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diff --git a/21793.txt b/21793.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..55b4803 --- /dev/null +++ b/21793.txt @@ -0,0 +1,5659 @@ +The Project Gutenberg eBook, Obiter Dicta, by Augustine Birrell + + +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: Obiter Dicta + Second Series + + +Author: Augustine Birrell + + + +Release Date: June 10, 2007 [eBook #21793] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ISO-646-US (US-ASCII) + + +***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK OBITER DICTA*** + + + + +Transcribed from the 1896 Elliot Stock edition by David Price, email +ccx074@pglaf.org + + + + + +OBITER DICTA. +_SECOND SERIES_. + + +BY +AUGUSTINE BIRRELL. + +_Cheap Edition_. + +LONDON: +ELLIOT STOCK, 62, PATERNOSTER ROW. +1896. + + + + +PREFACE. + + +I am sorry not to have been able to persuade my old friend, George +Radford, who wrote the paper on 'Falstaff' in the former volume, to +contribute anything to the second series of _Obiter Dicta_. In order to +enjoy the pleasure of reading your own books over and over again, it is +essential that they should be written either wholly or in part by +somebody else. + +Critics will probably be found ready to assert that this little book has +no right to exist, since it exhibits nothing worthy of the name of +research, being written by one who has never been inside the reading-room +of the British Museum. Neither does it expound any theory, save the +unworthy one that literature ought to please; nor does it so much as +introduce any new name or forgotten author to the attention of what is +facetiously called 'the reading public.' + +But I shall be satisfied with a mere _de facto_ existence for the book, +if only it prove a little interesting to men and women who, called upon +to pursue, somewhat too rigorously for their liking, their daily duties, +are glad, every now and again, when their feet are on the fender, and +they are surrounded by such small luxuries as their theories of life will +allow them to enjoy, to be reminded of things they once knew more +familiarly than now, of books they once had by heart, and of authors they +must ever love. + +The first two papers are here printed for the first time; the others have +been so treated before, and now reappear, pulled about a little, with the +kind permission of the proper parties. + +3, NEW SQUARE, LINCOLN'S INN. +_April_, 1887. + + + + +JOHN MILTON. + + +It is now more than sixty years ago since Mr. Carlyle took occasion to +observe, in his Life of Schiller, that, except the Newgate Calendar, +there was no more sickening reading than the biographies of authors. + +Allowing for the vivacity of the comparison, and only remarking, with +reference to the Newgate Calendar, that its compilers have usually been +very inferior wits, in fact attorneys, it must be owned that great +creative and inventive genius, the most brilliant gifts of bright fancy +and happy expression, and a glorious imagination, well-nigh seeming as if +it must be inspired, have too often been found most unsuitably lodged in +ill-living and scandalous mortals. Though few things, even in what is +called Literature, are more disgusting than to hear small critics, who +earn their bite and sup by acting as the self-appointed showmen of the +works of their betters, heaping terms of moral opprobrium upon those +whose genius is, if not exactly a lamp unto our feet, at all events a joy +to our hearts,--still, not even genius can repeal the Decalogue, or re- +write the sentence of doom, 'He which is filthy, let him be filthy +still.' It is therefore permissible to wish that some of our great +authors had been better men. + +It is possible to dislike John Milton. Men have been found able to do +so, and women too; amongst these latter his daughters, or one of them at +least, must even be included. But there is nothing sickening about his +biography, for it is the life of one who early consecrated himself to the +service of the highest Muses, who took labour and intent study as his +portion, who aspired himself to be a noble poem, who, Republican though +he became, is what Carlyle called him, the moral king of English +literature. + +Milton was born in Bread Street, Cheapside, on the 9th of December, 1608. +This is most satisfactory, though indeed what might have been expected. +There is a notable disposition nowadays, amongst the meaner-minded +provincials, to carp and gird at the claims of London to be considered +the mother-city of the Anglo-Saxon race, to regret her pre-eminence, and +sneer at her fame. In the matters of municipal government, gas, water, +fog, and snow, much can be alleged and proved against the English +capital, but in the domain of poetry, which I take to be a nation's best +guaranteed stock, it may safely be said that there are but two shrines in +England whither it is necessary for the literary pilgrim to carry his +cockle hat and shoon--London, the birthplace of Chaucer, Spenser, Ben +Jonson, Milton, Herrick, Pope, Gray, Blake, Keats, and Browning, and +Stratford-upon-Avon, the birthplace of Shakespeare. Of English poets it +may be said generally they are either born in London or remote country +places. The large provincial towns know them not. Indeed, nothing is +more pathetic than the way in which these dim, destitute places hug the +memory of any puny whipster of a poet who may have been born within their +statutory boundaries. This has its advantages, for it keeps alive in +certain localities fames that would otherwise have utterly perished. +Parnassus has forgotten all about poor Henry Kirke White, but the lace +manufacturers of Nottingham still name him with whatever degree of +reverence they may respectively consider to be the due of letters. +Manchester is yet mindful of Dr. John Byrom. Liverpool clings to Roscoe. + +Milton remained faithful to his birth-city, though, like many another +Londoner, when he was persecuted in one house he fled into another. From +Bread Street he moved to St. Bride's Churchyard, Fleet Street; from Fleet +Street to Aldersgate Street; from Aldersgate Street to the Barbican; from +the Barbican to the south side of Holborn; from the south side of Holborn +to what is now called York Street, Westminster; from York Street, +Westminster, to the north side of Holborn; from the north side of Holborn +to Jewin Street; from Jewin Street to his last abode in Bunhill Fields. +These are not vain repetitions if they serve to remind a single reader +how all the enchantments of association lie about him. Englishwomen have +been found searching about Florence for the street where George Eliot +represents Romola as having lived, who have admitted never having been to +Jewin Street, where the author of _Lycidas_ and _Paradise Lost_ did in +fact live. + +Milton's father was the right kind of father, amiable, accomplished, and +well-to-do. He was by business what was then called a scrivener, a term +which has received judicial interpretation, and imported a person who +arranged loans on mortgage, receiving a commission for so doing. The +poet's mother, whose baptismal name was Sarah (his father was, like +himself, John), was a lady of good extraction, and approved excellence +and virtue. We do not know very much about her, for the poet was one of +those rare men of genius who are prepared to do justice to their fathers. +Though Sarah Milton did not die till 1637, she only knew her son as the +author of _Comus_, though it is surely a duty to believe that no son +would have poems like _L'Allegro_ and _Il Penseroso_ in his desk, and not +at least once produce them and read them aloud to his mother. These +poems, though not published till 1645, were certainly composed in his +mother's life. She died before the troubles began, the strife and +contention in which her well-graced son, the poet, the dreamer of all +things beautiful and cultured, the author of the glancing, tripping +measure-- + + 'Haste thee, nymph, and bring with thee + Jest and youthful jollity'-- + +was destined to take a part, so eager and so fierce, and for which he was +to sacrifice twenty years of a poet's life. + +The poet was sent to St. Paul's School, where he had excellent teaching +of a humane and expanding character, and he early became, what he +remained until his sight left him, a strenuous reader and a late student. + + 'Or let my lamp at midnight hour + Be seen on some high, lonely tower, + Where I may oft outwatch the Bear.' + +Whether the maid who was told off by the elder Milton to sit up till +twelve or one o'clock in the morning for this wonderful Pauline realized +that she was a kind of doorkeeper in the house of genius, and blessed +accordingly, is not known, and may be doubted. When sixteen years old +Milton proceeded to Christ's College, Cambridge, where his memory is +still cherished; and a mulberry-tree, supposed in some way to be his, +rather unkindly kept alive. Milton was not a submissive pupil; in fact, +he was never a submissive anything, for there is point in Dr. Johnson's +malicious remark, that man in Milton's opinion was born to be a rebel, +and woman a slave. + +But in most cases, at all events, the rebel did well to be rebellious, +and perhaps he was never so entirely in the right as when he protested +against the slavish traditions of Cambridge educational methods in 1625. + +Universities must, however, at all times prove disappointing places to +the young and ingenuous soul, who goes up to them eager for literature, +seeing in every don a devotee to intellectual beauty, and hoping that +lectures will, by some occult process--the _genius loci_--initiate him +into the mysteries of taste and the storehouses of culture. And then the +improving conversation, the flashing wit, the friction of mind with +mind,--these are looked for, but hardly found; and the young scholar +groans in spirit, and perhaps does as Milton did--quarrels with his +tutor. But if he is wise he will, as Milton also did, make it up again, +and get the most that he can from his stony-hearted stepmother before the +time comes for him to bid her his _Vale vale et aeternum vale_. + +Milton remained seven years at Cambridge--from 1625 to 1632--from his +seventeenth to his twenty-fourth year. Any intention or thought he ever +may have had of taking orders he seems early to have rejected with a +characteristic scorn. He considered a state of subscription to articles +a state of slavery, and Milton was always determined, whatever else he +was or might become, to be his own man. Though never in sympathy with +the governing tone of the place, there is no reason to suppose that +Milton (any more than others) found this lack seriously to interfere with +a fair amount of good solid enjoyment from day to day. He had friends +who courted his society, and pursuits both grave and gay to occupy his +hours of study and relaxation. He was called the 'Lady' of his college, +on account of his personal beauty and the purity and daintiness of his +life and conversation. + +After leaving Cambridge Milton began his life, so attractive to one's +thoughts, at Horton, in Buckinghamshire, where his father had a house in +which his mother was living. Here, for five years, from his +twenty-fourth to his twenty-ninth year--a period often stormy in the +lives of poets--he continued his work of self-education. Some of his +Cambridge friends appear to have grown a little anxious, on seeing one +who had distinction stamped upon his brow, doing what the world calls +nothing; and Milton himself was watchful, and even suspicious. His +second sonnet records this state of feeling: + + 'How soon hath Time, the subtle thief of youth, + Stolen on his wing my three-and-twentieth year! + My hasting days fly on with full career, + But my late spring no bud or blossom shew'th.' + +And yet no poet had ever a more beautiful springtide, though it was +restless, as spring should be, with the promise of greater things and +'high midsummer pomps.' These latter it was that were postponed almost +too long. + +Milton at Horton made up his mind to be a great poet--neither more nor +less; and with that end in view he toiled unceasingly. A more solemn +dedication of a man by himself to the poetical office cannot be imagined. +Everything about him became, as it were, pontifical, almost sacramental. +A poet's soul must contain the perfect shape of all things good, wise, +and just. His body must be spotless and without blemish, his life pure, +his thoughts high, his studies intense. There was no drinking at the +'Mermaid' for John Milton. His thoughts, like his joys, were not those +that + + 'are in widest commonalty spread.' + +When in his walks he met the Hodge of his period, he is more likely to +have thought of a line in Virgil than of stopping to have a chat with the +poor fellow. He became a student of the Italian language, and writes to +a friend: 'I who certainly have not merely wetted the tip of my lips in +the stream of these (the classical) languages, but in proportion to my +years have swallowed the most copious draughts, can yet sometimes retire +with avidity and delight to feast on Dante, Petrarch, and many others; +nor has Athens itself been able to confine me to the transparent waves of +its Ilissus, nor ancient Rome to the banks of its Tiber, so as to prevent +my visiting with delight the streams of the Arno and the hills of +Faesolae.' + +Now it was that he, in his often-quoted words written to the young +Deodati, doomed to an early death, was meditating 'an immortality of +fame,' letting his wings grow and preparing to fly. But dreaming though +he ever was of things to come, none the less, it was at Horton he +composed _Comus_, _Lycidas_, _L'Allegro_, and _Il Penseroso_, poems which +enable us half sadly to realize how much went and how much was sacrificed +to make the author of _Paradise Lost_. + +After five years' retirement Milton began to feel the want of a little +society, of the kind that is 'quiet, wise, and good,' and he meditated +taking chambers in one of the Inns of Court, where he could have a +pleasant and shady walk under 'immemorial elms,' and also enjoy the +advantages of a few choice associates at home and an elegant society +abroad. The death of his mother in 1637 gave his thoughts another +direction, and he obtained his father's permission to travel to Italy, +'that woman-country, wooed not wed,' which has been the mistress of so +many poetical hearts, and was so of John Milton's. His friends and +relatives saw but one difficulty in the way. John Milton the younger, +though not at this time a Nonconformist, was a stern and unbending +Protestant, and was as bitter an opponent of His Holiness the Pope as he +certainly would have been, had his days been prolonged, of His Majesty +the Pretender. + +There is something very characteristic in this almost inflamed hostility +in the case of a man with such love of beauty and passion for +architecture and music as always abided in Milton, and who could write: + + 'But let my due feet never fail + To walk the studious cloisters' pale, + And love the high embowed roof, + With antique pillars massy-proof, + And storied windows richly dight, + Casting a dim, religious light. + There let the pealing organ blow + To the full-voiced quire below, + In service high and anthems clear, + As may with sweetness, through mine ear, + Dissolve me into ecstasies, + And bring all heaven before my eyes.' + +Here surely is proof of an aesthetic nature beyond most of our modern +raptures; but none the less, and at the very same time, Rome was for +Milton the 'grim wolf' who, 'with privy paw, daily devours apace.' It is +with a sigh of sad sincerity that Dr. Newman admits that Milton breathes +through his pages a hatred of the Catholic Church, and consequently the +Cardinal feels free to call him a proud and rebellious creature of God. +That Milton was both proud and rebellious cannot be disputed. +Nonconformists need not claim him for their own with much eagerness. What +he thought of Presbyterians we know, and he was never a church member, or +indeed a church-goer. Dr. Newman has admitted that the poet Pope was an +unsatisfactory Catholic; Milton was certainly an unsatisfactory +Dissenter. Let us be candid in these matters. Milton was therefore +bidden by his friends, and by those with whom he took counsel, to hold +his peace whilst in Rome about the 'grim wolf,' and he promised to do so, +adding, however, the Miltonic proviso that this was on condition that the +Papists did not attack his religion first. 'If anyone,' he wrote, 'in +the very city of the Pope attacked the orthodox religion, I defended it +most freely.' To call the Protestant religion, which had not yet +attained to its second century, the orthodox religion under the shadow of +the Vatican was to have the courage of his opinions. But Milton was not +a man to be frightened of schism. That his religious opinions should be +peculiar probably seemed to him to be almost inevitable, and not +unbecoming. He would have agreed with Emerson, who declares that would +man be great he must be a Nonconformist. + +There is something very fascinating in the records we have of Milton's +one visit to the Continent. A more impressive Englishman never left our +shores. Sir Philip Sidney perhaps approaches him nearest. Beautiful +beyond praise, and just sufficiently conscious of it to be careful never +to appear at a disadvantage, dignified in manners, versed in foreign +tongues, yet full of the ancient learning--a gentleman, a scholar, a +poet, a musician, and a Christian--he moved about in a leisurely manner +from city to city, writing Latin verses for his hosts and Italian sonnets +in their ladies' albums, buying books and music, and creating, one cannot +doubt, an all too flattering impression of an English Protestant. To +travel in Italy with Montaigne or Milton, or Evelyn or Gray, or Shelley, +or, pathetic as it is, with the dying Sir Walter, is perhaps more +instructive than to go there for yourself with a tourist's ticket. Old +Montaigne, who was but forty-seven when he made his journey, and whom +therefore I would not call old had not Pope done so before me, is the +most delightful of travelling companions, and as easy as an old shoe. A +humaner man than Milton, a wiser man than Evelyn--with none of the +constraint of Gray, or the strange, though fascinating, outlandishness of +Shelley--he perhaps was more akin to Scott than any of the other +travellers; but Scott went to Italy an overwhelmed man, whose only fear +was he might die away from the heather and the murmur of Tweed. However, +Milton is the most improving companion of them all, and amidst the +impurities of Italy, 'in all the places where vice meets with so little +discouragement, and is protected with so little shame,' he remained the +Milton of Cambridge and Horton, and did nothing to pollute the pure +temple of a poet's mind. He visited Paris, Nice, Genoa, Pisa, and +Florence, staying in the last city two months, and living on terms of +great intimacy with seven young Italians, whose musical names he duly +records. These were the months of August and September, not nowadays +reckoned safe months for Englishmen to be in Florence--modern lives being +raised in price. From Florence he proceeded through Siena to Rome, where +he also stayed two months. There he was present at a magnificent +entertainment given by the Cardinal Francesco Barberini in his palace, +and heard the singing of the celebrated Leonora Baroni. It is not for +one moment to be supposed that he sought an interview with the Pope, as +Montaigne had done, who was exhorted by His Holiness 'to persevere in the +devotion he had ever manifested in the cause of the Church;' and yet +perhaps Montaigne by his essays did more to sap the authority of Peter's +chair than Milton, however willing, was able to do. + +It has been remarked that Milton's chief enthusiasm in Italy was not art, +but music, which falls in with Coleridge's _dictum_, that Milton is not +so much a picturesque as a musical poet--meaning thereby, I suppose, that +the effects which he produces and the scenes which he portrays are rather +suggested to us by the rhythm of his lines than by actual verbal +descriptions. From Rome Milton went to Naples, whence he had intended to +go to Sicily and Greece; but the troubles beginning at home he forewent +this pleasure, and consequently never saw Athens, which was surely a +great pity. He returned to Rome, where, troubles or no troubles, he +stayed another two months. From Rome he went back to Florence, which he +found too pleasant to leave under two more months. Then he went to +Lucca, and so to Venice, where he was very stern with himself, and only +lingered a month. From Venice he went to Milan, and then over the Alps +to Geneva, where he had dear friends. He was back in London in August, +1639, after an absence of fifteen months. + +The times were troubled enough. Charles I., whose literary taste was so +good that one must regret the mischance that placed a crown upon his +comely head, was trying hard, at the bidding of a priest, to thrust +Episcopacy down Scottish throats, who would not have it at any price. He +was desperately in need of money, and the House of Commons (which had +then a _raison d'etre_) was not prepared to give him any except on terms. +Altogether it was an exciting time, but Milton was in no way specially +concerned in it. Milton looms so large in our imagination amongst the +figures of the period that, despite Dr. Johnson's sneers, we are apt to +forget his political insignificance, and to fancy him curtailing his tour +and returning home to take his place amongst the leaders of the +Parliament men. Return home he did, but it was, as another pedagogue has +reminded us, to receive boys 'to be boarded and instructed.' Dr. Johnson +tells us that we ought not to allow our veneration for Milton to rob us +of a joke at the expense of a man 'who hastens home because his +countrymen are contending for their liberty, and when he reaches the +scene of action vapours away his patriotism in a private +boarding-school;' but that this observation was dictated by the good +Doctor's spleen is made plain by his immediately proceeding to point out, +with his accustomed good sense, that there is really nothing to laugh at, +since it was desirable that Milton, whose father was alive and could only +make him a small allowance, should do something, and there was no shame +in his adopting an honest and useful employment. + +To be a Parliament man was no part of the ambition of one who still +aspired to be a poet; who was not yet blind to the heavenly vision; who +was still meditating what should be his theme, and who in the meantime +chastised his sister's sons, unruly lads, who did him no credit and bore +him no great love. + +The Long Parliament met in November, 1640, and began its work--brought +Strafford to the scaffold, clapped Laud into the Tower, Archbishop though +he was, and secured as best they could the permanency of Parliamentary +institutions. None of these things specially concerned John Milton. But +there also uprose the eternal Church question, 'What sort of Church are +we to have?' The fierce controversy raged, and 'its fair enticing +fruit,' spread round 'with liberal hand,' proved too much for the father +of English epic. + + 'He scrupled not to eat + Against his better knowledge.' + +In other words, he commenced pamphleteer, and between May, 1641, and the +following March he had written five pamphlets against Episcopacy, and +used an intolerable deal of bad language, which, however excusable in a +heated controversialist, ill became the author of _Comus_. + +The war broke out in 1642, but Milton kept house. The 'tented field' had +no attractions for him. + +In the summer of 1643 he took a sudden journey into the country, and +returned home to his boys with a wife, the daughter of an Oxfordshire +Cavalier. Poor Mary Powell was but seventeen, her poetic lord was thirty- +five. From the country-house of a rollicking squire to Aldersgate Street +was somewhat too violent a change. She had left ten brothers and sisters +behind her, the eldest twenty-one, the youngest four. As one looks upon +this picture and on that, there is no need to wonder that the poor girl +was unhappy. The poet, though keenly alive to the subtle charm of a +woman's personality, was unpractised in the arts of daily companionship. +He expected to find much more than he brought of general good-fellowship. +He had an ideal ever in his mind of both bodily and spiritual excellence, +and he was almost greedy to realize both, but he knew not how. One of +his complaints was that his wife was mute and insensate, and sat silent +at his board. It must, no doubt, have been deadly dull, that house in +Aldersgate Street. Silence reigned, save when broken by the cries of the +younger Phillips sustaining chastisement. Milton had none of that noble +humanitarian spirit which had led Montaigne long years before him to +protest against the cowardly traditions of the schoolroom. After a month +of Aldersgate Street, Mrs. Milton begged to go home. Her wish was +granted, and she ran back to her ten brothers and sisters, and when her +leave of absence was up refused to return. Her husband was furiously +angry; and in a time so short as almost to enforce the belief that he +began the work during the honeymoon, was ready with his celebrated +pamphlet, _The Doctrine and Discipline of Divorce restored to the good of +both sexes_. He is even said, with his accustomed courage, to have paid +attentions to a Miss Davis, who is described as a very handsome and witty +gentlewoman, and therefore not one likely to sit silent at his board; but +she was a sensible girl as well, and had no notion of a married suitor. +Of Milton's pamphlet it is everyone's duty to speak with profound +respect. It is a noble and passionate cry for a high ideal of married +life, which, so he argued, had by inflexible laws been changed into a +drooping and disconsolate household captivity, without refuge or +redemption. He shuddered at the thought of a man and woman being +condemned, for a mistake of judgment, to be bound together to their +unspeakable wearisomeness and despair, for, he says, not to be beloved +and yet retained is the greatest injury to a gentle spirit. Our present +doctrine of divorce, which sets the household captive free on payment of +a broken vow, but on no less ignoble terms, is not founded on the +congruous, and is indeed already discredited, if not disgraced. + +This pamphlet on divorce marks the beginning of Milton's mental +isolation. Nobody had a word to say for it. Episcopalian, Presbyterian, +and Independent held his doctrine in as much abhorrence as did the +Catholic, and all alike regarded its author as either an impracticable +dreamer or worse. It was written certainly in too great haste, for his +errant wife, actuated by what motives cannot now be said, returned to her +allegiance, was mindful of her plighted troth, and, suddenly entering his +room, fell at his feet and begged to be forgiven. She was only nineteen, +and she said it was all her mother's fault. Milton was not a sour man, +and though perhaps too apt to insist upon repentance preceding +forgiveness, yet when it did so he could forgive divinely. In a very +short time the whole family of Powells, whom the war had reduced to low +estate, were living under his roof in the Barbican, whither he moved on +the Aldersgate house proving too small for his varied belongings. The +poet's father also lived with his son. + +Mrs. Milton had four children, three of whom, all daughters, lived to +grow up. The mother died in childbirth in 1652, being then twenty-six +years of age. + +The _Areopagitica_, _a Speech for Unlicensed Printing_, followed the +divorce pamphlet, but it also fell upon deaf ears. Of all religious +sects the Presbyterians, who were then dominant, are perhaps the least +likely to forego the privilege of interference in the affairs of others. +Instead of the Archbishop of Canterbury and the Bishop of London, instead +of 'a lordly Imprimatur, one from Lambeth House, another from the west +end of Paul's,' there was appointed a commission of twenty Presbyterians +to act as State Licensers. Then was Milton's soul stirred within him to +a noble rage. His was a threefold protest--as a citizen of a State he +fondly hoped had been free, as an author, and as a reader. As a citizen +he protested against so unnecessary and improper an interference. It is +not, he cried, 'the unfrocking of a priest, the unmitring of a bishop, +that will make us a happy nation,' but the practice of virtue, and virtue +means freedom to choose. Milton was a manly politician, and detested +with his whole soul grandmotherly legislation. 'He who is not trusted +with his own actions, his drift not being known to be evil, and standing +to the hazard of law and penalty, has no great argument to think himself +reputed in the commonwealth wherein he was born, for other than a fool or +a foreigner.' 'They are not skilful considerers of human things who +imagine to remove sin by removing the matter of sin.' 'And were I the +chooser, a dram of well-doing should be preferred before many times as +much the forcible hindrance of evil doing.' These are texts upon which +sermons, not inapplicable to our own day, might be preached. Milton has +made our first parent so peculiarly his own, that any observations of his +about Adam are interesting. 'Many there be that complain of Divine +Providence for suffering Adam to transgress. Foolish tongues! When God +gave him reason He gave him freedom to choose, for reason is but +choosing; he had been else a mere artificial Adam. We ourselves esteem +not of that obedience a love or gift which is of force. God therefore +left him free, set before him a provoking object ever almost in his eyes; +herein consisted his merit, herein the right of his reward, the praise of +his abstinence.' So that according to Milton even Eden was a state of +trial. As an author, Milton's protest has great force. 'And what if the +author shall be one so copious of fancy as to have many things well worth +the adding come into his mind after licensing, while the book is yet +under the press, which not seldom happens to the best and diligentest +writers, and that perhaps a dozen times in one book? The printer dares +not go beyond his licensed copy. So often then must the author trudge to +his leave-giver that those his new insertions may be viewed, and many a +jaunt will be made ere that licenser--for it must be the same man--can +either be found, or found at leisure; meanwhile either the press must +stand still, which is no small damage, or the author lose his accuratest +thoughts, and send forth the book worse than he made it, which to a +diligent writer is the greatest melancholy and vexation that can befall.' + +Milton would have had no licensers. Every book should bear the printer's +name, and 'mischievous and libellous books' were to be burnt by the +common hangman, not as an effectual remedy, but as the 'most effectual +remedy man's prevention can use.' + +The noblest pamphlet in 'our English, the language of men ever famous and +foremost in the achievements of liberty,' accomplished nothing, and its +author must already have thought himself fallen on evil days. + +In the year 1645, the year of Naseby, as Mr. Pattison reminds us, +appeared the first edition of Milton's Poems. Then, for the first time, +were printed _L'Allegro_ and _Il Penseroso_, the _Ode on the Morning of +Christ's Nativity_, and various of the sonnets. The little volume also +contained _Comus_ and _Lycidas_, which had been previously printed. With +the exception of three sonnets and a few scraps of translation, Milton +had written nothing but pamphlets since his return from Italy. At the +beginning of the volume, which is a small octavo, was a portrait of the +poet, most villainously executed. He was really thirty-seven, but +flattered himself, as men of that age will, that he looked ten years +younger; he was therefore much chagrined to find himself represented as a +grim-looking gentleman of at least fifty. The way he revenged himself +upon the hapless artist is well known. The volume, with the portrait, is +now very scarce, almost rare. + +In 1647 Milton removed from the Barbican, both his father and his father- +in-law being dead, to a smaller house in Holborn, backing upon Lincoln's +Inn Fields, close to where the Inns of Court Hotel now stands, and not +far from the spot which was destined to witness the terrible tragedy +which was at once to darken and glorify the life of one of Milton's most +fervent lovers, Charles Lamb. About this time he is supposed to have +abandoned pedagogy. The habit of pamphleteering stuck to him; indeed, it +is one seldom thrown off. It is much easier to throw off the pamphlets. + +In 1649 Milton became a public servant, receiving the appointment of +Latin Secretary to the Council of Foreign Affairs. He knew some member +of the Committee, who obtained his nomination. His duties were purely +clerkly. It was his business to translate English despatches into Latin, +and foreign despatches into English. He had nothing whatever to do with +the shaping of the foreign policy of the Commonwealth. He was not even +employed in translating the most important of the State papers. There is +no reason for supposing that he even knew the leading politicians of his +time. There is a print one sees about, representing Oliver Cromwell +dictating a foreign despatch to John Milton; but it is all imagination, +nor is there anything to prove that Cromwell and Milton, the body and +soul of English Republicanism, were ever in the same room together, or +exchanged words with one another. Milton's name does not occur in the +great history of Lord Clarendon. Whitelocke, who was the leading member +of the Committee which Milton served, only mentions him once. Thurloe +spoke of him as a blind man who wrote Latin letters. Richard Baxter, in +his folio history of his Life and Times, never mentions Milton at all. +{27} He was just a clerk in the service of the Commonwealth, of a +scholarly bent, peculiar habit of thought, and somewhat of an odd temper. +He was not the man to cultivate great acquaintances, or to flitter away +his time waiting the convenience of other people. When once asked to use +his influence to obtain for a friend an appointment, he replied he had no +influence, '_propter paucissimas familiaritates meas cum gratiosis_, _qui +domi fere_, _idque libenter_, _me contineo_.' The busy great men of the +day would have been more than astonished, they would have been disgusted, +had they been told that posterity would refer to most of them +compendiously, as having lived in the age of Milton. But this need not +trouble us. + +On the Continent Milton enjoyed a wider reputation, on account of his +controversy with the great European scholar, Salmasius, on the +sufficiently important and interesting, and then novel, subject of the +execution of Charles I. Was it justifiable? Salmasius, a scholar and a +Protestant, though of an easy-going description, was employed, or rather, +as he had no wages (Milton's hundred _Jacobuses_ being fictitious), +nominated by Charles, afterwards the Second, to indict the regicides at +the bar of European opinion, which accordingly he did in the Latin +language. The work reached this country in the autumn of 1649, and it +evidently became the duty of somebody to answer it. Two qualifications +were necessary--the replier must be able to read Latin, and to write it +after a manner which should escape the ridicule of the scholars of +Leyden, Geneva, and Paris. Milton occurred to somebody's mind, and the +task was entrusted to him. It is not to be supposed that Cromwell was +ever at the pains to read Salmasius for himself, but still it would not +have done to have it said that the _Defensio Regia_ of so celebrated a +scholar as Salmasius remained unanswered, and so the appointment was +confirmed, and Milton, no new hand at a pamphlet, set to work. In March, +1651, his first _Defence of the English People_ was in print. In this +great pamphlet Milton asserts, as against the doctrine of the divine +right of kings, the undisputed sovereignty of the people; and he +maintains the proposition that, as well by the law of God, as by the law +of nations, and the law of England, a king of England may be brought to +trial and death, the people being discharged from all obligations of +loyalty when a lawful prince becomes a tyrant, or gives himself over to +sloth and voluptuousness. This noble argument, alike worthy of the man +and the occasion, is doubtless over-clouded and disfigured by personal +abuse of Salmasius, whose relations with his wife had surely as little to +do with the head of Charles I. as had poor Mr. Dick's memorial. +Salmasius, it appears, was henpecked, and to allow yourself to be +henpecked was, in Milton's opinion, a high crime and misdemeanour against +humanity, and one which rendered a man infamous, and disqualified him +from taking part in debate. + +It has always been reported that Salmasius, who was getting on in years, +and had many things to trouble him besides his own wife, perished in the +effort of writing a reply to Milton, in which he made use of language +quite as bad as any of his opponent's; but it now appears that this is +not so. Indeed, it is generally rash to attribute a man's death to a +pamphlet, or an article, either of his own or anybody else's. + +Salmasius, however, died, though from natural causes, and his reply was +not published till after the Restoration, when the question had become, +what it has ever since remained, academical. + +Other pens were quicker, and to their productions Milton, in 1654, +replied with his _Second Defence of the English People_, a tract +containing autobiographical details of immense interest and charm. By +this time he was totally blind, though, with a touch of that personal +sensitiveness ever characteristic of him, he is careful to tell Europe, +in the _Second Defence_, that externally his eyes were uninjured, and +shone with an unclouded light. + +Milton's _Defences of the English People_ are rendered provoking by his +extraordinary language concerning his opponents. 'Numskull,' 'beast,' +'fool,' 'puppy,' 'knave,' 'ass,' 'mongrel-cur,' are but a few of the +epithets employed. This is doubtless mere matter of pleading, a rule of +the forum where controversies between scholars are conducted; but for +that very reason it makes the pamphlets as provoking to an ordinary +reader as an old bill of complaint in Chancery must have been to an +impatient suitor who wanted his money. The main issues, when cleared of +personalities, are important enough, and are stated by Milton with great +clearness. 'Our king made not us, but we him. Nature has given fathers +to us all, but we ourselves appointed our own king; so that the people is +not for the king, but the king for them.' It was made a matter of great +offence amongst monarchs and monarchical persons that Charles was subject +to the indignity of a trial. With murders and poisonings kings were long +familiar. These were part of the perils of the voyage, for which they +were prepared, but, as Salmasius put it, 'for a king to be arraigned in a +court of judicature, to be put to plead for his life, to have sentence of +death pronounced against him, and that sentence executed,'--oh! horrible +impiety. To this Milton replies: 'Tell me, thou superlative fool, +whether it be not more just, more agreeable to the rules of humanity and +the laws of all human societies, to bring a criminal, be his offence what +it will, before a court of justice, to give him leave to speak for +himself, and if the law condemns him, then to put him to death as he has +deserved, so as he may have time to repent or to recollect himself; than +presently, as soon as ever he is taken, to butcher him without more ado?' + +But a king of any spirit would probably answer that he preferred to have +his despotism tempered by assassination than by the mercy of a court of +John Miltons. To which answer Milton would have rejoined, 'Despotism, I +know you not, since we are as free as any people under heaven.' + +The weakest part in Milton's case is his having to admit that the +Parliament was overawed by the army, which he says was wiser than the +senators. + +Milton's address to his countrymen, with which he concludes the first +defence, is veritably in his grand style: + + 'He has gloriously delivered you, the first of nations, from the two + greatest mischiefs of this life--tyranny and superstition. He has + endued you with greatness of mind to be First of Mankind, who after + having confined their own king and having had him delivered into their + hands, have not scrupled to condemn him judicially, and pursuant to + that sentence of condemnation to put him to death. After performing + so glorious an action as this, you ought to do nothing that's mean and + little; you ought not to think of, much less do, anything but what is + great and sublime. Which to attain to, this is your only way: as you + have subdued your enemies in the field, so to make it appear that you + of all mankind are best able to subdue Ambition, Avarice, the love of + Riches, and can best avoid the corruptions that prosperity is apt to + introduce. These are the only arguments by which you will be able to + evince that you are not such persons as this fellow represents you, + traitors, robbers, murderers, parricides, madmen, that you did not put + your king to death out of any ambitious design--that it was not an act + of fury or madness, but that it was wholly out of love to your + liberty, your religion, to justice, virtue, and your country, that you + punished a tyrant. But if it should fall out otherwise (which God + forbid), if, as you have been valiant in war, you should grow + debauched in peace, and that you should not have learnt, by so + eminent, so remarkable an example before your eyes, to fear God, and + work righteousness; for my part I shall easily grant and confess (for + I cannot deny it), whatever ill men may speak or think of you, to be + very true. And you will find in time that God's displeasure against + you will be greater than it has been against your adversaries--greater + than His grace and favour have been to yourseves, which you have had + larger experience of than any other nation under heaven.' + +This controversy naturally excited greater interest abroad, where Latin +was familiarly known, than ever it did here at home. Though it cost +Milton his sight, or at all events accelerated the hour of his blindness, +he appears greatly to have enjoyed conducting a high dispute in the face +of Europe. 'I am,' so he says, 'spreading abroad amongst the cities, the +kingdoms, and nations, the restored culture of civility and freedom of +life.' We certainly managed in this affair of the execution of Charles +to get rid of that note of insularity which renders our politics +uninviting to the stranger. + +Milton, despite his blindness, remained in the public service until after +the death of Cromwell; in fact, he did not formally resign until after +the Restoration. He played no part, having none to play, in the +performances that occurred between those events. He poured forth +pamphlets, but there is no reason to believe that they were read +otherwise than carelessly and by few. His ideas were his own, and never +had a chance of becoming fruitful. There seemed to him to be a ready and +an easy way to establish a free Commonwealth, but on the whole it turned +out that the easiest thing to do was to invite Charles Stuart to reascend +the throne of his ancestors, which he did, and Milton went into hiding. + +It is terrible to think how risky the situation was. Milton was +undoubtedly in danger of his life, and _Paradise Lost_ was unwritten. He +was for a time under arrest. But after all he was not one of the +regicides--he was only a scribe who had defended regicide. Neither was +he a man well associated. He was a solitary, and, for the most part, an +unpopular thinker, and blind withal. He was left alone for the rest of +his days. He lived first in Jewin Street, off Aldersgate Street; and +finally in Artillery Walk, Bunhill Fields. He had married, four years +after his first wife's death, a lady who died within a twelvemonth, +though her memory is kept ever fresh, generation after generation, by her +husband's sonnet beginning, + + 'Methought I saw my late espoused saint.' + +Dr. Johnson, it is really worth remembering, called this a poor sonnet. +In 1664 Milton married a third and last wife, a lady he had never seen, +and who survived her husband for no less a period than fifty-three years, +not dying till the year 1727. The poet's household, like his country, +never realized any of his ideals. His third wife took decent care of +him, and there the matter ended. He did not belong to the category of +adored fathers. His daughters did not love him--it seems even probable +they disliked him. Mr. Pattison has pointed out that Milton never was on +terms even with the scholars of his age. Political acquaintances he had +none. He was, in Puritan language, 'unconnected with any place of +worship,' and had therefore no pastoral visits to receive, or sermons to +discuss. The few friends he had were mostly young men who were attracted +to him, and were glad to give him their company; and it is well that he +had this pleasure, for he was ever in his wishes a social man--not +intended to live alone, and blindness must have made society little short +of a necessity for him. + +Now it was, in the evening of his days, with a Stuart once more upon the +throne, and Episcopacy finally installed, that Milton, a defeated +thinker, a baffled pamphleteer--for had not Salmasius triumphed?--with +Horton and Italy far, far behind him, set himself to keep the promise of +his glorious youth, and compose a poem the world should not willingly let +die. His manner of life was this. In summer he rose at four, in winter +at five. He went to bed at nine. He began the day with having the +Hebrew Scriptures read to him. Then he contemplated. At seven his man +came to him again, and he read and wrote till an early dinner. For +exercise he either walked in the garden or swung in a machine. Besides +conversation, his only other recreation was music. He played the organ +and the bass viol. He would sometimes sing himself. After recreation of +this kind he would return to his study to be read to till six. After six +his friends were admitted, and would sit with him till eight. At eight +he had his supper--olives or something light. He was very abstemious. +After supper he smoked a pipe of tobacco, drank a glass of water, and +went to bed. He found the night a favourable time for composition, and +what he composed at night he dictated in the day, sitting obliquely in an +elbow chair with his leg thrown over the arm. + +In 1664 _Paradise Lost_ was finished, but as in 1665 came the Great +Plague, and after the Great Plague the Great Fire, it was long before the +MS. found its way into the hands of the licenser. It is interesting to +note that the first member of the general public who read _Paradise +Lost_, I hope all through, was a clergyman of the name of Tomkyns, the +deputy of the Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr. Sheldon. The Archbishop was +the State Licenser for religious books, but of course did not do the work +himself. Tomkyns did the work, and was for a good while puzzled what to +make of the old Republican's poem. At last, and after some singularly +futile criticisms, Tomkyns consented to allow the publication of +_Paradise Lost_, which accordingly appeared in 1667, admirably printed, +and at the price of 3_s._ a copy. The author's agreement with the +publisher is in writing--as Mr. Besant tells us all agreements with +publishers should be--and may be seen in the British Museum. Its terms +are clear. The poet was to have 5 down pounds; another 5 pounds when the +first edition, which was not to exceed 1,500 copies, was sold; a third 5 +pounds when a second edition was sold; and a fourth and last 5 pounds +when a third edition was sold. He got his first 5 pounds, also his +second, and after his death his widow sold all her rights for 5 pounds. +Consequently 18 pounds, which represents perhaps 50 pounds of our present +currency, was Milton's share of all the money that has been made by the +sale of his great poem. But the praise is still his. The sale was very +considerable. The 'general reader' no doubt preferred the poems of +Cleaveland and Flatman, but Milton found an audience which was fit and +not fewer than ever is the case when noble poetry is first produced. + +_Paradise Regained_ was begun upon the completion of _Paradise Lost_, and +appeared with _Samson Agonistes_ in 1671, and here ended Milton's life as +a producing poet. He lived on till Sunday, 8th November, 1674, when the +gout, or what was then called gout, struck in and he died, and was buried +beside his father in the Church of St. Giles's, Cripplegate. He remained +laborious to the last, and imposed upon himself all kinds of drudgery, +compiling dictionaries, histories of Britain and Russia. He must have +worked not so much from love of his subjects as from dread of idleness. +But he had hours of relaxation, of social intercourse, and of music; and +it is pleasant to remember that one pipe of tobacco. It consecrates your +own. + +Against Milton's great poem it is sometimes alleged that it is not read; +and yet it must, I think, be admitted that for one person who has read +Spenser's _Fairy Queen_, ten thousand might easily be found who have read +_Paradise Lost_. Its popularity has been widespread. Mr. Mark Pattison +and Mr. John Bright measure some ground between them. No other poem can +be mentioned which has so coloured English thought as Milton's, and yet, +according to the French senator whom Mr. Arnold has introduced to the +plain reader, '_Paradise Lost_ is a false poem, a grotesque poem, a +tiresome poem.' It is not easy for those who have a touch of Milton's +temper, though none of his genius, to listen to this foreign criticism +quite coolly. Milton was very angry with Salmasius for venturing to find +fault with the Long Parliament for having repealed so many laws, and so +far forgot himself as to say, '_Nam nostrae leges_, _Ole_, _quid ad te_?' +But there is nothing municipal about _Paradise Lost_. All the world has +a right to be interested in it and to find fault with it. But the fact +that the people for whom primarily it was written have taken it to their +hearts and have it on their lips ought to have prevented it being called +tiresome by a senator of France. + +But what is the matter with our great epic? That nobody ever wished it +longer is no real accusation. Nobody ever did wish an epic longer. The +most popular books in the world are generally accounted too long--_Don +Quixote_, the _Pilgrim's Progress_, _Tom Jones_. But, says Mr. Arnold, +the whole real interest of the poem depends upon our being able to take +it literally; and again, 'Merely as matter of poetry, the story of the +Fall has no special force or effectiveness--its effectiveness for us +comes, and can only come, from our taking it all as the literal narrative +of what positively happened.' These bewildering utterances make one rub +one's eyes. Carlyle comes to our relief: 'All which propositions I for +the present content myself with modestly, but peremptorily and +irrevocably denying.' + +Mr. Pattison surely speaks the language of ordinary good sense when he +writes: 'For the world of _Paradise Lost_ is an ideal, conventional world +quite as much as the world of the _Arabian Nights_, or the world of the +chivalrous romance, or that of the pastoral novel.' + +Coleridge, in the twenty-second chapter of the _Biographia Literaria_, +points out that the fable and characters of _Paradise Lost_ are not +derived from Scripture, as in the _Messiah_ of Klopstock, but merely +suggested by it--the illusion on which all poetry is founded being thus +never contradicted. The poem proceeds upon a legend, ancient and +fascinating, and to call it a commentary upon a few texts in Genesis is a +marvellous criticism. + +The story of the Fall of Man, as recorded in the Semitic legend, is to me +more attractive as a story than the Tale of Troy, and I find the +rebellion of Satan and his dire revenge more to my mind than the circles +of Dante. Eve is, I think, more interesting than 'Heaven-born Helen, +Sparta's queen'--I mean in herself, and as a woman to write poetry about. + +The execution of the poem is another matter. So far as style is +concerned its merits have not yet been questioned. As a matter of style +and diction, Milton is as safe as Virgil. The handling of the story is +more vulnerable. The long speeches put in the mouth of the Almighty are +never pleasing, and seldom effective. The weak point about argument is +that it usually admits of being answered. For Milton to essay to justify +the ways of God to man was well and pious enough, but to represent God +Himself as doing so by argumentative process was not so well, and was to +expose the Almighty to possible rebuff. The king is always present in +his own courts, but as judge, not as advocate; hence the royal dignity +never suffers. + +It is narrated of an eminent barrister, who became a most polished judge, +Mr. Knight Bruce, that once, when at the very head of his profession, he +was taken in before a Master in Chancery, an office since abolished, and +found himself pitted against a little snip of an attorney's clerk, scarce +higher than the table, who, nothing daunted, and by the aid of +authorities he cited from a bundle of books as big as himself, succeeded +in worsting Knight Bruce, whom he persisted in calling over again and +again 'my learned friend.' Mr. Bruce treated the imp with that courtesy +which is always an opponent's due, but he never went before the Masters +any more. + +The Archangel has not escaped the reproach often brought against affable +persons of being a bit of a bore, and though this is to speak +unbecomingly, it must be owned that the reader is glad whenever Adam +plucks up heart of grace and gets in a word edgeways. Mr. Bagehot has +complained of Milton's angels. He says they are silly. But this is, I +think, to intellectualize too much. There are some classes who are +fairly exempted from all obligation to be intelligent, and these airy +messengers are surely amongst that number. The retinue of a prince or of +a bride justify their choice if they are well-looking and group nicely. + +But these objections do not touch the main issue. Here is the story of +the loss of Eden, told enchantingly, musically, and in the grand style. +'Who,' says M. Scherer, in a passage quoted by Mr. Arnold, 'can read the +eleventh and twelfth books without yawning?' People, of course, are free +to yawn when they please, provided they put their hands to their mouths; +but in answer to this insulting question one is glad to be able to +remember how Coleridge has singled out Adam's vision of future events +contained in these books as especially deserving of attention. But to +read them is to repel the charge. + +There was no need for Mr. Arnold, of all men, to express dissatisfaction +with Milton: + + 'Words which no ear ever to hear in heaven + Expected; least of all from thee, ingrate, + In place thyself so high above thy peers.' + +The first thing for people to be taught is to enjoy great things greatly. +The spots on the sun may be an interesting study, but anyhow the sun is +not all spots. Indeed, sometimes in the early year, when he breaks forth +afresh, + + 'And winter, slumbering in the open air, + Wears on his smiling face a dream of spring, + +we are apt to forget that he has any spots at all, and, as he shines, are +perhaps reminded of the blind poet sitting in his darkness, in this +prosaic city of ours, swinging his leg over the arm of his chair, and +dictating the lines: + + 'Seasons return, but not to me returns + Day, or the sweet approach of even or morn, + Or sight of vernal bloom or summer's rose, + Or flocks or herds, or human face divine. + But cloud instead, and ever-during dark + Surrounds me--from the cheerful ways of men + Cut off; and for the book of knowledge fair + Presented with a universal blank + Of nature's works, to me expunged and razed + And wisdom at one entrance quite shut out. + So much the rather, Thou, Celestial Light, + Shine inwards, and the mind through all her powers + Irradiate--_there_ plant eyes; all mist from thence + Purge and disperse, that I may see and tell + Of things invisible to mortal sight.' + +Coleridge added a note to his beautiful poem, 'The Nightingale,' lest he +should be supposed capable of speaking with levity of a single line in +Milton. The note was hardly necessary, but one loves the spirit that +prompted him to make it. Sainte-Beuve remarks: 'Parler des poetes est +toujours une chose bien delicate, et surtout quand on l'a ete un peu soi- +meme.' But though it does not matter what the little poets do, great +ones should never pass one another without a royal salute. + + + + +POPE. + + +_A Lecture delivered at Birmingham before the Midland Institute_. + +The eighteenth century has been well abused by the nineteenth. So far as +I can gather, it is the settled practice of every century to speak evil +of her immediate predecessor, and I have small doubt that, had we gone +groping about in the tenth century, we should yet have been found hinting +that the ninth was darker than she had any need to be. + +But our tone of speaking about the last century has lately undergone an +alteration. The fact is, we are drawing near our own latter end. The +Head Master of Harrow lately thrilled an audience by informing them that +he had, that very day, entered an existing _bona fide_ boy upon the +school books, whose education, however, would not begin till the +twentieth century. As a parent was overheard to observe, 'An +illustration of that sort comes home to one.' The older we grow the less +confident we become, the readier to believe that our judgments are +probably wrong, and liable, and even likely, to be reversed; the better +disposed to live and let live. The child, as Mr. Browning has somewhere +elaborated, cries for the moon and beats its nurse, but the old man sips +his gruel with avidity and thanks Heaven if nobody beats him. And so we +have left off beating the eighteenth century. It was not so, however, in +our lusty prime. Carlyle, historian though he was of Frederick the Great +and the French Revolution, revenged himself for the trouble it gave him +by loading it with all vile epithets. If it had been a cock or a cook he +could not have called it harder names. It was century spendthrift, +fraudulent, bankrupt, a swindler century, which did but one true action, +'namely, to blow its brains out in that grand universal suicide named +French Revolution.' + +The leaders of the neo-Catholic movement very properly shuddered at a +century which whitewashed its churches and thought even monthly +communions affected. The ardent Liberal could not but despise a century +which did without the franchise, and, despite the most splendid +materials, had no Financial Reform Almanack. The sentimental Tory found +little to please him in the House of Hanover and Whig domination. The +lovers of poetry, with Shelley in their ears and Wordsworth at their +hearts, made merry with the trim muses of Queen Anne, with their sham +pastorals, their dilapidated classicism, and still more with their town- +bred descriptions of the country, with its purling brooks and nodding +groves, and, hanging over all, the moon--not Shelley's 'orbed maiden,' +but 'the refulgent lamp of night.' And so, on all hands, the poor +century was weighed in a hundred different balances and found wanting. It +lacked inspiration, unction, and generally all those things for which it +was thought certain the twentieth century would commend us. But we do +not talk like that now. The waters of the sullen Lethe, rolling doom, +are sounding too loudly in our own ears. We would die at peace with all +centuries. Mr. Frederic Harrison writes a formal _Defence of the +Eighteenth Century_, Mr. Matthew Arnold reprints half a dozen of Dr. +Johnson's _Lives of the Poets_. Mr. Leslie Stephen composes a history of +thought during this objurgated period, and also edits, in sumptuously +inconvenient volumes, the works of its two great novelists, Richardson +and Fielding; and, finally, there now trembles on the very verge of +completion a splendid and long-laboured edition of the poems and letters +of the great poet of the eighteenth century, the abstract and brief +chronicle of his time, a man who had some of its virtues and most of its +vices, one whom it is easy to hate, but still easier to quote--Alexander +Pope. + +Twenty years ago the chances were that a lecturer on Pope began by asking +the, perhaps not impertinent, question, 'Was he a poet?' And the method +had its merits, for the question once asked, it was easy for the +lecturer, like an incendiary who has just fired a haystack, to steal away +amidst the cracklings of a familiar controversy. It was not unfitting +that so quarrelsome a man as Pope should have been the occasion of so +much quarrelsomeness in others. For long the battle waged as fiercely +over Pope's poetry as erst it did in his own _Homer_ over the body of the +slain Patroclus. Stout men took part in it, notably Lord Byron, whose +letters to Mr. Bowles on the subject, though composed in his lordship's +most ruffianly vein, still make good reading--of a sort. But the battle +is over, at all events for the present. It is not now our humour to +inquire too curiously about first causes or primal elements. As we are +not prepared with a definition of poetry, we feel how impossible it would +be for us to deny the rank of a poet to one whose lines not infrequently +scan and almost always rhyme. For my part, I should as soon think of +asking whether a centipede has legs or a wasp a sting as whether the +author of the _Rape of the Lock_ and the _Epistle to Dr. Arbuthnot_ was +or was not a poet. + +Pope's life has been described as a succession of petty secrets and third- +rate problems, but there seems to be no doubt that it began on May 21st, +1688, in Lombard Street, in the city of London. But this event over, +mystery steps in with the question, What was his father? The occupation +of the elder Pope occasioned nearly as fierce a controversy as the +poetical legitimacy of the younger. Malice has even hinted that old Pope +was a hatter. The poet, of course, knew, but wouldn't tell, being always +more ready, as Johnson observes, to say what his father was not than what +he was. He denied the hatter, and said his father was of the family of +the Earls of Downe; but on this statement being communicated to a +relative of the poet, the brutal fellow, who was probably without a +tincture of polite learning, said he heard of the relationship for the +first time! 'Hard as thy heart, and as thy birth obscure,' sang one of +Pope's too numerous enemies in the easy numbers he had taught his age. It +is, however, now taken as settled that the elder Pope, like Izaak Walton +and John Gilpin, and many other good fellows, was a linen-draper. He +made money, and one would like to know how he did it in the troublesome +times he lived in; but _his_ books have all perished. He was a Roman +Catholic, as also was the poet's mother, who was her husband's second +wife, and came out of Yorkshire. It used to be confidently asserted that +the elder Pope, on retiring from business, which he did early in the +poet's childhood, put his fortune in a box and spent it as he needed +it,--a course of conduct the real merits of which are likely to be hid +from a lineal descendant. Old Pope, however, did nothing of the kind, +but invested money in the French funds, his conscience not allowing him +to do so in the English, and he also lent sums on bond to +fellow-Catholics, one of whom used to remit him his half-year's interest +calculated at the rate of 4 pounds per cent. per annum, whereas by the +terms of the bond he was to pay 4.25 pounds per cent. per annum. On +another occasion the same borrower deducted from the interest accrued due +a pound he said he had lent the youthful poet. These things annoyed the +old gentleman, as they would most old gentlemen of my acquaintance. The +poet was the only child of his mother, and a queerly constituted mortal +he was. Dr. Johnson has recorded the long list of his infirmities with +an almost chilling bluntness; but, alas! so malformed was Pope's +character, so tortuous and twisted were his ways, so elaborately +artificial and detestably petty many of his devices, that it is not +malice, but charity, that bids us remember that, during his whole +maturity, he could neither dress nor undress himself, go to bed or get up +without help, and that on rising he had to be invested with a stiff +canvas bodice and tightly laced, and have put on him a fur doublet and +numerous stockings to keep off the cold and fill out his shrunken form. +If ever there was a man whose life was one long provocation, that man was +the author of the _Dunciad_. Pope had no means of self-defence save his +wit. Dr. Johnson was a queer fellow enough, having inherited, as he +tells us, a vile melancholy from his father, and he certainly was no +Adonis to look at, but those who laughed at him were careful to do so +behind his gigantic back. When a rapacious bookseller insulted him he +knocked him down. When the caricaturist Foote threatened to take him off +upon the stage, the most Christian of lexicographers caused it to be +intimated to him that if he did the author of _Rasselas_ would thrash him +in the public street, and the buffoon desisted. 'Did not Foote,' asked +Boswell, 'think of exhibiting you, sir?' and our great moralist replied, +'Sir, fear restrained him; he knew I would have broken his bones.' When +he denounced Macpherson for his _Ossian_ frauds, and the irate Celt said +something about personal chastisement, Johnson told him, in writing, that +he was not to be deterred from detecting a cheat by the menaces of a +ruffian, and by way of a temporary provision for his self-defence +selected a most grievous cudgel, six feet in height, and terminating in a +head (once the root) of the size of a large orange. The possession of +great physical strength is no mean assistance to a straightforward life. +The late Professor Fawcett, who, though blind, delighted, arm-in-arm with +a friend, to skate furiously on the fens, never could be brought to share +the fears entertained on his behalf by some of the less stalwart of his +acquaintances. 'Why,' he used to exclaim apologetically, 'even if I do +run up against anybody, it is always the other fellow who gets the worst +of it.' But poor Pope, whom a child could hustle, had no such resources. +We should always remember this; it is brutal to forget it. + +Pope's parents found in their only son the vocation of their later life. +He might be anything he liked. Did he lisp in numbers, the boyish rhymes +were duly scanned and criticised; had he a turn for painting, lessons +were provided. He might be anything he chose, and everything by turns. +Many of us have been lately reading chapters from the life of another +only son, and though the comparison may not bear working out, still, that +there were points of strong similarity between the days of the youthful +poet at Binfield and those of Ruskin at Herne Hill may be suspected. +Pope's education was, of course, private, for a double reason--his +proscribed faith and his frail form. Mr. Leslie Stephen, with a touching +faith in public schools, has the hardihood to regret that it was +obviously impossible to send Pope to Westminster. One shudders at the +thought. It could only have ended in an inquest. As it was, the poor +little cripple was whipped at Twyford for lampooning his master. Pope +was extraordinarily sensitive. Cruelty to animals he abhorred. Every +kind of sport, from spinning cockchafers to coursing hares, he held in +loathing, and one cannot but be thankful that the childhood of this +supersensitive poet was shielded from the ruffianism of the nether world +of boys as that brood then existed. Westminster had not long to wait for +Cowper. Pope was taught his rudiments by stray priests and at small +seminaries, where, at all events, he had his bent, and escaped the +contagious error that Homer wrote in Greek in order that English boys +might be beaten. Of course he did not become a scholar. Had he done so +he probably would not have translated Homer, though he might have +lectured on how not to do it. Indeed, the only evidence we have that +Pope knew Greek at all is that he translated Homer, and was accustomed to +carry about with him a small pocket edition of the bard in the original. +Latin he could probably read with decent comfort, though it is noticeable +that if he had occasion to refer to a Latin book, and there was a French +translation, he preferred the latter version to the original. Voltaire, +who knew Pope, asserts that he could not speak a word of French, and +could hardly read it; but Voltaire was not a truthful man, and on one +occasion told lies in an affidavit. The fact is, Pope's curiosity was +too inordinate--his desire to know everything all at once too strong--to +admit of the delay of learning a foreign language; and he was +consequently a reader of translations, and he lived in an age of +translations. He was, as a boy, a simply ferocious reader, and was early +acquainted with the contents of the great poets, both of antiquity and +the modern world. His studies, at once intense, prolonged, and exciting, +injured his feeble health, and made him the lifelong sufferer he was. It +was a noble zeal, and arose from the immense interest Pope ever took in +human things. + +From 1700 to 1715, that is, from his fourteenth to his twenty-ninth year, +he lived with his father and mother at Binfield, on the borders of +Windsor Forest, which he made the subject of one of his early poems, +against which it was alleged, with surely some force, that it has nothing +distinctive about it, and might as easily have been written about any +other forest; to which, however, Dr. Johnson characteristically replied +that the _onus_ lay upon the critic of first proving that there is +anything distinctive about Windsor Forest, which personally he doubted, +one green field in the Doctor's opinion being just like another. In 1715 +Pope moved with his parents to Chiswick, where, in 1717, his father, aged +seventy-five, died. The following year the poet again moved with his +mother to the celebrated villa at Twickenham, where in 1733 she died, in +her ninety-third year. Ten years later Pope's long disease, his life, +came to its appointed end. His poetical dates may be briefly summarized +thus: his _Pastorals_, 1709; the _Essay on Criticism_, 1711; the first +version of the _Rape of the Lock_, 1712; the second, 1714; the _Iliad_, +begun in 1715, was finished 1720; _Eloisa_, 1717; the _Elegy_ to the +memory of an _Unfortunate Lady_ and the _Dunciad_, 1728; the _Essay on +Man_, 1732; and then the _Epistles_ and _Satires_. Of all Pope's +biographers, Dr. Johnson is still, and will probably ever remain, the +best. The _Life_, indeed, like the rest of the _Lives of the Poets_, is +a lazy performance. It is not the strenuous work of a young author eager +for fame. When Johnson sat down, at the instance of the London +booksellers, to write the lives of those poets whose works his employers +thought it well to publish, he had long been an author at grass, and had +no mind whatever again to wear the collar. He had great reading and an +amazing memory, and those were at the service of the trade. The facts he +knew, or which were brought to his door, he recorded, but research was +not in his way. Was he not already endowed--with a pension, which, with +his customary indifference to attack, he wished were twice as large, in +order that his enemies might make twice as much fuss over it? None the +less--nay, perhaps all the more--for being written with so little effort, +the _Lives of the Poets_ are delightful reading, and Pope's is one of the +very best of them. {59} None knew the infirmities of ordinary human +nature better than Johnson. They neither angered him nor amused him; he +neither storms, sneers, nor chuckles, as he records man's vanity, +insincerity, jealousy, and pretence. It is with a placid pen he pricks +the bubble fame, dishonours the overdrawn sentiment, burlesques the sham +philosophy of life; but for generosity, friendliness, affection, he is +always on the watch, whilst talent and achievement never fail to win his +admiration; he being ever eager to repay, as best he could, the debt of +gratitude surely due to those who have taken pains to please, and who +have left behind them in a world, which rarely treated them kindly, works +fitted to stir youth to emulation, or solace the disappointments of age. +And over all man's manifold infirmities, he throws benignantly the mantle +of his stately style. Pope's domestic virtues were not likely to miss +Johnson's approbation. Of them he writes: + + 'The filial piety of Pope was in the highest degree amiable and + exemplary. His parents had the happiness of living till he was at the + summit of poetical reputation--till he was at ease in his fortune, and + without a rival in his fame, and found no diminution of his respect or + tenderness. Whatever was his pride, to them he was obedient; and + whatever was his irritability, to them he was gentle. Life has, + amongst its soothing and quiet comforts, few things better to give + than such a son.' + +To attempt to state in other words a paragraph like this would be +indelicate, as bad as defacing a tombstone, or rewriting a collect. + +Pope has had many editors, but the last edition will probably long hold +the field. It is more than sixty years since the original John Murray, +of Albemarle Street, determined, with the approval of his most +distinguished client Lord Byron, to bring out a library edition of Pope. +The task was first entrusted to Croker, the man whom Lord Macaulay hated +more than he did cold boiled veal, and whose edition, had it seen the +light in the great historian's lifetime, would have been, whatever its +merits, well basted in the _Edinburgh Review_. But Croker seems to have +made no real progress; for though occasionally advertised amongst Mr. +Murray's list of forthcoming works, the first volume did not make its +appearance until 1871, fourteen years after Croker's death. The new +editor was the Rev. Whitwell Elwin, a clergyman, with many qualifications +for the task,--patient, sensible, not too fluent, but an intense hater of +Pope. 'To be wroth with one you love,' sings Coleridge, 'doth work like +madness in the brain;' and to edit in numerous volumes the works of a man +you cordially dislike and always mistrust has something of the same +effect, whilst it is certainly hard measure on the poor fellow edited. +His lot--if I may venture upon a homely comparison founded upon a lively +reminiscence of childhood--resembles that of an unfortunate infant being +dressed by an angry nurse, in whose malicious hands the simplest +operations of the toilet, to say nothing of the severer processes of the +tub, can easily be made the vehicles of no mean torture. Good cause can +be shown for hating Pope if you are so minded, but it is something of a +shame to hate him and edit him too. The Rev. Mr. Elwin unravels the web +of Pope's follies with too rough a hand for my liking; and he was, +besides, far too apt to believe his poet in the wrong simply because +somebody has said he was. For example, he reprints without comment De +Quincey's absurd strictures on the celebrated lines-- + + 'Who but must laugh if such a man there be; + Who would not weep if Atticus were he!' + +De Quincey found these lines unintelligible, and pulls them about in all +directions but the right one. The ordinary reader never felt any +difficulty. However, Mr. Elwin kept it up till old age overtook him, and +now Mr. Courthope reigns in his stead. Mr. Courthope, it is easy to see, +would have told a very different tale had he been in command from the +first, for he keeps sticking in a good word for the crafty little poet +whenever he decently can. And this is how it should be. Mr. Courthope's +_Life_, which will be the concluding volume of Mr. Murray's edition, is +certain to be a fascinating book. + +It is Pope's behaviour about his letters that is now found peculiarly +repellent. Acts of diseased egotism sometimes excite an indignation +which injurious crimes fail to arouse. + +The whole story is too long to be told, and is by this time tolerably +familiar. Here, however, is part of it. In early life Pope began +writing letters, bits of pompous insincerity, as indeed the letters of +clever boys generally are, to men old enough to be his grandparents, who +had been struck by his precocity and anticipated his fame, and being +always master of his own time, and passionately fond of composition, he +kept up the habit so formed, and wrote his letters as one might fancy the +celebrated Blair composing his sermons, with much solemnity, very slowly, +and without emotion. A packet of these addressed to a gentleman owning +the once proud name of Cromwell, and who was certainly 'guiltless of his +country's blood'--for all that is now known of him is that he used to go +hunting in a tie-wig, that is, a full-bottomed wig tied up at the +ends--had been given by that gentleman to a lady with whom he had +relations, who being, as will sometimes happen, a little pressed for +money, sold them for ten guineas to Edmund Curll, a bold pirate of a +bookseller and publisher, upon whose head every kind of abuse has been +heaped, not only by the authors whom he actually pillaged, but by +succeeding generations of penmen who never took his wages, but none the +less revile his name. He was a wily ruffian. In the year 1727 he was +condemned by His Majesty's judges to stand in the pillory at Charing +Cross for publishing a libel, and thither doubtless, at the appointed +hour, many poor authors flocked, with their pockets full of the bad eggs +that should have made their breakfasts, eager to wreak vengeance upon +their employer; but a printer in the pillory has advantages over others +traders, and Curll had caused handbills to be struck off and distributed +amongst the crowd, stating, with his usual effrontery, that he was put in +the pillory for vindicating the blessed memory of her late Majesty Queen +Anne. This either touched or tickled the mob--it does not matter +which--who protected Curll whilst he stood on high from further outrage, +and when his penance was over bore him on their shoulders to an adjacent +tavern, where (it is alleged) he got right royally drunk. {65} Ten years +earlier those pleasant youths, the Westminster scholars, had got hold of +him, tossed him in a blanket, and beat him. This was the man who bought +Pope's letters to Cromwell for ten guineas, and published them. Pope, +oddly enough, though very angry, does not seem on this occasion to have +moved the Court of Chancery, as he subsequently did against the same +publisher, for an injunction to restrain the vending of the volume. +Indeed, until his suit in 1741, when he obtained an injunction against +Curll, restraining the sale of a volume containing some of his letters to +Swift, the right of the writer of a letter to forbid its publication had +never been established, and the view that a letter was a gift to the +receiver had received some countenance. But Pope had so much of the true +temper of a litigant, and so loved a nice point, that he might have been +expected to raise the question on the first opportunity. He, however, +did not do so, and the volume had a considerable sale--a fact not likely +to be lost sight of by so keen an author as Pope, to whom the thought +occurred, 'Could I only recover all my letters, and get them published, I +should be as famous in prose as I am in rhyme.' His communications with +his friends now begin to be full of the miscreant Curll, against whose +machinations and guineas no letters were proof. Have them Curll would, +and publish them he would, to the sore injury of the writer's feelings. +The only way to avoid this outrage upon the privacy of true friendship +was for all the letters to be returned to the writer, who had arranged +for them to be received by a great nobleman, against whose strong boxes +Curll might rage and surge in vain. Pope's friends did not at first +quite catch his drift. 'You need give yourself no trouble,' wrote Swift, +though at a later date than the transaction I am now describing; 'every +one of your letters shall be burnt.' But that was not what Pope wanted. +The first letters he recovered were chiefly those he had written to Mr. +Caryll, a Roman Catholic gentleman of character. Mr. Caryll parted with +his letters with some reluctance, and even suspicion, and was at the +extraordinary pains of causing them all to be transcribed; in a word, he +kept copies and said nothing about it. Now it is that Pope set about as +paltry a job as ever engaged the attention of a man of genius. He +proceeded to manufacture a sham correspondence; he garbled and falsified +to his heart's content. He took a bit of one letter and tagged it on to +a bit of another letter, and out of these two foreign parts made up an +imaginary letter, never really written to anybody, which he addressed to +Mr. Addison, who was dead, or to whom else he chose. He did this without +much regard to anything except the manufacture of something which he +thought would read well, and exhibit himself in an amiable light and in a +sweet, unpremeditated strain. This done, the little poet destroyed the +originals, and deposited one copy, as he said he was going to do, in the +library of the Earl of Oxford, whose permission so to do he sought with +much solemnity, the nobleman replying with curtness that any parcel Mr. +Pope chose to send to his butler should be taken care of. So far good. +The next thing was to get the letters published from the copy he had +retained for his own use. His vanity and love of intrigue forbade him +doing so directly, and he bethought himself of his enemy, the piratical +Curll, with whom, there can now be no reasonable doubt, he opened a sham +correspondence under the initials 'P.T.' 'P.T.' was made to state that +he had letters in his possession of Mr. Pope's, who had done him some +disservice, which letters he was willing to let Curll publish. Curll was +as wily as Pope, to whom he at once wrote and told him what 'P.T.' was +offering him. Pope replied by an advertisement in a newspaper, denying +the existence of any such letters. 'P.T.,' however, still kept it up, +and a mysterious person was introduced as a go-between, wearing a +clergyman's wig and lawyer's bands. Curll at last advertised as +forthcoming an edition of Mr. Pope's letters to, and, as the +advertisement certainly ran, from divers noblemen and gentlemen. Pope +affected the utmost fury, and set the House of Lords upon the printer for +threatening to publish peers' letters without their leave. Curll, +however, had a tongue in his head, and easily satisfied a committee of +their Lordship's House that this was a mistake, and that no noblemen's +letters were included in the intended publication, the unbound sheets of +which he produced. The House of Lords, somewhat mystified and disgusted, +gave the matter up, and the letters came out in 1735. Pope raved, but +the judicious even then opined that he protested somewhat too much. He +promptly got a bookseller to pirate Curll's edition--a proceeding on his +part which struck Curll as the unkindest cut of all, and flagrantly +dishonest. He took proceedings against Pope's publisher, but what came +of the litigation I cannot say. + +The Caryll copy of the correspondence as it actually existed, after long +remaining in manuscript, has been published, and we have now the real +letters and the sham letters side by side. The effect is grotesquely +disgusting. For example, on September 20th, 1713, Pope undoubtedly wrote +to Caryll as follows:-- + + 'I have been just taking a walk in St. James's Park, full of the + reflections of the transitory nature of all human delights, and giving + my thoughts a loose into the contemplation of those sensations of + satisfaction which probably we may taste in the more exalted company + of separate spirits, when we range the starry walks above and gaze on + the world at a vast distance, as now we do on those.' + +Poor stuff enough, one would have thought. On re-reading this letter +Pope was so pleased with his moonshine that he transferred the whole +passage to an imaginary letter, to which he gave the, of course +fictitious, date of February 10th, 1715, and addressed to Mr. Blount; so +that, as the correspondence now stands, you first get the Caryll letter +of 1713, 'I have been just taking a solitary walk by moonshine,' and so +on about the starry walks; and then you get the Blount letter of 1715, 'I +have been just taking a solitary walk by moonshine;' and go on to find +Pope refilled with his reflections as before. Mr. Elwin does not, you +may be sure, fail to note how unlucky Pope was in his second date, +February 10th, 1715; that being a famous year, when the Thames was frozen +over, and as the thaw set in on the 9th, and the streets were impassable +even for strong men, a tender morsel like Pope was hardly likely to be +out after dark. But, of course, when Pope concocted the Blount letter in +1735, and gave it any date he chose, he could not be expected to carry in +his head what sort of night it was on any particular day in February +twenty-two years before. It is ever dangerous to tamper with written +documents which have been out of your sole and exclusive possession even +for a few minutes. + +A letter Pope published as having been addressed to Addison is made up of +fragments of three letters actually written to Caryll. Another imaginary +letter to Addison contains the following not inapt passage from a letter +to Caryll:-- + + 'Good God! what an incongruous animal is man! how unsettled in his + best part, his soul, and how changing and variable in his frame of + body. What is man altogether but one mighty inconsistency?' + +What, indeed! The method subsequently employed by Pope to recover his +letters from Swift, and to get them published in such a way as to create +the impression that Pope himself had no hand in it, cannot be here +narrated. It is a story no one can take pleasure in. Of such an +organized hypocrisy as this correspondence it is no man's duty to speak +seriously. Here and there an amusing letter occurs, but as a whole it is +neither interesting, elevating, nor amusing. When in 1741 Curll moved to +dissolve the injunction Pope had obtained in connection with the Swift +correspondence, his counsel argued that letters on familiar subjects and +containing inquiries after the health of friends were not learned works, +and consequently were not within the copyright statute of Queen Anne, +which was entitled, 'An Act for the Encouragement of Learning;' but Lord +Hardwicke, with his accustomed good sense, would have none of this +objection, and observed (and these remarks, being necessary for the +judgment, are not mere _obiter dicta_, but conclusive): + + 'It is certain that no works have done more service to mankind than + those which have appeared in this shape upon familiar subjects, and + which, perhaps, were never intended to be published, and it is this + which makes them so valuable, for I must confess, for my own part, + that letters which are very elaborately written, and originally + intended for the press, are generally the most insignificant, and very + little worth any person's reading' (2 Atkyns, p. 357). + +I am encouraged by this authority to express the unorthodox opinion that +Pope's letters, with scarcely half-a-dozen exceptions, and only one +notable exception, are very little worth any person's reading. + +Pope's epistolary pranks have, perhaps, done him some injustice. It has +always been the fashion to admire the letter which, first appearing in +1737, in Pope's correspondence, and there attributed to Gay, describes +the death by lightning of the rustic lovers John Hewet and Sarah Drew. An +identical description occurring in a letter written by Pope to Lady Mary +Wortley Montagu, and subsequently published by Warton from the original, +naturally caused the poet to be accused of pilfering another man's +letter, and sending it off as his own. Mr. Thackeray so puts it in his +world-famous _Lectures_, and few literary anecdotes are better known; but +the better opinion undoubtedly is that the letter was Pope's from the +beginning, and attributed by him to Gay because he did not want to have +it appear that on the date in question he was corresponding with Lady +Mary. After all, there is a great deal to be said in favour of honesty. + +When we turn from the man to the poet we have at once to change our key. +A cleverer fellow than Pope never commenced author. He was in his own +mundane way as determined to be a poet, and the best going, as John +Milton himself. He took pains to be splendid--he polished and pruned. +His first draft never reached the printer--though he sometimes said it +did. This ought, I think, to endear him to us in these hasty days, when +authors high and low think nothing of emptying the slops of their minds +over their readers, without so much as a cry of 'Heads below!' + +Pope's translation of the _Iliad_ was his first great undertaking, and he +worked at it like a Trojan. It was published by subscription for two +guineas; that is, the first part was. His friends were set to work to +collect subscribers. Caryll alone got thirty-eight. Pope fully entered +into this. He was always alive to the value of his wares, and despised +the foppery of those of his literary friends who would not make money out +of their books, but would do so out of their country. He writes to +Caryll: + +'But I am in good earnest of late, too much a man of business to mind +metaphors and similes. I find subscribing much superior to writing, and +there is a sort of little epigram I more especially delight in, after the +manner of rondeaus, which begin and end all in the same words, +namely--"Received" and "A. Pope." These epigrams end smartly, and each +of them is tagged with two guineas. Of these, as I have learnt, you have +composed several ready for me to set my name to.' + +This is certainly much better than that trumpery walk in the moonshine. +Pope had not at this time joined the Tories, and both parties subscribed. +He cleared over 5,000 pounds by the _Iliad_. Over the _Odyssey_ he +slackened, and employed two inferior wits to do half the books; but even +after paying his journeymen he made nearly 4,000 pounds over the +_Odyssey_. Well might he write in later life-- + + 'Since, thanks to Homer, I do live and thrive.' + +Pope was amongst the first of prosperous authors, and heads the clan of +cunning fellows who have turned their lyrical cry into consols, and their +odes into acres. + +Of the merits of this great work it is not necessary to speak at length. +Mr. Edmund Yates tells a pleasant story of how one day, when an old +school Homer lay on his table, Shirley Brooks sauntered in, and taking +the book up, laid it down again, dryly observing: + +'Ah! I see you have _Homer's_ Iliad! Well, I believe it is the best.' +And so it is. Homer's Iliad is the best, and Pope's Homer's Iliad is the +second best. Whose is the third best is controversy. + +Pope knew next to no Greek, but then he did not work upon the Greek text. +He had Chapman's translation ever at his elbow, also the version of John +Ogilby, which had appeared in 1660--a splendid folio, with illustrations +by the celebrated Hollar. Dryden had not got farther than the first book +of the _Iliad_, and a fragment of the sixth book. A faithful rendering +of the exact sense of Homer is not, of course, to be looked for. In the +first book Pope describes the captive maid Briseis as looking back. In +Homer she does not look back, but in Dryden she does; and Pope followed +Dryden, and did not look, at all events, any farther back. + +But what really is odd is that in Cowper's translation Briseis looks back +too. Now, Cowper had been to a public school, and consequently knew +Greek, and made it his special boast that, though dull, he was faithful. +It is easy to make fun of Pope's version, but true scholars have seldom +done so. Listen to Professor Conington {76}:-- + + 'It has been, and I hope still is, the delight of every intelligent + schoolboy. They read of kings, and heroes, and mighty deeds in + language which, in its calm majestic flow, unhasting, unresting, + carries them on as irresistibly as Homer's own could do were they born + readers of Greek, and their minds are filled with a conception of the + heroic age, not indeed strictly true, but almost as near the truth as + that which was entertained by Virgil himself.' + +Mr. D. G. Rossetti, himself both an admirable translator and a +distinguished poet, has in effect laid down the first law of rhythmical +translation thus: 'Thou shalt not turn a good poem into a bad one.' Pope +kept this law. + +Pope was a great adept at working upon other men's stuff. There is +hardly anything in which men differ more enormously than in the degree in +which they possess this faculty of utilization. Pope's _Essay on +Criticism_, which brought him great fame, and was thought a miracle of +wit, was the result of much hasty reading, undertaken with the intention +of appropriation. Apart from the _limae labor_, which was enormous, and +was never grudged by Pope, there was not an hour's really hard work in +it. Dryden had begun the work of English criticism with his _Essay on +Dramatic Poesy_, and other well-known pieces. He had also translated +Boileau's _Art of Poetry_. Then there were the works of those noble +lords, Lord Sheffield, Lord Roscommon, Lord Granville, and the Duke of +Buckingham. Pope, who loved a brief, read all these books greedily, and +with an amazing quick eye for points. His orderly brain and brilliant +wit re-arranged and rendered resplendent the ill-placed and ill-set +thoughts of other men. + +The same thing is noticeable in the most laboured production of his later +life, the celebrated _Essay on Man_. For this he was coached by Lord +Bolingbroke. + +Pope was accustomed to talk with much solemnity of his ethical system, of +which the _Essay on Man_ is but a fragment, but we need not trouble +ourselves about it. Dr. Johnson said about _Clarissa Harlowe_ that the +man who read it for the story might hang himself; so we may say about the +poetry of Pope: the man who reads it for its critical or ethical +philosophy may hang himself. We read Pope for pleasure, but a bit of his +philosophy may be given: + + 'Presumptuous man! the reason wouldst thou find, + Why formed so weak, so little, and so blind? + First, if thou canst, the harder reason guess, + Why formed no weaker, blinder, and no less? + Ask of thy mother Earth why oaks are made + Taller and stronger than the weeds they shade! + Or ask of yonder argent fields above + Why Jove's satellites are less than Jove!' + +To this latter interrogatory presumptuous science, speaking through the +mouth of Voltaire, was ready with an answer. If Jupiter were less than +his satellites they wouldn't go round him. Pope can make no claim to be +a philosopher, and had he been one, Verse would have been a most improper +vehicle to convey his speculations. No one willingly fights in handcuffs +or wrestles to music. For a man with novel truths to promulgate, or +grave moral laws to expound, to postpone doing so until he had hitched +them into rhyme would be to insult his mission. Pope's gifts were his +wit, his swift-working mind, added to all the cunning of the craft and +mystery of composition. He could say things better than other men, and +hence it comes that, be he a great poet or a small one, he is a great +writer, an English classic. What is it that constitutes a great writer? +A bold question, certainly, but whenever anyone asks himself a question +in public you may be certain he has provided himself with an answer. I +find mine in the writings of a distinguished neighbour of yours, himself, +though living, an English classic--Cardinal Newman. He says {79}: + +'I do not claim for a great author, as such, any great depth of thought, +or breadth of view, or philosophy, or sagacity, or knowledge of human +nature, or experience of human life--though these additional gifts he may +have, and the more he has of them the greater he is,--but I ascribe to +him, as his characteristic gift, in a large sense, the faculty of +expression. He is master of the two-fold [Greek text], the thought and +the word, distinct but inseparable from each other. . . . He always has +the right word for the right idea, and never a word too much. If he is +brief it is because few words suffice; if he is lavish of them, still +each word has its mark, and aids, not embarrasses, the vigorous march of +his elocution. He expresses what all feel, but all cannot say, and his +sayings pass into proverbs amongst his people, and his phrases become +household words and idioms of their daily speech, which is tessellated +with the rich fragments of his language, as we see in foreign lands the +marbles of Roman grandeur worked into the walls and pavements of modern +palaces.' Pope satisfies this definition. He has been dead one hundred +and forty-two years; yet, next to Shakespeare, who has been dead two +hundred and seventy years, and who was nearer to Pope than Pope is to us, +he is the most quoted of English poets, the one who has most enriched our +common speech. Horace used, but has long ceased, to be the poet of +Parliament; for Mr. Gladstone, who, more than any other, has kept alive +in Parliament the scholarly traditions of the past, has never been very +Horatian, preferring, whenever the dignity of the occasion seemed to +demand Latin, the long roll of the hexameter, something out of Virgil or +Lucretius. The new generation of honourable members might not +unprofitably turn their attention to Pope. Think how, at all events, the +labour members would applaud, not with 'a sad civility,' but with +downright cheers, a quotation they actually understood. + +Pope is seen at his best in his satires and epistles, and in the mock- +heroic. To say that the _Rape of the Lock_ is the best mock-heroic poem +in the language is to say nothing; to say that it is the best in the +world is to say more than my reading warrants; but to say that it and +_Paradise Regained_ are the only two faultless poems, of any length, in +English is to say enough. + +The satires are savage--perhaps satires should be; but Pope's satires are +sometimes what satires should never be--shrill. Dr. Johnson is more to +my mind as a sheer satirist than Pope, for in satire character tells more +than in any other form of verse. We want a personality behind--a strong, +gloomy, brooding personality; soured and savage if you will--nay, as +soured and savage as you like, but spiteful never. + +Pope became rather by the backing of his friends than from any other +cause a party man. Party feeling ran high during the first Georges, and +embraced things now outside its ambit--the theatre, for example, and the +opera. You remember how excited politicians got over Addison's _Cato_, +which, as the work of a Whig, and appearing at a critical time, was +thought to be full of a wicked wit and a subtle innuendo future ages have +failed to discover amidst its obvious dulness. Pope, who was not then +connected with either party, wrote the prologue, and in one of the best +letters ever written to nobody tells the story of the first night. + + 'The numerous and violent claps of the Whig party, on the one side the + theatre, were echoed back by the Tories on the other, while the author + sweated behind the scenes with concern to find their applause + proceeded more from the hand than the head. This was the case too of + the prologue-writer, who was clapped into a stanch Whig, sore against + his will, at almost every two lines. I believe that you have heard + that, after all the applause of the opposite faction, my Lord + Bolingbroke sent for Booth, who played Cato, into the box between one + of the acts, and presented him with fifty guineas, in acknowledgment, + as he expressed it, for his defending the cause of liberty so well + against a perpetual dictator. The Whigs are unwilling to be distanced + this way, as it is said, and, therefore, design a present to the said + Cato very speedily. In the meantime they are getting ready as good a + sentence as the former on their side. So, betwixt them, it is + probable that Cato, as Dr. Garth expressed it, may have something to + live upon after he dies.' + +Later on music was dragged into the fray. The Court was all for Handel +and the Germans; the Prince of Wales and the Tory nobility affected the +Italian opera. The Whigs went to the Haymarket; the Tories to the Opera +House in Lincoln's Inn Field. In this latter strife Pope took small +part; for, notwithstanding his _Ode on St. Cecilia's Day_, he hated music +with an entire sincerity. He also affected to hate the drama; but some +have thought this accounted for by the fact that, early in his career, he +was damned for the farce of _Three Hours after Marriage_, which, after +the fashion of our own days, he concocted with another, the co-author in +this case being a wit of no less calibre than Gay, the author of _The +Beggars' Opera_. The astonished audience bore it as best they might till +the last act, when the two lovers, having first inserted themselves +respectively into the skins of a mummy and a crocodile, talk at one +another across the boards; then they rose in their rage, and made an end +of that farce. Their yells were doubtless still in Pope's ears when, +years afterwards, he wrote the fine lines-- + + 'While all its throats the gallery extends + And all the thunder of the pit ascends, + Loud as the wolves on Orca's stormy steep + Howl to the roarings of the northern deep.' + +Pope, as we have said, became a partisan, and so had his hands full of +ready-made quarrels; but his period was certainly one that demanded a +satirist. Perhaps most periods do; but I am content to repeat, his did. +Satire like Pope's is essentially modish, and requires a restricted +range. Were anyone desirous of satirizing humanity at large I should +advise him to check his noble rage, and, at all events, to begin with his +next-door neighbour, who is almost certain to resent it, which humanity +will not do. This was Pope's method. It was a corrupt set amongst whom +he moved. The gambling in the South Sea stock had been prodigious, and +high and low, married and single, town and country, Protestant and +Catholic, Whig and Tory, took part in it. One _could_ gamble in that +stock. The mania began in February 1720, and by the end of May the price +of 100 pounds stock was up to 340 pounds. In July and August it was 950 +pounds, and even touched, 1,000 pounds. In the middle of September it +was down to 590 pounds, and before the end of the year it had dropped to +125 pounds. Pope himself bought stock when it stood so low as 104 +pounds, but he had never the courage to sell, and consequently lost, +according to his own account, half his worldly possessions. The Prime +Minister, Sir Robert Walpole, also bought stock, but he sold--as did his +Most Gracious Majesty the King--at 1,000 pounds. The age was also a +scandalous, ill-living age, and Pope, who was a most confirmed gossip and +tale-bearer, picked up all that was going. The details of every lawsuit +of a personal character were at his finger-ends. Whoever starved a +sister, or forged a will, or saved his candle-ends, made a fortune +dishonestly, or lost one disgracefully, or was reported to do so, be he +citizen or courtier, noble duke or plump alderman, Mr. Pope was sure to +know all about it, and as likely as not to put it into his next satire. +Living, as the poet did, within easy distance of London, he always turned +up in a crisis as regularly as a porpoise in a storm, so at least writes +a noble friend. This sort of thing naturally led to quarrels, and the +shocking incompleteness of this lecture stands demonstrated by the fact +that, though I have almost done, I have as yet said nothing abort Pope's +quarrels, which is nearly as bad as writing about St. Paul and leaving +out his journeys. Pope's quarrels are celebrated. His quarrel with Mr. +Addison, culminating in the celebrated description, almost every line of +which is now part and parcel of the English language; his quarrel with +Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, whom he satirized in the most brutal lines +ever written by man of woman; his quarrel with Lord Hervey; his quarrel +with the celebrated Sarah, Duchess of Marlborough, ought not to be +dismissed so lightly, but what can I do? From the Duchess of Marlborough +Pope is said to have received a sum of money, sometimes stated at 1,000 +pounds and sometimes at 3,000 pounds, for consenting to suppress his +description of her as Atossa, which, none the less, he published. I do +not believe the story; money passed between the parties and went to Miss +Martha Blount, but it must have been for some other consideration. Sarah +Jennings was no fool, and loved money far too well to give it away +without security; and how possibly could she hope by a cash payment to +erase from the tablets of a poet's memory lines dictated by his hate, or +bind by the law of honour a man capable of extorting blackmail? Then +Pope quarrelled most terribly with the elder Miss Blount, who, he said, +used to beat her mother; then he quarrelled with the mother because she +persisted in living with the daughter and pretending to be fond of her. +As for his quarrels with the whole tribe of poor authors, are they not +writ large in the four books of the _Dunciad_? Mr. Swinburne is indeed +able to find in some, at all events, of these quarrels a species of holy +war, waged, as he says, in language which is at all events strong, +'against all the banded bestialities of all dunces and all dastards, all +blackguardly blockheads and all blockheaded blackguards.' + +I am sorry to be unable to allow myself to be wound up in Mr. Swinburne's +bucket to the height of his argument. There are two kinds of quarrels, +the noble and the ignoble. When John Milton, weary and depressed for a +moment in the battle he was fighting in the cause of an enlightened +liberty and an instructed freedom, exclaims, with the sad prophet Jeremy, +'Woe is me, my mother, that thou hast borne me, a man of strife and +contention,' we feel the sublimity of the quotation, which would not be +quite the case were the words uttered by an Irishman returning home with +a broken head from Donnybrook Fair. The _Dunciad_ was quite uncalled- +for. Even supposing that we admit that Pope was not the aggressor: + + 'The noblest answer unto such + Is kindly silence when they brawl.' + +But it is, to say the least of it, doubtful whether Pope did not begin +brawling first. Swift, whose misanthropy was genuine, and who begged +Pope whenever he thought of the world to give it another lash on his (the +Dean's) account, saw clearly the danger of Pope's method, and wrote to +him: 'Take care the bad poets do not out-wit you as they have done the +good ones in every age; whom they have provoked to transmit their names +to posterity. Maevius is as well known as Virgil, and Gildon will be as +well known as you if his name gets into your verses; and as for the +difference between good and bad fame, it is a mere trifle.' The advice +was far too good to be taken. But what has happened? The petty would-be +Popes, but for the real Pope, would have been entirely forgotten. As it +is, only their names survive in the index to the _Dunciad_; their +indecencies and dastardly blockheadisms are as dead as Queen Anne; and if +the historian or the moralist seeks an illustration of the coarseness and +brutality of their style, he finds it only too easily, not in the works +of the dead dunces, but in the pages of their persecutor. Pope had none +of the grave purpose which makes us, at all events, partially sympathize +with Ben Jonson in his quarrels with the poetasters of his day. It is a +mere toss-up whose name you may find in the _Dunciad_--a miserable +scribbler's or a resplendent scholar's; a tasteless critic's or an +immortal wit's. A satirist who places Richard Bentley and Daniel Defoe +amongst the Dunces must be content to abate his pretensions to be +regarded as a social purge. + +Men and women, we can well believe, went in terror of little Mr. Pope. +Well they might, for he made small concealment of their names, and even +such as had the luck to escape obvious recognition have been hoisted into +infamy by the untiring labours of subsequent commentators. It may, +perhaps, be still open to doubt who was the Florid Youth referred to in +the Epilogue to the _Satires_: + + 'And how did, pray, the Florid Youth offend + Whose speech you took and gave it to a friend?' + +Bowles said it was Lord Hervey, and that the adjective is due to his +lordship's well-known practice of painting himself; but Mr. Croker, who +knew everything, and was in the habit of contradicting the Duke of +Wellington about the battle of Waterloo, says, 'Certainly not. The +Florid Youth was young Henry Fox.' + +Sometimes, indeed, in our hours of languor and dejection, when + + 'The heart is sick, + And all the wheels of being slow,' + +the question forces itself upon us, What can it matter who the Florid +Youth was, and who cares how he offended? But this questioning spirit +must be checked. 'The proper study of mankind is man,' and that title +cannot be denied even to a florid youth. Still, as I was saying, people +did not like it at the time, and the then Duke of Argyll said, in his +place in the House of Lords, that if anybody so much as named him in an +invective, he would first run him through the body, and then throw +himself--not out of the window, as one was charitably hoping--but on a +much softer place--the consideration of their Lordship's House. Some +persons of quality, of less truculent aspect than McCallum More, thought +to enlist the poet's services, and the Duchess of Buckingham got him to +write an epitaph on her deceased son--a feeble lad--to which transaction +the poet is thought to allude in the pleasing lines, + + 'But random praise--the task can ne'er be done, + Each mother asks it for her booby son.' + +Mr. Alderman Barber asked it for himself, and was willing--so at least it +was reported--to pay for it at the handsome figure of 4,000 pounds for a +single couplet. Pope, however, who was not mercenary, declined to +gratify the alderman, who by his will left the poet a legacy of 100 +pounds, possibly hoping by this benefaction, if he could not be praised +in his lifetime, at all events to escape posthumous abuse. If this were +his wish it was gratified, and the alderman sleeps unsung. + +Pope greatly enjoyed the fear he excited. With something of exultation +he sings:-- + + 'Yes, I am proud: I must be proud to see + Men, not afraid of God, afraid of me; + Safe from the bar, the pulpit, and the throne, + Yet touched and shamed by ridicule alone. + O sacred weapon! left for Truth's defence, + Sole dread of folly, vice, and insolence! + To all but heaven-directed hands denied, + The Muse may give thee, but the gods must guide: + Reverent I touch thee, but with honest zeal, + To rouse the watchmen of the public weal, + To Virtue's work provoke the tardy Hall + And goad the prelate slumb'ring in his stall. + Ye tinsel insects! whom a court maintains, + That counts your beauties only by your stains, + Spin all your cobwebs o'er the eye of day, + The Muse's wing shall brush you all away. + All his grace preaches, all his lordship sings, + All that makes saints of queens, and gods of kings,-- + All, all but truth drops dead-born from the press, + Like the last gazette, or the last address.' + +The poet himself was very far from being invulnerable, and he writhed at +every sarcasm. There was one of his contemporaries of whom he stood in +mortal dread, but whose name he was too frightened even to mention. It +is easy to guess who this was. It was Hogarth, who in one of his +caricatures had depicted Pope as a hunchback, whitewashing Burlington +House. Pope deemed this the most grievous insult of his life, but he +said nothing about it; the spiteful pencil proving more than master of +the poisoned pen. + +Pope died on May 30th, 1744, bravely and cheerfully enough. His doctor +was offering him one day the usual encouragements, telling him his breath +was easier, and so on, when a friend entered, to whom the poet exclaimed, +'Here I am, dying of a hundred good symptoms.' In Spence's _Anecdotes_ +there is another story, pitched in a higher key: 'Shortly before his +death, he said to me, "What's that?" pointing into the air with a very +steady regard, and then looked down on me and said, with a smile of great +pleasure, and with the greatest softness, "'Twas a vision."' It may have +been so. At the very last he consented to allow a priest to be sent for, +who attended and administered to the dying man the last sacraments of the +Church. The spirit in which he received them cannot be pronounced +religious. As Cardinal Newman has observed, Pope was an unsatisfactory +Catholic. + +Pope died in his enemies' day. + +Dr. Arbuthnot, who was acknowledged by all his friends to have been the +best man who ever lived, be the second-best who he might, had predeceased +the poet; and it should be remembered, before we take upon ourselves the +task of judging a man we never saw, that Dr. Arbuthnot, who was as shrewd +as he was good, had for Pope that warm personal affection we too rarely +notice nowadays between men of mature years. Swift said of Arbuthnot: +'Oh! if the world had but a dozen Arbuthnots in it I would burn my +_Travels_.' This may be doubted without damage to the friendly +testimony. The terrible Dean himself, whose azure eyes saw through most +pretences, loved Pope; but Swift was now worse than dead--he was mad, +dying a-top, like the shivered tree he once gazed upon with horror and +gloomy forebodings of impending doom. + +Many men must have been glad when they read in their scanty journals that +Mr. Pope lay dead at his villa in Twickenham. They breathed the easier +for the news. Personal satire may be a legitimate, but it is an ugly +weapon. The Muse often gives what the gods do not guide; and though we +may be willing that our faults should be scourged, we naturally like to +be sure that we owe our sore backs to the blackness of our guilt, and not +merely to the fact that we have the proper number of syllables to our +names, or because we occasionally dine with an enemy of our scourger. + +But living as we do at a convenient distance from Mr. Pope, we may safely +wish his days had been prolonged, not necessarily to those of his mother, +but to the Psalmist's span, so that he might have witnessed the dawn of a +brighter day. 1744 was the nadir of the eighteenth century. With +Macbeth the dying Pope might have exclaimed,-- + + 'Renown and grace is dead; + The wine of life is drawn, and the mere lees + Is left in the vault to brag of.' + +The feats of arms that have made the first Ministry of the elder Pitt for +ever glorious would have appealed to Pope's better nature, and made him +forget the scandals of the court and the follies of the town. Who knows +but they might have stirred him, for he was not wholly without the true +poet's prophetic gift, which dreams of things to come, to foretell, in +that animated and animating style of his, which has no rival save +glorious John Dryden's, the expansion of England, and how, in far-off +summers he should never see, English maidens, living under the Southern +Cross, should solace their fluttering hearts before laying themselves +down to sleep with some favourite bit from his own _Eloisa to Abelard_? +Whether, in fact, maidens in those latitudes do read _Eloisa_ before +blowing out their candles I cannot say; but Pope, I warrant, would have +thought they would. And they might do worse--and better. + +Both as a poet and a man Pope had many negations. + + 'Of love, that sways the sun and all the stars,' + +he knew absolutely nothing. Even of the lesser light, + + 'The eternal moon of love, + Under whose motions life's dull billows move,' + +he knew but little. + +His _Eloisa_, splendid as is its diction, and vigorous though be the +portrayal of the miserable creature to whom the poem relates, most +certainly lacks 'a gracious somewhat,' whilst no less certainly is it +marred by a most unfeeling coarseness. A poem about love it may be--a +love-poem it is not. Of the 'wild benefit of nature,'-- + + 'The silence that is in the starry sky, + The sleep that is among the lonely hills,' + +Pope had small notion, though there is just a whiff of Wordsworth in an +observation he once hazarded, that a tree is a more poetical object than +a prince in his coronation robes. His taste in landscape gardening was +honoured with the approbation of Horace Walpole, and he spent 1,000 +pounds upon a grotto, which incurred the ridicule of Johnson. Of that +indescribable something, that 'greatness' which causes Dryden to uplift a +lofty head from the deep pit of his corruption, neither Pope's character +nor his style bears any trace. But still, both as a poet and a man we +must give place, and even high place, to Pope. About the poetry there +can be no question. A man with his wit, and faculty of expression, and +infinite painstaking, is not to be evicted from his ancient homestead in +the affections and memories of his people by a rabble of critics, or even +a _posse_ of poets. As for the man, he was ever eager and interested in +life. Beneath all his faults--for which he had more excuse than a whole +congregation of the righteous need ever hope to muster for their own +shortcomings--we recognise humanity, and we forgive much to humanity, +knowing how much need there is for humanity to forgive us. Indifference, +known by its hard heart and its callous temper, is the only unpardonable +sin. Pope never committed it. He had much to put up with. We have much +to put up with--in him. He has given enormous pleasure to generations of +men, and will continue so to do. We can never give him any pleasure. The +least we can do is to smile pleasantly as we replace him upon his shelf, +and say, as we truthfully may, 'There was a great deal of human nature in +Alexander Pope.' + + + + +DR. JOHNSON. + + +If we should ever take occasion to say of Dr. Johnson's Preface to +Shakspeare what he himself said of a similar production of the poet Rowe, +'that it does not discover much profundity or penetration,' we ought in +common fairness always to add that nobody else has ever written about +Shakspeare one-half so entertainingly. If this statement be questioned, +let the doubter, before reviling me, re-read the preface, and if, after +he has done so, he still demurs, we shall be content to withdraw the +observation, which, indeed, has only been made for the purpose of +introducing a quotation from the Preface itself. + +In that document, Dr. Johnson, with his unrivalled stateliness, writes as +follows:--'The poet of whose works I have undertaken the revision may now +begin to assume the dignity of an ancient, and claim the privilege of +established fame and prescriptive veneration. He has long outlived his +century, the term commonly fixed as the test of literary merit.' + +The whirligig of time has brought in his revenges. The Doctor himself +has been dead his century. He died on the 13th of December, 1784. Come, +let us criticise him. + +Our qualifications for this high office need not be investigated +curiously. + +'Criticism,' writes Johnson in the 60th _Idler_, 'is a study by which men +grow important and formidable at a very small expense. The power of +invention has been conferred by nature upon few, and the labour of +learning those sciences which may by mere labour be obtained, is too +great to be willingly endured; but every man can exert such judgment as +he has upon the works of others; and he whom nature has made weak, and +idleness keeps ignorant, may yet support his vanity by the name of a +critick.' + +To proceed with our task by the method of comparison is to pursue a +course open to grave objection, yet it is forced upon us when we find, as +we lately did, a writer in the _Times_ newspaper, in the course of a not +very discriminating review of Mr. Froude's recent volumes, casually +remarking, as if it admitted of no more doubt than the day's price of +consols, that Carlyle was a greater man than Johnson. It is a good thing +to be positive. To be positive in your opinions and selfish in your +habits is the best recipe, if not for happiness, at all events for that +far more attainable commodity, comfort, with which we are acquainted. 'A +noisy man,' sang poor Cowper, who could not bear anything louder than the +hissing of a tea-urn, 'a noisy man is always in the right,' and a +positive man can seldom be proved wrong. Still, in literature it is very +desirable to preserve a moderate measure of independence, and we, +therefore, make bold to ask whether it is as plain as the 'old hill of +Howth,' that Carlyle was a greater man than Johnson? Is not the precise +contrary the truth? No abuse of Carlyle need be looked for here or from +me. When a man of genius and of letters happens to have any striking +virtues, such as purity, temperance, honesty, the novel task of dwelling +on them has such attraction for us, that we are content to leave the +elucidation of his faults to his personal friends, and to stern, +unbending moralists like Mr. Edmund Yates and the _World_ newspaper. +{101} To love Carlyle is, thanks to Mr. Froude's super-human ideal of +friendship, a task of much heroism, almost meriting a pension; still, it +is quite possible for the candid and truth-loving soul. But a greater +than Johnson he most certainly was not. + +There is a story in Lockhart's _Life of Scott_ of an ancient +beggar-woman, who, whilst asking an alms of Sir Walter, described +herself, in a lucky moment for her pocket, as 'an old struggler.' Scott +made a note of the phrase in his diary, and thought it deserved to become +classical. It certainly clings most tenaciously to the memory--so +picturesquely does it body forth the striving attitude of poor battered +humanity. Johnson was 'an old struggler.' {102} So too, in all +conscience, was Carlyle. The struggles of Johnson have long been +historical; those of Carlyle have just become so. We are interested in +both. To be indifferent would be inhuman. Both men had great +endowments, tempestuous natures, hard lots. They were not amongst Dame +Fortune's favourites. They had to fight their way. What they took they +took by storm. But--and here is a difference indeed--Johnson came off +victorious, Carlyle did not. + +Boswell's book is an arch of triumph, through which, as we read, we see +his hero passing into eternal fame, to take up his place with those-- + + 'Dead but sceptred sovereigns who still rule + Our spirits from their urns.' + +Froude's book is a tomb over which the lovers of Carlyle's genius will +never cease to shed tender but regretful tears. + +We doubt whether there is in English literature a more triumphant book +than Boswell's. What materials for tragedy are wanting? Johnson was a +man of strong passions, unbending spirit, violent temper, as poor as a +church-mouse, and as proud as the proudest of church dignitaries; endowed +with the strength of a coal-heaver, the courage of a lion, and the tongue +of Dean Swift, he could knock down booksellers and silence bargees; he +was melancholy almost to madness, 'radically wretched,' indolent, +blinded, diseased. Poverty was long his portion; not that genteel +poverty that is sometimes behindhand with its rent, but that hungry +poverty that does not know where to look for its dinner. Against all +these things had this 'old struggler' to contend; over all these things +did this 'old struggler' prevail. Over even the fear of death, the +giving up of this 'intellectual being,' which had haunted his gloomy +fancy for a lifetime, he seems finally to have prevailed, and to have met +his end as a brave man should. + +Carlyle, writing to his wife, says, and truthfully enough, 'The more the +devil worries me the more I wring him by the nose;' but then if the +devil's was the only nose that was wrung in the transaction, why need +Carlyle cry out so loud? After buffeting one's way through the storm- +tossed pages of Froude's _Carlyle_--in which the universe is stretched +upon the rack because food disagrees with man and cocks crow--with what +thankfulness and reverence do we read once again the letter in which +Johnson tells Mrs. Thrale how he has been called to endure, not dyspepsia +or sleeplessness, but paralysis itself: + + 'On Monday I sat for my picture, and walked a considerable way with + little inconvenience. In the afternoon and evening I felt myself + light and easy, and began to plan schemes of life. Thus I went to + bed, and, in a short time, waked and sat up, as has long been my + custom; when I felt a confusion in my head which lasted, I suppose, + about half a minute; I was alarmed, and prayed God that however much + He might afflict my body He would spare my understanding. . . . Soon + after I perceived that I had suffered a paralytic stroke, and that my + speech was taken from me. I had no pain, and so little dejection, in + this dreadful state, that I wondered at my own apathy, and considered + that perhaps death itself, when it should come, would excite less + horror than seems now to attend it. In order to rouse the vocal + organs I took two drams. . . . I then went to bed, and, strange as it + may seem, I think, slept. When I saw light it was time I should + contrive what I should do. Though God stopped my speech He left me my + hand. I enjoyed a mercy which was not granted to my dear friend + Lawrence, who now perhaps overlooks me, as I am writing, and rejoices + that I have what he wanted. My first note was necessarily to my + servant, who came in talking, and could not immediately comprehend why + he should read what I put into his hands. . . . How this will be + received by you I know not. I hope you will sympathize with me; but + perhaps-- + + '"My mistress, gracious, mild, and good, + Cries--Is he dumb? 'Tis time he shou'd." + + 'I suppose you may wish to know how my disease is treated by the + physicians. They put a blister upon my back, and two from my ear to + my throat, one on a side. The blister on the back has done little, + and those on the throat have not risen. I bullied and bounced (it + sticks to our last sand), and compelled the apothecary to make his + salve according to the Edinburgh dispensatory, that it might adhere + better. I have now two on my own prescription. They likewise give me + salt of hartshorn, which I take with no great confidence; but I am + satisfied that what can be done is done for me. I am almost ashamed + of this querulous letter, but now it is written let it go.' + +This is indeed tonic and bark for the mind. + +If, irritated by a comparison that ought never to have been thrust upon +us, we ask why it is that the reader of Boswell finds it as hard to help +loving Johnson as the reader of Froude finds its hard to avoid disliking +Carlyle, the answer must be that whilst the elder man of letters was full +to overflowing with the milk of human kindness, the younger one was full +to overflowing with something not nearly so nice; and that whilst Johnson +was pre-eminently a reasonable man, reasonable in all his demands and +expectations, Carlyle was the most unreasonable mortal that ever +exhausted the patience of nurse, mother, or wife. + +Of Dr. Johnson's affectionate nature nobody has written with nobler +appreciation than Carlyle himself. 'Perhaps it is this Divine feeling of +affection, throughout manifested, that principally attracts us to +Johnson. A true brother of men is he, and filial lover of the earth.' + +The day will come when it will be recognised that Carlyle, as a critic, +is to be judged by what he himself corrected for the press, and not by +splenetic entries in diaries, or whimsical extravagances in private +conversation. + +Of Johnson's reasonableness nothing need be said, except that it is +patent everywhere. His wife's judgment was a sound one: 'He is the most +sensible man I ever met.' + +As for his brutality, of which at one time we used to hear a great deal, +we cannot say of it what Hookham Frere said of Landor's immorality, that +it was: + + 'Mere imaginary classicality + Wholly devoid of criminal reality.' + +It was nothing of the sort. Dialectically the great Doctor was a great +brute. The fact is, he had so accustomed himself to wordy warfare, that +he lost all sense of moral responsibility, and cared as little for men's +feelings as a Napoleon did for their lives. When the battle was over, +the Doctor frequently did what no soldier ever did that I have heard tell +of, apologized to his victims and drank wine or lemonade with them. It +must also be remembered that for the most part his victims sought him +out. They came to be tossed and gored. And after all, are they so much +to be pitied? They have our sympathy, and the Doctor has our applause. I +am not prepared to say, with the simpering fellow with weak legs whom +David Copperfield met at Mr. Waterbrook's dinner-table, that I would +sooner be knocked down by a man with blood than picked up by a man +without any; but, argumentatively speaking, I think it would be better +for a man's reputation to be knocked down by Dr. Johnson than picked up +by Mr. Froude. + +Johnson's claim to be the best of our talkers cannot, on our present +materials, be contested. For the most part we have only talk about other +talkers. Johnson's is matter of record. Carlyle no doubt was a great +talker--no man talked against talk or broke silence to praise it more +eloquently than he, but unfortunately none of it is in evidence. All +that is given us is a sort of Commination Service writ large. We soon +weary of it. Man does not live by curses alone. + +An unhappier prediction of a boy's future was surely never made than that +of Johnson's by his cousin, Mr. Cornelius Ford, who said to the infant +Samuel, 'You will make your way the more easily in the world as you are +content to dispute no man's claim to conversation excellence, and they +will, therefore, more willingly allow your pretensions as a writer.' +Unfortunate Mr. Ford! The man never breathed whose claim to conversation +excellence Dr. Johnson did not dispute on every possible occasion, +whilst, just because he was admittedly so good a talker, his pretensions +as a writer have been occasionally slighted. + +Johnson's personal character has generally been allowed to stand high. +It, however, has not been submitted to recent tests. To be the first to +'smell a fault' is the pride of the modern biographer. Boswell's artless +pages afford useful hints not lightly to be disregarded. During some +portion of Johnson's married life he had lodgings, first at Greenwich, +afterwards at Hampstead. But he did not always go home o' nights; +sometimes preferring to roam the streets with that vulgar ruffian Savage, +who was certainly no fit company for him. He once actually quarrelled +with 'Tetty,' who, despite her ridiculous name, was a very sensible woman +with a very sharp tongue, and for a season, like stars, they dwelt apart. +Of the real merits of this dispute we must resign ourselves to ignorance. +The materials for its discussion do not exist; even Croker could not find +them. Neither was our great moralist as sound as one would have liked to +see him in the matter of the payment of small debts. When he came to +die, he remembered several of these outstanding accounts; but what +assurance have we that he remembered them all? One sum of 10 pounds he +sent across to the honest fellow from whom he had borrowed it, with an +apology for his delay; which, since it had extended over a period of +twenty years, was not superfluous. I wonder whether he ever repaid Mr. +Dilly the guinea he once borrowed of him to give to a very small boy who +had just been apprenticed to a printer. If he did not, it was a great +shame. That he was indebted to Sir Joshua in a small loan is apparent +from the fact that it was one of his three dying requests to that great +man that he should release him from it, as, of course, the most amiable +of painters did. The other two requests, it will be remembered, were to +read his Bible, and not to use his brush on Sundays. The good Sir Joshua +gave the desired promises with a full heart, for these two great men +loved one another; but subsequently discovered the Sabbatical restriction +not a little irksome, and after a while resumed his former practice, +arguing with himself that the Doctor really had no business to extract +any such promise. The point is a nice one, and perhaps ere this the two +friends have met and discussed it in the Elysian fields. If so, I hope +the Doctor, grown 'angelical,' kept his temper with the mild shade of +Reynolds better than on the historical occasion when he discussed with +him the question of 'strong drinks.' + +Against Garrick, Johnson undoubtedly cherished a smouldering grudge, +which, however, he never allowed anyone but himself to fan into flame. +His pique was natural. Garrick had been his pupil at Edial, near +Lichfield; they had come up to town together with an easy united fortune +of fourpence--'current coin o' the realm.' Garrick soon had the world at +his feet and garnered golden grain. Johnson became famous too, but +remained poor and dingy. Garrick surrounded himself with what only money +can buy, good pictures and rare books. Johnson cared nothing for +pictures--how should he? he could not see them; but he did care a great +deal about books, and the pernickety little player was chary about +lending his splendidly bound rarities to his quondam preceptor. Our +sympathies in this matter are entirely with Garrick; Johnson was one of +the best men that ever lived, but not to lend books to. Like Lady +Slattern, he had a 'most observant thumb.' But Garrick had no real cause +for complaint. Johnson may have soiled his folios and sneered at his +trade, but in life Johnson loved Garrick, and in death embalmed his +memory in a sentence which can only die with the English language: 'I am +disappointed by that stroke of death which has eclipsed the gaiety of +nations, and impoverished the public stock of harmless pleasure.' + +Will it be believed that puny critics have been found to quarrel with +this colossal compliment on the poor pretext of its falsehood? Garrick's +death, urge these dullards, could not possibly have eclipsed the gaiety +of nations, since he had retired from the stage months previous to his +demise. When will mankind learn that literature is one thing, and sworn +testimony another? + +Johnson's relations with Burke were of a more crucial character. The +author of _Rasselas_ and _The English Dictionary_ can never have been +really jealous of Garrick, or in the very least desirous of 'bringing +down the house;' but Burke had done nobler things than that. He had made +politics philosophical, and had at least tried to cleanse them from the +dust and cobwebs of party. Johnson, though he had never sat in the House +of Commons, had yet, in his capacity of an unauthorized reporter, put +into the mouths of honourable members much better speeches than ever came +out of them, and it is no secret that he would have liked to make a +speech or two on his own account. Burke had made many. Harder still to +bear, there were not wanting good judges to say that, in their opinion, +Burke was a better talker than the great Samuel himself. To cap it all, +was not Burke a 'vile Whig'? The ordeal was an unusually trying one. +Johnson emerges triumphant. + +Though by no means disposed to hear men made much of, he always listened +to praise of Burke with a boyish delight. He never wearied of it. When +any new proof of Burke's intellectual prowess was brought to his notice, +he would exclaim exultingly, 'Did we not always say he was a great man?' +And yet how admirably did this 'poor scholar' preserve his independence +and equanimity of mind! It was not easy to dazzle the Doctor. What a +satisfactory story that is of Burke showing Johnson over his fine estate +at Beaconsfield, and expatiating in his exuberant style on its +'liberties, privileges, easements, rights, and advantages,' and of the +old Doctor, the tenant of 'a two-pair back' somewhere off Fleet Street, +peering cautiously about, criticising everything, and observing with much +coolness-- + + 'Non equidem invideo, miror magis.' + +A friendship like this could be disturbed but by death, and accordingly +we read: + + 'Mr. Langton one day during Johnson's last illness found Mr. Burke and + four or five more friends sitting with Johnson. Mr. Burke said to + him, "I am afraid, sir, such a number of us may be oppressive to you." + "No, sir," said Johnson, "it is not so; and I must be in a wretched + state indeed when your company would not be a delight to me." Mr. + Burke, in a tremulous voice, expressive of being very tenderly + affected, replied: "My dear sir, you have always been too good to me." + Immediately afterwards he went away. This was the last circumstance + in the acquaintance of these two eminent men.' + +But this is a well-worn theme, though, like some other well-worn themes, +still profitable for edification or rebuke. A hundred years can make no +difference to a character like Johnson's, or to a biography like +Boswell's. We are not to be robbed of our conviction that this man, at +all events, was both great and good. + +Johnson the author is not always fairly treated. Phrases are convenient +things to hand about, and it is as little the custom to inquire into +their truth as it is to read the letterpress on banknotes. We are +content to count banknotes, and to repeat phrases. One of these phrases +is, that whilst everybody reads Boswell, nobody reads Johnson. The facts +are otherwise. Everybody does not read Boswell, and a great many people +do read Johnson. If it be asked, What do the general public know of +Johnson's nine volumes octavo? I reply, Beshrew the general public! What +in the name of the Bodleian has the general public got to do with +literature? The general public subscribes to Mudie, and has its +intellectual, like its lacteal sustenance, sent round to it in carts. On +Saturdays these carts, laden with 'recent works in circulation,' traverse +the Uxbridge Road; on Wednesdays they toil up Highgate Hill, and if we +may believe the reports of travellers, are occasionally seen rushing +through the wilds of Camberwell and bumping over Blackheath. It is not a +question of the general public, but of the lover of letters. Do Mr. +Browning, Mr. Arnold, Mr. Lowell, Mr. Trevelyan, Mr. Stephen, Mr. Morley, +know their Johnson? 'To doubt would be disloyalty.' And what these big +men know in their big way hundreds of little men know in their little +way. We have no writer with a more genuine literary flavour about him +than the great Cham of literature. No man of letters loved letters +better than he. He knew literature in all its branches--he had read +books, he had written books, he had sold books, he had bought books, and +he had borrowed them. Sluggish and inert in all other directions, he +pranced through libraries. He loved a catalogue; he delighted in an +index. He was, to employ a happy phrase of Dr. Holmes, at home amongst +books, as a stable-boy is amongst horses. He cared intensely about the +future of literature and the fate of literary men. 'I respect Millar,' +he once exclaimed; 'he has raised the price of literature.' Now Millar +was a Scotchman. Even Horne Tooke was not to stand in the pillory: 'No, +no, the dog has too much literature for that.' The only time the author +of _Rasselas_ met the author of the _Wealth of Nations_ witnessed a +painful scene. The English moralist gave the Scotch one the lie direct, +and the Scotch moralist applied to the English one a phrase which would +have done discredit to the lips of a costermonger; {117} but this +notwithstanding, when Boswell reported that Adam Smith preferred rhyme to +blank verse, Johnson hailed the news as enthusiastically as did Cedric +the Saxon the English origin of the bravest knights in the retinue of the +Norman king. 'Did Adam say that?' he shouted: 'I love him for it. I +could hug him!' Johnson no doubt honestly believed he held George III. +in reverence, but really he did not care a pin's fee for all the crowned +heads of Europe. All his reverence was reserved for 'poor scholars.' +When a small boy in a wherry, on whom had devolved the arduous task of +rowing Johnson and his biographer across the Thames, said he would give +all he had to know about the Argonauts, the Doctor was much pleased, and +gave him, or got Boswell to give him, a double fare. He was ever an +advocate of the spread of knowledge amongst all classes and both sexes. +His devotion to letters has received its fitting reward, the love and +respect of all 'lettered hearts.' + +Considering him a little more in detail, we find it plain that he was a +poet of no mean order. His resonant lines, informed as they often are +with the force of their author's character--his strong sense, his +fortitude, his gloom--take possession of the memory, and suffuse +themselves through one's entire system of thought. A poet spouting his +own verses is usually a figure to be avoided; but one could be content to +be a hundred and thirty next birthday to have heard Johnson recite, in +his full sonorous voice, and with his stately elocution, _The Vanity of +Human Wishes_. When he came to the following lines, he usually broke +down, and who can wonder?-- + + 'Proceed, illustrious youth, + And virtue guard thee to the throne of truth! + Yet should thy soul indulge the gen'rous heat + Till captive science yields her last retreat; + Should reason guide thee with her brightest ray, + And pour on misty doubt resistless day; + Should no false kindness lure to loose delight, + Nor praise relax, nor difficulty fright; + Should tempting novelty thy cell refrain, + And sloth effuse her opiate fumes in vain; + Should beauty blunt on fops her fatal dart, + Nor claim the triumph of a lettered heart; + Should no disease thy torpid veins invade, + Nor melancholy's phantoms haunt thy shade; + Yet hope not life from grief or danger free, + Nor think the doom of man revers'd for thee. + Deign on the passing world to turn thine eyes, + And pause a while from letters to be wise; + There mark what ills the scholar's life assail, + Toil, envy, want, the patron and the gaol. + See nations, slowly wise and meanly just, + To buried merit raise the tardy bust. + If dreams yet flatter, once again attend, + Hear Lydiat's life, and Galileo's end.' + +If this be not poetry, may the name perish! + +In another style, the stanzas on the young heir's majority have such +great merit as to tempt one to say that the author of _The Jolly +Beggars_, Robert Burns himself, might have written them. Here are four +of them: + + 'Loosen'd from the minor's tether, + Free to mortgage or to sell; + Wild as wind and light as feather, + Bid the sons of thrift farewell. + + 'Call the Betseys, Kates, and Jennies, + All the names that banish care, + Lavish of your grandsire's guineas, + Show the spirit of an heir. + + 'Wealth, my lad, was made to wander, + Let it wander as it will; + Call the jockey, call the pander, + Bid them come and take their fill. + + 'When the bonny blade carouses, + Pockets full and spirits high-- + What are acres? what are houses? + Only dirt--or wet or dry.' + +Johnson's prologues, and his lines on the death of Robert Levet, are well +known. Indeed, it is only fair to say that our respected friend, the +General Public, frequently has Johnsonian tags on its tongue: + + 'Slow rises worth by poverty depressed.' + + 'The unconquered lord of pleasure and of pain.' + + 'He left the name at which the world grew pale + To point a moral or adorn a tale.' + + 'Death, kind nature's signal of retreat.' + + 'Panting Time toiled after him in vain.' + +All these are Johnson's, who, though he is not, like Gray, whom he hated +so, all quotations, is yet oftener in men's mouths than they perhaps wot +of. + +Johnson's tragedy, _Irene_, need not detain us. It is unreadable, and to +quote his own sensible words, 'It is useless to criticise what nobody +reads.' It was indeed the expressed opinion of a contemporary called Pot +that _Irene_ was the finest tragedy of modern times; but on this judgment +of Pot's being made known to Johnson, he was only heard to mutter, 'If +Pot says so, Pot lies,' as no doubt he did. + +Johnson's Latin Verses have not escaped the condemnation of scholars. +Whose have? The true mode of critical approach to copies of Latin verse +is by the question--How bad are they? Croker took the opinion of the +Marquess Wellesley as to the degree of badness of Johnson's Latin +Exercises. Lord Wellesley, as became so distinguished an Etonian, felt +the solemnity of the occasion, and, after bargaining for secrecy, gave it +as his opinion that they were all very bad, but that some perhaps were +worse than others. To this judgment I have nothing to add. + +As a writer of English prose, Johnson has always enjoyed a great, albeit +a somewhat awful reputation. In childish memories he is constrained to +be associated with dust and dictionaries, and those provoking obstacles +to a boy's reading--'long words.' It would be easy to select from +Johnson's writings numerous passages written in that essentially vicious +style to which the name Johnsonese has been cruelly given; but the +searcher could not fail to find many passages guiltless of this charge. +The characteristics of Johnson's prose style are colossal good sense, +though with a strong sceptical bias, good humour, vigorous language, and +movement from point to point, which can only be compared to the measured +tread of a well-drilled company of soldiers. Here is a passage from the +preface to Shakspeare: + + 'Notes are often necessary, but they are necessary evils. Let him + that is yet unacquainted with the powers of Shakspeare, and who + desires to feel the highest pleasure that the drama can give, read + every play from the first scene to the last, with utter negligence of + all his commentators. When his fancy is once on the wing, let it not + stoop at correction or explanation. When his attention is strongly + engaged, let it disdain alike to turn aside to the name of Theobald + and of Pope. Let him read on, through brightness and obscurity, + through integrity and corruption; let him preserve his comprehension + of the dialogue and his interest in the fable. And when the pleasures + of novelty have ceased, let him attempt exactness and read the + commentators.' + +Where are we to find better sense, or much better English? + +In the pleasant art of chaffing an author Johnson has hardly an equal. De +Quincey too often overdoes it. Macaulay seldom fails to excite sympathy +with his victim. In playfulness Mr. Arnold perhaps surpasses the Doctor, +but then the latter's playfulness is always leonine, whilst Mr. Arnold's +is surely, sometimes, just a trifle kittenish. An example, no doubt a +very good one, of Johnson's humour must be allowed me. Soame Jenyns, in +his book on the _Origin of Evil_, had imagined that, as we have not only +animals for food, but choose some for our diversion, the same privilege +may be allowed to beings above us, 'who may deceive, torment, or destroy +us for the ends only of their own pleasure.' + +On this hint writes our merry Doctor as follows: + + 'I cannot resist the temptation of contemplating this analogy, which I + think he might have carried farther, very much to the advantage of his + argument. He might have shown that these "hunters, whose game is + man," have many sports analogous to our own. As we drown whelps or + kittens, they amuse themselves now and then with sinking a ship, and + stand round the fields of Blenheim, or the walls of Prague, as we + encircle a cockpit. As we shoot a bird flying, they take a man in the + midst of his business or pleasure, and knock him down with an + apoplexy. Some of them perhaps are virtuosi, and delight in the + operations of an asthma, as a human philosopher in the effects of the + air-pump. Many a merry bout have these frolick beings at the + vicissitudes of an ague, and good sport it is to see a man tumble with + an epilepsy, and revive and tumble again, and all this he knows not + why. The paroxysms of the gout and stone must undoubtedly make high + mirth, especially if the play be a little diversified with the + blunders and puzzles of the blind and deaf. . . . One sport the merry + malice of these beings has found means of enjoying, to which we have + nothing equal or similar. They now and then catch a mortal, proud of + his parts, and flattered either by the submission of those who court + his kindness, or the notice of those who suffer him to court theirs. A + head thus prepared for the reception of false opinions, and the + projection of vain designs, they easily fill with idle notions till, + in time, they make their plaything an author; their first diversion + commonly begins with an ode or an epistle, then rises perhaps to a + political irony, and is at last brought to its height by a treatise of + philosophy. Then begins the poor animal to entangle himself in + sophisms and to flounder in absurdity.' + +The author of the philosophical treatise, _A Free Inquiry into the Nature +and Origin of Evil_, did not at all enjoy this 'merry bout' of the +'frolick' Johnson. + +The concluding paragraphs of Johnson's Preface to his Dictionary are +historical prose, and if we are anxious to find passages fit to compare +with them in the melancholy roll of their cadences and in their grave +sincerity and manly emotion, we must, I think, take a flying jump from +Dr. Johnson to Dr. Newman. + +For sensible men the world offers no better reading than the _Lives of +the Poets_. They afford an admirable example of the manner of man +Johnson was. The subject was suggested to him by the booksellers, whom +as a body he never abused. Himself the son of a bookseller, he respected +their calling. If they treated him with civility, he responded suitably. +If they were rude to him he knocked them down. These worthies chose +their own poets. Johnson remained indifferent. He knew everybody's +poetry, and was always ready to write anybody's Life. If he knew the +facts of a poet's life--and his knowledge was enormous on such +subjects--he found room for them; if he did not, he supplied their place +with his own shrewd reflections and sombre philosophy of life. It thus +comes about that Johnson is every bit as interesting when he is writing +about Sprat, or Smith, or Fenton, as he is when he has got Milton or Gray +in hand. He is also much less provoking. My own favourite _Life_ is +that of Sir Richard Blackmore. + +The poorer the poet the kindlier is the treatment he receives. Johnson +kept all his rough words for Shakspeare, Milton, and Gray. + +In this trait, surely an amiable one, he was much resembled by that +eminent man the late Sir George Jessel, whose civility to a barrister was +always in inverse ratio to the barrister's practice; and whose friendly +zeal in helping young and nervous practitioners over the stiles of legal +difficulty was only equalled by the fiery enthusiasm with which he thrust +back the Attorney and Solicitor General and people of that sort. + +As a political thinker Johnson has not had justice. He has been lightly +dismissed as the last of the old-world Tories. He was nothing of the +sort. His cast of political thought is shared by thousands to this day. +He represents that vast army of electors whom neither canvasser nor +caucus has ever yet cajoled or bullied into a polling-booth. Newspapers +may scold, platforms may shake; whatever circulars can do may be done, +all that placards can tell may be told; but the fact remains that one- +third of every constituency in the realm shares Dr. Johnson's 'narcotic +indifference,' and stays away. + +It is, of course, impossible to reconcile all Johnson's recorded +utterances with any one view of anything. When crossed in conversation +or goaded by folly he was capable of anything. But his dominant tone +about politics was something of this sort. Provided a man lived in a +State which guaranteed him private liberty and secured him public order, +he was very much of a knave or altogether a fool if he troubled himself +further. To go to bed when you wish, to get up when you like, to eat and +drink and read what you choose, to say across your port or your tea +whatever occurs to you at the moment, and to earn your living as best you +may--this is what Dr. Johnson meant by private liberty. Fleet Street +open day and night--this is what he meant by public order. Give a +sensible man these, and take all the rest the world goes round. Tyranny +was a bugbear. Either the tyranny was bearable, or it was not. If it +was bearable, it did not matter; and as soon as it became unbearable the +mob cut off the tyrant's head, and wise men went home to their dinner. To +views of this sort he gave emphatic utterance on the well-known occasion +when he gave Sir Adam Ferguson a bit of his mind. Sir Adam had +innocently enough observed that the Crown had too much power. Thereupon +Johnson: + + 'Sir, I perceive you are a vile Whig. Why all this childish jealousy + of the power of the Crown? The Crown has not power enough. When I + say that all governments are alike, I consider that in no government + power can be abused long; mankind will not bear it. If a sovereign + oppresses his people, they will rise and cut off his head. There is a + remedy in human nature against tyranny that will keep us safe under + every form of government.' + +This is not, and never was, the language of Toryism. It is a much more +intellectual 'ism.' It is indifferentism. So, too, in his able +pamphlet, _The False Alarm_, which had reference to Wilkes and the +Middlesex election, though he no doubt attempts to deal with the +constitutional aspect of the question, the real strength of his case is +to be found in passages like the following: + + 'The grievance which has produced all this tempest of outrage, the + oppression in which all other oppressions are included, the invasion + which has left us no property, the alarm that suffers no patriot to + sleep in quiet, is comprised in a vote of the House of Commons, by + which the freeholders of Middlesex are deprived of a Briton's + birthright--representation in Parliament. They have, indeed, received + the usual writ of election; but that writ, alas! was malicious + mockery; they were insulted with the form, but denied the reality, for + there was one man excepted from their choice. The character of the + man, thus fatally excepted, I have no purpose to delineate. Lampoon + itself would disdain to speak ill of him of whom no man speaks well. + Every lover of liberty stands doubtful of the fate of posterity, + because the chief county in England cannot take its representative + from a gaol.' + +Temperament was of course at the bottom of this indifference. Johnson +was of melancholy humour and profoundly sceptical. Cynical he was not--he +loved his fellow-men; his days were full of + + 'Little, nameless, unremembered acts + Of kindness and of love.' + +But he was as difficult to rouse to enthusiasm about humanity as is Mr. +Justice Stephen. He pitied the poor devils, but he did not believe in +them. They were neither happy nor wise, and he saw no reason to believe +they would ever become either. 'Leave me alone,' he cried to the sultry +mob, bawling 'Wilkes and Liberty.' 'I at least am not ashamed to own +that I care for neither the one nor the other.' + +No man, however, resented more fiercely than Johnson any unnecessary +interference with men who were simply going their own way. The +Highlanders only knew Gaelic, yet political wiseacres were to be found +objecting to their having the Bible in their own tongue. Johnson flew to +arms: he wrote one of his monumental letters; the opposition was quelled, +and the Gael got his Bible. So too the wicked interference with Irish +enterprise, so much in vogue during the last century, infuriated him. +'Sir,' he said to Sir Thomas Robinson, 'you talk the language of a +savage. What, sir! would you prevent any people from feeding themselves, +if by any honest means they can do so?' + +Were Johnson to come to life again, total abstainer as he often was, he +would, I expect, denounce the principle involved in 'Local Option.' I am +not at all sure he would not borrow a guinea from a bystander and become +a subscriber to the 'Property Defence League;' and though it is notorious +that he never read any book all through, and never could be got to +believe that anybody else ever did, he would, I think, read a larger +fraction of Mr. Spencer's pamphlet, '_Man_ versus _the State_,' than of +any other 'recent work in circulation.' The state of the Strand, when +two vestries are at work upon it, would, I am sure, drive him into open +rebellion. + +As a letter-writer Johnson has great merits. Let no man despise the +epistolary art. It is said to be extinct. I doubt it. Good letters +were always scarce. It does not follow that, because our grandmothers +wrote long letters, they all wrote good ones, or that nobody nowadays +writes good letters because most people write bad ones. Johnson wrote +letters in two styles. One was monumental--more suggestive of the chisel +than the pen. In the other there are traces of the same style, but, like +the old Gothic architecture, it has grown domesticated, and become the +fit vehicle of plain tidings of joy and sorrow--of affection, wit, and +fancy. The letter to Lord Chesterfield is the most celebrated example of +the monumental style. From the letters to Mrs. Thrale many good examples +of the domesticated style might be selected One must suffice: + + 'Queeney has been a good girl, and wrote me a letter. If Burney said + she would write, she told you a fib. She writes nothing to me. She + can write home fast enough. I have a good mind not to tell her that + Dr. Bernard, to whom I had recommended her novel, speaks of it with + great commendation, and that the copy which she lent me has been read + by Dr. Lawrence three times over. And yet what a gipsy it is. She no + more minds me than if I were a Branghton. Pray, speak to Queeney to + write again. . . . Now you think yourself the first writer in the + world for a letter about nothing. Can you write such a letter as + this? So miscellaneous, with such noble disdain of regularity, like + Shakspeare's works; such graceful negligence of transition, like the + ancient enthusiasts. The pure voice of Nature and of Friendship. Now, + of whom shall I proceed to speak? of whom but Mrs. Montague? Having + mentioned Shakspeare and Nature, does not the name of Montague force + itself upon me? Such were the transitions of the ancients, which now + seem abrupt, because the intermediate idea is lost to modern + understandings.' + +But the extract had better end, for there are, (I fear) 'modern +understandings who will not perceive the intermediate idea' between +Shakspeare and Mrs. Montague, and to whom even the name of Branghton will +suggest no meaning. + +Johnson's literary fame is, in our judgment, as secure as his character. +Like the stone which he placed over his father's grave at Lichfield, and +which, it is shameful to think, has been removed, it is 'too massy and +strong' to be ever much affected by the wind and weather of our literary +atmosphere. 'Never,' so he wrote to Mrs. Thrale, 'let criticisms operate +upon your face or your mind; it is very rarely that an author is hurt by +his critics. The blaze of reputation cannot be blown out; but it often +dies in the socket. From the author of _Fitzosborne's Letters_ I cannot +think myself in much danger. I met him only once, about thirty years +ago, and in some small dispute soon reduced him to whistle.' Dr. Johnson +is in no danger from anybody. None but Gargantua could blow him out, and +he still burns brightly in his socket. + +How long this may continue who can say? It is a far cry to 1985. Science +may by that time have squeezed out literature, and the author of the +_Lives of the Poets_ may be dimly remembered as an odd fellow who lived +in the Dark Ages, and had a very creditable fancy for making chemical +experiments. On the other hand, the Spiritualists may be in possession, +in which case the Cock Lane Ghost will occupy more of public attention +than Boswell's hero, who will, perhaps, be reprobated as the profane +utterer of these idle words: 'Suppose I know a man to be so lame that he +is absolutely incapable to move himself, and I find him in a different +room from that in which I left him, shall I puzzle myself with idle +conjectures, that perhaps his nerves have by some unknown change all at +once become effective? No, sir, it is clear how he got into a different +room--he was _carried_.' + +We here part company with Johnson, bidding him a most affectionate +farewell, and leaving him in undisturbed possession of both place and +power. His character will bear investigation, and some of his books +perusal. The latter, indeed, may be submitted to his own test, and there +is no truer one. A book, he wrote, should help us either to enjoy life +or to endure it. His frequently do both. + + + + +EDMUND BURKE. + + +_A Lecture delivered before the Edinburgh Philosophical Society_. + +Mr. John Morley, who amongst other things has written two admirable books +about Edmund Burke, is to be found in the Preface to the second of them +apologizing for having introduced into the body of the work extracts from +his former volume--conduct which he seeks to justify by quoting from the +Greek (always a desirable thing to do when in difficulty), to prove that, +though you may say what you have to say well once, you cannot so say it +twice. + +A difficulty somewhat of the same kind cannot fail to be felt by everyone +who takes upon himself to write on Burke; for however innocent a man's +own past life may be of any public references to the subject, the very +many good things other men have said about it must seriously interfere +with true liberty of treatment. + +Hardly any man, and certainly no politician, has been so bepraised as +Burke, whose very name, suggesting, as it does, splendour of diction, has +tempted those who would praise him to do so in a highly decorated style, +and it would have been easy work to have brought together a sufficient +number of animated passages from the works of well-known writers all +dedicated to the greater glory of Edmund Burke, and then to have tagged +on half-a-dozen specimens of his own resplendent rhetoric, and so to have +come to an apparently natural and long-desired conclusion without +exciting any more than the usual post-lectorial grumble. + +This course, however, not recommending itself, some other method had to +be discovered. Happily, it is out of the question within present limits +to give any proper summary of Burke's public life. This great man was +not like some modern politicians, a specialist, confining his activities +within the prospectus of an association; nor was he, like some others, a +thing of shreds and patches, busily employed to-day picking up the facts +with which he will overwhelm his opponents on the morrow; but was one +ever ready to engage with all comers on all subjects from out the stores +of his accumulated knowledge. Even were we to confine ourselves to those +questions only which engaged Burke's most powerful attention, enlisted +his most active sympathy, elicited his most bewitching rhetoric, we +should still find ourselves called upon to grapple with problems as vast +and varied as Economic Reform, the Status of our Colonies, our Empire in +India, our relations with Ireland both in respect to her trade and her +prevalent religion; and then, blurring the picture, as some may +think--certainly rendering it Titanesque and gloomy--we have the +spectacle of Burke in his old age, like another Laocoon, writhing and +wrestling with the French Revolution; and it may serve to give us some +dim notion of how great a man Burke was, of how affluent a mind, of how +potent an imagination, of how resistless an energy, that even when his +sole unassisted name is pitted against the outcome of centuries, and we +say Burke and the French Revolution, we are not overwhelmed by any sense +of obvious absurdity or incongruity. + +What I propose to do is merely to consider a little Burke's life prior to +his obtaining a seat in Parliament, and then to refer to any +circumstances which may help us to account for the fact that this truly +extraordinary man, whose intellectual resources beggar the imagination, +and who devoted himself to politics with all the forces of his nature, +never so much as attained to a seat in the Cabinet--a feat one has known +to be accomplished by persons of no proved intellectual agility. Having +done this, I shall then, bearing in mind the aphorism of Lord +Beaconsfield, that it is always better to be impudent than servile, essay +an analysis of the essential elements of Burke's character. + +The first great fact to remember is that the Edmund Burke we are all +agreed in regarding as one of the proudest memories of the House of +Commons was an Irishman. When we are in our next fit of political +depression about that island, and are about piously to wish, as the poet +Spenser tells us men were wishing even in his time, that it were not +adjacent, let us do a little national stocktaking, and calculate profits +as well as losses. Burke was not only an Irishman, but a typical one--of +the very kind many Englishmen, and even possibly some Scotchmen, make a +point of disliking. I do not say he was an aboriginal Irishman, but his +ancestors are said to have settled in the county of Galway, under +Strongbow, in King Henry the Second's time, when Ireland was first +conquered and our troubles began. This, at all events, is a better Irish +pedigree than Mr. Parnell's. + +Skipping six centuries, we find Burke's father an attorney in +Dublin--which somehow sounds a very Irish thing to be--who in 1725 +married a Miss Nagle, and had fifteen children. The marriage of Burke's +parents was of the kind called mixed--a term which doubtless admits of +wide application, but when employed technically signifies that the +religious faith of the spouses was different; one, the father, being a +Protestant, and the lady an adherent to what used to be pleasantly called +the 'old religion.' The severer spirit now dominating Catholic councils +has condemned these marriages, on the score of their bad theology and +their lax morality; but the practical politician, who is not usually much +of a theologian--though Lord Melbourne and Mr. Gladstone are +distinguished exceptions--and whose moral conscience is apt to be robust +(and here I believe there are no exceptions), cannot but regret that so +good an opportunity of lubricating religious differences with the sweet +oil of the domestic affections should be lost to us in these days of +bitterness and dissension. Burke was brought up in the Protestant faith +of his father, and was never in any real danger of deviating from it; but +I cannot doubt that his regard for his Catholic fellow-subjects, his +fierce repudiation of the infamies of the Penal Code--the horrors of +which he did something to mitigate--his respect for antiquity, and his +historic sense, were all quickened by the fact that a tenderly loved and +loving mother belonged through life and in death to an ancient and an +outraged faith. + +The great majority of Burke's brothers and sisters, like those of +Laurence Sterne, were 'not made to live;' and out of the fifteen but +three, beside himself, attained maturity. These were his eldest brother +Garrett, on whose death Edmund succeeded to the patrimonial Irish estate, +which he sold; his younger brother, Richard, a highly speculative +gentleman, who always lost; and his sister, Juliana, who married a Mr. +French, and was, as became her mother's daughter, a rigid Roman +Catholic--who, so we read, was accustomed every Christmas Day to invite +to the Hall the maimed, the aged, and distressed of her vicinity to a +plentiful repast, during which she waited upon them as a servant. A +sister like this never did any man any serious harm. + +Edmund Burke was born in 1729, in Dublin, and was taught his rudiments in +the country--first by a Mr. O'Halloran, and afterwards by a Mr. +FitzGerald, village pedagogues both, who at all events succeeded in +giving their charge a brogue which death alone could silence. Burke +passed from their hands to an academy at Ballitore, kept by a Quaker, +whence he proceeded to Trinity College, Dublin. He was thus not only +Irish born, but Irish bred. His intellectual habit of mind exhibited +itself early. He belonged to the happy family of omnivorous readers, +and, in the language of his latest schoolmaster, he went to college with +a larger miscellaneous stock of reading than was usual with one of his +years; which, being interpreted out of pedagogic into plain English, +means that 'our good Edmund' was an enormous devourer of poetry and +novels, and so he remained to the end of his days. That he always +preferred Fielding to Richardson is satisfactory, since it pairs him off +nicely with Dr. Johnson, whose preference was the other way, and so helps +to keep an interesting question wide open. His passion for the poetry of +Virgil is significant. His early devotion to Edward Young, the grandiose +author of the _Night Thoughts_, is not to be wondered at; though the +inspiration of the youthful Burke, either as poet or critic, may be +questioned, when we find him rapturously scribbling in the margin of his +copy: + + 'Jove claimed the verse old Homer sung, + But God Himself inspired Dr. Young.' + +But a boy's enthusiasm for a favourite poet is a thing to rejoice over. +The years that bring the philosophic mind will not bring--they must +find--enthusiasm. + +In 1750 Burke (being then twenty-one) came for the first time to London, +to do what so many of his lively young countrymen are still doing--though +they are beginning to make a grievance even of that--eat his dinners at +the Middle Temple, and so qualify himself for the Bar. Certainly that +student was in luck who found himself in the same mess with Burke; and +yet so stupid are men--so prone to rest with their full weight on the +immaterial and slide over the essential--that had that good fortune been +ours we should probably have been more taken up with Burke's brogue than +with his brains. Burke came to London with a cultivated curiosity, and +in no spirit of desperate determination to make his fortune. That the +study of the law interested him cannot be doubted, for everything +interested him, particularly the stage. Like the sensible Irishman he +was, he lost his heart to Peg Woffington on the first opportunity. He +was fond of roaming about the country during, it is to be hoped, vacation- +time only, and is to be found writing the most cheerful letters to his +friends in Ireland (all of whom are persuaded that he is going some day +to be somebody, though sorely puzzled to surmise what thing or when, so +pleasantly does he take life), from all sorts of out-of-the-way country +places, where he lodges with quaint old landladies who wonder maternally +why he never gets drunk, and generally mistake him for an author until he +pays his bill. When in town he frequented debating societies in Fleet +Street and Covent Garden, and made his first speeches; for which purpose +he would, unlike some debaters, devote studious hours to getting up the +subjects to be discussed. There is good reason to believe that it was in +this manner his attention was first directed to India. He was at all +times a great talker, and, Dr. Johnson's dictum notwithstanding, a good +listener. He was endlessly interested in everything--in the state of the +crops, in the last play, in the details of all trades, the rhythm of all +poems, the plots of all novels, and indeed in the course of every +manufacture. And so for six years he went up and down, to and fro, +gathering information, imparting knowledge, and preparing himself, though +he knew not for what. + +The attorney in Dublin grew anxious, and searched for precedents of a son +behaving like his, and rising to eminence. Had his son got the legal +mind?--which, according to a keen observer, chiefly displays itself by +illustrating the obvious, explaining the evident, and expatiating on the +commonplace. Edmund's powers of illustration, explanation, and +expatiation could not indeed be questioned; but then the subjects +selected for the exhibition of those powers were very far indeed from +being obvious, evident, or commonplace, and the attorney's heart grew +heavy within him. The paternal displeasure was signified in the usual +manner--the supplies were cut off. Edmund Burke, however, was no +ordinary prodigal, and his reply to his father's expostulations took the +unexpected and unprecedented shape of a copy of a second and enlarged +edition of his treatise on the _Sublime and Beautiful_, which he had +published in 1756 at the price of three shillings. Burke's father +promptly sent the author a bank-bill for 100 pounds--conduct on his part +which, considering he had sent his son to London and maintained him there +for six years to study law, was, in my judgment, both sublime and +beautiful. In the same year Burke published another pamphlet--a one-and- +sixpenny affair--written ironically in the style of Lord Bolingbroke, and +called _A Vindication of Natural Society_; _or_, _A View of the Miseries +and Evils arising to Mankind from Every Species of Civil Society_. Irony +is a dangerous weapon for a public man to have ever employed, and in +after-life Burke had frequently to explain that he was not serious. On +these two pamphlets' airy pinions Burke floated into the harbour of +literary fame. No less a man than the great David Hume referred to him, +in a letter to the hardly less great Adam Smith, as an Irish gentleman +who had written a 'very pretty treatise on the Sublime.' After these +efforts Burke, as became an established wit, went to Bath to recruit, and +there, fitly enough, fell in love. The lady was Miss Jane Mary Nugent, +the daughter of a celebrated Bath physician, and it is pleasant to be +able to say of the marriage that was shortly solemnized between the young +couple, that it was a happy one, and then to go on our way, leaving +them--where man and wife ought to be left--alone. Oddly enough, Burke's +wife was also the offspring of a 'mixed marriage'--only in her case it +was the father who was the Catholic; consequently both Mr. and Mrs. +Edmund Burke were of the same way of thinking, but each had a parent of +the other way. Although getting married is no part of the curriculum of +a law student, Burke's father seems to have come to the conclusion that +after all it was a greater distinction for an attorney in Dublin to have +a son living amongst the wits in London, and discoursing familiarly on +the 'Sublime and Beautiful,' than one prosecuting some poor countryman, +with a brogue as rich as his own, for stealing a pair of breeches; for we +find him generously allowing the young couple 200 pounds a year, which no +doubt went some way towards maintaining them. Burke, who was now in his +twenty-eighth year, seems to have given up all notion of the law. In +1758 he wrote for Dodsley the first volume of the _Annual Register_, a +melancholy series which continues to this day. For doing this he got 100 +pounds. Burke was by this time a well-known figure in London literary +society, and was busy making for himself a huge private reputation. The +Christmas Day of 1758 witnessed a singular scene at the dinner table of +David Garrick. Dr. Johnson, then in full vigour of his mind, and with +the all-dreaded weapons of his dialectics kept burnished by daily use, +was flatly contradicted by a fellow-guest some twenty years his junior, +and, what is more, submitted to it without a murmur. One of the diners, +Arthur Murphy, was so struck by this occurrence, unique in his long +experience of the Doctor, that on returning home he recorded the fact in +his journal, but ventured no explanation of it. It can only be accounted +for--so at least I venture to think--by the combined effect of four +wholly independent circumstances: _First_, the day was Christmas Day, a +day of peace and goodwill, and our beloved Doctor was amongst the +sincerest, though most argumentative, of Christians, and a great observer +of days. _Second_, the house was David Garrick's, and consequently we +may be certain that the dinner had been a superlatively good one; and has +not Boswell placed on record Johnson's opinion of the man who professed +to be indifferent about his dinner? _Third_, the subject under +discussion was India, about which Johnson knew he knew next to nothing. +And _fourth_, the offender was Edmund Burke, whom Johnson loved from the +first day he set eyes upon him to their last sad parting by the waters of +death. + +In 1761 that shrewd old gossip, Horace Walpole, met Burke for the first +time at dinner, and remarks of him in a letter to George Montague: + + 'I dined at Hamilton's yesterday; there were Garrick, and young Mr. + Burke, who wrote a book in the style of Lord Bolingbroke, that was + much admired. He is a sensible man, but has not worn off his + authorism yet, and thinks there is nothing so charming as writers, and + to be one. He will know better one of these days.' + +But great as were Burke's literary powers, and passionate as was his +fondness for letters and for literary society, he never seems to have +felt that the main burden of his life lay in that direction. He looked +to the public service, and this though he always believed that the pen of +a great writer was a more powerful and glorious weapon than any to be +found in the armoury of politics. This faith of his comes out sometimes +queerly enough. For example, when Dr. Robertson in 1777 sent Burke his +cheerful _History of America_, in quarto volumes, Burke, in the most +perfect good faith, closes a long letter of thanks thus:-- + + 'You will smile when I send you a trifling temporary production made + for the occasion of the day, and to perish with it, in return for your + immortal work.' + +I have no desire, least of all in Edinburgh, to say anything +disrespectful of Principal Robertson; but still, when we remember that +the temporary production he got in exchange for his _History of America_ +was Burke's immortal letter to the Sheriffs of Bristol on the American +War, we must, I think, be forced to admit that, as so often happens when +a Scotchman and an Irishman do business together, the former got the +better of the bargain. + +Burke's first public employment was of a humble character, and might well +have been passed over in a sentence, had it not terminated in a most +delightful quarrel, in which Burke conducted himself like an Irishman of +genius. Some time in 1759 he became acquainted with William Gerard +Hamilton, commonly called 'Single-speech Hamilton,' on account of the +celebrity he gained from his first speech in Parliament, and the steady +way in which his oratorical reputation went on waning ever after. In +1761 this gentleman went over to Ireland as Chief Secretary, and Burke +accompanied him as the Secretary's secretary, or, in the unlicensed +speech of Dublin, as Hamilton's jackal. This arrangement was eminently +satisfactory to Hamilton, who found, as generations of men have found +after him, Burke's brains very useful, and he determined to borrow them +for the period of their joint lives. Animated by this desire, in itself +praiseworthy, he busied himself in procuring for Burke a pension of 300 +pounds a year on the Irish establishment, and then the simple 'Single- +speech' thought the transaction closed. He had bought his poor man of +genius, and paid for him on the nail with other people's money. Nothing +remained but for Burke to draw his pension and devote the rest of his +life to maintaining Hamilton's reputation. There is nothing at all +unusual in this, and I have no doubt Burke would have stuck to his +bargain, had not Hamilton conceived the fatal idea that Burke's brains +were _exclusively_ his (Hamilton's). Then the situation became one of +risk and apparent danger. + +Burke's imagination began playing round the subject: he saw himself a +slave, blotted out of existence--mere fuel for Hamilton's flame. In a +week he was in a towering passion. Few men can afford to be angry. It +is a run upon their intellectual resources they cannot meet. But Burke's +treasury could well afford the luxury; and his letters to Hamilton make +delightful reading to those who, like myself, dearly love a dispute when +conducted according to the rules of the game by men of great intellectual +wealth. Hamilton demolished and reduced to stony silence, Burke sat down +again and wrote long letters to all his friends, telling them the whole +story from beginning to end. I must be allowed a quotation from one of +these letters, for this really is not so frivolous a matter as I am +afraid I have made it appear--a quotation of which this much may be said, +that nothing more delightfully Burkean is to be found anywhere:-- + + 'MY DEAR MASON,-- + + 'I am hardly able to tell you how much satisfaction I had in your + letter. Your approbation of my conduct makes me believe much the + better of you and myself; and I assure you that that approbation came + to me very seasonably. Such proofs of a warm, sincere, and + disinterested friendship were not wholly unnecessary to my support at + a time when I experienced such bitter effects of the perfidy and + ingratitude of much longer and much closer connections. The way in + which you take up my affairs binds me to you in a manner I cannot + express; for, to tell you the truth, I never can (knowing as I do the + principles upon which I always endeavour to act) submit to any sort of + compromise of my character; and I shall never, therefore, look upon + those who, after hearing the whole story, do not think me _perfectly_ + in the right, and do not consider Hamilton an infamous scoundrel, to + be in the smallest degree my friends, or even to be persons for whom I + am bound to have the slightest esteem, as fair and just estimators of + the characters and conduct of men. Situated as I am, and feeling as I + do, I should be just as well pleased that they totally condemned me as + that they should say there were faults on both sides, or that it was a + disputable case, as I hear is (I cannot forbear saying) the affected + language of some persons. . . . You cannot avoid remarking, my dear + Mason, and I hope not without some indignation, the unparalleled + singularity of my situation. Was ever a man before me expected to + enter into formal, direct, and undisguised slavery? Did ever man + before him confess an attempt to decoy a man into such an alleged + contract, not to say anything of the impudence of regularly pleading + it? If such an attempt be wicked and unlawful (and I am sure no one + ever doubted it), I have only to confess his charge, and to admit + myself his dupe, to make him pass, on his own showing, for the most + consummate villain that ever lived. The only difference between us + is, not whether he is not a rogue--for he not only admits but pleads + the facts that demonstrate him to be so; but only whether I was such a + fool as to sell myself absolutely for a consideration which, so far + from being adequate, if any such could be adequate, is not even so + much as certain. Not to value myself as a gentleman, a free man, a + man of education, and one pretending to literature; is there any + situation in life so low, or even so criminal, that can subject a man + to the possibility of such an engagement? Would you dare attempt to + bind your footman to such terms? Will the law suffer a felon sent to + the plantations to bind himself for his life, and to renounce all + possibility either of elevation or quiet? And am I to defend myself + for not doing what no man is suffered to do, and what it would be + criminal in any man to submit to? You will excuse me for this heat.' + +I not only excuse Burke for his heat, but love him for letting me warm my +hands at it after a lapse of a hundred and twenty years. + +Burke was more fortunate in his second master, for in 1765 being then +thirty-six years of age, he became private secretary to the new Prime +Minister, the Marquis of Rockingham; was by the interest of Lord Verney +returned to Parliament for Wendover, in Bucks; and on January 27th, 1766, +his voice was first heard in the House of Commons. + +The Rockingham Ministry deserves well of the historian, and on the whole +has received its deserts. Lord Rockingham, the Duke of Richmond, Lord +John Cavendish, Mr. Dowdeswell, and the rest of them, were good men and +true, judged by an ordinary standard; and when contrasted with most of +their political competitors, they almost approach the ranks of saints and +angels. However, after a year and twenty days, his Majesty King George +the Third managed to get rid of them, and to keep them at bay for fifteen +years. But their first term of office, though short, lasted long enough +to establish a friendship of no ordinary powers of endurance between the +chief members of the party and the Prime Minister's private secretary, +who was at first, so ran the report, supposed to be a wild Irishman, +whose real name was O'Bourke, and whose brogue seemed to require the +allegation that its owner was a popish emissary. It is satisfactory to +notice how from the very first Burke's intellectual pre-eminence, +character, and aims were clearly admitted and most cheerfully recognised +by his political and social superiors; and in the long correspondence in +which he engaged with most of them there is not a trace to be found, on +one side or the other, of anything approaching to either patronage or +servility. Burke advises them, exhorts them, expostulates with them, +condemns their aristocratic languor, fans their feeble flames, drafts +their motions, dictates their protests, visits their houses, and +generally supplies them with facts, figures, poetry, and romance. To all +this they submit with much humility. The Duke of Richmond once indeed +ventured to hint to Burke, with exceeding delicacy, that he (the Duke) +had a small private estate to attend to as well as public affairs; but +the validity of the excuse was not admitted. The part Burke played for +the next fifteen years with relation to the Rockingham party reminds me +of the functions I have observed performed in lazy families by a soberly +clad and eminently respectable person who pays them domiciliary visits, +and, having admission everywhere, goes about mysteriously from room to +room, winding up all the clocks. This is what Burke did for the +Rockingham party--he kept it going. + +But fortunately for us, Burke was not content with private adjuration, or +even public speech. His literary instincts, his dominating desire to +persuade everybody that he, Edmund Burke, was absolutely in the right, +and every one of his opponents hopelessly wrong, made him turn to the +pamphlet as a propaganda, and in his hands + + 'The thing became a trumpet, whence he blew + Soul-animating strains.' + +So accustomed are we to regard Burke's pamphlets as specimens of our +noblest literature, and to see them printed in comfortable volumes, that +we are apt to forget that in their origin they were but the children of +the pavement, the publications of the hour. If, however, you ever visit +any old public library, and grope about a little, you are likely enough +to find a shelf holding some twenty-five or thirty musty, ugly little +books, usually lettered 'Burke,' and on opening any of them you will come +across one of Burke's pamphlets as originally issued, bound up with the +replies and counter-pamphlets it occasioned. I have frequently tried, +but always in vain, to read these replies, which are pretentious +enough--usually the works of deans, members of Parliament, and other +dignitaries of the class Carlyle used compendiously to describe as +'shovel-hatted'--and each of whom was as much entitled to publish +pamphlets as Burke himself. There are some things it is very easy to do, +and to write a pamphlet is one of them; but to write such a pamphlet as +future generations will read with delight is perhaps the most difficult +feat in literature. Milton, Swift, Burke, and Sydney Smith are, I think, +our only great pamphleteers. + +I have now rather more than kept my word so far as Burke's +pre-parliamentary life is concerned, and will proceed to mention some of +the circumstances that may serve to account for the fact that, when the +Rockingham party came into power for the second time in 1782, Burke, who +was their life and soul, was only rewarded with a minor office. First, +then, it must be recorded sorrowfully of Burke that he was always +desperately in debt, and in this country no politician under the rank of +a baronet can ever safely be in debt. Burke's finances are, and always +have been, marvels and mysteries; but one thing must be said of them--that +the malignity of his enemies, both Tory enemies and Radical enemies, has +never succeeded in formulating any charge of dishonesty against him that +has not been at once completely pulverized, and shown on the facts to be +impossible. {159} Burke's purchase of the estate at Beaconsfield in +1768, only two years after he entered Parliament, consisting as it did of +a good house and 1,600 acres of land, has puzzled a great many good +men--much more than it ever did Edmund Burke. But how did he get the +money? After an Irish fashion--by not getting it at all. Two-thirds of +the purchase-money remained on mortgage, and the balance he borrowed; or, +as he puts it, 'With all I could collect of my own, and by the aid of my +friends, I have established a root in the country.' That is how Burke +bought Beaconsfield, where he lived till his end came; whither he always +hastened when his sensitive mind was tortured by the thought of how badly +men governed the world; where he entertained all sorts and conditions of +men--Quakers, Brahmins (for whose ancient rites he provided suitable +accommodation in a greenhouse), nobles and abbes flying from +revolutionary France, poets, painters, and peers; no one of whom ever +long remained a stranger to his charm. Burke flung himself into farming +with all the enthusiasm of his nature. His letters to Arthur Young on +the subject of carrots still tremble with emotion. You all know Burke's +_Thoughts on the Present Discontents_. You remember--it is hard to +forget--his speech on Conciliation with America, particularly the +magnificent passage beginning, 'Magnanimity in politics is not seldom the +truest wisdom, and a great empire and little minds go ill together.' You +have echoed back the words in which, in his letter to the Sheriffs of +Bristol on the hateful American War, he protests that it was not +instantly he could be brought to rejoice when he heard of the slaughter +and captivity of long lists of those whose names had been familiar in his +ears from his infancy, and you would all join with me in subscribing to a +fund which should have for its object the printing and hanging up over +every editor's desk in town and country a subsequent passage from the +same letter: + + 'A conscientious man would be cautious how he dealt in blood. He + would feel some apprehension at being called to a tremendous account + for engaging in so deep a play without any knowledge of the game. It + is no excuse for presumptuous ignorance that it is directed by + insolent passion. The poorest being that crawls on earth, contending + to save itself from injustice and oppression, is an object respectable + in the eyes of God and man. But I cannot conceive any existence under + heaven (which in the depths of its wisdom tolerates all sorts of + things) that is more truly odious and disgusting than an impotent, + helpless creature, without civil wisdom or military skill, bloated + with pride and arrogance, calling for battles which he is not to + fight, and contending for a violent dominion which he can never + exercise. . . . + + 'If you and I find our talents not of the great and ruling kind, our + conduct at least is conformable to our faculties. No man's life pays + the forfeit of our rashness. No desolate widow weeps tears of blood + over our ignorance. Scrupulous and sober in a well-grounded distrust + of ourselves, we would keep in the port of peace and security; and + perhaps in recommending to others something of the same diffidence, we + should show ourselves more charitable to their welfare than injurious + to their abilities.' + +You have laughed over Burke's account of how all Lord Talbot's schemes +for the reform of the king's household were dashed to pieces, because the +turnspit of the king's kitchen was a Member of Parliament. You have +often pondered over that miraculous passage in his speech on the Nabob of +Arcot's debts, describing the devastation of the Carnatic by Hyder Ali--a +passage which Mr. John Morley says fills the young orator with the same +emotions of enthusiasm, emulation, and despair that (according to the +same authority) invariably torment the artist who first gazes on 'The +Madonna' at Dresden, or the figures of 'Night' and 'Dawn' at Florence. +All these things you know, else are you mighty self-denying of your +pleasures. But it is just possible you may have forgotten the following +extract from one of Burke's farming letters to Arthur Young: + + 'One of the grand points in controversy (a controversy indeed chiefly + carried on between practice and speculation) is that of _deep + ploughing_. In your last volume you seem, on the whole, rather + against that practice, and have given several reasons for your + judgment which deserve to be very well considered. In order to know + how we ought to plough, we ought to know what end it is we propose to + ourselves in that operation. The first and instrumental end is to + divide the soil; the last and ultimate end, so far as regards the + plants, is to facilitate the pushing of the blade upwards, and the + shooting of the roots in all the inferior directions. There is + further proposed a more ready admission of external influences--the + rain, the sun, the air, charged with all those heterogeneous contents, + some, possibly all, of which are necessary for the nourishment of the + plants. By ploughing deep you answer these ends in a greater mass of + the soil. This would seem in favour of deep ploughing as nothing else + than accomplishing, in a more perfect manner, those very ends for + which you are induced to plough at all. But doubts here arise, only + to be solved by experiment. First, is it quite certain that it is + good for the ear and grain of farinaceous plants that their roots + should spread and descend into the ground to the greatest possible + distances and depths? Is there not some limit in this? We know that + in timber, what makes one part flourish does not equally conduce to + the benefit of all; and that which may be beneficial to the wood, does + not equally contribute to the quantity and goodness of the fruit; and, + _vice versa_, that what increases the fruit largely is often far from + serviceable to the tree. Secondly, is that looseness to great depths, + supposing it is useful to one of the species of plants, equally useful + to all? Thirdly, though the external influences--the rain, the sun, + the air--act undoubtedly a part, and a large part, in vegetation, does + it follow that they are equally salutary in any quantities, at any + depths? Or that, though it may be useful to diffuse one of these + agents as extensively as may be in the earth, that therefore it will + be equally useful to render the earth in the same degree pervious to + all? It is a dangerous way of reasoning in physics, as well as + morals, to conclude, because a given proportion of anything is + advantageous, that the double will be quite as good, or that it will + be good at all. Neither in the one nor the other is it always true + that two and two make four.' + +This is magnificent, but it is not farming, and you will easily believe +that Burke's attempts to till the soil were more costly than productive. +Farming, if it is to pay, is a pursuit of small economies; and Burke was +far too Asiatic, tropical, and splendid to have anything to do with small +economies. His expenditure, like his rhetoric, was in the 'grand style.' +He belongs to Charles Lamb's great race, 'the men who borrow.' But +indeed it was not so much that Burke borrowed as that men lent. Right- +feeling men did not wait to be asked. Dr. Brocklesby, that good +physician, whose name breathes like a benediction through the pages of +the biographies of the best men of his time, who soothed Dr. Johnson's +last melancholy hours, and for whose supposed heterodoxy the dying man +displayed so tender a solicitude, wrote to Burke, in the strain of a +timid suitor proposing for the hand of a proud heiress, to know whether +Burke would be so good as to accept 1,000 pounds at once, instead of +waiting for the writer's death. Burke felt no hesitation in obliging so +old a friend. Garrick, who, though fond of money, was as +generous-hearted a fellow as ever brought down a house, lent Burke 1,000 +pounds. Sir Joshua Reynolds, who has been reckoned stingy, by his will +left Burke 2,000 pounds, and forgave him another 2,000 pounds which he +had lent him. The Marquis of Rockingham by his will directed all Burke's +bonds held by him to be cancelled. They amounted to 30,000 pounds. +Burke's patrimonial estate was sold by him for 4,000 pounds; and I have +seen it stated that he had received altogether from family sources as +much as 20,000 pounds. And yet he was always poor, and was glad at the +last to accept pensions from the Crown in order that he might not leave +his wife a beggar. This good lady survived her illustrious husband +twelve years, and seemed as his widow to have had some success in paying +his bills, for at her death all remaining demands were found to be +discharged. For receiving this pension Burke was assailed by the Duke of +Bedford, a most pleasing act of ducal fatuity, since it enabled the +pensioner, not bankrupt of his wit, to write a pamphlet, now of course a +cherished classic, and introduce into it a few paragraphs about the House +of Russell and the cognate subject of grants from the Crown. But enough +of Burke's debts and difficulties, which I only mention because all +through his life they were cast up against him. Had Burke been a +moralist of the calibre of Charles James Fox, he might have amassed a +fortune large enough to keep up half a dozen Beaconsfields, by simply +doing what all his predecessors in the office he held, including Fox's +own father, the truly infamous first Lord Holland, had done--namely, by +retaining for his own use the interest on all balances of the public +money from time to time in his hands as Paymaster of the Forces. But +Burke carried his passion for good government into actual practice, and, +cutting down the emoluments of his office to a salary (a high one, no +doubt), effected a saving to the country of some 25,000 pounds a year, +every farthing of which might have gone without remark into his own +pocket. + +Burke had no vices, save of style and temper; nor was any of his +expenditure a profligate squandering of money. It all went in giving +employment or disseminating kindness. He sent the painter Barry to study +art in Italy. He saved the poet Crabbe from starvation and despair, and +thus secured to the country one who owns the unrivalled distinction of +having been the favourite poet of the three greatest intellectual factors +of the age (scientific men excepted)--Lord Byron, Sir Walter Scott, and +Cardinal Newman. Yet so distorted are men's views that the odious and +anti-social excesses of Fox at the gambling-table are visited with a +blame usually wreathed in smiles, whilst the financial irregularities of +a noble and pure-minded man are thought fit matter for the fiercest +censure or the most lordly contempt. + +Next to Burke's debts, some of his companions and intimates did him harm +and injured his consequence. His brother Richard, whose brogue we are +given to understand was simply appalling, was a good-for-nothing, with a +dilapidated reputation. Then there was another Mr. Burke, who was no +relation, but none the less was always about, and to whom it was not safe +to lend money. Burke's son, too, whose death he mourned so pathetically, +seems to have been a failure, and is described by a candid friend as a +nauseating person. To have a decent following is important in politics. + +A third reason must be given: Burke's judgment of men and things was +often both wrong and violent. The story of Powell and Bembridge, two +knaves in Burke's own office, whose cause he espoused, and whom he +insisted on reinstating in the public service after they had been +dismissed, and maintaining them there, in spite of all protests, till the +one had the grace to cut his throat and the other was sentenced by the +Queen's Bench to a term of imprisonment and a heavy fine, is too long to +be told, though it makes interesting reading in the twenty-second volume +of Howell's _State Trials_, where at the end of the report is to be found +the following note: + + 'The proceedings against Messrs. Powell and Bembridge occasioned much + animated discussion in the House of Commons, in which Mr. Burke warmly + supported the accused. The compassion which on these and all other + occasions was manifested by Mr. Burke for the sufferings of those + public delinquents, the zeal with which he advocated their cause, and + the eagerness with which he endeavoured to extenuate their + criminality, have received severe reprehension, and in particular when + contrasted with his subsequent conduct in the prosecution of Mr. + Hastings.' + +The real reason for Burke's belief in Bembridge is, I think, to be found +in the evidence Burke gave on his behalf at the trial before Lord +Mansfield. Bembridge had rendered Burke invaluable assistance in +carrying out his reforms at the Paymaster's Office, and Burke was +constitutionally unable to believe that a rogue could be on his side; +but, indeed, Burke was too apt to defend bad causes with a scream of +passion, and a politician who screams is never likely to occupy a +commanding place in the House of Commons. A last reason for Burke's +exclusion from high office is to be found in his aversion to any measure +of Parliamentary Reform. An ardent reformer like the Duke of +Richmond--the then Duke of Richmond--who was in favour of annual +parliaments, universal suffrage, and payment of members, was not likely +to wish to associate himself too closely with a politician who wept with +emotion at the bare thought of depriving Old Sarum of parliamentary +representation. + +These reasons account for Burke's exclusion, and jealous as we naturally +and properly are of genius being snubbed by mediocrity, my reading at all +events does not justify me in blaming any one but the Fates for the +circumstance that Burke was never a Secretary of State. And after all, +does it matter much what he was? Burke no doubt occasionally felt his +exclusion a little hard; but he is the victor who remains in possession +of the field; and Burke is now, for us and for all coming after us, in +such possession. + +It now only remains for me, drawing upon my stock of assurance, to essay +the analysis of the essential elements of Burke's mental character, and I +therefore at once proceed to say that it was Burke's peculiarity and his +glory to apply the imagination of a poet of the first order to the facts +and the business of life. Arnold says of Sophocles: + + 'He saw life steadily, and saw it whole.' + +Substitute for the word 'life' the words 'organised society,' and you get +a peep into Burke's mind. There was a catholicity about his gaze. He +knew how the whole world lived. Everything contributed to this: his vast +desultory reading; his education, neither wholly academical nor entirely +professional; his long years of apprenticeship in the service of +knowledge; his wanderings up and down the country; his vast +conversational powers; his enormous correspondence with all sorts of +people; his unfailing interest in all pursuits, trades, manufactures--all +helped to keep before him, like motes dancing in a sunbeam, the huge +organism of modern society, which requires for its existence and for its +development the maintenance of credit and of order. Burke's imagination +led him to look out over the whole land: the legislator devising new +laws, the judge expounding and enforcing old ones, the merchant +despatching 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. But love is the parent of fear, and none knew better than Burke +how thin is the lava layer between the costly fabric of society and the +volcanic heats and destroying flames of anarchy. He trembled for the +fair frame of all established things, and to his horror saw men, instead +of covering the thin surface with the concrete, digging in it for +abstractions, and asking fundamental questions about the origin of +society, and why one man should be born rich and another poor. Burke was +no prating optimist: it was his very knowledge how much could be said +against society that quickened his fears for it. There is no shallower +criticism than that which accuses Burke in his later years of apostasy +from so-called Liberal opinions. Burke was all his life through a +passionate maintainer of the established order of things, and a ferocious +hater of abstractions and metaphysical politics. The same ideas that +explode like bombs through his diatribes against the French Revolution +are to be found shining with a mild effulgence in the comparative calm of +his earlier writings. I have often been struck with a resemblance, which +I hope is not wholly fanciful, between the attitude of Burke's mind +towards government and that of Cardinal Newman towards religion. Both +these great men belong, by virtue of their imaginations, to the poetic +order, and they both are to be found dwelling with amazing eloquence, +detail, and wealth of illustration on the varied elements of society. +Both seem as they write to have one hand on the pulse of the world, and +to be for ever alive to the throb of its action; and Burke, as he +regarded humanity swarming like bees into and out of their hives of +industry, is ever asking himself, How are these men to be saved from +anarchy? whilst Newman puts to himself the question, How are these men to +be saved from atheism? Both saw the perils of free inquiry divorced from +practical affairs. + +'Civil freedom,' says Burke, 'is not, as many have endeavoured to +persuade you, a thing that lies hid in the depth of abstruse science. It +is a blessing and a benefit, not an abstract speculation, and all the +just reasoning that can be upon it is of so coarse a texture as perfectly +to suit the ordinary capacities of those who are to enjoy and of those +who are to defend it.' + +'Tell men,' says Cardinal Newman, 'to gain notions of a Creator from His +works, and if they were to set about it (which nobody does), they would +be jaded and wearied by the labyrinth they were tracing; their minds +would be gorged and surfeited by the logical operation. To most men +argument makes the point in hand more doubtful and considerably less +impressive. After all, man is not a reasoning animal, he is a seeing, +feeling, contemplating, actual animal.' + +Burke is fond of telling us that he is no lawyer, no antiquarian, but a +plain, practical man; and the Cardinal, in like manner, is ever insisting +that he is no theologian--he leaves everything of that sort to the +schools, whatever they may be, and simply deals with religion on its +practical side as a benefit to mankind. + +If either of these great men has been guilty of intellectual excesses, +those of Burke may be attributed to his dread of anarchy, those of Newman +to his dread of atheism. Neither of them was prepared to rest content +with a scientific frontier, an imaginary line. So much did they dread +their enemy, so alive were they to the terrible strength of some of his +positions, that they could not agree to dispense with the protection +afforded by the huge mountains of prejudice and the ancient rivers of +custom. The sincerity of either man can only be doubted by the bigot and +the fool. + +But Burke, apart from his fears, had a constitutional love for old +things, simply because they were old. Anything mankind had ever +worshipped, or venerated, or obeyed, was dear to him. I have already +referred to his providing his Brahmins with a greenhouse for the purpose +of their rites, which he watched from outside with great interest. One +cannot fancy Cardinal Newman peeping through a window to see men +worshipping false though ancient gods. Warren Hastings' high-handed +dealings with the temples and time-honoured if scandalous customs of the +Hindoos filled Burke with horror. So, too, he respected Quakers, +Presbyterians, Independents, Baptists, and all those whom he called +Constitutional Dissenters. He has a fine passage somewhere about Rust, +for with all his passion for good government he dearly loved a little +rust. In this phase of character he reminds one not a little of another +great writer--whose death literature has still reason to deplore--George +Eliot; who, in her love for old hedgerows and barns and crumbling moss- +grown walls, was a writer after Burke's own heart, whose novels he would +have sat up all night to devour; for did he not deny with warmth Gibbon's +statement that he had read all five volumes of _Evelina_ in a day? 'The +thing is impossible,' cried Burke; 'they took me three days doing nothing +else.' Now, _Evelina_ is a good novel, but _Silas Marner_ is a better. + +Wordsworth has been called the High Priest of Nature. Burke may be +called the High Priest of Order--a lover of settled ways, of justice, +peace, and security. His writings are a storehouse of wisdom, not the +cheap shrewdness of the mere man of the world, but the noble, animating +wisdom of one who has the poet's heart as well as the statesman's brain. +Nobody is fit to govern this country who has not drunk deep at the +springs of Burke. 'Have you read your Burke?' is at least as sensible a +question to put to a parliamentary candidate, as to ask him whether he is +a total abstainer or a desperate drunkard. Something there may be about +Burke to regret, and more to dispute; but that he loved justice and hated +iniquity is certain, as also it is that for the most part he dwelt in the +paths of purity, humanity, and good sense. May we be found adhering to +them! + + + + +THE MUSE OF HISTORY. + + +Two distinguished men of letters, each an admirable representative of his +University--Mr. John Morley and Professor Seeley--have lately published +opinions on the subject of history, which, though very likely to prove +right, deserve to be carefully considered before assent is bestowed upon +them. + +Mr. Morley, when President of the Midland Institute, and speaking in the +Town Hall of Birmingham, said: 'I do not in the least want to know what +happened in the past, except as it enables me to see my way more clearly +through what is happening to-day,' and this same indifference is +professed, though certainly nowhere displayed, in other parts of Mr. +Morley's writings. {178} + +Professor Seeley never makes his point quite so sharp as this, and +probably would hesitate to do so, but in the _Expansion of England_ he +expounds a theory of history largely based upon an indifference like that +which Mr. Morley professed at Birmingham. His book opens thus: 'It is a +favourite maxim of mine that history, while it should be scientific in +its method, should pursue a practical object--that is, it should not +merely gratify the reader's curiosity about the past, but modify his view +of the present and his forecast of the future. Now, if this maxim be +sound, the history of England ought to end with something that might be +called a moral.' + +This, it must be admitted, is a large order. The task of the historian, +as here explained, is not merely to tell us the story of the past, and +thus gratify our curiosity, but, pursuing a practical object, to seek to +modify our views of the present and help us in our forecasts of the +future, and this the historian is to do, not unconsciously and +incidentally, but deliberately and of set purpose. One can well +understand how history, so written, will usually begin with a maxim, and +invariably end with a moral. + +What we are afterwards told in the same book follows in logical sequence +upon our first quotation--namely, that 'history fades into _mere +literature_ (the italics are ours), when it loses sight of its relation +to practical politics.' In this grim sentence we read the dethronement +of Clio. The poor thing must forswear her father's house, her tuneful +sisters, the invocation of the poet, the worship of the dramatist, and +keep her terms at the University, where, if she is really studious and +steady, and avoids literary companions (which ought not to be difficult), +she may hope some day to be received into the Royal Society as a second- +rate science. The people who do not usually go to the Royal Society will +miss their old playmate from her accustomed slopes, but, even were they +to succeed in tracing her to her new home, access would be denied them; +for Professor Seeley, that stern custodian, has his answer ready for all +such seekers. 'If you want recreation, you must find it in Poetry, +particularly Lyrical Poetry. Try Shelley. We can no longer allow you to +disport yourselves in the Fields of History as if they were a mere +playground. Clio is enclosed.' + +At present, however, this is not quite the case; for the old literary +traditions are still alive, and prove somewhat irritating to Professor +Seeley, who, though one of the most even-tempered of writers, is to be +found on p. 173 almost angry with Thackeray, a charming person, who, as +we all know, had, after his lazy literary fashion, made an especial study +of Queen Anne's time, and who cherished the pleasant fancy that a man +might lie in the heather with a pipe in his mouth, and yet, if he had +only an odd volume of the _Spectator_ or the _Tatler_ in his hand, be +learning history all the time. 'As we read in these delightful pages,' +says the author of _Esmond_, 'the past age returns; the England of our +ancestors is revivified; the Maypole rises in the Strand; the beaux are +gathering in the coffee-houses;' and so on, in the style we all know and +love so well, and none better, we may rest assured, than Professor Seeley +himself, if only he were not tortured by the thought that people were +taking this to be a specimen of the science of which he is a Regius +Professor. His comment on this passage of Thackeray's is almost a groan. +'What is this but the old literary groove, leading to no trustworthy +knowledge?' and certainly no one of us, from letting his fancy gaze on +the Maypole in the Strand, could ever have foretold the Griffin. On the +same page he cries: 'Break the drowsy spell of narrative. Ask yourself +questions, set yourself problems; your mind will at once take up a new +attitude. Now, modern English history breaks up into two grand +problems--the problem of the Colonies and the problem of India.' The +Cambridge School of History with a vengeance! + +In a paper read at the South Kensington Museum in 1884, Professor Seeley +observes: 'The essential point is this, that we should recognise that to +study history is to study not merely a narrative, but _at the same time_ +certain theoretical studies.' He then proceeds to name them:--Political +philosophy, the comparative study of legal institutions, political +economy, and international law. + +These passages are, I think, adequate to give a fair view of Professor +Seeley's position. History is a science, to be written scientifically +and to be studied scientifically in conjunction with other studies. It +should pursue a practical object and be read with direct reference to +practical politics--using the latter word, no doubt, in an enlightened +sense. History is not a narrative of all sorts of facts--biographical, +moral, political--but of such facts as a scientific diagnosis has +ascertained to be historically interesting. In fine, history, if her +study is to be profitable and not a mere pastime, less exhausting than +skittles and cheaper than horse exercise, must be dominated by some +theory capable of verification by reference to certain ascertained facts +belonging to a particular class. Is this the right way of looking upon +history? The dictionaries tell us that history and story are the same +word, and are derived from a Greek source, signifying information +obtained by inquiry. The natural definition of history, therefore, +surely is the story of man upon earth, and the historian is he who tells +us any chapter or fragment of that story. All things that on earth do +dwell have, no doubt, their history as well as man; but when a member, +however humble, of the human race speaks of history without any +explanatory context, he may be presumed to be alluding to his own family +records, to the story of humanity during its passage across the earth's +surface. + +'A talent for history'--I am quoting from an author whose style, let +those mock at it who may, will reveal him--'may be said to be born with +us as our chief inheritance. History has been written with +quipo-threads, with feather pictures, with wampum belts, still oftener +with earth-mounds and monumental stone-heaps, whether as pyramid or +cairn; for the Celt and the Copt, the red man as well as the white, lives +between two eternities, and warring against oblivion, he would fain unite +himself in clear, conscious relation, as in dim, unconscious relation he +is already united, with the whole future and the whole past.' + +To keep the past alive for us is the pious function of the historian. Our +curiosity is endless, his the task of gratifying it. We want to know +what happened long ago. Performance of this task is only proximately +possible; but none the less it must be attempted, for the demand for it +is born afresh with every infant's cry. History is a pageant, and not a +philosophy. + +Poets, no less than professors, occasionally say good things even in +prose, and the following oracular utterance of Shelley is not pure +nonsense:--'History is the cyclic poem written by Time upon the memories +of men. The past, like an inspired rhapsodist, fills the theatre of +everlasting generations with her harmony.' + +If this be thought a little too fanciful, let me adorn these pages with a +passage from one of the great masters of English prose--Walter Savage +Landor. Would that the pious labour of transcription could confer the +tiniest measure of the gift! In that bundle of imaginary letters Landor +called _Pericles and Aspasia_, we find Aspasia writing to her friend +Cleone as follows: + + 'To-day there came to visit us a writer who is not yet an author; his + name is Thucydides. We understand that he has been these several + years engaged in preparation for a history. Pericles invited him to + meet Herodotus, when that wonderful man had returned to our country, + and was about to sail from Athens. Until then it was believed by the + intimate friends of Thucydides that he would devote his life to + poetry, and, such is his vigour both of thought and expression, that + he would have been the rival of Pindar. Even now he is fonder of + talking on poetry than any other subject, and blushed when history was + mentioned. By degrees, however, he warmed, and listened with deep + interest to the discourse of Pericles on the duties of a historian. + + '"May our first Athenian historian not be the greatest," said he, "as + the first of our dramatists has been, in the opinion of many. We are + growing too loquacious, both on the stage and off. We make + disquisitions which render us only more and more dim-sighted, and + excursions that only consume our stores. If some among us who have + acquired celebrity by their compositions, calm, candid, contemplative + men, were to undertake the history of Athens from the invasion of + Xerxes, I should expect a fair and full criticism on the orations of + Antiphon, and experience no disappointment at their forgetting the + battle of Salamis. History, when she has lost her Muse, will lose her + dignity, her occupation, her character, her name. She will wander + about the Agora; she will start, she will stop, she will look wild, + she will look stupid, she will take languidly to her bosom doubts, + queries, essays, dissertations, some of which ought to go before her, + some to follow, and all to stand apart. The field of history should + not merely be well tilled, but well peopled. None is delightful to me + or interesting in which I find not as many illustrious names as have a + right to enter it. We might as well in a drama place the actors + behind the scenes, and listen to the dialogue there, as in a history + push valiant men back and protrude ourselves with husky disputations. + Show me rather how great projects were executed, great advantages + gained, and great calamities averted. Show me the generals and the + statesmen who stood foremost, that I may bend to them in reverence; + tell me their names, that I may repeat them to my children. Teach me + whence laws were introduced, upon what foundation laid, by what + custody guarded, in what inner keep preserved. Let the books of the + treasury lie closed as religiously as the Sibyl's; leave weights and + measures in the market-place, Commerce in the harbour, the Arts in the + light they love, Philosophy in the shade; place History on her + rightful throne, and at the sides of her Eloquence and War."' + +This is, doubtless, a somewhat full-dress view of history. Landor was +not one of our modern dressing-gown-and-slippers kind of authors. He +always took pains to be splendid, and preferred stately magnificence to +chatty familiarity. But, after allowing for this, is not the passage I +have quoted infused with a great deal of the true spirit which should +animate the historian, and does it not seem to take us by the hand and +lead us very far away from Professor Seeley's maxims and morals, his +theoretical studies, his political philosophy, his political economy, and +his desire to break the drowsy spell of narrative, and to set us all +problems? I ask this question in no spirit of enmity towards these +theoretical studies, nor do I doubt for one moment that the student of +history proper, who has a turn in their directions, will find his pursuit +made only the more fascinating the more he studies them--just as a little +botany is said to add to the charm of a country walk; but--and surely the +assertion is not necessarily paradoxical--these studies ought not to be +allowed to disfigure the free-flowing outline of the historical Muse, or +to thicken her clear utterance, which in her higher moods chants an epic, +and in her ordinary moods recites a narrative which need not be drowsy. + +As for maxims, we all of us have our 'little hoard of maxims' wherewith +to preach down our hearts and justify anything shabby we may have done; +but the less we import their cheap wisdom into history the better. The +author of the _Expansion of England_ will probably agree with Burke in +thinking that 'a great empire and little minds go ill together,' and so, +surely, _a fortiori_, must a mighty universe and any possible maxim. +There have been plenty of brave historical maxims before Professor +Seeley's, though only Lord Bolingbroke's has had the good luck to become +itself historical. {189} And as for theories, Professor Flint, a very +learned writer, has been at the pains to enumerate fourteen French and +thirteen German philosophies of history current (though some, I expect, +never ran either fast or far) since the revival of learning. + +We are (are we not?) in these days in no little danger of being +philosophy-ridden, and of losing our love for facts simply as facts. So +long as Carlyle lived the concrete had a representative, the strength of +whose epithets sufficed, if not to keep the philosophers in awe, at least +to supply their opponents with stones. But now it is different. Carlyle +is no more a model historian than is Shakspeare a model dramatist. The +merest tyro can count the faults of either on his clumsy fingers. That +born critic, the late Sir George Lewis, had barely completed his tenth +year before he was able, in a letter to his mother, to point out to her +the essentially faulty structure of _Hamlet_, and many a duller wit, a +decade or two later in his existence, has come to the conclusion that +_Frederick the Great_ is far too long. But whatever were Carlyle's +faults, his historical method was superbly naturalistic. Have we a +historian left us so honestly possessed as he was with the genuine +historical instinct, the true enthusiasm to know what happened; or one +half so fond of a story for its own sake, or so in love with things, not +for what they were, but simply because they were? 'What wonderful things +are events!' wrote Lord Beaconsfield in _Coningsby_; 'the least are of +greater importance than the most sublime and comprehensive speculations.' +To say this is to go perhaps too far; certainly it is to go farther than +Carlyle, who none the less was in sympathy with the remark; for he also +worshipped events, believing as he did that but for the breath of God's +mouth they never would have been events at all. We thus find him always +treating even comparatively insignificant facts with a measure of +reverence, and handling them lovingly, as does a book-hunter the +shabbiest pamphlet in his collection. We have only to think of Carlyle's +essay on the _Diamond Necklace_ to fill our minds with his qualifications +for the proud office of the historian. Were that inimitable piece of +workmanship to be submitted to the criticisms of the new scientific +school, we doubt whether it would be so much as classed, whilst the +celebrated description of the night before the battle of Dunbar in +_Cromwell_, or any hundred scenes from the _French Revolution_, would, we +expect, be catalogued as good examples of that degrading process whereby +history fades into mere literature. + +This is not a question, be it observed, of style. What is called a +picturesque style is generally a great trial. Who was it who called +Professor Masson's style Carlyle on wooden legs? What can be drearier +than when a plain matter-of-fact writer attempts to be animated, and +tries to make his characters live by the easy but futile expedient of +writing about them in the present tense? What is wanted is a passion for +facts; the style may be left to take care of itself. Let me name a +historian who detested fine writing, and who never said to himself, 'Go +to, I will make a description,' and who yet was dominated by a love for +facts, whose one desire always was to know what happened, to dispel +illusion, and establish the true account--Dr. S. R. Maitland, of the +Lambeth Library, whose volumes entitled _The Dark Ages_ and _The +Reformation_ are to history what Milton's _Lycidas_ is said to be to +poetry: if they do not interest you, your tastes are not historical. + +The difference, we repeat, is not of style, but of aim. Is history a +pageant or a philosophy? That eminent historian, Lord Macaulay, whose +passion for letters and for 'mere literature' ennobled his whole life, +has expressed himself in some places, I need scarcely add in a most +forcible manner, in the same sense as Mr. Morley. In his well-known +essay on history, contributed to the _Edinburgh Review_ in 1828, we find +him writing as follows: 'Facts are the mere dross of history. It is from +the abstract truth which interpenetrates them, and lies latent amongst +them like gold in the ore, that the mass derives its whole value.' And +again: 'No past event has any intrinsic importance. The knowledge of it +is valuable only as it leads us to form just calculations with respect to +the future.' These are strong passages; but Lord Macaulay was a royal +eclectic, and was quite out of sympathy with the majority of that +brotherhood who are content to tone down their contradictories to the +dull level of ineptitudes. Macaulay never toned down his +contradictories, but, heightening everything all round, went on his +sublime way, rejoicing like a strong man to run a race, and well knowing +that he could give anybody five yards in fifty and win easily. It is, +therefore, no surprise to find him, in the very essay in which he speaks +so contemptuously of facts, laying on with his vigorous brush a +celebrated purple patch I would gladly transfer to my own dull page were +it not too long and too well known. A line or two taken at random will +give its purport: + +'A truly great historian would reclaim those materials the novelist has +appropriated. We should not then have to look for the wars and votes of +the Puritans in Clarendon and for their phraseology in _Old Mortality_, +for one half of King James in Hume and for the other half in the +_Fortunes of Nigel_. . . . Society would be shown from the highest to the +lowest, from the royal cloth of state to the den of the outlaw, from the +throne of the legate to the chimney-corner where the begging friar +regaled himself. Palmers, minstrels, crusaders, the stately monastery +with the good cheer in its refectory, and the tournament with the heralds +and ladies, the trumpets and the cloth of gold, would give truth and life +to the representation.' It is difficult to see what abstract truth +interpenetrates the cheer of the refectory, or what just calculations +with respect to the future even an upholsterer could draw from a cloth, +either of state or of gold; whilst most people will admit that, when the +brilliant essayist a few years later set himself to compose his own +magnificent history, so far as he interpenetrated it with the abstract +truths of Whiggism, and calculated that the future would be satisfied +with the first Reform Bill, he did ill and guessed wrong. + +To reconcile Macaulay's utterances on this subject is beyond my powers, +but of two things I am satisfied: the first is that, were he to come to +life again, a good many of us would be more careful than we are how we +write about him; and the second is that, on the happening of the same +event, he would be found protesting against the threatened domination of +all things by scientific theory. A Western American, who was once +compelled to spend some days in Boston, was accustomed in after-life to +describe that seat of polite learning to his horrified companions in +California as a city in whose streets Respectability stalked unchecked. +This is just what philosophical theories are doing amongst us, and a +decent person can hardly venture abroad without one, though it does not +much matter which one. Everybody is expected to have 'a system of +philosophy with principles coherent, interdependent, subordinate, and +derivative,' and to be able to account for everything, even for things it +used not to be thought sensible to believe in, like ghosts and haunted +houses. Keats remarks in one of his letters with great admiration upon +what he christens Shakspeare's 'negative capability,' meaning thereby +Shakspeare's habit of complaisant observation from outside of theory, and +his keen enjoyment of the unexplained facts of life. He did not pour +himself out in every strife. We have but little of this negative +capability. The ruddy qualities of delightfulness, of pleasantness, are +all 'sicklied o'er with the pale cast of thought.' The varied elements +of life--the + + 'Murmur of living, + Stir of existence, + Soul of the world!' + +seem to be fading from literature. Pure literary enthusiasm sheds but +few rays. To be lively is to be flippant, and epigram is dubbed paradox. + +That many people appear to like a drab-coloured world hung round with +dusky shreds of philosophy is sufficiently obvious. These persons find +any relaxation they may require from a too severe course of theories, +religious, political, social, or now, alas! historical, in the novels of +Mr. W. D. Howells, an American gentleman who has not been allowed to +forget that he once asserted of fiction what Professor Seeley would be +glad to be able to assert of history, that the drowsy spell of narrative +has been broken. We are to look for no more Sir Walters, no more +Thackerays, no more Dickens. The stories have all been told. Plots are +exploded. Incident is over. In moods of dejection these dark sayings +seemed only too true. Shakspeare's saddest of sad lines rose to one's +lips: + + 'My grief lies onward and my joy behind.' + +Behind us are _Ivanhoe_ and _Guy Mannering_, _Pendennis_ and _The +Virginians_, Pecksniff and Micawber. In front of us stretch a +never-ending series, a dreary vista of _Foregone Conclusions_, +_Counterfeit Presentments_, and _Undiscovered Countries_. But the +darkest watch of the night is the one before the dawn, and relief is +often nearest us when we least expect it. All this gloomy nonsense was +suddenly dispelled, and the fact that really and truly, and behind this +philosophical arras, we were all inwardly ravening for stories was most +satisfactorily established by the incontinent manner in which we flung +ourselves into the arms of Mr. Robert Louis Stevenson, to whom we could +almost have raised a statue in the market-place for having written +_Treasure Island_. + +But to return to history. The interests of our poor human life, which +seems to become duller every day, require that the fields of history +should be kept for ever unenclosed, and be a free breathing-place for a +pallid population well-nigh stifled with the fumes of philosophy. + +Were we, imaginatively, to propel ourselves forward to the middle of the +next century, and to fancy a well-equipped historian armed with the +digested learning of Gibbon, endowed with the eye of Carlyle, and say one- +fifteenth of his humour (even then a dangerous allotment in a dull +world), the moral gravity of Dr. Arnold, the critical sympathy of Sainte- +Beuve, and the style of Dr. Newman, approaching the period through which +we have lived, should we desire this talented mortal to encumber himself +with a theory into which to thrust all our doings as we toss clothes into +a portmanteau; to set himself to extract the essence of some new +political philosophy, capable of being applied to the practical politics +of his own day, or to busy himself with problems or economics? To us +personally, of course, it is a matter of indifference how the historians +of the twentieth century conduct themselves; but ought not our altruism +to bear the strain of a hope that at least one of the band may avoid all +these things, and, leaving political philosophy to the political +philosopher and political economy to the political economist, remember +that the first, if not the last, duty of the historian is to narrate, to +supply the text not the comment, the subject not the sermon, and proceed +to tell our grandchildren and remoter issue the story of our lives? The +clash of arms will resound through his pages as musically as ever it does +through those of the elder historians as he tells of the encounter +between the Northern and Southern States of America, in which Right and +Might, those great twin-brethren, fought side by side; but Romance, that +ancient parasite, clung affectionately with her tendril-hands to the +mouldering walls of an ancient wrong, thus enabling the historian, whilst +awarding the victor's palm to General Grant, to write kindly of the lost +cause, dear to the heart of a nobler and more chivalrous man, General +Lee, of the Virginian army. And again, is it not almost possible to envy +the historian to whom will belong the task of writing with full +information, and all the advantage of the true historic distance, the +history of that series of struggles and heroisms, of plots and counter- +plots, of crimes and counter-crimes, resulting in the freedom of Italy, +and of telling to a world, eager to listen, the life-story of Joseph +Mazzini? + + 'Of God nor man was ever this thing said, + That he could give + Life back to her who gave him, whence his dead + Mother might live. + But this man found his mother dead and slain, + With fast sealed eyes, + And bade the dead rise up and live again, + And she did rise.' + +Nor will our imaginary historian be unmindful of Cavour, or fail to +thrill his readers by telling them how, when the great Italian statesman, +with many sins upon his conscience, lay in the very grasp of death, he +interrupted the priests, busy at their work of intercession, almost +roughly, with the exclamation, 'Pray not for me.' 'Pray for Italy!' +whilst if he be one who has a turn for that ironical pastime, the +dissection of a king, the curious character, and muddle of motives, +calling itself Carlo Alberto, will afford him material for at least two +paragraphs of subtle interest. Lastly, if our historian is ambitious of +a larger canvas and of deeper colours, what is there to prevent him, +bracing himself to the task,-- + + 'As when some mighty painter dips + His pencil in the hues of earthquake and eclipse,' + +from writing the epitaph of the Napoleonic legend? + +But all this time I hear Professor Seeley whispering in my ear, 'What is +this but the old literary groove leading to no trustworthy knowledge?' If +by trustworthy knowledge is meant demonstrable conclusions, capable of +being expressed in terms at once exact and final, trustworthy knowledge +is not to be gained from the witness of history, whose testimony none the +less must be received, weighed, and taken into account. Truly observes +Carlyle: 'If history is philosophy teaching by examples, the writer +fitted to compose history is hitherto an unknown man. Better were it +that mere earthly historians should lower such pretensions, and, aiming +only at some picture of the thing acted, which picture itself will be but +a poor approximation, leave the inscrutable purport of them an +acknowledged secret.' 'Some picture of the thing acted.' Here we behold +the task of the historian; nor is it an idle, fruitless task. Science is +not the only, or the chief source of knowledge. The _Iliad_, +Shakspeare's plays, have taught the world more than the _Politics_ of +Aristotle or the _Novum Organum_ of Bacon. + +Facts are not the dross of history, but the true metal, and the historian +is a worker in that metal. He has nothing to do with abstract truth, or +with practical politics, or with forecasts of the future. A worker in +metal he is, and has certainly plenty of what Lord Bacon used to call +'stuff' to work upon; but if he is to be a great historian, and not a +mere chronicler, he must be an artist as well as an artisan, and have +something of the spirit which animated such a man as Francesco Francia of +Bologna, now only famous as a painter, but in his own day equally +celebrated as a worker in gold, and whose practice it was to sign his +pictures with the word Goldsmith after his name, whilst he engraved +Painter on his golden crucifixes. + +The true historian, therefore, seeking to compose a true picture of the +thing acted, must collect facts, select facts, and combine facts. Methods +will differ, styles will differ. Nobody ever does anything exactly like +anybody else; but the end in view is generally the same, and the +historian's end is truthful narration. Maxims he will have, if he is +wise, never a one; and as for a moral, if he tell his story well, it will +need none; if he tell it ill, it will deserve none. + +The stream of narrative flowing swiftly, as it does, over the jagged +rocks of human destiny, must often be turbulent and tossed; it is, +therefore, all the more the duty of every good citizen to keep it as +undefiled as possible, and to do what in him lies to prevent peripatetic +philosophers on the banks from throwing their theories into it, either +dead ones to decay, or living ones to drown. Let the philosophers +ventilate their theories, construct their blow-holes, extract their +essences, discuss their maxims, and point their morals as much as they +will; but let them do so apart. History must not lose her Muse, or 'take +to her bosom doubts, queries, essays, dissertations, some of which ought +to go before her, some to follow, and all to stand apart.' Let us at all +events secure our narrative first--sermons and philosophy the day after. + + + + +CHARLES LAMB. {204} + + +Mr. Walter Bagehot preferred Hazlitt to Lamb, reckoning the former much +the greater writer. The preferences of such a man as Bagehot are not to +be lightly disregarded, least of all when their sincerity is vouched for, +as in the present case, by half a hundred quotations from the favoured +author. Certainly no writer repays a literary man's devotion better than +Hazlitt, of whose twenty seldom read volumes hardly a page but glitters +with quotable matter; the true ore, to be had for the cost of cartage. +You may live like a gentleman for a twelvemonth on Hazlitt's ideas. +Opinions, no doubt, differ as to how many quotations a writer is entitled +to; but, for my part, I like to see an author leap-frog into his subject +over the back of a brother. + +I do not remember whether Bagehot has anywhere given his reasons for his +preference--the open avowal whereof drove Crabb Robinson well-nigh +distracted; and it is always rash to find reasons for a faith you do not +share; but probably they partook of the nature of a complaint that Elia's +treatment of men and things (meaning by things, books) is often +fantastical, unreal, even a shade insincere; whilst Hazlitt always at +least aims at the centre, whether he hits it or not. Lamb dances round a +subject; Hazlitt grapples with it. So far as Hazlitt is concerned, +doubtless this is so; his literary method seems to realize the agreeable +aspiration of Mr. Browning's _Italian in England_:-- + + 'I would grasp Metternich until + I felt his wet red throat distil + In blood thro' these two hands.' + +Hazlitt is always grasping some Metternich. He said himself that Lamb's +talk was like snap-dragon, and his own not very much 'unlike a game of +nine-pins.' Lamb, writing to him on one occasion about his son, wishes +the little fellow a 'smoother head of hair and somewhat of a better +temper than his father;' and the pleasant words seem to call back from +the past the stormy figure of the man who loved art, literature, and the +drama with a consuming passion, who has described books and plays, +authors and actors, with a fiery enthusiasm and reality quite +unsurpassable, and who yet, neither living nor dead, has received his due +meed of praise. Men still continue to hold aloof from Hazlitt; his +shaggy head and fierce scowling temper still seem to terrorize; and his +very books, telling us though they do about all things most +delightful--poems, pictures, and the cheerful playhouse--frown upon us +from their upper shelf. From this it appears that would a genius ensure +for himself immortality, he must brush his hair and keep his temper; but, +alas! how seldom can he be persuaded to do either. Charles Lamb did +both; and the years as they roll do but swell the rich revenues of his +praise. Lamb's popularity shows no sign of waning. Even that most +extraordinary compound, the rising generation of readers, whose taste in +literature is as erratic as it is pronounced; who have never heard of +James Thomson who sang _The Seasons_ (including the pleasant episode of +Musidora bathing), but understand by any reference to that name only the +striking author of _The City of Dreadful Night_; even these wayward +folk--the dogs of whose criticism, not yet full grown, will, when let +loose, as some day they must be, cry 'havoc' amongst established +reputations--read their Lamb, letters as well as essays, with laughter +and with love. + +If it be really seriously urged against Lamb as an author that he is +fantastical and artistically artificial, it must be owned he is so. His +humour, exquisite as it is, is modish. It may not be for all markets. +How it affected the Scottish Thersites we know only too well--that dour +spirit required more potent draughts to make him forget his misery and +laugh. It took Swift or Smollett to move his mirth, which was always, +three parts of it, derision. Lamb's elaborateness, what he himself calls +his affected array of antique modes and phrases, is sometimes overlooked +in these strange days, when it is thought better to read about an author +than to read him. To read aloud the _Praise of Chimney Sweepers_ without +stumbling, or halting, not to say mispronouncing, and to set in motion +every one of its carefully-swung sentences, is a very pretty feat in +elocution, for there is not what can be called a natural sentence in it +from beginning to end. Many people have not patience for this sort of +thing; they like to laugh and move on. Other people, again, like an +essay to be about something really important, and to conduct them to +conclusions they deem worth carrying away. Lamb's views about +indiscriminate almsgiving, so far as these can be extracted from his +paper _On the Decay of Beggars in the Metropolis_, are unsound, whilst +there are at least three ladies still living (in Brighton) quite +respectably on their means, who consider the essay entitled _A Bachelor's +Complaint of the Behaviour of Married People_ improper. But, as a rule, +Lamb's essays are neither unsound nor improper; none the less they are, +in the judgment of some, things of naught--not only lacking, as Southey +complained they did, 'sound religious feeling,' but everything else +really worthy of attention. + +To discuss such congenital differences of taste is idle; but it is not +idle to observe that when Lamb is read, as he surely deserves to be, as a +whole--letters and poems no less than essays--these notes of fantasy and +artificiality no longer dominate. The man Charles Lamb was far more +real, far more serious, despite his jesting, more self-contained and self- +restrained, than Hazlitt, who wasted his life in the pursuit of the +veriest will-o'-the-wisps that ever danced over the most miasmatic of +swamps, who was never his own man, and who died, like Brian de Bois +Gilbert, 'the victim of contending passions.' It should never be +forgotten that Lamb's vocation was his life. Literature was but his +byplay, his avocation in the true sense of that much-abused word. He was +not a fisherman, but an angler in the lake of letters; an author by +chance and on the sly. He had a right to disport himself on paper, to +play the frolic with his own fancies, to give the decalogue the slip, +whose life was made up of the sternest stuff, of self-sacrifice, +devotion, honesty, and good sense. + +Lamb's letters from first to last are full of the philosophy of life; he +was as sensible a man as Dr. Johnson. One grows sick of the expressions, +'poor Charles Lamb,' 'gentle Charles 'Lamb,' as if he were one of those +grown-up children of the Leigh Hunt type, who are perpetually begging and +borrowing through the round of every man's acquaintance. Charles Lamb +earned his own living, paid his own way, was the helper, not the helped; +a man who was beholden to no one, who always came with gifts in his hand, +a shrewd man, capable of advice, strong in council. Poor Lamb, indeed! +Poor Coleridge, robbed of his will; poor Wordsworth, devoured by his own +_ego_; poor Southey, writing his tomes and deeming himself a classic; +poor Carlyle, with his nine volumes of memoirs, where he + + 'Lies like a hedgehog rolled up the wrong way, + Tormenting himself with his prickles'-- + +call these men poor, if you feel it decent to do so, but not Lamb, who +was rich in all that makes life valuable or memory sweet. But he used to +get drunk. This explains all. Be untruthful, unfaithful, unkind; darken +the lives of all who have to live under your shadow, rob youth of joy, +take peace from age, live unsought for, die unmourned--and remaining +sober you will escape the curse of men's pity, and be spoken of as a +worthy person. But if ever, amidst what Burns called 'social noise,' you +so far forget yourself as to get drunk, think not to plead a spotless +life spent with those for whom you have laboured and saved; talk not of +the love of friends or of help given to the needy; least of all make +reference to a noble self-sacrifice passing the love of women, for all +will avail you nothing. You get drunk--and the heartless and the selfish +and the lewd crave the privilege of pitying you, and receiving your name +with an odious smile. It is really too bad. + +The completion of Mr. Ainger's edition of Lamb's works deserves a word of +commemoration. In our judgment it is all an edition of Lamb's works +should be. Upon the vexed question, nowadays so much agitated, whether +an editor is to be allowed any discretion in the exclusion from his +edition of the rinsings of his author's desk, we side with Mr. Ainger, +and think more nobly of the editor than to deny him such a discretion. An +editor is not a sweep, and, by the love he bears the author whose fame he +seeks to spread abroad, it is his duty to exclude what he believes does +not bear the due impress of the author's mind. No doubt as a rule +editors have no discretion to be trusted; but happily Mr. Ainger has +plenty, and most sincerely do we thank him for withholding from us _A +Vision of Horns_ and _The Pawnbroker's Daughter_. Boldly to assert, as +some are found to do, that the editor of a master of style has no choice +but to reprint the scraps or notelets that a misdirected energy may +succeed in disinterring from the grave the writer had dug for them, is to +fail to grasp the distinction between a collector of _curios_ and a lover +of books. But this policy of exclusion is no doubt a perilous one. Like +the Irish members, or Mark Antony's wife--the 'shrill-toned Fulvia'--the +missing essays are 'good, being gone.' Surely, so we are inclined to +grumble, the taste was severe that led Mr. Ainger to dismiss _Juke +Judkins_. We are not, indeed, prepared to say that Judkins has been +wrongfully dismissed, or that he has any right of action against Mr. +Ainger, but we could have put up better with his presence than his +absence. + +Mr. Ainger's introduction to the _Essays of Elia_ is admirable; here is a +bit of it: + + 'Another feature of Lamb's style is its allusiveness. He is rich in + quotations, and in my notes I have succeeded in tracing most of them + to their source, a matter of some difficulty in Lamb's case, for his + inaccuracy is all but perverse. But besides those avowedly introduced + as such, his style is full of quotations held, if the expression may + be allowed, in solution. One feels, rather than recognises, that a + phrase or idiom or turn of expression is an echo of something that one + has heard or read before. Yet such is the use made of the material, + that a charm is added by the very fact that we are thus continually + renewing our experience of an older day. This style becomes aromatic, + like the perfume of faded rose-leaves in a china jar. With such + allusiveness as this I need not say that I have not meddled in my + notes; its whole charm lies in recognising it for ourselves. The + "prosperity" of an allusion, as of a jest, "lies in the ear of him + that hears it," and it were doing a poor service to Lamb or his + readers to draw out and arrange in order the threads he has wrought + into the very fabric of his English.' + +Then Mr. Ainger's notes are not meddlesome notes, but truly explanatory +ones, genuine aids to enjoyment. Lamb needs notes, and yet the task of +adding them to a structure so fine and of such nicely studied proportions +is a difficult one; it is like building a tool-house against La Sainte +Chapelle. Deftly has Mr. Ainger inserted his notes, and capital reading +do they make; they tell us all we ought to want to know. He is no true +lover of Elia who does not care to know who the 'Distant Correspondent' +was. And Barbara S---. 'It was not much that Barbara had to claim.' No, +dear child! it was not--'a bare half-guinea'; but you are surely also +entitled to be known to us by your real name. When Lamb tells us +Barbara's maiden name was Street, and that she was three times +married--first to a Mr. Dancer, then to a Mr. Barry, and finally to a Mr. +Crawford, whose widow she was when he first knew her--he is telling us +things that were not, for the true Barbara died a spinster, and was born +a Kelly. + +Mr. Ainger, as was to be expected, has a full, instructive note anent the +Old Benchers of the Inner Temple. Some hasty editors, with a sorrowfully +large experience of Lamb's unblushing fictions and Defoe-like falsehoods, +and who, perhaps, have wasted good hours trying to find out all about +Miss Barbara's third husband, have sometimes assumed that at all events +most of the names mentioned by Lamb in his immortal essay on the Benchers +are fictitious. Mr. Ainger, however, assures us that the fact is +otherwise. Jekyl, Coventry, Pierson, Parton, Read, Wharry, Jackson, and +Mingay, no less than 'unruffled Samuel Salt,' were all real persons, and +were called to the Bench of the Honourable Society by those very names. +One mistake, indeed, Lamb makes--he writes of Mr. Twopenny as if he had +been a Bencher. Now, there never yet was a Bencher of the name of +Twopenny; though the mistake is easily accounted for. There was a Mr. +Twopenny, a very thin man too, just as Lamb described him, who lived in +the Temple; but he was not a Bencher, he was not even a barrister; he was +a much better thing, namely, stockbroker to the Bank of England. The +holding of this office, which Mr. Ainger rightly calls important, +doubtless accounts for Twopenny's constant good-humour and felicitous +jesting about his own person. A man who has a snug berth other people +want feels free to crack such jokes. + +Of the contents of these three volumes we can say deliberately what Dr. +Johnson said, surely in his haste, of Baxter's three hundred works, 'Read +them all, they are all good.' Do not be content with the essays alone. +It is shabby treatment of an author who has given you pleasure to leave +him half unread; it is nearly as bad as keeping a friend waiting. Anyhow, +read _Mrs. Leicester's School_; it is nearly all Mary Lamb's, but the +more you like it on that account the better pleased her brother would +have been. + +We are especially glad to notice that Mr. Ainger holds us out hopes of an +edition, uniform with the works, of the letters of Charles Lamb. Until +he has given us these, also with notes, his pious labours are incomplete. +Lamb's letters are not only the best text of his life, but the best +comment upon it. They reveal all the heroism of the man and all the +cunning of the author; they do the reader good by stealth. Let us have +them speedily, so that honest men may have in their houses a complete +edition of at least one author of whom they can truthfully say, that they +never know whether they most admire the writer or love the man. + + + + +EMERSON. + + +There are men whose charm is in their entirety. Their words occasionally +utter what their looks invariably express. We read their thoughts by the +light of their smiles. Not to see and hear these men is not to know +them, and criticism without personal knowledge is in their case +mutilation. Those who did know them listen in despair to the +half-hearted praise and clumsy disparagement of critical strangers, and +are apt to exclaim, as did the younger Pitt, when some extraneous person +was expressing wonder at the enormous reputation of Fox, 'Ah! you have +never been under the wand of the magician.' + +Of such was Ralph Waldo Emerson. When we find so cool-brained a critic +as Mr. Lowell writing and quoting thus of Emerson: + + 'Those who heard him while their natures were yet plastic, and their + mental nerves trembled under the slightest breath of divine air, will + never cease to feel and say: + + '"Was never eye did see that face + Was never ear did hear that tongue, + Was never mind did mind his grace + That ever thought the travail long; + But eyes, and ears, and every thought + Were with his sweet perfections caught;"' + +we recognise at once that the sooner we take off our shoes the better, +for that the ground upon which we are standing is holy. How can we +sufficiently honour the men who, in this secular, work-a-day world, +habitually breathe + + 'An ampler ether, a diviner air,' + +than ours! + +But testimony of this kind, conclusive as it is upon the question of +Emerson's personal influence, will not always be admissible in support of +his claims as an author. In the long-run an author's only witnesses are +his own books. + +In Dr. Holmes's estimate of Emerson's books everyone must wish to concur. +{218} These are not the days, nor is this dry and thirsty land of ours +the place, when or where we can afford to pass by any well of spiritual +influence. It is matter, therefore, for rejoicing that, in the opinion +of so many good judges, Emerson's well can never be choked up. His +essays, so at least we are told by no less a critic than Mr. Arnold, are +the most valuable prose contributions to English literature of the +century; his letters to Mr. Carlyle carried into all our homes the charm +of a most delightful personality; the quaint melody of his poems abides +in many ears. He would, indeed, be a churl who grudged Emerson his fame. + +But when we are considering a writer so full of intelligence as +Emerson--one so remote and detached from the world's bluster and brag--it +is especially incumbent upon us to charge our own language with +intelligence, and to make sure that what we say is at least truth for us. + +Were we at liberty to agree with Dr. Holmes in his unmeasured praise--did +we, in short, find Emerson full of inspiration--our task would be as easy +as it would be pleasant; but not entirely agreeing with Dr. Holmes, and +somehow missing the inspiration, the difficulty we began by mentioning +presses heavily upon us. + +Pleasant reading as the introductory thirty-five pages of Dr. Holmes's +book make, we doubt the wisdom of so very sketchy an account of Emerson's +lineage and intellectual environment. Attracted towards Emerson +everybody must be; but there are many who have never been able to get +quit of an uneasy fear as to his 'staying power.' He has seemed to some +of us a little thin and vague. A really great author dissipates all such +fears. Read a page and they are gone. To inquire after the intellectual +health of such a one would be an impertinence. Emerson hardly succeeds +in inspiring this confidence, but is more like a clever invalid who says, +and is encouraged by his friends to say, brilliant things, but of whom it +would be cruel to expect prolonged mental exertion. A man, he himself +has said, 'should give us a sense of mass.' He perhaps does not do so. +This gloomy and possibly distorted view is fostered rather than +discouraged by Dr. Holmes's introductory pages about Boston life and +intellect. It does not seem to have been a very strong place. We lack +performance. It is of small avail to write, as Dr. Holmes does, about +'brilliant circles,' and 'literary luminaries,' and then to pass on, and +leave the circles circulating and the luminaries shining _in vacuo_. We +want to know how they were brilliant, and what they illuminated. If you +wish me to believe that you are witty I must really trouble you to make a +joke. Dr. Holmes's own wit, for example, is as certain as the law of +gravitation, but over all these pages of his hangs vagueness, and we scan +them in vain for reassuring details. + +'Mild orthodoxy, ripened in Unitarian sunshine,' does not sound very +appetising, though we are assured by Dr. Holmes that it is 'a very +agreeable aspect of Christianity.' Emerson himself does not seem to have +found it very lively, for in 1832, after three years' experience of the +ministry of the 'Second Church' of Boston, he retires from it, not +tumultuously or with any deep feeling, but with something very like a +yawn. He concludes his farewell sermon to his people as follows: + + 'Having said this I have said all. I have no hostility to this + institution. {221} I am only stating my want of sympathy with it.' + +Dr. Holmes makes short work of Emerson's childhood. He was born in +Boston on the 25th May, 1803, and used to sit upon a wall and drive his +mother's cow to pasture. In fact, Dr. Holmes adds nothing to what we +already knew of the quiet and blameless life that came to its appointed +end on the 27th April, 1882. On the completion of his college education, +Emerson became a student of theology, and after a turn at teaching, was +ordained, in March, 1829, minister of the 'Second Church' in Boston. In +September of the same year he married; and the death of his young wife, +in February, 1832, perhaps quickened the doubts and disinclinations which +severed his connection with his 'Church' on the 9th September, 1832. The +following year he visited Europe for the first time, and made his +celebrated call upon Carlyle at Craigenputtock, and laid the keel of a +famous friendship. In the summer of 1834 he settled at Concord. He +married again, visited England again, wrote essays, delivered lectures, +made orations, published poems, carried on a long and most remarkable +correspondence with Carlyle, enjoyed after the most temperate and serene +of fashions many things and much happiness. And then he died. + +'Can you emit sparks?' said the cat to the ugly duckling in the fairy +tale, and the poor abashed creature had to admit that it could not. +Emerson could emit sparks with the most electrical of cats. He is all +sparks and shocks. If one were required to name the most non-sequacious +author one had ever read, I do not see how one could help nominating +Emerson. But, say some of his warmest admirers, 'What then? It does not +matter!' It appears to me to matter a great deal. + +A wise author never allows his reader's mind to be at large, but casts +about from the very first how to secure it all for himself. He takes you +(seemingly) into his confidence, perhaps pretends to consult you as to +the best route, but at all events points out to you the road, lying far +ahead, which you are to travel in his company. How carefully does a +really great writer, like Dr. Newman or M. Renan, explain to you what he +is going to do and how he is going to do it! His humour, wit, and fancy, +however abundant they may be, spring up like wayside flowers, and do but +adorn and render more attractive the path along which it is his object to +conduct you. The reader's mind, interested from the beginning, and +desirous of ascertaining whether the author keeps his word and adheres to +his plan, feels the glow of healthy exercise, and pays a real though +unconscious attention. But Emerson makes no terms with his readers--he +gives them neither thread nor clue, and thus robs them of one of the +keenest pleasures of reading--the being beforehand with your author, and +going shares with him in his own thoughts. + +If it be said that it is manifestly unfair to compare a mystical writer +like Emerson with a polemical or historical one, I am not concerned to +answer the objection, for let the comparison be made with whom you will, +the unparalleled non-sequaciousness of Emerson is as certain as the +Correggiosity of Correggio. You never know what he will be at. His +sentences fall over you in glittering cascades, beautiful and bright, and +for the moment refreshing, but after a very brief while the mind, having +nothing to do on its own account but to remain wide open, and see what +Emerson sends it, grows first restive and then torpid. Admiration gives +way to astonishment, astonishment to bewilderment, and bewilderment to +stupefaction. + +'Napoleon is not a man, but a system,' once said, in her most impressive +tones, Madame de Stael to Sir James Mackintosh, across a dinner-table. +'Magnificent!' murmured Sir James. 'But what does she mean?' whispered +one of those helplessly commonplace creatures who, like the present +writer, go about spoiling everything. 'Mass! I cannot tell!' was the +frank acknowledgment and apt Shakspearian quotation of Mackintosh. +Emerson's meaning, owing to his non-sequacious style, is often very +difficult to apprehend. Hear him for a moment on 'Experience': + + 'I gossip for my hour concerning the eternal politic. I have seen + many fair pictures, not in vain. A wonderful time I have lived in. I + am not the novice I was fourteen, nor yet seven years ago. Let who + will ask, Where is the fruit? I find a private fruit sufficient. This + is a fruit, that I should not ask for a rash effect from meditations, + counsels, and the hiving of truths.' + +This surely is an odd way of hiving truths. It follows from it that +Emerson is more striking than suggestive. He likes things on a large +scale--he is fond of ethnical remarks and typical persons. +Notwithstanding his habit of introducing the names of common things into +his discourses and poetry ('Hay, corn, roots, hemp, flax, apples, wool, +and wood,' is a line from one of his poems), his familiarity therewith is +evidently not great. 'Take care, papa,' cried his little son, seeing him +at work with his spade, 'you will dig your leg.' + +His essay on _Friendship_ will not be found satisfactory. Here is a +subject on which surely we are entitled to 'body.' The _Over Soul_ was +different; _there_ it was easy to agree with Carlyle, who, writing to +Emerson, says: 'Those voices of yours which I likened to unembodied souls +and censure sometimes for having no body--how _can_ they have a body? +They are light rays darting upwards in the east!' But friendship is a +word the very sight of which in print makes the heart warm. One +remembers Elia: 'Oh! it is pleasant as it is rare to find the same arm +linked in yours at forty which at thirteen helped it to turn over the +Cicero _De Amicitia_, or some other tale of antique friendship which the +young heart even then was burning to anticipate.' With this in your ear +it is rather chilling to read, 'I do, then, with my friends as I do with +my books. I would have them where I can find them, but I seldom use +them. We must have society on our own terms, and admit or exclude it on +the slightest cause. I cannot afford to speak much with my friend.' +These are not genial terms. + +For authors and books his affection, real as it was, was singularly +impersonal. In his treatment of literary subjects, we miss the purely +human touch, the grip of affection, the accent of scorn, that so +pleasantly characterize the writings of Mr. Lowell. Emerson, it is to be +feared, regarded a company of books but as a congeries of ideas. For one +idea he is indebted to Plato, for another to Dr. Channing. _Sartor +Resartus_, so Emerson writes, is a noble philosophical poem, but 'have +you read Sampson Read's _Growth of the Mind_?' We read somewhere of +'Pindar, Raphael, Angelo, Dryden, and De Stael.' Emerson's notions of +literary perspective are certainly 'very early.' Dr. Holmes himself is +every bit as bad. In this very book of his, speaking about the dangerous +liberty some poets--Emerson amongst the number--take of crowding a +redundant syllable into a line, he reminds us 'that Shakspeare and Milton +knew how to use it effectively; Shelley employed it freely: Bryant +indulged in it; Willis was fond of it.' One has heard of the _Republic +of Letters_, but this surely does not mean that one author is as good as +another. 'Willis was fond of it.' I dare say he was, but we are not +fond of Willis, and cannot help regarding the citation of his poetical +example as an outrage. + +None the less, if we will have but a little patience, and bid our +occasional wonderment be still, and read Emerson at the right times and +in small quantities, we shall not remain strangers to his charm. He +bathes the universe in his thoughts. Nothing less than the Whole ever +contented Emerson. His was no parochial spirit. He cries out: + + 'From air and ocean bring me foods, + From all zones and altitudes.' + +How beautiful, too, are some of his sentences! Here is a bit from his +essay on Shakspeare in _Representative Men_: + + 'It is the essence of poetry to spring like the rainbow daughter of + Wonder from the invisible, to abolish the past, and refuse all + history. Malone, Warburton, Dyce, and Collier have wasted their life. + The famed theatres have vainly assisted. Betterton, Garrick, Kemble, + Kean, and Macready dedicate their lives to his genius--him they crown, + elucidate, obey, and express--the genius knows them not. The + recitation begins, _one golden word leaps out immortal from all this + painful pedantry_, _and sweetly torments us with invitations to his + own inaccessible homes_.' + +The words we have ventured to italicize seem to us to be of surpassing +beauty, and to express what many a play-goer of late years must often +have dimly felt. + +Patience should indeed be the motto for any Emerson reader who is not by +nature 'author's kin.' For example, in the essay on _Character_, after +reading, 'Everything in nature is bipolar, or has a positive and negative +pole. There is a male and a female, a spirit and a fact, a north and a +south. Spirit is the positive, the event is the negative; will is the +north, action the south pole. Character may be ranked as having its +natural place in the north'--how easy to lay the book down and read no +more that day; but a moment's patience is amply rewarded, for but sixteen +lines farther on we may read as follows: 'We boast our emancipation from +many superstitions, but if we have broken any idols it is through a +transfer of the idolatry. What have I gained that I no longer immolate a +bull to Jove or to Neptune, or a mouse to Hecate; that I do not tremble +before the Eumenides or the Catholic Purgatory, or the Calvinistic +Judgment Day--if I quake at opinion, the public opinion as we call it, or +the threat of assault or contumely, or bad neighbours, or poverty, or +mutilation, or at the rumour of revolution or of wonder! If I quake, +what matters it what I quake at?' Well and truly did Carlyle write to +Emerson, 'You are a new era, my man, in your huge country.' + +Emerson's poetry has at least one of the qualities of true poetry--it +always pleases and occasionally delights. Great poetry it may not be, +but it has the happy knack of slipping in between our fancies, and of +clinging like ivy to the masonry of the thought-structure beneath which +each one of us has his dwelling. I must be allowed room for two +quotations, one from the stanzas called _Give all to Love_, the other +from _Wood Notes_. + + 'Cling with life to the maid; + But when the surprise, + First shadow of surmise, + Flits across her bosom young + Of a joy apart from thee, + Free be she, fancy-free, + Nor thou detain her vesture's hem, + Nor the palest rose she flung + From her summer's diadem. + Though thou loved her as thyself, + As a self of purer clay, + Though her parting dims the day, + Stealing grace from all alive; + Heartily know + When half-gods go, + The gods arrive.' + +The lines from _Wood Notes_ run as follows: + + 'Come learn with me the fatal song + Which knits the world in music strong, + Whereto every bosom dances, + Kindled with courageous fancies; + Come lift thine eyes to lofty rhymes + Of things with things, of times with times, + Primal chimes of sun and shade, + Of sound and echo, man and maid; + The land reflected in the flood; + Body with shadow still pursued. + For nature beats in perfect tune + And rounds with rhyme her every rune; + Whether she work in land or sea + Or hide underground her alchemy. + Thou canst not wave thy staff in air, + Or dip thy paddle in the lake, + But it carves the bow of beauty there, + And the ripples in rhymes the oar forsake. + Not unrelated, unaffied, + But to each thought and thing allied, + Is perfect nature's every part, + Rooted in the mighty heart.' + +What place Emerson is to occupy in American literature is for America to +determine. Some authoritative remarks on this subject are to be found in +Mr. Lowell's essay on 'Thoreau,' in _My Study Windows_; but here at home, +where we are sorely pressed for room, it is certain he must be content +with a small allotment, where, however, he may for ever sit beneath his +own vine and fig-tree, none daring to make him afraid. Emerson will +always be the favourite author of somebody; and to be always read by +somebody is better than to be read first by everybody and then by nobody. +Indeed, it is hard to fancy a pleasanter destiny than to join the company +of lesser authors. All their readers are sworn friends. They are spared +the harsh discords of ill-judged praise and feigned rapture. Once or +twice in a century some enthusiastic and expansive admirer insists upon +dragging them from their shy retreats, and trumpeting their fame in the +market-place, asserting, possibly with loud asseverations (after the +fashion of Mr. Swinburne), that they are precisely as much above Otway +and Collins and George Eliot as they are below Shakespeare and Hugo and +Emily Bronte. The great world looks on good-humouredly for a moment or +two, and then proceeds as before, and the disconcerted author is left +free to scuttle back to his corner, where he is all the happier, sharing +the raptures of the lonely student, for his brief experience of +publicity. + +Let us bid farewell to Emerson, who has bidden farewell to the world in +the words of his own _Good-bye_: + + 'Good-bye to flattery's fawning face, + To grandeur with his wise grimace, + To upstart wealth's averted eye, + To supple office low and high, + To crowded halls, to court and street, + To frozen hearts and hasting feet, + To those who go and those who come,-- + Good-bye, proud world, I'm going home, + I am going to my own hearth-stone + Bosomed in yon green hills, alone, + A secret nook in a pleasant land, + Whose groves the frolic fairies planned; + Where arches green the livelong day + Echo the blackbird's roundelay, + And vulgar feet have never trod, + A spot that is sacred to thought and God.' + + + + +THE OFFICE OF LITERATURE. + + +Dr. John Brown's pleasant story has become well known, of the countryman +who, being asked to account for the gravity of his dog, replied, 'Oh, +sir! life is full of sairiousness to him--he can just never get eneugh o' +fechtin'.' Something of the spirit of this saddened dog seems lately to +have entered into the very people who ought to be freest from it--our men +of letters. They are all very serious and very quarrelsome. To some of +them it is dangerous even to allude. Many are wedded to a theory or +period, and are the most uxorious of husbands--ever ready to resent an +affront to their lady. This devotion makes them very grave, and possibly +very happy after a pedantic fashion. One remembers what Hazlitt, who was +neither happy nor pedantic, has said about pedantry: + + 'The power of attaching an interest to the most trifling or painful + pursuits is one of the greatest happinesses of our nature. The common + soldier mounts the breach with joy, the miser deliberately starves + himself to death, the mathematician sets about extracting the cube- + root with a feeling of enthusiasm, and the lawyer sheds tears of + delight over _Coke upon Lyttleton_. He who is not in some measure a + pedant, though he may be a wise, cannot be a very happy man.' + +Possibly not; but then we are surely not content that our authors should +be pedants in order that they may be happy and devoted. As one of the +great class for whose sole use and behalf literature exists--the class of +readers--I protest that it is to me a matter of indifference whether an +author is happy or not. I want him to make me happy. That is his +office. Let him discharge it. + +I recognise in this connection the corresponding truth of what Sydney +Smith makes his Peter Plymley say about the private virtues of Mr. +Perceval, the Prime Minister: + + 'You spend a great deal of ink about the character of the present + Prime Minister. Grant all that you write--I say, I fear that he will + ruin Ireland, and pursue a line of policy destructive to the true + interests of his country; and then you tell me that he is faithful to + Mrs. Perceval, and kind to the Master Percevals. I should prefer that + he whipped his boys and saved his country.' + +We should never confuse functions or apply wrong tests. What can books +do for us? Dr. Johnson, the least pedantic of men, put the whole matter +into a nutshell (a cocoanut shell, if you will--Heaven forbid that I +should seek to compress the great Doctor within any narrower limits than +my metaphor requires!), when he wrote that a book should teach us either +to enjoy life or endure it. 'Give us enjoyment!' 'Teach us endurance!' +Hearken to the ceaseless demand and the perpetual prayer of an ever +unsatisfied and always suffering humanity! + +How is a book to answer the ceaseless demand? + +Self-forgetfulness is of the essence of enjoyment, and the author who +would confer pleasure must possess the art, or know the trick, of +destroying for the time the reader's own personality. Undoubtedly the +easiest way of doing this is by the creation of a host of rival +personalities--hence the number and the popularity of novels. Whenever a +novelist fails his book is said to flag; that is, the reader suddenly (as +in skating) comes bump down upon his own personality, and curses the +unskilful author. No lack of characters and continual motion is the +easiest recipe for a novel, which, like a beggar, should always be kept +'moving on.' Nobody knew this better than Fielding, whose novels, like +most good ones, are full of inns. + +When those who are addicted to what is called 'improving reading' inquire +of you petulantly why you cannot find change of company and scene in +books of travel, you should answer cautiously that when books of travel +are full of inns, atmosphere, and motion, they are as good as any novel; +nor is there any reason in the nature of things why they should not +always be so, though experience proves the contrary. + +The truth or falsehood of a book is immaterial. George Borrow's _Bible +in Spain_ is, I suppose, true; though now that I come to think of it, in +what is to me a new light, one remembers that it contains some odd +things. But was not Borrow the accredited agent of the British and +Foreign Bible Society? Did he not travel (and he had a free hand) at +their charges? Was he not befriended by our minister at Madrid, Mr. +Villiers, subsequently Earl of Clarendon in the peerage of England? It +must be true; and yet at this moment I would as lief read a chapter of +the _Bible in Spain_ as I would _Gil Blas_; nay, I positively would give +the preference to Don Jorge. + +Nobody can sit down to read Borrow's books without as completely +forgetting himself as if he were a boy in the forest with Gurth and +Wamba. + +Borrow is provoking, and has his full share of faults, and, though the +owner of a style, is capable of excruciating offences. His habitual use +of the odious word 'individual' as a noun-substantive (seven times in +three pages of _The Romany Rye_) elicits the frequent groan, and he is +certainly once guilty of calling fish the 'finny tribe.' He believed +himself to be animated by an intense hatred of the Church of Rome, and +disfigures many of his pages by Lawrence-Boythorn-like tirades against +that institution; but no Catholic of sense need on this account deny +himself the pleasure of reading Borrow, whose one dominating passion was +_camaraderie_, and who hob-a-nobbed in the friendliest spirit with priest +and gipsy in a fashion as far beyond praise as it is beyond description +by any pen other than his own. Hail to thee, George Borrow! Cervantes +himself, Gil Blas, do not more effectually carry their readers into the +land of the Cid than does this miraculous agent of the Bible Society, by +favour of whose pleasantness we can, any hour of the week, enter +Villafranca by night, or ride into Galicia on an Andalusian stallion +(which proved to be a foolish thing to do), without costing anybody a +_peseta_, and at no risk whatever to our necks--be they long or short. + +Cooks, warriors, and authors must be judged by the effects they produce: +toothsome dishes, glorious victories, pleasant books--these are our +demands. We have nothing to do with ingredients, tactics, or methods. We +have no desire to be admitted into the kitchen, the council, or the +study. The cook may clean her saucepans how she pleases--the warrior +place his men as he likes--the author handle his material or weave his +plot as best he can--when the dish is served we only ask, Is it good? +when the battle has been fought, Who won? when the book comes out, Does +it read? + +Authors ought not to be above being reminded that it is their first duty +to write agreeably--some very disagreeable men have succeeded in doing +so, and there is therefore no need for anyone to despair. Every author, +be he grave or gay, should try to make his book as ingratiating as +possible. Reading is not a duty, and has consequently no business to be +made disagreeable. Nobody is under any obligation to read any other +man's book. + +Literature exists to please--to lighten the burden of men's lives; to +make them for a short while forget their sorrows and their sins, their +silenced hearths, their disappointed hopes, their grim futures--and those +men of letters are the best loved who have best performed literature's +truest office. Their name is happily legion, and I will conclude these +disjointed remarks by quoting from one of them, as honest a parson as +ever took tithe or voted for the Tory candidate, the Rev. George Crabbe. +Hear him in _The Frank Courtship_:-- + + '"I must be loved;" said Sybil; "I must see + The man in terrors, who aspires to me: + At my forbidding frown his heart must ache, + His tongue must falter, and his frame must shake; + And if I grant him at my feet to kneel, + What trembling fearful pleasure must he feel: + Nay, such the raptures that my smiles inspire, + That reason's self must for a time retire." + + "Alas! for good Josiah," said the dame, + "These wicked thoughts would fill his soul with shame; + He kneel and tremble at a thing of dust! + He cannot, child:"--the child replied, "He must."' + +Were an office to be opened for the insurance of literary reputations, no +critic at all likely to be in the society's service would refuse the life +of a poet who could write like Crabbe. Cardinal Newman, Mr. Leslie +Stephen, Mr. Swinburne, are not always of the same way of thinking, but +all three hold the one true faith about Crabbe. + +But even were Crabbe now left unread, which is very far from being the +case, his would be an enviable fame--for was he not one of the favourite +poets of Walter Scott, and whenever the closing scene of the great +magician's life is read in the pages of Lockhart, must not Crabbe's name +be brought upon the reader's quivering lip? + +To soothe the sorrow of the soothers of sorrow, to bring tears to the +eyes and smiles to the cheeks of the lords of human smiles and tears, is +no mean ministry, and it is Crabbe's. + + + + +WORN-OUT TYPES. + + +It is now a complaint of quite respectably antiquity that the types in +which humanity was originally set up by a humour-loving Providence are +worn out and require recasting. The surface of society has become +smooth. It ought to be a bas-relief--it is a plane. Even a Chaucer (so +it is said) could make nothing of us as we wend our way to Brighton. We +have tempers, it is true--bad ones for the most part; but no humours to +be in or out of. We are all far too much alike; we do not group well; we +only mix. All this, and more, is alleged against us. A +cheerfully-disposed person might perhaps think that, assuming the +prevailing type to be a good, plain, readable one, this uniformity need +not necessarily be a bad thing; but had he the courage to give expression +to this opinion he would most certainly be at once told, with that +mixture of asperity and contempt so properly reserved for those who take +cheerful views of anything, that without well-defined types of character +there can be neither national comedy nor whimsical novel; and as it is +impossible to imagine any person sufficiently cheerful to carry the +argument further by inquiring ingenuously, 'And how would that matter?' +the position of things becomes serious, and demands a few minutes' +investigation. + +As we said at the beginning, the complaint is an old one--most complaints +are. When Montaigne was in Rome in 1580 he complained bitterly that he +was always knocking up against his own countrymen, and might as well have +been in Paris. And yet some people would have you believe that this +curse of the Continent is quite new. More than seventy years ago that +most quotable of English authors, Hazlitt, wrote as follows: + + 'It is, indeed, the evident tendency of all literature to generalize + and dissipate character by giving men the same artificial education + and the same common stock of ideas; so that we see all objects from + the same point of view, and through the same reflected medium; we + learn to exist not in ourselves, but in books; all men become alike, + mere readers--spectators, not actors in the scene and lose all proper + personal identity. The templar--the wit--the man of pleasure and the + man of fashion, the courtier and the citizen, the knight and the + squire, the lover and the miser--Lovelace, Lothario, Will Honeycomb + and Sir Roger de Coverley, Sparkish and Lord Foppington, Western and + Tom Jones, my Father and my Uncle Toby, Millament and Sir Sampson + Legend, Don Quixote and Sancho, Gil Blas and Guzman d'Alfarache, Count + Fathom and Joseph Surface--have all met and exchanged commonplaces on + the barren plains of the _haute litterature_--toil slowly on to the + Temple of Science, seen a long way off upon a level, and end in one + dull compound of politics, criticism, chemistry, and metaphysics.' + +Very pretty writing, certainly; {244} nor can it be disputed that +uniformity of surroundings puts a tax upon originality. To make bricks +and find your own straw are terms of bondage. Modern characters, like +modern houses, are possibly built too much on the same lines, Dickens's +description of Coketown is not easily forgotten: + + 'All the public inscriptions in the town were painted alike, in severe + characters of black and white. The jail might have been the + infirmary, the infirmary might have been the jail, the town hall might + have been either, or both, or anything else, for anything that + appeared to the contrary in the graces of their construction.' + +And the inhabitants of Coketown are exposed to the same objection as +their buildings. Every one sinks all traces of what he vulgarly calls +'the shop' (that is, his lawful calling), and busily pretends to be +nothing. Distinctions of dress are found irksome. A barrister of +feeling hates to be seen in his robes save when actually engaged in a +case. An officer wears his uniform only when obliged. Doctors have long +since shed all outward signs of their healing art. Court dress excites a +smile. A countess in her jewels is reckoned indecent by the British +workman, who, all unemployed, puffs his tobacco smoke against the window- +pane of the carriage that is conveying her ladyship to a drawing-room; +and a West-end clergyman is with difficulty restrained from telling his +congregation what he had been told the British workman said on that +occasion. Had he but had the courage to repeat those stirring words, his +hearers (so he said) could hardly have failed to have felt their force--so +unusual in such a place; but he had not the courage, and that sermon of +the pavement remains unpreached. The toe of the peasant is indeed kibing +the heel of the courtier. The passion for equality in externals cannot +be denied. We are all woven strangely in the same piece, and so it comes +about that, though our modern society has invented new callings, those +callings have not created new types. Stockbrokers, directors, official +liquidators, philanthropists, secretaries--not of State, but of +companies--speculative builders, are a new kind of people known to +many--indeed, playing a great part among us--but who, for all that, have +not enriched the stage with a single character. Were they to disappear +to-morrow, to be blown dancing away like the leaves before Shelley's west +wind, where in reading or playgoing would posterity encounter them? Alone +amongst the children of men, the pale student of the law, burning the +midnight oil in some one of the 'high lonely towers' recently built by +the Benchers of the Middle Temple (in the Italian taste), would, whilst +losing his youth over that interminable series, _The Law Reports_, every +now and again strike across the old track, once so noisy with the bayings +of the well-paid hounds of justice, and, pushing his way along it, trace +the history of the bogus company, from the acclamations attendant upon +its illegitimate birth to the hour of disgrace when it dies by +strangulation at the hands of the professional wrecker. The pale student +will not be a wholly unsympathetic reader. Great swindles have ere now +made great reputations, and lawyers may surely be permitted to take a +pensive interest in such matters. + + 'Not one except the Attorney was amused-- + He, like Achilles, faithful to the tomb, + So there were quarrels, cared not for the cause, + Knowing they must be settled by the laws.' + +But our elder dramatists would not have let any of these characters swim +out of their ken. A glance over Ben Jonson, Massinger, Beaumont and +Fletcher, is enough to reveal their frank and easy method. Their +characters, like an apothecary's drugs, wear labels round their necks. +Mr. Justice Clement and Mr. Justice Greedy; Master Matthew, the town +gull; Sir Giles Overreach, Sir Epicure Mammon, Mr. Plenty, Sir John +Frugal, need no explanatory context. Are our dramatists to blame for +withholding from us the heroes of our modern society? Ought we to have-- + + 'Sir Moses, Sir Aaron, Sir Jamramagee, + Two stock-jobbing Jews, and a shuffling Parsee'? + +Baron Contango, the Hon. Mr. Guinea-Pig, poor Miss Impulsia Allottee, Mr. +Jeremiah Builder--Rare Old Ben, who was fond of the city, would have +given us them all and many more; but though we may well wish he were here +to do it, we ought, I think, to confess that the humour of these typical +persons who so swell the _dramatis personae_; of an Elizabethan is, to +say the least of it, far to seek. There is a certain warm-hearted +tradition about their very names which makes disrespect painful. It +seems a churl's part not to laugh, as did our fathers before us, at the +humours of the conventional parasite or impossible serving-man; but we +laugh because we will, and not because we must. + +Genuine comedy--the true tickling scene, exquisite absurdity, +soul-rejoicing incongruity--has really nothing to do with types, +prevailing fashions, and such-like vulgarities. Sir Andrew Aguecheek is +not a typical fool; he _is_ a fool, seised in fee simple of his folly. + +Humour lies not in generalizations, but in the individual; not in his hat +nor in his hose, even though the latter be 'cross-gartered'; but in the +deep heart of him, in his high-flying vanities, his low-lying +oddities--what we call his 'ways'--nay, in the very motions of his back +as he crosses the road. These stir our laughter whilst he lives and our +tears when he dies, for in mourning over him we know full well we are +taking part in our own obsequies. 'But indeed,' wrote Charles Lamb, 'we +die many deaths before we die, and I am almost sick when I think that +such a hold as I had of you is gone.' + +Literature is but the reflex of life, and the humour of it lies in the +portrayal of the individual, not the type; and though the young man in +_Locksley Hall_ no doubt observes that the 'individual withers,' we have +but to take down George Meredith's novels to find the fact is otherwise, +and that we have still one amongst us who takes notes, and against the +battery of whose quick wits even the costly raiment of Poole is no +protection. We are forced as we read to exclaim with Petruchio: 'Thou +hast hit it; come sit on me.' No doubt the task of the modern humorist +is not so easy as it was. The surface ore has been mostly picked up. In +order to win the precious metal you must now work with in-stroke and out- +stroke after the most approved methods. Sometimes one would enjoy it a +little more if we did not hear quite so distinctly the snorting of the +engine, and the groaning and the creaking of the gear as it painfully +winds up its prize: but what would you? Methods, no less than men, must +have the defects of their qualities. + +If, therefore, it be the fact that our national comedy is in decline, we +must look for some other reasons for it than those suggested by Hazlitt +in 1817. When Mr. Chadband inquired, 'Why can we not fly, my friends?' +Mr. Snagsby ventured to observe, 'in a cheerful and rather knowing tone, +"No wings!"' but he was immediately frowned down by Mrs. Snagsby. We +lack courage to suggest that the somewhat heavy-footed movements of our +recent dramatists are in any way due to their not being provided with +those twin adjuncts indispensable for the genius who would soar. + + + + +CAMBRIDGE AND THE POETS. + + +Why all the English poets, with a barely decent number of exceptions, +have been Cambridge men, has always struck me, as did the abstinence of +the Greeks from malt Mr. Calverley, 'as extremely curious.' But in this +age of detail, one must, however reluctantly, submit to prove one's +facts, and I, therefore, propose to institute a 'Modest Inquiry' into +this subject. Imaginatively, I shall don proctorial robes, and armed +with a duster, saunter up and down the library, putting to each poet as I +meet him the once dreaded question, 'Sir, are you a member of this +University?' + +But whilst I am arranging myself for this function, let me utilize the +time by making two preliminary observations--the first one being that, as +to-day is Sunday, only such free libraries are open as may happen to be +attached to public-houses, and I am consequently confined to my own poor +shelves, and must be forgiven even though I make some palpable omissions. +The second is that I exclude from my survey living authors. I must do +so; their very names would excite controversy about a subject which, when +wisely handled, admits of none. + +I now pursue my inquiry. That Chaucer was a Cambridge man cannot be +proved. It is the better opinion that he was (how else should he have +known anything about the Trumpington Road?), but it is only an opinion, +and as no one has ever been found reckless enough to assert that he was +an Oxford man, he must be content to 'sit out' this inquiry along with +Shakspeare, Webster, Ford, Pope, Cowper, Burns, and Keats, no one of whom +ever kept his terms at either University. Spenser is, of course, the +glory of the Cambridge Pembroke, though were the fellowships of that +college made to depend upon passing a yearly examination in the _Faerie +Queen_, to be conducted by Dean Church, there would be wailing and +lamentation within her rubicund walls. Sir Thomas Wyatt was at St. +John's, Fulke Greville Lord Brooke at Jesus, Giles and Phineas Fletcher +were at King's, Herrick was first at St. John's, but migrated to the +Hall, where he is still reckoned very pretty reading, even by boating +men. Cowley, most precocious of poets, and Suckling were at Trinity, +Waller at King's, Francis Quarles was of Christ's. The Herbert family +were divided, some going to Oxford and some to Cambridge, George, of +course, falling to the lot of Cambridge. John Milton's name alone would +deify the University where he pursued his almost sacred studies. Andrew +Marvell, a pleasant poet and savage satirist, was of Trinity. The author +of _Hudibras_ is frequently attributed to Cambridge, but, on being +interrogated, he declined to name his college--always a suspicious +circumstance. + +I must not forget Richard Crashaw, of Peterhouse. Willingly would I +relieve the intolerable tedium of this dry inquiry by transcribing the +few lines of his now beneath my eye. But I forbear, and 'steer right +on.' + +Of dramatists we find Marlowe (untimelier death than his was never any) +at Corpus; Greene (I do not lay much stress on Greene) was both at St. +John's and Clare. Ben Jonson was at St. John's, so was Nash. John +Fletcher (whose claims to be considered the senior partner in his well- +known firm are simply paramount) was at Corpus. James Shirley, the +author of _The Maid's Revenge_ and of the beautiful lyric beginning 'The +glories of our birth and state,' in the innocence of his heart first went +to St. John's College, Oxford, from whence he was speedily sent down, for +reasons which the delightful author of _Athenae Oxonienses_ must really +be allowed to state for himself. 'At the same time (1612) Dr. William +Laud presiding at that house, he had a very great affection for Shirley, +especially for the pregnant parts that were visible in him, but then, +having a broad or large mole upon his left cheek, which some esteemed a +deformity, that worthy doctor would often tell him that he was an unfit +person to take the sacred function upon him, and should never have his +consent to do so.' Thus treated, Shirley left Oxford, that 'home of lost +causes,' but not apparently of large moles, and came to Cambridge, and +entered at St. Catharine's Hall, where, either because the authorities +were not amongst those who esteemed a broad or large mole upon the left +cheek to be a deformity, or because a mole, more or less, made no sort of +difference in the personal appearance of the college, or for other good +and sufficient reasons, poor Shirley was allowed, without, I trust, being +often told of his mole, to proceed to his degree and to Holy Orders. + +Starting off again, we find John Dryden, whose very name is a tower of +strength (were he to come to life again he would, like Mr. Brown of +Calaveras, 'clean out half the town'), at Trinity. In this poet's later +life he said he liked Oxford better. His lines on this subject are well +known: + + 'Oxford to him a dearer name shall be + Than his own Mother-University. + Thebes did his rude, unknowing youth engage, + He chooses Athens in his riper age.' + +But idle preferences of this sort are beyond the scope of my present +inquiry. After Dryden we find Garth at Peterhouse and charming Matthew +Prior at John's. Then comes the great name of Gray. Perhaps I ought not +to mention poor Christopher Smart, who was a Fellow of Pembroke; and yet +the author of _David_, under happier circumstances, might have conferred +additional poetic lustre even upon the college of Spenser. {255} + +In the present century, we find Byron and his bear at Trinity, Coleridge +at Jesus, and Wordsworth at St. John's. The last-named poet was fully +alive to the honour of belonging to the same University as Milton. In +language not unworthy of Mr. Trumbull, the well-known auctioneer in +_Middlemarch_, he has recorded as follows: + + 'Among the band of my compeers was one + Whom chance had stationed in the very room + Honoured by Milton's name. O temperate Bard, + Be it confest that for the first time seated + Within thy innocent lodge and oratory, + One of a festive circle, I poured out + Libations, to thy memory drank, till pride + And gratitude grew dizzy in a brain + Never excited by the fumes of wine + Before that hour or since.' {256} + +I know of no more amiable trait in the character of Cambridge men than +their willingness to admit having been drunk _once_. + +After the great name of Wordsworth any other must seem small, but I must, +before concluding, place on record Praed, Macaulay, Kingsley, and +Calverley. + +A glorious Roll-call indeed! + + 'Earth shows to Heaven the names by thousands told + That crown her fame.' + +So may Cambridge. + +Oxford leads off with one I could find it in my heart to grudge her, +beautiful as she is--Sir Philip Sidney. Why, I wonder, did he not +accompany his friend and future biographer, Fulke Greville, to Cambridge? +As Dr. Johnson once said to Boswell, 'Sir, you _may_ wonder!' Sidney +most indisputably was at Christchurch. Old George Chapman, who I suppose +was young once, was (I believe) at Oxford, though I have known Cambridge +to claim him. Lodge and Peele were at Oxford, so were Francis Beaumont +and his brother Sir John. Philip Massinger, Shakerley Marmion, and John +Marston are of Oxford, also Watson and Warner. Henry Vaughan the +Silurist, Sir John Davies, George Sandys, Samuel Daniel, Dr. Donne, +Lovelace, and Wither belong to the sister University, so did Dr. +Brady--but Oxford must not claim all the merit of the metrical version of +the Psalms, for Brady's colleague, Dr. Nahum Tate, was a Dublin man. +Otway and Collins, Young, Johnson, Charles Wesley, Southey, Landor, +Hartley Coleridge, Beddoes, Keble, Isaac Williams, Faber, and Clough are +names of which their University may well be proud. But surely, when +compared with the Cambridge list, a falling-off must be admitted. + +A poet indeed once came into residence at University College, whose +single name--for, after all, poets must be weighed and not counted--would +have gone far to right the balance, but is Oxford bold enough to claim +Shelley as her own? She sent him down, not for riotous living, for no +purer soul than his ever haunted her courts, but for wanting to discuss +with those whose business it was to teach him questions of high +philosophy. Had Shelley only gone to Trinity in 1810, I feel sure wise +and witty old Dr. Mansel would never have sent him down. Spenser, +Milton, and Shelley! What a triad of immortal fames they would have +made. As it is, we expect Oxford, with her accustomed composure, will +insist upon adding Shelley to her score--but even when she has been +allowed to do so, she must own herself beaten both in men and metal. + +But this being so--why was it so? It is now my turn to own myself +defeated. I cannot for the life of me tell how it happened. + + + + +BOOK-BUYING. + + +The most distinguished of living Englishmen, who, great as he is in many +directions, is perhaps inherently more a man of letters than anything +else, has been overheard mournfully to declare that there were more +booksellers' shops in his native town sixty years ago, when he was a boy +in it, than are to-day to be found within its boundaries. And yet the +place 'all unabashed' now boasts its bookless self a city! + +Mr. Gladstone was, of course, referring to second-hand bookshops. Neither +he nor any other sensible man puts himself out about new books. When a +new book is published, read an old one, was the advice of a sound though +surly critic. It is one of the boasts of letters to have glorified the +term 'second-hand,' which other crafts have 'soiled to all ignoble use.' +But why it has been able to do this is obvious. All the best books are +necessarily second-hand. The writers of to-day need not grumble. Let +them 'bide a wee.' If their books are worth anything, they, too, one day +will be second-hand. If their books are not worth anything there are +ancient trades still in full operation amongst us--the pastrycooks and +the trunkmakers--who must have paper. + +But is there any substance in the plaint that nobody now buys books, +meaning thereby second-hand books? The late Mark Pattison, who had +16,000 volumes, and whose lightest word has therefore weight, once stated +that he had been informed, and verily believed, that there were men of +his own University of Oxford who, being in uncontrolled possession of +annual incomes of not less than 500 pounds, thought they were doing the +thing handsomely if they expended 50 pounds a year upon their libraries. +But we are not bound to believe this unless we like. There was a touch +of morosity about the late Rector of Lincoln which led him to take gloomy +views of men, particularly Oxford men. + +No doubt arguments _a priori_ may readily be found to support the +contention that the habit of book-buying is on the decline. I confess to +knowing one or two men, not Oxford men either, but Cambridge men (and the +passion of Cambridge for literature is a by-word), who, on the plea of +being pressed with business, or because they were going to a funeral, +have passed a bookshop in a strange town without so much as stepping +inside 'just to see whether the fellow had anything.' But painful as +facts of this sort necessarily are, any damaging inference we might feel +disposed to draw from them is dispelled by a comparison of price-lists. +Compare a bookseller's catalogue of 1862 with one of the present year, +and your pessimism is washed away by the tears which unrestrainedly flow +as you see what _bonnes fortunes_ you have lost. A young book-buyer +might well turn out upon Primrose Hill and bemoan his youth, after +comparing old catalogues with new. + +Nothing but American competition, grumble some old stagers. + +Well! why not? This new battle for the books is a free fight, not a +private one, and Columbia has 'joined in.' Lower prices are not to be +looked for. The book-buyer of 1900 will be glad to buy at to-day's +prices. I take pleasure in thinking he will not be able to do so. Good +finds grow scarcer and scarcer. True it is that but a few short weeks +ago I picked up (such is the happy phrase, most apt to describe what was +indeed a 'street casualty') a copy of the original edition of _Endymion_ +(Keats's poem--O subscriber to Mudie's!--not Lord Beaconsfield's novel) +for the easy equivalent of half-a-crown--but then that was one of my +lucky days. The enormous increase of booksellers' catalogues and their +wide circulation amongst the trade has already produced a hateful +uniformity of prices. Go where you will it is all the same to the odd +sixpence. Time was when you could map out the country for yourself with +some hopefulness of plunder. There were districts where the Elizabethan +dramatists were but slenderly protected. A raid into the 'bonnie North +Countrie' sent you home again cheered with chap-books and weighted with +old pamphlets of curious interests; whilst the West of England seldom +failed to yield a crop of novels. I remember getting a complete set of +the Bronte books in the original issues at Torquay, I may say, for +nothing. Those days are over. Your country bookseller is, in fact, more +likely, such tales does he hear of London auctions, and such catalogues +does he receive by every post, to exaggerate the value of his wares than +to part with them pleasantly, and as a country bookseller should, 'just +to clear my shelves, you know, and give me a bit of room.' The only +compensation for this is the catalogues themselves. You get _them_, at +least, for nothing, and it cannot be denied that they make mighty pretty +reading. + +These high prices tell their own tale, and force upon us the conviction +that there never were so many private libraries in course of growth as +there are to-day. + +Libraries are not made; they grow. Your first two thousand volumes +present no difficulty, and cost astonishingly little money. Given 400 +pounds and five years, and an ordinary man can in the ordinary course, +without undue haste or putting any pressure upon his taste, surround +himself with this number of books, all in his own language, and +thenceforward have at least one place in the world in which it is +possible to be happy. But pride is still out of the question. To be +proud of having two thousand books would be absurd. You might as well be +proud of having two top coats. After your first two thousand difficulty +begins, but until you have ten thousand volumes the less you say about +your library the better. _Then_ you may begin to speak. + +It is no doubt a pleasant thing to have a library left you. The present +writer will disclaim no such legacy, but hereby undertakes to accept it, +however dusty. But good as it is to inherit a library, it is better to +collect one. Each volume then, however lightly a stranger's eye may roam +from shelf to shelf, has its own individuality, a history of its own. You +remember where you got it, and how much you gave for it; and your word +may safely be taken for the first of these facts, but not for the second. + +The man who has a library of his own collection is able to contemplate +himself objectively, and is justified in believing in his own existence. +No other man but he would have made precisely such a combination as his. +Had he been in any single respect different from what he is, his library, +as it exists, never would have existed. Therefore, surely he may +exclaim, as in the gloaming he contemplates the backs of his loved ones, +'They are mine, and I am theirs.' + +But the eternal note of sadness will find its way even through the +keyhole of a library. You turn some familiar page, of Shakspeare it may +be, and his 'infinite variety,' his 'multitudinous mind,' suggests some +new thought, and as you are wondering over it you think of Lycidas, your +friend, and promise yourself the pleasure of having his opinion of your +discovery the very next time when by the fire you two 'help waste a +sullen day.' Or it is, perhaps, some quainter, tenderer fancy that +engages your solitary attention, something in Sir Philip Sydney or Henry +Vaughan, and then you turn to look for Phyllis, ever the best interpreter +of love, human or divine. Alas! the printed page grows hazy beneath a +filmy eye as you suddenly remember that Lycidas is dead--'dead ere his +prime'--and that the pale cheek of Phyllis will never again be relumined +by the white light of her pure enthusiasm. And then you fall to thinking +of the inevitable, and perhaps, in your present mood, not unwelcome hour, +when the 'ancient peace' of your old friends will be disturbed, when rude +hands will dislodge them from their accustomed nooks and break up their +goodly company. + + 'Death bursts amongst them like a shell, + And strews them over half the town.' + +They will form new combinations, lighten other men's toil, and soothe +another's sorrow. Fool that I was to call anything _mine_! + +_Elliot Stock_, _Paternoster Row_, _London_. + + + + +Footnotes: + + +{27} See note to Mitford's _Milton_, vol. i., clii. + +{59} Not Horace Walpole's opinion. 'Sir Joshua Reynolds has lent me Dr. +Johnson's _Life of Pope_, which Sir Joshua holds to be a _chef d'oeuvre_. +It is a most trumpery performance, and stuffed with all his crabbed +phrases and vulgarisms, and much trash as anecdotes.'--_Letters_, vol. +viii., p. 26. + +{65} Howell's _State Trials_, vol. xvii., p. 159. + +{76} In _Oxford Essays_ for 1858. + +{79} _Lectures and Essays on University Subjects_: Lecture on +Literature. + +{101} "The late Mr. Carlyle was a brute and a boor."--_The World_, +October 29th, 1884. + +{102} In the first edition, by a strange and distressing freak of the +imagination, I took the 'old struggler' out of Lockhart and put her into +Boswell. + +{117} Anyone who does not wish this story to be true, will find good +reasons for disbelieving it stated in Mr. Napier's edition of Boswell, +vol. iv., p. 385. + +{159} All the difficulties connected with this subject will be found +collected, and somewhat unkindly considered, in Mr. Dilke's _Papers of a +Critic_, vol. ii. The equity draughtsman will be indisposed to attach +importance to statements made in a Bill of Complaint filed in Chancery by +Lord Verney against Burke fourteen years after the transaction to which +it had reference, in a suit which was abandoned after answer put in. But, +in justice to a deceased plaintiff, it should be remembered that in those +days a defendant could not be cross-examined upon his sworn answer. + +{178} _Critical Miscellanies_, vol. iii., p. 9. + +{189} 'I will answer you by quoting what I have read somewhere or other, +in Dionysius Halicarnassensis I think, that history is philosophy +teaching by examples.' See Lord Bolingbroke's _Second Letter on the +Study and Use of History_. + +{204} _The Works of Charles Lamb_. Edited, with notes and introduction, +by the Rev. Alfred Ainger. Three volumes. London: 1883-5. + +{218} See _Life of Emerson_, by O. W. Holmes. + +{221} The institution referred to was the Eucharist. + +{244} Yet in his essay _On Londoners and Country People_ we find Hazlitt +writing: 'London is the only place in which the child grows completely up +into the man. I have known characters of this kind, which, in the way of +childish ignorance and self-pleasing delusion, exceeded anything to be +met with in Shakespeare or Ben Jonson, or the Old Comedy.' + +{255} This passage was written before Mr. Browning's 'Parleyings' had +appeared. Christopher is now 'a person of importance,' and needs no +apology. + +{256} _The Prelude_, p. 55. + + + +***END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK OBITER DICTA*** + + +******* This file should be named 21793.txt or 21793.zip ******* + + +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: +http://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/2/1/7/9/21793 + + + +Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions +will be renamed. + +Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no +one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation +(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without +permission and without paying copyright royalties. Special rules, +set forth in the General Terms of Use part of this license, apply to +copying and distributing Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works to +protect the PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm concept and trademark. 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