoubtedly," said Mr. Matthews, "what I may call local fiction." + + "Every district of the country is finding its 'sacred poet.' Some + of them have only a local reputation, but all possess the common + characteristic of starting from fresh, original, and loving study + of local character and manners. You know what Miss Mary E. + Wilkins has done for New England, and you probably know, too, + that she was preceded in the same path by Miss Sarah Orne Jewett + and the late Mrs. Rose Terry Cooke. Mr. Harold Frederic is + performing much the same service for rural New York, Miss Murfree + (Charles Egbert Craddock) for the mountains of Tennessee, Mr. + James Lane Allen for Kentucky, Mr. Joel Chandler Harris for + Georgia, Mr. Cable for Louisiana, Miss French (Octave Thanet) for + Iowa, Mr. Hamlin Garland for the western prairies, and so forth. + Of course, one can trace the same tendency, more or less clearly, + in English fiction...." + +And Mr. Matthews went on to instance several living novelists, Scotch, +Irish, and English to support this last remark. + +The matter, however, is not in doubt. With Mr. Barrie in the North, +and Mr. Hardy in the South; with Mr. Hall Caine in the Isle of Man, +Mr. Crockett in Galloway, Miss Barlow in Lisconnell; with Mr. Gilbert +Parker in the territory of the H.B.C., and Mr. Hornung in Australia; +with Mr. Kipling scouring the wide world, but returning always to +India when the time comes to him to score yet another big artistic +success; it hardly needs elaborate proof to arrive at the conclusion +that 'locality' is playing a strong part in current fiction. + +The thing may possibly be overdone. Looking at it from the artistic +point of view as dispassionately as I may, I think we are overdoing +it. But that, for the moment, is not the point of view I wish to take. +If for the moment we can detach ourselves from the prejudice of +fashion and look at the matter from the historical point of view--if +we put ourselves into the position of the conscientious gentleman who, +fifty or a hundred years hence, will be surveying us and our works--I +think we shall find this elaboration of "locality" in fiction to be +but a swing-back of the pendulum, a natural revolt from the +thin-spread work of the "carpet-bagging" novelist who takes the whole +world for his province, and imagines he sees life steadily and sees it +whole when he has seen a great deal of it superficially. + +The "carpet-bagger" still lingers among us. We know him, with his +"tourist's return" ticket, and the ready-made "plot" in his head, and +his note-book and pencil for jotting down "local color." We still find +him working up the scenery of Bolivia in the Reading Room of the +British Museum. But he is going rapidly out of fashion; and it is as +well to put his features on record and pigeon-hole them, if only that +we may recognize him on that day when the pendulum shall swing him +triumphantly back into our midst, and "locality" shall in its turn +pass out of vogue. + +I submit this simile of the pendulum with some diffidence to those +eager theorists who had rather believe that their art is advancing +steadily, but at a fair rate of speed, towards perfection. My own less +cheerful--yet not altogether cheerless view--is that the various +fashions in art swing to and fro upon intersecting curves. Some of the +points of intersection are fortunate points--others are obviously the +reverse; and generally the fortunate points lie near the middle of +each arc, or the mean; while the less fortunate ones lie towards the +ends, that is, towards excess upon one side or another. I have already +said that, in the amount of attention they pay to locality just now, +the novelists seem to be running into excess. If I must choose between +one excess and the other--between the carpet-bagger and the writer of +"dialect-stories," each at his worst--I unhesitatingly choose the +latter. But that is probably because I happened to be born in the +'sixties. + +Let us get back (I hear you implore) to the historical point of view, +if possible: anywhere, anywhere, out of the _Poetics!_ And I admit +that a portion of the preceding paragraph reads like a bad parody of +that remarkable work. Well, then, I believe that our imaginary +historian--I suppose he will be a German: but we need not let our +imagination dwell upon _that_--will find a dozen reasons in +contemporary life to account for the attention now paid by novelists +to "locality." He will find one of them, no doubt, in the development +of locomotion by steam. He will point out that any cause which makes +communication easier between two given towns is certain to soften the +difference in the characteristics of their inhabitants: that the +railway made communication easier and quicker year by year; and its +tendency was therefore to obliterate local peculiarities. He will +describe how at first the carpet-bagger went forth in railway-train +and steamboat, rejoicing in his ability to put a girdle round the +world in a few weeks, and disposed to ignore those differences of race +and region which he had no time to consider and which he was daily +softening into uniformity. He will then relate that towards the close +of the nineteenth century, when these differences were rapidly +perishing, people began to feel the loss of them and recognize their +scientific and romantic value; and that a number of writers entered +into a struggle against time and the carpet-bagger, to study these +differences and place them upon record, before all trace of them +should disappear. And then I believe our historian, though he may find +that in 1894 we paid too much attention to the _minutiae_ of dialect, +folk-lore and ethnic differences, and were inclined to overlay with +these the more catholic principles of human conduct, will acknowledge +that in our hour we did the work that was most urgent. Our hour, no +doubt, is not the happiest; but, since this is the work it brings, +there can be no harm in going about it zealously. + + + + +CLUB TALK + + +Nov. 12, 1892. Mr. Gilbert Parker. + +Mr. Gilbert Parker's book of Canadian tales, "Pierre and His People" +(Methuen and Co.), is delightful for more than one reason. To begin +with, the tales themselves are remarkable, and the language in which +they are told, though at times it overshoots the mark by a long way +and offends by what I may call an affected virility, is always +distinguished. You feel that Mr. Parker considers his sentences, not +letting his bolts fly at a venture, but aiming at his effects +deliberately. It is the trick of promising youth to shoot high and +send its phrases in parabolic curves over the target. But a slight +wildness of aim is easily corrected, and to see the target at all is a +more conspicuous merit than the public imagines. Now Mr. Parker sees +his target steadily; he has a thoroughly good notion of what a short +story ought to be: and more than two or three stories in his book are +as good as can be. + + +Open Air v. Clubs. + +But to me the most pleasing quality in the book is its open-air +flavor. Here is yet another young author, and one of the most +promising, joining the healthy revolt against the workshops. Though +for my sins I have to write criticism now and then, and use the +language of the workshops, I may claim to be one of the rebels, having +chosen to pitch a small tent far from cities and to live out of doors: +and it rejoices me to see the movement growing, as it undoubtedly has +grown during the last few years, and find yet one more of the younger +men refusing, in Mr. Stevenson's words, to cultivate restaurant fat, +to fall in mind "to a thing perhaps as low as many types of +_bourgeois_--the implicit or exclusive artist." London is an alluring +dwelling-place for an author, even for one who desires to write about +the country. He is among the paragraph-writers, and his reputation +swells as a cucumber under glass. Being in sight of the newspaper men, +he is also in their mind. His prices will stand higher than if he go +out into the wilderness. Moreover, he has there the stimulating talk +of the masters in his profession, and will be apt to think that his +intelligence is developing amazingly, whereas in fact he is developing +all on one side; and the end of him is--the Exclusive Artist:-- + + "_When the flicker of London sun falls faint on the + Club-room's green and gold + The sons of Adam sit them down and scratch with their + pens in the mould-- + They scratch with their pens in the mould of their + graves and the ink and the anguish start, + For the Devil mutters behind the leaves: 'It's pretty, + but is it Art?'_" + +The spirit of our revolt is indicated clearly enough on that page of +Mr. Stevenson's "Wrecker," from which I have already quoted a +phrase:-- + + "That was a home word of Pinkerton's, deserving to be writ in + letters of gold on the portico of every School of Art: 'What I + can't see is why you should want to do nothing else.' The dull + man is made, not by the nature, but by the degree of his + immersion in a single business. And all the more if that be + sedentary, uneventful, and ingloriously safe. More than half of + him will then remain unexercised and undeveloped; the rest will + be distended and deformed by over-nutrition, over-cerebration and + the heat of rooms. And I have often marvelled at the impudence of + gentlemen who describe and pass judgment on the life of man, in + almost perfect ignorance of all its necessary elements and + natural careers. Those who dwell in clubs and studios may paint + excellent pictures or write enchanting novels. There is one thing + that they should not do: they should pass no judgment on man's + destiny, for it is a thing with which they are unacquainted. + Their own life is an excrescence of the moment, doomed, in the + vicissitude of history, to pass and disappear. The eternal life + of man, spent under sun and rain and in rude physical effort, + lies upon one side, scarce changed since the beginning." + +A few weeks ago our novelists were discussing the reasons why they +were novelists and not playwrights. The discussion was sterile enough, +in all conscience: but one contributor--it was "Lucas Malet"--managed +to make it clear that English fiction has a character to lose. "If +there is one thing," she said, "which as a nation we understand, it is +_out-of-doors_ by land and sea." Heaven forbid that, with only one +Atlantic between me and Mr. W.D. Howells, I should enlarge upon any +merit of the English novel: but I do suggest that this open-air +quality is a characteristic worth preserving, and that nothing is so +likely to efface it as the talk of workshops. It is worth preserving +because it tends to keep us in sight of the elemental facts of human +nature. After all, men and women depend for existence on the earth and +on the sky that makes earth fertile; and man's last act will be, as it +was his first, to till the soil. All empires, cities, tumults, civil +and religious wars, are transitory in comparison. The slow toil of +the farm-laborer, the endurance of the seaman, outlast them all. + + +Open Air in Criticism. + +That studio-talk tends to deaden this sense of the open-air is just +as certain. It runs not upon Nature, but upon the presentation of +Nature. I am almost ready to assert that it injures a critic as +surely as it spoils a creative writer. Certainly I remember that +the finest appreciation of Carlyle--a man whom every critic among +English-speaking races had picked to pieces and discussed and +reconstructed a score of times--was left to be uttered by an inspired +loafer in Camden, New Jersey. I love to read of Whitman dropping the +newspaper that told him of Carlyle's illness, and walking out under +the stars-- + + "Every star dilated, more vitreous, larger than usual. Not as in + some clear nights when the larger stars entirely outshine the + rest. Every little star or cluster just as distinctly visible and + just as high. Berenice's hair showing every gem, and new ones. To + the north-east and north the Sickle, the Goat and Kids, + Cassiopeia, Castor and Pollux, and the two Dippers. While through + the whole of this silent indescribable show, inclosing and + bathing my whole receptivity, ran the thought of Carlyle dying." + +In such a mood and place--not in a club after a dinner unearned by +exercise--a man is likely, if ever, to utter great criticism as well +as to conceive great poems. It is from such a mood and place that we +may consider the following fine passage fitly to issue:-- + + "The way to test how much he has left his country were to + consider, or try to consider, for a moment the array of British + thought, the resultant _ensemble_ of the last fifty years, as + existing to-day, _but with Carlyle left out._ It would be like an + army with no artillery. The show were still a gay and rich + one--Byron, Scott, Tennyson, and many more--horsemen and rapid + infantry, and banners flying--but the last heavy roar so dear to + the ear of the trained soldier, and that settles fate and + victory, would be lacking." + +For critic and artist, as for their fellow-creatures, I believe an +open-air life to be the best possible. And that is why I am glad to +read in certain newspaper paragraphs that Mr. Gilbert Parker is at +this moment on the wide seas, and bound for Quebec, where he starts to +collect material for a new series of short stories. His voyage will +loose him, in all likelihood, from the little he retains of club art. + +Of course, a certain proportion of our novelists must write of town +life: and to do this fitly they must live in town. But they must +study in the town itself, not in a club. Before anyone quotes Dickens +against me, let him reflect, first on the immensity of Dickens' +genius, and next on the conditions under which Dickens studied London. +If every book be a part of its writer's autobiography I invite the +youthful author who now passes his evenings in swapping views about +Art with his fellow cockneys to pause and reflect if he is indeed +treading in Dickens' footsteps or stands in any path likely to lead +him to results such as Dickens achieved. + + + + +EXCURSIONISTS IN POETRY + + +Nov. 5, 1892. An Itinerary. + +Besides the glorious exclusiveness of it, there is a solid advantage +just now, in not being an aspirant for the Laureateship. You can go +out into the wilderness for a week without troubling to leave an +address. A week or so back I found with some difficulty a friend who +even in his own judgment has no claim to the vacant office, and we set +out together across Dartmoor, Exmoor, the Quantocks, by eccentric +paths over the southern ranges of Wales to the Wye, and homewards by +canoe between the autumn banks of that river. The motto of the voyage +was Verlaine's line-- + + "Et surtout ne parlons pas litterature" + +--especially poetry. I think we felt inclined to congratulate each +other after passing the Quantocks in heroic silence; but were content +to read respect in each other's eyes. + + +The Return to Literature. + +On our way home we fell across a casual copy of the _Globe_ +newspaper, and picked up a scrap of information about the Blorenge, a +mountain we had climbed three days before. It is (said the _Globe_) +the only thing in the world that rhymes with orange. From this we +inferred that the Laureate had not been elected during our wanderings, +and that the Anglo-Saxon was still taking an interest in poetry. It +was so. + + +Public Excursions in Verse. + +The progress of this amusing epidemic may be traced in the _Times_. +It started mildly and decorously with the death of a politician. The +writer of Lord Sherbrooke's obituary notice happened to remember and +transcribe the rather flat epigram beginning-- + + "Here lie the bones of Robert Lowe, + Where he's gone to I don't know...." + +with Lowe's own Latin translation of the same. At once the _Times_ was +flooded with other versions by people who remembered the lines more or +less imperfectly, who had clung each to his own version since +childhood, who doubted if the epigram were originally written on Lord +Sherbrooke, who had seen it on an eighteenth-century tombstone in +several parts of England, and so on. London Correspondents took up +the game and carried it into the provincial press. Then country +clergymen bustled up and tried to recall the exact rendering; while +others who had never heard of the epigram waxed emulous and produced +translations of their own, with the Latin of which the local +compositor made sport after his kind. For weeks there continued quite +a pretty rivalry among these decaying scholars. + +The gentle thunders of this controversy had scarcely died down when +the _Times_ quoted a four-lined epigram about Mr. Leech making a +speech, and Mr. Parker making something darker that was dark enough +without; and another respectable profession, which hitherto had +remained cold, began to take fire and dispute with ardor. The Church, +the Legislature, the Bar, were all excited by this time. They strained +on the verge of surpassing feats, should the occasion be given. From +men in this mood the occasion is rarely withheld. Lord Tennyson died. +He had written at Cambridge a prize poem on Timbuctoo. Somebody else, +at Cambridge or elsewhere, had also written about Timbuctoo and a +Cassowary that ate a missionary with his this and his that and his +hymn-book too. Who was this somebody? Did he write it at Cambridge +(home of poets)? And what were the "trimmings," as Mr. Job Trotter +would say, with which the missionary was eaten? + +Poetry was in the air by this time. It would seem that those treasures +which the great Laureate had kept close were by his death unlocked and +spread over England, even to the most unexpected corners. "All have +got the seed," and already a dozen gentlemen were busily growing the +flower in the daily papers. It was not to be expected that our +senators, barristers, stockbrokers, having proved their strength, +would stop short at Timbuctoo and the Cassowary. Very soon a bold +egregious wether jumped the fence into the Higher Criticism, and gave +us a new and amazing interpretation of the culminating line in +_Crossing the Bar_. The whole flock was quick upon his heels. "Allow +me to remind the readers of your valuable paper that there are _two_ +kinds of pilot" is the sentence that now catches our eyes as we open +the _Times_. And according to the _Globe_ if you need a rhyme +for orange you must use Blorenge. And the press exists to supply the real +wants of the public.[A] + +They talk of decadence. But who will deny the future to a race capable +of producing, on the one hand, _Crossing the Bar_--and on the other, +this comment upon it, signed "T.F.W." and sent to the _Times_ from +Cambridge, October 27th, 1892?-- + + "... a poet so studious of fitness of language as Tennyson would + hardly, I suspect, have thrown off such words on such an occasion + haphazard. If the analogy is to be inexorably criticised, may it + not be urged that, having in his mind not the mere passage 'o'er + life's solemn main,' which we all are taking, with or without + reflection, but the near approach to an unexplored ocean beyond + it, he was mentally assigning to the pilot in whom his confidence + was fast the _status_ of the navigator of old days, the + sailing-master, on whose knowledge and care crews and captains + engaged in expeditions alike relied? Columbus himself married the + daughter of such a man, _un piloto Italiano famoso navigante_. + Camoens makes the people of Mozambique offer Vasco da Gama a + _piloto_ by whom his fleet shall be deftly (_sabiamente_) + conducted across the Indian Ocean. In the following century + (1520-30) Sebastian Cabot, then in the service of Spain, + commanded a squadron which was to pass through the Straits of + Magellan to the Moluccas, having been appointed by Charles V. + Grand Pilot of Castile. The French still call the mates of + merchant vessels--that is, the officers who watch about, take + charge of the deck--_pilotes_, and this designation is not + impossibly reserved to them as representing the _pilote + hauturier_ of former times, the scientific guide of ships _dans + la haute mer_, as distinguished from the _pilote cotier_, who + simply hugged the shore. The last class of pilot, it is almost + superfluous to observe, is still with us and does take our ships, + inwards or outwards, across the bar, if there be one, and does no + more. The _hauturier_ has long been replaced in all countries by + the captain, and it must be within the experience of some of us + that when outward bound the captain as often as not has been the + last man to come on board. We did not meet him until the ship, + which until his arrival was in the hands of the _cotier_, was + well out of harbour. Then our _cotier_ left us." + +Prodigious! + +FOOTNOTES: + +[A] Note, Oct. 21, 1893.--The nuisance revived again when Mr. +Nettleship the younger perished on Mont Blanc. And again, the friend +of Lowe and Nettleship, the great Master of Balliol, had hardly gone +to his grave before a dispute arose, not only concerning his parentage +(about which any man might have certified himself at the smallest +expense of time and trouble), but over an unusually pointless epigram +that was made at Cambridge many years ago, and neither on him, nor on +his father, but on an entirely different Jowett, _Semper ego auditor +tantum?_-- + + If a funny "Cantab" write a dozen funny rhymes, + Need a dozen "Cantabs" write about it to the _Times_? + Need they write, at any rate, a generation after, + Stating cause and date of joke and reasons for their laughter? + + + + +THE POPULAR CONCEPTION OF A POET + + +June 24, 1893. March 4, 1804. In what respect Remarkable. + +What seems to me chiefly remarkable in the popular conception of a +Poet is its unlikeness to the truth. Misconception in this case has +been flattered, I fear, by the poets themselves:-- + + "The poet in a golden Clime was born, + With golden stars above; + Dowered with the hate of hate, the scorn of scorn, + The love of love. + He saw thro' life and death, thro' good and ill; + He saw thro' his own soul. + The marvel of the Everlasting Will, + An open scroll, + Before him lay...." + +I should be sorry to vex any poet's mind with my shallow wit; but this +passage always reminds me of the delusions of the respectable +Glendower:-- + + "At my birth + The frame and huge foundation of the earth + Shak'd like a coward." + +--and Hotspur's interpretation (slightly petulant, to be sure), "Why, +so it would have done at the time if your mother's cat had but +kittened, though you yourself had never been born." I protest that I +reverence poetry and the poets: but at the risk of being warned off +the holy ground as a "dark-browed sophist," must declare my plain +opinion that the above account of the poet's birth and native gifts +does not consist with fact. + +Yet it consents with the popular notion, which you may find presented +or implied month by month and week by week, in the reviews; and even +day by day--for it has found its way into the newspapers. Critics have +observed that considerable writers fall into two classes-- + + +Two lines of Poetic Development. + +(1) Those who start with their heads full of great thoughts, and are +from the first occupied rather with their matter than with the manner +of expressing it. + +(2) Those who begin with the love of expression and intent to be +artists in words, _and come through expression to profound thought_. + + +The Popular Type. + +Now, for some reason it is fashionable just now to account Class 1 the +more respectable; a judgment to which, considering that Virgil and +Shakespeare belong to Class 2, I refuse my assent. It is fashionable +to construct an imaginary figure out of the characteristics of Class +1, and set him up as the Typical Poet. The poet at whose nativity +Tennyson assists in the above verses of course belongs to Class 1. A +babe so richly dowered can hardly help his matter overcrowding his +style; at least, to start with. + +But this is not all. A poet who starts with this tremendous equipment +can hardly help being something too much for the generation in which +he is born. Consequently, the Typical Poet is misunderstood by his +contemporaries, and probably persecuted. In his own age his is a voice +crying in the wilderness; in the wilderness he speeds the "viewless +arrows of his thought"; which fly far, and take root as they strike +earth, and blossom; and so Truth multiplies, and in the end (most +likely after his death) the Typical Poet comes by his own. + +Such is the popular conception of the Typical Poet, and I observe +that it fascinates even educated people. I have in mind the recent +unveiling of Mr. Onslow Ford's Shelley Memorial at University College, +Oxford. Those who assisted at that ceremony were for the most part men +and women of high culture. Excesses such as affable Members of +Parliament commit when distributing school prizes or opening free +public libraries were clearly out of the question. Yet even here, and +almost within the shadow of Bodley's great library, speaker after +speaker assumed as axiomatic this curious fallacy--that a Poet is +necessarily a thinker in advance of his age, and therefore peculiarly +liable to persecution at the hands of his contemporaries. + + +How supported by History. + +But logic, I believe, still flourishes in Oxford; and induction still +has its rules. Now, however many different persons Homer may have +been, I cannot remember that one of him suffered martyrdom, or even +discomfort, on account of his radical doctrine. I seem to remember +that AEchylus enjoyed the esteem of his fellow-citizens, sided with the +old aristocratic party, and lived long enough to find his own +tragedies considered archaic; that Sophocles, towards the end of a +very prosperous life, was charged with senile decay and consequent +inability to administer his estates--two infirmities which even his +accusers did not seek to connect with advanced thinking; and that +Euripides, though a technical innovator, stood hardly an inch ahead of +the fashionable dialectic of his day, and suffered only from the +ridicule of his comic contemporaries and the disdain of his +wife--misfortunes incident to the most respectable. Pindar and Virgil +were court favorites, repaying their patrons in golden song. Dante, +indeed, suffered banishment; but his banishment was just a move in a +political (or rather a family) game. Petrarch and Ariosto were not +uncomfortable in their generations. Chaucer and Shakespeare lived +happy lives and sang in the very key of their own times. Puritanism +waited for its hour of triumph to produce its great poet, who lived +unmolested when the hour of triumph passed and that of reprisals +succeeded. Racine was a royal pensioner; Goethe a chamberlain and the +most admired figure of his time. Of course, if you hold that these +poets one and all pale their ineffectual fires before the radiant +Shelley, our argument must go a few steps farther back. I have +instanced them as acknowledged kings of song. + + +The Case of Tennyson. + +Tennyson was not persecuted. He was not (and more honor to him for his +clearness) even misunderstood. I have never met with the contention +that he stood an inch ahead of the thought of his time. As for seeing +through death and life and his own soul, and having the marvel of the +everlasting will spread before him like an open scroll,--well, to +begin with, I doubt if these things ever happened to any man. Heaven +surely has been, and is, more reticent than the verse implies. But if +they ever happened, Tennyson most certainly was not the man they +happened to. What Tennyson actually sang, till he taught himself to +sing better, was:-- + + "Airy, fairy Lilian, + Flitting fairy Lilian, + When I ask her if she love me, + Claps her tiny hands above me, + Laughing all she can; + She'll not tell me if she love me, + Cruel little Lilian." + +There is not much of the scorn of scorn, or the love of love, or the +open scroll of the everlasting will, about _Cruel Little Lilian_. But +there _is_ a distinct striving after style--a striving that, as +everyone knows, ended in mastery: and through style Tennyson reached +such heights of thought as he was capable of. To the end his thought +remained inferior to his style: and to the end the two in him were +separable, whereas in poets of the very first rank they are +inseparable. But that towards the end his style lifted his thought to +heights of which even _In Memoriam_ gave no promise cannot, I think, +be questioned by any student of his collected works. + +Tennyson belongs, if ever poet belonged, to Class 2: and it is the +prettiest irony of fate that, having unreasonably belauded Class 1, he +is now being found fault with for not conforming to the supposed +requirements of that Class. He, who spoke of the poet as of a seer +"through life and death," is now charged with seeing but a short way +beyond his own nose. The Rev. Stopford Brooke finds that he had little +sympathy with the aspirations of the struggling poor; that he bore +himself coldly towards the burning questions of the hour; that, in +short, he stood anywhere but in advance of his age. As if plenty of +people were not interested in these things! Why, I cannot step out +into the street without running against somebody who is in advance of +the times on some point or another. + + +Of Virgil and Shakespeare. + +Virgil and Shakespeare were neither martyrs nor preachers despised in +their generation. I have said that as poets they also belong to Class +2. Will a champion of the Typical Poet (new style) dispute this, and +argue that Virgil and Shakespeare, though they escaped persecution, +yet began with matter that overweighted their style--with deep +stuttered thoughts--in fine, with a Message to their Time? I think +that view can hardly be maintained. We have the _Eclogues_ before the +_AEneid_; and _The Comedy of Errors_ before _As You Like It_. +Expression comes first; and through expression, thought. These are the +greatest names, or of the greatest: and they belong to Class 2. + + +Of Milton. + +Again, no English poetry is more thoroughly informed with thought than +Milton's. Did he find big thoughts hustling within him for utterance? +And did he at an early age stutter in numbers till his oppressed soul +found relief? And was it thus that he attained the glorious manner of + + "Seasons return, but not to me returns + Day, or the sweet approach of even or morn...." + +--and so on. No, to be short, it was not. At the age of twenty-four, +or thereabouts, he deliberately proposed to himself to be a great +poet. To this end he practised and studied, and travelled unweariedly +until his thirty-first year. Then he tried to make up his mind what to +write about. He took some sheets of paper--they are to be seen at this +day in the Library of Trinity College, Cambridge--and set down no less +than ninety-nine subjects for his proposed _magnum opus_, before he +could decide upon _Paradise Lost_. To be sure, when the _magnum opus_ +was written it fetched L5 only. But even this does not prove that +Milton was before his age. Perhaps he was behind it. _Paradise Lost_ +appeared in 1667: in 1657 it might have fetched considerably more than +L5. + +If the Typical Poet have few points in common with Shakespeare or +Milton, I fear that the Typical Poet begins to be in a bad way. + + +Of Coleridge. + +Shall we try Coleridge? He had "great thoughts"--thousands of them. On +the other hand, he never had the slightest difficulty in uttering +them, in prose. His great achievements in verse--his _Genevieve_, his +_Christabel_, his _Kubla Khan_, his _Ancient Mariner_--are +achievements of expression. When they appeal from the senses to the +intellect their appeal is usually quite simple. + + "He prayeth best who loveth best + All things both great and small." + +No, I am afraid Coleridge is not the Typical Poet. + +On the whole I suspect the Typical Poet to be a hasty generalization +from Shelley. + + + + +POETS ON THEIR OWN ART + + +May 11, 1895. A Prelude to Poetry. + +"To those who love the poets most, who care most for their ideals, +this little book ought to be the one indispensable book of devotion, +the _credo_ of the poetic faith." "This little book" is the volume +with which Mr. Ernest Rhys prefaces the pretty series of Lyrical Poets +which he is editing for Messrs. Dent & Co. He calls it _The Prelude to +Poetry_, and in it he has brought together the most famous arguments +stated from time to time by the English poets in defence and praise of +their own art. Sidney's magnificent "Apologie" is here, of course, and +two passages from Ben Jonson's "Discoveries," Wordsworth's preface to +the second edition of "Lyrical Ballads," the fourteenth chapter of the +"Biographia Literaria," and Shelley's "Defence." + + +Poets as Prose-writers. + +What admirable prose these poets write! Southey, to be sure, is not +represented in this volume. Had he written at length upon his art--in +spite of his confession that, when writing prose, "of what is now +called style not a thought enters my head at any time"--we may be sure +the reflection would have been even more obvious than it is. But +without him this small collection makes out a splendid case against +all that has been said in disparagement of the prose style of poets. +Let us pass what Hazlitt said of Coleridge's prose; or rather let us +quote it once again for its vivacity, and so pass on-- + + "One of his (Coleridge's) sentences winds its 'forlorn way + obscure' over the page like a patriarchal procession with camels + laden, wreathed turbans, household wealth, the whole riches of + the author's mind poured out upon the barren waste of his + subject. The palm tree spreads its sterile branches overhead, and + the land of promise is seen in the distance." + +All this is very neatly malicious, and particularly the last +co-ordinate sentence. But in the chapter chosen by Mr. Rhys from the +"Biographia Literaria" Coleridge's prose is seen at its +best--obedient, pertinent, at once imaginative and restrained--as in +the conclusion-- + + "Finally, good sense is the body of poetic genius, fancy its + drapery, motion its life, and imagination the soul that is + everywhere, and in each; and forms all into one graceful and + intelligent whole." + +The prose of Sidney's _Apologie_ is Sidney's best; and when that has +been said, nothing remains but to economize in quoting. I will take +three specimens only. First then, for beauty:-- + + "Nature never set forth the earth in so rich tapistry, as divers + Poets have done, neither with plesant rivers, fruitful trees, + sweet-smelling flowers: nor whatsoever else may make the too much + loved earth more lovely. Her world is brasen, the Poets only + deliver a golden: but let those things alone and goe to man, for + whom as the other things are, so it seemeth in him her uttermost + cunning is imployed, and know whether shee have brought forth so + true a lover as _Theagines_, so constant a friende as _Pilades_, + so valiant a man as _Orlando_, so right a Prince as _Xenophon's + Cyrus_; so excellent a man every way as _Virgil's Aeneas_...." + +Next for wit--roguishness, if you like the term better:-- + + "And therefore, if _Cato_ misliked _Fulvius_, for carrying + _Ennius_ with him to the field, it may be answered, that if + _Cato_ misliked it, the noble _Fulvius_ liked it, or else he had + not done it." + +And lastly for beauty and wit combined:-- + + "For he (the Poet) doth not only show the way, but giveth so + sweete a prospect into the way, as will intice any man to enter + into it. Nay he doth, as if your journey should lye through a + fayre Vineyard, at the first give you a cluster of Grapes: that + full of that taste, you may long to passe further. He beginneth + not with obscure definitions, which must blur the margent with + interpretations, and load the memory with doubtfulnesse: but he + cometh to you with words set in delightful proportion, either + accompanied with or prepared for the well inchanting skill of + Musicke: and with a tale forsooth he cometh unto you: with a tale + which holdeth children from play, and old men from the chimney + corner." + +"Is not this a glorious way to talk?" demanded the Rev. T.E. Brown of +this last passage, when he talked about Sidney, the other day, in Mr. +Henley's _New Review_. "No one can fail," said Mr. Brown, amiably +assuming the fineness of his own ear to be common to all mankind--"no +one can fail to observe the sweetness and the strength, the +outspokenness, the downrightness, and, at the same time, the nervous +delicacy of pausation, the rhythm all ripple and suspended fall, the +dainty _but_, the daintier _and forsooth_, as though the +pouting of a proud reserve curved the fine lip of him, and had to be +atoned for by the homeliness of _the chimney-corner_." + +Everybody admires Sidney's prose. But how of this?-- + + "Poetry is the breath and finer spirit of all knowledge; it is + the impassioned expression which is in the countenance of all + science. Emphatically it may be said of the Poet, as Shakespeare + has said of man, 'that he looks before and after.' He is the rock + of defence of human nature; an upholder and preserver, carrying + everywhere with him relationship and love. In spite of difference + of soil and climate, of language and manners, of laws and + customs, _in spite of things silently gone out of mind, and + things violently destroyed_, the Poet binds together by passion + and knowledge the vast empire of human society, as it is spread + over the whole earth, and over all time." + +It is Wordsworth who speaks--too rhetorically, perhaps. At any rate, +the prose will not compare with Sidney's. But it is good prose, +nevertheless; and the phrase I have ventured to italicise is superb. + + +Their high claims for Poesy. + +As might be expected, the poets in this volume agree in pride of their +calling. We have just listened to Wordsworth. Shelley quotes Tasso's +proud sentence--"Non c'e in mondo chi merita nome di creatore, se non +Iddio ed il Poeta": and himself says, "The jury which sits in judgment +upon a poet, belonging as he does to all time, must be composed of +his peers: it must be impanelled by Time from the selectest of the +wise of many generations." Sidney exalts the poet above the historian +and the philosopher; and Coleridge asserts that "no man was ever yet a +great poet without being at the same time a profound philosopher." Ben +Jonson puts it characteristically: "Every beggarly corporation affords +the State a mayor or two bailiffs yearly; but _Solus rex, aut poeta, +non quotannis nascitur_." The longer one lives, the more cause one +finds to rejoice that different men have different ways of saying the +same thing. + + +Inspiration not Improvisation. + +The agreement of all these poets on some other matters is more +remarkable. Most of them claim _inspiration_ for the great +practitioners of their art; but wonderful is the unanimity with which +they dissociate this from _improvisation_. They are sticklers for the +rules of the game. The Poet does not pour his full heart + + "In profuse strains of _unpremeditated_ art." + +On the contrary, his rapture is the sudden result of long +premeditation. The first and most conspicuous lesson of this volume +seems to be that Poetry is an _art_, and therefore has rules. Next +after this, one is struck with the carefulness with which these +practitioners, when it comes to theory, stick to their Aristotle. + + +Poetry not mere Metrical Composition + +For instance, they are practically unanimous in accepting Aristotle's +contention that it is not the metrical form that makes the poem. +"Verse," says Sidney, "is an ornament and no cause to poetry, since +there have been many most excellent poets that never versified, and +now swarm many versifiers that need never answer to the name of +poets." Wordsworth apologizes for using the word "Poetry" as +synonymous with metrical composition. "Much confusion," he says, "has +been introduced into criticism by this contradistinction of Poetry and +Prose, instead of the more philosophical one of Poetry and Matter of +Fact or Science. The only strict antithesis to Prose is Metre: nor is +this, in truth, a _strict_ antithesis, because lines and passages of +metre so naturally occur in writing prose that it would be scarcely +possible to avoid them, even were it desirable." And Shelley--"It is +by no means essential that a poet should accommodate his language to +this traditional form, so that the harmony, which is its spirit, be +observed.... The distinction between poets and prose writers is a +vulgar error." Shelley goes on to instance Plato and Bacon as true +poets, though they wrote in prose. "The popular division into prose +and verse," he repeats, "is inadmissible in accurate philosophy." + + +Its philosophic function. + +Then again, upon what Wordsworth calls "the more philosophical +distinction" between Poetry and Matter of Fact--quoting, of course, +the famous +"Philosophoteron kai spoudaioteron"+ passage in the +_Poetics_--it is wonderful with what hearty consent our poets pounce +upon this passage, and paraphrase it, and expand it, as the great +justification of their art: which indeed it is. Sidney gives the +passage at length. Wordsworth writes, "Aristotle, I have been told, +hath said that Poetry is the most philosophic of all writings: it is +so." Coleridge quotes Sir John Davies, who wrote of Poesy (surely with +an eye on the _Poetics_): + + "From their gross matter she abstracts their forms, + And draws a kind of quintessence from things; + Which to her proper nature she transforms + To bear them light on her celestial wings. + + "Thus does she, when from individual states + She doth abstract the universal kinds; + Which then reclothed in divers names and fates + Steal access through our senses to our minds." + +And Shelley has a remarkable paraphrase, ending, "The story of +particular facts is as a mirror which obscures and distorts that which +should be beautiful: poetry is a mirror which makes beautiful that +which is distorted." + +In fine, this book goes far to prove of poetry, as it has been proved +over and over again of other arts, that it is the men big enough to +break the rules who accept and observe them most cheerfully. + + + + +THE ATTITUDE OF THE PUBLIC TOWARDS LETTERS + + +Sept. 29, 1894. The "Great Heart" of the Public. + +I observe that our hoary friend, the Great Heart of the Public, has +been taking his annual outing in September. Thanks to the German +Emperor and the new head of the House of Orleans, he has had the +opportunity of a stroll through the public press arm in arm with his +old crony and adversary, the Divine Right of Kings. And the two have +gone once more a-roaming by the light of the moon, to drop a tear, +perchance, on the graves of the Thin End of the Wedge and the Stake in +the Country. You know the unhappy story?--how the Wedge drove its thin +end into the Stake, with fatal results: and how it died of remorse and +was buried at the cross-roads with the Stake in its inside! It is a +pathetic tale, and the Great Heart of the Public can always be trusted +to discriminate true pathos from false. + + +Miss Marie Corelli's Opinion of it. + +It was Mr. G.B. Burgin, in the September number of the _Idler_, who +let the Great Heart loose this time--unwittingly, I am sure; for Mr. +Burgin, when he thinks for himself (as he usually does), writes sound +sense and capital English. But in the service of Journalism Mr. Burgin +called on Miss Marie Corelli, the authoress of _Barabbas_, and asked +what she thought of the value of criticism. Miss Corelli "idealised +the subject by the poetic manner in which she mingled tea and +criticism together." She said-- + + "I think authors do not sufficiently bear in mind the important + fact that, in this age of ours, the public _thinks for itself_ + much more extensively than we give it credit for. It is a + cultured public, and its great brain is fully capable of deciding + things. It rather objects to be treated like a child and told + 'what to read and what to avoid'; and, moreover, we must not fail + to note that it mistrusts criticism generally, and seldom reads + 'reviews.' And why? Simply 'logrolling.' It is perfectly aware, + for instance, that Mr. Theodore Watts is logroller-in-chief to + Mr. Swinburne; that Mr. Le Gallienne 'rolls' greatly for Mr. + Norman Gale; and that Mr. Andrew Lang tumbles his logs along over + everything for as many as his humour fits...." + +--I don't know the proportion of tea to criticism in all this: but +Miss Corelli can hardly be said to "idealise the subject" here:-- + + "... The public is the supreme critic; and though it does not + write in the _Quarterly_ or the _Nineteenth Century_, it thinks + and talks independently of everything and everybody, and on its + thought and word alone depends the fate of any piece of + literature." + + +Mr. Hall Caine's View. + +Then Mr. Burgin called on Mr. Hall Caine, who "had just finished +breakfast." Mr. Hall Caine gave reasons which compelled him to believe +that "for good or bad, criticism is a tremendous force." But he, too, +confessed that in his opinion the public is the "ultimate critic." "It +often happens that the public takes books on trust from the professed +guides of literature, but if the books are not _right_, it drops +them." And he proceeded to make an observation, with which we may most +cordially agree. "I am feeling," he said, "increasingly, day by day, +that _rightness_ in imaginative writing is more important than +subject, or style, or anything else. If a story is right in its theme, +and the evolution of its theme, it will live; if it is not right, it +will die, whatever its secondary literary qualities." + + +In what sense the Public is the "Ultimate Critic." + +I say that we may agree with this most cordially: and it need not cost +us much to own that the public is the "ultimate critic," if we mean no +more than this, that, since the public holds the purse, it rests +ultimately with the public to buy, or neglect to buy, an author's +books. That, surely, is obvious enough without the aid of fine +language. But if Mr. Hall Caine mean that the public, without +instruction from its betters, is the best judge of a book; if he +consent with Miss Corelli that the general public is a cultured public +with a great brain, and by the exercise of that great brain approves +itself an infallible judge of the rightness or wrongness of a book, +then I would respectfully ask for evidence. The poets and critics of +his time united in praising Campion as a writer of lyrics: the Great +Brain and Heart of the Public neglected him utterly for three +centuries: then a scholar and critic arose and persuaded the public +that Campion was a great lyrical writer: and now the public accepts +him as such. Shall we say, then, the Great Heart of the Public is the +"ultimate judge" of Campion's lyrics? Perhaps: but we might as well +praise for his cleanliness a boy who has been held under the pump. +When Martin Farquhar Tupper wrote, the Great Heart of the Public +expanded towards him at once. The public bought his effusions by tens +of thousands. Gradually the small voice of skilled criticism made +itself heard, and the public grew ashamed of itself; and, at length, +laughed at Tupper. Shall we, then, call the public the ultimate judge +of Tupper? Perhaps: but we might as well praise the continence of a +man who turns in disgust from drink on the morning after a drunken +fit.[A] + + +What is "The Public"? + +The proposition that the Man in the Street is a better judge of +literature than the Critic--the man who knows little than the man who +knows more--wears (to my mind, at least) a slightly imbecile air on +the face of it. It also appears to me that people are either confusing +thought or misusing language when they confer the title of "supreme +critic" on the last person to be persuaded. And, again, what is "the +public?" I gather that Miss Corelli's story of _Barabbas_ has had an +immense popular success. But so, I believe, has the _Deadwood Dick_ +series of penny dreadfuls. And the gifted author of _Deadwood Dick_ +may console himself (as I daresay he does) for the neglect of the +critics by the thought that the Great Brain[B] of the Public is the +supreme judge of literature. But obviously he and Miss Corelli will +not have the same Public in their mind. If for "the Great Brain of the +Public" we substitute "the Great Brain of that Part of the Public +which subscribes to Mudie's," we may lose something of impressiveness, +but we shall at least know what we are talking about. + + * * * * * + +June 17, 1893. Mr. Gosse's View. + +Astounding as the statement must appear to any constant reader of +the Monthly Reviews, it is mainly because Mr. Gosse happens to be +a man of letters that his opinion upon literary questions is worth +listening to. In his new book[C] he discusses a dozen or so: and +one of them--the question, "What Influence has Democracy upon +Literature?"--not only has a chapter to itself, but seems to lie at +the root of all the rest. I may add that Mr. Gosse's answer is a +trifle gloomy. + + "As we filed slowly out of the Abbey on the afternoon of + Wednesday, the 12th of October, 1892, there must have occurred to + others, I think, as to myself, a whimsical and half-terrifying + sense of the symbolic contrast between what we had left and what + we had emerged upon. Inside, the grey and vitreous atmosphere, + the reverberations of music moaning somewhere out of sight, the + bones and monuments of the noble dead, reverence, antiquity, + beauty, rest. Outside, in the raw air, a tribe of hawkers urging + upon the edges of a dense and inquisitive crowd a large sheet of + pictures of the pursuit of a flea by a 'lady,' and more insidious + salesmen doing a brisk trade in what they falsely pretended to be + 'Tennyson's last poem.' Next day we read in our newspapers + affecting accounts of the emotion displayed by the vast crowd + outside the Abbey--horny hands dashing away the tear, + seamstresses holding 'the little green volumes' to their faces to + hide their agitation. Happy for those who could see these with + their fairy telescopes out of the garrets of Fleet Street. I, + alas!--though I sought assiduously--could mark nothing of the + kind." + +Nothing of the kind was there. Why should anything of the kind be +there? Her poetry has been one of England's divinest treasures: but +of her population a very few understand it; and the shrine has always +been guarded by the elect who happen to possess, in varying degrees, +certain qualities of mind and ear. It is, as Mr. Gosse puts it, by a +sustained effort of bluff on the part of these elect that English +poetry is kept upon its high pedestal of honor. The worship of it as +one of the glories of our birth and state is imposed upon the masses +by a small aristocracy of intelligence and taste. + + +Mr. Gissing's Testimony. + +What do the "masses" care for poetry? In an appendix Mr. Gosse prints +a letter from Mr. George Gissing, who, as everyone knows, has studied +the popular mind assiduously, and with startling results. Here are a +few sentences from his letter:-- + + (1) "After fifteen years' observation of the poorer classes of + English folk, chiefly in London and the south, I am pretty well + assured that, whatever civilising agencies may be at work among + the democracy, poetry is not one of them." + + (2) "The custodian of a Free Library in a southern city informs + me that 'hardly once in a month' does a volume of verse pass over + his counter; that the exceptional applicant (seeking Byron or + Longfellow) is generally 'the wife of a tradesman;' and that an + offer of verse to man or woman who comes simply for 'a book' is + invariably rejected; 'they won't even look at it.'" + + (3) "It was needless folly to pretend that, because one or two of + Tennyson's poems became largely known through popular recitation, + therefore Tennyson was dear to the heart of the people, a subject + of their pride whilst he lived, of their mourning when he died. + My point is that _no_ poet holds this place in the esteem of the + English lower orders." + + (4) "Some days before (the funeral) I was sitting in a public + room, where two men, retired shopkeepers, exchanged an occasional + word as they read the morning's news. 'A great deal here about + Lord Tennyson' said one. The 'Lord' was significant. I listened + anxiously for his companion's reply. 'Ah, yes.' The man moved + uneasily, and added at once: 'What do you think about this + long-distance ride?' In that room (I frequented it on successive + days with this object) not a syllable did I hear regarding + Tennyson save the sentence faithfully recorded." + + +Poetry not beloved by any one Class. + +Mr. Gissing, be it observed, speaks only of the class which he has +studied: but in talking of "demos," or, more loosely, of "democracy," +we must be careful not to limit these terms to the "lower" and +"lower-middle" classes. For Poetry, who draws her priests and warders +from all classes of society, is generally beloved of none. The average +country magnate, the average church dignitary, the average +professional man, the average commercial traveller--to all these she +is alike unknown: at least, the insensibility of each is +differentiated by shades so fine that we need not trouble ourselves to +make distinctions. A public school and university education does as +little for the Squire Westerns one meets at country dinner-tables as a +three-guinea subscription to a circulating library for the kind of +matron one comes upon at a _table d'hote_. Five minutes after hearing +the news of Browning's death I stopped an acquaintance in the street, +a professional man of charming manner, and repeated it to him. He +stared for a moment, and then murmured that he was sorry to hear it. +Clearly he did not wish to hurt my feelings by confessing that he +hadn't the vaguest idea who Browning might be. And if anybody think +this an extreme case, let him turn to the daily papers and read the +names of those who were at Newmarket on that same afternoon when our +great poet was laid in the Abbey with every pretence of national +grief. The pursuit of one horse by another is doubtless a more +elevating spectacle than "the pursuit of a flea by a 'lady,'" but on +that afternoon even a tepid lover of letters must have found an equal +incongruity in both entertainments. + +I do not say that the General Public hates Poetry. But I say that +those who care about it are few, and those who know about it are +fewer. Nor do these assert their right of interference as often as +they might. Just once or twice in the last ten or fifteen years they +have pulled up some exceptionally coarse weed on which the General +Public had every disposition to graze, and have pitched it over the +hedge to Lethe wharf, to root itself and fatten there; and terrible as +those of Polydorus have been the shrieks of the avulsed root. But as a +rule they have sat and piped upon the stile and considered the good +cow grazing, confident that in the end she must "bite off more than +she can chew." + + +The "Outsiders." + +Still, the aristocracy of letters exists: and in it, if nowhere else, +titles, social advantages, and commercial success alike count for +nothing; while Royalty itself sits in the Court of the Gentiles. And I +am afraid we must include in the crowd not only those affable +politicians who from time to time open a Public Library and oblige us +with their views upon literature, little realizing what Hecuba is to +them, and still less what they are to Hecuba, but also those affable +teachers of religion, philosophy, and science, who condescend +occasionally to amble through the garden of the Muses, and rearrange +its labels for us while drawing our attention to the rapid +deterioration of the flowerbeds. The author of _The Citizen of the +World_ once compared the profession of letters in England to a Persian +army, "where there are many pioneers, several suttlers, numberless +servants, women and children in abundance, and but few soldiers." Were +he alive to-day he would be forced to include the Volunteers. + +FOOTNOTES: + +[A] In a private letter, from which I am allowed to quote, Mr. Hall +Caine (October 2nd, 1894) explains and (as I think) amends his +position:--"If I had said _time_ instead of _the public_, I should +have expressed myself exactly. It is impossible for me to work up any +enthusiasm for the service done to literature by criticism as a whole. +I have, no doubt, the unenviable advantage over you of having wasted +three mortal months in reading all the literary criticism extant of +the first quarter of this century. It would be difficult to express my +sense of its imbecility, its blundering, and its bad passions. But the +good books it assailed are not lost, and the bad ones it glorified do +not survive. It is not that the public has been the better judge, but +that good work has the seeds of life, while bad work carries with it +the seeds of dissolution. This is the key to the story of Wordsworth +on the one hand, and to the story of Tupper on the other. Tupper did +not topple down because James Hannay smote him. Fifty James Hannays +had shouted him up before. And if there had not been a growing sense +that the big mountain was a mockery, five hundred James Hannays would +not have brought it down. The truth is that it is not the 'critic who +knows' or the public which does not know that determines the ultimate +fate of a book--the immediate fate they may both influence. The book +must do that for itself. If it is right, it lives; if it is wrong, it +dies. And the critic who re-establishes a neglected poet is merely +articulating the growing sense. There have always been a few good +critics, thank God ... but the finest critic is the untutored +sentiment of the public, not of to-day or to-morrow or the next day, +but of all days together--a sentiment which tells if a thing is right +or wrong by holding on to it or letting it drop." + +Of course, I agree that a book must ultimately depend for its fate +upon its own qualities. But when Mr. Hall Caine talks of "a growing +sense," I ask, In whom does this sense first grow? And I answer, In +the cultured few who enforce it upon the many--as in this very case of +Wordsworth. And I hold the credit of the result (apart from the +author's share) belongs rather to those few persistent advocates than +to those judges who are only "ultimate" in the sense that they are the +last to be convinced. + +[B] If the reader object that I am using the Great Heart and Great +Brain of the Public as interchangeable terms, I would refer him to Mr. +Du Maurier's famous Comic Alphabet, letter Z:-- + + "Z is a Zoophyte, whose heart's in his head, + And whose head's in his turn--rudimentary Z!" + +[C] _Questions at Issue_; by Edmund Gosse. London: William Heinemann. + + + + +A CASE OF BOOKSTALL CENSORSHIP + + +March 16, 1895. The "Woman Who Did," and Mr. Eason who wouldn't. + + "In the romantic little town of 'Ighbury, + My father kept a Succulating Libary...." + +--and, I regret to say, gave himself airs on the strength of it. + +The persons in my instructive little story are-- + + H.H. Prince Francis of Teck. + + Mr. Grant Allen, author of _The Woman Who Did_. + + Mr. W.T. Stead, Editor of _The Review of Reviews_. + + Messrs. Eason & Son, booksellers and newsvendors, possessing on + the railways of Ireland a monopoly similar to that enjoyed by + Messrs. W.H. Smith & Son on the railways of Great Britain. + + Mr. James O'Hara, of 18, Cope Street, Dublin. + + A Clerk. + +Now, on the appearance of Mr. Grant Allen's _The Woman Who Did_, Mr. +Stead conceived the desire of criticising it as the "Book of the +Month" in _The Review of Reviews_ for February, 1895. He strongly +dissents from the doctrine of _The Woman Who Did_, and he also +believes that the book indicts, and goes far to destroy, its own +doctrine. This opinion, I may say, is shared by many critics. He says +"Wedlock is to Mr. Grant Allen _Nehushtan_. And the odd thing about it +is that the net effect of the book which he has written with his +heart's blood to destroy this said _Nehushtan_ can hardly fail to +strengthen the foundation of reasoned conviction upon which marriage +rests." And again--"Those who do not know the author, but who take +what I must regard as the saner view of the relations of the sexes, +will rejoice at what might have been a potent force for evil has been +so strangely overruled as to become a reinforcement of the garrison +defending the citadel its author desires so ardently to overthrow. +From the point of view of the fervent apostle of Free Love, this is a +Boomerang of a Book." + +Believing this--that the book would be its own best antidote--Mr. +Stead epitomized it in his _Review_, printed copious extracts, and +wound up by indicating his own views and what he deemed the true moral +of the discussion. The _Review_ was published and, so far as Messrs. +W.H. Smith & Son were concerned, passed without comment. But to the +Editor's surprise (he tells the story in the _Westminster Gazette_ of +the 2nd inst.), no sooner was it placed on the market in Ireland than +he received word that every copy had been recalled from the +bookstalls, and that Messrs. Eason had refused to sell a single copy. +On telegraphing for more information, Mr. Stead was sent the following +letter:-- + + "DEAR SIR,--Allen's book is an avowed defence of Free Love, and + a direct attack upon the Christian view of marriage. Mr. Stead + criticises Allen's views adversely, but we do not think the + antidote can destroy the ill-effects of the poison, and we + decline to be made the vehicle for the distribution of attacks + upon the most fundamental institution of the Christian + state.--Yours faithfully, + ------." + +Mr. Stead thereupon wrote to the managing Director of Messrs. Eason & +Son, and received this reply:-- + + "DEAR SIR,--We have considered afresh the character of the + February number of your _Review_ so far as it relates to the + notice of Grant Allen's book, and we are more and more confirmed + in the belief that its influence has been, and is, most + pernicious. + + "Grant Allen is not much heard of in Ireland, and the laudations + you pronounce on him as a writer, so far as we know him, appear + wholly unmerited. + + "At any rate, he appears in your _Review_ as the advocate for + Free Love, and it seems to us strange that you should place his + work in the exaggerated importance of 'The Book of the Month,' + accompanied by eighteen pages of comment and quotation, in which + there is a publicity given to the work out of all proportion to + its merits. + + "I do not doubt that the topic of Free Love engages the attention + of the corrupt Londoner. There are plenty of such persons who are + only too glad to get the sanction of writers for the maintenance + and practice of their evil thoughts, but the purest and best + lives in all parts of the field of Christian philanthropy will + mourn the publicity you have given to this evil book. It is not + even improbable that the perusal of Grant Allen's book, which you + have lifted into importance as 'The Book of the Month,' may + determine the action of souls to their spiritual ruin. + + "The problem of indirect influence is full of mystery, but, as + the hour of our departure comes near, the possible consequences + to other minds of the example and teaching of our lives may + quicken our perceptions, and we may see and deeply regret our + actions when not directed by the highest authority, the will of + God.--We are, dear Sir, yours very truly (for Eason & Son, + Limited), + + "CHARLES EASON, Managing Director." + +Exception may be taken to this letter on many points, some trivial and +some important. Of the trivial points we may note with interest Mr. +Eason's assumption that his opinion is wanted on the literary merits +of the ware he vends; and, with concern, the rather slipshod manner in +which he allows himself and his assistants to speak of a gentleman as +"Allen," or "Grant Allen," without the usual prefix. But no one can +fail to see that this is an honest letter--the production of a man +conscious of responsibility and struggling to do his best in +circumstances he imperfectly understands. Nor do I think this view of +Mr. Eason need be seriously modified upon perusal of a letter received +by Mr. Stead from a Mr. James O'Hara, of 18, Cope Street, Dublin, and +printed in the _Westminster Gazette_ of March 11th. Mr. O'Hara +writes:-- + + "DEAR SIR,--The following may interest you and your readers. I + was a subscriber to the library owned by C. Eason & Co., Limited, + and in December asked them for _Napoleon and the Fair Sex_, by + Masson. The librarian informed me Mr. Eason had decided not to + circulate it, as it contained improper details, which Mr. Eason + considered immoral. A copy was also refused to one of the + best-known pressmen in Dublin, a man of mature years and + experience. + + "Three days afterwards I saw a young man ask the librarian for + the same book, and Eason's manager presented it to him with a low + bow. I remarked on this circumstance to Mr. Charles Eason, who + told me that he had issued it to this one subscriber only, + because he was Prince Francis of Teck. + + "I told him it was likely, from the description he had given me + of it, to be more injurious to a young man such as Prince Francis + of Teck than to me; but he replied: 'Oh, these high-up people + _are different_. Besides, they are so influential we cannot + refuse them. However, if you wish, you can now have the book.' + + "I told Mr. Eason that I did not wish to read it ever since he + had told me when I first applied for it that it was quite + improper." + +The two excuses produced by Mr. Eason do not agree very well together. +The first gives us to understand that, in Mr. Eason's opinion, +ordinary moral principles cannot be applied to persons of royal blood. +The second gives us to understand that though, in Mr. Eason's opinion, +ordinary moral principles _can_ be applied to princes, the application +would involve more risk than Mr. Eason cares to undertake. Each of his +excuses, taken apart, is intelligible enough. Taken together they can +hardly be called consistent. But the effects of royal and semi-royal +splendor upon the moral eyesight are well known, and need not be dwelt +on here. After all, what concerns us is not Mr. Eason's attitude +towards Prince Francis of Teck, but Mr. Eason's attitude towards the +reading public. And in this respect, from one point of view--which +happens to be his own--Mr. Eason's attitude seems to me +irreproachable. He is clearly alive to his responsibility, and is +honestly concerned that the goods he purveys to the public shall be +goods of which his conscience approves. Here is no grocer who sands +his sugar before hurrying to family prayer. Here is a man who carries +his religion into his business, and stakes his honor on the purity of +his wares. I think it would be wrong in the extreme to deride Mr. +Eason's action in the matter of _The Woman Who Did_ and Mr. Stead's +review. He is doing his best, as Mr. Stead cheerfully allows. + + +The reasonable Objection to Bookstall Censorship. + +But, as I said above, he is doing his best under circumstances he +imperfectly understands--and, let me add here, in a position which is +unfair to him. That Mr. Eason imperfectly understands his position +will be plain (I think) to anyone who studies his reply to Mr. Stead. +But let me make the point clear; for it is the crucial point in the +discussion of the modern Bookstall Censorship. A great deal may be +said against setting up a censorship of literature. A great deal may +be said in favor of a censorship. But if a censorship there must be, +the censor should be deliberately chosen for his office, and, in +exercising his power, should be directly responsible to the public +conscience. If a censorship there must be, let the community choose a +man whose qualifications have been weighed, a man in whose judgment it +decides that it can rely. But that Tom or Dick or Harry, or Tom Dick +Harry & Co. (Limited), by the process of collaring a commercial +monopoly from the railway companies, should be exalted into the +supreme arbiters of what men or women may or may not be allowed to +read--this surely is unjustifiable by any argument? Mr. Eason may on +the whole be doing more good than harm. He is plainly a very +well-meaning man of business. If he knows a good book from a bad--and +the public has no reason to suppose that he does--I can very well +believe that when his moral and literary judgment came into conflict +with his business interests, he would sacrifice his business +interests. But the interests of good literature and profitable +business cannot always be identical; and whenever they conflict they +put Mr. Eason into a false position. As managing director of Messrs. +Eason & Son, he must consider his shareholders; as supreme arbiter of +letters, he stands directly answerable to the public conscience. I +protest, therefore, that these functions should never be combined in +one man. As readers of THE SPEAKER know, I range myself on the side of +those who would have literature free. But even our opponents, who +desire control, must desire a form of control such as reason +approves. + + + + +THE POOR LITTLE PENNY DREADFUL + + +Oct. 5, 1895. Our "Crusaders." + +The poor little Penny Dreadful has been catching it once more. Once +more the British Press has stripped to its massive waist and solemnly +squared up to this hardened young offender. It calls this remarkable +performance a "Crusade." + +I like these Crusades. They remind one of that merry passage in +_Pickwick_ (p. 254 in the first edition):-- + + "Whether Mr. Winkle was seized with a temporary attack of that + species of insanity which originates in a sense of injury, or + animated by this display of Mr. Weller's valour, is uncertain; + but certain it is, that he no sooner saw Mr. Grummer fall, than + _he made a terrific onslaught on a small boy who stood next to + him_; whereupon Mr. Snodgrass--" + +[Pay attention to Mr. Snodgrass, if you please, and cast your memories +back a year or two, to the utterances of a famous Church Congress on +the National Vice of Gambling.] + + "--whereupon Mr. Snodgrass, in a truly Christian spirit, and in + order that he might take no one unawares, announced in a very + loud tone that he was going to begin, and proceeded to take off + his coat with the utmost deliberation. He was immediately + surrounded and secured; and it is but common justice both to him + and to Mr. Winkle to say that they did not make the slightest + attempt to rescue either themselves or Mr. Weller, who, after a + most vigorous resistance, was overpowered by numbers and taken + prisoner. The procession then reformed, the chairmen resumed + their stations, and the march was re-commenced." + +"The chairmen resumed their stations, and the march was re-commenced." +Is it any wonder that Dickens and Labiche have found no fit +successors? One can imagine the latter laying down his pen and +confessing himself beaten at his own game; for really this periodical +"crusade" upon the Penny Dreadful has all the qualities of the very +best vaudeville--the same bland exhibition of _bourgeois_ logic, the +same wanton appreciation of evidence, the same sententious alacrity in +seizing the immediate explanation--the more trivial the better--the +same inability to reach the remote cause, the same profound +unconsciousness of absurdity. + +You remember _La Grammaire_? Caboussat's cow has eaten a piece of +broken glass, with fatal results. Machut, the veterinary, comes:-- + + _Caboussat._ "Un morceau de verre ... est-ce drole? Une vache de + quatre ans." + + _Machut._ "Ah! monsieur, les vaches ... ca avale du verre a tout + age. J'en ai connu une qui a mange une eponge a laver les + cabriolets ... a sept ans! Elle en est morte." + + _Caboussat._ "Ce que c'est que notre pauvre humanite!" + + +Penny Dreadfuls and Matricide. + +Our friends have been occupied with the case of a half-witted boy who +consumed Penny Dreadfuls and afterwards went and killed his mother. +They infer that he killed his mother because he had read Penny +Dreadfuls (_post hoc ergo propter hoc_) and they conclude very +naturally that Penny Dreadfuls should be suppressed. But before +roundly pronouncing the doom of this--to me unattractive--branch of +fiction, would it not be well to inquire a trifle more deeply into +cause and effect? In the first place matricide is so utterly unnatural +a crime that there must be something abominably peculiar in a form of +literature that persuades to it. But a year or two back, on the +occasion of a former crusade, I took the pains to study a +considerable number of Penny Dreadfuls. My reading embraced all +those--I believe I am right in saying all--which were reviewed, a few +days back, in the _Daily Chronicle_; and some others. I give you my +word I could find nothing peculiar about them. They were even rather +ostentatiously on the side of virtue. As for the bloodshed in them, it +would not compare with that in many of the five-shilling adventure +stories at that time read so eagerly by boys of the middle and upper +classes. The style was ridiculous, of course: but a bad style excites +nobody but a reviewer, and does not even excite him to deeds of the +kind we are now trying to account for. The reviewer in the _Daily +Chronicle_ thinks worse of these books than I do. But he certainly +failed to quote anything from them that by the wildest fancy could be +interpreted as sanctioning such a crime as matricide. + + +The Cause to be sought in the Boy rather than in the Book. + +Let us for a moment turn our attention from the Penny Dreadful to the +boy--from the _eponge a laver les cabriolets_ to _notre pauvre +humanite_. Now--to speak quite seriously--it is well known to every +doctor and every schoolmaster (and should be known, if it is not, to +every parent), that all boys sooner or later pass through a crisis in +growth during which absolutely nothing can be predicted of their +behavior. At such times honest boys have given way to lying and theft, +gentle boys have developed an unexpected savagery, ordinary boys--"the +small apple-eating urchins whom we know"--have fallen into morbid +brooding upon unhealthy subjects. In the immense majority of cases the +crisis is soon over and the boy is himself again; but while it lasts, +the disease will draw its sustenance from all manner of +things--things, it may be, in themselves quite innocent. I avoid +particularizing for many reasons; but any observant doctor will +confirm what I have said. Now the moderately affluent boy who reads +five-shilling stories of adventure has many advantages at this period +over the poor boy who reads Penny Dreadfuls. To begin with, the crisis +has a tendency to attack him later. Secondly, he meets it fortified by +a better training and more definite ideas of the difference between +right and wrong, virtue and vice. Thirdly (and this is very +important), he is probably under school discipline at the time--which +means, that he is to some extent watched and shielded. When I think +of these advantages, I frankly confess that the difference in the +literature these two boys read seems to me to count for very little. I +myself have written "adventure-stories" before now: stories which, I +suppose--or, at any rate, hope--would come into the class of "Pure +Literature," as the term is understood by those who have been writing +on this subject in the newspapers. They were, I hope, better written +than the run of Penny Dreadfuls, and perhaps with more discrimination +of taste in the choice of adventures. But I certainly do not feel able +to claim that their effect upon a perverted mind would be innocuous. + + +Fallacy of the "Crusade." + +For indeed it is not possible to name any book out of which a +perverted mind will not draw food for its disease. The whole fallacy +lies in supposing literature the cause of the disease. Evil men are +not evil because they read bad books: they read bad books because they +are evil: and being evil, or diseased, they are quickly able to +extract evil or disease even from very good books. There is talk of +disseminating the works of our best authors, at a cheap rate, in the +hope that they will drive the Penny Dreadful out of the market. But +has good literature at the cheapest driven the middle classes from +their false gods? And let it be remembered, to the credit of these +poor boys, that they do buy their books. The middle classes take +_their_ poison on hire or exchange. + +But perhaps the full enormity of the cant about Penny Dreadfuls +can best be perceived by travelling to and fro for a week +between London and Paris and observing the books read by those +who travel with first-class tickets. I think a fond belief in +Ivanhoe-within-the-reach-of-all would not long survive that +experiment. + + + + +IBSEN'S "PEER GYNT" + + +Oct. 7, 1892. A Masterpiece. + + "_Peer Gynt_ takes its place, as we hold, on the summits of + literature precisely because it means so much more than the poet + consciously intended. Is not this one of the characteristics of + the masterpiece, that everyone can read in it his own secret? In + the material world (though Nature is very innocent of symbolic + intention) each of us finds for himself the symbols that have + relevance and value for him; and so it is with the poems that are + instinct with true vitality." + +I was glad to come across the above passage in Messrs. William and +Charles Archer's introduction to their new translation of Ibsen's +_Peer Gynt_ (London: Walter Scott), because I can now, with a clear +conscience, thank the writers for their book, even though I fail to +find some of the things they find in it. The play's the thing after +all. _Peer Gynt_ is a great poem: let us shake hands over that. It +will remain a great poem when we have ceased pulling it about to find +what is inside or search out texts for homilies in defence of our own +particular views of life. The world's literature stands unaffected, +though Archdeacon Farrar use it for chapter-headings and Sir John +Lubbock wield it as a mallet to drive home self-evident truths. + + +Not a Pamphlet. + +_Peer Gynt_ is an extremely modern story founded on old Norwegian +folk-lore--the folk-lore which Asbjoernsen and Moe collected, and +Dasent translated for our delight in childhood. Old and new are +curiously mixed; but the result is piquant and not in the least +absurd, because the story rests on problems which are neither old nor +new, but eternal, and on emotions which are neither older nor newer +than the breast of man. To be sure, the true devotee of Ibsen will not +be content with this. You will be told by Herr Jaeger, Ibsen's +biographer, that _Peer Gynt_ is an attack on Norwegian romanticism. +The poem, by the way, is romantic to the core--so romantic, indeed, +that the culminating situation, and the page for which everything has +been a preparation, have to be deplored by Messrs. Archer as "a mere +commonplace of romanticism, which Ibsen had not outgrown when he wrote +_Peer Gynt_." But your true votary is for ever taking his god off the +pedestal of the true artist to set him on the tub of the +hot-gospeller; even so genuine a specimen of impressionist work as +_Hedda Gabler_ being claimed by him for a sermon. And if ever you have +been moved by _Ghosts_, or _Brand_, or _Peer Gynt_ to exclaim "This is +poetry!" you have only to turn to Herr Jaeger--whose criticism, like +his namesake's underclothing, should be labelled "All Pure Natural +Wool"--to find that you were mistaken and that it is really +pamphleteering. + + +Yet Enforcing a Moral. + +To be sure, in one sense _Peer Gynt_ is a sermon upon a text. That is +to say, it is written primarily to expound one view of man's duty, not +to give a mere representation of life. The problem, not the picture, +is the main thing. But then the problem, not the picture, is the main +thing in _Alcestis_, _Hamlet_, _Faust_. In _Peer Gynt_ the poet's own +solution of the problem is presented with more insistence than in +_Alcestis_, _Hamlet_, or _Faust_: but the problem is wider, too. + +The problem is, What is self? and how shall a man be himself? And the +poet's answer is, "Self is only found by being lost, gained by being +given away": an answer at least as old as the gospels. The eponymous +hero of the story is a man essentially half-hearted, "the incarnation +of a compromising dread of self-committal to any one course," a fellow +who says, + + "Ay, think of it--wish it done--_will_ it to boot, + But _do_ it----. No, that's past my understanding!" + +--who is only stung to action by pique, or by what is called the +"instinct of self-preservation," an instinct which, as Ibsen shows, is +the very last that will preserve self. + + +The Story. + +This fellow, Peer Gynt, wins the love of Solveig, a woman essentially +whole-hearted, who has no dread of self-committal, who surrenders +self. Solveig, in short, stands in perfect antithesis to Peer. When +Peer is an outlaw she deserts her father's house and follows him to +his hut in the forest. The scene in which she presents herself before +Peer and claims to share his lot is worthy to stand beside the ballad +of the Nut-browne Mayde: indeed, as a confessed romantic I must own to +thinking Solveig one of the most beautiful figures in poetry. Peer +deserts her, and she lives in the hut alone and grows an old woman +while her lover roams the world, seeking everywhere and through the +wildest adventures the satisfaction of his Self, acting everywhere on +the Troll's motto, "To thyself be enough," and finding everywhere his +major premiss turned against him, to his own discomfiture, by an +ironical fate. We have one glimpse of Solveig, meanwhile, in a little +scene of eight lines. She is now a middle-aged woman, up in her forest +hut in the far north. She sits spinning in the sunshine outside her +door and sings:-- + + _"Maybe both the winter and spring will pass by, + And the next summer too, and the whole of the year; + But thou wilt come one day.... + * * * * * + God strengthen thee, whereso thou goest in the world! + God gladden thee, if at His footstool thou stand! + Here will I await thee till thou comest again; + And if thou wait up yonder, then there we'll meet, my friend!"_ + +At last Peer, an old man, comes home. On the heath around his old hut +he finds (in a passage which the translators call "fantastic," +intending, I hope, approval by this word) the thoughts he has missed +thinking, the watchword he has failed to utter, the tears he has +missed shedding, the deed he has missed doing. The thoughts are +thread-balls, the watchword withered leaves, the tears dewdrops, etc. +Also he finds on that heath a Button-Moulder with an immense ladle. +The Button-Moulder explains to Peer that he must go into this ladle, +for his time has come. He has neither been a good man nor a sturdy +sinner, but a half-and-half fellow without any real self in him. Such +men are dross, badly cast buttons with no loops to them, and must go, +by the Master's orders, into the melting-pot again. Is there no +escape? None, unless Peer can find the loop of the button, his real +Self, the Peer Gynt that God made. After vain and frantic searching +across the heath, Peer reaches the door of his own old hut. Solveig +stands on the threshold. + +As Peer flings himself to earth before her, calling out upon her to +denounce him, she sits down by his side and says-- + + "_Thou hast made all my life as a beautiful song. + Blessed be thou that at last thou hast come! + Blessed, thrice-blessed our Whitsun-morn meeting_!" + +"But," says Peer, "I am lost, unless thou canst answer riddles." "Tell +me them," tranquilly answers Solveig. And Peer asks, while the +Button-Moulder listens behind the hut-- + + "_Canst thou tell me where Peer Gynt has been since we parted_?" + + Solveig.--_Been_? + + Peer.-- _With his destiny's seal on his brow; + Been, as in God's thought he first sprang forth? + Canst thou tell me? If not, I must get me home_,-- + _Go down to the mist-shrouded regions_. + + Solveig (smiling).--_Oh, that riddle is easy_. + + Peer.-- _Then tell what thou knowest! + Where was I, as myself, as the whole man, the true man? + Where was I, with God's sigil upon my brow_? + + Solveig.--_In my faith, in my hope, in my love_. + + +A Shirking of the Ethical Problem? + +"This," says the Messrs. Archer, in effect, "may be--indeed +is--magnificent: but it is not Ibsen." To quote their very words-- + + "The redemption of the hero through a woman's love ... we take to + be a mere commonplace of romanticism, which Ibsen, though he + satirised it, had by no means fully outgrown when he wrote _Peer + Gynt_. Peer's return to Solveig is (in the original) a passage of + the most poignant lyric beauty, but it is surely a shirking, not + a solution, of the ethical problem. It would be impossible to the + Ibsen of to-day, who knows (none better) that _No man can save + his brother's soul, or pay his brother's debt_." + +In a footnote to the italicized words Messrs. Archer add the +quotation-- + + "No, nor woman, neither." + + * * * * * + +Oct. 22, 1892. The main Problem. + +"Peer's return to Solveig is surely a shirking, not a solution of the +ethical problem." Of what ethical problem? The main ethical problem of +the poem is, What is self? And how shall a man be himself? As Mr. +Wicksteed puts it in his "Four Lectures on Henrik Ibsen," "What is it +to be one's self? God _meant something_ when He made each one of us. +For a man to embody that meaning of God in his words and deeds, and so +become, in a degree, 'a word of God made flesh' is to be himself. But +thus to be himself he must slay himself. That is to say, he must slay +the craving to make himself the centre round which others revolve, and +must strive to find his true orbit, and swing, self poised, round the +great central light. But what if a poor devil can never puzzle out +what God _did_ mean when He made him? Why, then he must _feel_ it. But +how often your 'feeling' misses fire! Ay, there you have it. The devil +has no stancher ally than _want of perception_." + + +And its Solution. + +This is a fair statement of Ibsen's problem and his solution of it. In +the poem he solves it by the aid of two characters, two diagrams we +may say. Diagram I. is Peer Gynt, a man who is always striving to make +himself the centre round which others revolve, who never sacrifices +his Self generously for another's good, nor surrenders it to a decided +course of action. Diagram II. is Solveig, a woman who has no dread of +self-committal, who surrenders Self and is, in short, Peer's perfect +antithesis. When Peer is an outlaw she forsakes all and follows him to +his hut in the forest. Peer deserts her and roams the world, where he +finds his theory of Self upset by one adventure after another and at +last reduced to absurdity in the madhouse at Cairo. But though his own +theory is discredited, he has not yet found the true one. To find this +he must be brought face to face in the last scene with his deserted +wife. There, for the first time, he asks the question and receives the +answer. "Where," he asks, "has Peer Gynt's true self been since we +parted:-- + + "Where was I, as myself, as the whole man, the true man? + Where was I with God's sigil upon my brow?" + +And Solveig answers:-- + + "In my faith, in my hope, in my love." + +In these words we have the main ethical problem solved; and Peer's +_perception_ of the truth (_vide_ Mr. Wicksteed's remarks quoted +above) is the one necessary climax of the poem. We do not care a +farthing--at least, I do not care a farthing--whether Peer escape the +Button-Moulder or not. It may be too late for him, or there may be yet +time to live another life; but whatever the case may be, it doesn't +alter what Ibsen set out to prove. The problem which Ibsen shirks (if +indeed he does shirk it) is a subsidiary problem--a rider, so to +speak. Can Solveig by her love redeem Peer Gynt? Can the woman save +the man's soul? Will she, after all, cheat the Button-Moulder of his +victim? + +The poet, by giving Solveig the last word, seems to think it possible. +According to Mr. Archer, the Ibsen of to-day would know it to be +impossible. He knows (none better) that "No man can save his brother's +soul or pay his brother's debt." "No, nor women neither," adds Mr. +Archer. + + +Is Peer's Redemption a romantic Fallacy? + +But is this so? _Peer Gynt_ was published in 1867. I turn to _A Doll's +House_, written twelve years later, and I find there a woman preparing +to redeem a man just as Solveig prepares to redeem Peer. I find in Mr. +Archer's translation of that play the following page of dialogue:-- + + _Mrs. Linden_: There's no happiness in working for oneself, Nils; + give me somebody and something to work for. + + _Krogstad_: No, no; that can never be. It's simply a woman's + romantic notion of self-sacrifice. + + _Mrs. Linden_: Have you ever found me romantic? + + _Krogstad_: Would you really--? Tell me, do you know my past? + + _Mrs. Linden_: Yes. + + _Krogstad_: And do you know what people say of me? + + _Mrs. Linden_: Didn't you say just now that with me you could + have been another man? + + _Krogstad_: I am sure of it. + + _Mrs. Linden_: Is it too late? + + _Krogstad_: Christina, do you know what you are doing? Yes, you + do; I see it in your face. Have you the courage--? + + _Mrs. Linden_: I need someone to tend, and your children need a + mother. You need me, and I--I need you. Nils, I believe in your + better self. With you I fear nothing. + + +Ibsen's hopes of Enfranchised Women. + +Again, we are not told if Mrs. Linden's experiment is successful; but +Ibsen certainly gives no hint that she is likely to fail. This was in +1879. In 1885 Ibsen paid a visit to Norway and made a speech to some +workingmen at Drontheim, in which this passage occurred:-- + + "Democracy by itself cannot solve the social question. We must + introduce an aristocratic element into our life. I am not + referring, of course, to an aristocracy of birth, or of purse, or + even of intellect. I mean an aristocracy of character, of will, + of mind. That alone can make us free. From two classes will this + aristocracy I desire come to us--_from our women and our + workmen_. The social revolution, now preparing in Europe, is + chiefly concerned with the future of the workers and the women. + On this I set all my hopes and expectations...." + +I think it would be easy to multiply instances showing that, though +Ibsen may hold that no man can save his brother's soul, he does not +extend this disability to women, but hopes and believes, on the +contrary, that women will redeem mankind. On men he builds little +hope. To speak roughly, men are all in Peer Gynt's case, or Torvald +Helmer's. They are swathed in timid conventions, blindfolded with +selfishness, so that they cannot perceive, and unable with their own +hands to tear off these bandages. They are incapable of the highest +renunciation. "No man," says Torvald Helmer, "sacrifices his honor, +even for one he loves." Those who heard Miss Achurch deliver Nora's +reply will not easily forget it. "Millions of women have done so." The +effect in the theatre was tremendous. This sentence clinched the whole +play. + +Millions of women are, like Solveig, capable of renouncing all for +love, of surrendering self altogether; and, as I read Ibsen, it is +precisely on this power of renunciation that he builds his hope of +man's redemption. So that, unless I err greatly, the scene in _Peer +Gynt_ which Mr. Archer calls a shirking of the ethical problem, is +just the solution which Ibsen has been persistent in presenting to the +world. + +Let it be understood, of course, that it is only your Solveigs and +Mrs. Lindens who can thus save a brother's soul: women who have made +their own way in the world, thinking for themselves, working for +themselves, freed from the conventions which man would impose on them. +I know Mr. Archer will not retort on me with Nora, who leaves her +husband and children, and claims that her first duty is to herself. +Nora is just the woman who cannot redeem a man. Her Doll's House +training is the very opposite of Solveig's and Mrs. Linden's. She is a +silly girl brought up amid conventions, and awakened, by one blow, to +the responsibilities of life. That she should at once know the right +course to take would be incredible in real life, and impossible in a +play the action of which has been evolved as inevitably as real life. +Many critics have supposed Ibsen to commend Nora's conduct in the last +act of the play. He neither sanctions nor condemns. But he does +contrast her in the play with Mrs. Linden, and I do not think that +contrast can be too carefully studied. + + + + +MR. SWINBURNE'S LATER MANNER + + +May 5, 1894. Aloofness of Mr. Swinburne's Muse. + +There was a time--let us say, in the early seventies--when many young +men tried to write like Mr. Swinburne. Remarkably small success waited +on their efforts. Still their numbers and their youth and (for a while +also) their persistency seemed to promise a new school of poesy, with +Mr. Swinburne for its head and great exemplar: exemplar rather than +head, for Mr. Swinburne's attitude amid all this devotion was rather +that of the god than of the priest. He sang, and left the worshippers +to work up their own enthusiasm. And to this attitude he has been +constant. Unstinting, and occasionally unmeasured, in praise and +dispraise of other men, he has allowed his own reputation the noble +liberty to look after itself. Nothing, for instance, could have been +finer than the careless, almost disdainful, dignity of his bearing in +the months that followed Tennyson's death. The cats were out upon the +tiles, then, and his was the luminous, expressive silence of a sphere. +One felt, "whether he received it or no, here is the man who can wear +the crown." + + +And Her Tendency towards Abstractions. + +It was not, however, the aloofness of Mr. Swinburne's bearing that +checked the formation of a Swinburnian school of poetry. The cause lay +deeper, and has come more and more into the light in the course of Mr. +Swinburne's poetic development--let me say, his thoroughly normal +development. We can see now that from the first such a school, such a +successful following, was an impossibility. The fact is that Mr. +Swinburne has not only genius, but an extremely rare and individual +genius. The germ of this individuality may be found, easily enough, in +"Atalanta" and the Ballads; but it luxuriates in his later poems and +throughout them--flower and leaf and stem. It was hardly more natural +in 1870 to confess the magic of the great chorus, "Before the +beginning of years," or of "Dolores," than to embark upon the vain +adventure of imitating them. I cannot imagine a youth in all Great +Britain so green or unknowing as to attempt an imitation of "A +Nympholept," perhaps the finest poem in the volume before me. + +I say "in Great Britain;" because peculiar as Mr. Swinburne's genius +would be in any country, it is doubly peculiar as the endowment of an +English poet. If there be one quality beloved above others by the +inhabitants of this island, it is concreteness; and I suppose there +never was a poet in the world who used less concreteness of speech +than Mr. Swinburne. Mr. Palgrave once noted that the landscape of +Keats falls short of the landscape of Shelley in its comparative lack +of the larger features of sky and earth; Keats's was "foreground work" +for the most part. But what shall be said of Shelley's universe after +the immense vague regions inhabited by Mr. Swinburne's muse? She sings +of the sea; but we never behold a sail, never a harbor: she sings of +passion--among the stars. We seem never to touch earth; page after +page is full of thought--for, vast as the strain may be, it is never +empty--but we cannot apply it. And all this is extremely distressing +to the Briton, who loves practice as his birthright. He comes on a +Jacobite song. "Now, at any rate," he tells himself, "we arrive at +something definite: some allusion, however small, to Bonny Prince +Charlie." He reads-- + + "Faith speaks when hope dissembles; + Faith lives when hope lies dead: + If death as life dissembles, + And all that night assembles + Of stars at dawn lie dead, + Faint hope that smiles and trembles + May tell not well for dread: + But faith has heard it said." + +"Very beautiful," says the Briton; "but why call this a 'Jacobite +Song'?" Some thorough-going admirer of Mr. Swinburne will ask, no +doubt, if I prefer gush about Bonny Prince Charlie. Most decidedly I +do not. I am merely pointing out that the poet cares so little for the +common human prejudice in favor of concreteness of speech as to give +us a Jacobite song which, for all its indebtedness to the historical +facts of the Jacobite Risings, might just as well have been put in the +mouth of Judas Maccabaeus. + +Somebody--I forget for the moment who it was--compared Poetry with +Antaeus, who was strong when his feet touched Earth, his mother; +weaker when held aloft in air. The justice of this criticism I have +no space here to discuss; but the difference is patent enough between +poetry such as this of Herrick-- + + "When as in silks my Julia goes, + Then, then, methinks, how sweetly flows + The liquefaction of her clothes." + +Or this, of Burns-- + + "The boat rocks at the pier o' Leith, + Fu' loud the wind blaws frae the ferry, + The boat rides by the Berwick-law, + And I maun leave my bonny Mary." + +Or this, of Shakespeare-- + + "When daisies pied, and violets blue, + And lady smocks all silver-white, + And cuckoo-buds of yellow hue + Do paint the meadows with delight." + +Or this, of Milton-- + + "the broad circumference + Hung on his shoulders like the moon, whose orb, + Through optic glass the Tuscan artist views + At evening from the top of Fesole, + Or in Valdarno...." + +And such lines as these by Mr. Swinburne-- + + "The dark dumb godhead innate in the fair world's life + Imbues the rapture of dawn and of noon with dread, + Infects the peace of the star-shod night with strife, + Informs with terror the sorrow that guards the dead. + No service of bended knee or of humbled head + May soothe or subdue the God who has change to wife: + And life with death is as morning with evening wed." + +Take Burns's song, "It was a' for our right-fu' King," and set it +beside the Jacobite song quoted above, and it is clear at once that +with Mr. Swinburne we pass from the particular and concrete to the +general and abstract. And in this direction Mr. Swinburne's muse has +steadily marched. In his "Erechtheus" he tells how the gods gave +Pallas the lordship of Athens-- + + "The lordship and love of the lovely land, + The grace of the town that hath on it for crown + But a headband to wear + Of violets one-hued with her hair." + +Here at least we were allowed a picture of Athens: the violet crown +was something definite. But now, when Mr. Swinburne sings of England, +we have to precipitate our impressions from lines fluid as these:-- + + "Things of night at her glance took flight: the + strengths of darkness recoiled and sank: + Sank the fires of the murderous pyres whereon wild + agony writhed and shrank: + Rose the light of the reign of right from gulfs of + years that the darkness drank." + +Or-- + + "Change darkens and lightens around her, alternate + in hope and in fear to be: + Hope knows not if fear speak truth, nor fear whether + hope be not blind as she: + But the sun is in heaven that beholds her immortal, + and girdled with life by the sea." + +I suspect, then, that a hundred years hence, when criticism speaks +calm judgment upon all Mr. Swinburne's writings, she will find that +his earlier and more definite poems are the edge of his blade, and +such volumes as "Astrophel" the heavy metal behind it. The former +penetrated the affections of his countrymen with ease: the latter +followed more difficultly through the outer tissues of a people +notoriously pachydermatous to abstract speech. And criticism will then +know if Mr. Swinburne brought sufficient impact to drive the whole +mass of metal deep. + + +A Voice chanting in the Void. + +At present in these later volumes his must seem to us a godlike voice +chanting in the void. For, fit or unfit as we may be to grasp the +elusive substance of his strains, all must confess the voice of the +singer to be divine. At once in the range and suppleness of his music +he is not merely the first of our living poets, but incomparable. In +learning he has Robert Bridges for a rival, and no other. But no +amount of learning could give us 228 pages of music that from first to +last has not a flaw. Rather, his marvellous ear has taken him safely +through metres set by his learning as so many traps. There is one +metre, for instance, that recurs again and again in this volume. Here +is a specimen of it:-- + + "Music bright as the soul of light, for wings an eagle, + for notes a dove, + Leaps and shines from the lustrous lines wherethrough + thy soul from afar above + Shone and sang till the darkness rang with light whose + fire is the fount of love." + +These lines are written of Sir Philip Sidney. Could another man have +written them they had stood even better for Mr. Swinburne. But we are +considering the metre, not the meaning. Now the metre may have great +merits. I am disposed to say that, having fascinated Mr. Swinburne, it +must have great merits. That I dislike it is, no doubt, my fault, or +rather my misfortune. But undoubtedly it is a metre that no man but +Mr. Swinburne could handle without producing a monotony varied only by +discords. + + + + +A MORNING WITH A BOOK + + +April 29, 1893. Hazlitt's Stipulation. + + "Food, warmth, sleep, and a book; these are all I at present + ask--the _Ultima Thule_ of my wandering desires. Do you not then + wish for-- + _a friend in your retreat + Whom you may whisper, 'Solitude is sweet'?_ + + Expected, well enough: gone, still better. Such attractions are + strengthened by distance." + +So Hazlitt wrote in his _Farewell to Essay Writing_. There never was +such an epicure of his moods as Hazlitt. Others might add Omar's +stipulation-- + + "--and Thou + Beside me singing in the wilderness." + +But this addition would have spoiled Hazlitt's enjoyment. Let us +remember that his love affairs had been unprosperous. "Such +attractions," he would object, "are strengthened by distance." In any +case, the book and singer go ill together, and most of us will declare +for a spell of each in turn. + + +What are "The Best Books"? + +Suppose we choose the book. What kind of book shall it be? Shall it be +an old book which we have forgotten just sufficiently to taste +surprise as its felicities come back to us, and remember just +sufficiently to escape the attentive strain of a first reading? Or +shall it be a new book by an author we love, to be glanced through +with no critical purpose (this may be deferred to the second reading), +but merely for the lazy pleasure of recognizing the familiar brain at +work, and feeling happy, perhaps, at the success of a friend? There is +no doubt which Hazlitt would have chosen; he has told us in his essay +_On Reading Old Books_. But after a recent experience I am not sure +that I agree with him. + +That your taste should approve only the best thoughts of the best +minds is a pretty counsel, but one of perfection, and is found in +practice to breed prigs. It sets a man sailing round in a vicious +circle. What is the best thought of the best minds? That approved by +the man of highest culture. Who is the man of highest culture? He +whose taste approves the best thoughts of the best minds. To escape +from this foolish whirlpool, some of our stoutest bottoms run for +that discredited harbor of refuge--Popular Acceptance: a harbor full +of shoals, of which nobody has provided even the sketch of a chart. + +Some years ago, when the _Pall Mall Gazette_ sent round to all sorts +and conditions of eminent men, inviting lists of "The Hundred Best +Books"--the first serious attempt to introduce a decimal system into +Great Britain--I remember that these eminent men's replies disclosed +nothing so wonderful as their unanimity. We were prepared for Sir John +Lubbock, but not, I think, for the host of celebrities who followed +his hygienic example, and made a habit of taking the Rig Vedas to bed +with them. Altogether their replies afforded plenty of material for a +theory that to have every other body's taste in literature is the +first condition of eminence in every branch of the public service. But +in one of the lists--I think it was Sir Monier Williams's--the +unexpected really happened. Sir Monier thought that Mr. T.E. Brown's +_The Doctor_ was one of the best books in the world. + +Now, the poems of Mr. T.E. Brown are not known to the million. But, +like Mr. Robert Bridges, Mr. Brown has always had a band of readers to +whom his name is more than that of many an acknowledged classic. I +fancy it is a case of liking deeply or scarce at all. Those of us who +are not celebrities may be allowed to have favorites who are not the +favorites of others, writers who (fortuitously, perhaps) have helped +us at some crisis of our life, have spoken to us the appropriate word +at the moment of need, and for that reason sit cathedrally enthroned +in our affections. To explain why the author of _Betsy Lee_, _Tommy +Big-Eyes_ and _The Doctor_ is more to me than most poets--why to open +a new book of his is one of the most exciting literary events that can +befall me in now my twenty-ninth year--would take some time, and the +explanation might poorly satisfy the reader after all. + + +My Morning with a Book. + +But I set out to describe a morning with a book. The book was Mr. +Brown's _Old John, and other Poems_, published but a few days back by +Messrs. Macmillan & Co. The morning was spent in a very small garden +overlooking a harbor. Hazlitt's conditions were fulfilled. I had +enjoyed enough food and sleep to last me for some little time: few +people, I imagine, have complained of the cold, these last few weeks: +and the book was not only new to me for the most part, but certain to +please. Moreover, a small incident had already put me in the best of +humors. Just as I was settling down to read, a small tug came down the +harbor with a barque in tow whose nationality I recognized before she +cleared a corner and showed the Norwegian colors drooping from her +peak. I reached for the field-glass and read her name--_Henrik Ibsen_! +I imagined Mr. William Archer applauding as I ran to my own flag-staff +and dipped the British ensign to that name. The Norwegians on deck +stood puzzled for a moment, but, taking the compliment to themselves, +gave me a cheerful hail, while one or two ran aft and dipped the +Norwegian flag in response. It was still running frantically up and +down the halliards when I returned to my seat, and the lines of the +bark were softening to beauty in the distance--for, to tell the truth, +she had looked a crazy and not altogether seaworthy craft--as I opened +my book, and, by a stroke of luck, at that fine poem, _The Schooner_. + + "Just mark that schooner westward far at sea-- + 'Tis but an hour ago + When she was lying hoggish at the quay, + And men ran to and fro + And tugged, and stamped, and shoved, and pushed, and swore. + And ever an anon, with crapulous glee, + Grinned homage to viragoes on the shore. + + "So to the jetty gradual she was hauled: + Then one the tiller took, + And chewed, and spat upon his hand, and bawled; + And one the canvas shook + Forth like a mouldy bat; and one, with nods + And smiles, lay on the bowsprit end, and called + And cursed the Harbour-master by his gods. + + "And rotten from the gunwale to the keel, + Rat riddled, bilge bestank, + Slime-slobbered, horrible, I saw her reel + And drag her oozy flank, + And sprawl among the deft young waves, that laughed + And leapt, and turned in many a sportive wheel + As she thumped onward with her lumbering draught. + + "And now, behold! a shadow of repose + Upon a line of gray + She sleeps, that transverse cuts the evening rose, + She sleeps and dreams away, + Soft blended in a unity of rest + All jars, and strifes obscene, and turbulent throes + 'Neath the broad benediction of the West-- + + "Sleeps; and methinks she changes as she sleeps, + And dies, and is a spirit pure; + Lo! on her deck, an angel pilot keeps + His lonely watch secure; + And at the entrance of Heaven's dockyard waits + Till from night's leash the fine-breathed morning leaps + And that strong hand within unbars the gates." + +It is very far from being the finest poem in the volume. It has not +the noble humanity of _Catherine Kinrade_--and if this be not a great +poem I know nothing about poetry--nor the rapture of _Jessie_, nor the +awful pathos of _Mater Dolorosa_, nor the gentle pathos of _Aber +Stations_, nor the fine religious feeling of _Planting_ and +_Disguises_. But it came so pat to the occasion, and used the occasion +so deftly to take hold of one's sympathy, that these other poems were +read in the very mood that, I am sure, their author would have asked +for them. One has not often such luck in reading--"Never the time and +the place and the author all together," if I may do this violence to +Browning's line. Yet I trust that in any mood I should have had the +sense to pay its meed of admiration to this volume. + +Now, having carefully read the opinions of some half-a-dozen +reviewers upon it, I can only wonder and leave the question to my +reader, warning him by no means to miss _Mater Dalorosa_ and +_Catherine Kinrade_. If he remain cold to these two poems, then I +shall still preserve my own opinion. + + + + +MR. JOHN DAVIDSON + + +April 7, 1894. His Plays. + +For some weeks now I have been meaning to write about Mr. John +Davidson's "Plays" (Elkin Mathews and John Lane), and always shirking +the task at the last moment. The book is an exceedingly difficult one +to write about, and I am not at all sure that after a few sentences I +shall not stick my hands in my pockets and walk off to something +easier. The recent fine weather has, however, made me desperate. The +windows of the room in which I sit face S. and S.-E.; consequently a +deal of sunshine comes in upon my writing-table. In ninety-nine cases +out of the hundred this makes for idleness; in this, the hundredth +case, it constrains to energy, because it is rapidly bleaching the +puce-colored boards in which Mr. Davidson's plays are bound--and +(which is worse) bleaching them unevenly. I have tried (let the +miserable truth be confessed) turning the book daily, as one turns a +piece of toast--But this is not criticism of Mr. Davidson's "Plays." + + +His Style full of Imagination and Wit. + +Now it would be easy and pleasant to express my great admiration of +Mr. Davidson's Muse, and justify it by a score of extracts and so make +an end: and nobody (except perhaps Mr. Davidson himself) would know my +dishonesty. For indeed and out of doubt he is in some respects the +most richly-endowed of all our younger poets. Of wit and of +imagination he has almost a plethora: they crowd this book, and all +his books, from end to end. And his frequent felicity of phrase is +hardly less remarkable. You may turn page after page, and with each +page the truth of this will become more obvious. Let me add his quick +eye for natural beauty, his penetrating instinct for the principles +that lie beneath its phenomena, his sympathy with all men's more +generous emotions--and still I have a store of satisfactory +illustrations at hand for the mere trouble of turning the leaves. +Consider, for instance, the imagery in his description of the fight by +Bannockburn-- + + Now are they hand to hand! + How short a front! How close! _They're sewn together + with steel cross-stitches, halbert over sword,_ + _Spear across lance and death the purfled seam!_ + I never saw so fierce, so lock'd a fight. + That tireless brand that like a pliant flail + Threshes the lives from sheaves of Englishmen-- + Know you who wields it? Douglas, who but he! + A noble meets him now. Clifford it is! + No bitterer foes seek out each other there. + Parried! That told! And that! Clifford, good night! + And Douglas shouts to Randolf; Edward Bruce + Cheers on the Steward; while the King's voice rings + In every Scotch ear: such a narrow strait + Confines this firth of war! + + _Young Friar_: "God gives me strength + Again to gaze with eyes unseared. _Jewels! + These must be jewels peering in the grass. + Cloven from helms, or on them: dead men's eyes + Scarce shine so bright. The banners dip and mount + Like masts at sea...._" + +Or consider the fanciful melody of the Fairies' song in _An +Unhistorical Pastoral_-- + + "Weave the dance and sing the song; + _Subterranean depths prolong + The rainy patter of our feet;_ + Heights of air are rendered sweet + By our singing. Let us sing, + Breathing softly, fairily, + Swelling sweetly, airily, + Till earth and sky our echo ring. + Rustling leaves chime with our song: + Fairy bells its close prolong + Ding-dong, ding-dong." + +--Or the closely-packed wit in such passages as these-- + + _Brown_: "This world, + This oyster with its valves of toil and play, + Would round his corners for its own good ease, + And make a pearl of him if he'd plunge in. + * * * * * + _Jones_: And in this matter we may all be pearls. + + _Smith_: Be worldlings, truly. I would rather be + A shred of glass that sparkles in the sun, + And keeps a lowly rainbow of its own, + Than one of these so trim and patent pearls + With hearts of sand veneered, sewed up and down + The stiff brocade society affects." + +I have opened the book at random for these quotations. Its pages are +stuffed with scores as good. Nor will any but the least intelligent +reviewer upbraid Mr. Davidson for deriving so much of his inspiration +directly from Shakespeare. Mr. Davidson is still a young man; but the +first of these plays, _An Unhistorical Pastoral_, was first printed so +long ago as 1877; and the last, _Scaramouch in Naxos; a Pantomime_, in +1888. They are the work therefore of a very young man, who must use +models while feeling his way to a style and method of his own. + + +Lack of "Architectonic" Quality. + +But--there is a "but"; and I am coming at length to my difficulty with +Mr. Davidson's work. Oddly enough, this difficulty may be referred to +the circumstance that Mr. Davidson's poetry touches Shakespeare's +great circle at a second point. Wordsworth, it will be remembered, +once said that Shakespeare _could_ not have written an Epic +(Wordsworth, by the way, was rather fond of pointing out the things +that Shakespeare could not have done). "Shakespeare _could_ not have +written an Epic; he would have died of plethora of thought." +Substitute "wit" for "thought," and you have my difficulty with Mr. +Davidson. It is given to few men to have great wit: it is given to +fewer to carry a great wit lightly. In Mr. Davidson's case it +luxuriates over the page and seems persistently to choke his sense of +form. One image suggests another, one phrase springs under the very +shadow of another until the fabric of his poem is completely hidden +beneath luxuriant flowers of speech. Either they hide it from the +author himself; or, conscious of his lack of architectonic skill, he +deliberately trails these creepers over his ill-constructed walls. I +think the former is the true explanation, but am not sure. + +Let me be cautious here, or some remarks I made the other day upon +another poet--Mr. Hosken, author of _Phaon and Sappho_, and _Verses by +the Way_--will be brought up against me. Defending Mr. Hosken against +certain critics who had complained of the lack of dramatic power in +his tragedies, I said, "Be it allowed that he has little dramatic +power, and that (since the poem professed to be a tragedy) dramatic +power was what you reasonably looked for. But an alert critic, +considering the work of a beginner, will have an eye for the +bye-strokes as well as the main ones: and if the author, while missing +the main, prove effective with the bye--if Mr. Hosken, while failing +to construct a satisfactory drama, gave evidence of strength in many +fine meditative passages--then at the worst he stands convicted of a +youthful error in choosing a literary form unsuited to convey his +thought." + + +Not in the "Plays" only. + +These observations I believe to be just, and having entered the +_caveat_ in Mr. Hosken's case, I should observe it in Mr. Davidson's +also, did these five youthful plays stand alone. But Mr. Davidson has +published much since these plays first appeared--works both in prose +and verse--_Fleet Street Eclogues_, _Ninian Jamieson_, _A Practical +Novelist_, _A Random Itinerary_, _Baptist Lake_: and because I have +followed his writings (I think from his first coming to London) with +the greatest interest, I may possibly be excused for speaking a word +of warning. I am quite certain that Mr. Davidson will never bore me: +but I wish I could be half so certain that he will in time produce +something in true perspective; a fabric duly proportioned, each line +of which from the beginning shall guide the reader to an end which the +author has in view; something which + + "_Servetur ad imum + Qualis ab incepto processerit, et sibi constet._" + +_Sibi constet_, be it remarked. A work of art may stand very far from +Nature, provided its own parts are consistent. Heaven forbid that a +critic should decry an author for being fantastic, so long as he is +true to his fantasy. + +But Mr. Davidson's wit is so brilliant within the circles of its +temporary coruscation as to leave the outline of his work in a +constant penumbra. Indeed, when he wishes to unburden his mind of an +idea, he seems to have less capacity than many men of half his +ability to determine the form best suited for conveying it. If +anything can be certain which has not been tried, it is that his story +_A Practical Novelist_ should have been cast in dramatic form. His +vastly clever _Perfervid: _or_ the Career of Ninian Jamieson_ is cast +in two parts which neither unite to make a whole, nor are sufficiently +independent to stand complete in themselves. I find it characteristic +that his _Random Itinerary_--that fresh and agreeable narrative of +suburban travel--should conclude with a crashing poem, magnificent in +itself, but utterly out of key with the rest of the book. Turn to the +_Compleat Angler_, and note the exquisite congruity of the songs +quoted by Walton with the prose in which they are set, and the +difference will be apparent at once. Fate seems to dog Mr. Davidson +even into his illustrations. _A Random Itinerary_ and this book of +_Plays_ (both published by Messrs. Mathews and Lane) have each a +conspicuously clever frontispiece. But the illustrator of _A Random +Itinerary_ has chosen as his subject the very poem which I have +mentioned as out of harmony with the book; and I must protest that the +vilely sensual faces in Mr. Beardsley's frontispiece to these _Plays_ +are hopelessly out of keeping with the sunny paganism of _Scaramouch +in Naxos_. There is nothing Greek about Mr. Beardsley's figures: their +only relationship with the Olympians is derived through the goddess +Aselgeia. + +With all this I have to repeat that Mr. Davidson is in some respects +the most richly endowed of all the younger poets. The grand manner +comes more easily to him than to any other: and if he can cultivate a +sense of form and use this sense as a curb upon his wit, he has all +the qualities that take a poet far. + + * * * * * + +Nov. 24, 1984. "Ballads and Songs." + +At last there is no mistake about it: Mr. John Davidson has come by +his own. And by "his own" I do not mean popularity--though I hope +that in time he will have enough of this and to spare--but mastery of +his poetic method. This new volume of "Ballads and Songs" (London: +John Lane) justifies our hopes and removes our chief fear. You +remember Mr. T.E. Brown's fine verses on "Poets and Poets"?-- + + He fishes in the night of deep sea pools: + For him the nets hang long and low, + Cork-buoyed and strong; the silver-gleaming schools + Come with the ebb and flow + Of universal tides, and all the channels glow. + + Or holding with his hand the weighted line + He sounds the languor of the neaps, + Or feels what current of the springing brine + The cord divergent sweeps, + The throb of what great heart bestirs the middle deeps. + + Thou also weavest meshes, fine and thin, + And leaguer'st all the forest ways; + But of that sea and the great heart therein + Thou knowest nought; whole days + Thou toil'st, and hast thy end--good store of pies and jays. + +Mr. Davidson has never allowed us to doubt to which of these two +classes he belongs. "For him the nets hang long and low." But though +it may satisfy the Pumblechook within us to recall our pleasant +prophesyings, we shall find it more salutary to remember our fears. We +watched Mr. Davidson struggling in the thicket of his own fancies, and +saw him too often break his shins over his own wit. We asked: Will he +in the end overcome the defect of his qualities? Will he remain unable +to see the wood for the trees? Or will he some day be giving us poems +of which the whole conception and structure shall be as beautiful as +the casual fragment or the single line? For this architectonic quality +is just that "invidious distinction" which the fabled undergraduate +declined to draw between the major and minor prophets. + + +The "Ballad of a Nun." + +Since its appearance, a few weeks back, all the critics have spoken of +"A Ballad of a Nun," and admitted its surprising strength and beauty. +They have left me in the plight of that belated fiddle in "Rejected +Addresses," or of the gentleman who had to be content with saying +"ditto" to Mr. Burke. For once they seem unanimous, and for once they +are right. The poem is beautiful indeed in detail: + + "The adventurous sun took Heaven by storm; + Clouds scattered largesses of rain; + The sounding cities, rich and warm, + Smouldered and glittered in the plain." + +Dickens, reading for the first time Tennyson's "Dream of Fair Women," +laid down the book, saying, "What a treat it is to come across a +fellow who can _write_!" The verse that moved him to exclaim it was +this-- + + "Squadrons and squares of men in brazen plates, + Scaffolds, still sheets of water, divers woes, + Ranges of glimmering vaults with iron grates; + And hushed seraglios." + +It is not necessary to compare these two stanzas. Tennyson's depicts a +confused and moving dream; Mr. Davidson's a wide earthly prospect. The +point to notice in each is the superlative skill with which the poet +chooses the essential points of the picture and presents them so as to +convey their full meaning, appealing at once to the senses and the +intelligence. Tennyson, who is handling a mental condition in which +the sensations are less sharply and logically separated than in a +waking vision, can enforce this second appeal--this appeal to the +intelligence--by introducing the indefinite "divers woes" between the +definite "sheets of water" and the definite "ranges of glimmering +vaults with iron grates": just as Wordsworth, to convey the vague +unanalyzed charm of singing, combines the indefinite "old unhappy +far-off things" with the definite "battles long ago." Mr. Davidson, on +the other hand, is describing what the eye sees, and conveying what +the mind suspects, in their waking hours, and is therefore restricted +in his use of the abstract and indefinite. Notice, therefore, how he +qualifies that which can be seen--the sun, the clouds, the plain, the +cities that "smoulder" and "glitter"--with the epithets "sounding," +"rich," and "warm," each an inference rather than a direct sensation: +for nobody imagines that the sound of the cities actually rang in the +ear of the Nun who watched them from the mountain-side. The whole +picture has the effect of one of those wide conventional landscapes +which old painters delighted to spread beyond the court-yard of +Nazareth, or behind the pillars of the temple at Jerusalem. My attempt +to analyze it is something of a folly; to understand it is impossible: + + "but _if_ I could understand + What you are, root and all, and all in all,"-- + +I should at length comprehend the divine and inexplicable gift of +song. + + +The "Ballad of the Making of a Poet." + +But beautiful as it is in detail, this poem, and at least one other in +the little volume, have the great merit which has hitherto been +lacking in the best of Mr. Davidson's work. They are thoroughly +considered; seen as solid wholes; seen not only in front but round at +the back. In fact, they are natural growths of Mr. Davidson's +philosophy of life. In his "Ballad of the Making of a Poet" Mr. +Davidson lets us know his conception of the poet's proper function. + + "I am a man apart: + A mouthpiece for the creeds of all the world; + A soulless life that angels may possess + Or demons haunt, wherein the foulest things + May loll at ease beside the loveliest; + A martyr for all mundane moods to tear; + The slave of every passion; and the slave + Of heat and cold, of darkness and of light; + A trembling lyre for every wind to sound. + * * * * * + Within my heart + I'll gather all the universe, and sing + As sweetly as the spheres; and I shall be + The first of men to understand himself...." + +Making, of course, full concessions to the demands of poetical +treatment, we may assume pretty confidently that Mr. Davidson intended +this "Ballad in Blank Verse of the Making of a Poet" for a soul's +autobiography, of a kind. If so, I trust he will forgive me for +doubting if he is at all likely to fulfil the poet's office as he +conceives it here, or even to approach within measurable distance of +his ideal-- + + "A trembling lyre for every wind to sound." + +That it is one way in which a poet may attain, I am not just now +denying. But luckily men attain in many ways: and the man who sits +himself down of fixed purpose to be an AEolian harp for the winds of +the world, is of all men the least likely to be merely AEolian. For the +first demand of AEolian sound is that the instrument should have no +theories of its own; and explicitly to proclaim yourself AEolian is +implicitly to proclaim yourself didactic. As a matter of fact, both +the "Ballad of the Making of a Poet" and the "Ballad of a Nun" contain +sharply pointed morals very stoutly driven home. In each the poet has +made up his mind; he has a theory of life, and presents that theory to +us under cover of a parable. The beauty of the "Ballad of a Nun"--or +so much of it as stands beyond and above mere beauty of +language--consists in this, that it is informed, and consciously +informed, by a spirit of tolerance so exceedingly wide that to match +it I can find one poem and one only among those of recent years: I +mean "Catherine Kinrade." In Mr. Brown's poem the Bishop is welcomed +into Heaven by the half-wilted harlot he had once condemned to painful +and public punishment. In Mr. Davidson's poem, Mary, the Mother of +Heaven, herself takes the form and place of the wandering nun and +fills it until the penitent returns. Take either poem: take Mr. +Brown's-- + + "Awe-stricken, he was 'ware + How on the Emerald stair + A woman sat divinely clothed in white, + And at her knees four cherubs bright. + That laid + Their heads within their lap. Then, trembling, he essayed + To speak--'Christ's mother, pity me!' + Then answered she-- + 'Sir, I am Catherine Kinrade.'" + +Or take Mr. Davidson's--in a way, its converse-- + + "The wandress raised her tenderly; + She touched her wet and fast-shut eyes; + 'Look, sister; sister, look at me; + Look; can you see through my disguise?' + + She looked and saw her own sad face, + And trembled, wondering, 'Who art thou?' + 'God sent me down to fill your place; + I am the Virgin Mary now.' + + And with the word, God's mother shone; + The wanderer whispered 'Mary, hail!' + The vision helped her to put on + Bracelet and fillet, ring and veil. + + 'You are sister to the mountains now, + And sister to the day and night; + Sister to God.' And on her brow + She kissed her thrice and left her sight." + +The voice in each case is that of a prophet rather than that of a reed +shaken by the wind, or an AEolian harp played upon by the same. + + * * * * * + +March, 1895. Second Thoughts. + +I have to add that, apart from the beautiful language in which they +are presented, Mr. Davidson's doctrines do not appeal to me. I cannot +accept his picture of the poet's as "a soulless life ... wherein the +foulest things may loll at ease beside the loveliest." It seems to me +at least as obligatory on a poet as on other men to keep his garden +weeded and his conscience active. Indeed, I believe some asceticism of +soul to be a condition of all really great poetry. Also Mr. Davidson +appears to be confusing charity with an approbation of things in the +strict sense damnable when he makes the Mother of Christ abet a Nun +whose wanderings have no nobler excuse than a carnal desire--_savoir +enfin ce que c'est un homme_. Between forgiving a lapsed man or woman +and abetting the lapse I now, in a cooler hour, see an immense, an +essential, moral difference. But I confess that the foregoing paper +was written while my sense of this difference was temporarily blinded +under the spell of Mr. Davidson's beautiful verse. + +It may still be that his Nun had some nobler motive than I am able, +after two or three readings of the ballad, to discover. In that case I +can only ask pardon for my obtuseness. + + + + +BJOERNSTERNE BJOERNSON + + +June 1, 1895. Bjoernson's First Manner. + +I see that the stories promised in Mr. Heinemann's new series of +translations of Bjoernson are _Synnoeve Solbakken_, _Arne_, _A Happy +Boy_, _The Fisher Maiden_, _The Bridal March_, _Magnhild_, and +_Captain Mansana_. The first, _Synnoeve Solbakken_, appeared in 1857. +The others are dated thus:--_Arne_ in 1858, _A Happy Boy_ in 1860, +_The Fisher Maiden_ in 1868, _The Bridal March_ in 1873, _Magnhild_ in +1877, and _Captain Mansana_ in 1879. There are some very significant +gaps here, the most important being the eight years' gap between _A +Happy Boy_ and _The Fisher Maiden_. Again, after 1879 Bjoernson ceased +to write novels for a while, returning to the charge in 1884 with +_Flags are Flying in Town and Haven_, and following up with _In God's +Way_, 1889. Translations of these two novels have also been published +by Mr. Heinemann (the former under an altered title, _The Heritage of +the Kurts_) and, to use Mr. Gosse's words, are the works, by which +Bjoernson is best known to the present generation of Englishmen. "They +possess elements which have proved excessively attractive to certain +sections of our public; indeed, in the case of _In God's Way_, a novel +which was by no means successful in its own country at its original +publication, has enjoyed an aftermath of popularity in Scandinavia, +founded on reflected warmth from its English admirers." + +Taking, then, Bjoernson's fiction apart from his other writings (with +which I confess myself unacquainted), we find that it falls into three +periods, pretty sharply divided. The earliest is the idyllic period, +pure and simple, and includes _Synnoeve_, _Arne_, and _A Happy Boy_. +Then with _The Fisher Maiden_ we enter on a stage of transition. It is +still the idyll; but it grows self-conscious, elaborate, confused by +the realism that was coming into fashion all over Europe; and the +trouble and confusion grow until we reach _Magnhild_. With _Flags are +Flying_ and _In God's Way_ we reach a third stage--the stage of +realism, some readers would say. I should not agree. But these tales +certainly differ remarkably from their predecessors. They are much +longer, to begin with; in them, too, realism at length preponderates; +and they are probably as near to pure realism as Bjoernson will ever +get. + +If asked to label these three periods, I should call them the periods +of (1) Simplicity, (2) Confusion, (3) Dire Confusion. + +I speak, of course, as a foreigner, obliged to read Bjoernson in +translations. But perhaps the disability is not so important as it +seems at first sight. Translations cannot hide Bjoernson's genius; nor +obscure the truth that his genius is essentially idyllic. Now if one +form of literary expression suffers more than another by translation +it is the idyll. Its bloom is peculiarly delicate; its freshness +peculiarly quick to disappear under much handling of any kind. But all +the translations leave _Arne_ a masterpiece, and _Synnoeve_ and _The +Happy Boy_. + +How many artists have been twisted from their natural bent by the long +vogue of "naturalism" we shall never know. We must make the best of +the great works which have been produced under its influence, and be +content with that. But we may say with some confidence that Bjoernson's +genius was unfortunate in the date of its maturity. He was born on the +8th of December, 1832, in a lonely farmhouse among the mountains, at +the head of the long valley called Osterdalen; his father being priest +of Kvikne parish, one of the most savage in all Norway. After six +years the family removed to Naesset, in the Romsdal, "a spot as +enchanting and as genial as Kvikne is the reverse." Mr. Gosse, who +prefaces Mr. Heinemann's new series with a study of Bjoernson's +writings, quotes a curious passage in which Bjoernson records the +impression of physical beauty made upon his childish mind by the +physical beauty of Naesset:-- + + "Here in the parsonage of Naesset--one of the loveliest places in + Norway, where the land lies broadly spreading where two fjords + meet, with the green braeside above it, with waterfalls and + farmhouses on the opposite shore, with billowy meadows and cattle + away towards the foot of the valley, and, far overhead, along the + line of the fjord, mountains shooting promontory after promontory + out into the lake, a big farmhouse at the extremity of each--here + in the parsonage of Naesset, where I would stand at the close of + the day and gaze at the sunlight playing over mountain and + fjord, until I wept, as though I had done something wrong; and + where I, descending on my snow-shoes into some valley, would + pause as though bewitched by a loveliness, by a longing, which I + had not the power to explain, but which was so great that above + the highest ecstasy of joy I would feel the deepest apprehension + and distress--here in the parsonage of Naesset were awakened my + earliest sensations." + +The passage is obviously important. And Bjoernson shows how much +importance he attaches to the experience by introducing it, or +something like it, time after time into his stories. Readers of _In +God's Way_--the latest of the novels under discussion--will remember +its opening chapter well. + +It was good fortune indeed that a boy of such gifts should pass his +early boyhood in such surroundings. Nor did the luck end here. While +the young Bjoernson accumulated these impressions, the peasant-romance, +or idyll of country life, was taking its place and growing into favor +as one of the most beautiful forms of modern prose-fiction. Immermann +wrote _Der Oberhof_ in 1839. Weill and Auerbach took up the running in +1841 and 1843. George Sand followed, and Fritz Reuter. Bjoernson began +to write in 1856. _Synnoeve Solbakken_ and _Arne_ came in on the high +flood of this movement. "These two stories," writes Mr. Gosse, "seem +to me to be almost perfect; they have an enchanting lyrical quality, +without bitterness or passion, which I look for elsewhere in vain in +the prose literature of the second half of the century." To my mind, +without any doubt, they and _A Happy Boy_ are the best work Bjoernson +has ever done in fiction, or is ever likely to do. For they are +simple, direct, congruous; all of one piece as a flower is of a piece +with its root. And never since has Bjoernson written a tale altogether +of one piece. + + +His later Manner. + +For here the luck ended. All over Europe there began to spread +influences that may have been good for some artists, but were (we may +say) peculiarly injurious to so _naif_ and, at the same time, so +personal a writer as Bjoernson. I think another age will find much the +same cause to mourn over Daudet when it compares his later novels with +the promise of _Lettres de Mon Moulin_ and _Le Petit Chose_. +Naturalism demands nothing more severely than an impersonal treatment +of its themes. Of three very personal and romantic writers, our own +Stevenson escaped the pit into which both Bjoernson and Daudet +stumbled. You may say the temptation came later to him. But the +temptation to follow an European fashion does, as a rule, befall a +Briton last of all men, for reasons of which we need not feel proud: +and the date of Mr. Hardy's stumbling is fairly recent, after all. +Bjoernson, at any rate, began very soon to be troubled. Between 1864 +and 1874, from his thirty-second to his forty-second year, his +invention seemed, to some extent, paralyzed. _The Fisher Maiden_, the +one story written during that time, starts as beautifully as _Arne_; +but it grows complicated and introspective: the psychological +experiences of the stage-struck heroine are not in the same key as the +opening chapters. Passing over nine years, we find _Magnhild_ much +more vague and involved-- + + "Here he is visibly affected by French models, and by the methods + of the naturalists, but he is trying to combine them with his own + simpler traditions of rustic realism.... The author felt himself + greatly moved by fermenting ideas and ambitions which he had not + completely mastered.... There is a kind of uncomfortable + discrepancy between the scene and the style, a breath of Paris + and the boulevards blowing through the pine-trees of a + puritanical Norwegian village.... But the book is a most + interesting link between the early peasant-stories and the great + novels of his latest period." + +Well, of these same "great novels"--of _Flags are Flying_ and _In +God's Way_--people must speak as they think. They seem to me the +laborious productions of a man forcing himself still further and +further from his right and natural bent. In them, says Mr. Gosse, +"Bjoernson returns, in measure, to the poetical elements of his youth. +He is now capable again, as for instance in the episode of Ragni's +symbolical walk in the woodlands, _In God's Way_, of passages of pure +idealism." Yes, he returns--"in measure." He is "capable of idyllic +passages." In other words, his nature reasserts itself, and he remains +an imperfect convert. "He has striven hard to be a realist, and at +times he has seemed to acquiesce altogether in the naturalistic +formula, but in truth he has never had anything essential in common +with M. Zola." In other words, he has fallen between two stools. He +has tried to expel nature with a pitchfork and still she runs back +upon him. He has put his hand to the plough and has looked back: or +(if you take my view of "the naturalistic formula") he has sinned, but +has not sinned with his whole heart. For to produce a homogeneous +story, either the acquired Zola or the native Bjoernson must have been +cast out utterly. + + +Value of Early Impressions to a Novelist. + +I have quoted an example of the impressions of Bjoernson's childhood. I +do not think critics have ever quite realized the extent to which +writers of fiction--especially those who use a personal style--depend +upon the remembered impressions of childhood. Such impressions--no +matter how fantastic--are an author's firsthand stock: and in using +them he comes much closer to nature than when he collects any number +of scientifically approved data to maintain some view of life which he +has derived from books. Compare _Flags are Flying_ with _Arne_, and +you will see my point. The longer book is ten times as realistic in +treatment, and about one-tenth as true to life. + + + + +MR. GEORGE MOORE + + +March 31, 1894. "Esther Waters." + +It is good, after all, to come across a novel written by a man who can +write a novel. We have been much in the company of the Amateur of +late, and I for one am very weary of him--weary of his preposterous +goings-out and comings-in, of his smart ineptitudes, of his solemn +zeal in reforming the decayed art of fiction, of his repeated failures +to discover beneficence in all those institutions, from the Common Law +of England to the Scheme of the Universe, which have managed to leave +him and his aspirations out of count. I am weary of him and of his +deceased wife's sister, and of their fell determination to discover +each other's soul in a bottle of hay. Above all, I am weary of his +writings, because he cannot write, neither has he the humility to sit +down and learn. + +Mr. George Moore, on the other hand, has steadily labored to make +himself a fine artist, and his training has led him through many +strange places. I should guess that among living novelists few have +started with so scant an equipment. As far as one can tell he had, to +begin with, neither a fertile invention nor a subtle dramatic +instinct, nor an accurate ear for language. A week ago I should have +said this very confidently: after reading _Esther Waters_ I say it +less confidently, but believe it to be true, nevertheless. Mr. Moore +has written novels that are full of faults. These faults have been +exposed mercilessly, for Mr. Moore has made many enemies. But he has +always possessed an artistic conscience and an immense courage. He +answered his critics briskly enough at the time, but an onlooker of +common sagacity could perceive that the really convincing answer was +held in reserve--that, as they say in America, Mr. Moore "allowed" he +was going to write a big novel one of these days, and meanwhile we had +better hold our judgment upon Mr. Moore's capacity open to revision. + +What, then, is to be said of _Esther Waters_, this volume of a modest +377 pages, upon which Mr. Moore has been at work for at least two +years? + + +"Esther" and Mr. Hardy's "Tess." + +Well, in the first place, I say, without hesitation, that _Esther +Waters_ is the most important novel published in England during these +two years. We have been suffering from the Amateur during that period, +and no doubt (though it seems hard) every nation has the Amateur it +deserves. To find a book to compare with _Esther Waters_ we must go +back to December, 1891, and to Mr. Hardy's _Tess of the +D'Urbervilles_. It happens that a certain similarity in the motives of +these two stories makes comparison easy. Each starts with the +seduction of a young girl; and each is mainly concerned with her +subsequent adventures. From the beginning the advantage of probability +is with the younger novelist. Mr. Moore's "William Latch" is a +thoroughly natural figure, and remains a natural figure to the end of +the book: an uneducated man and full of failings, but a man always, +and therefore to be forgiven by the reader only a little less readily +than Esther herself forgives him. Mr. Hardy's "Alec D'Urberville" is a +grotesque and violent lay figure, a wholly incredible cad. Mr. Hardy, +by killing Tess's child, takes away the one means by which his heroine +could have been led to return to D'Urberville without any loss of the +reader's sympathy. Mr. Moore allows Esther's child to live, and thus +has at hand the material for one of the most beautiful stories of +maternal love ever imagined by a writer. I dislike extravagance of +speech, and would run my pen through these words could I remember, in +any novel I have read, a more heroic story than this of Esther Waters, +a poor maid-of-all-work, without money, friends, or character, +fighting for her child against the world, and in the end dragging +victory out of the struggle. In spite of the AEschylean gloom in which +Mr. Hardy wraps the story of Tess, I contend that Esther's fight is, +from end to end, the more heroic. + +Also Esther's story seems to me informed with a saner philosophy of +life. There is gloom in her story; and many of the circumstances are +sordid enough; but throughout I see the recognition that man and woman +can at least improve and dignify their lot in this world. Many people +believe _Tess_ to be the finest of its author's achievements. A +devoted admirer of Mr. Hardy's genius, I decline altogether to +consent. To my mind, among recent developments of the English novel +nothing is more lamentable than the manner in which this +distinguished writer has allowed himself of late to fancy that the +riddles of life are solved by pulling mouths at Providence (or +whatever men choose to call the Supreme Power) and depicting it as a +savage and omnipotent bully, directing human affairs after the fashion +of a practical joker fresh from a village ale-house. For to this +teaching his more recent writings plainly tend; and alike in _Tess_ +and _Life's Little Ironies_ the part played by the "President of the +Immortals" is no sublimer--save in the amount of force exerted--than +that of a lout who pulls a chair suddenly from under an old woman. +Now, by wedding Necessity with uncouth Jocularity, Mr. Hardy may have +found an hypothesis that solves for him all the difficulties of life. +I am not concerned in this place to deny that it may be the true +explanation. I have merely to point out that art and criticism must +take some time in getting accustomed to it, and that meanwhile the +traditions of both are so far agreed in allowing a certain amount of +free will to direct the actions of men and women that a tale which +should be all necessity and no free will would, in effect, be +necessity's own contrary--a merely wanton freak. + +For, in effect, it comes to this:--The story of Tess, in which +attention is so urgently directed to the hand of Destiny, is not felt +to be inevitable, but freakish. The story of Esther Waters, in which a +poor servant-girl is allowed to grapple with her destiny and, after a +fashion, to defeat it, is felt (or has been felt by one reader, at any +rate) to be absolutely inevitable. To reconcile us to the black flag +above Wintoncester prison as to the appointed end of Tess's career, a +curse at least as deep as that of Pelops should have been laid on the +D'Urberville family. Tess's curse does not lie by nature on all women; +nor on all Dorset women; nor on all Dorset women who have illegitimate +children; for a very few even of these are hanged. We feel that we are +not concerned with a type, but with an individual case deliberately +chosen by the author; and no amount of talk about the "President of +the Immortals" and his "Sport" can persuade us to the contrary. With +Esther Waters, on the other hand, we feel we are assisting in the +combat of a human life against its natural destiny; we perceive that +the woman has a chance of winning; we are happy when she wins; and we +are the better for helping her with our sympathy in the struggle. +That is why, using the word in the Aristotelian sense, I maintain that +_Esther Waters_ is a more "philosophical" work than _Tess_. + +The atmosphere of the low-class gambling in which Mr. Moore's +characters breathe and live is no doubt a result of his careful study +of Zola. It is, as everyone knows, M. Zola's habit to take one of the +many pursuits of men--from War and Religion down to Haberdashery and +Veterinary Surgery--and expand it into an atmosphere for a novel. But +in Mr. Moore's case it may safely be urged that gambling on racehorses +actually is the atmosphere in which a million or two of Londoners pass +their lives. Their hopes, their very chances of a satisfying meal, +hang from day to day on the performances of horses they have never +seen. I cannot profess to judge with what accuracy Mr. Moore has +reproduced the niceties of handicapping, bookmaking, place-betting, +and the rest, the fluctuations of the gambling market, and their +causes. I gather that extraordinary care has been bestowed upon these +details; but criticism here must be left to experts, I only know that, +not once or twice only in the course of his narrative, Mr. Moore +makes us study the odds against a horse almost as eagerly as if it +carried our own money: because it does indeed carry for a while the +destiny of Esther Waters--and yet for a while only. We feel that, +whichever horse wins the ultimate issues are inevitable. + +It will be gathered from what I have said that Mr. Moore has vastly +outstripped his own public form, even as shown in _A Mummer's Wife_. +But it may be as well to set down, beyond possibility of +misapprehension, my belief that in _Esther Waters_ we have the most +artistic, the most complete, and the most inevitable work of fiction +that has been written in England for at least two years. Its plainness +of speech may offend many. It may not be a favorite in the circulating +libraries or on the bookstalls. But I shall be surprised if it fails +of the place I predict for it in the esteem of those who know the true +aims of fiction and respect the conscientious practice of that great +art. + + + + +MRS. MARGARET L. WOODS + + +Nov. 28, 1891. "Esther Vanhomrigh." + +Among considerable novelists who have handled historical +subjects--that is to say, who have brought into their story men and +women who really lived and events which have really taken place--you +will find one rule strictly observed, and no single infringement of it +that has been followed by success. This rule is that the historical +characters and events should be mingled with poetical characters and +events, and _made subservient to them_. And it holds of books as +widely dissimilar as _La Vicomte de Bragelonne_ and _La Guerre et la +Paix_; _The Abbot_ and _John Inglesant_. In history Louis XIV. and +Napoleon are the most salient men of their time: in fiction they fall +back and give prominence to D'Artagnan and the Prince Andre. They may +be admirably painted, but unless they take a subordinate place in the +composition, the artist scores a failure. + + +A Disability of "Historical Fiction." + +The reason of this is, of course, very simple. If an artist is to +have full power over his characters, to know their hearts, to govern +their emotions and sway them at his will, they must be his own +creatures and the life in them derived from him. He must have an +entirely free hand with them. But the personages of history have an +independent life of their own, and with them his hand is tied. +Thackeray has a freehold on the soul of Beatrix Esmond, but he takes +the soul of Marlborough furnished, on a short lease, and has to render +an account to the Muse of History. He is lord of one and mere occupier +of the other. Nor will it do to say that an artist by sympathetic and +intelligent study can master the motives of any group of historical +characters sufficiently for his purpose. For, since they have +anticipated him and lived their lives without his help, they leave him +but a choice between two poor courses. If he narrate their lives and +adventures as they really befel, he is writing history. If, on the +other hand, he disregard historical accuracy, he might just as well +have used another set of characters or have given his characters other +names. Indeed, it would be much better. For if Alcibiades went as a +matter of fact to Sparta and as a matter of fiction you make him stay +at home, you merely advertise to the world that there was something in +Alcibiades you don't understand. And if you are writing about an +Alcibiades whom you don't quite understand, you will save your readers +some risk of confusion by calling him Charicles. + +Now Jonathan Swift and Esther Johnson and Esther Vanhomrigh really +lived; and by living, became historical. But Mrs. Woods sets forth to +translate them back into fiction, not as subordinate characters, but +as protagonists. She has chosen to work within the difficult limits I +have indicated. But there are others which might easily have cramped +her hand even more closely. + + +A Tale of Passion to be told in Terms of Reason. + +The story of Swift and Esther Vanhomrigh is a story of passion, and +runs on the confines of madness. But it happened in the Age of Reason. +Doubtless men and women felt madness and passion in that age: +doubtless, too, they spoke of madness and passion, but not in their +literature. And now that the lips are dust and the fiery conversations +lost, Mrs. Woods has only their written prose to turn to for help. To +satisfy the pedant she must tell her story of passion in terms of +reason. In one respect Thackeray had a more difficult task in +_Esmond_; for he aimed to make his book a reflection, in every page +and line, of the days of Queen Anne. Not only had he, like Mrs. Woods, +to make his characters and their talk consistent with that age; but +every word of the story is supposed to be told by a gentleman of that +age, whereas Mrs. Woods in her narrative prose may use the language of +her own century. On the other hand, the story of _Esmond_ deals with +comparatively temperate emotions. There is nothing in Thackeray's +masterpiece to strain the prose of the Age of Reason. It is pitched in +the key of those times, and the prose of those times is sufficient and +exactly sufficient for it. That it should be so is all the more to +Thackeray's honor, for the artist is to be praised in the conception +as duly as in the execution of his work. But, the conception being +granted, I think _Esther Vanhomrigh_ must have been a harder book than +_Esmond_ to write. + +For even the prose of Swift himself is inadequate to Swift. He was a +great and glaring anomaly who never fell into perspective with his age +while he lived, and can hardly be pulled into perspective now with the +drawing materials which are left to us. Men of like abundant genius +are rarely measurable in language used by their contemporaries; and +this is perhaps the reason why they disquiet their contemporaries so +confoundedly. Where in the books written by tye-bewigged gentlemen, or +in the letters written by Swift himself, can you find words to explain +that turbulent and potent man? He bursts the capacity of Addison's +phrase and Pope's couplet. He was too big for a bishop's chair, and +now, if a novelist attempt to clothe him in the garments of his time, +he splits them down the back. + +It is in meeting this difficulty that Mrs. Woods seems to me to +display the courage and intelligence of a true artist. She is bound to +be praised by many for her erudition; but perhaps she will let me +thank her for having trodden upon her erudition. In the first volume +it threatened to overload and sink her. But no sooner does she begin +to catch the wind of her subject than she tosses all this superfluous +cargo overboard. From the point where passion creeps into the story +this learning is carried lightly and seems to be worn unconsciously. +Instead of cataloguing the age, she comprehends it. + +To me the warmth and pathos she packs into her eighteenth-century +conversation, without modernizing it thereby, is something amazing. +For this alone the book would be notable; and it can be proved to come +of divination, simply because nothing exists from which she could have +copied it. More obvious, though not more wonderful, is her feminine +gift of rendering a scene vivid for us by describing it, not as it is, +but as it excites her own intelligence or feelings. Let me explain +myself: for it is the sorry fate of a book so interesting and +suggestive as _Esther Vanhomrigh_ to divert the critic from praise of +the writer to consider a dozen problems which the writer raises. + + +Women and "le don pittoresque." + +Well, then, M. Jules Lemaitre has said somewhere--and with +considerable truth--that women when they write have not _le don +pittoresque_. By this he means that they do not strive to depict a +scene exactly as it strikes upon their senses, but as they perceive +it after testing its effect upon their emotions and experience. +Suppose now we have to describe a moonlit night in May. Mrs. Woods +begins as a man might begin, thus-- + + "The few and twinkling lights disappeared from the roadside + cottages. The full white moon was high in the cloudless deep of + heaven, and the sounds of the warm summer night were all about + their path; the splash of leaping fish, the sleepy chirrup of + birds disturbed by some night-wandering creature; the song of the + reed-warbler, the persistent churring of the night jar, and the + occasional hoot of the owl, far off on some ancestral tree." + +Now all this, except, perhaps, the "ancestral" tree, is a direct +picture, and with it some men might stop. But no woman could stop +here, and Mrs. Woods does not. She goes on-- + + "It was such an exquisite May night, full of the mystery and + beauty of moonlight and the scent of hawthorn, as makes the earth + an Eden in which none but lovers should walk--happy lovers or + young poets, whose large eyes, so blind in the daylight world of + men, can see God walking in the Garden." ... + +You see it is sensation no longer, but reflection and emotion. + +Now I am only saying that women cannot avoid this. I am not +condemning it. On the contrary, it is beautiful in Mrs. Woods's hand, +and sometimes luminously true. Take this, for instance, of the +interior of a city church:-- + + "It had none of the dim impressiveness of a mediaeval church, that + seems reared with a view to Heaven rather than Earth, and whose + arches, massive or soaring, neither gain nor lose by the + accidental presence of ephemeral human creatures below them. No, + the building seemed to cry out for a congregation, and the mind's + eye involuntarily peopled it with its Sunday complement of + substantial citizens and their families." + +This is not a picturesque but a reflective description. Yet how it +illuminates! If we had never thought of it before we know now, once +and for all, the essential difference between a Gothic church and one +of Wren's building. And further, since Mrs. Woods is writing of an age +that slighted Gothic for the architecture of Wren and his followers, +we get a brilliant side-flash to help our comprehension. It is a hint +only, but it assures us as we read that we are in the eighteenth +century, when men and women were of more account than soaring +aspirations. + +And the conclusion is that if Mrs. Woods could not conquer the +difficulties which beset any attempt to make protagonists of two +historical characters, if she was obliged to follow the facts to the +detriment of composition, she has vitalized and recreated a dead age +in a fashion to make us all wonder. _Esther Vanhomrigh_ is a great +feat, and its authoress is one of the few of whom almost anything may +be expected. + + * * * * * + +Jan. 26, 1895. "The Vagabonds." + +In her latest book,[A] Mrs. Woods returns to that class of life--so +far as life may be classified--which she handled so memorably in _A +Village Tragedy_. There are differences, though. As the titles +indicate, the life in the earlier story was stationary: in the latter +it is nomadic--the characters are artistes in a travelling show. This +at once suggests comparison with M. Edmond de Goncourt's _Les Freres +Zemganno_; or rather a contrast: for the two stories, conceived in +very similar surroundings, differ in at least two vital respects. + + +Compared with "Les Freres Zemganno." + +For what, in short, is the story of _Les Freres Zemganno_? Two +brothers, Gianni and Nello, tumblers in a show that travels round the +village fairs and small country towns of France, are seized with an +ambition to excel in their calling. They make their way to England, +where they spend some years clowning in various circuses. Then they +return to make their _debut_ in Paris. Gianni has invented at length a +trick act, a feat that will make the brothers famous. They are +performing it for the first time in public, when a circus girl, who +has a spite against Nello, causes him to fall and break both his legs. +He can perform no more: and henceforward, as he watches his brother +performing, a strange jealousy awakes and grows in him, causing him +agony whenever Gianni touches a trapeze. Gianni discovers this and +renounces his art. + +Now here in the first place it is to be noted that the whole story +depends upon the circus profession, and the brothers' love for it and +desire to excel in it. The catastrophe; Nello's jealousy; Gianni's +self-sacrifice; are inseparable from the atmosphere of the book. The +catastrophe is a professional catastrophe; the jealousy a professional +jealousy; the sacrifice a sacrifice of a profession. And in the second +place we know, even if we had not his own word for it, that M. de +Goncourt--contrary to his habit--deliberately etherealized the +atmosphere of the circus-ring and idealized the surroundings. He calls +his tale an essay in poetic realism, "Je me suis trouve dans une de +ces heures de la vie, vieillissantes, maladives, laches devant le +travail poignant et angoisseux de mes autres livres, en un etat de +l'ame ou la verite trop vraie m'etait antipathique a moi aussi!--et +j'ai fait cette fois de l'imagination dans du reve mele a du +souvenir." We know from the Goncourt Journals exactly what is meant by +"du souvenir." We know that M. Edmond de Goncourt is but translating +into the language of the circus-ring and symbolizing in the story of +Gianni and Nello the story of his own literary collaboration with his +brother Jules--a collaboration of quite singular intimacy, that ceased +only with Jules's death in 1870. Possibly, as M. Zola once suggested, +M. Edmond de Goncourt did at first intend to depict the circus-life, +after his wont, in true "naturalistic" manner, softening and +extenuating nothing: but "par une delicatesse qui s'explique, il a +recule devant le milieu brutal de cirques, devant certaines laideurs +et certaines monstruosites des personnages qu'il choisis-sait." The +two facts remain that in _Les Freres Zemganno_ M. de Goncourt (1) made +professional life in a circus the very blood and tissue of his story; +and (2) that he softened the details of that life, and to a certain +degree idealized it. + +Turning to Mrs. Woods's book and taking these two points in reverse +order, we find to begin with that she idealizes nothing and softens +next to nothing. Where she does soften, she softens only for literary +effect--to give a word its due force, or a picture its proper values. +She does not, for instance, accurately report the oaths and +blasphemies:-- + + "The tents and booths of the show were disappearing rapidly like + stage scenery. The red-faced Manager, Joe, and several others in + authority, ran hither and thither shouting their orders to a + crowd of workmen in jackets and fustian trousers, who were piling + rolls of canvas, and heavy chests, and mountains of planks and + long vibrating poles, on the great waggons. Others were + harnessing the big powerful horses to the carts, horses that were + mostly white, and wore large red collars. The scene was so busy, + so full of movement, that it would have been exhilarating had not + the fresh morning air been full of senseless blasphemies and + other deformities of speech, uttered casually and constantly, + without any apparent consciousness on the part of the speakers + that they were using strong language. Probably the lady who + dropped toads and vipers from her lips whenever she opened them + came in process of time to consider them the usual accompaniments + of conversation." + +There are a great many reasons against copious profanity of speech. +Here you have the artistic reason, and, by implication, that which +forbids its use in literature--namely, its ineffectiveness. But though +she selects, Mrs. Woods does not refine. She exhibits the life of the +travelling show in its habitual squalor as well as in its occasional +brightness. How she has managed it passes my understanding: but her +book leaves the impression of confident familiarity with this kind of +life, of knowledge not merely accumulated, but assimilated. Knowing as +we do that Mrs. Woods was not brought up in a circus, we infer that +she must have spent much labor in research: but, taken by itself, her +book permits no such inference. The truth is that in the case of a +genuine artist no line can be drawn between knowledge and imagination. +Probably--almost certainly--Mrs. Woods has to a remarkable degree that +gift which Mr. Henry James describes as "the faculty which when you +give it an inch takes an ell, and which for an artist is a much +greater source of strength than any accident of residence or of place +in the social scale ... the power to guess the unseen from the seen, +to trace the implication of things, to judge the whole piece by the +pattern; the condition of feeling life in general so completely that +you are well on your way to knowing a particular corner of it." Be +this as it may, Mrs. Woods has written a novel which, for mastery of +an unfamiliar _milieu_, is almost fit to stand beside _Esther Waters_. +I say "almost": for, although Mrs. Woods's mastery is easier and less +conscious than Mr. Moore's, it neither goes so deep to the springs of +action nor bears so intimately on the conduct of the story. But of +this later. + +If one thing more than another convinces me that Mrs. Woods has +thoroughly realized these queer characters of hers, it is that she +makes them so much like other people. Whatever our profession may be, +we are generally silent upon the instincts that led us to adopt +it--unless, indeed, we happen to be writers and make a living out of +self-analysis. So these strollers are silent upon the attractiveness +of their calling. But they crave as openly as any of us for +distinction, and they worship "respectability" as heartily and +outspokenly as any of the country-folk for whose amusement they tumble +and pull faces. It is no small merit in this book that it reveals how +much and yet how very little divides the performers in the ring from +the audience in the sixpenny seats. I wish I had space to quote a +particularly fine passage--you will find it on pp. 72-74--in which +Mrs. Woods describes the progress of these motley characters through +Midland lanes on a fresh spring morning; the shambling white horses +with their red collars, the painted vans, the cages "where bears paced +uneasily and strange birds thrust uncouth heads out into the +sunshine," the two elephants and the camel padding through the dust +and brushing the dew off English hedges, the hermetically sealed +omnibus in which the artistes bumped and dozed, while the +wardrobe-woman, Mrs. Thompson, held forth undeterred on "those +advantages of birth, house-rent, and furniture, which made her +discomforts of real importance, whatever those of the other ladies in +the show might be." + +But in bringing her Vagabonds into relation with ordinary English +life, Mrs. Woods loses all, or nearly all, of that esoteric +professional interest which, at first sight, would seem the chief +reason for choosing circus people to write about. The story of _Les +Freres Zemganno_ has, as I have said, this esoteric professional +interest. The story of _The Vagabonds_ is the story of a husband and +of a young wife who does not love him, but discovers that she loves +another man--a story as old as the hills and common to every rank and +every calling. Mrs. Woods has made the husband a middle-aged clown, +the wife a girl with strict notions about respectability, and the +lover, Fritz, a handsome young German gymnast. But there was no +fundamental reason for this choice of professions. The tale might be +every bit as true of a grocer, and a grocer's wife, and a grocer's +assistant. Once or twice, indeed, in the earlier chapters we have +promise of a more peculiar story when we read of Mrs. Morris's +objection to seeing her husband play the clown. "No woman," she says, +"that hadn't been brought up to the business would like to see her +husband look like that." And of Joe Morris we read that he took an +artistic pride in his clowning. But there follows no serious struggle +between love and art--no such struggle, for instance, as Zola has +worked out to tragic issues in his _L'OEuvre_. Mrs. Morris's shame at +her husband's ridiculous appearance merely heightens the contrast in +her eyes between him and the handsome young gymnast. + +But though the circus-business is not essential, Mrs. Woods makes most +effective use of it. I will select one notable illustration of this. +When Mrs. Morris at length makes her confession--it is in the wagon, +and at night--the unhappy husband wraps her up carefully in her bed +and creeps away with his grief to the barn where Chang, a ferocious +elephant amenable only to him, has been stabled:-- + + "He opened the door; the barn was pitch dark, but as he entered + he could hear the noise of the chain which had been fastened to + the elephant's legs being suddenly dragged. He spoke to Chang, + and the noise ceased. Then running up a short ladder which was + close to the door, he threw himself down on the straw and stared + up into the darkness, which to his aching eyes seemed spangled + with many colours. Presently he was startled by something warm + touching him on the face. + + "'Who's there?' he called out. + + "There was no answer, but the soft thing, something like a hand, + felt him cautiously and caressingly all over. + + "'Oh, it's you, Chang, my boy, is it?' said Joe. 'What! are you + glad to have me, old chappie? No humbug about yer, are yer sure? + No lies?'" + +The circus-business is employed again in the catastrophe: but, to my +mind, far less happily. In spite of very admirable writing, there +remains something ridiculous in the spectacle of an injured husband, +armed with a Winchester rifle and mounted on a frantic elephant, +pursuing his wife's lover by moonlight across an English common and +finally "treeing" him up a sign-post. Mrs. Woods, indeed, means it to +be grotesque: but I think it is something more. + +The problem of the story is the commonest in fiction. And when I add +that the injured husband has been married before and that his first +wife, honestly supposed to be dead, returns to threaten his happiness, +you will see that Mrs. Woods sets forth upon a path trodden by many +hundreds of thousands of incompetent feet. To start with such a +situation almost suggests bravado. If it be bravado, it is entirely +justified as the tale proceeds: for amid the crowd of failures Mrs. +Woods's solution wears the singular distinction of truth. That the +book is written in restrained and beautiful English goes without +saying: but the best tribute one can pay to the writing of it is to +say that its style and its truthfulness are at one. If complaint must +be made, it is the vulgar complaint against truth--that it leaves one +a trifle cold. A less perfect story might have aroused more emotion. +Yet I for one would not barter the pages that tell of Joe Morris's +final surrender of his wife--with their justness of imagination and +sobriety of speech--for any amount of pity and terror. + +A word on the few merely descriptive passages in the book. Mrs. +Woods's scene-painting has all a Frenchman's accomplishment with the +addition of that open-air feeling and intimate knowledge of the +phenomena of "out-of-doors" which a Frenchman seldom or never attains +to. Though not, perhaps, her strongest gift, it is the one by which +she stands most conspicuously above her contemporaries. The more +credit, then, that she uses it so temperately. + +FOOTNOTES: + +[A] _The Vagabonds_. By Margaret L. Woods. London: Smith, Elder & Co. + + + + +MR. HALL CAINE + + +August 11, 1894. "The Manxman." + +Mr. Hall Caine's new novel _The Manxman_ (London: William Heinemann) +is a big piece of work altogether. But, on finishing the tale, I +turned back to the beginning and read the first 125 pages over again, +and then came to a stop. I wish that portion of the book could be +dealt with separately. It cannot: for it but sets the problem in human +passion and conduct which the remaining 300 pages have to solve. +Nevertheless the temptation is too much for me. + +As one who thought he knew how good Mr. Hall Caine can be at his best, +I must confess to a shock of delight, or rather a growing sense of +delighted amazement, while reading those 125 pages. Yet the story is a +very simple one--a story of two friends and a woman. The two friends +are Philip Christian and Pete Quilliam: Philip talented, accomplished, +ambitious, of good family, and eager to win back the social position +which his father had lost by an imprudent marriage; Pete a nameless +boy--the bastard son of Philip's uncle and a gawky country-girl--ignorant, +brave, simple-minded, and incurably generous. The boys have grown up +together, and in love are almost more than brothers when the time comes +for them to part for a while--Philip leaving home for school, while +Pete goes as mill-boy to one Caesar Cregeen, who combined the occupations +of miller and landlord of "The Manx Fairy" public-house. And now enters +the woman--a happy child when first we make her acquaintance--in the +shape of Katherine Cregeen, the daughter of Pete's employer. With her +poor simple Pete falls over head and ears in love. Philip, too, when +home for his holidays, is drawn by the same dark eyes; but stands aside +for his friend. Naturally, the miller will not hear of Pete, a landless, +moneyless, nameless, lad, as a suitor for his daughter; and so Pete sails +for Kimberley to make his fortune, confiding Kitty to Philip's care. + +It seems that the task undertaken by Philip--that of watching over his +friend's sweetheart--is a familiar one in the Isle of Man, and he who +discharges it is known by a familiar name. + + "They call him the _Dooiney Molla_--literally, the 'man-praiser'; + and his primary function is that of an informal, unmercenary, + purely friendly and philanthropic match-maker, introduced by the + young man to persuade the parents of the young woman that he is a + splendid fellow, with substantial possessions or magnificent + prospects, and entirely fit to marry her. But he has a secondary + function, less frequent, though scarcely less familiar; and it is + that of a lover by proxy, or intended husband by deputy, with + duties of moral guardianship over the girl while the man himself + is off 'at the herrings,' or away 'at the mackerel,' or abroad on + wider voyages." + +And now, of course, begins Philip Christian's ordeal: for Kitty +discovers that she loves him and not Pete, and he that he loves Kitty +madly. On the other hand there is the imperative duty to keep faith +with his absent friend; and more than this. His future is full of high +hope; the eyes of his countrymen and of the Governor himself are +beginning to fasten on him as the most promising youth in the island; +it is even likely that he will be made Deemster, and so win back all +the position that his father threw away. But to marry Kitty--even if +he can bring himself to break faith with Pete--will be to marry +beneath him, to repeat his father's disaster, and estrange the favor +of all the high "society" of the island. Therefore, even when the +first line of resistance is broken down by a report that Pete is dead, +Philip determines to cut himself free from the temptation. But the +girl, who feels that he is slipping away from her, now takes fate into +her own hands. It is the day of harvest-home--the "Melliah"--on her +father's farm. Philip has come to put an end to her hopes, and she +knows it. The "Melliah" is cut and the usual frolic begins: + + "Then the young fellows went racing over the field, vaulting the + stooks, stretching a straw rope for the girls to jump over, + heightening and tightening it to trip them up, and slackening it + and twirling it to make them skip. And the girls were falling + with a laugh, and, leaping up again and flying off like the dust, + tearing their frocks and dropping their sun-bonnets as if the + barley-grains they had been reaping had got into their blood. + + "In the midst of this maddening frolic, while Caesar and the + others were kneeling by the barley-stack, Kate snatched Philip's + hat from his head and shot like a gleam into the depths of the + glen. + + "Philip dragged up his coat by one of its arms and fled after + her." + +Here, then, in Sulby Glen, the girl stakes her last throw--the last +throw of every woman--and wins. It is the woman--a truly Celtic +touch--who wooes the man, and secures her love and, in the end, her +shame. + + "When a good woman falls from honour, is it merely that she is + the victim of a momentary intoxication, of stress of passion, of + the fever of instinct? No. It is mainly that she is the slave of + the sweetest, tenderest, most spiritual, and pathetic of all + human fallacies--the fallacy that by giving herself to the man + she loves she attaches him to herself for ever. This is the real + betrayer of nearly all good women that are betrayed. It lies at + the root of tens of thousands of the cases that make up the + merciless story of man's sin and woman's weakness. Alas! it is + only the woman who clings the closer. The impulse of the man is + to draw apart. He must conquer it, or she is lost. Such is the + old cruel difference and inequality of man and woman as Nature + made them--the old trick, the old tragedy." + +And meanwhile Pete is not dead; but recovered, and coming home. + +Here, on p. 125, ends the second act of the drama: and the telling has +been quite masterly. The passage quoted above has hitherto been the +author's solitary comment. Everything has been presented in that fine +objective manner which is the triumph of story-telling. As I read, I +began to say to myself, "This is good"; and in a little while, "Ah, +but this is very good"; and at length, "But this is amazing. If he can +only keep this up, he will have written one of the finest novels of +his time." The whole story was laid out so easily; with such humor, +such apparent carelessness, such an instinct for the right stroke in +the right place, and no more than the right stroke; the big +scenes--Pete's love-making in the dawn and Kate's victory in Sulby +Glen--were so poetically conceived (I use the adverb in its strictest +sense) and so beautifully written; above all, the story remained so +true to the soil on which it was constructed. A sworn admirer of Mr. +Brown's _Betsy Lee_ and _The Doctor_ has no doubt great advantage over +other people in approaching _The Manxman_. Who, that has read his +_Fo'c's'le Yarns_ worthily, can fail to feel kindly towards the little +island and its shy, home-loving folk? And--by what means I do not +know--Mr. Hall Caine has managed from time to time to catch Mr. +Brown's very humor and set it to shine on his page. The secret, I +suppose, is their common possession as Manxmen: and, like all the best +art, theirs is true to its country and its material. + +Pete comes home, suspecting no harm; still childish of heart and loud +of voice--a trifle too loud, by the way; his shouts begin to irritate +the reader, and the reader begins to feel how sorely they must have +irritated his wife: for the unhappy Kate is forced, after all, into +marrying Pete. And so the tragedy begins. + +I wish, with my heart, I could congratulate Mr. Hall Caine as warmly +upon the remainder of the book as upon its first two parts. He is too +sure an artist to miss the solution--the only adequate solution--of +the problem. The purification of Philip Christian and Kitty must come, +if at all, "as by fire"; and Mr. Hall Caine is not afraid to take us +through the deepest fire. No suffering daunts him--neither the anguish +of Kitty, writhing against her marriage with Pete, nor the desperate +pathos of Pete after his wife has run away, pretending to the +neighbors that she has only gone to Liverpool for her health, and +actually writing letters and addressing parcels to himself and posting +them from out-of-the-way towns to deceive the local postman; nor the +moral ruination of Philip, with whom Kitty is living in hiding; nor +his final redemption by the ordeal of a public confession before the +great company assembled to see him reach the height of worldly +ambition and be appointed governor of his native island. + +And yet--I have a suspicion that Mr. Hall Caine, who deals by +preference with the elemental emotions, would rejoice in the epithet +"AEschylean" applied to his work. The epithet would not be unwarranted: +but it is precisely when most consciously AEschylean that Mr. Hall +Caine, in my poor judgment, comes to grief. This is but to say that he +possesses the defects of his qualities. There is altogether too much +of the "Go to: let me be Titanic" about the book. AEschylus has grown a +trifle too well aware of his reputation, has taken to underscoring his +points, and tends to prolixity in consequence. Mr. Hall Caine has not +a little of Hugo's audacity, but, with it, not a little of Hugo's +diffuseness. Standing, like Destiny, with scourge lifted over the +naked backs of his two poor sinners, he spares them no single +stroke--not so much as a little one. Every detail that can possibly +heighten their suffering is brought out in its place, until we feel +that Life, after all, is more careless, and tell ourselves that Fate +does not measure out her revenge with an inch rule. We see the +machinery of pathos at work: and we are rather made incredulous than +moved when the machinery works so accurately that Philip is made to +betray Pete on the very night when Pete goes out to beat a big drum in +Philip's honor. Nor is this by any means the only harrowing +coincidence of the kind. Worse than this--for its effect upon us as a +work of art--our emotions are so flogged and out-tired by detail after +detail that they cannot rise at the last big fence, and so the scene +of Philip's confession in the Courthouse misses half its effect. It is +a fine scene. I am no bigoted admirer of Hawthorne--a very cold one, +indeed--and should be the last to say that the famous scene in _The +Scarlet Letter_ cannot be improved upon. Nor do I make any doubt that, +as originally conceived by Mr. Hall Caine, the story had its duly +effective climax here. But still less do I doubt that the climax, and +therefore the whole story, would have been twice as impressive had the +book, from p. 125 onwards, contained just half its present number of +words. But whether this opinion be right or wrong, the book remains a +big book, and its story a beautiful story. + + + + +MR. ANTHONY HOPE + + +Oct. 27, 1894. "The God in the Car" and "The Indiscretion +of the Duchess." + +As I set down the titles of these two new stories by Mr. Anthony Hope, +it occurs to me that combined they would make an excellent title for a +third story yet to be written. For Mr. Hope's duchess, if by any +chance she found herself travelling with a god in a car, would +infallibly seize the occasion for a _tour de force_ in charming +indiscretion. That the car would travel for some part of the distance +in that position of unstable equilibrium known to skaters as the +"outside edge" may, I think, be taken for granted. But far be it from +me to imagine bungling developments of the situation I here suggest to +Mr. Hope's singular and agreeable talents. Like Mr. Stevenson's +smatterer, who was asked, "What would be the result of putting a pound +of potassium in a pot of porter?" I content myself with anticipating +"that there would probably be a number of interesting bye-products." + +Be it understood that I suggest only a combination of the titles--not +of the two stories as Mr. Hope has written them: for these move on +levels altogether different. The constant reader of _The Speaker's_ +"Causeries" will be familiar with the two propositions--not in the +least contradictory--that a novel should be true to life, and that it +is quite impossible for a novel to be true to life. He will also know +how they are reconciled. A story, of whatever kind, must follow life +at a certain remove. It is a good and consistent story if it keep at +that remove from first till last. Let us have the old tag once more: + + "Servetur ad inum + Qualis ab incepto processerit, et sibi constet." + +A good story and real life are such that, being produced in either +direction and to any extent, they never meet. The distance between the +parallels does not count: or rather, it is just a matter for the +author to choose. It is here that Mr. Howells makes his mistake, who +speaks contemptuously of Romance as _Puss in Boots_. _Puss in Boots_ +is a masterpiece in its way, and in its way just as true to +life--_i.e._, to its distance from life--as that very different +masterpiece _Silas Lapham_. When Mr. Howells objects to the figure of +Vautrin in _Le Pere Goriot_, he criticizes well: Vautrin in that tale +is out of drawing and therefore monstrous. But to bring a similar +objection against Porthos in _Le Vicomte de Bragelonne_ would be very +bad criticism; for it would ignore all the postulates of the story. In +real life Vautrin and Porthos would be equally monstrous: in the +stories Vautrin is monstrous and Porthos is not. + +But though the distance from real life at which an author conducts his +tale is just a matter for his own choice, it usually happens to him +after a while, either from taste or habit, to choose a particular +distance and stick to it, or near it, henceforth in all his writings. +Thus Scott has his own distance, and Jane Austen hers. Balzac, Hugo, +Charlotte Bronte, Dickens, Tolstoi, Mr. Howells himself--all these +have their favorite distances, and all are different and cannot be +confused. But a young writer usually starts in some uncertainty on +this point. He has to find his range, and will quite likely lead off +with a miss or a ricochet, as Mr. Hardy led off with _Desperate +Remedies_ before finding the target with _Under the Greenwood Tree_. +Now Mr. Hope--the application of these profound remarks is coming at +last--being a young writer, hovers in choice between two ranges. He +has found the target with both, and cannot make up his mind between +them: and I for one hope he will keep up his practice at both: for his +experiments are most interesting, and in the course of them he is +giving us capital books. Of the two before me, _The God in the Car_ +belongs to the same class as his earliest work--his _Father Stafford_, +for instance, a novel that did not win one-tenth of the notice it +deserved. It is practice at short range. It moves very close to real +life. Real people, of course, do not converse as briskly and wittily +as do Mr. Hope's characters: but these have nothing of the impossible +in them, and even in the whole business of Omofaga there is nothing +more fantastic than its delightful name. The book is genuinely tragic; +but the tragedy lies rather in what the reader is left to imagine than +in what actually occurs upon the stage. That it never comes to a more +explicit and vulgar issue stands not so much to the credit of the +heroine (as I suppose we must call Mrs. Dennison) as to the force of +circumstances as manipulated in the tactful grasp of Mr. Hope. Nor is +it to be imputed to him for a fault that the critical chapter xvii. +reminds us in half a dozen oddly indirect ways of a certain chapter in +_Richard Feverel_. The place, the situation, the reader's suspense, +are similar; but the actors, their emotions, their purposes are vastly +different. It is a fine chapter, and the page with which it opens is +the worst in the book--a solitary purple patch of "fine writing." I +observe without surprise that the reviewers--whose admiring attention +is seldom caught but by something out of proportion--have been +fastening upon it and quoting it ecstatically. + +_The Indiscretion of the Duchess_ is the tale in Mr. Hope's second +manner--the manner of _The Prisoner of Zenda_. Story for story, it +falls a trifle sort of _The Prisoner of Zenda_. As a set-off, the +telling is firmer, surer, more accomplished. In each an aimless, +superficially cynical, but naturally amiable English gentleman finds +himself casually involved in circumstances which appeal first to his +sportsmanlike love of adventure, and so by degrees to his chivalry, +his sense of honor, and his passions. At first amused, then perplexed, +then nettled, then involved heart and soul, he is left to fight his +way through with the native weapons of his order--courage, tact, +honesty, wit, strength of self-sacrifice, aptitude for affairs. The +_donnee_ of these tales, their spirit, their postulates, are nakedly +romantic. In them the author deliberately lends enchantment to his +view by withdrawing to a convenient distance from real life. But, once +more, the enchantment is everything and the distance nothing. If I +must find fault with the later of the stories, it will not be with its +general extravagance--for extravagance is part of the secret of +Romance--but with the sordid and very nasty Madame Delhasse. She would +be repulsive enough in any case: but as Marie's mother she is +peculiarly repulsive and, let me add, improbable. Nobody looks for +heredity in a tale of this sort: but even in the fairy tales it is +always the heroine's _step_-mother who ends very fitly with a roll +downhill in a barrel full of spikes. + +But great as are the differences between _The God in the Car_ and _The +Indiscretion of the Duchess_--and I ought to say that the former +carries (as it ought) more weight of metal--they have their points of +similarity. Both illustrate conspicuously Mr. Hope's gift of +advancing the action of his story by the sprightly conversation of his +characters. There is a touch of Dumas in their talk, and more than a +touch of Sterne--the Sterne of the _Sentimental Journey_. + + "I beg your pardon, madame," said I, with a whirl of my hat. + + "I beg your pardon, sir," said the lady, with an inclination of + her head. + + "One is so careless in entering rooms hurriedly," I observed. + + "Oh, but it is stupid to stand just by the door!" insisted the + lady. + +To sum up, these are two most entertaining books by one of the writers +for whose next book one searches eagerly in the publishers' lists. If, +however, he will not resent one small word of caution, it is that he +should not let us find his name there too often. As far as we can see, +he cannot write too much for us. But he may very easily write too much +for his own health. + + + + +"TRILBY" + + +Sept. 14, 1895. Hypnotic Fiction. + +A number of people--and I am one--cannot "abide" hypnotism in fiction. +In my own case the dislike has been merely instinctive, and I have +never yet found time to examine the instinct and discover whether or +not it is just and reasonable. The appearance of a one-volume edition +of _Trilby_--undoubtedly the most successful tale that has ever dealt +with hypnotism--and the success of the dramatic version of _Trilby_ +presented a few days ago by Mr. Tree, invite one to apply the test. +Clearly there are large numbers of people who enjoy hypnotic fiction, +or whose prejudices have been effectively subdued by Mr. du Maurier's +tact and talent. Must we then confess that our instinct has been +unjust and unreasonable, and give it up? Or--since we _must_ like +_Trilby_, and there is no help for it--shall we enjoy the tale under +protest and in spite of its hypnotism? + + +Analysis of an Aversion. + +I think my first objection to these hypnotic tales is the terror they +inspire. I am not talking of ordinary human terror, which, of course, +is the basis of much of the best tragedy. We are terrified by the +story of Macbeth; but it is with a rational and a salutary terror. We +are aware all the while that the moral laws are at work. We see a +hideous calamity looming, approaching, imminent: but we can see that +it is the effect of causes which have been duly exhibited to us. We +can reason it out: we know where we stand: our conscience approves the +punishment even while our pity calls out against it. And when the blow +falls, it shakes away none of our belief in the advantages of virtuous +conduct. It leaves the good old impregnable position, "Be virtuous and +you will be happy," stronger than ever. But the terror of these +hypnotic stories resembles that of a child in a dark room. For +artistic reasons too obvious to need pointing out, the hypnotizer in +these stories is always the villain of the piece. For the same or +similar reasons, the "subject" is always a person worthy of our +sympathy, and is usually a woman. Let us suppose it to be a good and +beautiful woman--for that is the commonest case. The gives us to +understand that by hypnotism this good and beautiful woman is for a +while completely in the power of a man who is _ex hypothesi_ a beast, +and who _ex hypothesi_ can make her commit any excesses that his +beastliness may suggest. Obviously we are removed outside the moral +order altogether; and in its place we are presented with a state of +things in which innocence, honesty, love, and the rest are entirely at +the disposal and under the rule of malevolent brutality; the result, +as presented to us, being qualified only by such tact as the author +may choose to display. That Mr. du Maurier has displayed great tact is +extremely creditable to Mr. du Maurier, and might have been predicted +of him. But it does not alter the fact that a form of fiction which +leaves us at the mercy of an author's tact is a very dangerous form in +a world which contains so few Du Mauriers. It is lamentable enough to +have to exclaim--as we must over so much of human history-- + + "Ah! what avails the sceptred race + And what the form divine?..." + +But it must be quite intolerable when a story leaves us demanding, +"What avail native innocence, truthfulness, chastity, when all these +can be changed into guile and uncleanliness at the mere suggestion of +a dirty mesmerist?" + +The answer to this, I suppose, will be, "But hypnotism is a scientific +fact. People can be hypnotized, and are hypnotized. Are you one of +those who would exclude the novelist from this and that field of human +experience?" And then I am quite prepared to hear the old tag, "_Homo +sum_," etc., once more misapplied. + + +Limitation of Hypnotic Fiction. + +Let us distinguish. Hypnotism is a proved fact: people are hypnotized. +Hypnotism is not a delimited fact: nobody yet knows precisely its +conditions or its effects; or, if the discovery has been made, it has +certainly not yet found its way to the novelists. For them it is as +yet chiefly a field of fancy. They invent vagaries for it as they +invent ghosts. And as for the "_humananum nihil a me alienum_" +defence, my strongest objection to hypnotic fiction is its inhumanity. +An experience is not human in the proper artistic sense (with which +alone we are concerned) merely because it has befallen a man or a +woman. There was an Irishman, the other day, who through mere +inadvertence cut off his own head with a scythe. But the story is +rather inhuman than not. Still less right have we to call everything +human which can be supposed by the most liberal stretch of the +imagination to have happened to a man or a woman. A story is only +human in so far as it is governed by the laws which are recognized as +determining human action. Now according as we regard human action, its +two great determinants will be free will or necessity. But hypnotism +entirely does away with free will: and for necessity, fatal or +circumstantial, it substitutes the lawless and irresponsible +imperative of a casual individual man, who (in fiction) usually +happens to be a scoundrel. + +A story may be human even though it discard one or more of the +recognized conditions of human life. Thus in the confessedly +supernatural story of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, the conflict between +the two Jekylls is human enough and morally significant, because it +answers to a conflict which is waged day by day--though as a rule less +tremendously--in the soul of every human being. But the double Trilby +signifies nothing. She is naturally in love with Little Billee: she is +also in love with Svengali, but quite unnaturally and irresponsibly. +There is no real conflict. As Gecko says of Svengali-- + + "He had but to say '_Dors!_' and she suddenly became an + unconscious Trilby of marble, who could produce wonderful + sounds--just the sounds he wanted and nothing else--and think his + thoughts and wish his wishes--and love him at his bidding with a + strange, unreal, factitious love ... just his own love for + himself turned inside out--a l'envers--and reflected back on him + as from a mirror ... un echo, un simulacre, quoi? pas autre + chose!... It was not worth having! I was not even jealous!" + +This last passage, I think, suggests that Mr. du Maurier would have +produced a much less charming story, indeed, but a vastly more +artistic one, had he directed his readers' attention rather upon the +tragedy of Svengali than upon the tragedy of Trilby. For Svengali's +position as complete master of a woman's will and yet unable to call +forth more than a factitious love--"just his own love for himself +turned inside out and reflected back on him as from a mirror"--is a +really tragic one, and a fine variation on the old Frankenstein +_motif_. The tragedy of Frankenstein resides in Frankenstein himself, +not in his creature. + + +An Incongruous Story. + +In short, _Trilby_ seems--as _Peter Ibbetson_ seemed--to fall into two +parts, the natural and supernatural, which will not join. They might +possibly join if Mr. du Maurier had not made the natural so +exceedingly domestic, had he been less successful with the Trilby, and +Little Billee, and Taffy, and the Laird, for all of whom he has taught +us so extravagant a liking. But his very success with these domestic +(if oddly domestic) figures, and with the very domestic tale of Little +Billee's affair of the heart, proves our greatest stumbling-block when +we are invited to follow the machinations of the superlative Svengali. +That the story of Svengali and of Trilby's voice is a good story only +a duffer would deny. So is Gautier's _La Morte Amoureuse_; perhaps the +best story of its kind ever written. But suppose Thackeray had taken +_La Morte Amoureuse_ and tried to write it into _Pendennis!_ + + + + +MR. STOCKTON + + +Sept. 21, 1895. Stevenson's Testimony. + +In his chapter of "Personal Memories," printed in the _Century +Magazine_ of July last, Mr. Gosse speaks of the peculiar esteem in +which Mr. Frank R. Stockton's stories were held by Robert Louis +Stevenson. "When I was going to America to lecture, he was +particularly anxious that I should lay at the feet of Mr. Frank R. +Stockton his homage, couched in the following lines:-- + + My Stockton if I failed to like, + It were a sheer depravity; + For I went down with the 'Thomas Hyke,' + And up with the 'Negative Gravity.' + +He adored these tales of Mr. Stockton's, a taste which must be shared +by all good men." + +It is shared at any rate by some thousands of people on this side of +the Atlantic. Only, one is not quite sure how far their admiration +extends. As far as can be guessed--for I have never come across any +British attempt at a serious appreciation of Mr. Stockton--the +general disposition is to regard him as an amusing kind of "cuss" with +a queer kink in his fancy, who writes puzzling little stories that +make you smile. As for taking him seriously, "why he doesn't even +profess to write seriously"--an absurd objection, of course; but good +enough for the present-day reviewer, who sits up all night in order +that the public may have his earliest possible opinion on the +Reminiscences of Bishop A, or the Personal Recollections of +Field-Marshal B, or a Tour taken in Ireland by the Honorable Mrs. C. +For criticism just now, as a mere matter of business convenience, +provides a relative importance for books before they appear; and in +this classification the space allotted to fiction and labelled +"important" is crowded for the moment with works dealing with +religious or sexual difficulties. Everyone has read _Rudder Grange_, +_The Lady or the Tiger?_ and _A Borrowed Month_; but somehow few +people seem to think of them as subjects for serious criticism. + + +"Classical" qualities. + +And yet these stories are almost classics. That is to say, they have +the classical qualities, and only need time to ripen them into +classics: for nothing but age divides a story of the quality of _The +Lady or the Tiger?_ (for instance) from a story of the quality of _Rip +Van Winkle_. They are full of wit; but the wit never chokes the style, +which is simple and pellucid. Their fanciful postulates being granted, +they are absolutely rational. And they are in a high degree original. +Originality, good temper, good sense, moderation, wit--these are +classical qualities: and he is a rare benefactor who employs them all +for the amusement of the world. + + +A Comparison. + +At first sight it may seem absurd to compare Mr. Stockton with Defoe. +You can scarcely imagine two men with more dissimilar notions of the +value of gracefulness and humor, or with more divergent aims in +writing. Mr. Stockton is nothing if not fanciful, and Defoe is hardly +fanciful at all. Nevertheless in reading one I am constantly reminded +of the other. You must remember Mr. Stockton's habit is to confine his +eccentricities of fancy to the postulates of a tale. He starts with +some wildly unusual--but, as a rule, not impossible--conjuncture of +circumstances. This being granted, however, he deduces his story +logically and precisely, appealing never to our passions and almost +constantly to our common sense. His people are as full of common-sense +as Defoe's. They may have more pluck than the average man or woman, +and they usually have more adaptability; but they apply to +extraordinary circumstances the good unsentimental reasoning of +ordinary life, and usually with the happiest results. The shipwreck of +Mrs. Lecks and Mrs. Aleshine was extraordinary enough, but their +subsequent conduct was rational almost to precision: and in +story-telling rationality does for fancy what economy of emotional +utterances does for emotion. We may apply to Mr. Stockton's tales a +remark which Mr. Saintsbury let fall some years ago upon +dream-literature. He was speaking particularly of Flaubert's +_Tentation de Saint Antoine_:-- + + "The capacities of dreams and hallucinations for literary + treatment are undoubted. But most writers, including even De + Quincey, who have tried this style, have erred, inasmuch as they + have endeavoured to throw a portion of the mystery with which the + waking mind invests dreams over the dream itself. Anyone's + experience is sufficient to show that this is wrong. The events + of dreams as they happen are quite plain and matter-of-fact, and + it is only in the intervals, and, so to speak, the + scene-shifting of dreaming, that any suspicion of strangeness + occurs to the dreamer." + +A dream, however wild, is quite plain and matter-of-fact to the +dreamer; therefore, for verisimilitude, the narrative of a dream +should be quite plain and matter-of-fact. In the same way the narrator +of an extremely fanciful tale should--since verisimilitude is the +first aim of story-telling--attempt to exclude all suspicion of the +unnatural from his reader's mind. And this is only done by persuading +him that no suspicion of the unnatural occurred to the actors in the +story. And this again is best managed by making his characters persons +of sound every-day common sense. "If _these_ are not upset by what +befalls them, why"--is the unconscious inference--"why in the world +should _I_ be upset?" + +So, in spite of the enormous difference between the two writers, there +has been no one since Defoe who so carefully as Mr. Stockton regulates +the actions of his characters by strict common sense. Nor do I at the +moment remember any writer who comes closer to Defoe in mathematical +care for detail. In the case of the True-born Englishman this +carefulness was sometimes overdone--as when he makes Colonel Jack +remember with exactness the lists of articles he stole as a boy, and +their value. In the _Adventures of Captain Horn_ the machinery which +conceals and guards the Peruvian treasure is so elaborately described +that one is tempted to believe Mr. Stockton must have constructed a +working model of it with his own hands before he sat down to write the +book. In a way, this accuracy of detail is part of the common-sense +character of the narrative, and undoubtedly helps the verisimilitude +enormously. + + +A Genuine American. + +But to my mind Mr. Stockton's characters are even more original than +the machinery of his stories. And in their originality they reflect +not only Mr. Stockton himself, but the race from which they and their +author spring. In fact, they seem to me about the most genuinely +American things in American fiction. After all, when one comes to +think of it, Mrs. Lecks and Captain Horn merely illustrate that ready +adaptation of Anglo-Saxon pluck and businesslike common sense to +savage and unusual circumstances which has been the real secret of the +colonization of the North American Continent. Captain Horn's +discovery and winning of the treasure may differ accidentally, but do +not differ in essence, from a thousand true tales of commercial +triumph in the great Central Plain or on the Pacific Slope. And in the +heroine of the book we recognize those very qualities and aptitudes +for which we have all learnt to admire and esteem the American girl. +They are hero and heroine, and so of course we are presented with the +better side of a national character; but then it has been the better +side which has done the business. The bitterest critic of things +American will not deny that Mr. Stockton's characters are typical +Americans, and could not belong to any other nation in the world. Nor +can he deny that they combine sobriety with pluck, and businesslike +behavior with good feeling; that they are as full of honor as of +resource, and as sportsmanlike as sagacious. That people with such +characteristics should be recognizable by us as typical Americans is a +sufficient answer to half the nonsense which is being talked just now +_a propos_ of a recent silly contest for the America Cup. + +Nationality apart, if anyone wants a good stirring story, _Captain +Horn_ is the story for his money. It has loose ends, and the +concluding chapter ties up an end that might well have been left +loose; but if a better story of adventure has been written of late I +wish somebody would tell me its name. + + + + +BOW-WOW + + +August 26, 1893. Dauntless Anthology. + +It is really very difficult to know what to say to Mr. Maynard +Leonard, editor of _The Dog in British Poetry_ (London: David Nutt). +His case is something the same as Archdeacon Farrar's. The critic who +desires amendment in the Archdeacon's prose, and suggests that +something might be done by a study of Butler or Hume or Cobbett or +Newman, is met with the cheerful retort, "But I have studied these +writers, and admire them even more than you do." The position is +impregnable; and the Archdeacon is only asserting that two and two +make four when he goes on to confess that, "with the best will in the +world to profit by the criticisms of his books, he has never profited +in the least by any of them." + +Now, Mr. Leonard has at least this much in common with Archdeacon +Farrar, that before him criticism must sit down with folded hands. In +the lightness of his heart he accepts every fresh argument against +such and such a course as an added reason for following it:-- + + "While this collection of poems was being made," he tells us, "a + well-known author and critic took occasion to gently ridicule + (_sic_) anthologies and anthologists. He suggested, as if the + force of foolishness could no further go, that the next anthology + would deal with dogs." + +"Undismayed by this," to use his own words, Mr. Leonard proceeded to +prove it. Now it is obvious that no man can set a term to literary +activity if it depend on the Briton's notorious unwillingness to +recognize that he is beaten. I might dare, for instance, a Scotsman to +compile an anthology on "The Eel in British Poetry"; but of what avail +is it to challenge an indomitable race? + +I am sorry Mr. Leonard has not given the name of this critic; but have +a notion it must be Mr. Andrew Lang, though I am sure he is innocent +of the split infinitive quoted above. It really ought to be Mr. Lang, +if only for the humor of the means by which Mr. Leonard proposes to +silence him. "I am confident," says he, "that the voice of the great +dog-loving public in this country would drown that of the critic in +question." Mr. Leonard's metaphors, you see, like the dyer's hand, are +subdued to what they work in. But is not the picture delightful? Mr. +Lang, the gentle of speech; who, with his master Walton, "studies to +be quiet"; who tells us in his very latest verse + + "I've maistly had my fill + O' this world's din"-- + +--Mr. Lang set down in the midst of a really representative dog show, +say at Birmingham or the Crystal Palace, and there howled down! His +_blandi susurri_ drowned in the combined clamor of mongrel, puppy, +whelp, and hound, and "the great dog-loving public in this country"! + +"_Solvitur ululando_," hopes Mr. Leonard; and we will wait for the +voice of the great dog-loving public to uplift itself and settle the +question. Here, at any rate, is the book, beautiful in shape, and +printed by the Constables upon sumptuous paper. And the title-page +bears a rubric and a reference to Tobias' dog. "It is no need," says +Wyclif in one of his sermons, "to busy us what hight Tobies' hound"; +but Wyclif had never to reckon with a great dog-loving public. And Mr. +Leonard, having considered his work and dedicated it "To the +Cynics"--which, I suppose, is Greek for "dog-loving public"--observes, +"It is rather remarkable that no one has yet published such a book as +this." Perhaps it is. + +But if we take it for granted (1) that it was worth doing, and (2) +that whatever be worth doing is worth doing well, then Mr. Leonard has +reason for his complacency. "It was never my intention," he says, "to +gather together a complete collection of even British poems about +dogs."--When will _that_ come, I wonder?--"I have sought to secure a +representative rather than an exhaustive anthology." His selections +from a mass of poetry ranging from Homer to Mr. Mallock are judicious. +He is not concerned (he assures us) to defend the poetical merits of +all this verse:-- + + "--O, the wise contentment + Th' anthologist doth find!" + +--but he has provided it with notes--and capital notes they are--with +a magnificent Table of Contents, an Index of Authors, an Index of +First Lines, an Index of Dogs Mentioned by Name in the Poems, and an +Index of the Species of Dogs Mentioned. So that, even if he miss +transportation to an equal sky, the dog has better treatment on earth +than most authors. And Mr. Nutt and the Messrs. Constable have done +their best; and everyone knows how good is that best. And the wonder +is, as Dr. Johnson remarked (concerning a dog, by the way), not that +the thing is done so well, but that it should be done at all. + + + + +OF SEASONABLE NUMBERS: + +_A Baconian Essay_ + + +Dec. 26, 1891. + +That was a Wittie Invective made by _Montaigny_ upon the _Antipodean_, +Who said they must be Thieves that pulled on their breeches when +Honest Folk were scarce abed. So is it Obnoxious to them that purvey +_Christmas Numbers_, _Annuals_, and the like, that they commonly write +under _Sirius_ his star as it were _Capricornus_, feigning to Scate +and Carol and blow warm upon their Fingers, while yet they might be +culling of Strawberries. And all to this end, that Editors may take +the cake. I know One, the Father of a long Family, that will sit a +whole June night without queeching in a Vessell of Refrigerated Water +till he be Ingaged with hard Ice, that the _Publick_ may be docked no +pennyweight of the Sentiments incident to the _Nativity_. For we be +like Grapes, and goe to Press in August. But methinks these rigours do +postulate a _Robur Corporis_ more than ordinary (whereas 'tis but one +in ten if a Novelist overtop in Physique); and besides will often fail +of the effect. As I _myself_ have asked--the Pseudonym being but +gauze-- + + "O! Who can hold a fire in his hand + By thinking on the frosty Caucasus?" + +Yet sometimes, because some things are in kind very Casuall, which if +they escape prove Excellent (as the man who by Inadvertence inherited +the throne of the _Grand Turk_ with all appertayning) so that the kind +is inferiour, being subject to Perill, but that which is Excellent +being proved superiour, as the Blossom of March and the Blossom of +May, whereof the French verse goeth:-- + + "Bourgeon de Mars, enfant de Paris; + Si un eschape, il en vaut dix." + +--so, as I was saying (till the Mischief infected my Protasis), albeit +the gross of writings will moulder between _St. John's_ feast and _St. +Stephen's_, yet, if one survive, 'tis odds he will prove Money in your +Pocket. Therefore I counsel that you preoccupate and tie him, by +Easter at the latest, to _Forty thousand words_, naming a Figure in +excess: for Operation shrinketh all things, as was observed by +Galenus, who said to his Friend, "I will cut off your Leg, and then +you will be lesse by a Foot." Also you will do well to provide a +_Pictura_ in Chromo-Lithography. For the Glaziers like it, and no harm +done if they blush not: which is easily avoided by making it out of a +little Child and a Puppy-dog, or else a Mother, or some such trivial +Accompaniment. But Phryne marrs all. It was even rashly done of that +Editor who issued a Coloured Plate, calling it "_Phryne Behind the +Areopagus_": for though nothing was Seen, the pillars and Grecian +elders intervening, yet 'twas Felt a great pity. And the Fellow ran +for it, saying flimsily:-- + + "Populus me sibilat. At mihi plaudo." + +Whereas I rather praise the dictum of that other writer, who said, "In +this house I had sooner be turned over on the Drawing-room Table than +roll under that in the Dining-room," meaning to reflect on the wine, +but the Hostess took it for a compliment. + +But to speak of the Letter Press. For the Sea you will use Clark +Russell; for the East, Rudyard Kipling; for _Blood_, Haggard; for +neat pastorall Subjects, Thomas Hardy, so he be within Bounds. I +mislike his "Noble Dames." Barrie has a prettier witt; but Besant will +keep in all weathers, and serve as right _Pemmican_. As for conundrums +and poetry, they are but Toys: I have seen as good in crackers; which +we pull, not as meaning to read or guess, but read and guess to cover +the Shame of our Employment. Yet for Conundrums, if you hold the +Answers till your next issue they Raise the Wind among Fools. + +He that hath _Wife and Children_ hath given Hostages to _Little +Folks_: he will hardly redeem but by sacrifice of a Christmas Tree. +The learned Poggius, that had twelve Sons and Daughters, used to note +ruefully that he might never escape but by purchase of a _dozen +Annuals_, citing this to prove how greatly Tastes will diverge among +the Extreamely Young, even though they come of the same geniture. So +will Printed Matter multiply faster than our Parents. Yet 'tis +discutable that this phrensy of _Annuals_ groweth staler by +Recurrence. As that Helvetian lamented, whose Cuckoo-clock failed of +a ready Purchaser, and he had to live with it. "_What Again?_" said +he, and "_Surely Spring is not come yet, dash it?_" Also I cannot +stomach that our Authors portend a Severity of Weather unseasonable in +these Muggy Latitudes. I will eat my Hat if for these twenty +Christmasses I have made six Slides worthy the Mention. Yet I know an +Author that had his _Hero and Heroine_ consent together very prettily; +but 'twas in a _Thaw_, and the Editor being stout, the match was +broken off unblessedly, till a Pact was made that it should indeed be +a Thaw, but sufficient only to let the Heroine drop through the Ice +and be Rescewed. + +Without _Ghosts_, we twiddle thumbs.... + + + + +***END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK ADVENTURES IN CRITICISM*** + + +******* This file should be named 17452.txt or 17452.zip ******* + + +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: +http://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/1/7/4/5/17452 + + + +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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