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diff --git a/.gitattributes b/.gitattributes new file mode 100644 index 0000000..6833f05 --- /dev/null +++ b/.gitattributes @@ -0,0 +1,3 @@ +* text=auto +*.txt text +*.md text diff --git a/22280-h.zip b/22280-h.zip Binary files differnew file mode 100644 index 0000000..b6e9c74 --- /dev/null +++ b/22280-h.zip diff --git a/22280-h/22280-h.htm b/22280-h/22280-h.htm new file mode 100644 index 0000000..4119962 --- /dev/null +++ b/22280-h/22280-h.htm @@ -0,0 +1,6063 @@ +<!DOCTYPE html + PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Strict//EN" + "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-strict.dtd"> +<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" xml:lang="en" lang="en"> +<head> +<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=US-ASCII" /> +<title>Views and Reviews</title> + <style type="text/css"> +/*<![CDATA[ XML blockout */ +<!-- + P { margin-top: .75em; + margin-bottom: .75em; + } + H1, H2 { + text-align: center; + margin-top: 2em; + margin-bottom: 2em; + } + H3, H4 { + text-align: left; + margin-top: 1em; + margin-bottom: 1em; + } + BODY{margin-left: 10%; + margin-right: 10%; + } + table { border-collapse: collapse; } + td { vertical-align: top; border: 1px solid black;} + td p { margin: 0.2em; } + .blkquot {margin-left: 4em; margin-right: 4em;} /* block indent */ + + .smcap {font-variant: small-caps;} + + .pagenum {position: absolute; + left: 92%; + font-size: smaller; + text-align: right; + color: gray;} + + .citation {vertical-align: super; + font-size: .8em; + text-decoration: none;} + // --> + /* XML end ]]>*/ + </style> +</head> +<body> +<h2> +<a href="#startoftext">Views and Reviews, by William Ernest Henley</a> +</h2> +<pre> +The Project Gutenberg eBook, Views and Reviews, by William Ernest Henley + + +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: Views and Reviews + Essays in appreciation + + +Author: William Ernest Henley + + + +Release Date: August 8, 2007 [eBook #22280] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ISO-646-US (US-ASCII) + + +***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK VIEWS AND REVIEWS*** +</pre> +<p><a name="startoftext"></a></p> +<p>Transcribed from the 1892 David Nutt edition by David Price, +email ccx074@pglaf.org</p> +<h1>VIEWS AND REVIEWS</h1> +<p style="text-align: center">ESSAYS<br /> +IN APPRECIATION</p> +<p style="text-align: center">By W. E. HENLEY</p> +<p style="text-align: center">LITERATURE</p> +<p style="text-align: center">LONDON<br /> +Published by DAVID NUTT<br /> +in the Strand<br /> +1892</p> +<p style="text-align: center">* * * * *</p> +<p style="text-align: center">FIRST EDITION</p> +<p style="text-align: center">Printing begun 28th October 1889, +ended 13th May 1890</p> +<p style="text-align: center"><span class="smcap">Ordinary +Issue</span>—<br /> +1000 <i>copies</i></p> +<p style="text-align: center">Finest Japanese—<br /> +20 <i>copies</i></p> +<p style="text-align: center">SECOND EDITION</p> +<p style="text-align: center">Printing begun May 25th, ended June +18, 1892</p> +<p style="text-align: center">1000 <i>copies</i></p> +<p style="text-align: center"><i>Edinburgh</i>:<i> T. & A. +CONSTABLE</i>, <i>Printers to Her Majesty</i></p> +<p style="text-align: center"><!-- page v--><a +name="pagev"></a><span class="pagenum">p. v</span>TO THE MEN +OF<br /> +‘THE SCOTS OBSERVER’</p> +<h2><!-- page vii--><a name="pagevii"></a><span +class="pagenum">p. vii</span>PREFATORY</h2> +<p><i>Suggested by one friend and selected and compiled by +another</i>, <i>this volume is less a book than a mosaic of +scraps and shreds recovered from the shot rubbish of some +fourteen years of journalism</i>. <i>Thus</i>, <i>the notes +on Longfellow</i>, <i>Balzac</i>, <i>Sidney</i>, <i>Tourneur</i>, +‘<i>Arabian Nights Entertainments</i>,’ +<i>Borrow</i>, <i>George Eliot</i>, <i>and Mr. Frederick Locker +are extracted from originals in</i> +‘<i>London</i>’—<i>a print still remembered +with affection by those concerned in it</i>; <i>those on +Labiche</i>, <i>Champfleury</i>, <i>Richardson</i>, +<i>Fielding</i>, <i>Byron</i>, <i>Gay</i>, <i>Congreve</i>, +<i>Boswell</i>, ‘<i>Essays and Essayists</i>,’ +<i>Jefferies</i>, <i>Hood</i>, <i>Matthew Arnold</i>, +<i>Lever</i>, <i>Thackeray</i>, <i>Dickens</i>, <i>M. +Théodore de Banville</i>, <i>Mr. Austin Dobson</i>, <i>and +Mr. George Meredith from articles contributed to</i> +‘<i>The Athenæum</i>’; <i>those on Dumas</i>, +<i>Count Tolstoï’s novels</i>, <i>and the verse of Dr. +Hake from</i> ‘<i>The Saturday Review</i>’; <i>those +on Walton</i>, <i>Landor</i>, <i>and Heine from</i> ‘<i>The +Scots Observer</i>,’ ‘<i>The Academy</i>,’ +<i>and</i> ‘<i>Vanity Fair</i>’ <i>respectively</i>; +<i>while the</i> ‘<i>Disraeli</i>’ <i>has been pieced +together from</i> ‘<i>London</i>,’ ‘<i>Vanity +Fair</i>,’ <i>and</i> ‘<i>The +Athenæum</i>’; <i>the</i> +‘<i>Berlioz</i>’ <i>from</i> ‘<i>The Scots +Observer</i>’ <i>and</i> <!-- page viii--><a +name="pageviii"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +viii</span>‘<i>The Saturday Review</i>’; <i>the</i> +‘<i>Tennyson</i>’ <i>from</i> ‘<i>The Scots +Observer</i>’ <i>and</i> ‘<i>The Magazine of +Art</i>’; <i>the</i> ‘<i>Homer and +Theocritus</i>’ <i>from</i> ‘<i>Vanity +Fair</i>’ <i>and the defunct</i> +‘<i>Teacher</i>’; <i>the</i> +‘<i>Hugo</i>’ <i>from</i> ‘<i>The +Athenæum</i>,’ ‘<i>The Magazine of +Art</i>,’ <i>and an unpublished fragment written for</i> +‘<i>The Scottish Church</i>.’ <i>In all cases +permission to reprint is hereby gratefully acknowledged</i>; +<i>but the reprinted matter has been subjected to such a process +of revision and reconstitution that much of it is practically +new</i>, <i>while little or none remains as it was</i>. +<i>I venture</i>, <i>then</i>, <i>to hope that the result</i>, +<i>for all its scrappiness</i>, <i>will be found to have that +unity which comes of method and an honest regard for +letters</i>.</p> +<p style="text-align: right">W. E. H.</p> +<p><i>Edin</i><sup><i>r</i></sup><i>.</i> 8<i>th</i> <i>May</i> +1890</p> +<h2><!-- page 1--><a name="page1"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +1</span>DICKENS</h2> +<h3>A ‘Frightful Minus’</h3> +<p>Mr. Andrew Lang is delightfully severe on those who +‘cannot read Dickens,’ but in truth it is only by +accident that he is not himself of that unhappy persuasion. +For Dickens the humourist he has a most uncompromising +enthusiasm; for Dickens the artist in drama and romance he has as +little sympathy as the most practical. Of the prose of +<i>David Copperfield</i> and <i>Our Mutual Friend</i>, the +<i>Tale of Two Cities</i> and <i>The Mystery of Edwin Drood</i>, +he disdains to speak. He is almost fierce (for him) in his +denunciation of Little Nell and Paul Dombey; he protests that +Monks and Ralph Nickleby are ‘too steep,’ as indeed +they are. But of Bradley Headstone and Sydney Carton he +says not a word; while of <i>Martin Chuzzlewit</i>—but here +he shall speak for himself, the italics being a present to +him. ‘I have read in that book a score of +times,’ says he; ‘I never see <!-- page 2--><a +name="page2"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 2</span>it but I revel +in it—in Pecksniff and Mrs. Gamp and the Americans. +<i>But what the plot is all about</i>, <i>what Jonas did</i>, +<i>what Montague Tigg had to make in the matter</i>, <i>what all +the pictures with plenty of shading illustrate</i>, <i>I have +never been able to comprehend</i>.’ This is almost as +bad as the reflection (in a magazine) that Jonas Chuzzlewit is +‘the most shadowy murderer in fiction.’ Yet it +is impossible to be angry. In his own way and within his +own limits Mr. Lang is such a thoroughgoing admirer of Dickens +that you are moved to compassion when you think of the much he +loses by ‘being constitutionally incapable’ of +perfect apprehension. ‘How poor,’ he cries, +with generous enthusiasm, ‘the world of fancy would be, +“how dispeopled of her dreams,” if, in some ruin of +the social system, the books of Dickens were lost; and if The +Dodger, and Charley Bates, and Mr. Crinkle and Miss Squeers and +Sam Weller, and Mrs. Gamp, and Dick Swiveller were to perish, or +to vanish with Menander’s men and women! We cannot +think of our world without them; and, children of dreams as they +are, they seem more essential than great statesmen, artists, +soldiers, who have actually worn flesh and blood, ribbons and +orders, gowns and uniforms.’ Nor is this all. +He is almost prepared to welcome ‘free education,’ +since ‘every Englishman who can read, unless he be an Ass, +is a reader the more’ for Dickens. Does it not give +one pause to reflect that the writer <!-- page 3--><a +name="page3"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 3</span>of this +charming eulogy can only read the half of Dickens, and is half +the ideal of his own denunciation.</p> +<h3>His Method.</h3> +<p>Dickens’s imagination was diligent from the outset; with +him conception was not less deliberate and careful than +development; and so much he confesses when he describes himself +as ‘in the first stage of a new book, which consists in +going round and round the idea, as you see a bird in his cage go +about and about his sugar before he touches it.’ +‘I have no means,’ he writes to a person wanting +advice, ‘of knowing whether you are patient in the pursuit +of this art; but I am inclined to think that you are not, and +that you do not discipline yourself enough. When one is +impelled to write this or that, one has still to consider: +“How much of this will tell for what I mean? How much +of it is my own wild emotion and superfluous energy—how +much remains that is truly belonging to this ideal character and +these ideal circumstances?” It is in the laborious +struggle to make this distinction, and in the determination to +try for it, that the road to the correction of faults lies. +[Perhaps I may remark, in support of the sincerity with which I +write this, that I am an impatient and impulsive <!-- page 4--><a +name="page4"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 4</span>person myself, +but that it has been for many years the constant effort of my +life to practise at my desk what I preach to you.]’ +Such golden words could only have come from one enamoured of his +art, and holding the utmost endeavour in its behalf of which his +heart and mind were capable for a matter of simple duty. +They are a proof that Dickens—in intention at least, and if +in intention then surely, the fact of his genius being admitted, +to some extent in fact as well—was an artist in the best +sense of the term.</p> +<h3>His Development.</h3> +<p>In the beginning he often wrote exceeding ill, especially when +he was doing his best to write seriously. He developed into +an artist in words as he developed into an artist in the +construction and the evolution of a story. But his +development was his own work, and it is a fact that should +redound eternally to his honour that he began in newspaper +English, and by the production of an imitation of the <i>novela +picaresca</i>—a string of adventures as broken and +disconnected as the adventures of Lazarillo de Tormes or +Peregrine Pickle, and went on to become an exemplar. A man +self-made and self-taught, if he knew anything at all about the +‘art for art’ theory—which is doubtful—he +may <!-- page 5--><a name="page5"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +5</span>well have held it cheap enough. But he practised +Millet’s dogma—<i>Dans l’art il faut sa +peau</i>—as resolutely as Millet himself, and that, too, +under conditions that might have proved utterly demoralising had +he been less robust and less sincere. He began as a serious +novelist with Ralph Nickleby and Lord Frederick Verisopht; he +went on to produce such masterpieces as Jonas Chuzzlewit and +Doubledick, and Eugene Wrayburn and the immortal Mrs. Gamp, and +Fagin and Sikes and Sydney Carton, and many another. The +advance is one from positive weakness to positive strength, from +ignorance to knowledge, from incapacity to mastery, from the +manufacture of lay figures to the creation of human beings.</p> +<h3>His Results.</h3> +<p>His faults were many and grave. He wrote some nonsense; +he sinned repeatedly against taste; he could be both noisy and +vulgar; he was apt to be a caricaturist where he should have been +a painter; he was often mawkish and often extravagant; and he was +sometimes more inept than a great writer has ever been. But +his work, whether bad or good, has in full measure the quality of +sincerity. He meant what he did: and he meant it with his +whole heart. He looked upon himself as representative <!-- +page 6--><a name="page6"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 6</span>and +national—as indeed he was; he regarded his work as a +universal possession; and he determined to do nothing that for +lack of pains should prove unworthy of his function. If he +sinned it was unadvisedly and unconsciously; if he failed it was +because he knew no better. You feel that as you read. +The freshness and fun of <i>Pickwick</i>—a comic +middle-class epic, so to speak—seem mainly due to high +spirits; and perhaps that immortal book should be described as a +first improvisation by a young man of genius not yet sure of +either expression or ambition and with only vague and momentary +ideas about the duties and necessities of art. But from +<i>Pickwick</i> onwards to <i>Edwin Drood</i> the effort after +improvement is manifest. What are <i>Dombey</i> and +<i>Dorrit</i> themselves but the failures of a great and serious +artist? In truth the man’s genius did but ripen with +years and labour; he spent his life in developing from a popular +writer into an artist. He extemporised <i>Pickwick</i>, it +may be, but into <i>Copperfield</i> and <i>Chuzzlewit</i> and the +<i>Tale of Two Cities</i> and <i>Our Mutual Friend</i> he put his +whole might, working at them with a passion of determination not +exceeded by Balzac himself. He had enchanted the public +without an effort; he was the best-beloved of modern writers +almost from the outset of his career. But he had in him at +least as much of the French artist as of the middle-class +Englishman; and if all his life he never ceased from <!-- page +7--><a name="page7"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +7</span>self-education but went unswervingly in pursuit of +culture, it was out of love for his art and because his +conscience as an artist would not let him do otherwise. We +have been told so often to train ourselves by studying the +practice of workmen like Gautier and Hugo and imitating the +virtues of work like <i>Hernani</i> and +<i>Quatre-Vingt-Treize</i> and <i>l’Education +Sentimentale</i>—we have heard so much of the +æsthetic impeccability of Young France and the section of +Young England that affects its qualities and reproduces its +fashions—that it is hard to refrain from asking if, when +all is said, we should not do well to look for models nearer +home? if in place of such moulds of form as <i>Mademoiselle de +Maupin</i> we might not take to considering stuff like +<i>Rizpah</i> and <i>Our Mutual Friend</i>?</p> +<h3>Ave atque Vale.</h3> +<p>Yes, he had many and grave faults. But so had Sir Walter +and the good Dumas; so, to be candid, had Shakespeare +himself—Shakespeare the king of poets. To myself he +is always the man of his unrivalled and enchanting +letters—is always an incarnation of generous and abounding +gaiety, a type of beneficent earnestness, a great expression of +intellectual vigour and emotional vivacity. I love to +remember that I came into the world <!-- page 8--><a +name="page8"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +8</span>contemporaneously with some of his bravest work, and to +reflect that even as he was the inspiration of my boyhood so is +he a delight of my middle age. I love to think that while +English literature endures he will be remembered as one that +loved his fellow-men, and did more to make them happy and amiable +than any other writer of his time.</p> +<h2><!-- page 9--><a name="page9"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +9</span>THACKERAY</h2> +<h3>His Worshippers.</h3> +<p>It is odd to note how opinions differ as to the greatness of +Thackeray and the value of his books. Some regard him as +the greatest novelist of his age and country and as one of the +greatest of any country and any age. These hold him to be +not less sound a moralist than excellent as a writer, not less +magnificently creative than usefully and delightfully cynical, +not less powerful and complete a painter of manners than +infallible as a social philosopher and incomparable as a lecturer +on the human heart. They accept Amelia Sedley for a very +woman; they believe in Colonel Newcome—‘by <i>Don +Quixote</i> out of <i>Little Nell</i>’—as in +something venerable and heroic; they regard William Dobbin and +‘Stunning’ Warrington as finished and subtle +portraitures; they think Becky Sharp an improvement upon Mme. +Marneffe and Wenham better work than Rigby; they are in love with +Laura Bell, and refuse to see either cruelty or caricature in +their poet’s presentment of Alcide de Mirobolant. +Thackeray’s fun, Thackeray’s wisdom, +Thackeray’s knowledge of <!-- page 10--><a +name="page10"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 10</span>men and +women, Thackeray’s morality, Thackeray’s view of +life, ‘his wit and humour, his pathos, and his +umbrella,’ are all articles of belief with them. Of +Dickens they will not hear; Balzac they incline to despise; if +they make any comparison between Thackeray and Fielding, or +Thackeray and Richardson, or Thackeray and Sir Walter, or +Thackeray and Disraeli, it is to the disadvantage of Disraeli and +Scott and Richardson and Fielding. All these were well +enough in their way and day; but they are not to be classed with +Thackeray. It is said, no doubt, that Thackeray could +neither make stories nor tell them; but he liked stories for all +that, and by the hour could babble charmingly of <i>Ivanhoe</i> +and the <i>Mousquetaires</i>. It is possible that he was +afraid of passion, and had no manner of interest in crime. +But then, how hard he bore upon snobs, and how vigorously he +lashed the smaller vices and the meaner faults! It may be +beyond dispute that he was seldom good at romance, and saw most +things—art and nature included—rather prosaically and +ill-naturedly, as he might see them who has been for many years a +failure, and is naturally a little resentful of other men’s +successes; but then, how brilliant are his studies of club +humanity and club manners! how thoroughly he understands the +feelings of them that go down into the West in broughams! +If he writes by preference for people with a <!-- page 11--><a +name="page11"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 11</span>thousand a +year, is it not the duty of everybody with a particle of +self-respect to have that income? Is it possible that any +one who has it not can have either wit or sentiment, humour or +understanding? Thackeray writes <i>of</i> gentlemen +<i>for</i> gentlemen; therefore he is alone among artists; +therefore he is ‘the greatest novelist of his +age.’ That is the faith of the true believer: that +the state of mind of him that reveres less wisely than +thoroughly, and would rather be damned with Thackeray than saved +with any one else.</p> +<h3>His Critics.</h3> +<p>The position of them that wear their rue with a difference, +and do not agree that all literature is contained in <i>The Book +of Snobs</i> and <i>Vanity Fair</i>, is more easily +defended. They like and admire their Thackeray in many +ways, but they think him rather a writer of genius who was +innately and irredeemably a Philistine than a supreme artist or a +great man. To them there is something artificial in the man +and something insincere in the artist: something which makes it +seem natural that his best work should smack of the literary +<i>tour de force</i>, and that he should never have appeared to +such advantage as when, in <i>Esmond</i> and in <i>Barry +Lyndon</i>, he was writing up to a standard and upon a model <!-- +page 12--><a name="page12"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +12</span>not wholly of his own contrivance. They admit his +claim to eminence as an adventurer in ‘the discovery of the +Ugly’; but they contend that even there he did his work +more shrewishly and more pettily than he might; and in this +connection they go so far as to reflect that a snob is not only +‘one who meanly admires mean things,’ as his own +definition declares, but one who meanly detests mean things as +well. They agree with Walter Bagehot that to be perpetually +haunted by the plush behind your chair is hardly a sign of lofty +literary and moral genius; and they consider him narrow and +vulgar in his view of humanity, limited in his outlook upon life, +inclined to be envious, inclined to be tedious and pedantic, +prone to repetitions, and apt in bidding for applause to appeal +to the baser qualities of his readers and to catch their sympathy +by making them feel themselves spitefully superior to their +fellow-men. They look at his favourite heroines—at +Laura and Ethel and Amelia; and they can but think him stupid who +could ever have believed them interesting or admirable or +attractive or true. They listen while he regrets it is +impossible for him to attempt the picture of a man; and, with +Barry Lyndon in their mind’s eye and the knowledge that +Casanova and Andrew Bowes suggested no more than that, they +wonder if the impossibility was not a piece of luck for +him. They hear him heaping contumely upon the murders and +adulteries, the <!-- page 13--><a name="page13"></a><span +class="pagenum">p. 13</span>excesses in emotion, that pleased the +men of 1830 as they had pleased the Elizabethans before them; and +they see him turning with terror and loathing from +these—which after all are effects of vigorous +passion—to busy himself with the elaborate and careful +narrative of how Barnes Newcome beat his wife, and Mrs. Mackenzie +scolded Colonel Newcome to death, and old Twysden bragged and +cringed himself into good society and an interest in the life and +well-being of a little cad like Captain Woolcomb; and it is not +amazing if they think his morality more dubious in some ways than +the morality he is so firmly fixed to ridicule and to +condemn. They reflect that he sees in Beatrix no more than +the makings of a Bernstein; and they are puzzled, when they come +to mark the contrast between the two portraitures and the +difference between the part assigned to Mrs. Esmond and the part +assigned to the Baroness, to decide if he were short-sighted or +ungenerous, if he were inapprehensive or only cruel. They +weary easily of his dogged and unremitting pursuit of the merely +conventional man and the merely conventional woman; they cannot +always bring themselves to be interested in the cupboard drama, +the tea-cup tragedies and cheque-book and bandbox comedies, which +he regards as the stuff of human action and the web of human +life; and from their theory of existence they positively refuse +to eliminate the heroic qualities of romance <!-- page 14--><a +name="page14"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 14</span>and mystery +and passion, which are—as they have only to open their +newspapers to see—essentials of human achievement and +integral elements of human character. They hold that his +books contain some of the finest stuff in fiction: as, for +instance, Rawdon Crawley’s discovery of his wife and Lord +Steyne, and Henry Esmond’s return from the wars, and those +immortal chapters in which the Colonel and Frank Castlewood +pursue and run down their kinswoman and the Prince. But +they hold, too, that their influence is dubious, and that few +have risen from them one bit the better or one jot the +happier.</p> +<h3>Which is Right?</h3> +<p>Genius apart, Thackeray’s morality is that of a highly +respectable British cynic; his intelligence is largely one of +trifles; he is wise over trivial and trumpery things. He +delights in reminding us—with an air!—that everybody +is a humbug; that we are all rank snobs; that to misuse your +aspirates is to be ridiculous and incapable of real merit; that +Miss Blank has just slipped out to post a letter to Captain +Jones; that Miss Dash wears false teeth and a wig; that General +Tufto is almost as tightly laced as the beautiful Miss Hopper; +that there’s a bum-bailiff in the kitchen at Number +Thirteen; that the <!-- page 15--><a name="page15"></a><span +class="pagenum">p. 15</span>dinner we ate t’other day at +Timmins’s is still to pay; that all is vanity; that +there’s a skeleton in every house; that passion, +enthusiasm, excess of any sort, is unwise, abominable, a little +absurd; and so forth. And side by side with these +assurances are admirable sketches of character and still more +admirable sketches of habit and of manners—are the Pontos +and Costigan, Gandish and Talbot Twysden and the unsurpassable +Major, Sir Pitt and Brand Firmin, the heroic De la Pluche and the +engaging Farintosh and the versatile Honeyman, a crowd of vivid +and diverting portraitures besides; but they are not +different—in kind at least—from the reflections +suggested by the story of their several careers and the +development of their several individualities. Esmond apart, +there is scarce a man or a woman in Thackeray whom it is possible +to love unreservedly or thoroughly respect. That gives the +measure of the man, and determines the quality of his +influence. He was the average clubman <i>plus</i> genius +and a style. And, if there is any truth in the theory that +it is the function of art not to degrade but to ennoble—not +to dishearten but to encourage—not to deal with things ugly +and paltry and mean but with great things and beautiful and +lofty—then, it is argued, his example is one to depreciate +and to condemn.</p> +<h3><!-- page 16--><a name="page16"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +16</span> His Style.</h3> +<p>Thus the two sects: the sect of them that are with Thackeray +and the sect of them that are against him. Where both agree +is in the fact of Thackeray’s pre-eminence as a writer of +English and the master of one of the finest prose styles in +literature. His manner is the perfection of conversational +writing. Graceful yet vigorous; adorably artificial yet +incomparably sound; touched with modishness yet informed with +distinction; easily and happily rhythmical yet full of colour and +quick with malice and with meaning; instinct with urbanity and +instinct with charm—it is a type of high-bred English, a +climax of literary art. He may not have been a great man +but assuredly he was a great writer; he may have been a faulty +novelist but assuredly he was a rare artist in words. +Setting aside Cardinal Newman’s, the style he wrote is +certainly less open to criticism than that of any other modern +Englishman. He was neither super-eloquent like Mr. Ruskin +nor a Germanised Jeremy like Carlyle; he was not marmoreally +emphatic as Landor was, nor was he slovenly and inexpressive as +was the great Sir Walter; he neither dallied with antithesis like +Macaulay nor rioted in verbal vulgarisms with Dickens; he +abstained from technology and what may be called Lord-Burleighism +as carefully as George Eliot indulged in them, and he avoided +conceits as sedulously as Mr. George Meredith goes out of his way +to hunt for them. He is a better <!-- page 17--><a +name="page17"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 17</span>writer than +any one of these, in that he is always a master of speech and of +himself, and that he is always careful yet natural and choice yet +seemingly spontaneous. He wrote as a very prince among +talkers, and he interfused and interpenetrated English with the +elegant and cultured fashion of the men of Queen Anne and with +something of the warmth, the glow, the personal and romantic +ambition, peculiar to the century of Byron and Keats, of Landor +and Dickens, of Ruskin and Tennyson and Carlyle. Unlike his +only rival, he had learnt his art before he began to practise +it. Of the early work of the greater artist a good half is +that of a man in the throes of education: the ideas, the +thoughts, the passion, the poetry, the humour, are of the best, +but the expression is self-conscious, strained, ignorant. +Thackeray had no such blemish. He wrote dispassionately, +and he was a born writer. In him there is no hesitation, no +fumbling, no uncertainty. The style of <i>Barry Lyndon</i> +is better and stronger and more virile than the style of +<i>Philip</i>; and unlike the other man’s, whose latest +writing is his best, their author’s evolution was towards +decay.</p> +<h3>His Mission.</h3> +<p>He is so superior a person that to catch him tripping is a +peculiar pleasure. It is a satisfaction <!-- page 18--><a +name="page18"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 18</span>apart, for +instance, to reflect that he has (it must be owned) a certain +gentility of mind. Like the M.P. in <i>Martin +Chuzzlewit</i>, he represents the Gentlemanly Interest. +That is his mission in literature, and he fulfils it +thoroughly. He appears sometimes as Mr. Yellowplush, +sometimes as Mr. Fitzboodle, sometimes as Michael Angelo +Titmarsh, but always in the Gentlemanly Interest. In his +youth (as ever) he is found applauding the well-bred Charles de +Bernard, and remarking of Balzac and Dumas that the one is +‘not fit for the <i>salon</i>,’ and the other +‘about as genteel as a courier.’ Balzac and +Dumas are only men of genius and great artists: the real thing is +to be ‘genteel’ and write—as <i>Gerfeuil</i> +(<i>sic</i>) is written—‘in a gentleman-like +style.’ A few pages further on in the same +pronouncement (a review of <i>Jérôme Paturot</i>), I +find him quoting with entire approval Reybaud’s sketch of +‘a great character, in whom the <i>habitué</i> of +Paris will perhaps recognise a certain likeness to a certain +celebrity of the present day, by name Monsieur Hector Berlioz, +the musician and critic.’ The description is too long +to quote. It sparkles with all the <i>fadaises</i> of +anti-Berliozian criticism, and the point is that the hero, after +conducting at a private party (which Berlioz never did) his own +‘hymn of the creation that has been lost since the days of +the deluge,’ ‘called for his cloak and his clogs, and +walked home, where he wrote a critique for the <!-- page 19--><a +name="page19"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 19</span>newspapers of +the music which he had composed and directed.’ In the +Gentlemanly Interest Mr. Titmarsh translates this sorry little +libel with the utmost innocence of approval. It is <i>The +Paris Sketch-Book</i> over again. That Monsieur Hector +Berlioz may possibly have known something of his trade and been +withal as honest a man and artist as himself seems never to have +occurred to him. He knows nothing of Monsieur Hector except +that he is a ‘hairy romantic,’ and that whatever he +wrote it was not <i>Batti</i>, <i>batti</i>; but that nothing is +enough. ‘Whether this little picture is a likeness or +not,’ he is ingenuous enough to add, ‘who shall +say?’ But,—and here speaks the bold but +superior Briton—‘it is a good caricature of a race in +France, where geniuses <i>poussent</i> as they do nowhere else; +where poets are prophets, where romances have +revelations.’ As he goes on to qualify +<i>Jérôme Paturot</i> as a +‘masterpiece,’ and as ‘three volumes of satire +in which there is not a particle of bad blood,’ it seems +fair to conclude that in the Gentlemanly Interest all is +considered fair, and that to accuse a man of writing criticisms +on his own works is to be ‘witty and entertaining,’ +and likewise ‘careless, familiar, and sparkling’ to +the genteelest purpose possible in this genteelest of all +possible worlds.</p> +<h2><!-- page 20--><a name="page20"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +20</span>DISRAELI</h2> +<h3>His Novels.</h3> +<p>To the general his novels must always be a kind of caviare; +for they have no analogue in letters, but are the output of a +mind and temper of singular originality. To the honest +Tory, sworn to admire and unable to comprehend, they must seem +inexplicable as abnormal. To the professional Radical they +are so many proofs of innate inferiority: for they are full of +pretentiousness and affectation; they teem with examples of all +manner of vices, from false English to an immoral delight in +dukes; they prove their maker a trickster and a charlatan in +every page. To them, however, whose first care is for rare +work, the series of novels that began with <i>Vivian Grey</i> and +ended with <i>Endymion</i> is one of the pleasant facts in modern +letters. These books abound in wit and daring, in +originality and shrewdness, in knowledge of the world and in +knowledge of men; they contain many vivid and striking studies of +character, both portrait and caricature; they sparkle with +speaking phrases and happy epithets; they are aglow with the +passion of youth, the love of love, the worship of physical +beauty, the admiration of whatever is <!-- page 21--><a +name="page21"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 21</span>costly and +select and splendid—from a countess to a castle, from a +duke to a diamond; they are radiant with delight in whatever is +powerful or personal or attractive—from a cook to a +cardinal, from an agitator to an emperor. They often remind +you of Voltaire, often of Balzac, often of <i>The Arabian +Nights</i>. You pass from an heroic drinking bout to a +brilliant criticism of style; from rhapsodies on bands and +ortolans that remind you of Heine to a gambling scene that for +directness and intensity may vie with the bluntest and strongest +work of Prosper Mérimée; from the extravagant +impudence of <i>Popanilla</i> to the sentimental rodomontade of +<i>Henrietta Temple</i>; from ranting romanticism in <i>Alroy</i> +to vivid realism in <i>Sybil</i>. Their author gives you no +time to weary of him, for he is worldly and passionate, fantastic +and trenchant, cynical and ambitious, flippant and sentimental, +ornately rhetorical and triumphantly simple in a breath. He +is imperiously egoistic, but while constantly parading his own +personality he is careful never to tell you anything about +it. And withal he is imperturbably good-tempered: he brands +and gibbets with a smile, and with a smile he adores and +applauds. Intellectually he is in sympathy with character +of every sort; he writes as becomes an artist who has recognised +that ‘the conduct of men depends upon the temperament, not +upon a bunch of musty maxims,’ and that ‘there is a +<!-- page 22--><a name="page22"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +22</span>great deal of vice that is really sheer +inadvertence.’ It is said that the Monmouth of +<i>Coningsby</i> and the Steyne of <i>Vanity Fair</i> are painted +from one and the same original; and you have but to compare the +savage realism of Thackeray’s study to the scornful amenity +of the other’s—as you have but to contrast the +elaborate and extravagant cruelty of Thackeray’s Alcide de +Mirobolant with the polite and half-respectful irony of +Disraeli’s treatment of the cooks in +<i>Tancred</i>—to perceive that in certain ways the +advantage is not with ‘the greatest novelist of his +time,’ and that the Monmouth produces an impression which +is more moral because more kindly and humane than the impression +left by the Steyne, while in its way it is every whit as vivid +and as convincing. Yet another excellence, and a great one, +is his mastery of apt and forcible dialogue. The talk of +Mr. Henry James’s personages is charmingly equable and +appropriate, but it is also trivial and tame; the talk in Anthony +Trollope is surprisingly natural and abundant, but it is also +commonplace and immemorable; the talk of Mr. George Meredith is +always eloquent and fanciful, but the eloquence is too often dark +and the fancy too commonly inhuman. What Disraeli’s +people have to say is not always original nor profound, but it is +crisply and happily phrased and uttered, it reads well, its +impression seldom fails of permanency. His <i>Wit and +Wisdom</i> is a kind of <i>Talker’s Guide</i> or +<i>Handbook of Conversation</i>. How <!-- page 23--><a +name="page23"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 23</span>should it be +otherwise, seeing that it contains the characteristic utterances +of a great artist in life renowned for memorable speech?</p> +<h3>A Contrast.</h3> +<p>Now, if you ask a worshipper of him that was so long his +rival, to repeat a saying, a maxim, a sentence, of which his idol +is the author, it is odds but he will look like a fool, and visit +you with an evasive answer. What else should he do? +His deity is a man of many words and no sayings. He is the +prince of agitators, but it would be impossible for him to mint a +definition of ‘agitation’; he is the world’s +most eloquent arithmetician, but it is beyond him to +epigrammatise the fact that two and two make four. And it +seems certain, unless the study of Homer and religious fiction +inspire him to some purpose, that his contributions to axiomatic +literature will be still restricted to the remark that +‘There are three courses open’ to something or other: +to the House, to the angry cabman, to what and whomsoever you +will. In sober truth, he is one who writes for to-day, and +takes no thought of either yesterdays or morrows. For him +the Future is next session; the Past does not extend beyond his +last change of mind. He is a prince of journalists, <!-- +page 24--><a name="page24"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +24</span>and his excursions into monthly literature remain to +show how great and copious a master of the +‘leader’—ornate, imposing, absolutely +insignificant—his absorption in politics has cost the +English-speaking world.</p> +<h3>His Backgrounds.</h3> +<p>Disraeli’s imagination, at once practical and +extravagant, is not of the kind that delights in plot and +counterplot. His novels abound in action, but the episodes +wear a more or less random look: the impression produced is +pretty much that of a story of adventure. But if they fail +as stories they are unexceptionable as canvases. Our author +unrolls them with superb audacity; and rapidly and vigorously he +fills them in with places and people, with faces that are as life +and words expressive even as they. Nothing is too lofty or +too low for him. He hawks at every sort of game, and rarely +does he make a false cast. It is but a step from the wilds +of Lancashire to the Arabian Desert, from the cook’s first +floor to the Home of the Bellamonts; for he has the +Seven-League-Boots of the legend, and more than the genius of +adventure of him that wore them. His castles may be of +cardboard, his cataracts of tinfoil, the sun of his adjurations +the veriest figment; but he never lets his readers <!-- page +25--><a name="page25"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 25</span>see +that he knows it. His irony, sudden and reckless and +insidious though it be, yet never extends to his +properties. There may be a sneer beneath that mask which, +with an egotism baffling as imperturbable, he delights in +intruding among his creations; but you cannot see it. You +suspect its presence, because he is a born mocker. But you +remember that one of his most obvious idiosyncrasies is an +inordinate love of all that is sumptuous, glittering, radiant, +magnificent; and you incline to suspect that he keeps his +sneering for the world of men, and admires his scenes and +decorations too cordially to visit them with anything so +merciless.</p> +<h3>His Men and Women.</h3> +<p>But dashing and brilliant as are his sketches of places and +things, they are after all the merest accessories. It was +as a student of Men and Women that he loved to excel, and it is +as their painter that I praise him now. Himself a +worshipper of intellect, it was intellectually that he mastered +and developed them. Like Sidonia he moves among them not to +feel with them but to understand and learn from them. Such +sympathy as he had was either purely sensuous, as for youth and +beauty and all kinds of comeliness; or purely intellectual, as +for intelligence, artificiality, servility, <!-- page 26--><a +name="page26"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +26</span>meanness. And as his essence was satirical, as he +was naturally irreverent and contemptuous, it follows that he is +best and strongest in the act of punishment not of reward. +His passion for youth was beautiful, but it did not make him +strong. His scorn for things contemptible, his hate for +things hateful, are at times too bitter even for those who think +with him; but in these lay his force—they filled his brain +with light, and they touched his lips with fire. The +wretched Rigby is far more vigorous and life-like than the +amiable Coningsby; Tom Cogit—a sketch, but a sketch of +genius—is infinitely more interesting than May Dacre or +even the Young Duke; Tancred is a good fellow, and very real and +true in his goodness, but contrast him with Fakredeen! And +after his knaves, his fools, his tricksters, the most striking +figures in his gallery are those whom he has considered from a +purely intellectual point of view: either kindly, as Sidonia, or +coolly, as Lord Monmouth, but always calmly and with no point of +passion in his regard: the Eskdales, Villebecques, Ormsbys, +Bessos, Marneys, Meltons, and Mirabels, the Bohuns and St. +Aldegondes and Grandisons, the Tadpoles and the Tapers, the +dominant and subaltern humanity of the world. All these are +drawn with peculiar boldness of line, precision of touch, and +clearness of intention. And as with his men so is it with +his women: the finest are not those he likes best but those who +interested him <!-- page 27--><a name="page27"></a><span +class="pagenum">p. 27</span>most. Male and female, his +eccentrics surpass his commonplaces. He had a great regard +for girls, and his attitude towards them, or such of them as he +elected heroines, was mostly one of adoration—magnificent +yet a little awkward and strained. With women, married +women, he had vastly more in common: he could admire, study, +divine, without having to feign a warmer feeling; and while his +girls are poor albeit splendid young persons, his matrons are +usually delightful. Edith Millbank is not a very striking +figure in <i>Coningsby</i>; but her appearance in +<i>Tancred</i>—well, you have only to compare it to the +resurrection of Laura Bell, as Mrs. Pendennis to see how good it +is.</p> +<h3>His Style.</h3> +<p>Now and then the writing is bad, and the thought is +stale. Disraeli had many mannerisms, innate and +acquired. His English was frequently loose and +inexpressive; he was apt to trip in his grammar, to stumble over +‘and which,’ and to be careless about the connection +between his nominatives and his verbs. Again, he could +scarce ever refrain from the use of gorgeous commonplaces of +sentiment and diction. His taste was sometimes ornately and +barbarically conventional; he wrote as an orator, and his phrases +often read as if he had used them <!-- page 28--><a +name="page28"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 28</span>for the sake +of their associations rather than themselves. His works are +a casket of such stage jewels of expression as ‘Palladian +structure,’ ‘Tusculan repose,’ ‘Gothic +pile,’ ‘pellucid brow,’ ‘mossy +cell,’ and ‘dew-bespangled meads.’ He +delighted in ‘hyacinthine curls’ and ‘lustrous +locks,’ in ‘smiling parterres’ and +‘stately terraces.’ He seldom sat down in print +to anything less than a ‘banquet’, he was capable of +invoking ‘the iris pencil of Hope’; he could not +think nor speak of the beauties of woman except as +‘charms.’ Which seems to show that to be +‘born in a library,’ and have Voltaire—that +impeccable master of the phrase—for your chief of early +heroes and exemplars is not everything.</p> +<h3>His Oratory.</h3> +<p>It is admitted, I believe, that he had many of the qualities +of a great public speaker: that he had an admirable voice and an +excellent method; that his sequences were logical and natural, +his arguments vigorous and persuasive; that he was an artist in +style, and in the course of a single speech could be eloquent and +vivacious, ornate and familiar, passionate and cynical, +deliberately rhetorical and magnificently fantastic in turn; that +he was a master of all oratorical modes—of irony and +argument, of stately <!-- page 29--><a name="page29"></a><span +class="pagenum">p. 29</span>declamation and brilliant and +unexpected antithesis, of caricature and statement and rejoinder +alike; that he could explain, denounce, retort, retract, advance, +defy, dispute, with equal readiness and equal skill; that he was +unrivalled in attack and unsurpassed in defence; and that in +heated debate and on occasions when he felt himself justified in +putting forth all his powers and in striking in with the full +weight of his imperious and unique personality he was the most +dangerous antagonist of his time. And yet, in spite of his +mysterious and commanding influence over his followers—in +spite, too, of the fact that he died assuredly the most romantic +and perhaps the most popular figure of his time—it is +admitted withal that he was lacking in a certain quality of +temperament, that attribute great orators possess in common with +great actors: the power, that is, of imposing oneself upon an +audience not by argument nor by eloquence, not by the perfect +utterance of beautiful and commanding speech nor by the +enunciation of eternal principles or sympathetic and stirring +appeals, but by an effect of personal magnetism, by the +expression through voice and gesture and presence of an +individuality, a temperament, call it what you will, that may be +and is often utterly commonplace but is always inevitably +irresistible. He could slaughter an opponent, or butcher a +measure, or crumple up a theory with unrivalled <!-- page 30--><a +name="page30"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 30</span>adroitness +and despatch; but he could not dominate a crowd to the extent of +persuading it to feel with his heart, think with his brain, and +accept his utterances as the expression not only of their common +reason but of their collective sentiment as well. He was as +incapable of such a feat as Mr. Gladstone’s Midlothian +campaign as Mr. Gladstone is of producing the gaming scene in +<i>The Young Duke</i> or the ‘exhausted volcanoes’ +paragraph in the Manchester speech.</p> +<h3>His Speeches as Literature.</h3> +<p>As a rule—a rule to which there are some magnificent +exceptions—orators have only to cease from speaking to +become uninteresting. What has been heard with enthusiasm +is read with indifference or even with astonishment. You +miss the noble voice, the persuasive gesture, the irresistible +personality; and with the emotional faculty at rest and the +reason at work you are surprised—and it may be a little +indignant—that you should have been impressed so deeply as +you were by such cold, bald verbosity as seen in black and white +the masterpiece of yesterday appears to be. To some extent +this is the case with these speeches of Disraeli’s. +At the height of debate, amid the clash of personal and party +animosities, with <!-- page 31--><a name="page31"></a><span +class="pagenum">p. 31</span>the cheers of the orator’s +supporters to give them wings, they sounded greater than they +were. But for all that they are vigorous and profitable +yet. Their author’s unfailing capacity for saying +things worth heeding and remembering is proved in every one of +them. It is not easy to open either of Mr. Kebbel’s +volumes without lighting upon something—a string of +epigrams, a polished gibe, a burst of rhetoric, an effective +collocation of words—that proclaims the artist. In +this connection the perorations are especially instructive, even +if you consider them simply as arrangements of sonorous and +suggestive words: as oratorical impressions carefully prepared, +as effects of what may be called vocalised orchestration touched +off as skilfully and with as fine a sense of sound and of the +sentiment to correspond as so many passages of instrumentation +signed ‘Berlioz’ might be.</p> +<h3>The Great Earl.</h3> +<p>Fruits fail, and love dies, and time ranges; and only the +whippersnapper (that fool of Time) endureth for ever. +Molière knew him well, and he said that Molière was +a liar and a thief. And Disraeli knew him too, and he said +that in these respects Disraeli and Molière were +brothers. That he said so matters as <!-- page 32--><a +name="page32"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 32</span>little now as +ever it did; for though the whippersnapper is immortal in kind, +he is nothing if not futile and ephemeral in effect, and it was +seen long since that in life and death Disraeli, as became his +genius and his race, was the Uncommonplace incarnate, the +antithesis of Grocerdom, the Satan of that revolt against the +yielding habit of Jehovah-Bottles the spirit whereof is fast +coming to be our one defence against socialism and the dominion +of the Common Fool. He was no sentimentalist: as what great +artist in government has ever been? He loved power for +power’s sake, and recognising to the full the law of the +survival of the fittest he preferred his England to the +world. He knew that it is the function of the man of genius +to show that theory is only theory, and that in the House of +Morality there are many mansions. To that end he lived and +died; and it is not until one has comprehended the complete +significance of his life and death that one is qualified to speak +with understanding of such a life and death as his who passed at +Khartoum.</p> +<h2><!-- page 33--><a name="page33"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +33</span>ALEXANDRE DUMAS</h2> +<h3>His Components.</h3> +<p>The life of Dumas is not only a monument of endeavour and +success, it is a sort of labyrinth as well. It abounds in +pseudonyms and disguises, in sudden and unexpected appearances +and retreats as unexpected and sudden, in scandals and in +rumours, in mysteries and traps and ambuscades of every +kind. It pleased the great man to consider himself of more +importance than any and all of the crowd of collaborators whose +ideas he developed, whose raw material he wrought up into the +achievement we know; and he was given to take credit to himself +not only for the success and value of a particular work but for +the whole thing—the work in its quiddity, so to speak, and +resolved into its original elements. On the other hand, it +pleased such painful creatures as MM. Quérard and +‘Eugène de Mirecourt,’ as it has since pleased +Messrs. Hitchman and Fitzgerald to consider the second- and +third-rate literary persons whom Dumas assimilated in such +numbers as of greater interest and higher merit than Dumas. +To them the jackals were far nobler than the lion, and they +worked their hardest in the interest of the pack. It was +their <!-- page 34--><a name="page34"></a><span +class="pagenum">p. 34</span>mission to decompose and disintegrate +the magnificent entity which M. Blaze de Bury very happily +nicknames ‘Dumas-Légion,’ and in the process +not to render his own unto Cæsar but to take from him all +that was Cæsar’s, and divide it among the mannikins +he had absorbed. And their work was in its way well done; +for have we not seen M. Brunetière exulting in agreement +and talking of Dumas as one less than Eugène Sue and not +much bigger than Gaillardet? Of course the ultimate issue +of the debate is not doubtful. Dumas remains to the end a +prodigy of force and industry, a miracle of cleverness and +accomplishment and ease, a type of generous and abundant +humanity, a great artist in many varieties of form, a prince of +talkers and story-tellers, one of the kings of the stage, a +benefactor of his epoch and his kind; while of those who assisted +him in the production of his immense achievement the most exist +but as fractions of the larger sum, and the others have utterly +disappeared. ‘Combien,’ says his son in that +excellent page which serves to preface <i>le Fils +Naturel</i>—‘combien parmi ceux qui devaient rester +obscurs se sont éclairés et chauffés +à ta forge, et si l’heure des restitutions sonnait, +quel gain pour toi, rien qu’à reprendre ce que tu as +donné et ce qu’on t’a pris!’ That +is the true verdict of posterity, and he does well who abides by +it.</p> +<h3><!-- page 35--><a name="page35"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +35</span>Himself.</h3> +<p>He is one of the heroes of modern art. Envy and scandal +have done their worst now. The libeller has said his say; +the detectives who make a specialty of literary forgeries have +proved their cases one and all; the judges of matter have spoken, +and so have the critics of style; the distinguished author of +<i>Nana</i> has taken us into his confidence on the subject; we +have heard from the lamented Granier and others as much as was to +be heard on the question of plagiarism in general and the +plagiarisms of Dumas in particular; and Mr. Percy Fitzgerald has +done what he is pleased to designate the ‘nightman’s +work’ of analysing <i>Antony</i> and <i>Kean</i>, and of +collecting everything that spite has said about their +author’s life, their author’s habits, their +author’s manners and customs and character: of whose +vanity, mendacity, immorality, a score of improper qualities +besides, enough has been written to furnish a good-sized +library. And the result of it all is that Dumas is +recognised for a force in modern art and for one of the greatest +inventors and amusers the century has produced. Whole +crowds of men were named as the real authors of his books and +plays; but they were only readable when he signed for them. +His ideas were traced to a hundred originals; but they had all +seemed worthless till he took them in hand and developed them +according to their innate capacity. The French he wrote was +popular, and the <!-- page 36--><a name="page36"></a><span +class="pagenum">p. 36</span>style at his command was none of the +loftiest, as his critics have often been at pains to show; but he +was for all that an artist at once original and exemplary, with +an incomparable instinct of selection, a constructive faculty not +equalled among the men of this century, an understanding of what +is right and what is wrong in art and a mastery of his materials +which in their way are not to be paralleled in the work of Sir +Walter himself. Like Napoleon, he was ‘a natural +force let loose’; and if he had done no more than achieve +universal renown as the prince of <i>raconteurs</i> and a +commanding position as a novelist wherever novels are read he +would still have done much. But he did a vast deal +more. A natural force, he wrought in the right direction, +as natural forces must and do. He amused the world for +forty years and more; but he also contributed something to the +general sum of the world’s artistic experience and +capacity, and his contribution is of permanent worth and +charm. He has left us stories which are models of the +enchanting art of narrative; and, with a definition good and +comprehensive enough to include all the best work which has been +produced for the theatre from Æschylus down to Augier, from +the <i>Choephoræ</i> on to <i>le Gendre de M. Poirier</i>, +he has given us types of the romantic and the domestic drama, +which, new when he produced them, are even now not old, and which +as regards essentials have yet to be improved upon. The +form <!-- page 37--><a name="page37"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +37</span>and aim of the modern drama, as we know it, have been +often enough ascribed to the ingenious author of <i>une +Chaîne</i> and the <i>Verre d’Eau</i>; but they might +with much greater truth be ascribed to the author of +<i>Antony</i> and <i>la Tour de Nesle</i>. Scribe invents +and eludes where Dumas invents and dares. The theory of +Scribe is one of mere dexterity: his drama is a perpetual +<i>chassé-croisé</i> at the edge of a precipice, a +dance of puppets among swords that might but will not cut and +eggs that might but will not break; to him a situation is a kind +of tight-rope to be crossed with ever so much agility and an +endless affectation of peril by all his characters in turn: in +fact, as M. Dumas <i>fils</i> has said of him, he is ‘le +Shakespeare des ombres chinoises.’ The theory of +Dumas is the very antipodes of this. ‘All I +want,’ he said in a memorable comparison between himself +and Victor Hugo, ‘is four trestles, four boards, two +actors, and a passion’; and his good plays are a proof that +in this he spoke no more than the truth. Drama to him was +so much emotion in action. If he invented a situation he +accepted its issues in their entirety, and did his utmost to +express from it all the passion it contained. That he fails +to reach the highest peaks of emotional effect is no fault of +his: to do that something more is needed than a perfect method, +something other than a great ambition and an absolute certainty +of touch; and Dumas was neither a Shakespeare nor an <!-- page +38--><a name="page38"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +38</span>Æschylus—he was not even an Augier. +All the same, he has produced in <i>la Tour de Nesle</i> a +romantic play which M. Zola himself pronounces the ideal of the +<i>genre</i> and in <i>Antony</i> an achievement in drawing-room +tragedy which is out of all questioning the first, and in the +opinion of a critic so competent and so keen as the +master’s son is probably the strongest, thing of its kind +in modern literature. On this latter play it were +difficult, I think, to bestow too much attention. It is +touched, even tainted, with the manner and the affectation of its +epoch. But it is admirably imagined and contrived; it is +very daring, and it is very new; it deals with the men and women +of 1830, and—with due allowance for differences of manners, +ideal, and personal genius—it is in its essentials a play +in the same sense as <i>Othello</i> and the +<i>Trachiniæ</i> are plays in theirs. It is the +beginning, as I believe, not only of <i>les Lionnes Pauvres</i> +but of <i>Thérèse Raquin</i> and <i>la Glu</i> as +well: just as <i>la Tour de Nesle</i> is the beginning of +<i>Patrie</i> and <i>la Haine</i>.</p> +<h3>At Least.</h3> +<p>And if these greater and loftier pretensions be still +contested; if the theory of the gifted creature who wrote that +the works of the master wizard are ‘like summer fruits +brought forth abundantly in the full blaze of sunshine, which do +not keep’—if this preposterous <!-- page 39--><a +name="page39"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 39</span>fantasy be +generally accepted, there will yet be much in Dumas to venerate +and love. If <i>Antony</i> were of no more account than an +ephemeral burlesque; if <i>la Reine Margot</i> and the immortal +trilogy of the Musketeers—that ‘epic of +friendship’—were dead as morality and as literature +alike; if it were nothing to have re-cast the novel of adventure, +formulated the modern drama, and perfected the drama of incident; +if to have sent all France to the theatre to see in three +dimensions those stories of Chicot, Edmond Dantès, +d’Artagnan, which it knew by heart from books were an +achievement within the reach of every scribbler who dabbles in +letters; if all this were true, and Dumas were merely a piece of +human journalism, produced to-day and gone to-morrow, there would +still be enough of him to make his a memorable name. He was +a prodigy—of amiability, cleverness, energy, daring, charm, +industry—if he was nothing else. Gronow tells that he +has sat at table with Dumas and Brougham, and that Brougham, +out-faced and out-talked, was forced to quit the field. +‘J’ai conservé,’ says M. Maxime du Camp, +in his admirable <i>Souvenirs littéraires</i>, +‘d’Alexandre Dumas un souvenir ineffaçable; +malgré un certain laisser-aller qui tenait à +l’exubérance de sa nature, c’était un +homme <i>dont tous les sentiments étaient +élevés</i>. On a été injuste +pour lui; comme il avait énormément d’esprit, +on l’a accusé d’être léger; <!-- +page 40--><a name="page40"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +40</span>comme il produisait avec une facilité incroyable, +on l’a accusé de gâcher la besogne, et, comme +il était prodigue, on l’a accusé de manquer +de tenue. Ces reproches m’ont toujours paru +misérables.’ This is much; but it is not +nearly all. He had, this independent witness goes on to +note, ‘une générosité naturelle qui ne +comptait jamais; il ressemblait à une corne +d’abondance qui se vide sans cesse dans les mains tendues; +<i>la moitié</i>, <i>sinon plus</i>, <i>de l’argent +gagné par lui a été +donnée</i>.’ That is true; and it is also true +that he gave at least as largely of himself—his prodigious +temperament, his generous gaiety, his big, manly heart, his turn +for chivalry, his gallant and delightful genius—as of his +money. He was reputed a violent and luxurious debauchee; +and he mostly lived in an attic—(the worst room in the +house and therefore the only one he could call his +own)—with a camp-bed and the deal table at which he +wrote. He passed for a loud-mouthed idler; and during many +years his daily average of work was fourteen hours for months on +end. ‘Ivre de puissance,’ says George Sand of +him, but ‘foncièrement bon.’ They used +to hear him laughing as he wrote, and when he killed Porthos he +did no more that day. It would have been worth while to +figure as one of the crowd of friends and parasites who lived at +rack and manger in his house, for the mere pleasure of seeing him +descend upon them from his toil of moving mountains and sharing +in that pleasing half-hour <!-- page 41--><a +name="page41"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 41</span>of talk which +was his common refreshment. After that he would return to +the attic and the deal table, and move more mountains. With +intervals of travel, sport, adventure, and what in France is +called ‘l’amour’—(it is strange, by the +way, that he was never a hero of Carlyle’s)—he lived +in this way more or less for forty years or so; and when he left +Paris for the last time he had but two napoleons in his +pocket. ‘I had only one when I came here +first,’ quoth he, ‘and yet they call me a +spendthrift.’ That was his way; and while the result +is not for Dr. Smiles to chronicle, I for one persist in +regarding the spirit in which it was accepted as not less +exemplary than delightful.</p> +<h3>His Monument.</h3> +<p>On M. du Camp’s authority there is a charming touch to +add to his son’s description of him. ‘Il me +semble,’ said the royal old prodigal in his last illness, +‘que je suis au sommet d’un monument qui tremble +comme si les fondations étaient assises sur le +sable.’ ‘Sois en paix,’ replied the +author of the <i>Demi-Monde</i>: ‘le monument est bien +bati, et la base est solide.’ He was right, as we +know. It is good and fitting that Dumas should have a +monument in the Paris he amazed and delighted and amused so +long. But he could have done <!-- page 42--><a +name="page42"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 42</span>without +one. In what language is he not read? and where that he is +read is he not loved? ‘<i>Exegi +monumentum</i>,’ he might have said: ‘and wherever +romance is a necessary of life, there shall you look for it, and +not in vain.’</p> +<h2><!-- page 43--><a name="page43"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +43</span>GEORGE MEREDITH</h2> +<h3>His Qualities.</h3> +<p>To read Mr. Meredith’s novels with insight is to find +them full of the rarest qualities in fiction. If their +author has a great capacity for unsatisfactory writing he has +capacities not less great for writing that is satisfactory in the +highest degree. He has the tragic instinct and endowment, +and he has the comic as well; he is an ardent student of +character and life; he has wit of the swiftest, the most +comprehensive, the most luminous, and humour that can be +fantastic or ironical or human at his pleasure; he has passion +and he has imagination; he has considered sex—the great +subject, the leaven of imaginative art—with notable +audacity and insight. He is as capable of handling a vice +or an emotion as he is of managing an affectation. He can +be trivial, or grotesque, or satirical, or splendid; and whether +his <i>milieu</i> be romantic or actual, whether his personages +be heroic or sordid, he goes about his task with the same +assurance and intelligence. In his best work he takes rank +with the world’s novelists. He is a companion for +Balzac and Richardson, an intimate for Fielding and +Cervantes. His figures fall into their place <!-- page +44--><a name="page44"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +44</span>beside the greatest of their kind; and when you think of +Lucy Feverel and Mrs. Berry, of Evan Harrington’s Countess +Saldanha and the Lady Charlotte of <i>Emilia in England</i>, of +the two old men in <i>Harry Richmond</i> and the Sir Everard +Romfrey of <i>Beauchamp’s Career</i>, of Renée and +Cecilia, of Emilia and Rhoda Fleming, of Rose Jocelyn and Lady +Blandish and Ripton Thompson, they have in the mind’s eye a +value scarce inferior to that of Clarissa and Lovelace, of Bath +and Western and Booth, of Andrew Fairservice and Elspeth +Mucklebacket, of Philippe Bridau and Vautrin and Balthasar +Claës. In the world of man’s creation his people +are citizens to match the noblest; they are of the aristocracy of +the imagination, the peers in their own right of the society of +romance. And for all that, their state is mostly desolate +and lonely and forlorn.</p> +<h3>His Defects.</h3> +<p>For Mr. Meredith is one of the worst and least attractive of +great writers as well as one of the best and most +fascinating. He is a sun that has broken out into +innumerable spots. The better half of his genius is always +suffering eclipse from the worse half. He writes with the +pen of a great artist in his left hand and the razor of a +spiritual suicide <!-- page 45--><a name="page45"></a><span +class="pagenum">p. 45</span>in his right. He is the master +and the victim of a monstrous cleverness which is neither to hold +nor to bind, and will not permit him to do things as an honest, +simple person of genius would. As Shakespeare, in +Johnson’s phrase, lost the world for a quibble and was +content to lose it, so does Mr. Meredith discrown himself of the +sovereignty of contemporary romance to put on the cap and bells +of the professional wit. He is not content to be plain +Jupiter: his lightnings are less to him than his fireworks; and +his pages so teem with fine sayings and magniloquent epigrams and +gorgeous images and fantastic locutions that the mind would +welcome dulness as a bright relief. He is tediously +amusing; he is brilliant to the point of being obscure; his +helpfulness is so extravagant as to worry and confound. +That is the secret of his unpopularity. His stories are not +often good stories and are seldom well told; his ingenuity and +intelligence are always misleading him into treating mere +episodes as solemnly and elaborately as main incidents; he is +ever ready to discuss, to ramble, to theorise, to dogmatise, to +indulge in a little irony or a little reflection or a little +artistic misdemeanour of some sort. But other novelists +have done these things before him, and have been none the less +popular, and are actually none the less readable. None, +however, has pushed the foppery of style and intellect to such a +point as Mr. Meredith. Not infrequently he writes page +after page <!-- page 46--><a name="page46"></a><span +class="pagenum">p. 46</span>of English as ripe and sound and +unaffected as heart could wish; and you can but impute to +wantonness and recklessness the splendid impertinences that +intrude elsewhere. To read him at the rate of two or three +chapters a day is to have a sincere and hearty admiration for him +and a devout anxiety to forget his defects and make much of his +merits. But they are few who can take a novel on such terms +as these, and to read your Meredith straight off is to have an +indigestion of epigram, and to be incapable of distinguishing +good from bad: the author of the parting between Richard and Lucy +Feverel—a high-water mark of novelistic passion and +emotion—from the creator of Mr. Raikes and Dr. Shrapnel, +which are two of the most flagrant unrealities ever perpetrated +in the name of fiction by an artist of genius.</p> +<h3>Another Way.</h3> +<p>On the whole, I think, he does not often say anything not +worth hearing. He is too wise for that; and, besides, he is +strenuously in earnest about his work. He has a noble sense +of the dignity of art and the responsibilities of the artist; he +will set down nothing that is to his mind unworthy to be +recorded; his treatment of his material is distinguished by the +presence of an intellectual passion <!-- page 47--><a +name="page47"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 47</span>(as it were) +that makes whatever he does considerable and deserving of +attention and respect. But unhappily the will is not seldom +unequal to the deed: the achievement is often leagues in rear of +the inspiration; the attempt at completeness is too laboured and +too manifest—the feat is done but by a painful and +ungraceful process. There <i>is</i> genius, but there is +<i>not</i> felicity: that, one is inclined to say, is the +distinguishing note of Mr. Meredith’s work, in prose and +verse alike. There are magnificent exceptions, of course, +but they prove the rule and, broken though it be, there is no +gainsaying its existence. To be concentrated in form, to be +suggestive in material, to say nothing that is not of permanent +value, and only to say it in such terms as are charged to the +fullest with significance—this would seem to be the aim and +end of Mr. Meredith’s ambition. Of simplicity in his +own person he appears incapable. The texture of his +expression must be stiff with allusion, or he deems it ill spun; +there must be something of antic in his speech, or he cannot +believe he is addressing himself to the Immortals; he has praised +with perfect understanding the lucidity, the elegance, the ease, +of Molière, and yet his aim in art (it would appear) is to +be Molière’s antipodes, and to vanquish by +congestion, clottedness, an anxious and determined dandyism of +form and style. There is something <i>bourgeois</i> in his +intolerance of the commonplace, something fanatical <!-- page +48--><a name="page48"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 48</span>in +the intemperance of his regard for artifice. ‘Le +dandy,’ says Baudelaire, ‘doit aspirer à +être sublime sans interruption. Il doit vivre et +dormir devant un miroir.’ That, you are tempted to +believe, is Mr. Meredith’s theory of expression. +‘Ce qu’il y a dans le mauvais goût,’ is +elsewhere the opinion of the same unamiable artist in paradox, +‘c’est le plaisir aristocratique de +déplaire.’ Is that, you ask yourself, the +reason why Mr. Meredith is so contemptuous of the general +public?—why he will stoop to no sort of concession nor +permit himself a mite of patience with the herd whose intellect +is content with such poor fodder as Scott and Dickens and +Dumas? Be it as it may, the effect is the same. Our +author is bent upon being ‘uninterruptedly sublime’; +and we must take him as he wills and as we find him. He +loses of course; and we suffer. But none the less do we +cherish his society, and none the less are we interested in his +processes, and enchanted (when we are clever enough) by his +results. He lacks felicity, I have said; but he has charm +as well as power, and, once his rule is accepted, there is no way +to shake him off. The position is that of the antique +tyrant in a commonwealth once republican and free. You +resent the domination, but you enjoy it too, and with or against +your will you admire the author of your slavery.</p> +<h3><!-- page 49--><a name="page49"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +49</span>Rhoda Fleming.</h3> +<p><i>Rhoda Fleming</i> is one of the least known of the novels, +and in a sense it is one of the most disagreeable. To the +general it has always been caviare, and caviare it is likely to +remain; for the general is before all things respectable, and no +such savage and scathing attack upon the superstitions of +respectability as <i>Rhoda Fleming</i> has been written. +And besides, the emotions developed are too tragic, the +personages too elementary in kind and too powerful in degree, the +effects too poignant and too sorrowful. In these days +people read to be amused. They care for no passion that is +not decent in itself and whose expression is not +restrained. It irks them to grapple with problems capable +of none save a tragic solution. And when Mr. Meredith goes +digging in a very bad temper with things in general into the +deeper strata, the primitive deposits, of human nature, the +public is the reverse of profoundly interested in the outcome of +his exploration and the results of his labour. But for them +whose eye is for real literature and such literary essentials as +character largely seen and largely presented and as passion +deeply felt and poignantly expressed there is such a feast in +<i>Rhoda Fleming</i> as no other English novelist alive has +spread. The book, it is true, is full of failures. +There is, for instance, the old bank porter Anthony, who is such +a failure as only a great novelist may perpetrate and survive; +who suggests (with some <!-- page 50--><a name="page50"></a><span +class="pagenum">p. 50</span>other of Mr. Meredith’s +creations) a close, deliberate, and completely unsuccessful +imitation of Dickens: a writer with whom Mr. Meredith is not +averse from entering into competition, and who, so manifest on +these occasions is his superiority, may almost be described as +the other’s evil genius. Again, there is Algernon the +fool, of whom his author is so bitterly contemptuous that he is +never once permitted to live and move and have any sort of being +whatever and who, though he bears a principal part in the +intrigue, like the Blifil of <i>Tom Jones</i> is so constantly +illuminated by the lightnings of the ironical mode of +presentation as always to seem unreal in himself and seriously to +imperil the reality of the story. And, lastly, there are +the chivalrous Percy Waring and the inscrutable Mrs. Lovell, two +gentle ghosts whose proper place is the shadow-land of the +American novel. But when all these are removed (and for the +judicious reader their removal is far from difficult) a treasure +of reality remains. What an intensity of life it is that +hurries and throbs and burns through the veins of the two +sisters—Dahlia the victim, Rhoda the executioner! +Where else in English fiction is such a ‘human oak +log’ as their father, the Kentish yeoman William +Fleming? And where in English fiction is such a problem +presented as that in the evolution of which these +three—with a following so well selected and achieved as +Robert Armstrong and Jonathan <!-- page 51--><a +name="page51"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 51</span>Eccles and +the evil ruffian Sedgett, a type of the bumpkin gone wrong, and +Master Gammon, that type of the bumpkin old and obstinate, a sort +of human saurian—are dashed together, and ground against +each other till the weakest and best of the three is broken to +pieces? Mr. Meredith may and does fail conspicuously to +interest you in Anthony Hackbut and Algernon Blancove and Percy +Waring; but he knows every fibre of the rest, and he makes your +knowledge as intimate and comprehensive as his own. With +these he is never at fault and never out of touch. They +have the unity of effect, the vigorous simplicity, of life that +belong to great creative art; and at their highest stress of +emotion, the culmination of their passion, they appeal to and +affect you with a force and a directness that suggest the highest +achievement of Webster. Of course this sounds +excessive. The expression of human feeling in the coil of a +tragic situation is not a characteristic of modern fiction. +It is thought to be not consistent with the theory and practice +of realism; and the average novelist is afraid of it, the average +reader is only affected by it when he goes to look for it in +poetry. But the book is there to show that such praise is +deserved; and they who doubt it have only to read the chapters +called respectively ‘When the Night is Darkest’ and +‘Dahlia’s Frenzy’ to be convinced and doubt no +longer. It has been objected to the climax of <i>Rhoda +Fleming</i> that it is unnecessarily <!-- page 52--><a +name="page52"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 52</span>inhumane, and +that Dahlia dead were better art than Dahlia living and incapable +of love and joy. But the book, as I have said, is a +merciless impeachment of respectability; and as the spectacle of +a ruined and broken life is infinitely more discomforting than +that of a noble death, I take it that Mr. Meredith was right to +prefer his present ending to the alternative, inasmuch as the +painfulness of that impression he wished to produce and the +potency of that moral he chose to draw are immensely heightened +and strengthened thereby.</p> +<h3>The Tragic Comedians.</h3> +<p>Opinions differ, and there are those, I believe, to whom Alvan +and Clotilde von Rüdiger—‘acrobats of the +affections’ they have been called—are pleasant +companions, and the story of those feats in the gymnastics of +sentimentalism in which they lived to shine is the prettiest +reading imaginable. But others not so fortunate or, to be +plain, more honestly obtuse persist in finding that story +tedious, and the bewildering appearances it deals with not human +beings—not of the stock of Rose Jocelyn and Sir Everard +Romfrey, of Dahlia Fleming and Lucy Feverel and Richmond +Roy—but creatures of gossamer and rainbow, phantasms of +spiritual romance, abstractions of remote, dispiriting points in +sexual philosophy.</p> +<h3>The Egoist.</h3> +<p><!-- page 53--><a name="page53"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +53</span>Just as Molière in the figures of Alceste and +Tartuffe has summarised and embodied all that we need to know of +indignant honesty and the false fervour of sanctimonious +animalism, so in the person of Sir Willoughby Patterne has Mr. +Meredith succeeded in expressing the qualities of egoism as the +egoist appears in his relations with women and in his conception +and exercise of the passion of love. Between the means of +the two men there is not, nor can be, any sort of +comparison. Molière is brief, exquisite, lucid: +classic in his union of ease and strength, of purity and +sufficiency, of austerity and charm. In <i>The Egoist</i> +Mr. Meredith is even more artificial and affected than his wont: +he bristles with allusions, he teems with hints and side-hits and +false alarms, he glitters with phrases, he riots in intellectual +points and philosophical fancies; and though his style does +nowhere else become him so well, his cleverness is yet so +reckless and indomitable as to be almost as fatiguing here as +everywhere. But in their matter the great Frenchman and he +have not much to envy each other. Sir Willoughby Patterne +is a ‘document on humanity’ of the highest value; and +to him that would know of egoism and the egoist the study of Sir +Willoughby is indispensable. There is something in him of +us all. He is a compendium of the Personal in man; and if +in him the abstract Egoist have not taken on his final shape and +become classic and typical it is <!-- page 54--><a +name="page54"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 54</span>not that Mr. +Meredith has forgotten anything in his composition but rather +that there are certain defects of form, certain structural faults +and weaknesses, which prevent you from accepting as conclusive +the aspect of the mass of him. But the Molière of +the future (if the future be that fortunate) has but to pick and +choose with discretion here to find the stuff of a companion +figure to Arnolphe and Alceste and Célimène.</p> +<h3>In Metre.</h3> +<p>His verse has all the faults and only some of the merits of +his prose. Thus he will rhyme you off a ballad, and to +break the secret of that ballad you have to take to yourself a +dark lantern and a case of jemmies. I like him best in +<i>The Nuptials of Attila</i>. If he always wrote as here, +and were always as here sustained in inspiration, rapid of march, +nervous of phrase, apt of metaphor, and moving in effect, he +would be delightful to the general, and that without sacrificing +on the vile and filthy altar of popularity. Here he is +successfully himself, and what more is there to say? You +clap for Harlequin, and you kneel to Apollo. Mr. Meredith +doubles the parts, and is irresistible in both. Such fire, +such vision, such energy on <!-- page 55--><a +name="page55"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 55</span>the one hand +and on the other such agility and athletic grace are not often +found in combination.</p> +<h3>The Fashion of Art.</h3> +<p>This is the merit and distinction of art: to be more real than +reality, to be not nature but nature’s essence. It is +the artist’s function not to copy but to synthesise: to +eliminate from that gross confusion of actuality which is his raw +material whatever is accidental, idle, irrelevant, and select for +perpetuation that only which is appropriate and immortal. +Always artistic, Mr. Meredith’s work is often great +art.</p> +<h2><!-- page 56--><a name="page56"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +56</span>BYRON</h2> +<h3>Byron and the World.</h3> +<p>Two obvious reasons why Byron has long been a prophet more +honoured abroad than at home are his life and his work. He +is the most romantic figure in the literature of the century, and +his romance is of that splendid and daring cast which the people +of Britain—‘an aristocracy materialised and null, a +middle class purblind and hideous, a lower class crude and +brutal’—prefers to regard with suspicion and +disfavour. He is the type of them that prove in defiance of +precept that the safest path is not always midway, and that the +golden rule is sometimes unspeakably worthless: who set what +seems a horrible example, create an apparently shameful +precedent, and yet contrive to approve themselves an honour to +their country and the race. To be a good Briton a man must +trade profitably, marry respectably, live cleanly, avoid excess, +revere the established order, and wear his heart in his breeches +pocket or anywhere but on his sleeve. Byron did none of +these things, though he was a public character, and ought for the +example’s sake to have done them all, and done them +ostentatiously. He lived hard, and drank hard, and played +hard. <!-- page 57--><a name="page57"></a><span +class="pagenum">p. 57</span>He was flippant in speech and +eccentric in attire. He thought little of the sanctity of +the conjugal tie, and said so; and he married but to divide from +his wife—who was an incarnation of the national virtue of +respectability—under circumstances too mysterious not to be +discreditable. He was hooted into exile, and so far from +reforming he did even worse than he had done before. After +bewildering Venice with his wickedness and consorting with +atheists like Shelley and conspirators like young Gamba, he went +away on a sort of wild-goose chase to Greece, and died there with +every circumstance of publicity. Also his work was every +whit as abominable in the eyes of his countrymen as his +life. It is said that the theory and practice of British +art are subject to the influence of the British school-girl, and +that he is unworthy the name of artist whose achievement is of a +kind to call a blush to the cheek of youth. Byron was +contemptuous of youth, and did not hesitate to write—in +<i>Beppo</i> and in <i>Cain</i>, in <i>Manfred</i> and <i>Don +Juan</i> and the <i>Vision</i>—exactly as he pleased. +In three words, he made himself offensively conspicuous, and from +being infinitely popular became utterly contemptible. Too +long had people listened to the scream of this eagle in wonder +and in perturbation, and the moment he disappeared they grew +ashamed of their emotion and angry with its cause, and began to +hearken to other and more melodious voices—to Shelley and +Keats, to <!-- page 58--><a name="page58"></a><span +class="pagenum">p. 58</span>Wordsworth and Coleridge and the +‘faultless and fervent melodies of Tennyson.’ +In course of time Byron was forgotten, or only remembered with +disdain; and when Thackeray, the representative Briton, the +artist Philistine, the foe of all that is excessive or abnormal +or rebellious, took it upon himself to flout the author of <i>Don +Juan</i> openly and to lift up his heavy hand against the fops +and fanatics who had affected the master’s humours, he did +so amid general applause. Meanwhile, however, the genius +and the personality of Byron had come to be vital influences all +the world over, and his voice had been recognised as the most +human and the least insular raised on English ground since +Shakespeare’s. In Russia he had created Pushkin and +Lermontoff; in Germany he had awakened Heine, inspired Schumann, +and been saluted as an equal by the poet of <i>Faust</i> himself; +in Spain he had had a share in moulding the noisy and unequal +talent of Espronceda; in Italy he had helped to develop and to +shape the melancholy and daring genius of Leopardi; and in France +he had been one of the presiding forces of a great æsthetic +revolution. To the men of 1830 he was a special and +peculiar hero. Hugo turned in his wake to Spain and Italy +and the East for inspiration. Musset, as Mr. Swinburne has +said—too bitterly and strongly said—became in a +fashion a Kaled to his Lara, ‘his female page or attendant +dwarf.’ He was in some sort the <!-- page 59--><a +name="page59"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 59</span>grandsire of +the Buridan and the Antony of Dumas. Berlioz went to him +for the material for his <i>Harold en Italie</i>, his +<i>Corsaire</i> overture, and his <i>Episode</i>. Delacroix +painted the <i>Barque de Don Juan</i> from him, with the +<i>Massacre de Scio</i>, the <i>Marino Faliero</i>, the <i>Combat +du Giaour et du Pacha</i>, and many a notable picture more. +Is it at all surprising that M. Taine should have found heart to +say that alone among modern poets Byron ‘atteint à +la cime’? or that Mazzini should have reproached us with +our unaccountable neglect of him and with our scandalous +forgetfulness of the immense work done by him in giving a +‘European <i>rôle</i> . . . to English +literature’ and in awakening all over the Continent so much +‘appreciation and sympathy for England’?</p> +<h3>Byron and Wordsworth.</h3> +<p>He had his share in the work of making Matthew Arnold +possible, but he is the antipodes of those men of culture and +contemplation—those artists pensive and curious and +sedately self-contained—whom Arnold best loved and of whom +the nearest to hand is Wordsworth. Byron and Wordsworth are +like the Lucifer and the Michael of the <i>Vision of +Judgment</i>. Byron’s was the genius of revolt, as +<!-- page 60--><a name="page60"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +60</span>Wordsworth’s was the genius of dignified and +useful submission; Byron preached the dogma of private +revolution, Wordsworth the dogma of private apotheosis; +Byron’s theory of life was one of liberty and +self-sacrifice, Wordsworth’s one of self-restraint and +self-improvement; Byron’s practice was dictated by a +vigorous and voluptuous egoism, Wordsworth’s by a benign +and lofty selfishness; Byron was the ‘passionate and +dauntless soldier of a forlorn hope,’ Wordsworth a kind of +inspired clergyman. Both were influences for good, and both +are likely to be influences for good for some time to come. +Which is the better and stronger is a question that can hardly be +determined now. It is certain that Byron’s star has +waned, and that Wordsworth’s has waxed; but it is also +certain that there are moments in life when the <i>Ode to +Venice</i> is almost as refreshing and as precious as the ode on +the <i>Intimations</i>, and when the epic mockery of <i>Don +Juan</i> is to the full as beneficial as the chaste philosophy of +<i>The Excursion</i> and the <i>Ode to Duty</i>. Arnold was +of course with Michael heart and soul, and was only interested in +our Lucifer. He approached his subject in a spirit of undue +deprecation. He thought it necessary to cite +Scherer’s opinion that Byron is but a coxcomb and a +rhetorician: partly, it would appear, for the pleasure of seeming +to agree with it in a kind of way and partly to have the +satisfaction of distinguishing and of showing it to be a +mistake. Then, <!-- page 61--><a name="page61"></a><span +class="pagenum">p. 61</span>he could not quote Goethe without +apologising for the warmth of that consummate artist’s +expressions and explaining some of them away. Again, he was +pitiful or disdainful, or both, of Scott’s estimate; and he +did not care to discuss the sentiment which made that great and +good man think <i>Cain</i> and the <i>Giaour</i> fit stuff for +family reading on a Sunday after prayers, though as Mr. Ruskin +has pointed out, in one of the wisest and subtlest bits of +criticism I know, the sentiment is both natural and beautiful, +and should assist us not a little in the task of judging Byron +and of knowing him for what he was. That Arnold should +institute a comparison between Leopardi and Byron was probably +inevitable: Leopardi had culture and the philosophic mind, which +Byron had not; he is incapable of influencing the general heart, +as Byron can; he is a critics’ poet, which Byron can never +be; he was always an artist, which Byron was not; and—it +were Arnoldian to take the comparison seriously. Byron was +not interested in words and phrases but in the greater truths of +destiny and emotion. His empire is over the imagination and +the passions. His personality was many-sided enough to make +his egoism representative. And as mankind is wont to feel +first and to think afterwards, a single one of his heart-cries +may prove to the world of greater value as a moral agency than +all the intellectual reflections that Leopardi contrived <!-- +page 62--><a name="page62"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +62</span>to utter. After examining this and that opinion +and doubting over and deprecating them all, Arnold touched firm +ground at last in a dictum of Mr. Swinburne’s, the most +pertinent and profound since those of Goethe, to the effect that +in Byron there is a ‘splendid and imperishable excellence +which covers all his offences and outweighs all his defects: the +excellence of sincerity and strength.’ With this +‘noble praise’ our critic agreed so vigorously that +it became the key-note of the latter part of his summing up, and +in the end you found him declaring Byron the equal of Wordsworth, +and asserting of this ‘glorious pair’ that +‘when the year 1900 is turned, and the nation comes to +recount her poetic glories in the century which has just then +ended, the first names with her will be these.’ The +prophecy is as little like to commend itself to the pious votary +of Keats as to the ardent Shelleyite: there are familiars of the +Tennysonian Muse, the Sibyl of <i>Rizpah</i> and <i>Vastness</i> +and <i>Lucretius</i> and <i>The Voyage</i>, to whom it must seem +impertinent beyond the prophet’s wont; there are—(but +<i>they</i> scarce count)—who grub (as for truffles) for +meanings in Browning. But it was not uttered to please, and +in truth it has enough of plausibility to infuriate whatever +poet-sects there be. Especially the Wordsworthians.</p> +<h2><!-- page 63--><a name="page63"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +63</span>HUGO</h2> +<h3>His Critics.</h3> +<p>To many Hugo was of the race of Æschylus and +Shakespeare, a world-poet in the sense that Dante was, an artist +supreme alike in genius and in accomplishment. To others he +was but a great master of words and cadences, with a gift of +lyric utterance and inspiration rarely surpassed but with a +personality so vigorous and excessive as to reduce its literary +expression—in epic, drama, fiction, satire and ode and +song—to the level of work essentially subjective, in +sentiment as in form, in intention as in effect. The debate +is one in which the only possible arbiter is Time; and to Time +the final judgment may be committed. What is certain is +that there is one point on which both dissidents and +devout—the heretics who deny with Matthew Arnold and the +orthodox who worship with Mr. Swinburne and M. de +Banville—are absolutely agreed. Plainly Hugo was the +greatest man of letters of his day. It has been given to +few or none to live a life so full of effort and achievement, so +rich in honour and success and fame. Born almost with the +century, he was a writer at fifteen, and at his death he was +writing still; so that the record of <!-- page 64--><a +name="page64"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 64</span>his career +embraces a period of more than sixty years. There is hardly +a department of art to a foremost place in which he did not prove +his right. From first to last; from the time of +Chateaubriand to the time of Zola, he was a leader of men; and +with his departure from the scene the undivided sovereignty of +literature became a thing of the past like Alexander’s +empire.</p> +<h3>Some Causes and Effects.</h3> +<p>In 1826, in a second set of <i>Odes et Ballades</i>, he +announced his vocation in unmistakeable terms. He was a +lyric poet and the captain of a new emprise. His genius was +too large and energetic to move at ease in the narrow garment +prescribed as the poet’s wear by the dullards and the +pedants who had followed Boileau. He began to repeat the +rhythms of Ronsard and the Pleiad; to deal in the richest rhymes +and in words and verses tricked with new-spangled ore; to be +curious in cadences, careless of stereotyped rules, prodigal of +invention and experiment, defiant of much long recognised as good +sense, contemptuous of much till then applauded as good +taste. In a word, he was the Hugo of the hundred volumes we +know: an artist, that is, endowed with a technical imagination of +the highest quality, the very genius of style, <!-- page 65--><a +name="page65"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 65</span>and a sense +of the plastic quality of words unequalled, perhaps, since +Milton. The time was ripe for him: within France and +without it was big with revolution. In verse there were the +examples of André Chenier and Lamartine; in prose the work +of Rousseau and Diderot, of Bernardin de Saint-Pierre and +Chateaubriand; in war and politics the tremendous tradition of +Napoleon. Goethe and Schiller had recreated romance and +established the foundations of a new palace of art; their theory +and practice had been popularised in the novels of Walter Scott; +and in the life and work of Byron the race had such an example of +revolt, such an incitement to liberty and change, such a +passionate and persuasive argument against authority and +convention, as had never before been felt in art. Hugo like +all great artists was essentially a child of his age: +‘Rebellion lay in his way, and he found it.’ In +1827 he published his <i>Cromwell</i>, and came forth as a rebel +confessed and unashamed. It is an unapproachable +production, tedious in the closet, impossible upon the stage; and +to compare it to such work as that which at some and twenty Keats +had given to the world—<i>Hyperion</i>, for instance, or +the <i>Eve of St. Agnes</i>—is to glory in the name of +Briton. But it had its value then, and as an historical +document it has its value now. The preface was at once a +profession of faith and a proclamation of war. It is crude, +it is limited, it is mistaken, in places it is <!-- page 66--><a +name="page66"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 66</span>even +absurd. But from the moment of its appearance the old order +was practically closed. It prepared the way for +<i>Albertus</i> and for <i>Antony</i>, for <i>Rolla</i> and the +<i>Tour de Nesle</i>; and it was also the ‘<i>fiat +lux</i>’ in deference to which the world has accepted with +more or less of resignation the partial eclipse of art and morals +effected in <i>Salammbô</i> and <i>l’Education +sentimentale</i> and the Egyptian darkness achieved in work like +<i>la Terre</i> and <i>une Vie</i> and <i>les +Blasphèmes</i>. In its ringing periods, its plangent +antitheses and æsthetic epigrams, it preluded and +vindicated the excesses of whatsoever manifestations of +romanticism mankind and the arts have since been called upon to +consider and endure: from the humours of Petrus Borel to the +experiments of Claude Monet and the ‘discoveries’ of +Richard Wagner.</p> +<h3>Environment.</h3> +<p>It is too often forgotten that from the first Hugo was +associated with men of pretensions and capacities not greatly +inferior to his own, and that in no direction was victory the +work of his single arm. In painting the initiative had been +taken years before the publication of the <i>Cromwell</i> +manifesto by Géricault with the famous <i>Radeau de la +Méduse</i>, and by Delacroix with the <i>Dante et +Virgile</i> (1822) and the <i>Massacre de Scio</i> (1823). +In music Berlioz, <!-- page 67--><a name="page67"></a><span +class="pagenum">p. 67</span>at this time a student in the +Conservatoire, was fighting hard against Cherubini and the +bewigged ones for liberty of expression and leave to admire and +imitate the audacities of Weber and Beethoven, and three years +hence, in the year of <i>Hernani</i>, was to set his mark upon +the art with the <i>Symphonie fantastique</i>. On the stage +as early as 1824 Frédérick and Firmin had realised +in the personages of Macaire and Bertrand the grotesque ideal, +the combination of humour and terror, of which the character of +Cromwell was put forward as the earliest expression, and had +realised it so completely that their work has taken rank with the +greater and the more lasting results of the movement. In +the literature of drama the old order was ruined and the victory +won on all essential points not in 1830 with <i>Hernani</i> but +in 1829 with <i>Henri Trois et sa Cour</i>, the first of the +innumerable successes of Alexandre Dumas, who determined at a +single stroke the fundamental qualities of structure and form and +material, and left his chief no question to solve save that of +diction and style. Musset’s earlier poems date from +1828, the year of <i>les Orientales</i>, Gautier’s from +1830; and these are also the dates of Balzac’s +<i>Chouans</i> and <i>la Peau de Chagrin</i>. Moreover, +among the intimates of the young leader were men like +Sainte-Beuve, who was two years his junior, and the brothers +Deschamps: whose influence was doubtless exerted more frequently +to encourage than to repress. Towards the <!-- page 68--><a +name="page68"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 68</span>end we lost +sight of all this, and saw in Victor Hugo not so much the most +glorious survival of romanticism as romanticism itself, the +movement in flesh and blood, the revolution in general +‘summed up and closed’ in a single figure. This +agreeable view of things was Hugo’s own. From the +beginning he took himself with perfect seriousness, and his +followers, however enthusiastic in admiration, had excellent +warrant from above. ‘Il <i>trône</i> +trop,’ says Berlioz of him somewhere; and M. Maxime du Camp +has given an edifying account of the means he was wont to use to +make himself beloved and honoured by the youth who came to him +for counsel and encouragement. How perfectly he succeeded +in this the political part of his function is matter of +history. Gautier’s first visit to him was that of a +devotee to his divinity; and years afterwards the good poet +confessed that not even in pitch darkness and in a cellar fathoms +under ground should he dare to whisper to himself that a verse of +the Master’s was bad. So far as devotion went there +were innumerable Gautiers. Sainte-Beuve was not long a +pillar of orthodoxy; Dumas was always conscious of his own +pre-eminence in certain qualities, and made light of Hugo’s +dramas as candidly as he made much of the style in which they are +written; and when some creature of unwisdom saluted Delacroix as +‘the Hugo of painting,’ the artist of the <i>Marino +Faliero</i> and the <i>Barque de Don Juan</i> resented the +compliment with <!-- page 69--><a name="page69"></a><span +class="pagenum">p. 69</span>bitterness. But these were +exceptions. The youth of 1830 were Hugolaters almost to a +man.</p> +<h3>Equipment and Achievement.</h3> +<p>Their enthusiasm was not all irrational. Hugo’s +supremacy was not that he was the greatest artist in essentials, +for here Dumas was immeasurably his superior. It was not +that he knew best the heart of man, or had apprehended most +thoroughly the conditions of life; for Balzac so far surpassed +him in these sciences that comparison was impossible. It +was not that he sang the truest song or uttered the deepest word, +for Musset is the poet of <i>Rolla</i> and the <i>Nuits</i> in +verse and the poet of <i>Fantasio</i> and <i>Lorenzaccio</i> and +<i>Carmosine</i> in prose. But the epoch Hugo represented +was interested in the manner rather than the substance of things: +the revolution at whose front he had been set and whose most +shining figure he became was largely a revolution of +externals. With an immense amount of enthusiasm there was, +as Sainte-Beuve confessed, an incredible amount of +ignorance—so that <i>Cromwell</i> was supposed to be +historical; and with a passionate delight in form there +co-existed a strangely imperfect understanding of +material—so that <i>Hernani</i> <!-- page 70--><a +name="page70"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 70</span>was supposed +to be Shakespearean. To this ignorance and to this +imperfect understanding Hugo owed a certain part of his +authority; the other and greater he got from his unrivalled +mastery of style, from his extraordinary skill as an artist in +words. To the opposing faction his innovations were +horrible: his verse was poison, his example an outrage, his +prosody a violation of all laws, his rhymes and tropes and +metaphors so many offences against Heaven and the Muse. But +to the ardent youngsters who fought beneath his banner it was his +to give a something priceless and unique—a something +glorious to France and never before exampled in her +literature. For the distichs of +Boileau—‘strong, heavy, useful, like pairs of +tongs,’—he found them alexandrines with the leap and +sparkle of sea waves and the sound of clashing swords and the +colours of sunset and the dawn. They were tired of +whitewash and cold distemper; and he gave them hangings of +brocade and tapestries of price and tissues stiff with gold and +glowing with new dyes. He flung them handfuls of jewels +where his rivals scattered handfuls of marbles. And they +paid him for his gifts with an intemperance of worship, a fury of +belief, a rapture of admiration, such as no other man has +known. The substance was striking, was peculiar, was novel +and full of charm; but the manner was all this and something +besides—was magnificent, was intoxicating, was +irresistible; and Victor Hugo by <!-- page 71--><a +name="page71"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 71</span>virtue of it +became the foremost man of literary France. The great +battle of <i>Hernani</i> was merely a battle of style. From +Dumas the artist of <i>Henri Trois</i> and <i>Antony</i>, the +language of Boileau was safe enough; and his triumph, +all-important and significant as it was, seemed neither fatal nor +abominable. It was another matter with +<i>Hernani</i>. Its success meant ruin for the Academy and +destruction for the idiom of Delille and M. de Jouy; and the +classicists mustered in force, and did their utmost to stay the +coming wrath and arrest the impending doom. They failed of +course; for they fought with a vague yet limited apprehension of +the question at issue, they had nothing to give in place of the +thing they hated. And Victor Hugo was made captain of the +victorious host, while the men who might have been in a certain +sort his rivals took service as lieutenants, and accepted his +ensign for their own.</p> +<h3>His Diary.</h3> +<p>All his life long he was addicted to attitude; all his life +long he was a <i>poseur</i> of the purest water. He seems +to have considered the affectation of superiority an essential +quality in art; for just as the cock in Mrs. Poyser’s +apothegm believed that the sun got up to hear him crow, so to the +poet of the <!-- page 72--><a name="page72"></a><span +class="pagenum">p. 72</span><i>Légende</i> and the +<i>Contemplations</i> it must have seemed as if the human race +existed but to consider the use he made of his ‘oracular +tongue.’ How tremendous his utterances sometimes +were—informed with what majesty yet with what +brilliance—is one of the things that every schoolboy +knows. One no more needs to insist upon the merits of his +best manner than to emphasise the faults of his worst. At +his best as at his worst, however, he was always an artist in his +way. His speech was nothing if not artificial—in the +good sense of the word sometimes and sometimes in the bad. +Simplicity (it seemed) was impossible to him. In the quest +of expression, the cult of antithesis, the pursuit of effect, he +sacrificed directness and plainness with not less consistency +than complacency. In that tissue of ‘apocalyptic +epigram’ which to him was style there was no room for truth +and soberness. His Patmos was a place of mirrors, and +before them he draped himself in his phrases like Frederick in +the mantle of Ruy Blas. That this grandiosity was unnatural +and unreal was proved by the publication of <i>Choses +Vues</i>. When Hugo wrote for himself he wrote almost as +simply and straightforwardly as Dumas. The effect is +disconcerting. You rub your eyes in amazement. It is +evidently Hugo. But Hugo plain, sober, direct? Hugo +without rhetoric? Hugo declining antithesis and content to +be no gaudier than his neighbours? Hugo expressing <!-- +page 73--><a name="page73"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +73</span>himself in the fearless old fashion of pre-romantic +ages? A page of commonplace from Mr. Meredith, a book for +boarding-schools by M. Zola, were not more startling.</p> +<h3>For and Against.</h3> +<p>Some primary qualities of his genius are pretty evenly +balanced by some primary faults. Thus, for breadth and +brilliance of conception, for energy and sweep of imagination, +for the power of dealing as a master with the greater forces of +nature, he is unsurpassed among modern men. But the +conception is too often found to be empty as well as spacious; +the imagination is too often tainted with insincerity; in his +dramas of the elements there are too many such falsehoods as +abound in his dramas of the emotions. Again, he is +sometimes grand and often grandiose; but he has a trick of +affecting the grandiose and the grand which is constant and +intolerable. He had the genius of style in such fulness as +entitles him to rank with the great artists in words of all +time. His sense of verbal colour and verbal music is beyond +criticism; his rhythmical capacity is something prodigious. +He so revived and renewed the language of France that in his +hands it became an instrument not unworthy to <!-- page 74--><a +name="page74"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 74</span>compete with +Shakespeare’s English and the German of Goethe and Heine; +and in the structure and capacity of all manner of French +metrical forms he effected such a change that he may fairly be +said to have received the orchestra of Rameau from his +predecessors and to have bequeathed his heirs the orchestra of +Berlioz. On the other hand; in much of his later work his +mannerisms in prose and in verse are discomfortably glaring; the +outcome of his unsurpassable literary faculty is often no more +than a parade or triumph of the vocables; there were times when +his brain appears to have become a mere machine for the +production of antitheses and sterile conceits. What is +perhaps more damning than all, his work is saturate in his own +remarkable personality, and is objective only here and +there. His dramas are but five-act lyrics, his epics the +romance of an egoist, his history is confession, his criticism +the opinions of Victor Hugo. Even his lyrics, the +‘fine flower’ of his genius, the loveliest expression +of the language, have not escaped reproach as a ‘Psalter of +Subjectivity.’ Even his essays in prose +romance—a form of art on which he has stamped his image and +superscription in a manner all his own, the work by which he is +best known to humanity at large—are vitiated by the same +defect. For one that believes in Bishop Myriel as Bishop +Myriel there are a hundred who see in him only a pose of Victor +Hugo; it is the same with Ursel and Javert, with <!-- page +75--><a name="page75"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +75</span>Cimourdain and Lantenac and Josiane; the very +<i>pieuvre</i> of <i>les Travailleurs</i> is a Hugolater at +heart. It is a proof of his commanding personality, that in +spite of these objections he held in enchantment the hearts and +minds of men for over sixty years. He is almost a +literature in himself; and if it be true that his work is as +wholly lacking in the radiant sanity of Shakespeare’s as it +is in the exquisite good sense of Voltaire’s, it is also +true that he left the world far richer than he found it.</p> +<h3>What Lives of Him.</h3> +<p>To select an anthology from his work were surely the +pleasantest of tasks. One richer in grace and passion and +sweetness might he chosen out of Musset; one wrought more truly +of the finer stuff of humanity as well as more bountifully +touched with tact and dignity and temper from the work of +Tennyson. But the Hugo selection would combine the rarest +technical merits with a set of interests all its own. It +would give, for instance, the <i>Stella</i> of the +<i>Châtiments</i> and the <i>Pauvres Gens</i> of the +<i>Légende</i>. On one page would be found that +admirable <i>Souvenir de la Nuit du Quatre</i>, which is at once +the impeachment and the condemnation of the Coup +d’État; and on another the little epic of +<i>Eviradnus</i>, with <!-- page 76--><a name="page76"></a><span +class="pagenum">p. 76</span>its immortal serenade, a culmination +of youth and romance and love:</p> +<blockquote><p>‘Si tu veux, faisons un rêve.<br /> +Montons sur deux palefrois.<br /> +Tu m’emmènes, je t’enlève.<br /> +L’oiseau chante dans les bois.</p> +<p>. . . . .</p> +<p>Allons-nous-en par l’Autriche!<br /> +Nous aurons l’aube à nos fronts.<br /> +Je serai grand et toi riche,<br /> +Puisque nous nous aimerons.</p> +<p>. . . . .</p> +<p>Tu seras dame et moi comte.<br /> +Viens, mon œeur s’épanouit.<br /> +Viens, nous conterons ce conte<br /> +Aux étoiles de la nuit.’</p> +</blockquote> +<p>Here, a summary of all the interests of romanticism, would be +the complaint of Gastibelza:</p> +<blockquote><p>‘Un jour d’été, +où tout était lumière,<br /> + Vie et douceur,<br /> +Elle s’en vint jouer dans la rivière<br /> + Avec sa sœur.<br /> +Je vis le pied de sa jeune compagne<br /> + Et son genou . . .—<br /> +Le vent qui vient à travers la montagne<br /> + Me rendra fou!’—</p> +</blockquote> +<p>here the adorable <i>Vieille Chanson du Jeune Temps</i>:</p> +<blockquote><p>‘Rose, droite sur ses hanches,<br /> +Leva son beau bras tremblant<br /> +Pour prendre une mûre aux branches:<br /> +Je ne vis pas son bras blanc.</p> +<p>Une eau courait, fraîche et creuse,<br /> +Sur les mousses de velours;<br /> +Et la nature amoureuse<br /> +Dormait dans les grands bois sourds.’—</p> +</blockquote> +<p>and here, not unworthy to be remembered with <i>Proud +Maisie</i>, that wonderful harmony of legend <!-- page 77--><a +name="page77"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 77</span>and +superstition and the facts and dreams of common life, the +death-song of Fantine:</p> +<blockquote><p>‘Nous acheterons de bien belles choses,<br +/> + En nous promenant le long de faubourgs.</p> +<p>La Vierge-Marie auprès de mon poële<br /> + Est venue hier, en manteau brodé,<br /> +Et m’a dit: Voici, caché sous mon voile,<br /> + Le petit qu’un jour tu m’as +demandé.<br /> +Courez à la ville; ayez de la toile,<br /> + Achetez du fil, achetez un dé.</p> +<p>Les bluets sont bleus, les roses sont roses,<br /> + Les bluets sont bleus, j’aime mes +amours.’</p> +</blockquote> +<p>And from this masterpiece of simple and direct emotion, which +to me has always seemed the high-water mark of Hugo’s +lyrical achievement as well as the most human of his utterances, +one might pass on to masterpieces of another inspiration: to the +luxurious and charming graces of <i>Sara la Baigneuse</i>; to the +superb crescendo and diminuendo of <i>les Djinns</i>; to +‘Si vous n’avez rien à me dire,’ that +daintiest of songlets; to the ringing rhymes and gallant spirit +of the <i>Pas d’Armes du Roi Jean</i>:</p> +<blockquote><p>‘Sus, ma bête,<br /> +De façon<br /> +Que je fête<br /> +Ce grison!<br /> +Je te baille<br /> +Pour ripaille<br /> +Plus de paille,<br /> +Plus de son,</p> +<p>Qu’un gros frère,<br /> +Gai, friand,<br /> +Ne peut faire,<br /> +Mendiant<br /> +Par les places<br /> +Où tu passes,<br /> +De grimaces<br /> +En priant!’—</p> +</blockquote> +<p>to the melodious tenderness of ‘Si tu voulais, +Madelaine’; to the gay music of the <i>Stances à +Jeanne</i>:</p> +<blockquote><p><!-- page 78--><a name="page78"></a><span +class="pagenum">p. 78</span>‘Je ne me mets pas en peine<br +/> +Du clocher ni du beffroi.<br /> +Je ne sais rien de la reine,<br /> +Et je ne sais rien du roi.’—</p> +</blockquote> +<p>to the admirable song of the wind of the sea:</p> +<blockquote><p>‘Quels sont les bruits sourds?<br /> +Ecoutez vers l’onde<br /> +Cette voix profonde<br /> +Qui pleure toujours,<br /> +Et qui toujours gronde,</p> +<p>Quoiqu’un son plus claire<br /> +Parfois l’interrompe . . .<br /> +Le vent de la mer<br /> +Souffle dans sa trompe.’—</p> +</blockquote> +<p>to the <i>Romance Mauresque</i>, to the barbaric fury of +<i>les Reîtres</i>, to the magnificent rodomontade of the +<i>Romancero du Cid</i>. ‘J’en passe, et des +meilleurs,’ as Ruy Gomez observes of his ancestors. +Here at any rate are jewels enough to furnish forth a casket that +should be one of the richest of its kind! The worst is, +they are most of them not necessaries but luxuries. It is +impossible to conceive of life without Shakespeare and Burns, +without <i>Paradise Lost</i> and the <i>Intimations</i> ode and +the immortal pageant of the <i>Canterbury Tales</i>; but (the +technical question apart) to imagine it wanting Hugo’s +lyrics is easy enough. The largesse of which he was so +prodigal has but an arbitrary and conventional value. Like +the magician’s money much has changed, almost in the act of +distribution, into withered leaves; and such of it as seems +minted of good metal is not for general circulation.</p> +<h2><!-- page 79--><a name="page79"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +79</span>HEINE</h2> +<h3>The Villainy Translation.</h3> +<p>Heine had a light hand with the branding-iron, and marked his +subjects not more neatly than indelibly. And really he +alone were capable of dealing adequate vengeance upon his +translators. His verse has only violent lovers or violent +foes; indifference is impossible. Once read as it deserves, +it becomes one of the loveliest of our spiritual +acquisitions. We hate to see it tampered with; we are on +thorns as the translator approaches, and we resent his operations +as an individual hurt, a personal affront. What business +has he to be trampling among our borders and crushing our flowers +with his stupid hobnails? Why cannot he carry his zeal for +topsy-turvy horticulture elsewhere? He comes and lays a +brutal hand on our pet growths, snips off their graces, shapes +them anew according to his own ridiculous ideal, paints and +varnishes them with a villainous compound of his contrivance, and +then bids us admire the effect and thank him for its +production! Is any name too hard for such a creature? and +could any vengeance be too deadly? If he walked into your +garden and amused himself so with your <!-- page 80--><a +name="page80"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 80</span>cabbages, you +could put him in prison. But into your poets he can stump +his way at will, and upon them he can do his pleasure. And +he does it. How many men have brutalised the elegance, the +grace, the winning urbanity of Horace! By how many coarse +and stupid fingers has Catullus been smudged and fumbled and +mauled! To turn <i>Faust</i> into English (in the original +metres) is a fashionable occupation; there are more perversions +of the <i>Commedia</i> than one cares to recall; there is scarce +a great or even a good work of the human mind but has been thus +bedevilled and deformed. <i>Don Quixote</i>, <i>le +Père Goriot</i>, <i>The Frogs</i>, <i>The +Decameron</i>—the trail of the translator is over them +all. Messrs. Payne and Lang and Swinburne have turned poor +Villon into a citizen of Bedford Park, Fitzgerald and Florence +Macarthy have Englished Calderon, Messrs. Pope, Gladstone and +others have done their worst with Homer. If Rossetti had +not succeeded with <i>la Vita Nuova</i>, if Fitzgerald had not +ennobled Omar, if Mr. Lang had not bettered upon Banville and +Gérard de Nerval, the word ‘translator’ would +be odious as the word ‘occupy.’ And +‘occupy’ on the authority of Mrs. Dorothy Tearsheet +is an odious word indeed.</p> +<h3>The Proof of It.</h3> +<p>The fact is, the translator too often forgets the difference +between his subject and himself; he is <!-- page 81--><a +name="page81"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 81</span>too often a +common graveyard mason that would play the sculptor. And it +is not nearly enough for him to be a decent craftsman. To +give an adequate idea of an artist’s work a man must be +himself an artist of equal force and versatility with his +original. The typical translator makes clever enough +verses, but Heine’s accomplishment is remote from him as +Heine’s genius. He perverts his author as rhyme and +rhythm will. No charge of verbal inaccuracy need therefore +be made, for we do not expect a literal fidelity in our +workman. Let him convey the spirit of his original, and +that, so far as meaning goes, is enough. But we do expect +of him a something that shall recall his author’s form, his +author’s personality, his author’s charm of diction +and of style; and here it is that such an interpreter as Sir +Theodore Martin (say) fails with such assurance and +ill-fortune. The movement of Heine’s rhythms, simple +as they seem, is not spontaneous; it is an effect of art: the +poet laboured at his cadences as at his meanings. +Artificial he is, but he has the wonderful quality of never +seeming artificial. His verses dance and sway like the +nixies he loved. Their every motion seems informed with the +perfect suavity and spontaneity of pure nature. They tinkle +down the air like sunset bells, they float like clouds, they wave +like flowers, they twitter like skylarks, they have in them +something of the swiftness and the certainty of exquisite <!-- +page 82--><a name="page82"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +82</span>physical sensations. In such a transcript as Sir +Theodore’s all this is lost: Heine becomes a mere +prentice-metrist; he sets the teeth on edge as surely as Browning +himself; the verse that recalled a dance of naiads suggests a +springless cart on a Highland road; Terpsichore is made to prance +a hobnailed breakdown. The poem disappears, and in its +place you have an indifferent copy of verses. You look at +the pages from afar, and your impression is that they are not +unlike Heine; you look into them, and Heine has vanished. +The man is gone, and only an awkward, angular, clumsily +articulated, entirely preposterous lay-figure remains to show +that the translator has been by.</p> +<h2><!-- page 83--><a name="page83"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +83</span>MATTHEW ARNOLD</h2> +<h3>His Verse.</h3> +<p>In every page of Arnold the poet there is something to return +upon and to admire. There are faults, and these of a kind +this present age is ill-disposed to condone. The rhymes are +sometimes poor; the movement of the verse is sometimes uncertain +and sometimes slow; the rhythms are obviously simple always; now +and then the intention and effect are cold even to austerity, are +bald to uncomeliness. But then, how many of the rarer +qualities of art and inspiration are represented here, and here +alone in modern work! There is little of that delight in +material for material’s sake which is held to be essential +to the composition of a great artist; there is none of that +rapture of sound and motion and none of that efflorescence of +expression which are deemed inseparable from the endowment of the +true singer. For any of those excesses in technical +accomplishment, those ecstasies in the use of words, those +effects of sound which are so rich and strange as to impress the +hearer with something of their author’s own emotion of +creation—for any, indeed, of the characteristic attributes +of modern poetry—you shall <!-- page 84--><a +name="page84"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 84</span>turn to him +in vain. In matters of form this poet is no romantic but a +classic to the marrow. He adores his Shakespeare, but he +will none of his Shakespeare’s fashions. For him the +essentials are dignity of thought and sentiment and distinction +of manner and utterance. It is no aim of his to talk for +talking’s sake, to express what is but half felt and half +understood, to embody vague emotions and nebulous fancies in +language no amount of richness can redeem from the reproach of +being nebulous and vague. In his scheme of art there is no +place for excess, however magnificent and Shakespearean—for +exuberance, however overpowering and Hugoesque. Human and +interesting in themselves, the ideas apparelled in his verse are +completely apprehended; natural in themselves, the experiences he +pictures are intimately felt and thoroughly perceived. They +have been resolved into their elements by the operation of an +almost Sophoclean faculty of selection, and the effect of their +presentation is akin to that of a gallery of Greek marbles.</p> +<h3>His Failure.</h3> +<p>Other poets say anything—say everything that is in +them. Browning lived to realise the myth of the +Inexhaustible Bottle; Mr. William Morris is nothing: if not +fluent and copious; Mr. Swinburne has a facility that would seem +impossible if it were not a living <!-- page 85--><a +name="page85"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 85</span>fact; even +the Laureate is sometimes prodigal of unimportant details, of +touches insignificant and superfluous, of words for words’ +sake, of cadences that have no reason of being save +themselves. Matthew Arnold alone says only what is worth +saying. In other words, he selects: from his matter +whatever is impertinent is eliminated and only what is vital is +permitted to remain. Sometimes he goes a little astray, and +his application of the principle on which Sophocles and Homer +wrought results in failure. But in these instances it will +always be found, I think, that the effect is due not to the +principle nor the poet’s application of it but to the poet +himself, who has exceeded his commission, and attempted more than +is in him to accomplish. The case is rare with Arnold, one +of whose qualities—and by no means the least Hellenic of +them—was a fine consciousness of his limitations. But +that he failed, and failed considerably, it were idle to +deny. There is <i>Merope</i> to bear witness to the fact; +and of <i>Merope</i> what is there to say? Evidently it is +an imitation Greek play: an essay, that is, in a form which +ceased long since to have any active life, so that the attempt to +revive it—to create a soul under the ribs of very musty +death—is a blunder alike in sentiment and in art. As +evidently Arnold is no dramatist. Empedocles, the Strayed +Reveller, even the Forsaken Merman, all these are expressions of +purely personal feeling—are so many <!-- page 86--><a +name="page86"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 86</span>metamorphoses +of Arnold. In <i>Merope</i> there is no such basis of +reality. The poet was never on a level with his +argument. He knew little or nothing of his +characters—of Merope or Æpytus or Polyphontes, of +Arcas or Laias or even the Messenger; at every step the ground is +seen shifting under his feet; he is comparatively void of matter, +and his application of the famous principle is labour lost. +He is winnowing the wind; he is washing not gold but water.</p> +<h3>His Triumphs.</h3> +<p>It is other-guess work with <i>Empedocles</i>, the +<i>Dejaneira</i> fragment, <i>Sohrab and Rustum</i>, the +<i>Philomela</i>, his better work in general, above all with the +unique and unapproached <i>Balder Dead</i>. To me this last +stands alone in modern art for simple majesty of conception, +sober directness and potency of expression, sustained dignity of +thought and sentiment and style, the complete presentation of +whatever is essential, the stern avoidance of whatever is merely +decorative: indeed for every Homeric quality save rhythmical +vitality and rapidity of movement. Here, for example, is +something of that choice yet ample suggestiveness—the only +true realism because the only perfect ideal of +realisation—for which the <!-- page 87--><a +name="page87"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 87</span>similitudes +of the ‘Ionian father of his race’ are pre-eminently +distinguished:—</p> +<blockquote><p>‘And as a spray of honeysuckle flowers<br /> +Brushes across a tired traveller’s face<br /> +Who shuffles through the deep dew-moistened dust<br /> +On a May evening, in the darken’d lanes,<br /> +And starts him, that he thinks a ghost went by—<br /> +So Hoder brushed by Hermod’s side.’</p> +</blockquote> +<p>Here is Homer’s direct and moving because most human and +comprehensive touch in narrative:—</p> +<blockquote><p>‘But from the hill of Lidskialf Odin +rose,<br /> +The throne, from which his eye surveys the world;<br /> +And mounted Sleipner, and in darkness rode<br /> +To Asgard. And the stars came out in heaven,<br /> +High over Asgard, to light home the king.<br /> +But fiercely Odin gallop’d, moved in heart;<br /> +And swift to Asgard, to the gate, he came.<br /> +And terribly the hoofs of Sleipner rang<br /> +Along the flinty floor of Asgard streets,<br /> +And the Gods trembled on their golden beds<br /> +Hearing the wrathful Father coming home—<br /> +For dread, for like a whirlwind Odin came.<br /> +And to Valhalla’s gate he rode, and left<br /> +Sleipner; and Sleipner went to his own stall;<br /> +And in Valhalla Odin laid him down.’</p> +</blockquote> +<p>And here—to have done with evidence of what is known to +every one—here is the Homeric mariner, large and majestic +and impersonal, of recording speech:—</p> +<blockquote><p>‘Bethink ye, Gods, is there no other +way?—<br /> +Speak, were not this a way, a way for Gods?<br /> +If I, if Odin, clad in radiant arms,<br /> +Mounted on Sleipner, with the warrior Thor<br /> +Drawn in his car beside me, and my sons,<br /> +All the strong brood of Heaven, to swell my train,<br /> +Should make irruption into Hela’s realm,<br /> +And set the fields of gloom ablaze with light,<br /> +And bring in triumph Balder back to Heaven?’</p> +</blockquote> +<p><!-- page 88--><a name="page88"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +88</span>One has but to contrast such living work as this with +the ‘mouldering realm’ of <i>Merope</i> to feel the +difference with a sense of pain;</p> +<blockquote><p>‘For doleful are the ghosts, the troops of +dead,<br /> +Whom Hela with austere control presides’;</p> +</blockquote> +<p>while this in its plain, heroic completeness is touched with a +stately life that is a presage of immortality. It is +evident, indeed, that Arnold wrote <i>Balder Dead</i> in his most +fortunate hour, and that <i>Merope</i> is his one serious mistake +in literature. For a genius thus peculiar and introspective +drama—the presentation of character through action—is +impossible; to a method thus reticent and severe drama—the +expression of emotion in action—is improper. +‘Not here, O Apollo!’ It is written that none +shall bind his brows with the twin laurels of epos and +drama. Shakespeare did not, nor could Homer; and how should +Matthew Arnold?</p> +<h3>His Prose.</h3> +<p>He has opinions and the courage of them; he has assurance and +he has charm; he writes with an engaging clearness. It is +very possible to disagree with him; but it is difficult indeed to +resist his many graces of manner, and decline to be entertained +and even interested by the variety and quality of his <!-- page +89--><a name="page89"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +89</span>matter. He was described as ‘the most +un-English of Britons,’ the most cosmopolitan of islanders; +and you feel as you read him that in truth his mind was +French. He took pattern by Goethe, and was impressed by +Leopardi; he was judiciously classic, but his romanticism was +neither hidebound nor inhuman; he apprehended Heine and Marcus +Aurelius, Spinoza and Sainte-Beuve, Joubert and Maurice de +Guérin, Wordsworth and Pascal, Rachel and Sarah Bernhardt, +Burke and Arthur Clough, Eliza Cook and Homer; he was an +authority on education, poetry, civilisation, the <i>Song of +Roland</i>, the love-letters of Keats, the Genius of Bottles, the +significance of <i>eutrapelos</i> and <i>eutrapelia</i>. In +fact, we have every reason to be proud of him. For the +present is a noisy and affected age; it is given overmuch to +clamorous devotion and extravagant repudiation; there is an +element of swagger in all its words and ways; it has a +distressing and immoral turn for publicity. Matthew +Arnold’s function was to protest against its fashions by +his own intellectual practice, and now and then to take it to +task and to call it to order. He was not particularly +original, but he had in an eminent degree the formative capacity, +the genius of shaping and developing, which is a chief quality of +the French mind and which is not so common among us English as +our kindest critics would have us believe. He would take a +handful of golden sentences—things wisely thought and +finely said <!-- page 90--><a name="page90"></a><span +class="pagenum">p. 90</span>by persons having authority—and +spin them into an exquisite prelection; so that his work with all +the finish of art retains a something of the freshness of those +elemental truths on which it was his humour to dilate. He +was, that is to say, an artist in ethics as in speech, in culture +as in ambition. ‘Il est donné,’ says +Sainte-Beuve, ‘de nos jours, à un bien petit nombre, +même parmi les plus délicats et ceux qui les +apprécient le mieux, de recueillir, d’ordonner sa +vie selon ses admirations et selon ses goûts, avec suite, +avec noblesse.’ That is true enough; but Arnold was +one of the few, and might ‘se vanter d’être +resté fidèle à soi-même, à son +premier et à son plus beau passé.’ He +was always a man of culture in the good sense of the word; he had +many interests in life and art, and his interests were sound and +liberal; he was a good critic of both morals and measures, both +of society and of literature, because he was commonly at the +pains of understanding his matter before he began to speak about +it. It is therefore not surprising that the part he played +was one of considerable importance or that his influence was +healthy in the main. He was neither prophet nor pedagogue +but a critic pure and simple. Too well read to be violent, +too nice in his discernment to be led astray beyond recovery in +any quest after strange gods, he told the age its faults and +suggested such remedies as the study of great men’s work +<!-- page 91--><a name="page91"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +91</span>had suggested to him. If his effect was little +that was not his fault. He returned to the charge with +imperturbable good temper, and repeated his remarks—which +are often exasperating in effect—with a mixture of +mischievousness and charm, of superciliousness and sagacity, and +a serene dexterity of phrase, unique in modern letters.</p> +<h2><!-- page 92--><a name="page92"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +92</span>HOMER AND THEOCRITUS</h2> +<h3>The Odyssey.</h3> +<p>I think that of all recent books the two that have pleased me +best and longest are those delightful renderings into English +prose of the Greek of Homer and Theocritus, which we owe, the one +to Messrs. Henry Butcher and Andrew Lang and the other to Mr. +Lang’s unaided genius. To read this <i>Odyssey</i> of +theirs is to have a breath of the clear, serene airs that blew +through the antique Hellas; to catch a glimpse of the large, new +morning light that bathes the seas and highlands of the young +heroic world. In a space of shining and fragrant clarity +you have a vision of marble columns and stately cities, of men +august in single-heartedness and strength and women comely and +simple and superb as goddesses; and with a music of leaves and +winds and waters, of plunging ships and clanging armours, of +girls at song and kindly gods discoursing, the sunny-eyed heroic +age is revealed in all its nobleness, in all its majesty, its +candour, and its charm. The air is yet plangent with echoes +of the leaguer of Troy, and Odysseus the ready-at-need goes forth +upon his wanderings: into the cave of Polypheme, into the land of +giants, <!-- page 93--><a name="page93"></a><span +class="pagenum">p. 93</span>into the very regions of the dead: to +hear among the olive trees the voice of Circe, the sweet witch, +singing her magic song as she fares to and fro before her golden +loom; to rest and pine in the islet of Calypso, the kind +sea-goddess; to meet with Nausicaa, loveliest of mortal maids; to +reach his Ithaca, and do battle with the Wooers, and age in peace +and honour by the side of the wise Penelope. The day is yet +afar when, as he sailed out to the sunset and the mysterious +west,</p> +<blockquote><p>Sol con un legno, e con quella compagna<br /> +Picciola, dalla qual non fue deserto,</p> +</blockquote> +<p>the great wind rushed upon him from the new-discovered land, +and so ended his journeyings for ever; and all with him is energy +and tact and valour and resource, as becomes the captain of an +indomitable human soul. His society is like old +d’Artagnan’s: it invigorates, renews, inspires. +I had rather lack the friendship of the good Alonso Quijada +himself than the brave example of these two.</p> +<h3>The Idylls.</h3> +<p>With certain differences it is the same with our +Theocritus. From him, too, the mind is borne back to a +‘happier age of gold,’ when the world was younger +than now, and men were not so weary nor so jaded nor so highly +civilised as they choose to think <!-- page 94--><a +name="page94"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +94</span>themselves. Shepherds still piped, and maidens +still listened to their piping. The old gods had not been +discrowned and banished; and to fishers drawing their nets the +coasts yet kept a something of the trace of amorous Polypheme, +the rocks were peopled with memories of his plaint to +Galatea. Inland, among the dim and thymy woods, bee-haunted +and populous with dreams of dryad and oread, there were rumours +of Pan; and dwellers under thatch—the goatherd mending his +sandals, the hind carving his new staff, the girls who busked +them for the vintaging—were conscious, as the wind went by +among the beeches and the pines, and brought with it the sounds +of a lonely and mysterious night, that hard by them in the starry +darkness the divine Huntress was abroad, and about the base of +Ætna she and her forest maids drove the chase with horn and +hound. In the cities ladies sang the psalm of Adonis +brought back from ‘the stream eternal of +Acheron.’ Under the mystic moon love-lorn damsels did +their magic rites, and knit up spells of power to bring home the +men they loved. Among the vines and under the grey olives +songs were singing of Daphnis all day long. There were +junketings and dancings and harvest-homes for ever toward; the +youths went by to the gymnasium, and the girls stood near to +watch them as they went; the cicalas sang, the air was fragrant +with apples and musical with the sound of flutes and running +water; while <!-- page 95--><a name="page95"></a><span +class="pagenum">p. 95</span>the blue Sicilian sky laughed over +all, and the soft Sicilian sea encircled the land and its lovers +with a ring of sapphire and silver. To translate +Theocritus, wrote Sainte-Beuve, is as if one sought to carry away +in one’s hand a patch of snow that has lain forgotten +through the summer in a cranny of the rocks of +Ætna:—‘On a fait trois pas à peine, que +cette neige déjà est fondue. On est heureux +s’il en reste assez du moins pour donner le vif sentiment +de la fraîcheur.’ But Mr. Lang has so rendered +into English the graces of the loveliest of Dorian singers that +he has earned the thanks of every lover of true literature. +Every one should read his book, for it will bring him face to +face with a very prince among poets and with a very summer among +centuries. That Theocritus was a rare and beautiful master +there is even in this English transcript an abundance of +evidence. Melancholy apart, he was the Watteau of the old +Greek world—an exquisite artist, a rare poet, a true and +kindly soul; and it is very good to be with him. We have +changed it all of course, and are as fortunate as we can +expect. But it is good to be with Theocritus, for he lets +you live awhile in the happy age and under the happy heaven that +were his. He gives you leave and opportunity to listen to +the tuneful strife of Lacon and Comatas; to witness the duel in +song between Corydon and Battus; to talk of Galatea pelting with +apples the barking dog of her love-lorn Polypheme; <!-- page +96--><a name="page96"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 96</span>under +the whispering elms, to lie drinking with Eucritus and Lycidas by +the altar of Demeter, ‘while she stands smiling by, with +sheaves and poppies in her hand.’</p> +<h3>Old Lamps and New.</h3> +<p>It is relief unspeakable to turn from the dust and din and +chatter of modern life, with its growing trade in heroes and its +poverty of men, its innumerable regrets and ambitions and +desires, to this immense tranquillity, this candid and shining +calm. They had no Irish Question then, you can reflect, nor +was theology invented. Men were not afraid of life nor +ashamed of death; and you could be heroic without a dread of +clever editors, and hospitable without fear of rogues, and +dutiful for no hope of illuminated scrolls. Odysseus +disguised as Irus is still Odysseus and august. How comes +it that Mr. Gladstone in rags and singing ballads would be only +fit for a police-station? that Lord Salisbury hawking cocoa-nuts +would instantly suggest the purlieus of Petticoat Lane? Is +the fault in ourselves? Can it be that we have deteriorated +so much as that? Nerves, nerves, nerves! . . . These +many centuries the world has had neuralgia; and what has come of +it is that Robert Elsmere is an ideal, and the bleat of the +sentimentalist might almost be mistaken for the voice of living +England.</p> +<h2><!-- page 97--><a name="page97"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +97</span>RABELAIS</h2> +<h3>His Essence.</h3> +<p>Rabelais is not precisely a book for bachelors and +maids—at times, indeed, is not a book for grown men. +There are passages not to be read without a blush and a sensation +of sickness: the young giant which is the Renaissance being +filthy and gross as Nature herself at her grossest and her most +filthy. It is argued that this is all deliberate—is +an effect of premeditation: that Rabelais had certain home-truths +to deliver to his generation, and delivered them in such terms as +kept him from the fagot and the rope by bedaubing him with the +renown of a common buffoon. But the argument is none of the +soundest in itself, and may fairly be set aside as a piece of +desperate special pleading, the work of counsel at their +wits’ end for matter of defence. For Rabelais clean +is not Rabelais at all. His grossness is an essential +component in his mental fabric, an element in whose absence he +would be not Rabelais but somebody else. It inspires his +practice of art to the full as thoroughly as it informs his +theory of language. He not only employs it wherever it +might be useful: he goes out of his way to find it, he shovels it +<!-- page 98--><a name="page98"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +98</span>in on any and every occasion, he bemerds his readers and +himself with a gusto that assuredly is not a common +characteristic of defensive operations. In him, indeed, the +humour of Old France—the broad, rank, unsavoury <i>esprit +gaulois</i>—found its heroic expression; he made use of it +because he must; and we can no more eliminate it from his work +than we can remove the quality of imagination from +Shakespeare’s or those of art and intellect from Ben +Jonson’s. Other men are as foul or fouler; but in +none is foulness so inbred and so ingrained, from none is it so +inseparable. Few have had so much genius, and in none else +has genius been so curiously featured.</p> +<h3>His Secret.</h3> +<p>It is significant enough that with all this against him he +should have been from the first a great moral and literary +influence and the delight of the wisest and soundest minds the +world has seen. Shakespeare read him, and Jonson; +Montaigne, a greater than himself, is in some sort his +descendant; Swift, in Coleridge’s enlightening phrase, is +‘anima Rabelaesii habitans in sicco’; to Sterne and +Balzac and Molière he was a constant inspiration; unto +this day his work is <!-- page 99--><a name="page99"></a><span +class="pagenum">p. 99</span>studied and his meanings are sought +with almost religious devoutness; while his phrases have passed +into the constitution of a dozen languages, and the great figures +he scrawled across the face of the Renaissance have survived the +movement that gave them being, and are ranked with the monuments +of literature. Himself has given us the reasons in the +prologue to the first book, where he tells of the likeness +between Socrates and the boxes called Sileni, and discourses of +the manifest resemblance of his own work with Socrates. +‘Opening this box,’ which is Socrates, says he, +‘you would have found within it a heavenly and inestimable +drug, a more than human understanding, an admirable virtue, +matchless learning, invincible courage, inimitable sobriety, +certain contentment of mind, perfect assurance, and an incredible +disregard of all that for which men cunningly do so much watch, +run, sail, fight, travel, toil, and turmoil +themselves.’ In such wise must his book be opened, +and the ‘high conceptions’ with which it is stuffed +will presently be apparent. Nay, more: you are to do with +it even as a dog with a marrowbone. ‘If you have seen +him you might have remarked with what devotion and circumspection +he watches and wards it; with what care he keeps it; how +fervently he holds it; how prudently he gobbets it; with what +affection he breaks it; with what diligence he sucks +it.’ <!-- page 100--><a name="page100"></a><span +class="pagenum">p. 100</span>And in the same way you ‘by a +sedulous lecture and frequent meditation’ shall break the +bone and suck out the marrow of these books. Since the +advice was proffered, generation after generation of mighty wits +have taken counsel with the Master, and his wisdom has through +them been passed out into the practice of life, the evolution of +society, the development of humanity. But the ‘prince +de toute sapience et de toute comédie’ has not yet +uttered his last word. He remains in the front of time as +when he lived and wrote. The Abbey of Thelema and the +education of Gargantua are still unrealised ideals; the Ringing +Isle and the Isle of Papimany are in their essentials pretty much +as he left them; Panurge, ‘the pollarded man, the man with +every faculty except the reason,’ has bettered no whit for +the three centuries of improvement that have passed since he was +flashed into being. We—even we—have much to +learn from Master Alcofribas, and until we have learned it well +enough to put it into practice his work remains half done and his +book still one to study.</p> +<h2><!-- page 101--><a name="page101"></a><span +class="pagenum">p. 101</span>SHAKESPEARE</h2> +<h3>A Parallel.</h3> +<p>Shakespeare and Rembrandt have in common the faculty of +quickening speculation and compelling the minds of men to combat +and discussion. About the English poet a literature of +contention has been in process of accretion ever since he was +discovered to be Shakespeare; and about the Dutch painter and +etcher there has gradually accumulated a literature precisely +analogous in character and for the most part of equal +quality. In such an age as this, when the creative faculty +of the world is mainly occupied with commentary and criticism, +the reason should not be far to seek. Both were giants; +both were original and individual in the highest sense of the +words; both were leagues ahead of their contemporaries, not +merely as regards the matter of their message but also in respect +of the terms of its delivery; each, moreover—and here one +comes upon a capital point of contact and resemblance—each +was at times prodigiously inferior to himself. Shakespeare +often writes so ill that you hesitate to believe he could ever +write supremely well; or, if this way of putting it seem +indecorous and abominable, he very <!-- page 102--><a +name="page102"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 102</span>often +writes so well that you are loth to believe he could ever have +written thus extremely ill. There are passages in his work +in which he reaches such heights of literary art as since his +time no mortal has found accessible; and there are passages which +few or none of us can read without a touch of that ‘burning +sense of shame’ experienced in the presence of Mr. +Poynter’s <i>Diadumene</i> by the British Matron of <i>The +Times</i> newspaper. Now, we have got to be so curious in +ideals that we cannot away with the thought of +imperfection. Our worship must have for its object +something flawless, something utterly without spot or +blemish. We can be satisfied with nothing less than an +entire and perfect chrysolite; and we cannot taste our +Shakespeare at his worst without experiencing not merely the +burning sense of shame aforesaid but also a frenzy of longing to +father his faults upon somebody else—Marlowe for instance, +or Green, or Fletcher—and a fury of proving that our +divinity was absolutely incapable of them. That Shakespeare +varied—that the matchless prose and the not particularly +lordly verse of <i>As You Like It</i> are by the same hand; that +the master to whom we owe our Hamlet is also responsible for +Gertrude and King Claudius; that he who gave us the agony of Lear +and the ruin of Othello did likewise perpetrate the scene of +Hector’s murder, in manner so poor and in spirit so cynical +and vile—is beyond all belief and patience; <!-- page +103--><a name="page103"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +103</span>and we have argued the point to such an extent that we +are all of us in Gotham, and a mooncalf like the ascription of +whatever is good in Shakespeare to Lord Bacon is no prodigy but a +natural birth.</p> +<h2><!-- page 104--><a name="page104"></a><span +class="pagenum">p. 104</span>SIDNEY</h2> +<h3>His Expression of Life.</h3> +<p>Sidney’s prime faults are affectation and conceit. +His verses drip with fine love-honey; but it has been so +clarified in meta-physics that much of its flavour and sweetness +has escaped. Very often, too, the conceit embodied is +preposterously poor. You have as it were a casket of finest +gold elaborately wrought and embellished, and the gem within is a +mere spangle of paste, a trumpery spikelet of crystal. No +doubt there is a man’s heart beating underneath; but so +thick is the envelope of buckram and broidery and velvet through +which it has to make itself audible that its pulsations are +sometimes hard to count, while to follow it throb by throb is +impossible. And if this be true of that <i>Astrophel and +Stella</i> series in which the poet outpours the melodious heyday +of his youth—in which he strives to embody a passion as +rich and full as ever stirred man’s blood—what shall +be said of the <i>Arcadia</i>? In that ‘cold +pastoral’ he is trying to give breath and substance to as +thin and frigid a fashion as has ever afflicted literature; and +though he put a great deal of himself into the result, still +every one has not the true critical insight, and to most <!-- +page 105--><a name="page105"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +105</span>of us, I think, those glimpses of the lofty nature of +the writer which make the thing written a thing of worth in the +eyes of the few are merely invisible.</p> +<h3>His Fame.</h3> +<p>In thinking of Sidney, Ophelia’s lament for Hamlet +springs to the lips, and the heart reverts to that closing scene +at Zutphen with a blessed sadness of admiration and regret. +But frankly, is it not a fact that that fine last speech of his +has more availed to secure him immortality than all his +verse? They call him the English Bayard, and the Frenchman +need not be displeasured by the comparison. But when you +come to read his poetry you find that our Bayard had in him a +strong dash of the pedant and a powerful leaven of the +euphuist. Subtle, delicate, refined, with a keen and +curious wit, a rare faculty of verse, a singular capacity of +expression, an active but not always a true sense of form, he +wrote for the few, and (it may be) the few will always love +him. But his intellectual life, intense though it were, was +lived among shadows and abstractions. He thought deeply, +but he neither looked widely nor listened intently, and when all +is said he remains no more than a brilliant amorist, too +super-subtle for complete sincerity, whose fluency and sweetness +have not improved with years.</p> +<h2><!-- page 106--><a name="page106"></a><span +class="pagenum">p. 106</span>TOURNEUR</h2> +<h3>His Style.</h3> +<p>Tourneur was a fierce and bitter spirit. The words in +which he unpacked his heart are vitalised with passion. He +felt so keenly that oftentimes his phrase is the offspring of the +emotion, so terse and vigorous and apt, so vivid and so potent +and eager, it appears. As an instance of this avidity of +wrath and scorn finding expression in words the fittest and most +forcible, leaving the well-known scenes embalmed in Elia’s +praise, one might take the three or four single words in which +Vindici (<i>The Revenger’s Tragedy</i>), on as many several +occasions, refers to the caresses of Spurio and the wanton +Duchess. Each is of such amazing propriety, is so keenly +discriminated, is so obviously the product of an imagination +burning with rage and hate, that it strikes you like an affront: +each is an incest taken in the fact and branded there and +then. And this quality of verbal fitness, this power of so +charging a phrase with energy and colour as to make it convey the +emotion of the writer at the instant of inspiration, is perhaps +the master quality of Tourneur’s work.</p> +<h3><!-- page 107--><a name="page107"></a><span +class="pagenum">p. 107</span>His Matter.</h3> +<p>They that would have it are many; they that achieve their +desire are few. For in the minor artist the +passionate—the elemental quality—is not often found: +he being of his essence the ape or zany of his betters. +Tourneur is not a great tragic. <i>The Atheist’s +Tragedy</i> is but grotesquely and extravagantly horrible; its +personages are caricatures of passion; its comedy is +inexpressibly sordid; its incidents are absurd when they are not +simply abominable. But it is written in excellent dramatic +verse and in a rich and brilliant diction, and it contains a +number of pregnant epithets and ringing lines and violent +phrases. And if you halve the blame and double the praise +you will do something less than justice to that +<i>Revenger’s Tragedy</i> which is Tourneur’s +immortality. After all its companion is but a bastard of +the loud, malignant, antic muse of Marston; the elegies are cold, +elaborate, and very tedious; the <i>Transformed Metamorphosis</i> +is better verse but harder reading than <i>Sordello</i> +itself. But the <i>Revenger’s Tragedy</i> has merit +as a piece of art and therewith a rare interest as a window on +the artist’s mind. The effect is as of a volcanic +landscape. An earthquake has passed, and among grisly +shapes and blasted aspects here lurks and wanders the genius of +ruin.</p> +<h2><!-- page 108--><a name="page108"></a><span +class="pagenum">p. 108</span>WALTON</h2> +<h3>The Compleat Angler.</h3> +<p>I am told that it is generally though silently admitted that, +while Charles Cotton came of a school of fishermen renowned for +accomplishment even now, his master and friend was not in the +modern or Cottonian sense a fisherman at all. There was in +him, indeed, a vast deal of the philosopher and the observer of +nature and still more, perhaps, of the artist in English; but +there was also not a little of the cockney sportsman. He +never rose above the low-lived worm and quill; his prey was +commonly those fish that are the scorn of the true angler, for he +knew naught of trout and grayling, yet was deeply interested in +such base creatures (and such poor eating) as chub and roach and +dace; and that part of his treatise which has still a certain +authority—which may be said, indeed, to have placed the +mystery of fly-fishing upon something of a scientific +basis—was not his work but that of ‘my most honoured +friend, Charles Cotton, Esq.’ Again, it is a +characteristic of your true as opposed to your cockney sportsman +that, unless constrained thereto by hunger, he does not eat what +he has killed; and <!-- page 109--><a name="page109"></a><span +class="pagenum">p. 109</span>it is a characteristic of +Walton—who in this particular at least may stand for the +authentic type of the cockney sportsman as opposed to the true +one—that he delighted not much less in dining or supping on +his catch than he did in the act of making it: as witness some of +the most charming parts in a book that from one end to the other +is charm and little besides. Indeed the truth—(with +reverence be it spoken)—appears to be that the <i>Compleat +Angler</i> is an expression in the terms of art of the +cit’s enjoyment of the country.</p> +<h3>Master Piscator.</h3> +<p>What Walton saw in angling was not that delight in the +consciousness of accomplishment and intelligence which sends the +true fisherman to the river and keeps him there, rejoicing in his +strength, whether he kill or go empty away. It was rather +the pretext—with a worm and perhaps a good supper at one +end and a contemplative man at the other—of a day in the +fields: where the skylark soared, and the earth smelled sweet, +and the water flashed and tinkled as it ran, while hard by some +milk-maid, courteous yet innocent, sang as she plied her nimble +fingers, and not very far away the casement of the inn-parlour +gleamed comfortable <!-- page 110--><a name="page110"></a><span +class="pagenum">p. 110</span>promises of talk and food and +rest. That was the Master Piscator who, being an excellent +man of letters, went out to ‘stretch his legs up Tottenham +Hill’ in search of fish, and came home with immortal copy; +and that was the Izaak Walton who ‘ventured to fill a +part’ of Cotton’s ‘margin’ with remarks +not upon his theory of how to angle for trout or grayling in a +clear stream but ‘by way of paraphrase for your +reader’s clearer understanding both of the situation of +your fishing house, and the pleasantness of that you dwell +in.’ He had the purest and the most innocent of +minds, he was the master of a style as bright, as sweet, as +refreshing and delightful, as fine clean home-spun some time in +lavender; he called himself an angler, and he believed in the +description with a cordial simplicity whose appeal is more +persuasive now than ever. But he was nothing if not the +citizen afield—the cockney aweary of Bow Bells and +rejoicing in ‘the sights and sounds of the open +landscape.’ After all it is only your town-bred poet +who knows anything of the country, or is moved to concern himself +in anywise for the sensations and experiences it yields. +Milton was born in Bread Street, and Herrick in Cheapside. +Yet Milton gave us the <i>Allegro</i> and the <i>Penseroso</i> +and the scenery in <i>Comus</i> and the epic; while as for +Herrick—the <i>Night-Piece</i>, the lovely and immortal +verses <i>To Meadows</i>, the fresh yet sumptuous and noble <i>To +Corinna Going a-Maying</i>, <!-- page 111--><a +name="page111"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 111</span>these and a +hundred more are there to answer for <i>him</i>. Here +Walton is with Herrick and Milton and many ‘dear sons of +Memory’ besides; and that is why he not only loved the +country but was moved to make art of it as well.</p> +<h2><!-- page 112--><a name="page112"></a><span +class="pagenum">p. 112</span>HERRICK</h2> +<h3>His Muse.</h3> +<p>In Herrick the air is fragrant with new-mown hay; there is a +morning light upon all things; long shadows streak the grass, and +on the eglantine swinging in the hedge the dew lies white and +brilliant. Out of the happy distance comes a shrill and +silvery sound of whetting scythes; and from the near brook-side +rings the laughter of merry maids in circle to make cowslipballs +and babble of their bachelors. As you walk you are +conscious of ‘the grace that morning meadows wear,’ +and mayhap you meet Amaryllis going home to the farm with an +apronful of flowers. Rounded is she and buxom, cool-cheeked +and vigorous and trim, smelling of rosemary and thyme, with an +appetite for curds and cream and a tongue of ‘cleanly +wantonness.’ For her singer has an eye in his head, +and exquisite as are his fancies he dwells in no land of +shadows. The more clearly he sees a thing the better he +sings it; and provided that he do see it nothing is beneath the +caress of his muse. The bays and rosemary that wreath the +hall at Yule, the log itself, the Candlemas box, the hock-cart +and the maypole, nay,</p> +<blockquote><p>‘See’st thou that cloud as silver +clear,<br /> +Plump, soft, and swelling everywhere?<br /> + Tis Julia’s bed!’—</p> +</blockquote> +<p><!-- page 113--><a name="page113"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +113</span>And not only does he listen to the +‘clecking’ of his hen and know what it means: he +knows too that the egg she has laid is long and white; so that +ere he enclose it in his verse, you can see him take it in his +hand, and look at it with a sort of boyish wonder and +delight. This freshness of spirit, this charming and +innocent curiosity, he carries into all he does. He can +turn a sugared compliment with the best, but when Amaryllis +passes him by he is yet so eager and unsophisticate that he can +note that ‘winning wave in the tempestuous petticoat’ +which has rippled to such good purpose through so many graceful +speeches since. So that though Julia and Dianeme and Anthea +have passed away, though Corinna herself is merely ‘a +fable, song, a fleeting shade,’ he has saved enough of them +from the ravin of Time for us to love and be grateful for +eternally. Their gracious ghosts abide in a peculiar nook +of the Elysium of Poesy. There ‘in their habit as +they lived’ they dance in round, they fill their laps with +flowers, they frolic and junket sweetly, they go for ever +maying. Soft winds blow round them, and in their clear +young voices they sing the verse of the rare artist who called +them from the multitude and set them for ever where they are.</p> +<h3><!-- page 114--><a name="page114"></a><span +class="pagenum">p. 114</span>His Moral.</h3> +<p>And Amaryllis herself will not, mayhap, be found so fair as +those younglings of the year she bears with her in ‘wicker +ark’ or ‘lawny continent.’ Herrick is +pre-eminently the poet of flowers. He alone were capable of +bringing back</p> +<blockquote><p> ‘Le +bouquet d’Ophélie<br /> +De la rive inconnue où les flots l’ont +laissé.</p> +</blockquote> +<p>He knows and loves the dear blossoms all. He considers +them with tender and shining eyes, he culls them his sweetest +fancies and his fondest metaphors. Their idea is +inseparable from that of his girls themselves, and it is by the +means of the one set of mistresses that he is able so well to +understand the other. The flowers are maids to him, and the +maids are flowers. In an ecstasy of tender contemplation he +turns from those to these, exampling Julia from the rose and +pitying the hapless violets as though they were indeed not blooms +insensitive but actually ‘poor girls +neglected.’ His pages breathe their clean and +innocent perfumes, and are beautiful with the chaste beauty of +their colour, just as they carry with them something of the +sweetness and simplicity of maidenhood itself. And from +both he extracts the same pathetic little moral: both are lovely +and both must die. And so, between his virgins that are for +love indeed and those that sit silent and delicious in the +‘flowery nunnery,’ the old singer finds life so good +a thing that he dreads <!-- page 115--><a +name="page115"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 115</span>to lose it, +and not all his piety can remove the passionate regret with which +he sees things hastening to their end.</p> +<h3>His Piety.</h3> +<p>That piety is equally removed from the erotic mysticism of +Richard Crashaw and from the adoration, chastened and awful and +pure, of Cowper. To find an analogue, you have to cross the +borders of English into Spain. In his <i>Noble Numbers</i> +Herrick shows himself to be a near kinsman of such men as +Valdivielso, Ocaña, Lope de Ubeda; and there are versicles +of his that in their homely mixture of the sacred and the +profane, in their reverent familiarity with things divine, their +pious and simple gallantry, may well be likened to the graceful +and charming romances and villancicos of these strangers. +Their spirit is less Protestant than Catholic, and is hardly +English at all, so that it is scarce to be wondered at if they +have remained unpopular. But their sincerity and +earnestness are as far beyond doubt as their grace of line and +inimitable daintiness of surface.</p> +<h2><!-- page 116--><a name="page116"></a><span +class="pagenum">p. 116</span>LOCKER</h2> +<h3>His Qualities.</h3> +<p>Mr. Locker’s verse has charmed so wisely and so long +that it has travelled the full circle of compliment and exhausted +one part of the lexicon of eulogy. As you turn his pages +you feel as freshly as ever the sweet, old-world elegance, the +courtly amiability, the mannerly restraint, the measured and +accomplished ease. True, they are colourless, and in these +days we are deboshed with colour; but then they are so luminously +limpid and serene, they are so sprightly and graceful and +gay! In the gallantry they affect there is a something at +once exquisite and paternal. If they pun, ’tis with +an air: even thus might Chesterfield have stooped to folly. +And then, how clean the English, how light yet vigorous the +touch, the manner how elegant and how staid! There is wit +in them, and that so genial and unassuming that as like as not it +gets leave to beam on unperceived. There is humour too, but +humour so polite as to look half-unconscious, so dandified that +it leaves you in doubt as to whether you should laugh or only +smile. And withal there is a vein of well-bred wisdom never +breathed but to the <!-- page 117--><a name="page117"></a><span +class="pagenum">p. 117</span>delight no less than to the profit +of the student. And for those of them that are touched with +passion, as in <i>The Unrealized Ideal</i> and that lovely odelet +to Mabel’s pearls, why, these are, I think, the best and +the least approachable of all.</p> +<h3>His Effect.</h3> +<p>For as English as she is, indeed, his muse is not to be +touched off save in French. To think of her is to reflect +that she is <i>delicate</i>, <i>spirituelle</i>, +<i>sémillante</i>—<i>une fine mouche</i>, +<i>allez</i>! The <i>salon</i> has +disappeared,—‘Iran, indeed, is gone, and all his +rose’; but she was born with the trick of it. You +make your bow to her in her Sheraton chair, a buckle shoe +engagingly discovered; and she rallies you with an incomparable +ease, a delicate malice, in a dialect itself a distinction; and +when she smiles it is behind or above a fan that points while it +dissembles, that assists effect as delightfully as it veils +intention. At times she is sensitive and tender, but her +graver mood has no more of violence or mawkishness than has her +gallant roguery (or enchanting archness) of viciousness or +spite. Best of all, she is her poet’s very own. +You may woo her and pursue her as you will; but the end is +invariable. ‘I follow, follow still, but I shall +never see her face.’ Even as in her master’s +finest song.</p> +<h2><!-- page 118--><a name="page118"></a><span +class="pagenum">p. 118</span>BANVILLE</h2> +<h3>His Nature.</h3> +<p>The Muse of M. de Banville was born not naked but in the most +elaborate and sumptuous evening wear that ever muse put on. +To him, indeed, there is no nature so natural as that depicted on +the boards, no humanity half so human as the actor puts on with +his paint. For him the flowers grow plucked and bound into +nosegays; passion has no existence outside the +Porte-Saint-Martin; the universe is a place of rhymes and +rhythms, the human heart a supplement to the dictionary. He +delights in babbling of green fields, and Homer, and Shakespeare, +and the Eumenides, and the ‘<i>rire +énorme</i>’ of the <i>Frogs</i> and the +<i>Lysistrata</i>. But it is suspected that he loves these +things rather as words than as facts, and that in his heart of +hearts he is better pleased with Cassandra and Columbine than +with Rosalind and Othello, with the studio Hellas of Gautier than +with the living Greece of Sophocles. Heroic objects are all +very well in their way of course: they suggest superb effects in +verse, they are of incomparable merit considered as colours and +jewels for well-turned sentences in prose. But their +function is <!-- page 119--><a name="page119"></a><span +class="pagenum">p. 119</span>purely verbal; they are the raw +material of the outward form of poesy, and they come into being +to glorify a climax, to adorn a refrain, to sparkle and sound in +odelets and rondels and triolets, to twinkle and tinkle and chime +all over the eight-and-twenty members of a fair ballade.</p> +<h3>His Art.</h3> +<p>It is natural enough that to a theory of art and life that can +be thus whimsically described we should be indebted for some of +the best writing of modern years. Our poet has very little +sympathy with fact, whether heroic or the reverse, whether +essential or accidental; but he is a rare artist in words and +cadences. He writes of ‘Pierrot, l’homme +subtil,’ and Columbine, and ‘le beau +Léandre,’ and all the marionettes of that pleasant +puppet-show which he mistakes for the world, with the rhetorical +elegance and distinction, the verbal force and glow, the rhythmic +beauty and propriety, of a rare poet; he models a group of +flowers in wax as passionately and cunningly, and with as perfect +an interest in the process and as lofty and august a faith in the +result, as if he were carving the Venus of Milo, or scoring +Beethoven’s ‘Fifth,’ or producing <i>King +Lear</i> or the <i>Ronde de Nuit</i>. He is profoundly +artificial, but he is simple and even <!-- page 120--><a +name="page120"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 120</span>innocent in +his artifice; so that he is often interesting and even +affecting. He knows so well what should be done and so well +how to do it that he not seldom succeeds in doing something that +is actually and veritably art: something, that is, in which there +is substance as well as form, in which the matter is equal with +the manner, in which the imagination is human as well as +æsthetic and the invention not merely verbal but emotional +and romantic also. The dramatic and poetic value of such +achievements in style as <i>Florise</i> and <i>Diane au Bois</i> +is open to question; but there can be no doubt that +<i>Gringoire</i> is a play. There is an abundance of +‘epical ennui’ in <i>le Sang de la Coupe</i> and +<i>les Stalactites</i>; but the ‘Nous n’irons plus au +bois’ and the charming epigram in which the poet paints a +processional frieze of Hellenic virgins are high-water marks of +verse. But, indeed, if Pierrot and Columbine were all the +race, and the footlights might only change places with the sun, +then were M. de Banville by way of being a Shakespeare.</p> +<h2><!-- page 121--><a name="page121"></a><span +class="pagenum">p. 121</span>DOBSON</h2> +<h3>Method and Effect.</h3> +<p>His style has distinction, elegance, urbanity, precision, an +exquisite clarity. Of its kind it is as nearly as possible +perfect. You think of Horace as you read; and you think of +those among our own eighteenth century poets to whom Horace was +an inspiration and an example. The epithet is usually so +just that it seems to have come into being with the noun it +qualifies; the metaphor is mostly so appropriate that it leaves +you in doubt as to whether it suggested the poem or the poem +suggested it; the verb is never in excess of the idea it would +convey; the effect of it all is that ‘something has here +got itself uttered,’ and for good. Could anything, +for instance, be better, or less laboriously said, than this +poet’s remonstrance <i>To an Intrusive Butterfly</i>? +The thing is instinct with delicate observation, so aptly and +closely expressed as to seem natural and living as the facts +observed:</p> +<blockquote><p>‘I watch you through the garden walks,<br /> + I watch you <i>float</i> between<br /> +The <i>avenues</i> of dahlia stalks,<br /> + And <i>flicker</i> on the green;<br /> +You <i>hover</i> round the garden seat,<br /> + You <i>mount</i>, you <i>waver</i>. . .</p> +<p>* * * * *</p> +<p><!-- page 122--><a name="page122"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +122</span>Across the room <i>in loops of flight</i><br /> + I watch you wayward go;<br /> +* * * * *<br /> +Before the bust you flaunt and flit—<br /> +* * * * *<br /> +You <i>pause</i>, you <i>poise</i>, you <i>circle up</i><br /> + Among my old Japan.’</p> +</blockquote> +<p>And all the rest of it. The theme is but the vagaries of +a wandering insect; but how just and true is the literary +instinct, how perfect the literary <i>savoir-faire</i>! The +words I have italicised are the only words (it seems) in the +language that are proper to the occasion; and yet how quietly +they are produced, with what apparent unconsciousness they are +set to do their work, how just and how sufficient is their +effect! In writing of this sort there is a certain artistic +good-breeding whose like is not common in these days. We +have lost the secret of it: we are too eager to make the most of +our little souls in art and too ignorant to do the best by them; +too egoistic and ‘individual,’ too clever and skilful +and well informed, to be content with the completeness of +simplicity. Even the Laureate was once addicted to glitter +for glitter’s sake; and with him to keep them in +countenance there is a thousand minor poets whose ‘little +life’ is merely a giving way to the necessities of what is +after all a condition of intellectual impotence but poorly +redeemed by a habit of artistic swagger. The singer of +Dorothy and Beau Brocade is of another race. He is +‘the co-mate and brother in exile’ of Matthew Arnold +and the poet of <i>The Unknown </i><!-- page 123--><a +name="page123"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +123</span><i>Eros</i>. Alone among modern English bards +they stand upon that ancient way which is the best: attentive to +the pleadings of the Classic Muse, heedful always to give such +thoughts as they may breed no more than their due expression.</p> +<h2><!-- page 124--><a name="page124"></a><span +class="pagenum">p. 124</span>BERLIOZ</h2> +<h3>The Critic.</h3> +<p>One of the very few great musicians who have been able to +write their own language with vigour and perspicuity, Berlioz was +for many years among the kings of the feuilleton, among the most +accomplished journalists of the best epoch of the Parisian +press. He had an abundance of wit and humour; his energy +and spirit were inexhaustible; within certain limits he was a +master of expression and style; in criticism as in music he was +an artist to his finger-ends; and if he found writing hard work +what he wrote is still uncommonly easy reading. He is one +of the few—the very few—journalists the worth of +whose achievement has been justified by collection and +republication. Louis Veuillot has been weighed in this +balance, and found wanting; and so has Janin prince of +critics. With Berlioz it is otherwise. If you are no +musician he appeals to you as a student of life; if you are +interested in life and music both he is irresistible. The +<i>Mémoires</i> is one of the two or three essays in +artistic biography which may claim equal honours with +Benvenuto’s story of himself and his own doings; the two +volumes of correspondence rank with the most interesting <!-- +page 125--><a name="page125"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +125</span>epistolary matter of these times; in the +<i>Grotesques</i>, the <i>A Travers Chants</i>, the +<i>Soirées de l’Orchestre</i> there is enough of fun +and earnest, of fine criticism and diabolical humour, of wit and +fancy and invention, to furnish forth a dozen ordinary critics, +and leave a rich remainder when all’s done. These +books have been popular for years; they are popular still; and +the reason is not far to seek. Berlioz was not only a great +musician and a brilliant writer; he was also a very interesting +and original human being. His writings are one expression +of an abnormal yet very natural individuality; and when he speaks +you are sure of something worth hearing and remembering.</p> +<h3>A Prototype.</h3> +<p>Apart from Cellini’s ruffianism there are several points +of contact between the two men. Berlioz made the roaring +goldsmith the hero of an opera, and it is not doubtful that he +was in complete sympathy with his subject. In the Frenchman +there is a full measure of the waywardness of temper, the +impatience of authority, the resolute and daring humour, the +passion of worship for what is great in art and of contempt for +what is little and bad, which entered so largely into the +composition of the <!-- page 126--><a name="page126"></a><span +class="pagenum">p. 126</span>Florentine. There is not much +to choose between the Berlioz of the <i>Débats</i>, the +author of the <i>Grotesques de la Musique</i> and the <i>A +Travers Chants</i>, and the Benvenuto who, as Il Lasca writes of +him,</p> +<blockquote><p>‘Senza alcun ritegno o barbazzale<br /> +Delle cose malfatte dicea male.’</p> +</blockquote> +<p>Benvenuto enlarges upon the joys of drawing from the life and +expatiates upon the greatness of Michelangelo in much the same +spirit and with much the same fury of admiration with which +Berlioz descants upon the rapture of conducting an orchestra and +dilates upon the beauty of <i>Divinités du Styx</i> or the +adagio of the so-called <i>Moonlight Sonata</i>. It is +written of Benvenuto, in connection with Vasari’s attack +upon that cupola of Santa Maria del Fiore which himself was wont +to call ‘the marvel of beautiful things,’ that if he +had lived to see the result,</p> +<blockquote><p>‘Certo non capirebbe nelle pelle;<br /> +<i>E saltando</i>, <i>e correndo</i>, <i>e fulminando</i>,<br /> +S’ andrebbe querelando,<br /> +E per tutto gridando ad alta voce<br /> +<i>Giorgin d’Arezzo meterebbe in croce</i>,<br /> +Oggi universalmente<br /> +Odiato della gente<br /> +<i>Quasi publico ladro e assassino</i>’;</p> +</blockquote> +<p>and you are reminded irresistibly of Berlioz betrampling +Lachnith and the ingenious Castil-Blaze and defending Beethoven +against the destructive pedantry of Fétis. And, just +as the <i>Vita</i> is invaluable as a personal record of +artist-life <!-- page 127--><a name="page127"></a><span +class="pagenum">p. 127</span>in the Italy of the Renaissance, so +are the <i>Mémoires</i> invaluable as a personal record of +the works and ways of musicians in the Paris of the Romantic +revival. Berlioz is revealed in them for one of the race of +the giants. He is the musician of 1830, as Delacroix is the +painter; and his work is as typical and as significant as the +<i>Sardanapale</i> and the <i>Faust</i> lithographs.</p> +<h3>His Theory of Autobiography.</h3> +<p>To read the <i>Mémoires</i> is to feel that in writing +them the great musician deliberately set himself to win the heart +of posterity. He believed in himself, and he believed in +his music: he divined that one day or another he would be +legendary as well as immortal; and he took an infinite deal of +pains to make certain that the ideal which was presently to +represent him in men’s minds should be an ideal of which he +could thoroughly approve. It is fair to note that in this +care for the good will and the good word of the future he was not +by any means alone. The <i>romantiques</i>, indeed, were +keen—from Napoleon downwards—to make the very best of +themselves. The poet of the <i>Légende des +Siècles</i>, for example, went early to work to arrange +the story of his life and character at least as carefully as he +composed <!-- page 128--><a name="page128"></a><span +class="pagenum">p. 128</span>the audiences of his +<i>premières</i>; and he did it with so light a hand, and +with such a sense of the importance of secrecy, that it is even +now by no means so well and widely known as it should be that +<i>Victor Hugo raconté par un Témoin de sa Vie</i> +is the work of the hero’s wife, and was not only inspired +but may also have been revised and prepared for publication by +the hero himself. Again, the dramatist of <i>Antony</i> and +the novelist of <i>Bragelonne</i> was never so happy as when he +was engaged upon the creation of what he hoped would be the +historical Dumas; he made volume after volume of delightful +reading out of his own impressions and adventures; he turned +himself into copy with a frankness, a grace, a gusto, a +persistency of egoism, which are merely enchanting. +Berlioz, therefore, had good warrant for his work. It is +more to the point, perhaps, that he would have taken it if he had +not had it. And I hold that he would have done well; for +(in any case) a great man’s notion of himself is, <i>ipso +facto</i>, better and more agreeable and convincing, especially +as he presents it, than the idea of his inferiors and admirers, +especially as presented by them. Berlioz, it is true, was +prodigal in these <i>Mémoires</i> of his of wit and fun +and devilry, of fine humanity and noble art, of good things said +and great things dreamed and done and suffered; but he was +prodigal of invention and suppression as well, and the result, +while considerably less veracious, is all the more fascinating, +<!-- page 129--><a name="page129"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +129</span>therefor. One feels that for one thing he was too +complete an artist to be merely literal and exact; that for +another he saw and felt things for himself, as Milton did before +him—Milton in the mind’s eye of Milton the noblest of +created things and to Mr. Saintsbury almost as unpleasing a +spectacle as the gifted but abject Racine; and for a third that +from his own point of view he was right, and there is an end of +it.</p> +<h2><!-- page 130--><a name="page130"></a><span +class="pagenum">p. 130</span>GEORGE ELIOT</h2> +<h3>The Ideal.</h3> +<p>It was thought that with George Eliot the Novel-with-a-Purpose +had really come to be an adequate instrument for the regeneration +of humanity. It was understood that Passion only survived +to point a moral or provide the materials of an awful tale, while +Duty, Kinship, Faith, were so far paramount as to govern Destiny +and mould the world. A vague, decided flavour of Liberty, +Equality, and Fraternity was felt to pervade the moral universe, +a chill but seemly halo of Golden Age was seen to play soberly +about things in general. And it was with confidence +anticipated that those perfect days were on the march when men +and women would propose—(from the austerest +motives)—by the aid of scientific terminology.</p> +<h3>The Real.</h3> +<p>To the Sceptic—(an apostate, and an undoubted +male)—another view was preferable. He held that +George Eliot had carried what he called the +‘Death’s-Head Style’ of art a trifle too +far. He read her books in much the same spirit and to much +the same <!-- page 131--><a name="page131"></a><span +class="pagenum">p. 131</span>purpose that he went to the +gymnasium and diverted himself with parallel bars. He +detested her technology; her sententiousness revolted while it +amused him; and when she put away her puppets and talked of them +learnedly and with understanding—instead of letting them +explain themselves, as several great novelists have been content +to do—he recalled how Wisdom crieth out in the street and +no man regardeth her, and perceived that in this case the fault +was Wisdom’s own. He accepted with the humility of +ignorance, and something of the learner’s gratitude, her +woman generally, from Romola down to Mrs. Pullet. But his +sense of sex was strong enough to make him deny the possibility +in any stage of being of nearly all the governesses in revolt it +pleased her to put forward as men; for with very few exceptions +he knew they were heroes of the divided skirt. To him +Deronda was an incarnation of woman’s rights; Tito an +‘improper female in breeches’; Silas Marner a good, +perplexed old maid, of the kind of whom it is said that they have +‘had a disappointment.’ And Lydgate alone had +aught of the true male principle about him.</p> +<h3>Appreciations.</h3> +<p>Epigrams are at best half-truths that look like whole +ones. Here is a handful about George <!-- page 132--><a +name="page132"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +132</span>Eliot. It has been said of her +books—(‘on several occasions’)—that +‘it is doubtful whether they are novels disguised as +treatises, or treatises disguised as novels’; that, +‘while less romantic than Euclid’s Elements, they are +on the whole a great deal less improving reading’; and that +‘they seem to have been dictated to a plain woman of genius +by the ghost of David Hume.’ Herself, too, has been +variously described: as ‘An Apotheosis of +Pupil-Teachery’; as ‘George Sand <i>plus</i> Science +and <i>minus</i> Sex’; as ‘Pallas with prejudices and +a corset’; as ‘the fruit of a caprice of Apollo for +the Differential Calculus.’ The comparison of her +admirable talent to ‘not the imperial violin but the grand +ducal violoncello’ seems suggestive and is not unkind.</p> +<h2><!-- page 133--><a name="page133"></a><span +class="pagenum">p. 133</span>BORROW</h2> +<h3>His Vocation.</h3> +<p>Three hundred years since Borrow would have been a gentleman +adventurer: he would have dropped quietly down the river, and +steered for the Spanish Main, bent upon making carbonadoes of +your Don. But he came too late for that, and falling upon +no sword and buckler age but one that was interested in Randal +and Spring, he accepted that he found, and did his best to turn +its conditions, into literature. As he had that admirable +instinct of making the best of things which marks the true +adventurer, he was on the whole exceeding happy. There was +no more use in sailing for Javan and Gadire; but at home there +were highways in abundance, and what is your genuine tramp but a +dry-land sailor? The Red Man is exhausted of everything but +sordidness; but under that round-shouldered little tent at the +bend of the road, beside that fire artistically built beneath +that kettle of the comfortable odours, among those horses and +colts at graze hard by, are men and women more mysterious and +more alluring to the romantic mind than any Mingo or Comanch that +ever traded a scalp. While as for your tricks <!-- page +134--><a name="page134"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 134</span>of +fence—your immortal <i>passado</i>, your <i>punto +reverso</i>—if that be no longer the right use for a +gentleman, have not Spring and Langan fought their great battle +on Worcester racecourse? and has not Cribb of +Gloucestershire—that renowned, heroic, irresistible +Thomas—beaten Molyneux the negro artist in the presence of +twenty thousand roaring Britons? and shall the practice of an art +which has rejoiced in such a master as the illustrious Game +Chicken, Hannibal of the Ring, be held degrading by an Englishman +of sufficient inches who, albeit a Tory and a High Churchman, is +at bottom as thoroughgoing a Republican as ever took the word of +command from Colonel Cromwell? And if all this fail, if he +get nobody to put on the gloves with him, if the tents of the +Romany prove barren of interest, if the king’s highway be +vacant of adventure as Mayfair, he has still philology to fall +back upon, he can still console himself with the study of strange +tongues, he can still exult in a peculiar superiority by quoting +the great Ab Gwylim where the baser sort of persons is content +with Shakespeare. So that what with these and some kindred +diversions—a little horse-whispering and ale-drinking, the +damnation of Popery, the study of the Bible—he can manage +not merely to live but to live so fully and richly as to be the +envy of some and the amazement of all. That, as life goes +and as the world wags, is given to few. <!-- page 135--><a +name="page135"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 135</span>Add to it +the credit of having written as good a book about Spain as ever +was written in any language, the happiness of having dreamed and +partly lived that book ere it was written, the perfect joy of +being roundly abused by everybody, and the consciousness of being +different from everybody and of giving at least as good as ever +you got at several things the world is silly enough to hold in +worship—as the Toryism of Sir Walter, or the niceness of +Popery, or the pleasures of Society: and is it not plain that +Borrow was a man uncommon fortunate, and that he enjoyed life as +greatly as most men not savages who have possessed the fruition +of this terrestrial sphere?</p> +<h3>Ideals and Achievements.</h3> +<p>He prepared his effects as studiously and almost as +dexterously as Dumas himself. His instinct of the +picturesque was rarely indeed at fault; he marshalled his +personages and arranged his scene with something of that passion +for effect which entered so largely into the theory of M. le +Comte de Monte-Cristo. However closely disguised, himself +is always the heroic figure, and he is ever busy in arranging +discovery and triumph. To his chance-mates he is but an +eccentric person, an amateur tinker, a slack-baked gipsy, an +unlettered hack; to his audience he is his <!-- page 136--><a +name="page136"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 136</span>own, +strong, indifferent self: presently the rest will recognise him +and he will be disdainfully content. And recognise him they +do. He throws off his disguise; there is a gape, a stare, a +general conviction that Lavengro is the greatest man in the +world; and then—as the manner of Lesage commands—the +adventure ends, the stars resume their wonted courses, and the +self-conscious Tinker-Quixote takes the road once more and passes +on to other achievements: a mad preacher to succour, a priest to +baffle, some tramp to pound into a jelly of humility, an +applewoman to mystify, a horse-chaunter to swindle, a pugilist to +study and help and portray. But whatever it be, Lavengro +emerges from the ordeal modestly, unobtrusively, quietly, most +consciously magnificent. Circumstantial as Defoe, rich in +combinations as Lesage, and with such an instinct of the +picturesque, both personal and local, as none of these possessed, +this strange wild man holds on his strange wild way, and leads +you captive to the end. His dialogue is copious and +appropriate: you feel that like Ben Jonson he is dictating rather +than reporting, that he is less faithful and exact than +imaginative and determined; but you are none the less pleased +with it, and suspicious though you be that the voice is +Lavengro’s and the hands are the hands of some one else, +you are glad to surrender to the illusion, and you regret when it +is dispelled. Moreover, that all of it <!-- page 137--><a +name="page137"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 137</span>should be +set down in racy, nervous, idiomatic English, with a kind of +eloquence at once primitive and scholarly, precious but +homely—the speech of an artist in sods and turfs—if +at first it surprise and charm yet ends by seeming so natural and +just that you go on to forget all about it and accept the whole +thing as the genuine outcome of a man’s experience which it +purports to be. Add that it is all entirely unsexual; that +there is none with so poor an intelligence of the heart as woman +moves it; that the book does not exist in which the relations +between boy and girl are more miserably misrepresented than in +<i>Lavengro</i> and <i>The Romany Rye</i>; that that picaresque +ideal of romance which, finding utterance in Hurtado de Mendoza, +was presently to appeal to such artists as Cervantes, Quevedo, +Lesage, Smollett, the Dickens of <i>Pickwick</i>, finds such +expression in <i>Lavengro</i> and <i>The Romany Rye</i> as +nowhere else; and the tale of Borrow is complete enough.</p> +<h3>Himself.</h3> +<p>Despite or because of a habit of mystification which obliged +him to jumble together the homely Real and a not less homely +Ideal, Lavengro will always, I think, be found worthy of +companionship, if only as the one exemplary artist-tramp the race +has yet achieved. The artist-tramp, the tinker who <!-- +page 138--><a name="page138"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +138</span>can write, the horse-coper with a twang of Hamlet and a +habit of Monte-Cristo—that is George Borrow. For them +that love these differences there is none in whom they are so +cunningly and quaintly blended as George Borrow; and they that +love them not may keep the other side of the road and fare in +peace elsewhither.</p> +<h2><!-- page 139--><a name="page139"></a><span +class="pagenum">p. 139</span>BALZAC</h2> +<h3>Under which King?</h3> +<p>To Goethe it seemed that every one of Balzac’s novels +had been dug out of a suffering woman’s heart: but Goethe +spoke not always wisely, and in this exacting world there be some +that not only have found fault with Balzac’s method and +results but have dared to declare his theory of society the dream +of a mind diseased. To these critics Balzac was less +observer than creator: his views were false, his vision was +distorted, and though he had ‘incomparable power’ he +had not power enough to make them accept his work. This +theory is English, and in France they find Balzac possible +enough. There is something of him in Pierre Dupont; he made +room for the work of Flaubert, Feydeau, the younger Dumas, Augier +and Zola and the brothers Goncourt; and to him Charles Baudelaire +is as some fat strange fungus to the wine-cask in whose leakings +it springs. Sainte-Beuve refused to accept him, but his +‘Pigault-Lebrun des duchesses’ is only malicious: he +resented the man’s exuberant and inordinate personality, +and made haste to apply to it some drops <!-- page 140--><a +name="page140"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 140</span>of that +sugared vitriol of which he had the secret. Taine is a +fitter critic of the <i>Comédie humaine</i> than +Sainte-Beuve; and Taine has come to other conclusions. +Acute, coarse, methodical, exhaustive, he has recognised the +greatness of one still more exhaustive, methodical, coarse, and +acute than himself. English critics fall foul of +Balzac’s women; but Taine falls foul of English critics, +and with the authority of a Parisian by profession declares that +the <i>Parisiennes</i> of the <i>Comédie</i> are +everything they ought to be—the true daughters of their +‘bon gros libertin de père.’ And while +Taine, exulting in his Marneffe and his Coralie, does solemnly +and brilliantly show that he is right and everybody else is +wrong, a later writer—English of course—can find no +better parallel of Balzac than Browning, and knows nothing in art +so like the Pauline of <i>la Peau de Chagrin</i> as the Sistine +Madonna. It is curious, this clash of opinions; and it is +plain that one or other party must be wrong. Which is +it? ‘Qui trompe-t-on ici?’ Is Taine a +better judge than Mr. Leslie Stephen or Mr. Henry James? Or +are Messrs. James and Stephen better qualified to speak with +authority than Taine? It may be that none but a Frenchman +can thoroughly and intimately apprehend in its inmost a thing so +essentially French as the <i>Comédie</i>; it is a fact +that Frenchmen of all sorts and sizes have accepted the +<i>Comédie</i> in its totality; and that is reason good +<!-- page 141--><a name="page141"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +141</span>enough for any commonplace Englishman who is lacking in +the vanity of originality to accept it also.</p> +<h3>The Fact.</h3> +<p>Balzac’s ambition was to be omnipotent. He would +be Michelangelesque, and that by sheer force of minuteness. +He exaggerated scientifically, and made things gigantic by a +microscopic fulness of detail. His Hulot was to remain the +Antony of modern romance, losing the world for the love of woman, +and content to lose it; his Marneffe, in whom is incarnated the +instinct and the science of sexual corruption, is Hulot’s +Cleopatra, and only dies because ‘elle va faire le bon +Dieu’—as who should say ‘to mash the Old +Man’; Frenhœffer, Philippe Bridau, Vautrin, Marsay, +Rastignac, Grandet, Balthazar Claës, Béatrix, +Sarrazine, Lousteau, Esther, Lucien Chardon—the list is, I +believe, some thousands strong! Also the argument is proved +in advance: there is the <i>Comédie</i> +itself—‘the new edition fifty volumes +long.’ Bad or good, foul or fair, impossible or +actual, a monstrous debauch of mind or a triumph of realisation, +there is the <i>Comédie</i>. It is forty years since +Balzac squared and laid the last stones of it; and it +exists—if a little the worse for wear: the bulk is +enormous—if the materials be in some sort worm-eaten <!-- +page 142--><a name="page142"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +142</span>and crumbling. Truly, he had ‘incomparable +power.’ He was the least capable and the most +self-conscious of artists; his observation was that of an +inspired and very careful auctioneer; he was a visionary and a +fanatic; he was gross, ignorant, morbid of mind, cruel in heart, +vexed with a strain of Sadism that makes him on the whole +corrupting and ignoble in effect. But he divined and +invented prodigiously if he observed and recorded tediously, and +his achievement remains a phantasmagoria of desperate suggestions +and strange, affecting situations and potent and inordinate +effects. He may be impossible; but there is French +literature and French society to show that he passed that way, +and had ‘incomparable power.’ The phrase is Mr. +Henry James’s, and it is hard to talk of Balzac and refrain +from it.</p> +<h2><!-- page 143--><a name="page143"></a><span +class="pagenum">p. 143</span>LABICHE</h2> +<h3>Teniers or Daumier?</h3> +<p>To the maker of Poirier and Fabrice, of Séraphine and +Giboyer, of Olympe and the Marquis d’Auberive, there were +analogies between the genius of Labiche and the genius of +Teniers. ‘C’est au premier abord,’ says +he, ‘le même aspect de caricature; c’est, en y +regardant de plus près, la même finesse de tons, la +même justesse d’expression, la même +vivacité de mouvement.’ For myself, I like to +think of Labiche as in some sort akin to Honoré +Daumier. Earnestness and accomplishment apart, he has much +in common with that king of caricaturists. The lusty +frankness, the jovial ingenuity, the keen sense of the +ridiculous, the insatiable instinct of observation, of the +draughtsman are a great part of the equipment of the +playwright. Augier notes that truth is everywhere in +Labiche’s work, and Augier is right. He is before +everything a dramatist: an artist, that is, whose function is to +tell a story in action and by the mouths of its personages; and +whimsical and absurd as he loves to be, he is never either the +one or the other at the expense of nature. He is often +careless and futile: he will squander—(as in <i>Vingt-neuf +Degrés à l’Ombre</i> and <i>l’Avare en +Gants</i> <!-- page 144--><a name="page144"></a><span +class="pagenum">p. 144</span><i>Jaunes</i>)—an idea that +rightly belongs to the domain of pure comedy on the presentation +of a most uproarious farce. But he is never any falser to +his vocation than this. Now and then, as in <i>Moi</i> and +<i>le Voyage de M. Perrichon</i>, he is an excellent comic poet, +dealing with comedy seriously as comedy should be dealt with, and +incarnating a vice or an affectation in a certain character with +impeccable justness and assurance. Now and then, as in +<i>les Petits Oiseaux</i> and <i>les Vivacités du +Capitaine Tic</i>, he is content to tell a charming story as +pleasantly as possible. Sometimes, as in <i>Célimare +le Bien-Aimé</i> (held by M. Sarcey to be the high-water +mark of the modern <i>vaudeville</i>), <i>le Plus Heureux des +Trois</i>, and <i>le Prix Martin</i>, he fights again from a +humouristic point of view that triangular duel between the wife, +the husband, and the lover which fills so large a place in the +literature of France; and then he shows the reverse of the medal +of adultery—with the husband at his ease, the seducer +haunted by the ghosts of old sins, the erring wife the slave of +her unsuspecting lord. Or again, he takes to turning the +world upside down, and—as in the <i>Cagnotte</i>, the +<i>Chapeau de Paille</i>, and the <i>Trente Millions</i>—to +producing a scheme of morals and society that seems to have been +dictated from an Olympus demoralised by champagne and +lobster. But at his wildest he never forgets that men and +women are themselves. His dialogue is always right and +appropriate, however extravagant it be. <!-- page 145--><a +name="page145"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 145</span>His vivid +and varied knowledge of life and character supplies him with +touches enough of nature and truth to make the fortune of a dozen +ordinary dramatists; and withal you feel as you read that he is +writing, as Augier says of him, to amuse himself merely, and that +he could an if he would be solemn and didactic with all the +impressiveness that a perfect acquaintance with men and things +and an admirable dramatic aptitude can bestow. The fact +that he is always in a good temper has done him some wrong in +that it has led him to be to all appearances amusing only, where +he might well have posed as a severe and serious artist. +But he is none the less true for having elected to be funny, and +there is certainly more genuine human nature and human feeling in +such drolleries as the <i>Chapeau de Paille</i> and <i>le Plus +Heureux des Trois</i> than in all the serious dramas of Ponsard +(say) and Hugo put together.</p> +<h3>Labiche.</h3> +<p>Perhaps the most characteristic and individual part of his +work is that in which he has given his invention full swing, and +allowed his humour to play its maddest pranks at will. +<i>Moi</i> is an admirable comedy, and De la Porcheraie is almost +hideously egoistic; the <i>Voyage de M. Perrichon</i> is +delightful reading, <!-- page 146--><a name="page146"></a><span +class="pagenum">p. 146</span>and Perrichon is as pompous an ass +as I know; but the <i>Chapeau de Paille</i>, the <i>Cagnotte</i>, +the <i>Trente Millions</i>, the <i>Sensitive</i>, the <i>Deux +Merles Blancs</i>, the <i>Doit-On le Dire</i>, and their +compeers—with them it is other-guess work altogether. +In these whimsical phantasmagorias men and women move and speak +as at the bidding of destinies drunk with laughing-gas. +Time and chance have gone demented, fate has turned comic poet, +society has become its own parody, everybody is the irrepressible +caricature of himself. You are in a topsy-turvy world, +enveloped in an atmosphere instinct with gaiety and folly, where +burlesque is natural and only the extravagant is normal; where +your Chimæra has grown frolic, your Nightmare is first +Cousin to the Cheshire Cat, and your Sphinxes are all upon the +spree; and where you have as little concern for what is real as +you have in that hemisphere of the great globe of +Molière—that has Scapin and Sganarelle for its +breed-bates, and Pourceaugnac for its butt, and Pancrace and +Marphurius for its scientific men, and Lélie and +Agnès for its incarnations of love and beauty. That +the creator of such a world as this should have aspired to the +Academy’s spare arm-chair—that one above all others +but just vacated by the respectable M. de Sacy—was a fact +that roused the <i>Revue des Deux Mondes</i> even to +satire. But if the arm-chair brought honour with it, then +no man better deserved the privilege than Eugène <!-- page +147--><a name="page147"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +147</span>Labiche, for he had amused and kept awake the public +for nearly forty years—for almost as long, that is, as the +<i>Revue</i> had been sending it to sleep. There are times +and seasons when a good laugh makes more for edification than +whole folios of good counsel. ‘I regarded him +not,’ quoth Sir John of one that would have moved him to +sapience, ‘and yet he talked wisely.’ Now Sir +John, whatever his opinion of the <i>Revue</i>, would never have +said all that—the second part of it he might—of +anything signed ‘Eugène Labiche,’ nor—so +I love to believe—would his august creator either. +For is not his work so full of quick, fiery, and delectable +shapes as to be perpetual sherris? And when time and season +fit, what more can the heart of man desire?</p> +<h2><!-- page 148--><a name="page148"></a><span +class="pagenum">p. 148</span>CHAMPFLEURY</h2> +<h3>The Man.</h3> +<p>Champfleury—novelist, dramatist, archæologist, +humourist, and literary historian—belonged to a later +generation than that of Petrus Borel and Philothée +O’Neddy; but he could remember the production of <i>les +Burgraves</i>, and was able of his own personal knowledge to +laugh at the melancholy speech of poor Célestin +Nanteuil—the famous ‘Il n’y a plus de +jeunesse’ of a man grown old and incredulous and apathetic +before his time: the lament over a yesterday already a hundred +years behind. He had lived in the Latin quarter; he had +dined with Flicoteaux, and listened to the orchestras of Habeneck +and Musard; he had heard the chimes at midnight with Baudelaire +and Murger, hissed the tragedies of Ponsard, applauded Deburau +and Rouvière, and seen the rise and fall of Courbet and +Dupont. If he was not of the giants he was of their +immediate successors, and he had seen them actually at +work. He had hacked for Balzac, and read romantic prose at +Victor Hugo’s; he had lived so near the red waistcoat of +Théophile Gautier as to dare to go up and down in Paris +(under <!-- page 149--><a name="page149"></a><span +class="pagenum">p. 149</span>the inspiration of the artist of +<i>la Femme qui taille la Soupe</i>) in ‘un habit en +bouracan vert avec col à la Marat, un gilet de couleur +bachique, et une culotte en drap d’un jaune assez +malséant,’ together with ‘une triomphante +cravate de soie jaune’—a vice of Baudelaire’s +inventing—and ‘un feutre ras dans le goût de la +coiffure de Camille Desmoulins.’ And having seen for +himself, he could judge for himself as well. From first to +last he showed himself to be out of sympathy with the ambitions +and effects of romanticism. He was born a humourist and an +observer, and he became a ‘realist’ as soon as he +began to write.</p> +<h3>The Writer.</h3> +<p>His work is an antipodes not only of <i>Hernani</i> and +<i>Notre-Dame</i> but of <i>Sarrazine</i> and <i>la Cousine +Bette</i> and <i>Béatrix</i> as well. For the +commonplace types and incidents, the everyday passions and +fortunes, of the <i>Aventures de Mariette</i> and the +<i>Mascarade de la Vie Parisienne</i> represent a reaction not +alone against the sublimities and the extravagance of Hugo but +against the heroic aggrandisement of things trivial of Balzac as +well. True, they deal with kindred subjects, and they +purport to be a record of life as it is and not of life as it +<!-- page 150--><a name="page150"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +150</span>ought to be. But the pupil’s point of view +is poles apart from the master’s; his intention, his +ambition, his inspiration, belong to another order of +ideas. He contents himself with observing and noting and +reflecting; with making prose prosaic and adding sobriety and +plainness to a plain and sober story; with being merely curious +and intelligent; with using experience not as an intoxicant but +as a staple of diet; with considering fact not as the raw +material of inspiration but as inspiration itself. Between +an artist of this sort—pedestrian, good-tempered, touched +with malice, a little cynical—and the noble desperadoes of +1830 there could be little sympathy; and there seems no reason +why the one should be the others’ historian, and none why, +if their historian he should be, his history should be other than +partial and narrow—than at best an achievement in special +pleading. But Champfleury’s was a personality +apart. His master quality was curiosity; he was interested +in everything, and he was above all things interested in men and +women; he had a liberal mind and no prejudices; he had the +scientific spirit and the scientific intelligence, if he +sometimes spoke with the voice of the humourist and in the terms +of the artist in words; and his studies in romanticism are far +better literature than his experiments in fiction.</p> +<h2><!-- page 151--><a name="page151"></a><span +class="pagenum">p. 151</span>LONGFELLOW</h2> +<h3>Sea Poets.</h3> +<p>The ocean as confidant, a Laertes that can neither avoid his +Hamlets nor bid them hold their peace, is a modern +invention. Byron and Shelley discovered it; Heine took it +into his confidence, and told it the story of his loves; +Wordsworth made it a moral influence; Browning loved it in his +way, but his way was not often the poet’s; to Matthew +Arnold it was the voice of destiny, and its message was a message +of despair; Hugo conferred with it as with an humble friend, and +uttered such lofty things over it as are rarely heard upon the +lips of man. And so with living lyrists each after his +kind. Lord Tennyson listens and looks until it strikes him +out an undying note of passion, or yearning, or regret—</p> +<blockquote><p> ‘Sunset and evening +star,<br /> +And one clear call for me’;</p> +</blockquote> +<p>Mr. Swinburne maddens with the wind and the sounds and the +scents of it, until there passes into his verse a something of +its vastness and its vehemency, the rapture of its inspiration, +the palpitating, many-twinkling miracle of its light; Mr. William +Morris has been taken with the manner of its melancholy; while to +Whitman it <!-- page 152--><a name="page152"></a><span +class="pagenum">p. 152</span>has been ‘the great +Camerado’ indeed, for it gave him that song of the brown +bird bereft of his mate in whose absence the half of him had not +been told to us.</p> +<h3>Longfellow.</h3> +<p>But to Longfellow alone was it given to see that stately +galley which Count Arnaldos saw; his only to hear the steersman +singing that wild and wondrous song which none that hears it can +resist, and none that has heard it may forget. Then did he +learn the old monster’s secret—the word of his charm, +the core of his mystery, the human note in his music, the quality +of his influence upon the heart and the mind of man; and then did +he win himself a place apart among sea poets. With the most +of them it is a case of <i>Ego et rex meus</i>: It is I and the +sea, and my egoism is as valiant and as vocal as the +other’s. But Longfellow is the spokesman of a +confraternity; what thrills him to utterance is the spirit of +that strange and beautiful freemasonry established as long ago as +when the first sailor steered the first keel out into the +unknown, irresistible water-world, and so established the +foundations of the eternal brotherhood of man with ocean. +To him the sea is a place of mariners and ships. In his +verse the rigging creaks, the white sail fills and crackles, +there are blown smells <!-- page 153--><a +name="page153"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 153</span>of pine and +hemp and tar; you catch the home wind on your cheeks; and old +shipmen, their eyeballs white in their bronzed faces, with silver +rings and gaudy handkerchiefs, come in and tell you moving +stories of the immemorial, incommunicable deep. He abides +in a port; he goes down to the docks, and loiters among the +galiots and brigantines, he hears the melancholy song of the +chanty-men; he sees the chips flying under the shipwright’s +adze; he smells the pitch that smokes and bubbles in the +caldron. And straightway he falls to singing his variations +on the ballad of Count Arnaldos; and the world listens, for its +heart beats in his song.</p> +<h2><!-- page 154--><a name="page154"></a><span +class="pagenum">p. 154</span>TENNYSON</h2> +<h3>St. Agnes’ Eve.</h3> +<p>In Keats’s <i>St. Agnes’ Eve</i> nothing is white +but the heroine. It is winter, and ‘bitter +chill’; the hare ‘limps trembling through the frozen +grass; the owl is a-cold for all his feathers; the +beadsman’s fingers are numb, his breath is frosted; and at +an instant of special and peculiar romance</p> +<blockquote><p> ‘The +frost-wind blows<br /> +Like Love’s alarum, pattering the sharp sleet<br /> +Against the window-panes.’</p> +</blockquote> +<p>But there is no snow. The picture is pure colour: it +blushes with blood of queens and kings; it glows with +‘splendid dyes,’ like the ‘tiger-moth’s +deep-damasked wings’—with ‘rose bloom,’ +and warm gules,’ and ‘soft amethyst’; it is +loud with music and luxurious with ‘spiced dainties,’ +with lucent syrops tinct with cinnamon,’ with ‘manna +and dates,’ the fruitage of Fez and ‘cedared +Lebanon’ and ‘silken Samarcand.’ Now, the +Laureate’s <i>St. Agnes’ Eve</i> is an ecstasy of +colourless perfection. The snows sparkle on the convent +roof; the ‘first snowdrop’ vies with St. Agnes’ +virgin bosom; the moon shines an ‘argent round’ in +the ‘frosty skies’; and in a transport of purity the +lady prays:</p> +<blockquote><p><!-- page 155--><a name="page155"></a><span +class="pagenum">p. 155</span>‘Break up thy heavens, O Lord! +and far,<br /> + Through all the starlight keen,<br /> +Draw me thy bride, a glittering star,<br /> + In raiment white and clean.’</p> +</blockquote> +<p>It is all coldly, miraculously stainless: as somebody has +said, ‘la vraie <i>Symphonie en Blanc +Majeur</i>.’</p> +<h3>Indian Summer.</h3> +<p>And at four-score the poet of <i>St. Agnes’ Eve</i> is +still our greatest since the Wordsworth of certain sonnets and +the two immortal odes: is still the one Englishman of whom it can +be stated and believed that Elisha is not less than Elijah. +His verse is far less smooth and less lustrous than in the +well-filed times of <i>In Memoriam</i> and the Arthurian +idylls. But it is also far more plangent and affecting; it +shows a larger and more liberal mastery of form and therewith a +finer, stronger, saner sentiment of material; in its display of +breadth and freedom in union with particularity, of +suggestiveness with precision, of swiftness of handling with +completeness of effect, it reminds you of the later magic of +Rembrandt and the looser and richer, the less artful-seeming but +more ample and sumptuous, of the styles of Shakespeare. And +the matter is worthy of the manner. Everywhere are +greatness and a high imagination moving at ease in the gold <!-- +page 156--><a name="page156"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +156</span>armour of an heroic style. There are passages in +<i>Demeter and Persephone</i> that will vie with the best in +<i>Lucretius</i>; <i>Miriam</i> is worth a wilderness of +<i>Aylmer’s Fields</i>; <i>Owd Roä</i> is one of the +best of the studies in dialect; in <i>Happy</i> there are stanzas +that recall the passion of <i>Rizpah</i>; nothing in modern +English so thrills and vibrates with the prophetic inspiration, +the fury of the seer, as <i>Vastness</i>; the verses <i>To Mary +Boyle</i>—(in the same stanza as Musset’s <i>le Mie +Prigioni</i>)—are marked by such a natural grace of form +and such a winning ‘affectionateness,’ to coin a +word, of intention and accomplishment as Lord Tennyson has never +surpassed nor very often equalled. In <i>Vastness</i> the +insight into essentials, the command of primordial matter, the +capacity of vital suggestion, are gloriously in evidence from the +first line to the last. Here is no touch of ingenuity, no +trace of ‘originality,’ no single sign of cleverness; +the rhymes are merely inevitable—there is no visible +transformation of metaphor in deference to their suggestions; +nothing is antic, peculiar, superfluous; but here in epic unity +and completeness, here is a sublimation of experience expressed +by means of a sublimation of style. It is unique in +English, and for all that one can see it is like to remain unique +this good while yet. The impression you take is one of +singular loftiness of purpose and a rare nobility of mind. +Looking upon life and time and the spirit of man from the <!-- +page 157--><a name="page157"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +157</span>heights of his eighty years, it has been given to the +Master Poet to behold much that is hid to them in the plain or on +the slopes beneath him, and beholding it to frame and utter a +message so lofty in style and in significance so potent that it +sounds as of this world indeed but from the confines of +experience, the farthest kingdoms of mortality.</p> +<h3>His Mastership.</h3> +<p>It is to note, too, that the Laureate of to-day deals with +language in a way that to the Tennyson of the beginning +was—unhappily—impossible. In those early years +he neither would nor could have been responsible for the +magnificent and convincing rhythms of <i>Vastness</i>, the +austere yet passionate shapeliness of <i>Happy</i>, the effects +of vigour and variety realised in <i>Parnassus</i>. For in +those early years he was rather Benvenuto than Michelangelo, he +was more of a jeweller than a sculptor, the phrase was too much +to him, the inspiration of the incorrect too little. All +that is changed, and for the best. Most interesting is it +to the artist to remark how impatient—(as the Milton of the +<i>Agonistes</i> was)—of rhyme and how confident in rhythm +is the whilome poet of <i>Oriana</i> and <i>The Lotus-Eaters</i> +and <i>The Vision of Sin</i>; and how this impatience and this +confidence are revealed not merely in a piece of mysticism naked +yet unashamed as <i>The Gleam</i>—(whose movement <!-- page +158--><a name="page158"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +158</span>with its constancy in double endings and avoidance of +triplets is perhaps a little tame)—but also in what should +have been a popular piece: the ode, to wit, <i>On the Jubilee of +Queen Victoria</i>. In eld, indeed, the craftsman inclines +to play with his material: he is conscious of mastery; he is in +the full enjoyment of his own; he indulges in experiments which +to him are as a crown of glory and to them that come after +him—to the noodles that would walk in his ways without +first preparing themselves by prayer and study and a life of +abnegation—are only the devil in disguise. The +Rembrandt of <i>The Syndics</i>, the Shakespeare of <i>The +Tempest</i> and <i>Lear</i>—what are these but pits for the +feet of the Young Ass? and what else will be the Tennyson of +<i>Vastness</i> and <i>The Gleam</i>? ‘Lord,’ +quoth Dickens years ago in respect of the <i>Idylls</i> or of +<i>Maud</i>, ‘what a pleasure it is to come across a man +that can <i>write</i>!’ He also was an artist in +words; and what he said then he would say now with greater +emphasis and more assurance. From the first Lord Tennyson +has been an exemplar; and now in these new utterances, his +supremacy is completely revealed. There is no fear now that +‘All will grow the flower, For all have got the +seed’; for then it was a mannerism that people took and +imitated, and now—! Now it is art; it is the greater +Shakespeare, the consummate Rembrandt, the unique Velasquez; and +they may rise to it that can.</p> +<h2><!-- page 159--><a name="page159"></a><span +class="pagenum">p. 159</span>GORDON HAKE</h2> +<h3>Aim and Equipment.</h3> +<p>Dr. Hake is one of the most earnest and original of +poets. He has taken nothing from his contemporaries, but +has imagined a message for himself, and has chosen to deliver it +in terms that are wholly his own. For him the accidents and +trivialities of individualism, the transitory and changing facts +that make up the external aspect of an age or a character, can +hardly be said to exist. He only concerns himself with +absolutes—the eternal elements of human life and the +immutable tides of human destiny. It is of these that the +stuff of his message is compacted; it is from these that its +essence is distilled. His talk is not of Arthur and +Guinevere, nor Chastelard and Atalanta, nor Paracelsus and Luria +and Abt Vogler; of ‘the drawing-room and the deanery’ +he has nothing to say; nothing of the tendencies of Strauss and +Renan, nothing of the New Renaissance, nothing of Botticelli, nor +the ballet, nor the text of Shakespeare, nor the joys of the +book-hunter, nor the quaintness of Queen Anne, nor the morals of +Helen of Troy. To these he prefers the mystery of death, +the significance of life, the quality of <!-- page 160--><a +name="page160"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 160</span>human and +divine love; the hopes and fears and the joys and sorrows that +are the perdurable stuff of existence, the inexhaustible and +unchanging principles of activity in man. Now it is only to +the few that reduced to their simplest expression the +‘eternal verities’ are engaging and impressive. +To touch the many they must be conveyed in human terms; they must +be presented not as impersonal abstractions, not as matter for +the higher intelligence and the higher emotions, but as living, +breathing, individual facts, vivid with the circumstance of +terrene life, quick with the thoughts and ambitions of the hour, +full charged with familiar and neighbourly associations. +All this with Dr. Hake is by no means inevitable. He loves +to symbolise; he does not always care that the symbol shall be +appropriate and plain. He prefers to work in allegory and +emblem; but he does not always see that, however representative +to himself, his emblems and his allegories may not be altogether +representative to the world. His imagination is at once +quaint and far-reaching—at once peculiar and ambitious; and +it is often guilty of what is recondite and remote. In his +best work—in <i>Old Souls</i>, for instance, and <i>Old +Morality</i>—the quaintness is merely decorative: the +essentials are sound and human enough to be of lasting interest +and to have a capacity of common application. Elsewhere his +imagery is apt to become strange and unaffecting, his fancy to +work in curious and desolate <!-- page 161--><a +name="page161"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 161</span>ways, his +message to sound abstruse and strange; and these effects too are +deepened by the qualities and the merits of his style. It +is peculiarly his own, but it is not always felicitous. +There are times when it has the true epic touch—or at least +as much of it as is possible in an age of detail and elaboration; +there are times when it has a touch of the pathetic—when in +homeliness of phrase and triviality of rhythm it is hardly to be +surpassed; and there are times, as in <i>The Snake Charmer</i> +when, as in certain pages in the work of Richard Wagner, it is so +studiously laboured and so heavily charged with ornament and +colour as to be almost pedantic in infelicity, almost repellent +by sheer force of superfluous and elaborate suggestiveness. +Last of all, in an epoch trained upon the passionate and subtle +cadences of the Laureate and the large-moulded, ample, +irresistible melodies of Mr. Swinburne, Dr. Hake chooses to deal +in rhythms of the utmost naïveté and in metrical +forms that are simplicity itself.</p> +<h2><!-- page 162--><a name="page162"></a><span +class="pagenum">p. 162</span>LANDOR</h2> +<h3>Anti-Landor.</h3> +<p>To the many, Landor has always been more or less +unapproachable, and has always seemed more or less shadowy and +unreal. To begin with, he wrote for himself and a few +others, and principally for himself. Then, he wrote +waywardly and unequally as well as selfishly; he published pretty +much at random; the bulk of his work is large; and the majority +has passed him by for writers more accessible and work less +freakish and more comprehensible. It is probable too that +even among those who, inspired by natural temerity or the +intemperate curiosity of the general reader, have essayed his +conquest and set out upon what has been described as ‘the +Adventure of the Seven Volumes which are Seven Valleys of Dry +Bones,’ but few have returned victorious. Of course +the Seven Volumes are a world. But (it is objected) the +world is peculiar in pattern, abounding in antres vast and +desarts idle, in gaps and precipices and ‘manifest +solutions of continuity,’ and enveloped in an atmosphere +which ordinary lungs <!-- page 163--><a name="page163"></a><span +class="pagenum">p. 163</span>find now too rare and now too dense +and too anodyne. Moreover, it is peopled chiefly with +abstractions: bearing noble and suggestive names but all +surprisingly alike in stature and feature, all more or less +incapable of sustained emotion and even of logical argument, all +inordinately addicted to superb generalities and a kind of +monumental skittishness, all expressing themselves in a style +whose principal characteristic is a magnificent monotony, and all +apparently the outcome of a theory that to be wayward is to be +creative, that human interest is a matter of apophthegms and +oracular sentences, and that axiomatic and dramatic are identical +qualities and convertible terms. This is the opinion of +those adventurers in whom defeat has generated a sense of injury +and an instinct of antagonism. Others less fortunate still +have found Landor a continent of dulness and futility—have +come to consider the Seven Volumes as so many aggregations of +tedium. Such experiences are one-sided and partial no +doubt; and considered from a certain point of view they seem +worthless enough. But they exist, and they are in some sort +justified. Landor, when all is said, remains a +writers’ writer; and for my part I find it impossible not +to feel a certain sympathy with them that hesitate to accept him +for anything else.</p> +<h3>His Drama.</h3> +<p><!-- page 164--><a name="page164"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +164</span>Again, to some of us Lander’s imagination is not +only inferior in kind but poverty-stricken in degree; his +creative faculty is limited by the reflection that its one +achievement is Landor; his claim to consideration as a dramatic +writer is negatived by the fact that, poignant as are the +situations with which he loved to deal, he was apparently +incapable of perceiving their capacities: inasmuch as he has +failed completely and logically to develop a single one of them; +inasmuch, too, as he has never once succeeded in conceiving, much +less in picturing, such a train of conflicting emotions as any +one of the complications from which he starts might be supposed +to generate. To many there is nothing Greek about his +dramatic work except the absence of stage directions; and to +these that quality of ‘Landorian abruptness’ which +seems to Mr. Sidney Colvin to excuse so many of its shortcomings +is identical with a certain sort of what in men of lesser mould +is called stupidity.</p> +<h2><!-- page 165--><a name="page165"></a><span +class="pagenum">p. 165</span>HOOD</h2> +<h3>How Much of Him?</h3> +<p>Hood wrote much for bread, and he wrote much under pressure of +all manner of difficulties—want of health and want of +money, the hardship of exile and the bitterness of comparative +failure; and not a little of what he produced is the merest +journalism, here to-day and gone to-morrow. At his highest +he is very high, but it was not given to him to enjoy the +conditions under which great work is produced: he had neither +peace of body nor health of mind, his life from first to last was +a struggle with sickness and misfortune. How is it possible +to maintain an interest in all he wrote, when two-thirds of it +was produced with duns at the door and a nurse in the other room +and the printer’s-devil waiting in the hall? Of his +admirable courage, his fine temper, his unfailing goodness of +heart, his incorruptible honesty, it were hard to speak too +highly; for one has but to read the story of his life to wonder +that he should have written anything at all. At his +happiest he had the gift of laughter; at his deepest and truest +the more precious gift of tears. But for him there were +innumerable hours when the best he could <!-- page 166--><a +name="page166"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 166</span>affect was +the hireling’s motley; when his fun and his pathos alike +ran strained and thin; when the unique poet and wit became a mere +comic rhymester. Is it just to his memory that it should be +burdened with such a mass of what is already antiquated? +But one answer is possible. The immortal part of Hood might +be expressed into a single tiny volume.</p> +<h3>Death’s Jest-Book.</h3> +<p>Thackeray preferred Hood’s passion to his fun; and +Thackeray knew. Hood had an abundance of a certain sort of +wit, the wit of odd analogies, of remote yet familiar +resemblances, of quaint conceits and humourous and unexpected +quirks. He made not epigrams but jokes, sometimes purely +intellectual but nearly always with the verbal quality as +well. The wonderful jingle called <i>Miss +Kilmansegg</i>—hard and cold and glittering as the gold +that gleams in it—abounds in capital types of both. +But for an example of both here is a stanza taken at random from +the <i>Ode to the Great Unknown</i>:—</p> +<blockquote><p>‘Thou <i>Scottish Barmecide</i>, feeding the +hunger<br /> + Of curiosity with airy gammon;<br /> + Thou mystery-monger,<br /> + <i>Dealing it out like middle cut of salmon</i><br +/> +<i>That people buy and can’t make head or tail of +it</i>,’</p> +</blockquote> +<p>and so forth, and so forth: the first a specimen <!-- page +167--><a name="page167"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 167</span>of +oddness of analogy—the joke intellectual; the second a jest +in which the intellectual quality is complicated with the +verbal. Of rarer merit are that conceit of the door which +was shut with such a slam ‘it sounded like a wooden +d---n,’ and that mad description of the demented +mariner,—</p> +<blockquote><p>‘His head was <i>turned</i>, and so he +<i>chewed</i><br /> +<i>His pigtail</i> till he died,’—</p> +</blockquote> +<p>which is a pun as unexpected and imaginative as any that +exists, not excepting even Lamb’s renowned achievement, the +immortal ‘I say, Porter, is that your own Hare or a +Wig?’ But as a punster Hood is merely +unsurpassable. The simplest and the most complex, the +wildest and the most obvious, the straightest and the most +perverse, all puns came alike to him. The form was his +natural method of expression. His prose +extravaganzas—even to the delightful <i>Friend in +Need</i>—are pretty well forgotten; his one novel is very +hard to read; there is far less in <i>Up the Rhine</i> than in +<i>Humphry Clinker</i> after all; we have been spoiled for +<i>Lycus the Centaur</i> and <i>The Plea of the Midsummer +Fairies</i> by the rich and passionate verse of the Laureate, the +distinction, and the measure of Arnold, the sumptuous diction and +the varied and enchanting music of <i>Atalanta</i> and +<i>Hesperia</i> and <i>Erechtheus</i>. We care little for +the old-fashioned whimsicality of the <i>Odes</i>, and little for +such an inimitable farrago of vulgarisms, such a <i>reductio ad +absurdum</i> of sentiment and style, as <!-- page 168--><a +name="page168"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 168</span><i>The Lost +Child</i>. But the best of Hood’s puns are amusing +after forty years. They are the classics of verbal +extravagance, and they are a thousand times better known than +<i>The Last Man</i>, though that is a work of genius, and almost +as popular as the <i>Song of the Shirt</i>, the <i>Bridge of +Sighs</i>, the <i>Dream of Eugene Aram</i> themselves. By +an odd chance, too, the rhymes in which they are set have all a +tragic theme. ‘Tout ce qui touche à la +mort,’ says Champfleury, ‘est d’une +gaieté folle.’ Hood found out that much for +himself before Champfleury had begun to write. His most +riotous ballads are ballads of death and the grave. Tim +Turpin does murder and is hanged</p> +<blockquote><p>‘On Horsham drop, and none can say<br /> + He took a drop too much’;</p> +</blockquote> +<p>Ben Battle entwines a rope about his melancholy neck, and for +the second time in life <i>enlists him in the line</i>; Young Ben +expires of grief for the falsehood of Sally Brown: Lieutenant +Luff drinks himself into his grave; John Day the amorous +coachman,</p> +<blockquote><p>‘With back too broad to be conceived<br /> + By any narrow mind,’</p> +</blockquote> +<p>pines to nothingness, and is found heels uppermost in his +cruel mistress’s water-butt. To Hood, with his grim +imagination and his strange fantastic humour, death was meat and +drink. It is as though he saw so much of the +‘execrable Shape’ <!-- page 169--><a +name="page169"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 169</span>that at +last the pair grew friends, and grinned whenever they +foregathered even in thought.</p> +<h3>His Immortal Part.</h3> +<p>Was Thackeray right, then, in resenting the waste of +Hood’s genius upon mere comicalities? I think he was; +but only to a certain point. Hood was a true poet: but it +was not until after years of proof and endeavour that he +discovered the use to which his powers could best be put and the +material on which they could best be employed. He worked +hard and with but partial success at poetry all his life +long. He passed his life in punning and making comic +assaults on the Queen’s English; but he was author all the +while of <i>The Plea of the Midsummer Fairies</i>, the <i>Ode to +Melancholy</i>, <i>Hero and Leander</i>, <i>Lycus the +Centaur</i>, and a score and more of lovable and moving ballads; +and he had won himself a name with two such capital examples of +melodrama as <i>The Last Man</i> (1826) and <i>The Dream of +Eugene Aram</i> (1829). But as a poet he profited +little. The public preferred him as a buffoon; and not +until his last years (and then anonymously) was he able to utter +his highest word. All was made ready against his +coming—the age, the subject, the public mind, the public +capacity of emotion; and in <i>The Song of the Shirt</i> he +approved himself a great <!-- page 170--><a +name="page170"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +170</span>singer. In the days of <i>Lycus the Centaur</i> +and the <i>Midsummer Fairies</i> he could no more have written it +than the public could have heeded had he written. But times +were changed—Dickens had come, and the humanitarian +epoch—and the great song went like fire. So, a year +or two after, did <i>The Bridge of Sighs</i>. That, says +Thackeray, ‘was his Corunna, his Heights of +Abraham—sickly, weak, wounded, he fell in the full blaze +and fame of that great victory.’ Could he have +repeated it had he lived? Who knows? In both these +irresistible appeals to the heart of man the material is of equal +value and importance with the form; and in poetry such material +is rare. A brace of such songs is possible to a poet; ten +couples are not. It is Hood’s immortality that he +sang these two. Almost in the uttering they went the round +of the world; and it is not too much to say of them that they +will only pass with the language.</p> +<h2><!-- page 171--><a name="page171"></a><span +class="pagenum">p. 171</span>LEVER</h2> +<h3>How He Lived.</h3> +<p>The story of Lever’s life and adventures only wants +telling to be as irresistibly attractive as Lorrequer’s or +O’Malley’s own. Born in Dublin, of an English +father and an Irish mother, he lived to be essentially +cosmopolitan and a <i>viveur</i> of the first magnitude. At +eight he was master of his schoolmaster—a gentleman given +to flogging but not learned in Greek, and therefore a proper +subject for a certain sort of blackmailing. He was not an +industrious boy; but he was apt and ready with his tongue, he was +an expert in fencing and the dance, he was good at improvising +and telling stories, it is on record that he pleaded and won the +cause of himself and certain of his schoolmates accused before a +magistrate of riot and outrage. At college he found work +for his high spirits in wild fun and the perpetration of +practical jokes. He and his chum Ottiwell, the original of +Frank Webber, behaved to their governors, teachers, and +companions very much as Charles O’Malley and the +redoubtable Frank behave to theirs. Lever was excellent at +a street-ballad, and made and sang them in the rags of Rhoudlim, +just <!-- page 172--><a name="page172"></a><span +class="pagenum">p. 172</span>as Frank Webber does; and he +personated Cusack the surgeon to Cusack’s class, just as +Frank Webber personates the dean to <i>his</i> class. On +the whole, indeed, he must have been as gamesome and volatile a +nuisance as even Dublin has endured. On leaving college he +took charge of an emigrant ship bound for Quebec. Arrived +in Canada, he plunged into the backwoods, was affiliated to a +tribe of Indians, and had to escape like Bagenal Daly at the risk +of his life. Then he went to Germany, became a student at +Göttingen under Blumenbach, was heart and soul a Bursch, and +had the honour of seeing Goethe at Weimar. His diploma +gained, he went to Clare to do battle with the cholera and gather +materials for <i>Harry Lorrequer</i>. After this he was for +some time dispensary doctor at Portstewart, where he met +Prebendary Maxwell, the wild parson who wrote <i>Captain +Blake</i>: so that here and now it is natural to find him leaping +turf-carts and running away from his creditors. At +Brussels, where he physicked the British Embassy and the British +tourist, he knew all sorts of people—among them +Commissioner Meade, the original of Major Monsoon, and Cardinal +Pecci, the original of Leo <span +class="smcap">xiii.</span>—and saw all sorts of life, and +ran into all sorts of extravagance: until of a sudden, he is back +again in the capital, editing the <i>Dublin University +Magazine</i>. Of course he was the maddest editor <!-- page +173--><a name="page173"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +173</span>ever seen. For him cards, horses, and high living +were not luxuries but necessaries of life; yet all the while he +believed devoutly in medicine, and with his family indulged with +freedom in the use of calomel and such agents. Presently he +abandoned Ireland for the Continent. He took his horses +with him, and astonished Europe with a four-in-hand of his +own. Carlsruhe knew him well, as Belgium and the Rhine had +known him. He only left the Reider Schloss at Bregenz to +conquer Italy; and at Florence, Spezzia, and finally Trieste, he +shone like himself.</p> +<h3>What He Was.</h3> +<p>He was a born <i>poseur</i>. His vanity made him one of +the worst—the most excessive—of talkers; go where he +would and do what he might, he was unhappy if the first place +were another’s. In all he did he was greedy to excel, +and to excel incontestably. Like his own Bagenal Daly he +would have taken the big jump with the reins in his mouth and his +hands tied, ‘just to show the English Lord-Lieutenant how +an Irish gentleman rides.’ He was all his life long +confounding an English Lord-Lieutenant of some sort; for without +display he would have pined away and died. At Templeogue +<!-- page 174--><a name="page174"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +174</span>he lived at the rate of £3,000 a year on an +income of £1,200; at Brussels he kept open house on little +or nothing for all the wandering grandees of Europe; at Florence +they used to liken the cavalcade from his house to a procession +from Franconi’s; he found living in a castle and spending +£10 a day on his horses the finest fun in the world. +He existed but to bewilder and dazzle, and had he not been a +brilliant and distinguished novelist he would have been a +brilliant and distinguished something else. As he kept open +house everywhere, as he was fond of every sort of luxury, as he +loved not less to lend money to his intimates than to lose it to +them at cards, and as he got but poor prices for his novels and +was not well paid for his consular services, it is not easy to +see how he managed to make ends meet.</p> +<h3>How He Wrote.</h3> +<p>Nor is it easy to see how he contrived to produce his +novels. He was too passionately addicted to society and the +enjoyment of life to spare an instant from them if he could help +it; and the wonder is not that he should have written so well but +that he should have written at all. Fortunately or the +other thing, his books cost him no effort. <!-- page +175--><a name="page175"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 175</span>He +wrote or dictated at a gallop and, his copy once produced, had +finished his work. He abhorred revision, and while keenly +sensitive to blame and greedy of praise he ceased to care for his +books as soon as they had left his desk. That he was not in +scarce any sense an artist is but too clear. He never +worked on a definite plan nor was at any pains to contrive a +plot; he depended on the morning’s impressions for the +evening’s task, and wrote <i>Con Cregan</i> under the +immediate influence of a travelled Austrian, who used to talk to +him every night ere he sat down to his story. But he was a +wonderful improvisatore. He had imagination—(even +romantic imagination: as the episode of Menelaus Crick in <i>Con +Cregan</i> will show)—a keen, sure eye for character, +incomparable facility in composition, an inexhaustible fund of +shrewdness, whimsicality, high spirits, an admirable knack of +dialogue; and as consul at Spezzia and at Trieste, as a +fashionable practitioner at Brussels, as dispensary doctor on the +wild Ulster coast, he was excellently placed for the kind of +literature it was in him to produce. Writing at random and +always under the spur of necessity, he managed to inform his work +with extraordinary vitality and charm. His books were only +made to sell, but it is like enough that they will also live, for +they are yet well nigh as readable as at first, and Nina and Kate +O’Donoghue—(for instance)—seem destined to go +<!-- page 176--><a name="page176"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +176</span>down to posterity as typical and representative. +Had their author taken art seriously, and devoted all his energy +to its practice, he could scarce have done more than this. +Perhaps, indeed, he would not have done so much. It could +never have been Lorrequer’s to ‘build the lofty +rhyme.’ It was an honest as well as a brilliant +creature; and I believe we should all have suffered if some +avenging chance had borne it in upon him that to be really lofty +your rhyme must of necessity be not blown upwards like a bubble +but built in air like a cathedral. He would, I take it, +have experimentalised in repentance to the extent of elaborating +his creations and chastising his style; and, it may be, he would +have contrived but to beggar his work of interest and correct +himself of charm. A respectable ambition, no doubt; but how +much better to be the rough-and-ready artist of Darby the Beast +and Micky Free, the humane and charming rattlepate to whom we owe +Paul Goslett and the excellent and pleasing Potts!</p> +<h2><!-- page 177--><a name="page177"></a><span +class="pagenum">p. 177</span>JEFFERIES</h2> +<h3>His Virtue.</h3> +<p>I love to think of Jefferies as a kind of literary +Leatherstocking. His style, his mental qualities, the field +he worked in, the chase he followed, were peculiar to himself, +and as he was without a rival, so was he without a second. +Reduced to its simplest expression, his was a mind compact of +observation and of memory. He writes as one who watches +always, who sees everything, who forgets nothing. As his +lot was cast in country places, among wood and pasturage and +corn, by coverts teeming with game and quick with insect life, +and as withal he had the hunter’s patience and +quick-sightedness, his faculty of looking and listening and of +noting and remembering, his readiness of deduction and insistence +of pursuit—there entered gradually into his mind a greater +quantity of natural England, her leaves and flowers, her winds +and skies, her wild things and tame, her beauties and humours and +discomforts, than was ever, perhaps, the possession of writing +Briton. This property he conveyed to his countrymen in a +series of books of singular freshness and interest. The +style is too formal and sober, the English seldom other than +homely and <!-- page 178--><a name="page178"></a><span +class="pagenum">p. 178</span>sufficient; there is overmuch of the +reporter and nothing like enough of the artist, the note of +imagination, the right creative faculty. But they are +remarkable books. It is not safe to try and be beforehand +with posterity, but in the case of such works as the +<i>Gamekeeper</i> and <i>Wild Life</i> and with such a precedent +as that established by the <i>Natural History of Selborne</i> +such anticipation seems more tempting and less hazardous than +usual. One has only to think of some mediæval +Jefferies attached to the staff of Robin Hood, and writing about +Needwood and Charnwood as his descendant wrote about the South +Downs, to imagine an historical document of priceless value and +inexhaustible interest. And in years to be, when the whole +island is one vast congeries of streets, and the fox has gone +down to the bustard and the dodo, and outside museums of +comparative anatomy the weasel is not and the badger has ceased +from the face of the earth, it is not doubtful that the +<i>Gamekeeper</i> and <i>Wild Life</i> and the +<i>Poacher</i>—epitomising, as they will, the rural England +of certain centuries before—will be serving as material and +authority for historical descriptions, historical novels, +historical epics, historical pictures, and will be honoured as +the most useful stuff of their kind in being.</p> +<h3><!-- page 179--><a name="page179"></a><span +class="pagenum">p. 179</span>His Limitation.</h3> +<p>In those first books of his Jefferies compels attention by +sheer freshness of matter; he is brimful of new facts and +original and pertinent observation, and that every one is vaguely +familiar with and interested in the objects he is handling and +explaining serves but to heighten his attractiveness. There +are so many who but know of hares disguised as soup, of ants as a +people on whose houses it is not good to sit down, of partridges +as a motive of bread sauce! And Jefferies, retailing in +plain, useful English the thousand and one curious facts that +make up life for these creatures and their kind—Jefferies +walking the wood, or tracking the brook, or mapping out the big +tree—is some one to be heeded with gratitude. He is +the Scandalous Chronicler of the warren and the rookery, the +newsmonger and intelligencer of creeping things, and things that +fly, and things that run; and his confidences, unique in quality +and type, have the novelty and force of personal +revelations. In dealing with men and women, he surrendered +most of his advantage and lost the best part of his charm. +The theme is old, the matter well worn, the subject common to us +all; and most of us care nothing for a few facts more or less +unless they be romantically conveyed. Reality is but the +beginning, the raw material, of art; and it is by the +artist’s aid and countenance that we are used to make +acquaintance with our fellows, be they <!-- page 180--><a +name="page180"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 180</span>generals in +cocked hats or mechanics in fustian. Now Jefferies was not +an artist, and so beside his stoats and hares, his pike, his +rabbits, and his moles, his men and women are of little +moment. You seem to have heard of them and to far better +purpose from others; you have had their author’s facts +presented elsewhere, and that in picturesque conjunction with the +great eternal interests of passion and emotion. To be aware +of such a difference is to resent it; and accordingly to read is +to know that Jefferies would have done well to leave Hodge and +Hodge’s masters alone and keep to his beasts and birds and +fishes.</p> +<h3>The General.</h3> +<p>Is it not plain as the nose on your face that his admirers +admire him injudiciously? It is true, for instance, that he +is in a sense, ‘too full’ (the phrase is Mr. +Besant’s) for the generality of readers. But it is +also true that he is not nearly full enough: that they look for +conclusions while he is bent upon giving them only details: that +they clamour for a breath of inspiration while he is bent upon +emptying his note-book in decent English; that they persist in +demanding a motive, a leading idea, a justification, while he +with knowledge crammed is fixed in his resolve to tell them no +more than that there are milestones on the Dover Road, or <!-- +page 181--><a name="page181"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +181</span>that there are so many nails of so many shapes and so +many colours in the pig-sty at the back of Coate Farm. They +prefer ‘their geraniums in the conservatory.’ +They refuse, in any case, to call a ‘picture’ that +which is only a long-drawn sequence of statements. They are +naturally inartistic, but they have the tradition of a long and +speaking series of artistic results, and instinctively they +decline to recognise as art the work of one who was plainly the +reverse of an artist. The artist is he who knows how to +select and to inspire the results of his selection. +Jefferies could do neither. He was a reporter of genius; +and he never got beyond reporting. To the average reader he +is wanting in the great essentials of excitement: he is prodigal +of facts, and he contrives to set none down so as to make one +believe in it for longer than the instant of perusal. From +his work the passionate human quality is not less absent than the +capacity of selection and the gift of inspiration, and all the +enthusiasm of all the enthusiasts of an enthusiastic age will not +make him and his work acceptable to the aforesaid average +reader. In letters he is as the ideal British +water-colourist in paint: the care of both is not art but facts, +and again facts, and facts ever. You consider their work; +you cannot see the wood for the trees; and you are fain to +conclude that themselves were so much interested in the trees +they did not even know the wood was there.</p> +<h3><!-- page 182--><a name="page182"></a><span +class="pagenum">p. 182</span>Last Words.</h3> +<p>To come to an end with the man:—his range was very +limited, and within that range his activity was excessive; yet +the consequences of his enormous effort were—and +are—a trifle disappointing. He thought, poor fellow! +that he had the world in his hand and the public at his feet; +whereas, the truth to tell, he had only the empire of a kind of +back garden and the lordship of (as Mr. Besant has told us) some +forty thousand out of a hundred millions of readers. You +know that he suffered greatly; you know too that to the last he +worked and battled on as became an honest, much-enduring, +self-admiring man: as you know that in death he snatched a kind +of victory, and departed this life with dignity as one +‘good at many things,’ who had at last +‘attained to be at rest.’ You know, in a word, +that he took his part in the general struggle for existence, and +manfully did his best; and it is with something like a pang that +you find his biographer insisting on the merits of the feat, and +quoting approvingly the sentimentalists who gathered about his +death-bed. To make eloquence about heroism is not the way +to breed heroes; and it may be that Jefferies, had his last +environment been less fluent and sonorous, would now seem +something more heroic than he does.</p> +<h2><!-- page 183--><a name="page183"></a><span +class="pagenum">p. 183</span>GAY</h2> +<h3>The Fabulist.</h3> +<p>Gay the fabulist is only interesting in a certain sense and to +a small extent. The morality of the <i>Fables</i> is +commonplace; their workmanship is only facile and agreeable; as +literature—as achievements in a certain order of +art—they have a poor enough kind of existence. In +comparison to the work of La Fontaine they are the merest +journalism. The simplicity, the wit, the wisdom, the +humanity, the dramatic imagination, the capacity of dramatic +expression, the exquisite union of sense and manner, the +faultless balance of matter and style, are qualities for which in +the Englishman you look in vain. You read, and you read not +only without enthusiasm but without interest. The verse is +merely brisk and fluent; the invention is common; the wit is not +very witty; the humour is artificial; the wisdom, the morality, +the knowledge of life, the science of character—if they +exist at all it is but as anatomical preparations or plants in a +<i>hortus siccus</i>. Worse than anything, the +<i>Fables</i> are monotonous. The manner is consistently +uniform; the invention has the level sameness of a Lincolnshire +landscape; the narrative moves with the equal <!-- page 184--><a +name="page184"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 184</span>pace of +boats on a Dutch canal. The effect is that of a host of +flower-pots, the columns in a ledger, a tragedy by the Rev. Mr. +Home; and it is heightened by the matchless triteness of the +fabulist’s reflections and the uncommon tameness of his +drama. It is hard to believe that this is indeed the Gay of +<i>Polly</i> and <i>The Beggars’ Opera</i>. True, the +dialects of his Peachum and his Lockit are in some sort one; his +gentlemen of the road and his ladies of the kennel rejoice in a +common flippancy of expression; there is little to choose between +the speech of Polly and the speech of Lucy. But in respect +of the essentials of drama the dialogue of the <i>Beggars’ +Opera</i> is on the whole sufficient. The personages are +puppets; but they are individual, and they are fairly consistent +in their individuality. Miss Lockit does not think and feel +like Miss Diver; Macheath is distinguishable from Peachum; none +is exactly alive, but of stage life ail have their share. +The reverse of this is the case with the personages of the +<i>Fables</i>. They think the thoughts and speak the speech +of Mr. Gay. The elephant has the voice of the sparrow; the +monkey is one with the organ on which he sits; there is but a +difference of name between the eagle and the hog; the talk of +Death has exactly the manner and weight and cadence of the +Woodman’s; a change of label would enable the lion to +change places with the spaniel, would suffice to cage the wolf as +a bird and set free the parrot as a beast of <!-- page 185--><a +name="page185"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 185</span>prey. +All are equally pert, brisk, and dapper in expression; all are +equally sententious and smart in aim; all are absolutely +identical in function and effect. The whole gathering is +stuffed with the same straw, prepared with the same dressing, +ticketed in the same handwriting, and painted with the same +colours. Any one who remembers the infinite variety of La +Fontaine will feel that Gay the fabulist is a writer whose work +the world has let die very willingly indeed.</p> +<h3>The Moralist.</h3> +<p>And Gay is not a whit less inefficient as a moralist. He +is a kindly soul, and in his easygoing way he has learnt +something of the tricks of the world and something of the hearts +of men. He writes as an unsuccessful courtier; and in that +capacity he has remarks to offer which are not always valueless, +and in which there is sometimes a certain shrewdness. But +the unsuccessful courtier is on the whole a creature of the +past. Such interest as he has is rather historical than +actual; and neither in the nursery nor in the schoolroom is he +likely to create any excitement or be received with any +enthusiasm. To the world he can only recommend himself as +one anxious to <!-- page 186--><a name="page186"></a><span +class="pagenum">p. 186</span>make it known on the smallest +provocation and on any occasion or none that Queen Anne is +dead. Open him where you will, and you find him full of +this important news and determined on imparting it. Thus, +in <i>The Scold and the Parrot</i>:</p> +<blockquote><p>‘One slander must ten thousand get,<br /> +The world with int’rest pays the debt’;</p> +</blockquote> +<p>that is to say, Queen Anne is dead. Thus, too, in <i>The +Persian</i>, <i>the Sun</i>, <i>and the Cloud</i>:</p> +<blockquote><p>‘The gale arose; the vapour tost<br /> +(The sport of winds) in air was lost;<br /> +The glorious orb the day refines.<br /> +Thus envy breaks, thus merit shines’;</p> +</blockquote> +<p>in <i>The Goat without a Beard</i>:</p> +<blockquote><p>‘Coxcombs distinguished from the rest<br /> +To all but coxcombs are a jest’;</p> +</blockquote> +<p>in <i>The Shepherd’s Dog and the Wolf</i>:</p> +<blockquote><p>‘An open foe may prove a curse,<br /> +But a pretended friend is worse’;</p> +</blockquote> +<p>and so to the end of the chapter. The theme is not +absorbing, and the variations are proper to the theme.</p> +<h3>After All.</h3> +<p>How long is it that the wise and good have ceased to say +(striking their pensive bosoms), ‘<i>Here</i> lies <!-- +page 187--><a name="page187"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +187</span>Gay’? It is—how long? But for +all that Gay is yet a figure in English letters. As a +song-writer he has still a claim on us, and is still able to +touch the heart and charm the ear. The lyrics in <i>Acis +and Galatea</i> are not unworthy their association with +Handel’s immortal melodies, the songs in <i>The +Beggars’ Opera</i> have a part in the life and fame of the +sweet old tunes from which they can never be divided. I +like to believe that in the operas and the <i>Trivia</i> and +<i>The Shepherd’s Week</i> is buried the material of a +pleasant little book.</p> +<h2><!-- page 188--><a name="page188"></a><span +class="pagenum">p. 188</span>ESSAYS AND ESSAYISTS</h2> +<h3>The Good of Them.</h3> +<p>It is our misfortune that of good essayists there should be +but few. Men there have been who have done the +essayist’s part so well as to have earned an immortality in +the doing; but we have had not many of them, and they make but a +poor figure on our shelves. It is a pity that things should +be thus with us, for a good essayist is the pleasantest companion +imaginable. There are folk in plenty who have never read +Montaigne at all; but there are few indeed who have read but a +page of him, and that page but once. And the same may be +said of Addison and Fielding, of Lamb and Hazlitt, of Sterne and +Bacon and Ben Jonson, and all the members of their goodly +fellowship. To sit down with any one of them is to sit down +in the company of one of the ‘mighty wits, our elders and +our betters,’ who have done much to make literature a good +thing, having written books that are eternally readable. If +of all them that have tried to write essays and succeeded after a +fashion a twentieth part so much could be said the world would +have a conversational literature of inexhaustible interest. +But indeed there is <!-- page 189--><a name="page189"></a><span +class="pagenum">p. 189</span>nothing of the sort. Beside +the ‘rare and radiant’ masters of the art there are +the apprentices, and these are many and dull.</p> +<h3>Generalities.</h3> +<p>Essayists, like poets, are born and not made, and for one +worth remembering the world is confronted with a hundred not +worth reading. Your true essayist is in a literary sense +the friend of everybody. As one of the brotherhood has +phrased it, it is his function ‘to speak with ease and +opportunity to all men.’ He must be personal, or his +hearers can feel no manner of interest in him. He must be +candid and sincere, or his readers presently see through +him. He must have learned to think for himself and to +consider his surroundings with an eye that is both kindly and +observant, or they straightway find his company +unprofitable. He should have fancy, or his starveling +propositions will perish for lack of metaphor and the tropes and +figures needed to vitalise a truism. He does well to have +humour, for humour makes men brothers, and is perhaps more +influential in an essay than in most places else. He will +find a little wit both serviceable to himself and comfortable to +his readers. For wisdom, it is not absolutely <!-- page +190--><a name="page190"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +190</span>necessary that he have it, but in its way it is as good +a property as any: used with judgment, indeed, it does more to +keep an essay sweet and fresh than almost any other +quality. And in default of wisdom—which, to be sure, +it is not given to every man, much less to every essayist, to +entertain—he need have no scruples about using whatever +common sense is his; for common sense is a highly respectable +commodity, and never fails of a wide and eager circle of +buyers. A knowledge of men and of books is also to be +desired; for it is a writer’s best reason of being, and +without it he does well to hold his tongue. Blessed with +these attributes he is an essayist to some purpose. Give +him leisure and occasion, and his discourse may well become as +popular as Montaigne’s own.</p> +<h3>In Particular.</h3> +<p>For the British essayists, they are more talked about than +known. It is to be suspected that from the first their +reputation has greatly exceeded their popularity; and of late +years, in spite of the declamation of Macaulay and the very +literary enthusiasm of the artist of <i>Esmond</i> and <i>The +Virginians</i>, they have fallen further into the background, and +are less <!-- page 191--><a name="page191"></a><span +class="pagenum">p. 191</span>than ever studied with regard. +In theory the age of Anne is still the Augustan age to us; but in +theory only, and only to a certain extent. What attracts us +is its outside. We are in love with its houses and its +china and its costumes. We are not enamoured of it as it +was but as it seems to Mr. Caldecott and Mr. Dobson and Miss Kate +Greenaway. We care little for its comedy and nothing at all +for its tragedy. Its verse is all that our own is not, and +the same may be said of its prose and ours—of the prose of +Mr. Swinburne and Mr. George Meredith and the prose of Addison +and Swift. Mr. Gladstone is not a bit like Bolingbroke, and +between <i>The Times</i> and <i>The Tatler</i>, between <i>The +Spectator</i> (Mr. Addison’s), and <i>The Fortnightly +Review</i>, there is a difference of close upon two centuries and +of a dozen revolutions—political, social, scientific, and +æsthetic. We may babble as we please about the +‘sweetness’ of Steele and the ‘humour’ of +Sir Roger de Coverley, but in our hearts we care for them a great +deal less than we ought, and in fact Mr. Mudie’s +subscribers do not hesitate to prefer the ‘sweetness’ +of Mr. Black and the ‘humour’ of Mr. James +Payn. Our love is not for the essentials of the time but +only its accidents and oddities; and we express it in pictures +and poems and fantasies in architecture, and the canonisation (in +figures) of Chippendale and Sheraton. But it is +questionable if we might not with advantage increase <!-- page +192--><a name="page192"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +192</span>our interest, and carry imitation a little +deeper. The Essayists, for instance, are often dull, but +they write like scholars and gentlemen. They refrain from +personalities; they let scandal alone, nor ever condescend to +eavesdropping; they never go out of their way in search of +affectation or prurience or melancholy, but are content to be +merely wise and cheerful and humane. Above all, they do +their work as well as they can. They seem to write not for +bread nor for a place in society but for the pleasure of writing, +and of writing well. In these hysterical times life is so +full, so much is asked and so much has to be given, that tranquil +writing and careful workmanship are impossible. A certain +poet has bewailed the change in a charming rondeau:—</p> +<blockquote><p>‘More swiftly now the hours take flight!<br +/> +What’s read at morn is dead at night;<br /> +Scant space have we for art’s delays,<br /> +Whose breathless thought so briefly stays,<br /> +We may not work—ah! would we might,<br /> + With slower pen!’</p> +</blockquote> +<p>It must be owned that his melancholy is anything but +groundless. The trick of amenity and good breeding is lost; +the graces of an excellence that is unobtrusive are graces no +more. We write as men paint for the exhibitions: with the +consciousness that we must pass without notice if we do not +exceed in colour and subject and tone. The need exists, and +the world bows to it. Mr. Austin Dobson’s little +sheaf of <i>Eighteenth Century Essays</i> might <!-- page +193--><a name="page193"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 193</span>be +regarded as a protest against the necessity and the +submission. It proves that ’tis possible to be +eloquent without adjectives and elegant without affectation; that +to be brilliant you need not necessarily be extravagant and +conceited; that without being maudlin and sentimental it is not +beyond mortal capacity to be pathetic; and that once upon a time +a writer could prove himself a humourist without feeling it +incumbent upon him to be also a jack-pudding.</p> +<h2><!-- page 194--><a name="page194"></a><span +class="pagenum">p. 194</span>BOSWELL</h2> +<h3>His Destiny.</h3> +<p>It has been Boswell’s fate to be universally read and +almost as universally despised. What he suffered at the +hands of Croker and Macaulay is typical of his fortune. In +character, in politics, in attainments, in capacity, the two were +poles apart; but they were agreed in this: that Boswell must be +castigated and contemned, and that they were the men to do +it. Croker’s achievement, consider it how you will, +remains the most preposterous in literary history. He could +see nothing in the <i>Life</i> but a highly entertaining +compilation greatly in need of annotation and correction. +Accordingly he took up Boswell’s text and interlarded it +with scraps of his own and other people’s; he pegged into +it a sophisticated version of the <i>Tour</i>; and he overwhelmed +his amazing compound with notes and commentaries in which he took +occasion to snub, scold, ‘improve,’ and insult his +author at every turn. What came of it one knows. +Macaulay, in the combined interests of Whiggism and good +literature, made Boswell’s quarrel his own, and the +expiation was as bitter as the offence was wanton and +scandalous.</p> +<h3><!-- page 195--><a name="page195"></a><span +class="pagenum">p. 195</span>His Critic.</h3> +<p>But Macaulay, if he did Jeddart justice on Croker, took care +not to forget that Johnson was a Tory hero, and that Boswell was +Johnson’s biographer. He was too fond of good reading +not to esteem the <i>Life</i> for one of the best of books. +But he was also a master of the art of brilliant and picturesque +misrepresentation; and he did not neglect to prove that the +<i>Life</i> is only admirable because Boswell was +contemptible. It was, he argued, only by virtue of being at +once daft and drunken, selfish and silly, an eavesdropper and a +talebearer, a kind of inspired Faddle, a combination of butt and +lackey and snob, that Boswell contrived to achieve his wretched +immortality. And in the same way Boswell’s hero was +after all but a sort of Grub Street Cyclops, respectable enough +by his intelligence—(but even so ridiculous in comparison +to gifted Whigs)—yet more or less despicable in his +manners, his English, and his politics. Now, Macaulay was +the genius of special pleading. Admirable man of letters as +he was, he was politician first and man of letters afterwards: +his judgments are no more final than his antitheses are dull, and +his method for all its brilliance is the reverse of sound. +When you begin to inquire how much he really knew about Boswell, +and how far you may accept his own estimate of his own +pretentions, he becomes amusing in spite of himself: much as, +according <!-- page 196--><a name="page196"></a><span +class="pagenum">p. 196</span>to him, Boswell was an artist. +In his review of Croker he is keen enough about dates and facts +and solecisms; on questions of this sort he bestows his fiercest +energies; for such lapses he visits his Tory opposite with his +most savage and splendid insolence, his heartiest contempt, his +most scathing rhetoric. But on the great question of +all—the corruption of Boswell’s text—he is not +nearly so implacable, and concerning the foisting on the +<i>Life</i> of the whole bulk of the <i>Tour</i> he is not more +than lukewarm. ‘We greatly doubt,’ he says, +‘whether <i>even</i> the <i>Tour to the Hebrides</i> should +have been inserted in the midst of the <i>Life</i>. There +is one marked distinction between the two works. Most of +the <i>Tour</i> was seen by Johnson in manuscript. It does +not appear that he ever saw any part of the +<i>Life</i>.’ This is to say that Croker’s +action is reprehensible not because it is an offence against art +but because Johnson on private and personal grounds might not +have been disposed to accept the <i>Life</i> as representative +and just, and might have refused to sanction its appearance on an +equal footing with the <i>Tour</i>, which on private and personal +grounds he <i>had</i> accepted. In the face of such an +argument who can help suspecting Macaulay’s artistic +faculty? ‘The <i>Life of Johnson</i>,’ he says, +‘is assuredly a great, a very great, book. Homer is +not more decidedly the first of heroic poets, Shakespeare is not +more decidedly the <!-- page 197--><a name="page197"></a><span +class="pagenum">p. 197</span>first of dramatists, Demosthenes is +not more decidedly the first of orators, than Boswell is the +first of biographers . . . Eclipse is first, and the rest +nowhere.’ That is hearty and exact enough. But, +as I have hinted, Macaulay, furious with Croker’s +carelessness, is almost tolerant of Croker’s +impudence. For Croker as a scholar and an historian he is +merely pitiless; to Croker ruining the <i>Life</i> by the +insertion of the <i>Tour</i>—a feat which would scarce be +surpassed by the interpolation of the Falstaff scenes of the +<i>Merry Wives</i> in one or other of the parts of <i>Henry +IV.</i>—he is lenient enough, and lenient on grounds which +are not artistic but purely moral. Did he recognise to the +full the fact of Boswell’s pre-eminence as an artist? +Was he really conscious that the <i>Life</i> is an admirable work +of art as well as the most readable and companionable of +books? As, not content with committing himself thus far, he +goes on to prove that Boswell was great because he was little, +that he wrote a great book because he was an ass, and that if he +had not been an ass his book would probably have been at least a +small one, incredulity on these points becomes respectable.</p> +<h3><!-- page 198--><a name="page198"></a><span +class="pagenum">p. 198</span>Himself.</h3> +<p>Boswell knew better. A true Scotsman and a true artist, +he could play the fool on occasion, and he could profit by his +folly. In his dedication to the first and greatest +President the Royal Academy has had he anticipates a good many of +Macaulay’s objections to his character and deportment, and +proves conclusively that if he chose to seem ridiculous he did so +not unwittingly but with a complete apprehension of the effect he +designed and the means he adopted. In the <i>Tour</i>, says +he, from his ‘eagerness to display the wonderful fertility +and readiness of Johnson’s wit,’ he ‘freely +showed to the world its dexterity, even when I was myself the +object of it.’ He was under the impression that he +would be ‘liberally understood,’ as ‘knowing +very well what I was about.’ But, he adds, ‘it +seems I judged too well of the world’; and he points his +moral with a story of ‘the great Dr. Clarke,’ who, +‘unbending himself with a few friends in the most playful +and frolicsome manner,’ saw Beau Nash in the distance, and +was instantly sobered. ‘My boys,’ quoth he, +‘let us be grave—here comes a fool.’ +Macaulay was not exactly Beau Nash, nor was Boswell ‘the +great Dr. Clarke’; but, as Macaulay, working on +Wolcot’s lines, was presently to show, Boswell did right to +describe the world as ‘a great fool,’ and to regret +in respect of his own silliness that in the <i>Tour</i> he had +been ‘arrogant <!-- page 199--><a name="page199"></a><span +class="pagenum">p. 199</span>enough to suppose that the tenour of +the rest of the book would sufficiently guard against such a +strange imputation.’ In the same way he showed +himself fully alive to the enduring merits of his +achievement. ‘I will venture to say,’ he +writes, ‘that he (Johnson) will be seen in this work more +completely than any man who has ever lived.’ He had +his own idea of biography; he had demonstrated its value +triumphantly in the <i>Tour</i> which, though organically +complete, is plainly not a record of travel but a biographical +essay. In the <i>Tour</i>, that is, he had approved himself +an original master of selection, composition, and design; of the +art of working a large number of essential details into a uniform +and living whole; and of that most difficult and telling of +accomplishments, the reproduction of talk. In the +<i>Life</i> he repeated the proof on a larger scale and with a +finer mastery of construction and effect; and in what his best +editor describes as ‘the task of correcting, amending, and +adding to his darling work’ he spent his few remaining +years. That he drifted into greatness, produced his two +masterpieces unconsciously, and developed a genius for biography +as one develops a disease, is ‘a ridiculous +conception,’ as Mr. Napier rightly says. In proof of +it we have Boswell’s own words, and we have the books +themselves. Such testimony is not to be overborne by any +number of paradoxes, however ingenious, nor by any <!-- page +200--><a name="page200"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +200</span>superflux of rhetoric, however plausible and +persuasive. That Boswell was a gossip, a busybody, and +something of a sot, and that many did and still do call him fool, +is certain; but that is no reason why he should not have been an +artist, and none why he should be credited with the fame of +having devoted the best part of his life to the production of a +couple of masterpieces—as M. Jourdain talked +prose—without knowing what he was doing. Turner chose +to go a-masquerading as ‘Puggy Booth’; but as yet +nobody has put forward the assertion that Turner was unconscious +of the romance and splendour of his <i>Ulysses and +Polyphemus</i>, or that he painted his <i>Rain</i>, <i>Speed</i>, +<i>and Steam</i> in absolute ignorance of the impression it would +produce and the idea it should convey. Goldsmith reminded +Miss Reynolds of ‘a low mechanic, particularly . . . a +journey-man tailor’; but that he was unconsciously the most +elegant and natural writer of his age is a position which has not +yet been advanced. And surely it is high time that Boswell +should take that place in art which is his by right of conquest, +and that Macaulay’s paradox—which is only the opinion +brilliantly put of an ignorant and unthinking +world—(‘Il avait mieux que personne l’esprit de +tout le monde’)—should go the way of all its +kind.</p> +<h2><!-- page 201--><a name="page201"></a><span +class="pagenum">p. 201</span>CONGREVE</h2> +<h3>His Biographers and Critics.</h3> +<p>An American literary journal once assured its readers that +Congreve has a ‘niche in the Valhalla of Ben +Jonson.’ The remark is injudicious, of course, even +for a literary American, and there is no apparent reason why it +should ever have got itself uttered. It is probably the +unluckiest thing that ever was said of Congreve, who—with +some unimportant exceptions—has been singularly fortunate +in his critics and biographers. Dryden wrote of him with +enthusiasm, and in doing so he may be said to have set a fashion +of admiration which is vigorous and captivating even yet. +Swift, Voltaire, Lamb, Hunt, Hazlitt, Thackeray, Macaulay, to +name but these, have dealt with him in their several ways; of +late he has been praised by such masters of the art of writing as +Mr. Swinburne and Mr. George Meredith; while Mr. Gosse, the last +on the list, surpasses most of his predecessors in admiration and +nearly all, I think, in knowledge.</p> +<h3><!-- page 202--><a name="page202"></a><span +class="pagenum">p. 202</span>The Real Congreve.</h3> +<p>It is no fault of Mr. Gosse’s that with all his +diligence he should fail to give a complete and striking portrait +of his man, or to make more of what he describes as his +‘smiling, faultless rotundity.’ As he puts it: +‘There were no salient points about Congreve’s +character,’ so that ‘no vagaries, no escapades place +him in a ludicrous or in a human light,’ and ‘he +passes through the literary life of his time as if in felt +slippers, noiseless, unupbraiding, without personal +adventures.’ That, I take it, is absolutely +true. It is known that Congreve was cheerful, serviceable, +and witty; that he was a man of many friends; that Pope dedicated +his <i>Iliad</i> to him; that Dryden loved and admired him; that +Collier attacked his work, and that his rejoinder was equally +spiritless and ill-bred; that he was attached to Mrs. +Bracegirdle, and left all his money to the Duchess of +Marlborough; that he was a creditable Government official; and +that at thirty, having written a certain number of plays, he +suddenly lost his interest in life and art, and wrote no +more. But that is about all. Thackeray’s +picture of him may be, and probably is, as unveracious as his +Fielding or his Dick Steele; but there is little or nothing to +show how far we can depend upon it. The character of the +man escapes us, and we have either to refrain from trying to see +him or to content ourselves with mere hypothesis. So +abnormal <!-- page 203--><a name="page203"></a><span +class="pagenum">p. 203</span>is the mystery in which he is +enshrouded that what in the case of others would be notorious +remains in his case dubious and obscure: so that we cannot tell +whether he was Bracegirdle’s lover or only her friend, and +the secret of his relations with the Duchess of Marlborough has +yet to be discovered. Mr. Gosse succeeded no better than +they that went before in plucking out the heart of +Congreve’s mystery. He was, and he remains, +impersonal. At his most substantial he is (as some one said +of him) no more than ‘vagueness personified’: at his +most luminous only an appearance like the <i>Scin-Laeca</i>, the +shining shadow adapted in a moment of peculiar inspiration by the +late Lord Lytton.</p> +<h3>The Dramatist.</h3> +<p>But we have the plays, and who runs may read and admire. +I say advisedly who runs may read, and not who will may +see. Congreve’s plays are, one can imagine, as dull +in action as they are entertaining in print. They have +dropped out of the <i>répertoire</i>, and the truth is +they merit no better fate. They are only plays to the +critic of style; to the actor and the average spectator they are +merely so much spoken weariness. To begin with, they are +marked by such a deliberate and immitigable baseness of <!-- page +204--><a name="page204"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +204</span>morality as makes them impossible to man. +Wycherley has done more vilely; Vanbrugh soars to loftier +altitudes of filthiness. But neither Wycherley nor Vanbrugh +has any strain of the admirable intellectual quality of +Congreve. Villainy comes natural to the one, and +beastliness drops from the other as easily as honey from the +comb; but in neither is there evident that admirable effort of +the intelligence which is a distinguishing characteristic of +Congreve, and with neither is the result at once so consummate +and so tame. For both Wycherley and Vanbrugh are +playwrights, and Congreve is not. Congreve is only an +artist in style writing for himself and half a dozen in the pit, +while Wycherley and Vanbrugh—and for that matter Etherege +and Farquhar—are playwrights producing for the whole +theatre. In fact Congreve’s plays were only +successful in proportion as they were less literary and +‘Congrevean.’ His first comedy was the talk of +the town; his last, <i>The Way of the World</i>, that monument of +characterisation (of a kind) and fine English, was only a +‘success of esteem.’ The reason is not far to +seek. Congreve’s plays were too sordid in conception +and too unamusing in effect for even the audiences to which they +were produced; they were excellent literature, but they were bad +drama, and they were innately detestable to boot. Audiences +are the same in all strata of time; and it is easy to see that +Wycherley’s Horner and Vanbrugh’s Sir John and Lady +Brute <!-- page 205--><a name="page205"></a><span +class="pagenum">p. 205</span>were amusing, when Lady Wishfort and +Sir Sampson Legend and the illustrious and impossible Maskwell +were found ‘old, cold, withered, and of intolerable +entrails.’ An audience, whatever its epoch, wants +action; and still action, and again and for the last time action; +also it wants a point of departure that shall be something +tinctured with humanity, a touch of the human in the term of +everything, and at least a ‘sort of a kind of a +strain’ of humanity in the progress of events from the one +point to the other. This it gets in Wycherley, brute as he +is; with a far larger and more vigorous comic sense it gets the +same in Vanbrugh; it gets it with a difference in the +light-hearted indecencies of Farquhar. From the magnificent +prose of Congreve it is absent. His it was to sublimate all +that was most artificial in an artificial state of society: he +was the consummate artist of a phase that was merely transient, +the laureate of a generation that was only alive for half-an-hour +in the course of all the twenty-four. He is saved from +oblivion by sheer strength of style. It is a bad dramatic +style, as we know; it leaves the Witwoulds and the Plyants as +admirable as the Mirabels and Millamants and Angelicas; it makes +no distinction between the Mrs. Foresights and the Sir Sampson +Legends; it presents an exemplar in Lady Wishfort and an exemplar +in Petulant; it is uneasy, self-conscious, intrusive, even +offensive, the very reverse of dramatic; and in Congreve’s +<!-- page 206--><a name="page206"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +206</span>hands it is irresistible, for, thanks to Congreve, it +has been forced from the stage, and lives as literature +alone.</p> +<h3>The Writer.</h3> +<p>Congreve was essentially a man of letters; his style is that +of a pupil not of Molière but of the full, the rich, the +excessive, the pedantic Jonson; his Legends, his Wishforts, his +Foresights are the lawful heirs—refined and sublimated but +still of direct descent—of the Tuccas and the Bobadils and +the Epicure Mammons of the great Elizabethan; they are (that is) +more literary than theatrical—they are excellent reading, +but they have long since fled the stage and vanished into the +night of mere scholarship. To compare an author of this +type and descent to Shakespeare is a trifle unfair; to compare +him to Molière is to misapprehend the differences between +pure literature and literature that is also drama. +Congreve, as I have said, has disappeared from the boards, and is +only tolerable or even intelligible to the true reader; while +Shakespeare worked on so imperfect a convention that, though he +keeps the stage and is known indeed for the poet of the most +popular play ever written—(for that, I take it, +<i>Hamlet</i> is)—he is yet the prey of every twopenny <!-- +page 207--><a name="page207"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +207</span>actor, or actor-manager, or actor-manager-editor, who +is driven to deal with him. Now, Molière wrote as +one that was first of all a great actor; who dealt not so much +with what is transient in human life as with what is eternal in +human nature; who addressed himself much more to an +audience—(Fénelon who found fault with his style is +witness to the fact)—than to a circle of readers. And +the result is that Molière not only remains better reading +than Congreve, but is played at this time in the Rue de Richelieu +line for line and word for word as he was played at the +Palais-Bourbon over two hundred years ago.</p> +<h2><!-- page 208--><a name="page208"></a><span +class="pagenum">p. 208</span>ARABIAN NIGHTS ENTERTAINMENTS</h2> +<h3>Its Romance.</h3> +<p>He that has the book of the <i>Thousand Nights and a Night</i> +has Hachisch-made-words for life. Gallant, subtle, refined, +intense, humourous, obscene, here is the Arab intelligence drunk +with conception. It is a vast extravaganza of passion in +action and picarooning farce and material splendour run +mad. The amorous instinct and the instinct of enjoyment, +not tempered but heightened greatly by the strict ordinances of +dogma, have leave to riot uncontrolled. It is the old +immortal story of Youth and Beauty and their coming together, but +it is coloured with the hard and brilliant hues of an imagination +as sensuous in type and as gorgeous in ambition as humanity has +known. The lovers must suffer, for suffering intensifies +the joy of fruition; so they are subjected to all such modes of +travail and estrangement as a fancy careless of pain and +indifferent to life can devise. But it is known that happy +they are to be; and if by the annihilation of time and space then +are space and time annihilated. Adventures are to the +adventurous all the world <!-- page 209--><a +name="page209"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 209</span>over; but +they are so with a difference in the East. It is only +Sinbad that confesses himself devoured with the lust of +travel. The grip of a humourous and fantastic fate is tight +on all the other heroes of this epic-in-bits. They do not +go questing for accidents: their hour comes, and the finger of +God urges them forth, and thrusts them on in the way of +destiny. The air is horrible with the gross and passionate +figments of Islamite mythology. Afrits watch over or molest +them; they are made captive of malignant Ghouls; the Jinns take +bodily form and woo them to their embraces. The sea-horse +ramps at them from the ocean floor; the great roc darkens earth +about them with the shadow of his wings; wise and goodly apes +come forth and minister unto them; enchanted camels bear them +over evil deserts with the swiftness of the wind, or the magic +horse outspreads his sail-broad vannes, and soars with them; or +they are borne aloft by some servant of the Spell till the earth +is as a bowl beneath them, and they hear the angels quiring at +the foot of the Throne. So they fare to strange and dismal +places: through cities of brass whose millions have perished by +divine decree; cities guilty of the cult of the Fire and the +Light wherein all life has been striken to stone; or on to the +magnetic mountain by whose horrible attraction the bolts are +drawn from the ship, and they alone survive the inevitable +wreck. And the end <!-- page 210--><a +name="page210"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +210</span>comes. Comes the Castle of Burnished Copper, and +its gates fly open before them: the forty damsels, each one +fairer than the rest, troop out at their approach; they are +bathed in odours, clothed in glittering apparel, fed with +enchanted meats, plunged fathoms deep in the delights of the +flesh. There is contrived for them a private paradise of +luxury and splendour, a practical Infinite of gold and silver +stuffs and jewels and all things gorgeous and rare and costly; +and therein do they abide for evermore. You would say of +their poets that they contract immensity to the limits of desire; +they exhaust the inexhaustible in their enormous effort; they +stoop the universe to the slavery of a talisman, and bind the +visible and invisible worlds within the compass of a ring.</p> +<h3>Its Comedy.</h3> +<p>But there is another side to their imaginings. When the +Magian has done beating his copper drum—(how its mysterious +murmur still haunts the echoes of memory!)—when Queen Lab +has finished her tremendous conjurations, wonder gives place to +laughter, the apotheosis of the flesh to the spirit of +comedy. The enchanter turns harlequin; and what the lovers +ask is not the annihilation of time and space but only that the +father be at his <!-- page 211--><a name="page211"></a><span +class="pagenum">p. 211</span>prayers, or the husband gone on a +fool’s errand, while they have leave to kiss each +other’s mouths, ‘as a pigeon feedeth her +young,’ to touch the lute, strip language naked, and +‘repeat the following verses’ to a ring of laughing +girls and amid all such comfits and delicates as a hungry +audience may rejoice to hear enumerated. And the intrigue +begins, and therewith the presentment of character, the +portraiture of manners. Merry ladies make love to their +gallants with flowers, or scorn them with the huckle-bones of +shame; the Mother Coles of Araby pursue the unwary stranger for +their mistress’ pleasure; damsels resembling the full moon +carouse with genial merchants or inquiring calenders. The +beast of burden, even the porter, has his hour: he goes the round +at the heels of a veiled but beautiful lady, and lays her in the +materials of as liberal and sumptuous a carouse as is recorded in +history. Happy lady, and O thrice-fortunate porter! +enviable even to the term of time! It is a voluptuous +farce, a masque and anti-masque of wantonness and stratagem, of +wine-cups and jewels and fine raiment, of gaudy nights and +amorous days, of careless husbands and adventurous wives, of +innocent fathers and rebel daughters and lovers happy or +befooled. And high over all, his heart contracted with the +spleen of the East, the tedium of supremacy, towers the great +Caliph Haroun, the buxom and bloody tyrant, a Muslim Lord of <!-- +page 212--><a name="page212"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +212</span>Misrule. With Giafar, the finest gentleman and +goodliest gallant of Eastern story, and Mesrour, the +well-beloved, the immortal Eunuch, he goes forth upon his round +in the enchanted streets of Bagdàd, like François +Premier in the maze of old-time Paris. The night is musical +with happy laughter and the sound of lutes and voices; it is +seductive with the clink of goblets and the odour of perfumes: +not a shadow but has its secret, or jovial or amorous or +terrible: here falls a head, and there you may note the +contrapuntal effect of the bastinado. But the blood is +quickly hidden with flowers, the bruises are tired over with +cloth-of-gold, and the jolly pageant sweeps on. Truly the +comic essence is imperishable. What was fun to them in +Baghdad is fun to us in London after a thousand years.</p> +<h3>Sacer Vates.</h3> +<p>The prose of Mr. Payne’s translation is always readable +and often elegant; Sir Richard Burton’s notes and +‘terminal essays’ are a mine of curious and diverting +information; but for me the real author of <i>The Arabian +Nights</i> is called not Burton nor Payne but Antoine +Galland. He it was, in truth, who gave the world as much +exactly as it needed of his preposterous original: who eliminated +its <!-- page 213--><a name="page213"></a><span +class="pagenum">p. 213</span>tediousness, purged it of its +barbarous and sickening immorality, wiped it clean of cruelty and +unnaturalness, selected its essentials of comedy and romance, and +set them clear and sharp against a light that western eyes can +bear and in an atmosphere that western lungs can breathe. +Of course the new translations are interesting—especially +to ethnologists and the critic with a theory that translated +verse is inevitably abominable. But they are not for the +general nor the artist. They include too many pages +revolting by reason of unutterable brutality of incident and +point of view—as also for the vileness of those lewd and +dreadful puritans whose excesses against humanity and whose +devotion to Islam they record—to be acceptable as +literature or tolerable as reading. Now, in Galland I get +the best of them. He gave me whatever is worth remembering +of Bedreddin and Camaralzaman and that enchanting Fairy +Peri-Banou; he is the true poet alike of Abou Hassan and the +Young King of the Black Islands, of Ali Baba and the Barber of +the Brothers; to him I owe that memory—of Zobeidè +alone in the accursed city whose monstrous silence is broken by +the voice of the one man spared by the wrath of God as he repeats +his solitary prayer—which ranks with Crusoe’s +discovery of the footprint in the thrilling moments of my life; +it was he who, by refraining from the use of pepper in his cream +tarts, contrived to kitchen those confections with the very +essence <!-- page 214--><a name="page214"></a><span +class="pagenum">p. 214</span>of romance; it was he that clove +asunder the Sultan’s kitchen-wall for me, and took me to +the pan, and bade me ask a certain question of the fish that +fried therein, and made them answer me in terms mysterious and +tremendous yet. Nay, that animating and delectable feeling +I cherish ever for such enchanted commodities as gold-dust and +sandal-wood and sesame and cloth of gold and black slaves with +scimitars—to whom do I owe it but this rare and delightful +artist? ‘O mes chers <i>Mille et une +Nuits</i>!’ says Fantasio, and he speaks in the name of all +them that have lived the life that Galland alone made +possible. The damsels of the new style may ‘laugh +till they fall backwards,’ etc., through forty volumes +instead of ten, and I shall still go back to my Galland. I +shall go back to him because his masterpiece is—not a book +of reference, nor a curiosity of literature, nor an achievement +in pedantry, nor even a demonstration of the absolute failure of +Islamism as an influence that makes for righteousness, +but—an excellent piece of art.</p> +<h2><!-- page 215--><a name="page215"></a><span +class="pagenum">p. 215</span>RICHARDSON</h2> +<h3>His Fortune.</h3> +<p>It is many years since Richardson fell into desuetude; it is +many years since he became the novelist not of the world at large +but of that inconsiderable section of the world which is +interested in literature. His methods are those of a bygone +epoch; his ideals, with one or two exceptions, are old-fashioned +enough to seem fantastic; his sentiment belongs to ancient +history; to a generation bred upon Ouida’s romances and the +plays of Mr. W. S. Gilbert his morality appears not merely +questionable but coarse and improper and repulsive. While +he lived he was adored: he moved and spoke and dwelt in an +eternal mist of ‘good, thick, strong, stupefying incense +smoke’; he was the idol of female England, a master of +virtue, a king of art, the wisest and best of mankind. +Johnson revered him—Johnson and Colley Gibber; Diderot +ranked him with Moses and Homer; to Balzac and Musset and George +Sand he was the greatest novelist of all time; Rousseau imitated +him; Macaulay wrote and talked of him with an enthusiasm that +would have sat becomingly on Lady Bradshaigh herself. <!-- +page 216--><a name="page216"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +216</span>But all that is over. Not even the emasculation +to which the late Mr. Dallas was pleased to subject his +<i>Clarissa</i> could make that <i>Clarissa</i> at all popular; +not all the allusions of all the leader-writers of a +leader-writing age have been able to persuade the public to renew +its interest in the works and ways of Grandison the august and +the lovely and high-souled Harriet Byron. Richardson has to +be not skimmed but studied; not sucked like an orange, nor +swallowed like a lollipop, but attacked <i>secundum artem</i> +like a dinner of many courses and wines. Once inside the +vast and solid labyrinth of his intrigue, you must hold fast to +the clue which you have caught up on entering, or the adventure +proves impossible, and you emerge from his precincts defeated and +disgraced. And by us children of Mudie, to whom a novel +must be either a solemn brandy-and-soda or as it were a garrulous +and vapid afternoon tea, adventures of that moment are not often +attempted.</p> +<h3>Pamela.</h3> +<p>Again, when all is said in Richardson’s favour it has to +be admitted against him that in <i>Pamela</i> he produced an +essay in vulgarity—of sentiment and morality +alike—which has never been surpassed. In these days +it is hardly less difficult to understand the popularity of this +masterpiece of specious <!-- page 217--><a +name="page217"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 217</span>immodesty +than to speak or think of it with patience. That it was +once thought moral is as wonderful as that it was once found +readable. What is more easily apprehended is the contempt +of Henry Fielding—is the justice of that ridicule he was +moved to visit it withal. To him, a scholar and a gentleman +and a man of the world, <i>Pamela</i> was a new-fangled blend of +sentimental priggishness and prurient unreality. To him the +pretensions to virtue and consideration of the vulgar little +hussy whom Richardson selected for his heroine were certainly not +less preposterous than the titles to life and actuality of the +wooden libertine whom Richardson put forth as his hero. He +was artist enough to know that the book was ignoble as literature +and absolutely false as fact; he was moralist enough to see that +its teachings were the reverse of elevating and improving; and he +uttered his conclusions <i>more suo</i> in one of the best and +healthiest books in English literature. This, indeed, is +the only merit of which the history of Miss Andrews can well be +accused: that it set Fielding thinking and provoked him to the +composition of the first of his three great novels. Pamela +is only remembered nowadays as Joseph’s sister: the +egregious Mr. B--- has hardly any existence save as Lady +Booby’s brother. ’Tis an ill wind that blows +good to nobody. There are few more tedious or more +unpleasant experiences <!-- page 218--><a +name="page218"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 218</span>than +<i>Pamela</i>; <i>or</i>, <i>Virtue Rewarded</i>. But you +have but to remember that without it the race might never have +heard of Fanny and Joseph, of the fair Slipslop and the ingenuous +Didapper, of Parson Trulliber and immortal Abraham Adams, to be +reconciled to its existence and the fact of its old-world +fame. Nay, more, to remember its ingenious author with +something of gratitude and esteem.</p> +<h3>Grandison.</h3> +<p>Nor is this the only charge that can be made and sustained +against our poet. It is also to be noted in his +disparagement that he is the author of <i>Sir Charles +Grandison</i>, and that <i>Sir Charles Grandison</i>, epic of the +polite virtues, is deadly dull. ‘My dear,’ says +somebody in one of Mr. Thackeray’s books, ‘your +eternal blue velvet quite tires me.’ That is the +worst of <i>Sir Charles Grandison</i>: his eternal blue +velvet—his virtue, that is, his honour, his propriety, his +good fortune, his absurd command over the affections of the other +sex, his swordsmanship, his manliness, his patriotic sentiment, +his noble piety—quite tires you. He is an ideal, but +so very, very tame that it is hard to justify his +existence. He is too perfect to be of the slightest moral +use to anybody. He has everything he wants, so that he has +no temptation to be wicked; he is <!-- page 219--><a +name="page219"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 219</span>incapable +of immorality, so that he is easily quit of all inducements to be +vicious; he has no passions, so that he is superior to every sort +of spiritual contest; he is monstrous clever, so that he has made +up his mind about everything knowable and unknowable; he is +excessively virtuous so that he has made it up in the right +direction. He is, as Mr. Leslie Stephen remarks, a tedious +commentary on the truth of Mrs. Rawdon Crawley’s acute +reflection upon the moral effect of five thousand a year. +He is only a pattern creature, because he has neither need nor +opportunity, neither longing nor capacity, to be anything +else. In real life such faultless monsters are impossible: +one does not like to think what would happen if they were +not. In fiction they are possible enough, and—what is +more to the purpose—they are of necessity extravagantly +dull. This is what is the matter with Sir Charles. He +is dull, and he effuses dulness. By dint of being +uninteresting himself he makes his surroundings +uninteresting. In the record of his adventures and +experiences there is enough of wit and character and invention to +make the fortune of a score or more of such novels as the public +of these degenerate days would hail with enthusiasm. But +his function is to vitiate them all. He is a bore of the +first magnitude, and of his eminence in that capacity his history +is at once the monument and the proof.</p> +<h3>Clarissa.</h3> +<p><!-- page 220--><a name="page220"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +220</span>But if <i>Grandison</i> be dull and <i>Pamela</i> +contemptible <i>Clarissa</i> remains; and <i>Clarissa</i> is what +Musset called it, ‘le premier roman du monde.’ +Of course <i>Clarissa</i> has its faults. Miss Harlowe, for +instance, is not always herself—is not always the complete +creation she affects to be: there are touches of moral +pedantry—anticipations of George Eliot—in her; the +scenes in which she is brought to shame are scarcely real, +living, moving, all the rest of it. But on the other hand +is there anything better than Lovelace in the whole range of +fiction? Take Lovelace in all or any of his +moods—suppliant, intriguing, repentant, triumphant, above +all triumphant—and find his parallel if you can. +Where, you ask, did the little printer of Salisbury +Court—who suggests to Mr. Stephen ‘a plump white +mouse in a wig’—where did Richardson discover so much +gallantry and humanity, so much romance and so much fact, such an +abundance of the heroic qualities and the baser veracities of +mortal nature? Lovelace is, if you except Don Quixote, the +completest hero in fiction. He has wit, humour, grace, +brilliance, charm; he is a scoundrel and a ruffian, and he is a +gentleman and a man; of his kind and in his degree he has the +right Shakespearean quality. Almost as perfect in her way +is the enchanting Miss Howe—an incarnation of womanliness +and wit and fun, after Lovelace the most brilliant of +Richardson’s <!-- page 221--><a name="page221"></a><span +class="pagenum">p. 221</span>creations. Or take the Harlowe +family: the severe and stupid father, the angry and selfish +uncles, the cub James, the vixen Arabella, a very fiend of envy +and hatred and malice—what a gallery of portraits is +here! And Solmes and Tomlinson, Belford and Brand and +Hickman; and the infinite complexity of the intrigue; the wit, +the pathos, the invention; the knowledge of human nature; the +faculty of dialogue—where save in <i>Clarissa</i> shall we +find all these? As for Miss Harlowe herself, all incomplete +as she is she remains the Eve of fiction, the prototype of the +modern heroine, the common mother of all the self-contained, +self-suffering, self-satisfied young persons whose delicacies and +repugnances, whose independence of mind and body, whose airs and +ideas and imaginings, are the stuff of the modern novel. +With her begins a new ideal of womanhood; from her proceeds a +type unknown in fact and fiction until she came. When after +outrage she declines to marry her destroyer, and prefers death to +the condonation of her dishonour, she strikes a note and assumes +a position till then not merely unrecognised but absolutely +undiscovered. It has been said of her half in jest and half +in earnest that she is ‘the aboriginal Woman’s Rights +person’; and it is a fact that she and Helena and Desdemona +and Ophelia are practically a thousand years apart. And +this is perhaps her finest virtue as it is certainly <!-- page +222--><a name="page222"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +222</span>her greatest charm: that, until she set the example, +woman in literature as a self-suffering individuality, as an +existence endowed with equal rights to independence—of +choice, volition, action—with man, had not begun to +be. That of itself would suffice to make <i>Clarissa</i> +memorable; and that is the least of its merits. Consider it +from which point you will, the book remains a masterpiece, unique +of its kind. It has been imitated but it has never been +equalled. It is Richardson’s only title to fame; but +it is enough. Not the Great Pyramid itself is more solidly +built nor more incapable of ruin.</p> +<h2><!-- page 223--><a name="page223"></a><span +class="pagenum">p. 223</span>TOLSTOÏ</h2> +<h3>The Man and the Artist.</h3> +<p>There are two men in Tolstoï. He is a mystic and he +is also a realist. He is addicted to the practice of a +pietism that for all its sincerity is nothing if not vague and +sentimental; and he is the most acute and dispassionate of +observers, the most profound and earnest student of character and +emotion. These antitheses are both represented in his +novels. He has thought out the scheme of things for +himself; his interpretation, while deeply tinctured with +religion, is also largely and liberally human; he is one to the +just and the unjust alike, and he is no more angry with the +wicked than he is partial to the good. He asks but one +thing of his men and women—that they shall be natural; yet +he handles his humbugs and impostors with as cold a kindness and +a magnanimity as equable as he displays in his treatment of their +opposites. Indeed his interest in humanity is +inexhaustible, and his understanding of it is well nigh +formidable in its union of breadth with delicacy. Himself +an aristocrat and an official, he is able to sympathise with the +Russian peasant as completely and to express his sentiments as +perfectly as he is able <!-- page 224--><a +name="page224"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 224</span>to present +the characters and give utterance to the ambitions and the +idiosyncrasies of the class to which he belongs and might be +assumed to have studied best. It is to be noted, moreover, +that he looks for his material at one or other pole of +society. He is equally at home with officers and privates, +with diplomats and carpenters, with princes and ploughmen; but +with the intermediary strata he is out of touch, and he is +careful to leave the task of presenting them to others. It +is arguable that only in the highest and lowest expressions of +society is unsophisticated nature to be found; and that +Tolstoï, interested less in manners than in men and studious +above all of the elemental qualities of character, has done right +to avoid the middle-class and attach himself to the consideration +and the representation of the highest and the lowest. +Certain it is that here have been his successes. The Prince +Andrew of <i>War and Peace</i>—cultured, intelligent, +earnest, true lover and true gentleman—is as noble a hero +as modern fiction has achieved; but he is no more interesting as +a human being and no more successful as art than the Marianna of +<i>les Cosaques</i>, who is a savage pure and simple, or the Efim +of <i>les Deux Vieillards</i>, who would seem to the haughty +Radical no better than a common idiot. It is to be noted of +all three—the prince, the savage, and the +peasant—that none in himself is sophisticate nor vile but +that each is rich in the common, simple, elemental qualities of +<!-- page 225--><a name="page225"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +225</span>humanity. It is to these and the manifestations +of these that Tolstoï turns for inspiration first of +all. If he chose he could be as keen a satirist and as +indefatigable a student of the meannesses and the minor miseries +of existence, the toothaches and the pimples of experience, as +Thackeray. But he does not choose. The epic note +sounds in his work. The eternal issues of life, the +fundamental interests of character and conduct and emotion, are +his material. Love, valour, self-sacrifice, charity, the +responsibilities of being, these and their like are the only +vital facts to him; they constitute the really important part of +the scheme of things as he sees and comprehends it. In +their analysis the artist and the mystic meet and take hands; +sometimes to each other’s profit, more often, to each +other’s hurt. It is not without significance that no +other novelist has looked so closely and penetrated so far into +the secret of death: that none has divined so much of it, nor +presented his results with so complete and intimate a mastery and +so persuasive and inspiring a belief. Plainly Tolstoï +has learned ‘la vraie signification de la vie’; his +faith in its capacities is immense, his acceptance of its +consequences is unhesitating. He is the great optimist, and +his work is wholesome and encouraging in direct ratio to the +vastness of his talent and the perfection of his method.</p> +<h3><!-- page 226--><a name="page226"></a><span +class="pagenum">p. 226</span> Ivan Iliitch.</h3> +<p>Who does not know that extraordinary <i>Death of Ivan +Iliitch</i>? It is an achievement in realism: not the +realism of externals and trivial details—though of this +there is enough for art if not for the common Zolaphyte—but +the higher and better sort, the realism which deals with mental +and spiritual conditions, the realism of <i>Othello</i> and +<i>Hamlet</i>. There are many deaths in literature, but +there is none, I think, in which the gradual processes of +dissolution are analysed and presented with such knowledge, such +force, such terrible directness, as here. The result is +appalling, but the final impression is one of encouragement and +consolation. Here, as everywhere, Tolstoï appeals to +the primitive nature of man, and the issue is what he wishes it +to be. Not for him is the barren pessimism of the +latter-day French rhapsodist in fiction, and the last word of his +study, inexorable till then, is a word of hope and faith.</p> +<h3>War and Peace.</h3> +<p>Incomparably his greatest book, however, is <i>War and +Peace</i>. It is the true Russian epic; alike in the +vastness of its scope and in the completeness of its +execution. It tells the story of the great conflict between +Koutouzoff and Russia and Napoleon and France, it begins some +years before Austerlitz, and it ends <!-- page 227--><a +name="page227"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 227</span>when +Borodino and Moscow are already ancient history. The canvas +is immense: the crowd of figures and the world of incidents +almost bewildering. It is not a complete success. In +many places the mystic has got the better of the artist: he is +responsible for theories of the art of war which, advanced with +the greatest confidence, are disproved by the simple narrative of +events; and he has made a study of Napoleon in which, for the +first and only time in all his work, he appears as an intemperate +advocate. But when all is said in blame so much remains to +praise that one scarce knows where to begin. +Tolstoï’s theory of war is mystical and untenable, no +doubt; but his pictures of warfare are incomparably good. +None has felt and reproduced as he has done what may be called +the intimacy of battle—the feeling of the individual +soldier, the passion and excitement, the terror and the fury, +that taken collectively make up the influence which represents +the advance or the retreat of an army in combat. But also, +in a far greater degree, none has dealt so wonderfully with the +vaster incidents, the more tremendous issues. His +Austerlitz is magnificent; his Borodino is (there is no other +word for it) epic; his studies of the Retreat are almost worthy +of what has gone before. For the first time what has been +called ‘the peering modern touch’ is here applied to +great events, with the result that here is a book unique in +literature. Of the characters—Natasha, Peter, <!-- +page 228--><a name="page228"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +228</span>Mary, Dennissoff, the Rostoffs, Helen, Dologhoff, +Bagration, Bolkonsky, and the others; above all, Koutouzoff and +Prince Andrew—Prince Andrew the heroic gentleman, +Koutouzoff the genius of Russia and the war—to meet them +once is to take on a set of friends and enemies for life.</p> +<h2><!-- page 229--><a name="page229"></a><span +class="pagenum">p. 229</span>FIELDING</h2> +<h3>Illusions.</h3> +<p>Fielding is one of the most striking figures in our literary +history, and he is one of the most popular as well. But it +is questionable if many people know very much about him after +all, or if the Fielding of legend—the potwalloper of genius +at whom we have smiled so often—has many things in common +with the Fielding of fact, the indefatigable student, the +vigorous magistrate, the great and serious artist. You hear +but little of him from himself; for with that mixture of +intellectual egoism and moral unselfishness which is a +characteristic of his large and liberal nature he was as careless +of Henry Fielding’s sayings and doings and as indifferent +to the fact of Henry Fielding’s life and personality as he +was garrulous in respect of the good qualities of Henry +Fielding’s friends and truculently talkative about the +vices of Henry Fielding’s enemies. And what is +exactly known people have somehow or other contrived to +misapprehend and misapply. They have preferred the evidence +of Horace Walpole to that of their own senses. They have +suffered the brilliant antitheses of Lady Mary to obscure and +blur the man as they might have found <!-- page 230--><a +name="page230"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 230</span>him in his +work. Booth and Jones have been taken for definite and +complete reflections of the author of their being: the parts for +the whole, that is—a light-minded captain of foot and a +hot-headed and soft-hearted young man about town for adequate +presentments of the artist of a new departure and the writer of +three or four books of singular solidity and finish. +Whichever way you turn, you are confronted with appearances each +more distorted and more dubious than the other. Some have +chosen to believe the foolish fancies of Murphy, and have +pictured themselves a Fielding begrimed with snuff, heady with +champagne, and smoking so ferociously that out of the wrappings +of his tobacco he could keep himself in paper for the manuscripts +of his plays. For others the rancour of Smollett calls up a +Fielding who divides his time and energy between blowing a +trumpet on a Smithfield show and playing Captain Bilkum to a +flesh-and-blood Stormandra at the establishment of a living, +breathing, working Mother Punchbowl. With Dr. Rimbault and +Professor Henry Morley others yet evolve from their inner +consciousness a Fielding with a booth in Smithfield, buffooning +for the coppers of a Bartlemy Fair audience. The +accomplished lawyer has had as little place in men’s +thoughts as the tender father, the admirable artist as little as +the devoted husband and the steadfast friend. Fielding has +been so often painted a hard drinker that few <!-- page 231--><a +name="page231"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 231</span>have +thought of him as a hard reader; he has been suspected of +conjugal infidelity, so it has seemed impossible that he should +be other than a violent Bohemian. In certain chapters of +<i>Jonathan Wild the Great</i> there is enough of sustained +intellectual effort to furnish forth a hundred modern novels; but +you only think of Fielding reeling home from the Rose, and refuse +to consider him except as sitting down with his head in a wet +towel to scribble immodest and ruffianly trash for the +players! A consequence of all these exercises in sentiment +and imagination has been that, while many have been ready to deal +with Fielding as the text for a sermon or the subject of an +essay, as the point of a moral or the adornment of a tale, few +have cared to think of him as worthy to dispute the palm with +Cervantes and Sir Walter as the heroic man of letters.</p> +<h3>Facts.</h3> +<p>He is before all things else a writer to be studied. He +wrote for the world at large and to the end that he might be read +eternally. His matter, his manner, the terms of his +philosophy, the quality of his ideals, the nature of his +achievement, proclaim him universal. Like Scott, like +Cervantes, like Shakespeare, he claims not merely our +acquaintance but an intimate and abiding familiarity. He +has no special public, and to be <!-- page 232--><a +name="page232"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 232</span>only on +nodding terms with him is to be practically dead to his +attraction and unworthy his society. He worked not for the +boys and girls of an age but for the men and women of all time; +and both as artist and as thinker he commands unending attention +and lifelong friendship. He is a great inventor, an +unrivalled craftsman, a perfect master of his material. His +achievement is the result of a life-time of varied experience, of +searching and sustained observation, of unwearying intellectual +endeavour. The sound and lusty types he created have an +intellectual flavour peculiar to themselves. His novels +teem with ripe wisdom and generous conclusions and beneficent +examples. As Mr. Stephen tells you, ‘he has the +undeniable merit of representing certain aspects of contemporary +society with a force and accuracy not even rivalled by any other +writer’; and it is a fact that not to have studied him +‘is to be without a knowledge of the most important +documents of contemporary history.’ More: to contrast +those fair, large parchments in which he has stated his results +with those tattered and filthy papers which the latter-day +literary rag-picker exists but to grope out from kennel and sewer +is to know the difference between the artist in health and the +artist possessed by an idiosyncrasy as by a devil.</p> +<h3><!-- page 233--><a name="page233"></a><span +class="pagenum">p. 233</span>The Worst of It.</h3> +<p>But the present is an age of sentiment: its ideals and +ambitions are mainly emotional; what it chiefly loves is romance +or the affectation of romance, passion, self-conscious solemnity, +and a certain straining after picturesque effects. In +Fielding’s time there was doubtless a good deal of +sentimentalism, for his generation delighted not only in Western +and Trunnion and Mrs. Slipslop but in Pamela and Clarissa and the +pathetic Le Fevre. But for all that it was—at all +events in so far as it was interesting to Fielding and in so far +as Fielding has pictured it—a generation that knew nothing +of romance but was keenly interested in common sense, and took a +vast deal of honest pleasure in humour and wit and a rather +truculent and full-blooded type of satire. It is plain that +such possibilities of sympathy and understanding as exist between +a past of this sort and such a present as our own must of +necessity be few and small. Their importance, too, is +greatly diminished when you reflect on the nature and tendency of +certain essential elements in Fielding’s art and +mind. The most vigorous and the most individual of these is +probably his irony; the next is that abundant vein of purely +intellectual comedy by whose presence his work is exalted to a +place not greatly inferior to that of the <i>Misantrope</i> and +the <i>Ecole des Femmes</i>. These rare and shining +qualities are distinguishing features in the best and <!-- page +234--><a name="page234"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +234</span>soundest part of Fielding. Of irony he is +probably the greatest English master; of pure comedy—the +intellectual manipulation and transmutation into art of what is +spiritually ridiculous in manners and society—he is both in +narrative and in dialogue the greatest between Shakespeare and +Mr. George Meredith. And with both our sympathy is +imperfect. We have learned to be sentimental and +self-sufficient with Rousseau, to be romantic and chivalrous with +Scott, to be emotional with Dickens, to take ourselves seriously +with Balzac and George Eliot; there are touches of feeling in our +laughter, even though the feeling be but spite; we have acquired +a habit of politeness—a tradition of universal +consideration and respect; and our theory of satire is rounded by +the pleasing generalities of Mr. Du Maurier on the one hand and +the malevolent respectability of Mr. W. S. Gilbert on the +other. It is an age of easy writing and still easier +reading: our authors produce for us much in the manner of the +silkworm—only their term of life is longer; we accept their +results in something of the spirit of them that are interested, +and not commercially, in the processes of silkworms. And M. +Guy de Maupassant can write but hath a devil, and we take him not +because of his writing but because of his devil; and Blank and +Dash and So-and-So and the rest could no more than so many sheep +develop a single symptom of possession among <!-- page 235--><a +name="page235"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 235</span>them, and +we take them because a devil and they are incompatibles. +And art is short and time is long; and we care nothing for art +and almost as much for time; and there is little if any to choose +between Mudie’s latest ‘catch’ and last +year’s ‘sensation’ at Burlington House. +And to one of us it is ‘poor Fielding’; and to +another Fielding is merely gross, immoral, and dull; and to most +the story of that last journey to Lisbon is unknown, and +Thackeray’s dream of Fielding—a novelist’s +presentment of a purely fictitious character—is the +Fielding who designed and built and finished for eternity. +Which is to be pitied? The artist of <i>Amelia</i> and +<i>Jonathan Wild</i>, the creator of the Westerns and Parson +Adams and Colonel Bath? or we the whippersnappers of +sentiment—the critics who can neither read nor +understand?</p> +<p style="text-align: center"><span class="smcap">the +end</span></p> +<p style="text-align: center">Printed by <span +class="smcap">T.</span> and <span class="smcap">A. +Constable</span>, Printers to Her Majesty,<br /> +at the Edinburgh University Press.</p> +<p>***END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK VIEWS AND REVIEWS***</p> +<pre> + + +***** This file should be named 22280-h.htm or 22280-h.zip****** + + +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: +http://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/2/2/2/8/22280 + + + +Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions +will be renamed. + +Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no +one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation +(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without +permission and without paying copyright royalties. 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You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + + + + + +Title: Views and Reviews + Essays in appreciation + + +Author: William Ernest Henley + + + +Release Date: August 8, 2007 [eBook #22280] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ISO-646-US (US-ASCII) + + +***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK VIEWS AND REVIEWS*** + + + +Transcribed from the 1892 David Nutt edition by David Price, email +ccx074@pglaf.org + + + + + +VIEWS AND REVIEWS + + +ESSAYS +IN APPRECIATION + +By W. E. HENLEY + +LITERATURE + +LONDON +Published by DAVID NUTT +in the Strand +1892 + +* * * * * + +FIRST EDITION + +Printing begun 28th October 1889, ended 13th May 1890 + +ORDINARY ISSUE-- +1000 _copies_ + +Finest Japanese-- +20 _copies_ + +SECOND EDITION + +Printing begun May 25th, ended June 18, 1892 + +1000 _copies_ + +_Edinburgh_:_ T. & A. CONSTABLE_, _Printers to Her Majesty_ + +TO THE MEN OF +'THE SCOTS OBSERVER' + + + + +PREFATORY + + +_Suggested by one friend and selected and compiled by another_, _this +volume is less a book than a mosaic of scraps and shreds recovered from +the shot rubbish of some fourteen years of journalism_. _Thus_, _the +notes on Longfellow_, _Balzac_, _Sidney_, _Tourneur_, '_Arabian Nights +Entertainments_,' _Borrow_, _George Eliot_, _and Mr. Frederick Locker are +extracted from originals in_ '_London_'--_a print still remembered with +affection by those concerned in it_; _those on Labiche_, _Champfleury_, +_Richardson_, _Fielding_, _Byron_, _Gay_, _Congreve_, _Boswell_, '_Essays +and Essayists_,' _Jefferies_, _Hood_, _Matthew Arnold_, _Lever_, +_Thackeray_, _Dickens_, _M. Theodore de Banville_, _Mr. Austin Dobson_, +_and Mr. George Meredith from articles contributed to_ '_The Athenaeum_'; +_those on Dumas_, _Count Tolstoi's novels_, _and the verse of Dr. Hake +from_ '_The Saturday Review_'; _those on Walton_, _Landor_, _and Heine +from_ '_The Scots Observer_,' '_The Academy_,' _and_ '_Vanity Fair_' +_respectively_; _while the_ '_Disraeli_' _has been pieced together from_ +'_London_,' '_Vanity Fair_,' _and_ '_The Athenaeum_'; _the_ '_Berlioz_' +_from_ '_The Scots Observer_' _and_ '_The Saturday Review_'; _the_ +'_Tennyson_' _from_ '_The Scots Observer_' _and_ '_The Magazine of Art_'; +_the_ '_Homer and Theocritus_' _from_ '_Vanity Fair_' _and the defunct_ +'_Teacher_'; _the_ '_Hugo_' _from_ '_The Athenaeum_,' '_The Magazine of +Art_,' _and an unpublished fragment written for_ '_The Scottish Church_.' +_In all cases permission to reprint is hereby gratefully acknowledged_; +_but the reprinted matter has been subjected to such a process of +revision and reconstitution that much of it is practically new_, _while +little or none remains as it was_. _I venture_, _then_, _to hope that +the result_, _for all its scrappiness_, _will be found to have that unity +which comes of method and an honest regard for letters_. + +W. E. H. + +_Edinr._ 8_th_ _May_ 1890 + + + + +DICKENS + + +A 'Frightful Minus' + + +Mr. Andrew Lang is delightfully severe on those who 'cannot read +Dickens,' but in truth it is only by accident that he is not himself of +that unhappy persuasion. For Dickens the humourist he has a most +uncompromising enthusiasm; for Dickens the artist in drama and romance he +has as little sympathy as the most practical. Of the prose of _David +Copperfield_ and _Our Mutual Friend_, the _Tale of Two Cities_ and _The +Mystery of Edwin Drood_, he disdains to speak. He is almost fierce (for +him) in his denunciation of Little Nell and Paul Dombey; he protests that +Monks and Ralph Nickleby are 'too steep,' as indeed they are. But of +Bradley Headstone and Sydney Carton he says not a word; while of _Martin +Chuzzlewit_--but here he shall speak for himself, the italics being a +present to him. 'I have read in that book a score of times,' says he; 'I +never see it but I revel in it--in Pecksniff and Mrs. Gamp and the +Americans. _But what the plot is all about_, _what Jonas did_, _what +Montague Tigg had to make in the matter_, _what all the pictures with +plenty of shading illustrate_, _I have never been able to comprehend_.' +This is almost as bad as the reflection (in a magazine) that Jonas +Chuzzlewit is 'the most shadowy murderer in fiction.' Yet it is +impossible to be angry. In his own way and within his own limits Mr. +Lang is such a thoroughgoing admirer of Dickens that you are moved to +compassion when you think of the much he loses by 'being constitutionally +incapable' of perfect apprehension. 'How poor,' he cries, with generous +enthusiasm, 'the world of fancy would be, "how dispeopled of her dreams," +if, in some ruin of the social system, the books of Dickens were lost; +and if The Dodger, and Charley Bates, and Mr. Crinkle and Miss Squeers +and Sam Weller, and Mrs. Gamp, and Dick Swiveller were to perish, or to +vanish with Menander's men and women! We cannot think of our world +without them; and, children of dreams as they are, they seem more +essential than great statesmen, artists, soldiers, who have actually worn +flesh and blood, ribbons and orders, gowns and uniforms.' Nor is this +all. He is almost prepared to welcome 'free education,' since 'every +Englishman who can read, unless he be an Ass, is a reader the more' for +Dickens. Does it not give one pause to reflect that the writer of this +charming eulogy can only read the half of Dickens, and is half the ideal +of his own denunciation. + + + +His Method. + + +Dickens's imagination was diligent from the outset; with him conception +was not less deliberate and careful than development; and so much he +confesses when he describes himself as 'in the first stage of a new book, +which consists in going round and round the idea, as you see a bird in +his cage go about and about his sugar before he touches it.' 'I have no +means,' he writes to a person wanting advice, 'of knowing whether you are +patient in the pursuit of this art; but I am inclined to think that you +are not, and that you do not discipline yourself enough. When one is +impelled to write this or that, one has still to consider: "How much of +this will tell for what I mean? How much of it is my own wild emotion +and superfluous energy--how much remains that is truly belonging to this +ideal character and these ideal circumstances?" It is in the laborious +struggle to make this distinction, and in the determination to try for +it, that the road to the correction of faults lies. [Perhaps I may +remark, in support of the sincerity with which I write this, that I am an +impatient and impulsive person myself, but that it has been for many +years the constant effort of my life to practise at my desk what I preach +to you.]' Such golden words could only have come from one enamoured of +his art, and holding the utmost endeavour in its behalf of which his +heart and mind were capable for a matter of simple duty. They are a +proof that Dickens--in intention at least, and if in intention then +surely, the fact of his genius being admitted, to some extent in fact as +well--was an artist in the best sense of the term. + + + +His Development. + + +In the beginning he often wrote exceeding ill, especially when he was +doing his best to write seriously. He developed into an artist in words +as he developed into an artist in the construction and the evolution of a +story. But his development was his own work, and it is a fact that +should redound eternally to his honour that he began in newspaper +English, and by the production of an imitation of the _novela +picaresca_--a string of adventures as broken and disconnected as the +adventures of Lazarillo de Tormes or Peregrine Pickle, and went on to +become an exemplar. A man self-made and self-taught, if he knew anything +at all about the 'art for art' theory--which is doubtful--he may well +have held it cheap enough. But he practised Millet's dogma--_Dans l'art +il faut sa peau_--as resolutely as Millet himself, and that, too, under +conditions that might have proved utterly demoralising had he been less +robust and less sincere. He began as a serious novelist with Ralph +Nickleby and Lord Frederick Verisopht; he went on to produce such +masterpieces as Jonas Chuzzlewit and Doubledick, and Eugene Wrayburn and +the immortal Mrs. Gamp, and Fagin and Sikes and Sydney Carton, and many +another. The advance is one from positive weakness to positive strength, +from ignorance to knowledge, from incapacity to mastery, from the +manufacture of lay figures to the creation of human beings. + + + +His Results. + + +His faults were many and grave. He wrote some nonsense; he sinned +repeatedly against taste; he could be both noisy and vulgar; he was apt +to be a caricaturist where he should have been a painter; he was often +mawkish and often extravagant; and he was sometimes more inept than a +great writer has ever been. But his work, whether bad or good, has in +full measure the quality of sincerity. He meant what he did: and he +meant it with his whole heart. He looked upon himself as representative +and national--as indeed he was; he regarded his work as a universal +possession; and he determined to do nothing that for lack of pains should +prove unworthy of his function. If he sinned it was unadvisedly and +unconsciously; if he failed it was because he knew no better. You feel +that as you read. The freshness and fun of _Pickwick_--a comic middle- +class epic, so to speak--seem mainly due to high spirits; and perhaps +that immortal book should be described as a first improvisation by a +young man of genius not yet sure of either expression or ambition and +with only vague and momentary ideas about the duties and necessities of +art. But from _Pickwick_ onwards to _Edwin Drood_ the effort after +improvement is manifest. What are _Dombey_ and _Dorrit_ themselves but +the failures of a great and serious artist? In truth the man's genius +did but ripen with years and labour; he spent his life in developing from +a popular writer into an artist. He extemporised _Pickwick_, it may be, +but into _Copperfield_ and _Chuzzlewit_ and the _Tale of Two Cities_ and +_Our Mutual Friend_ he put his whole might, working at them with a +passion of determination not exceeded by Balzac himself. He had +enchanted the public without an effort; he was the best-beloved of modern +writers almost from the outset of his career. But he had in him at least +as much of the French artist as of the middle-class Englishman; and if +all his life he never ceased from self-education but went unswervingly in +pursuit of culture, it was out of love for his art and because his +conscience as an artist would not let him do otherwise. We have been +told so often to train ourselves by studying the practice of workmen like +Gautier and Hugo and imitating the virtues of work like _Hernani_ and +_Quatre-Vingt-Treize_ and _l'Education Sentimentale_--we have heard so +much of the aesthetic impeccability of Young France and the section of +Young England that affects its qualities and reproduces its fashions--that +it is hard to refrain from asking if, when all is said, we should not do +well to look for models nearer home? if in place of such moulds of form +as _Mademoiselle de Maupin_ we might not take to considering stuff like +_Rizpah_ and _Our Mutual Friend_? + + + +Ave atque Vale. + + +Yes, he had many and grave faults. But so had Sir Walter and the good +Dumas; so, to be candid, had Shakespeare himself--Shakespeare the king of +poets. To myself he is always the man of his unrivalled and enchanting +letters--is always an incarnation of generous and abounding gaiety, a +type of beneficent earnestness, a great expression of intellectual vigour +and emotional vivacity. I love to remember that I came into the world +contemporaneously with some of his bravest work, and to reflect that even +as he was the inspiration of my boyhood so is he a delight of my middle +age. I love to think that while English literature endures he will be +remembered as one that loved his fellow-men, and did more to make them +happy and amiable than any other writer of his time. + + + + +THACKERAY + + +His Worshippers. + + +It is odd to note how opinions differ as to the greatness of Thackeray +and the value of his books. Some regard him as the greatest novelist of +his age and country and as one of the greatest of any country and any +age. These hold him to be not less sound a moralist than excellent as a +writer, not less magnificently creative than usefully and delightfully +cynical, not less powerful and complete a painter of manners than +infallible as a social philosopher and incomparable as a lecturer on the +human heart. They accept Amelia Sedley for a very woman; they believe in +Colonel Newcome--'by _Don Quixote_ out of _Little Nell_'--as in something +venerable and heroic; they regard William Dobbin and 'Stunning' +Warrington as finished and subtle portraitures; they think Becky Sharp an +improvement upon Mme. Marneffe and Wenham better work than Rigby; they +are in love with Laura Bell, and refuse to see either cruelty or +caricature in their poet's presentment of Alcide de Mirobolant. +Thackeray's fun, Thackeray's wisdom, Thackeray's knowledge of men and +women, Thackeray's morality, Thackeray's view of life, 'his wit and +humour, his pathos, and his umbrella,' are all articles of belief with +them. Of Dickens they will not hear; Balzac they incline to despise; if +they make any comparison between Thackeray and Fielding, or Thackeray and +Richardson, or Thackeray and Sir Walter, or Thackeray and Disraeli, it is +to the disadvantage of Disraeli and Scott and Richardson and Fielding. +All these were well enough in their way and day; but they are not to be +classed with Thackeray. It is said, no doubt, that Thackeray could +neither make stories nor tell them; but he liked stories for all that, +and by the hour could babble charmingly of _Ivanhoe_ and the +_Mousquetaires_. It is possible that he was afraid of passion, and had +no manner of interest in crime. But then, how hard he bore upon snobs, +and how vigorously he lashed the smaller vices and the meaner faults! It +may be beyond dispute that he was seldom good at romance, and saw most +things--art and nature included--rather prosaically and ill-naturedly, as +he might see them who has been for many years a failure, and is naturally +a little resentful of other men's successes; but then, how brilliant are +his studies of club humanity and club manners! how thoroughly he +understands the feelings of them that go down into the West in broughams! +If he writes by preference for people with a thousand a year, is it not +the duty of everybody with a particle of self-respect to have that +income? Is it possible that any one who has it not can have either wit +or sentiment, humour or understanding? Thackeray writes _of_ gentlemen +_for_ gentlemen; therefore he is alone among artists; therefore he is +'the greatest novelist of his age.' That is the faith of the true +believer: that the state of mind of him that reveres less wisely than +thoroughly, and would rather be damned with Thackeray than saved with any +one else. + + + +His Critics. + + +The position of them that wear their rue with a difference, and do not +agree that all literature is contained in _The Book of Snobs_ and _Vanity +Fair_, is more easily defended. They like and admire their Thackeray in +many ways, but they think him rather a writer of genius who was innately +and irredeemably a Philistine than a supreme artist or a great man. To +them there is something artificial in the man and something insincere in +the artist: something which makes it seem natural that his best work +should smack of the literary _tour de force_, and that he should never +have appeared to such advantage as when, in _Esmond_ and in _Barry +Lyndon_, he was writing up to a standard and upon a model not wholly of +his own contrivance. They admit his claim to eminence as an adventurer +in 'the discovery of the Ugly'; but they contend that even there he did +his work more shrewishly and more pettily than he might; and in this +connection they go so far as to reflect that a snob is not only 'one who +meanly admires mean things,' as his own definition declares, but one who +meanly detests mean things as well. They agree with Walter Bagehot that +to be perpetually haunted by the plush behind your chair is hardly a sign +of lofty literary and moral genius; and they consider him narrow and +vulgar in his view of humanity, limited in his outlook upon life, +inclined to be envious, inclined to be tedious and pedantic, prone to +repetitions, and apt in bidding for applause to appeal to the baser +qualities of his readers and to catch their sympathy by making them feel +themselves spitefully superior to their fellow-men. They look at his +favourite heroines--at Laura and Ethel and Amelia; and they can but think +him stupid who could ever have believed them interesting or admirable or +attractive or true. They listen while he regrets it is impossible for +him to attempt the picture of a man; and, with Barry Lyndon in their +mind's eye and the knowledge that Casanova and Andrew Bowes suggested no +more than that, they wonder if the impossibility was not a piece of luck +for him. They hear him heaping contumely upon the murders and +adulteries, the excesses in emotion, that pleased the men of 1830 as they +had pleased the Elizabethans before them; and they see him turning with +terror and loathing from these--which after all are effects of vigorous +passion--to busy himself with the elaborate and careful narrative of how +Barnes Newcome beat his wife, and Mrs. Mackenzie scolded Colonel Newcome +to death, and old Twysden bragged and cringed himself into good society +and an interest in the life and well-being of a little cad like Captain +Woolcomb; and it is not amazing if they think his morality more dubious +in some ways than the morality he is so firmly fixed to ridicule and to +condemn. They reflect that he sees in Beatrix no more than the makings +of a Bernstein; and they are puzzled, when they come to mark the contrast +between the two portraitures and the difference between the part assigned +to Mrs. Esmond and the part assigned to the Baroness, to decide if he +were short-sighted or ungenerous, if he were inapprehensive or only +cruel. They weary easily of his dogged and unremitting pursuit of the +merely conventional man and the merely conventional woman; they cannot +always bring themselves to be interested in the cupboard drama, the tea- +cup tragedies and cheque-book and bandbox comedies, which he regards as +the stuff of human action and the web of human life; and from their +theory of existence they positively refuse to eliminate the heroic +qualities of romance and mystery and passion, which are--as they have +only to open their newspapers to see--essentials of human achievement and +integral elements of human character. They hold that his books contain +some of the finest stuff in fiction: as, for instance, Rawdon Crawley's +discovery of his wife and Lord Steyne, and Henry Esmond's return from the +wars, and those immortal chapters in which the Colonel and Frank +Castlewood pursue and run down their kinswoman and the Prince. But they +hold, too, that their influence is dubious, and that few have risen from +them one bit the better or one jot the happier. + + + +Which is Right? + + +Genius apart, Thackeray's morality is that of a highly respectable +British cynic; his intelligence is largely one of trifles; he is wise +over trivial and trumpery things. He delights in reminding us--with an +air!--that everybody is a humbug; that we are all rank snobs; that to +misuse your aspirates is to be ridiculous and incapable of real merit; +that Miss Blank has just slipped out to post a letter to Captain Jones; +that Miss Dash wears false teeth and a wig; that General Tufto is almost +as tightly laced as the beautiful Miss Hopper; that there's a bum-bailiff +in the kitchen at Number Thirteen; that the dinner we ate t'other day at +Timmins's is still to pay; that all is vanity; that there's a skeleton in +every house; that passion, enthusiasm, excess of any sort, is unwise, +abominable, a little absurd; and so forth. And side by side with these +assurances are admirable sketches of character and still more admirable +sketches of habit and of manners--are the Pontos and Costigan, Gandish +and Talbot Twysden and the unsurpassable Major, Sir Pitt and Brand +Firmin, the heroic De la Pluche and the engaging Farintosh and the +versatile Honeyman, a crowd of vivid and diverting portraitures besides; +but they are not different--in kind at least--from the reflections +suggested by the story of their several careers and the development of +their several individualities. Esmond apart, there is scarce a man or a +woman in Thackeray whom it is possible to love unreservedly or thoroughly +respect. That gives the measure of the man, and determines the quality +of his influence. He was the average clubman _plus_ genius and a style. +And, if there is any truth in the theory that it is the function of art +not to degrade but to ennoble--not to dishearten but to encourage--not to +deal with things ugly and paltry and mean but with great things and +beautiful and lofty--then, it is argued, his example is one to depreciate +and to condemn. + + + + His Style. + + +Thus the two sects: the sect of them that are with Thackeray and the sect +of them that are against him. Where both agree is in the fact of +Thackeray's pre-eminence as a writer of English and the master of one of +the finest prose styles in literature. His manner is the perfection of +conversational writing. Graceful yet vigorous; adorably artificial yet +incomparably sound; touched with modishness yet informed with +distinction; easily and happily rhythmical yet full of colour and quick +with malice and with meaning; instinct with urbanity and instinct with +charm--it is a type of high-bred English, a climax of literary art. He +may not have been a great man but assuredly he was a great writer; he may +have been a faulty novelist but assuredly he was a rare artist in words. +Setting aside Cardinal Newman's, the style he wrote is certainly less +open to criticism than that of any other modern Englishman. He was +neither super-eloquent like Mr. Ruskin nor a Germanised Jeremy like +Carlyle; he was not marmoreally emphatic as Landor was, nor was he +slovenly and inexpressive as was the great Sir Walter; he neither dallied +with antithesis like Macaulay nor rioted in verbal vulgarisms with +Dickens; he abstained from technology and what may be called +Lord-Burleighism as carefully as George Eliot indulged in them, and he +avoided conceits as sedulously as Mr. George Meredith goes out of his way +to hunt for them. He is a better writer than any one of these, in that +he is always a master of speech and of himself, and that he is always +careful yet natural and choice yet seemingly spontaneous. He wrote as a +very prince among talkers, and he interfused and interpenetrated English +with the elegant and cultured fashion of the men of Queen Anne and with +something of the warmth, the glow, the personal and romantic ambition, +peculiar to the century of Byron and Keats, of Landor and Dickens, of +Ruskin and Tennyson and Carlyle. Unlike his only rival, he had learnt +his art before he began to practise it. Of the early work of the greater +artist a good half is that of a man in the throes of education: the +ideas, the thoughts, the passion, the poetry, the humour, are of the +best, but the expression is self-conscious, strained, ignorant. Thackeray +had no such blemish. He wrote dispassionately, and he was a born writer. +In him there is no hesitation, no fumbling, no uncertainty. The style of +_Barry Lyndon_ is better and stronger and more virile than the style of +_Philip_; and unlike the other man's, whose latest writing is his best, +their author's evolution was towards decay. + + + +His Mission. + + +He is so superior a person that to catch him tripping is a peculiar +pleasure. It is a satisfaction apart, for instance, to reflect that he +has (it must be owned) a certain gentility of mind. Like the M.P. in +_Martin Chuzzlewit_, he represents the Gentlemanly Interest. That is his +mission in literature, and he fulfils it thoroughly. He appears +sometimes as Mr. Yellowplush, sometimes as Mr. Fitzboodle, sometimes as +Michael Angelo Titmarsh, but always in the Gentlemanly Interest. In his +youth (as ever) he is found applauding the well-bred Charles de Bernard, +and remarking of Balzac and Dumas that the one is 'not fit for the +_salon_,' and the other 'about as genteel as a courier.' Balzac and +Dumas are only men of genius and great artists: the real thing is to be +'genteel' and write--as _Gerfeuil_ (_sic_) is written--'in a gentleman- +like style.' A few pages further on in the same pronouncement (a review +of _Jerome Paturot_), I find him quoting with entire approval Reybaud's +sketch of 'a great character, in whom the _habitue_ of Paris will perhaps +recognise a certain likeness to a certain celebrity of the present day, +by name Monsieur Hector Berlioz, the musician and critic.' The +description is too long to quote. It sparkles with all the _fadaises_ of +anti-Berliozian criticism, and the point is that the hero, after +conducting at a private party (which Berlioz never did) his own 'hymn of +the creation that has been lost since the days of the deluge,' 'called +for his cloak and his clogs, and walked home, where he wrote a critique +for the newspapers of the music which he had composed and directed.' In +the Gentlemanly Interest Mr. Titmarsh translates this sorry little libel +with the utmost innocence of approval. It is _The Paris Sketch-Book_ +over again. That Monsieur Hector Berlioz may possibly have known +something of his trade and been withal as honest a man and artist as +himself seems never to have occurred to him. He knows nothing of +Monsieur Hector except that he is a 'hairy romantic,' and that whatever +he wrote it was not _Batti_, _batti_; but that nothing is enough. +'Whether this little picture is a likeness or not,' he is ingenuous +enough to add, 'who shall say?' But,--and here speaks the bold but +superior Briton--'it is a good caricature of a race in France, where +geniuses _poussent_ as they do nowhere else; where poets are prophets, +where romances have revelations.' As he goes on to qualify _Jerome +Paturot_ as a 'masterpiece,' and as 'three volumes of satire in which +there is not a particle of bad blood,' it seems fair to conclude that in +the Gentlemanly Interest all is considered fair, and that to accuse a man +of writing criticisms on his own works is to be 'witty and entertaining,' +and likewise 'careless, familiar, and sparkling' to the genteelest +purpose possible in this genteelest of all possible worlds. + + + + +DISRAELI + + +His Novels. + + +To the general his novels must always be a kind of caviare; for they have +no analogue in letters, but are the output of a mind and temper of +singular originality. To the honest Tory, sworn to admire and unable to +comprehend, they must seem inexplicable as abnormal. To the professional +Radical they are so many proofs of innate inferiority: for they are full +of pretentiousness and affectation; they teem with examples of all manner +of vices, from false English to an immoral delight in dukes; they prove +their maker a trickster and a charlatan in every page. To them, however, +whose first care is for rare work, the series of novels that began with +_Vivian Grey_ and ended with _Endymion_ is one of the pleasant facts in +modern letters. These books abound in wit and daring, in originality and +shrewdness, in knowledge of the world and in knowledge of men; they +contain many vivid and striking studies of character, both portrait and +caricature; they sparkle with speaking phrases and happy epithets; they +are aglow with the passion of youth, the love of love, the worship of +physical beauty, the admiration of whatever is costly and select and +splendid--from a countess to a castle, from a duke to a diamond; they are +radiant with delight in whatever is powerful or personal or +attractive--from a cook to a cardinal, from an agitator to an emperor. +They often remind you of Voltaire, often of Balzac, often of _The Arabian +Nights_. You pass from an heroic drinking bout to a brilliant criticism +of style; from rhapsodies on bands and ortolans that remind you of Heine +to a gambling scene that for directness and intensity may vie with the +bluntest and strongest work of Prosper Merimee; from the extravagant +impudence of _Popanilla_ to the sentimental rodomontade of _Henrietta +Temple_; from ranting romanticism in _Alroy_ to vivid realism in _Sybil_. +Their author gives you no time to weary of him, for he is worldly and +passionate, fantastic and trenchant, cynical and ambitious, flippant and +sentimental, ornately rhetorical and triumphantly simple in a breath. He +is imperiously egoistic, but while constantly parading his own +personality he is careful never to tell you anything about it. And +withal he is imperturbably good-tempered: he brands and gibbets with a +smile, and with a smile he adores and applauds. Intellectually he is in +sympathy with character of every sort; he writes as becomes an artist who +has recognised that 'the conduct of men depends upon the temperament, not +upon a bunch of musty maxims,' and that 'there is a great deal of vice +that is really sheer inadvertence.' It is said that the Monmouth of +_Coningsby_ and the Steyne of _Vanity Fair_ are painted from one and the +same original; and you have but to compare the savage realism of +Thackeray's study to the scornful amenity of the other's--as you have but +to contrast the elaborate and extravagant cruelty of Thackeray's Alcide +de Mirobolant with the polite and half-respectful irony of Disraeli's +treatment of the cooks in _Tancred_--to perceive that in certain ways the +advantage is not with 'the greatest novelist of his time,' and that the +Monmouth produces an impression which is more moral because more kindly +and humane than the impression left by the Steyne, while in its way it is +every whit as vivid and as convincing. Yet another excellence, and a +great one, is his mastery of apt and forcible dialogue. The talk of Mr. +Henry James's personages is charmingly equable and appropriate, but it is +also trivial and tame; the talk in Anthony Trollope is surprisingly +natural and abundant, but it is also commonplace and immemorable; the +talk of Mr. George Meredith is always eloquent and fanciful, but the +eloquence is too often dark and the fancy too commonly inhuman. What +Disraeli's people have to say is not always original nor profound, but it +is crisply and happily phrased and uttered, it reads well, its impression +seldom fails of permanency. His _Wit and Wisdom_ is a kind of _Talker's +Guide_ or _Handbook of Conversation_. How should it be otherwise, seeing +that it contains the characteristic utterances of a great artist in life +renowned for memorable speech? + + + +A Contrast. + + +Now, if you ask a worshipper of him that was so long his rival, to repeat +a saying, a maxim, a sentence, of which his idol is the author, it is +odds but he will look like a fool, and visit you with an evasive answer. +What else should he do? His deity is a man of many words and no sayings. +He is the prince of agitators, but it would be impossible for him to mint +a definition of 'agitation'; he is the world's most eloquent +arithmetician, but it is beyond him to epigrammatise the fact that two +and two make four. And it seems certain, unless the study of Homer and +religious fiction inspire him to some purpose, that his contributions to +axiomatic literature will be still restricted to the remark that 'There +are three courses open' to something or other: to the House, to the angry +cabman, to what and whomsoever you will. In sober truth, he is one who +writes for to-day, and takes no thought of either yesterdays or morrows. +For him the Future is next session; the Past does not extend beyond his +last change of mind. He is a prince of journalists, and his excursions +into monthly literature remain to show how great and copious a master of +the 'leader'--ornate, imposing, absolutely insignificant--his absorption +in politics has cost the English-speaking world. + + + +His Backgrounds. + + +Disraeli's imagination, at once practical and extravagant, is not of the +kind that delights in plot and counterplot. His novels abound in action, +but the episodes wear a more or less random look: the impression produced +is pretty much that of a story of adventure. But if they fail as stories +they are unexceptionable as canvases. Our author unrolls them with +superb audacity; and rapidly and vigorously he fills them in with places +and people, with faces that are as life and words expressive even as +they. Nothing is too lofty or too low for him. He hawks at every sort +of game, and rarely does he make a false cast. It is but a step from the +wilds of Lancashire to the Arabian Desert, from the cook's first floor to +the Home of the Bellamonts; for he has the Seven-League-Boots of the +legend, and more than the genius of adventure of him that wore them. His +castles may be of cardboard, his cataracts of tinfoil, the sun of his +adjurations the veriest figment; but he never lets his readers see that +he knows it. His irony, sudden and reckless and insidious though it be, +yet never extends to his properties. There may be a sneer beneath that +mask which, with an egotism baffling as imperturbable, he delights in +intruding among his creations; but you cannot see it. You suspect its +presence, because he is a born mocker. But you remember that one of his +most obvious idiosyncrasies is an inordinate love of all that is +sumptuous, glittering, radiant, magnificent; and you incline to suspect +that he keeps his sneering for the world of men, and admires his scenes +and decorations too cordially to visit them with anything so merciless. + + + +His Men and Women. + + +But dashing and brilliant as are his sketches of places and things, they +are after all the merest accessories. It was as a student of Men and +Women that he loved to excel, and it is as their painter that I praise +him now. Himself a worshipper of intellect, it was intellectually that +he mastered and developed them. Like Sidonia he moves among them not to +feel with them but to understand and learn from them. Such sympathy as +he had was either purely sensuous, as for youth and beauty and all kinds +of comeliness; or purely intellectual, as for intelligence, +artificiality, servility, meanness. And as his essence was satirical, as +he was naturally irreverent and contemptuous, it follows that he is best +and strongest in the act of punishment not of reward. His passion for +youth was beautiful, but it did not make him strong. His scorn for +things contemptible, his hate for things hateful, are at times too bitter +even for those who think with him; but in these lay his force--they +filled his brain with light, and they touched his lips with fire. The +wretched Rigby is far more vigorous and life-like than the amiable +Coningsby; Tom Cogit--a sketch, but a sketch of genius--is infinitely +more interesting than May Dacre or even the Young Duke; Tancred is a good +fellow, and very real and true in his goodness, but contrast him with +Fakredeen! And after his knaves, his fools, his tricksters, the most +striking figures in his gallery are those whom he has considered from a +purely intellectual point of view: either kindly, as Sidonia, or coolly, +as Lord Monmouth, but always calmly and with no point of passion in his +regard: the Eskdales, Villebecques, Ormsbys, Bessos, Marneys, Meltons, +and Mirabels, the Bohuns and St. Aldegondes and Grandisons, the Tadpoles +and the Tapers, the dominant and subaltern humanity of the world. All +these are drawn with peculiar boldness of line, precision of touch, and +clearness of intention. And as with his men so is it with his women: the +finest are not those he likes best but those who interested him most. +Male and female, his eccentrics surpass his commonplaces. He had a great +regard for girls, and his attitude towards them, or such of them as he +elected heroines, was mostly one of adoration--magnificent yet a little +awkward and strained. With women, married women, he had vastly more in +common: he could admire, study, divine, without having to feign a warmer +feeling; and while his girls are poor albeit splendid young persons, his +matrons are usually delightful. Edith Millbank is not a very striking +figure in _Coningsby_; but her appearance in _Tancred_--well, you have +only to compare it to the resurrection of Laura Bell, as Mrs. Pendennis +to see how good it is. + + + +His Style. + + +Now and then the writing is bad, and the thought is stale. Disraeli had +many mannerisms, innate and acquired. His English was frequently loose +and inexpressive; he was apt to trip in his grammar, to stumble over 'and +which,' and to be careless about the connection between his nominatives +and his verbs. Again, he could scarce ever refrain from the use of +gorgeous commonplaces of sentiment and diction. His taste was sometimes +ornately and barbarically conventional; he wrote as an orator, and his +phrases often read as if he had used them for the sake of their +associations rather than themselves. His works are a casket of such +stage jewels of expression as 'Palladian structure,' 'Tusculan repose,' +'Gothic pile,' 'pellucid brow,' 'mossy cell,' and 'dew-bespangled meads.' +He delighted in 'hyacinthine curls' and 'lustrous locks,' in 'smiling +parterres' and 'stately terraces.' He seldom sat down in print to +anything less than a 'banquet', he was capable of invoking 'the iris +pencil of Hope'; he could not think nor speak of the beauties of woman +except as 'charms.' Which seems to show that to be 'born in a library,' +and have Voltaire--that impeccable master of the phrase--for your chief +of early heroes and exemplars is not everything. + + + +His Oratory. + + +It is admitted, I believe, that he had many of the qualities of a great +public speaker: that he had an admirable voice and an excellent method; +that his sequences were logical and natural, his arguments vigorous and +persuasive; that he was an artist in style, and in the course of a single +speech could be eloquent and vivacious, ornate and familiar, passionate +and cynical, deliberately rhetorical and magnificently fantastic in turn; +that he was a master of all oratorical modes--of irony and argument, of +stately declamation and brilliant and unexpected antithesis, of +caricature and statement and rejoinder alike; that he could explain, +denounce, retort, retract, advance, defy, dispute, with equal readiness +and equal skill; that he was unrivalled in attack and unsurpassed in +defence; and that in heated debate and on occasions when he felt himself +justified in putting forth all his powers and in striking in with the +full weight of his imperious and unique personality he was the most +dangerous antagonist of his time. And yet, in spite of his mysterious +and commanding influence over his followers--in spite, too, of the fact +that he died assuredly the most romantic and perhaps the most popular +figure of his time--it is admitted withal that he was lacking in a +certain quality of temperament, that attribute great orators possess in +common with great actors: the power, that is, of imposing oneself upon an +audience not by argument nor by eloquence, not by the perfect utterance +of beautiful and commanding speech nor by the enunciation of eternal +principles or sympathetic and stirring appeals, but by an effect of +personal magnetism, by the expression through voice and gesture and +presence of an individuality, a temperament, call it what you will, that +may be and is often utterly commonplace but is always inevitably +irresistible. He could slaughter an opponent, or butcher a measure, or +crumple up a theory with unrivalled adroitness and despatch; but he could +not dominate a crowd to the extent of persuading it to feel with his +heart, think with his brain, and accept his utterances as the expression +not only of their common reason but of their collective sentiment as +well. He was as incapable of such a feat as Mr. Gladstone's Midlothian +campaign as Mr. Gladstone is of producing the gaming scene in _The Young +Duke_ or the 'exhausted volcanoes' paragraph in the Manchester speech. + + + +His Speeches as Literature. + + +As a rule--a rule to which there are some magnificent exceptions--orators +have only to cease from speaking to become uninteresting. What has been +heard with enthusiasm is read with indifference or even with +astonishment. You miss the noble voice, the persuasive gesture, the +irresistible personality; and with the emotional faculty at rest and the +reason at work you are surprised--and it may be a little indignant--that +you should have been impressed so deeply as you were by such cold, bald +verbosity as seen in black and white the masterpiece of yesterday appears +to be. To some extent this is the case with these speeches of +Disraeli's. At the height of debate, amid the clash of personal and +party animosities, with the cheers of the orator's supporters to give +them wings, they sounded greater than they were. But for all that they +are vigorous and profitable yet. Their author's unfailing capacity for +saying things worth heeding and remembering is proved in every one of +them. It is not easy to open either of Mr. Kebbel's volumes without +lighting upon something--a string of epigrams, a polished gibe, a burst +of rhetoric, an effective collocation of words--that proclaims the +artist. In this connection the perorations are especially instructive, +even if you consider them simply as arrangements of sonorous and +suggestive words: as oratorical impressions carefully prepared, as +effects of what may be called vocalised orchestration touched off as +skilfully and with as fine a sense of sound and of the sentiment to +correspond as so many passages of instrumentation signed 'Berlioz' might +be. + + + +The Great Earl. + + +Fruits fail, and love dies, and time ranges; and only the whippersnapper +(that fool of Time) endureth for ever. Moliere knew him well, and he +said that Moliere was a liar and a thief. And Disraeli knew him too, and +he said that in these respects Disraeli and Moliere were brothers. That +he said so matters as little now as ever it did; for though the +whippersnapper is immortal in kind, he is nothing if not futile and +ephemeral in effect, and it was seen long since that in life and death +Disraeli, as became his genius and his race, was the Uncommonplace +incarnate, the antithesis of Grocerdom, the Satan of that revolt against +the yielding habit of Jehovah-Bottles the spirit whereof is fast coming +to be our one defence against socialism and the dominion of the Common +Fool. He was no sentimentalist: as what great artist in government has +ever been? He loved power for power's sake, and recognising to the full +the law of the survival of the fittest he preferred his England to the +world. He knew that it is the function of the man of genius to show that +theory is only theory, and that in the House of Morality there are many +mansions. To that end he lived and died; and it is not until one has +comprehended the complete significance of his life and death that one is +qualified to speak with understanding of such a life and death as his who +passed at Khartoum. + + + + +ALEXANDRE DUMAS + + +His Components. + + +The life of Dumas is not only a monument of endeavour and success, it is +a sort of labyrinth as well. It abounds in pseudonyms and disguises, in +sudden and unexpected appearances and retreats as unexpected and sudden, +in scandals and in rumours, in mysteries and traps and ambuscades of +every kind. It pleased the great man to consider himself of more +importance than any and all of the crowd of collaborators whose ideas he +developed, whose raw material he wrought up into the achievement we know; +and he was given to take credit to himself not only for the success and +value of a particular work but for the whole thing--the work in its +quiddity, so to speak, and resolved into its original elements. On the +other hand, it pleased such painful creatures as MM. Querard and 'Eugene +de Mirecourt,' as it has since pleased Messrs. Hitchman and Fitzgerald to +consider the second- and third-rate literary persons whom Dumas +assimilated in such numbers as of greater interest and higher merit than +Dumas. To them the jackals were far nobler than the lion, and they +worked their hardest in the interest of the pack. It was their mission +to decompose and disintegrate the magnificent entity which M. Blaze de +Bury very happily nicknames 'Dumas-Legion,' and in the process not to +render his own unto Caesar but to take from him all that was Caesar's, +and divide it among the mannikins he had absorbed. And their work was in +its way well done; for have we not seen M. Brunetiere exulting in +agreement and talking of Dumas as one less than Eugene Sue and not much +bigger than Gaillardet? Of course the ultimate issue of the debate is +not doubtful. Dumas remains to the end a prodigy of force and industry, +a miracle of cleverness and accomplishment and ease, a type of generous +and abundant humanity, a great artist in many varieties of form, a prince +of talkers and story-tellers, one of the kings of the stage, a benefactor +of his epoch and his kind; while of those who assisted him in the +production of his immense achievement the most exist but as fractions of +the larger sum, and the others have utterly disappeared. 'Combien,' says +his son in that excellent page which serves to preface _le Fils +Naturel_--'combien parmi ceux qui devaient rester obscurs se sont +eclaires et chauffes a ta forge, et si l'heure des restitutions sonnait, +quel gain pour toi, rien qu'a reprendre ce que tu as donne et ce qu'on +t'a pris!' That is the true verdict of posterity, and he does well who +abides by it. + + + +Himself. + + +He is one of the heroes of modern art. Envy and scandal have done their +worst now. The libeller has said his say; the detectives who make a +specialty of literary forgeries have proved their cases one and all; the +judges of matter have spoken, and so have the critics of style; the +distinguished author of _Nana_ has taken us into his confidence on the +subject; we have heard from the lamented Granier and others as much as +was to be heard on the question of plagiarism in general and the +plagiarisms of Dumas in particular; and Mr. Percy Fitzgerald has done +what he is pleased to designate the 'nightman's work' of analysing +_Antony_ and _Kean_, and of collecting everything that spite has said +about their author's life, their author's habits, their author's manners +and customs and character: of whose vanity, mendacity, immorality, a +score of improper qualities besides, enough has been written to furnish a +good-sized library. And the result of it all is that Dumas is recognised +for a force in modern art and for one of the greatest inventors and +amusers the century has produced. Whole crowds of men were named as the +real authors of his books and plays; but they were only readable when he +signed for them. His ideas were traced to a hundred originals; but they +had all seemed worthless till he took them in hand and developed them +according to their innate capacity. The French he wrote was popular, and +the style at his command was none of the loftiest, as his critics have +often been at pains to show; but he was for all that an artist at once +original and exemplary, with an incomparable instinct of selection, a +constructive faculty not equalled among the men of this century, an +understanding of what is right and what is wrong in art and a mastery of +his materials which in their way are not to be paralleled in the work of +Sir Walter himself. Like Napoleon, he was 'a natural force let loose'; +and if he had done no more than achieve universal renown as the prince of +_raconteurs_ and a commanding position as a novelist wherever novels are +read he would still have done much. But he did a vast deal more. A +natural force, he wrought in the right direction, as natural forces must +and do. He amused the world for forty years and more; but he also +contributed something to the general sum of the world's artistic +experience and capacity, and his contribution is of permanent worth and +charm. He has left us stories which are models of the enchanting art of +narrative; and, with a definition good and comprehensive enough to +include all the best work which has been produced for the theatre from +AEschylus down to Augier, from the _Choephorae_ on to _le Gendre de M. +Poirier_, he has given us types of the romantic and the domestic drama, +which, new when he produced them, are even now not old, and which as +regards essentials have yet to be improved upon. The form and aim of the +modern drama, as we know it, have been often enough ascribed to the +ingenious author of _une Chaine_ and the _Verre d'Eau_; but they might +with much greater truth be ascribed to the author of _Antony_ and _la +Tour de Nesle_. Scribe invents and eludes where Dumas invents and dares. +The theory of Scribe is one of mere dexterity: his drama is a perpetual +_chasse-croise_ at the edge of a precipice, a dance of puppets among +swords that might but will not cut and eggs that might but will not +break; to him a situation is a kind of tight-rope to be crossed with ever +so much agility and an endless affectation of peril by all his characters +in turn: in fact, as M. Dumas _fils_ has said of him, he is 'le +Shakespeare des ombres chinoises.' The theory of Dumas is the very +antipodes of this. 'All I want,' he said in a memorable comparison +between himself and Victor Hugo, 'is four trestles, four boards, two +actors, and a passion'; and his good plays are a proof that in this he +spoke no more than the truth. Drama to him was so much emotion in +action. If he invented a situation he accepted its issues in their +entirety, and did his utmost to express from it all the passion it +contained. That he fails to reach the highest peaks of emotional effect +is no fault of his: to do that something more is needed than a perfect +method, something other than a great ambition and an absolute certainty +of touch; and Dumas was neither a Shakespeare nor an AEschylus--he was +not even an Augier. All the same, he has produced in _la Tour de Nesle_ +a romantic play which M. Zola himself pronounces the ideal of the _genre_ +and in _Antony_ an achievement in drawing-room tragedy which is out of +all questioning the first, and in the opinion of a critic so competent +and so keen as the master's son is probably the strongest, thing of its +kind in modern literature. On this latter play it were difficult, I +think, to bestow too much attention. It is touched, even tainted, with +the manner and the affectation of its epoch. But it is admirably +imagined and contrived; it is very daring, and it is very new; it deals +with the men and women of 1830, and--with due allowance for differences +of manners, ideal, and personal genius--it is in its essentials a play in +the same sense as _Othello_ and the _Trachiniae_ are plays in theirs. It +is the beginning, as I believe, not only of _les Lionnes Pauvres_ but of +_Therese Raquin_ and _la Glu_ as well: just as _la Tour de Nesle_ is the +beginning of _Patrie_ and _la Haine_. + + + +At Least. + + +And if these greater and loftier pretensions be still contested; if the +theory of the gifted creature who wrote that the works of the master +wizard are 'like summer fruits brought forth abundantly in the full blaze +of sunshine, which do not keep'--if this preposterous fantasy be +generally accepted, there will yet be much in Dumas to venerate and love. +If _Antony_ were of no more account than an ephemeral burlesque; if _la +Reine Margot_ and the immortal trilogy of the Musketeers--that 'epic of +friendship'--were dead as morality and as literature alike; if it were +nothing to have re-cast the novel of adventure, formulated the modern +drama, and perfected the drama of incident; if to have sent all France to +the theatre to see in three dimensions those stories of Chicot, Edmond +Dantes, d'Artagnan, which it knew by heart from books were an achievement +within the reach of every scribbler who dabbles in letters; if all this +were true, and Dumas were merely a piece of human journalism, produced to- +day and gone to-morrow, there would still be enough of him to make his a +memorable name. He was a prodigy--of amiability, cleverness, energy, +daring, charm, industry--if he was nothing else. Gronow tells that he +has sat at table with Dumas and Brougham, and that Brougham, out-faced +and out-talked, was forced to quit the field. 'J'ai conserve,' says M. +Maxime du Camp, in his admirable _Souvenirs litteraires_, 'd'Alexandre +Dumas un souvenir ineffacable; malgre un certain laisser-aller qui tenait +a l'exuberance de sa nature, c'etait un homme _dont tous les sentiments +etaient eleves_. On a ete injuste pour lui; comme il avait enormement +d'esprit, on l'a accuse d'etre leger; comme il produisait avec une +facilite incroyable, on l'a accuse de gacher la besogne, et, comme il +etait prodigue, on l'a accuse de manquer de tenue. Ces reproches m'ont +toujours paru miserables.' This is much; but it is not nearly all. He +had, this independent witness goes on to note, 'une generosite naturelle +qui ne comptait jamais; il ressemblait a une corne d'abondance qui se +vide sans cesse dans les mains tendues; _la moitie_, _sinon plus_, _de +l'argent gagne par lui a ete donnee_.' That is true; and it is also true +that he gave at least as largely of himself--his prodigious temperament, +his generous gaiety, his big, manly heart, his turn for chivalry, his +gallant and delightful genius--as of his money. He was reputed a violent +and luxurious debauchee; and he mostly lived in an attic--(the worst room +in the house and therefore the only one he could call his own)--with a +camp-bed and the deal table at which he wrote. He passed for a +loud-mouthed idler; and during many years his daily average of work was +fourteen hours for months on end. 'Ivre de puissance,' says George Sand +of him, but 'foncierement bon.' They used to hear him laughing as he +wrote, and when he killed Porthos he did no more that day. It would have +been worth while to figure as one of the crowd of friends and parasites +who lived at rack and manger in his house, for the mere pleasure of +seeing him descend upon them from his toil of moving mountains and +sharing in that pleasing half-hour of talk which was his common +refreshment. After that he would return to the attic and the deal table, +and move more mountains. With intervals of travel, sport, adventure, and +what in France is called 'l'amour'--(it is strange, by the way, that he +was never a hero of Carlyle's)--he lived in this way more or less for +forty years or so; and when he left Paris for the last time he had but +two napoleons in his pocket. 'I had only one when I came here first,' +quoth he, 'and yet they call me a spendthrift.' That was his way; and +while the result is not for Dr. Smiles to chronicle, I for one persist in +regarding the spirit in which it was accepted as not less exemplary than +delightful. + + + +His Monument. + + +On M. du Camp's authority there is a charming touch to add to his son's +description of him. 'Il me semble,' said the royal old prodigal in his +last illness, 'que je suis au sommet d'un monument qui tremble comme si +les fondations etaient assises sur le sable.' 'Sois en paix,' replied +the author of the _Demi-Monde_: 'le monument est bien bati, et la base +est solide.' He was right, as we know. It is good and fitting that +Dumas should have a monument in the Paris he amazed and delighted and +amused so long. But he could have done without one. In what language is +he not read? and where that he is read is he not loved? '_Exegi +monumentum_,' he might have said: 'and wherever romance is a necessary of +life, there shall you look for it, and not in vain.' + + + + +GEORGE MEREDITH + + +His Qualities. + + +To read Mr. Meredith's novels with insight is to find them full of the +rarest qualities in fiction. If their author has a great capacity for +unsatisfactory writing he has capacities not less great for writing that +is satisfactory in the highest degree. He has the tragic instinct and +endowment, and he has the comic as well; he is an ardent student of +character and life; he has wit of the swiftest, the most comprehensive, +the most luminous, and humour that can be fantastic or ironical or human +at his pleasure; he has passion and he has imagination; he has considered +sex--the great subject, the leaven of imaginative art--with notable +audacity and insight. He is as capable of handling a vice or an emotion +as he is of managing an affectation. He can be trivial, or grotesque, or +satirical, or splendid; and whether his _milieu_ be romantic or actual, +whether his personages be heroic or sordid, he goes about his task with +the same assurance and intelligence. In his best work he takes rank with +the world's novelists. He is a companion for Balzac and Richardson, an +intimate for Fielding and Cervantes. His figures fall into their place +beside the greatest of their kind; and when you think of Lucy Feverel and +Mrs. Berry, of Evan Harrington's Countess Saldanha and the Lady Charlotte +of _Emilia in England_, of the two old men in _Harry Richmond_ and the +Sir Everard Romfrey of _Beauchamp's Career_, of Renee and Cecilia, of +Emilia and Rhoda Fleming, of Rose Jocelyn and Lady Blandish and Ripton +Thompson, they have in the mind's eye a value scarce inferior to that of +Clarissa and Lovelace, of Bath and Western and Booth, of Andrew +Fairservice and Elspeth Mucklebacket, of Philippe Bridau and Vautrin and +Balthasar Claes. In the world of man's creation his people are citizens +to match the noblest; they are of the aristocracy of the imagination, the +peers in their own right of the society of romance. And for all that, +their state is mostly desolate and lonely and forlorn. + + + +His Defects. + + +For Mr. Meredith is one of the worst and least attractive of great +writers as well as one of the best and most fascinating. He is a sun +that has broken out into innumerable spots. The better half of his +genius is always suffering eclipse from the worse half. He writes with +the pen of a great artist in his left hand and the razor of a spiritual +suicide in his right. He is the master and the victim of a monstrous +cleverness which is neither to hold nor to bind, and will not permit him +to do things as an honest, simple person of genius would. As +Shakespeare, in Johnson's phrase, lost the world for a quibble and was +content to lose it, so does Mr. Meredith discrown himself of the +sovereignty of contemporary romance to put on the cap and bells of the +professional wit. He is not content to be plain Jupiter: his lightnings +are less to him than his fireworks; and his pages so teem with fine +sayings and magniloquent epigrams and gorgeous images and fantastic +locutions that the mind would welcome dulness as a bright relief. He is +tediously amusing; he is brilliant to the point of being obscure; his +helpfulness is so extravagant as to worry and confound. That is the +secret of his unpopularity. His stories are not often good stories and +are seldom well told; his ingenuity and intelligence are always +misleading him into treating mere episodes as solemnly and elaborately as +main incidents; he is ever ready to discuss, to ramble, to theorise, to +dogmatise, to indulge in a little irony or a little reflection or a +little artistic misdemeanour of some sort. But other novelists have done +these things before him, and have been none the less popular, and are +actually none the less readable. None, however, has pushed the foppery +of style and intellect to such a point as Mr. Meredith. Not infrequently +he writes page after page of English as ripe and sound and unaffected as +heart could wish; and you can but impute to wantonness and recklessness +the splendid impertinences that intrude elsewhere. To read him at the +rate of two or three chapters a day is to have a sincere and hearty +admiration for him and a devout anxiety to forget his defects and make +much of his merits. But they are few who can take a novel on such terms +as these, and to read your Meredith straight off is to have an +indigestion of epigram, and to be incapable of distinguishing good from +bad: the author of the parting between Richard and Lucy Feverel--a high- +water mark of novelistic passion and emotion--from the creator of Mr. +Raikes and Dr. Shrapnel, which are two of the most flagrant unrealities +ever perpetrated in the name of fiction by an artist of genius. + + + +Another Way. + + +On the whole, I think, he does not often say anything not worth hearing. +He is too wise for that; and, besides, he is strenuously in earnest about +his work. He has a noble sense of the dignity of art and the +responsibilities of the artist; he will set down nothing that is to his +mind unworthy to be recorded; his treatment of his material is +distinguished by the presence of an intellectual passion (as it were) +that makes whatever he does considerable and deserving of attention and +respect. But unhappily the will is not seldom unequal to the deed: the +achievement is often leagues in rear of the inspiration; the attempt at +completeness is too laboured and too manifest--the feat is done but by a +painful and ungraceful process. There _is_ genius, but there is _not_ +felicity: that, one is inclined to say, is the distinguishing note of Mr. +Meredith's work, in prose and verse alike. There are magnificent +exceptions, of course, but they prove the rule and, broken though it be, +there is no gainsaying its existence. To be concentrated in form, to be +suggestive in material, to say nothing that is not of permanent value, +and only to say it in such terms as are charged to the fullest with +significance--this would seem to be the aim and end of Mr. Meredith's +ambition. Of simplicity in his own person he appears incapable. The +texture of his expression must be stiff with allusion, or he deems it ill +spun; there must be something of antic in his speech, or he cannot +believe he is addressing himself to the Immortals; he has praised with +perfect understanding the lucidity, the elegance, the ease, of Moliere, +and yet his aim in art (it would appear) is to be Moliere's antipodes, +and to vanquish by congestion, clottedness, an anxious and determined +dandyism of form and style. There is something _bourgeois_ in his +intolerance of the commonplace, something fanatical in the intemperance +of his regard for artifice. 'Le dandy,' says Baudelaire, 'doit aspirer a +etre sublime sans interruption. Il doit vivre et dormir devant un +miroir.' That, you are tempted to believe, is Mr. Meredith's theory of +expression. 'Ce qu'il y a dans le mauvais gout,' is elsewhere the +opinion of the same unamiable artist in paradox, 'c'est le plaisir +aristocratique de deplaire.' Is that, you ask yourself, the reason why +Mr. Meredith is so contemptuous of the general public?--why he will stoop +to no sort of concession nor permit himself a mite of patience with the +herd whose intellect is content with such poor fodder as Scott and +Dickens and Dumas? Be it as it may, the effect is the same. Our author +is bent upon being 'uninterruptedly sublime'; and we must take him as he +wills and as we find him. He loses of course; and we suffer. But none +the less do we cherish his society, and none the less are we interested +in his processes, and enchanted (when we are clever enough) by his +results. He lacks felicity, I have said; but he has charm as well as +power, and, once his rule is accepted, there is no way to shake him off. +The position is that of the antique tyrant in a commonwealth once +republican and free. You resent the domination, but you enjoy it too, +and with or against your will you admire the author of your slavery. + + + +Rhoda Fleming. + + +_Rhoda Fleming_ is one of the least known of the novels, and in a sense +it is one of the most disagreeable. To the general it has always been +caviare, and caviare it is likely to remain; for the general is before +all things respectable, and no such savage and scathing attack upon the +superstitions of respectability as _Rhoda Fleming_ has been written. And +besides, the emotions developed are too tragic, the personages too +elementary in kind and too powerful in degree, the effects too poignant +and too sorrowful. In these days people read to be amused. They care +for no passion that is not decent in itself and whose expression is not +restrained. It irks them to grapple with problems capable of none save a +tragic solution. And when Mr. Meredith goes digging in a very bad temper +with things in general into the deeper strata, the primitive deposits, of +human nature, the public is the reverse of profoundly interested in the +outcome of his exploration and the results of his labour. But for them +whose eye is for real literature and such literary essentials as +character largely seen and largely presented and as passion deeply felt +and poignantly expressed there is such a feast in _Rhoda Fleming_ as no +other English novelist alive has spread. The book, it is true, is full +of failures. There is, for instance, the old bank porter Anthony, who is +such a failure as only a great novelist may perpetrate and survive; who +suggests (with some other of Mr. Meredith's creations) a close, +deliberate, and completely unsuccessful imitation of Dickens: a writer +with whom Mr. Meredith is not averse from entering into competition, and +who, so manifest on these occasions is his superiority, may almost be +described as the other's evil genius. Again, there is Algernon the fool, +of whom his author is so bitterly contemptuous that he is never once +permitted to live and move and have any sort of being whatever and who, +though he bears a principal part in the intrigue, like the Blifil of _Tom +Jones_ is so constantly illuminated by the lightnings of the ironical +mode of presentation as always to seem unreal in himself and seriously to +imperil the reality of the story. And, lastly, there are the chivalrous +Percy Waring and the inscrutable Mrs. Lovell, two gentle ghosts whose +proper place is the shadow-land of the American novel. But when all +these are removed (and for the judicious reader their removal is far from +difficult) a treasure of reality remains. What an intensity of life it +is that hurries and throbs and burns through the veins of the two +sisters--Dahlia the victim, Rhoda the executioner! Where else in English +fiction is such a 'human oak log' as their father, the Kentish yeoman +William Fleming? And where in English fiction is such a problem +presented as that in the evolution of which these three--with a following +so well selected and achieved as Robert Armstrong and Jonathan Eccles and +the evil ruffian Sedgett, a type of the bumpkin gone wrong, and Master +Gammon, that type of the bumpkin old and obstinate, a sort of human +saurian--are dashed together, and ground against each other till the +weakest and best of the three is broken to pieces? Mr. Meredith may and +does fail conspicuously to interest you in Anthony Hackbut and Algernon +Blancove and Percy Waring; but he knows every fibre of the rest, and he +makes your knowledge as intimate and comprehensive as his own. With +these he is never at fault and never out of touch. They have the unity +of effect, the vigorous simplicity, of life that belong to great creative +art; and at their highest stress of emotion, the culmination of their +passion, they appeal to and affect you with a force and a directness that +suggest the highest achievement of Webster. Of course this sounds +excessive. The expression of human feeling in the coil of a tragic +situation is not a characteristic of modern fiction. It is thought to be +not consistent with the theory and practice of realism; and the average +novelist is afraid of it, the average reader is only affected by it when +he goes to look for it in poetry. But the book is there to show that +such praise is deserved; and they who doubt it have only to read the +chapters called respectively 'When the Night is Darkest' and 'Dahlia's +Frenzy' to be convinced and doubt no longer. It has been objected to the +climax of _Rhoda Fleming_ that it is unnecessarily inhumane, and that +Dahlia dead were better art than Dahlia living and incapable of love and +joy. But the book, as I have said, is a merciless impeachment of +respectability; and as the spectacle of a ruined and broken life is +infinitely more discomforting than that of a noble death, I take it that +Mr. Meredith was right to prefer his present ending to the alternative, +inasmuch as the painfulness of that impression he wished to produce and +the potency of that moral he chose to draw are immensely heightened and +strengthened thereby. + + + +The Tragic Comedians. + + +Opinions differ, and there are those, I believe, to whom Alvan and +Clotilde von Rudiger--'acrobats of the affections' they have been +called--are pleasant companions, and the story of those feats in the +gymnastics of sentimentalism in which they lived to shine is the +prettiest reading imaginable. But others not so fortunate or, to be +plain, more honestly obtuse persist in finding that story tedious, and +the bewildering appearances it deals with not human beings--not of the +stock of Rose Jocelyn and Sir Everard Romfrey, of Dahlia Fleming and Lucy +Feverel and Richmond Roy--but creatures of gossamer and rainbow, +phantasms of spiritual romance, abstractions of remote, dispiriting +points in sexual philosophy. + + + +The Egoist. + + +Just as Moliere in the figures of Alceste and Tartuffe has summarised and +embodied all that we need to know of indignant honesty and the false +fervour of sanctimonious animalism, so in the person of Sir Willoughby +Patterne has Mr. Meredith succeeded in expressing the qualities of egoism +as the egoist appears in his relations with women and in his conception +and exercise of the passion of love. Between the means of the two men +there is not, nor can be, any sort of comparison. Moliere is brief, +exquisite, lucid: classic in his union of ease and strength, of purity +and sufficiency, of austerity and charm. In _The Egoist_ Mr. Meredith is +even more artificial and affected than his wont: he bristles with +allusions, he teems with hints and side-hits and false alarms, he +glitters with phrases, he riots in intellectual points and philosophical +fancies; and though his style does nowhere else become him so well, his +cleverness is yet so reckless and indomitable as to be almost as +fatiguing here as everywhere. But in their matter the great Frenchman +and he have not much to envy each other. Sir Willoughby Patterne is a +'document on humanity' of the highest value; and to him that would know +of egoism and the egoist the study of Sir Willoughby is indispensable. +There is something in him of us all. He is a compendium of the Personal +in man; and if in him the abstract Egoist have not taken on his final +shape and become classic and typical it is not that Mr. Meredith has +forgotten anything in his composition but rather that there are certain +defects of form, certain structural faults and weaknesses, which prevent +you from accepting as conclusive the aspect of the mass of him. But the +Moliere of the future (if the future be that fortunate) has but to pick +and choose with discretion here to find the stuff of a companion figure +to Arnolphe and Alceste and Celimene. + + + +In Metre. + + +His verse has all the faults and only some of the merits of his prose. +Thus he will rhyme you off a ballad, and to break the secret of that +ballad you have to take to yourself a dark lantern and a case of jemmies. +I like him best in _The Nuptials of Attila_. If he always wrote as here, +and were always as here sustained in inspiration, rapid of march, nervous +of phrase, apt of metaphor, and moving in effect, he would be delightful +to the general, and that without sacrificing on the vile and filthy altar +of popularity. Here he is successfully himself, and what more is there +to say? You clap for Harlequin, and you kneel to Apollo. Mr. Meredith +doubles the parts, and is irresistible in both. Such fire, such vision, +such energy on the one hand and on the other such agility and athletic +grace are not often found in combination. + + + +The Fashion of Art. + + +This is the merit and distinction of art: to be more real than reality, +to be not nature but nature's essence. It is the artist's function not +to copy but to synthesise: to eliminate from that gross confusion of +actuality which is his raw material whatever is accidental, idle, +irrelevant, and select for perpetuation that only which is appropriate +and immortal. Always artistic, Mr. Meredith's work is often great art. + + + + +BYRON + + +Byron and the World. + + +Two obvious reasons why Byron has long been a prophet more honoured +abroad than at home are his life and his work. He is the most romantic +figure in the literature of the century, and his romance is of that +splendid and daring cast which the people of Britain--'an aristocracy +materialised and null, a middle class purblind and hideous, a lower class +crude and brutal'--prefers to regard with suspicion and disfavour. He is +the type of them that prove in defiance of precept that the safest path +is not always midway, and that the golden rule is sometimes unspeakably +worthless: who set what seems a horrible example, create an apparently +shameful precedent, and yet contrive to approve themselves an honour to +their country and the race. To be a good Briton a man must trade +profitably, marry respectably, live cleanly, avoid excess, revere the +established order, and wear his heart in his breeches pocket or anywhere +but on his sleeve. Byron did none of these things, though he was a +public character, and ought for the example's sake to have done them all, +and done them ostentatiously. He lived hard, and drank hard, and played +hard. He was flippant in speech and eccentric in attire. He thought +little of the sanctity of the conjugal tie, and said so; and he married +but to divide from his wife--who was an incarnation of the national +virtue of respectability--under circumstances too mysterious not to be +discreditable. He was hooted into exile, and so far from reforming he +did even worse than he had done before. After bewildering Venice with +his wickedness and consorting with atheists like Shelley and conspirators +like young Gamba, he went away on a sort of wild-goose chase to Greece, +and died there with every circumstance of publicity. Also his work was +every whit as abominable in the eyes of his countrymen as his life. It +is said that the theory and practice of British art are subject to the +influence of the British school-girl, and that he is unworthy the name of +artist whose achievement is of a kind to call a blush to the cheek of +youth. Byron was contemptuous of youth, and did not hesitate to write--in +_Beppo_ and in _Cain_, in _Manfred_ and _Don Juan_ and the +_Vision_--exactly as he pleased. In three words, he made himself +offensively conspicuous, and from being infinitely popular became utterly +contemptible. Too long had people listened to the scream of this eagle +in wonder and in perturbation, and the moment he disappeared they grew +ashamed of their emotion and angry with its cause, and began to hearken +to other and more melodious voices--to Shelley and Keats, to Wordsworth +and Coleridge and the 'faultless and fervent melodies of Tennyson.' In +course of time Byron was forgotten, or only remembered with disdain; and +when Thackeray, the representative Briton, the artist Philistine, the foe +of all that is excessive or abnormal or rebellious, took it upon himself +to flout the author of _Don Juan_ openly and to lift up his heavy hand +against the fops and fanatics who had affected the master's humours, he +did so amid general applause. Meanwhile, however, the genius and the +personality of Byron had come to be vital influences all the world over, +and his voice had been recognised as the most human and the least insular +raised on English ground since Shakespeare's. In Russia he had created +Pushkin and Lermontoff; in Germany he had awakened Heine, inspired +Schumann, and been saluted as an equal by the poet of _Faust_ himself; in +Spain he had had a share in moulding the noisy and unequal talent of +Espronceda; in Italy he had helped to develop and to shape the melancholy +and daring genius of Leopardi; and in France he had been one of the +presiding forces of a great aesthetic revolution. To the men of 1830 he +was a special and peculiar hero. Hugo turned in his wake to Spain and +Italy and the East for inspiration. Musset, as Mr. Swinburne has +said--too bitterly and strongly said--became in a fashion a Kaled to his +Lara, 'his female page or attendant dwarf.' He was in some sort the +grandsire of the Buridan and the Antony of Dumas. Berlioz went to him +for the material for his _Harold en Italie_, his _Corsaire_ overture, and +his _Episode_. Delacroix painted the _Barque de Don Juan_ from him, with +the _Massacre de Scio_, the _Marino Faliero_, the _Combat du Giaour et du +Pacha_, and many a notable picture more. Is it at all surprising that M. +Taine should have found heart to say that alone among modern poets Byron +'atteint a la cime'? or that Mazzini should have reproached us with our +unaccountable neglect of him and with our scandalous forgetfulness of the +immense work done by him in giving a 'European _role_ . . . to English +literature' and in awakening all over the Continent so much 'appreciation +and sympathy for England'? + + + +Byron and Wordsworth. + + +He had his share in the work of making Matthew Arnold possible, but he is +the antipodes of those men of culture and contemplation--those artists +pensive and curious and sedately self-contained--whom Arnold best loved +and of whom the nearest to hand is Wordsworth. Byron and Wordsworth are +like the Lucifer and the Michael of the _Vision of Judgment_. Byron's +was the genius of revolt, as Wordsworth's was the genius of dignified and +useful submission; Byron preached the dogma of private revolution, +Wordsworth the dogma of private apotheosis; Byron's theory of life was +one of liberty and self-sacrifice, Wordsworth's one of self-restraint and +self-improvement; Byron's practice was dictated by a vigorous and +voluptuous egoism, Wordsworth's by a benign and lofty selfishness; Byron +was the 'passionate and dauntless soldier of a forlorn hope,' Wordsworth +a kind of inspired clergyman. Both were influences for good, and both +are likely to be influences for good for some time to come. Which is the +better and stronger is a question that can hardly be determined now. It +is certain that Byron's star has waned, and that Wordsworth's has waxed; +but it is also certain that there are moments in life when the _Ode to +Venice_ is almost as refreshing and as precious as the ode on the +_Intimations_, and when the epic mockery of _Don Juan_ is to the full as +beneficial as the chaste philosophy of _The Excursion_ and the _Ode to +Duty_. Arnold was of course with Michael heart and soul, and was only +interested in our Lucifer. He approached his subject in a spirit of +undue deprecation. He thought it necessary to cite Scherer's opinion +that Byron is but a coxcomb and a rhetorician: partly, it would appear, +for the pleasure of seeming to agree with it in a kind of way and partly +to have the satisfaction of distinguishing and of showing it to be a +mistake. Then, he could not quote Goethe without apologising for the +warmth of that consummate artist's expressions and explaining some of +them away. Again, he was pitiful or disdainful, or both, of Scott's +estimate; and he did not care to discuss the sentiment which made that +great and good man think _Cain_ and the _Giaour_ fit stuff for family +reading on a Sunday after prayers, though as Mr. Ruskin has pointed out, +in one of the wisest and subtlest bits of criticism I know, the sentiment +is both natural and beautiful, and should assist us not a little in the +task of judging Byron and of knowing him for what he was. That Arnold +should institute a comparison between Leopardi and Byron was probably +inevitable: Leopardi had culture and the philosophic mind, which Byron +had not; he is incapable of influencing the general heart, as Byron can; +he is a critics' poet, which Byron can never be; he was always an artist, +which Byron was not; and--it were Arnoldian to take the comparison +seriously. Byron was not interested in words and phrases but in the +greater truths of destiny and emotion. His empire is over the +imagination and the passions. His personality was many-sided enough to +make his egoism representative. And as mankind is wont to feel first and +to think afterwards, a single one of his heart-cries may prove to the +world of greater value as a moral agency than all the intellectual +reflections that Leopardi contrived to utter. After examining this and +that opinion and doubting over and deprecating them all, Arnold touched +firm ground at last in a dictum of Mr. Swinburne's, the most pertinent +and profound since those of Goethe, to the effect that in Byron there is +a 'splendid and imperishable excellence which covers all his offences and +outweighs all his defects: the excellence of sincerity and strength.' +With this 'noble praise' our critic agreed so vigorously that it became +the key-note of the latter part of his summing up, and in the end you +found him declaring Byron the equal of Wordsworth, and asserting of this +'glorious pair' that 'when the year 1900 is turned, and the nation comes +to recount her poetic glories in the century which has just then ended, +the first names with her will be these.' The prophecy is as little like +to commend itself to the pious votary of Keats as to the ardent +Shelleyite: there are familiars of the Tennysonian Muse, the Sibyl of +_Rizpah_ and _Vastness_ and _Lucretius_ and _The Voyage_, to whom it must +seem impertinent beyond the prophet's wont; there are--(but _they_ scarce +count)--who grub (as for truffles) for meanings in Browning. But it was +not uttered to please, and in truth it has enough of plausibility to +infuriate whatever poet-sects there be. Especially the Wordsworthians. + + + + +HUGO + + +His Critics. + + +To many Hugo was of the race of AEschylus and Shakespeare, a world-poet +in the sense that Dante was, an artist supreme alike in genius and in +accomplishment. To others he was but a great master of words and +cadences, with a gift of lyric utterance and inspiration rarely surpassed +but with a personality so vigorous and excessive as to reduce its +literary expression--in epic, drama, fiction, satire and ode and song--to +the level of work essentially subjective, in sentiment as in form, in +intention as in effect. The debate is one in which the only possible +arbiter is Time; and to Time the final judgment may be committed. What +is certain is that there is one point on which both dissidents and +devout--the heretics who deny with Matthew Arnold and the orthodox who +worship with Mr. Swinburne and M. de Banville--are absolutely agreed. +Plainly Hugo was the greatest man of letters of his day. It has been +given to few or none to live a life so full of effort and achievement, so +rich in honour and success and fame. Born almost with the century, he +was a writer at fifteen, and at his death he was writing still; so that +the record of his career embraces a period of more than sixty years. +There is hardly a department of art to a foremost place in which he did +not prove his right. From first to last; from the time of Chateaubriand +to the time of Zola, he was a leader of men; and with his departure from +the scene the undivided sovereignty of literature became a thing of the +past like Alexander's empire. + + + +Some Causes and Effects. + + +In 1826, in a second set of _Odes et Ballades_, he announced his vocation +in unmistakeable terms. He was a lyric poet and the captain of a new +emprise. His genius was too large and energetic to move at ease in the +narrow garment prescribed as the poet's wear by the dullards and the +pedants who had followed Boileau. He began to repeat the rhythms of +Ronsard and the Pleiad; to deal in the richest rhymes and in words and +verses tricked with new-spangled ore; to be curious in cadences, careless +of stereotyped rules, prodigal of invention and experiment, defiant of +much long recognised as good sense, contemptuous of much till then +applauded as good taste. In a word, he was the Hugo of the hundred +volumes we know: an artist, that is, endowed with a technical imagination +of the highest quality, the very genius of style, and a sense of the +plastic quality of words unequalled, perhaps, since Milton. The time was +ripe for him: within France and without it was big with revolution. In +verse there were the examples of Andre Chenier and Lamartine; in prose +the work of Rousseau and Diderot, of Bernardin de Saint-Pierre and +Chateaubriand; in war and politics the tremendous tradition of Napoleon. +Goethe and Schiller had recreated romance and established the foundations +of a new palace of art; their theory and practice had been popularised in +the novels of Walter Scott; and in the life and work of Byron the race +had such an example of revolt, such an incitement to liberty and change, +such a passionate and persuasive argument against authority and +convention, as had never before been felt in art. Hugo like all great +artists was essentially a child of his age: 'Rebellion lay in his way, +and he found it.' In 1827 he published his _Cromwell_, and came forth as +a rebel confessed and unashamed. It is an unapproachable production, +tedious in the closet, impossible upon the stage; and to compare it to +such work as that which at some and twenty Keats had given to the +world--_Hyperion_, for instance, or the _Eve of St. Agnes_--is to glory +in the name of Briton. But it had its value then, and as an historical +document it has its value now. The preface was at once a profession of +faith and a proclamation of war. It is crude, it is limited, it is +mistaken, in places it is even absurd. But from the moment of its +appearance the old order was practically closed. It prepared the way for +_Albertus_ and for _Antony_, for _Rolla_ and the _Tour de Nesle_; and it +was also the '_fiat lux_' in deference to which the world has accepted +with more or less of resignation the partial eclipse of art and morals +effected in _Salammbo_ and _l'Education sentimentale_ and the Egyptian +darkness achieved in work like _la Terre_ and _une Vie_ and _les +Blasphemes_. In its ringing periods, its plangent antitheses and +aesthetic epigrams, it preluded and vindicated the excesses of whatsoever +manifestations of romanticism mankind and the arts have since been called +upon to consider and endure: from the humours of Petrus Borel to the +experiments of Claude Monet and the 'discoveries' of Richard Wagner. + + + +Environment. + + +It is too often forgotten that from the first Hugo was associated with +men of pretensions and capacities not greatly inferior to his own, and +that in no direction was victory the work of his single arm. In painting +the initiative had been taken years before the publication of the +_Cromwell_ manifesto by Gericault with the famous _Radeau de la Meduse_, +and by Delacroix with the _Dante et Virgile_ (1822) and the _Massacre de +Scio_ (1823). In music Berlioz, at this time a student in the +Conservatoire, was fighting hard against Cherubini and the bewigged ones +for liberty of expression and leave to admire and imitate the audacities +of Weber and Beethoven, and three years hence, in the year of _Hernani_, +was to set his mark upon the art with the _Symphonie fantastique_. On +the stage as early as 1824 Frederick and Firmin had realised in the +personages of Macaire and Bertrand the grotesque ideal, the combination +of humour and terror, of which the character of Cromwell was put forward +as the earliest expression, and had realised it so completely that their +work has taken rank with the greater and the more lasting results of the +movement. In the literature of drama the old order was ruined and the +victory won on all essential points not in 1830 with _Hernani_ but in +1829 with _Henri Trois et sa Cour_, the first of the innumerable +successes of Alexandre Dumas, who determined at a single stroke the +fundamental qualities of structure and form and material, and left his +chief no question to solve save that of diction and style. Musset's +earlier poems date from 1828, the year of _les Orientales_, Gautier's +from 1830; and these are also the dates of Balzac's _Chouans_ and _la +Peau de Chagrin_. Moreover, among the intimates of the young leader were +men like Sainte-Beuve, who was two years his junior, and the brothers +Deschamps: whose influence was doubtless exerted more frequently to +encourage than to repress. Towards the end we lost sight of all this, +and saw in Victor Hugo not so much the most glorious survival of +romanticism as romanticism itself, the movement in flesh and blood, the +revolution in general 'summed up and closed' in a single figure. This +agreeable view of things was Hugo's own. From the beginning he took +himself with perfect seriousness, and his followers, however enthusiastic +in admiration, had excellent warrant from above. 'Il _trone_ trop,' says +Berlioz of him somewhere; and M. Maxime du Camp has given an edifying +account of the means he was wont to use to make himself beloved and +honoured by the youth who came to him for counsel and encouragement. How +perfectly he succeeded in this the political part of his function is +matter of history. Gautier's first visit to him was that of a devotee to +his divinity; and years afterwards the good poet confessed that not even +in pitch darkness and in a cellar fathoms under ground should he dare to +whisper to himself that a verse of the Master's was bad. So far as +devotion went there were innumerable Gautiers. Sainte-Beuve was not long +a pillar of orthodoxy; Dumas was always conscious of his own pre-eminence +in certain qualities, and made light of Hugo's dramas as candidly as he +made much of the style in which they are written; and when some creature +of unwisdom saluted Delacroix as 'the Hugo of painting,' the artist of +the _Marino Faliero_ and the _Barque de Don Juan_ resented the compliment +with bitterness. But these were exceptions. The youth of 1830 were +Hugolaters almost to a man. + + + +Equipment and Achievement. + + +Their enthusiasm was not all irrational. Hugo's supremacy was not that +he was the greatest artist in essentials, for here Dumas was immeasurably +his superior. It was not that he knew best the heart of man, or had +apprehended most thoroughly the conditions of life; for Balzac so far +surpassed him in these sciences that comparison was impossible. It was +not that he sang the truest song or uttered the deepest word, for Musset +is the poet of _Rolla_ and the _Nuits_ in verse and the poet of +_Fantasio_ and _Lorenzaccio_ and _Carmosine_ in prose. But the epoch +Hugo represented was interested in the manner rather than the substance +of things: the revolution at whose front he had been set and whose most +shining figure he became was largely a revolution of externals. With an +immense amount of enthusiasm there was, as Sainte-Beuve confessed, an +incredible amount of ignorance--so that _Cromwell_ was supposed to be +historical; and with a passionate delight in form there co-existed a +strangely imperfect understanding of material--so that _Hernani_ was +supposed to be Shakespearean. To this ignorance and to this imperfect +understanding Hugo owed a certain part of his authority; the other and +greater he got from his unrivalled mastery of style, from his +extraordinary skill as an artist in words. To the opposing faction his +innovations were horrible: his verse was poison, his example an outrage, +his prosody a violation of all laws, his rhymes and tropes and metaphors +so many offences against Heaven and the Muse. But to the ardent +youngsters who fought beneath his banner it was his to give a something +priceless and unique--a something glorious to France and never before +exampled in her literature. For the distichs of Boileau--'strong, heavy, +useful, like pairs of tongs,'--he found them alexandrines with the leap +and sparkle of sea waves and the sound of clashing swords and the colours +of sunset and the dawn. They were tired of whitewash and cold distemper; +and he gave them hangings of brocade and tapestries of price and tissues +stiff with gold and glowing with new dyes. He flung them handfuls of +jewels where his rivals scattered handfuls of marbles. And they paid him +for his gifts with an intemperance of worship, a fury of belief, a +rapture of admiration, such as no other man has known. The substance was +striking, was peculiar, was novel and full of charm; but the manner was +all this and something besides--was magnificent, was intoxicating, was +irresistible; and Victor Hugo by virtue of it became the foremost man of +literary France. The great battle of _Hernani_ was merely a battle of +style. From Dumas the artist of _Henri Trois_ and _Antony_, the language +of Boileau was safe enough; and his triumph, all-important and +significant as it was, seemed neither fatal nor abominable. It was +another matter with _Hernani_. Its success meant ruin for the Academy +and destruction for the idiom of Delille and M. de Jouy; and the +classicists mustered in force, and did their utmost to stay the coming +wrath and arrest the impending doom. They failed of course; for they +fought with a vague yet limited apprehension of the question at issue, +they had nothing to give in place of the thing they hated. And Victor +Hugo was made captain of the victorious host, while the men who might +have been in a certain sort his rivals took service as lieutenants, and +accepted his ensign for their own. + + + +His Diary. + + +All his life long he was addicted to attitude; all his life long he was a +_poseur_ of the purest water. He seems to have considered the +affectation of superiority an essential quality in art; for just as the +cock in Mrs. Poyser's apothegm believed that the sun got up to hear him +crow, so to the poet of the _Legende_ and the _Contemplations_ it must +have seemed as if the human race existed but to consider the use he made +of his 'oracular tongue.' How tremendous his utterances sometimes +were--informed with what majesty yet with what brilliance--is one of the +things that every schoolboy knows. One no more needs to insist upon the +merits of his best manner than to emphasise the faults of his worst. At +his best as at his worst, however, he was always an artist in his way. +His speech was nothing if not artificial--in the good sense of the word +sometimes and sometimes in the bad. Simplicity (it seemed) was +impossible to him. In the quest of expression, the cult of antithesis, +the pursuit of effect, he sacrificed directness and plainness with not +less consistency than complacency. In that tissue of 'apocalyptic +epigram' which to him was style there was no room for truth and +soberness. His Patmos was a place of mirrors, and before them he draped +himself in his phrases like Frederick in the mantle of Ruy Blas. That +this grandiosity was unnatural and unreal was proved by the publication +of _Choses Vues_. When Hugo wrote for himself he wrote almost as simply +and straightforwardly as Dumas. The effect is disconcerting. You rub +your eyes in amazement. It is evidently Hugo. But Hugo plain, sober, +direct? Hugo without rhetoric? Hugo declining antithesis and content to +be no gaudier than his neighbours? Hugo expressing himself in the +fearless old fashion of pre-romantic ages? A page of commonplace from +Mr. Meredith, a book for boarding-schools by M. Zola, were not more +startling. + + + +For and Against. + + +Some primary qualities of his genius are pretty evenly balanced by some +primary faults. Thus, for breadth and brilliance of conception, for +energy and sweep of imagination, for the power of dealing as a master +with the greater forces of nature, he is unsurpassed among modern men. +But the conception is too often found to be empty as well as spacious; +the imagination is too often tainted with insincerity; in his dramas of +the elements there are too many such falsehoods as abound in his dramas +of the emotions. Again, he is sometimes grand and often grandiose; but +he has a trick of affecting the grandiose and the grand which is constant +and intolerable. He had the genius of style in such fulness as entitles +him to rank with the great artists in words of all time. His sense of +verbal colour and verbal music is beyond criticism; his rhythmical +capacity is something prodigious. He so revived and renewed the language +of France that in his hands it became an instrument not unworthy to +compete with Shakespeare's English and the German of Goethe and Heine; +and in the structure and capacity of all manner of French metrical forms +he effected such a change that he may fairly be said to have received the +orchestra of Rameau from his predecessors and to have bequeathed his +heirs the orchestra of Berlioz. On the other hand; in much of his later +work his mannerisms in prose and in verse are discomfortably glaring; the +outcome of his unsurpassable literary faculty is often no more than a +parade or triumph of the vocables; there were times when his brain +appears to have become a mere machine for the production of antitheses +and sterile conceits. What is perhaps more damning than all, his work is +saturate in his own remarkable personality, and is objective only here +and there. His dramas are but five-act lyrics, his epics the romance of +an egoist, his history is confession, his criticism the opinions of +Victor Hugo. Even his lyrics, the 'fine flower' of his genius, the +loveliest expression of the language, have not escaped reproach as a +'Psalter of Subjectivity.' Even his essays in prose romance--a form of +art on which he has stamped his image and superscription in a manner all +his own, the work by which he is best known to humanity at large--are +vitiated by the same defect. For one that believes in Bishop Myriel as +Bishop Myriel there are a hundred who see in him only a pose of Victor +Hugo; it is the same with Ursel and Javert, with Cimourdain and Lantenac +and Josiane; the very _pieuvre_ of _les Travailleurs_ is a Hugolater at +heart. It is a proof of his commanding personality, that in spite of +these objections he held in enchantment the hearts and minds of men for +over sixty years. He is almost a literature in himself; and if it be +true that his work is as wholly lacking in the radiant sanity of +Shakespeare's as it is in the exquisite good sense of Voltaire's, it is +also true that he left the world far richer than he found it. + + + +What Lives of Him. + + +To select an anthology from his work were surely the pleasantest of +tasks. One richer in grace and passion and sweetness might he chosen out +of Musset; one wrought more truly of the finer stuff of humanity as well +as more bountifully touched with tact and dignity and temper from the +work of Tennyson. But the Hugo selection would combine the rarest +technical merits with a set of interests all its own. It would give, for +instance, the _Stella_ of the _Chatiments_ and the _Pauvres Gens_ of the +_Legende_. On one page would be found that admirable _Souvenir de la +Nuit du Quatre_, which is at once the impeachment and the condemnation of +the Coup d'Etat; and on another the little epic of _Eviradnus_, with its +immortal serenade, a culmination of youth and romance and love: + + 'Si tu veux, faisons un reve. + Montons sur deux palefrois. + Tu m'emmenes, je t'enleve. + L'oiseau chante dans les bois. + + . . . . . + + Allons-nous-en par l'Autriche! + Nous aurons l'aube a nos fronts. + Je serai grand et toi riche, + Puisque nous nous aimerons. + + . . . . . + + Tu seras dame et moi comte. + Viens, mon oeeur s'epanouit. + Viens, nous conterons ce conte + Aux etoiles de la nuit.' + +Here, a summary of all the interests of romanticism, would be the +complaint of Gastibelza: + + 'Un jour d'ete, ou tout etait lumiere, + Vie et douceur, + Elle s'en vint jouer dans la riviere + Avec sa soeur. + Je vis le pied de sa jeune compagne + Et son genou . . .-- + Le vent qui vient a travers la montagne + Me rendra fou!'-- + +here the adorable _Vieille Chanson du Jeune Temps_: + + 'Rose, droite sur ses hanches, + Leva son beau bras tremblant + Pour prendre une mure aux branches: + Je ne vis pas son bras blanc. + + Une eau courait, fraiche et creuse, + Sur les mousses de velours; + Et la nature amoureuse + Dormait dans les grands bois sourds.'-- + +and here, not unworthy to be remembered with _Proud Maisie_, that +wonderful harmony of legend and superstition and the facts and dreams of +common life, the death-song of Fantine: + + 'Nous acheterons de bien belles choses, + En nous promenant le long de faubourgs. + + La Vierge-Marie aupres de mon poele + Est venue hier, en manteau brode, + Et m'a dit: Voici, cache sous mon voile, + Le petit qu'un jour tu m'as demande. + Courez a la ville; ayez de la toile, + Achetez du fil, achetez un de. + + Les bluets sont bleus, les roses sont roses, + Les bluets sont bleus, j'aime mes amours.' + +And from this masterpiece of simple and direct emotion, which to me has +always seemed the high-water mark of Hugo's lyrical achievement as well +as the most human of his utterances, one might pass on to masterpieces of +another inspiration: to the luxurious and charming graces of _Sara la +Baigneuse_; to the superb crescendo and diminuendo of _les Djinns_; to +'Si vous n'avez rien a me dire,' that daintiest of songlets; to the +ringing rhymes and gallant spirit of the _Pas d'Armes du Roi Jean_: + + 'Sus, ma bete, + De facon + Que je fete + Ce grison! + Je te baille + Pour ripaille + Plus de paille, + Plus de son, + + Qu'un gros frere, + Gai, friand, + Ne peut faire, + Mendiant + Par les places + Ou tu passes, + De grimaces + En priant!'-- + +to the melodious tenderness of 'Si tu voulais, Madelaine'; to the gay +music of the _Stances a Jeanne_: + + 'Je ne me mets pas en peine + Du clocher ni du beffroi. + Je ne sais rien de la reine, + Et je ne sais rien du roi.'-- + +to the admirable song of the wind of the sea: + + 'Quels sont les bruits sourds? + Ecoutez vers l'onde + Cette voix profonde + Qui pleure toujours, + Et qui toujours gronde, + + Quoiqu'un son plus claire + Parfois l'interrompe . . . + Le vent de la mer + Souffle dans sa trompe.'-- + +to the _Romance Mauresque_, to the barbaric fury of _les Reitres_, to the +magnificent rodomontade of the _Romancero du Cid_. 'J'en passe, et des +meilleurs,' as Ruy Gomez observes of his ancestors. Here at any rate are +jewels enough to furnish forth a casket that should be one of the richest +of its kind! The worst is, they are most of them not necessaries but +luxuries. It is impossible to conceive of life without Shakespeare and +Burns, without _Paradise Lost_ and the _Intimations_ ode and the immortal +pageant of the _Canterbury Tales_; but (the technical question apart) to +imagine it wanting Hugo's lyrics is easy enough. The largesse of which +he was so prodigal has but an arbitrary and conventional value. Like the +magician's money much has changed, almost in the act of distribution, +into withered leaves; and such of it as seems minted of good metal is not +for general circulation. + + + + +HEINE + + +The Villainy Translation. + + +Heine had a light hand with the branding-iron, and marked his subjects +not more neatly than indelibly. And really he alone were capable of +dealing adequate vengeance upon his translators. His verse has only +violent lovers or violent foes; indifference is impossible. Once read as +it deserves, it becomes one of the loveliest of our spiritual +acquisitions. We hate to see it tampered with; we are on thorns as the +translator approaches, and we resent his operations as an individual +hurt, a personal affront. What business has he to be trampling among our +borders and crushing our flowers with his stupid hobnails? Why cannot he +carry his zeal for topsy-turvy horticulture elsewhere? He comes and lays +a brutal hand on our pet growths, snips off their graces, shapes them +anew according to his own ridiculous ideal, paints and varnishes them +with a villainous compound of his contrivance, and then bids us admire +the effect and thank him for its production! Is any name too hard for +such a creature? and could any vengeance be too deadly? If he walked +into your garden and amused himself so with your cabbages, you could put +him in prison. But into your poets he can stump his way at will, and +upon them he can do his pleasure. And he does it. How many men have +brutalised the elegance, the grace, the winning urbanity of Horace! By +how many coarse and stupid fingers has Catullus been smudged and fumbled +and mauled! To turn _Faust_ into English (in the original metres) is a +fashionable occupation; there are more perversions of the _Commedia_ than +one cares to recall; there is scarce a great or even a good work of the +human mind but has been thus bedevilled and deformed. _Don Quixote_, _le +Pere Goriot_, _The Frogs_, _The Decameron_--the trail of the translator +is over them all. Messrs. Payne and Lang and Swinburne have turned poor +Villon into a citizen of Bedford Park, Fitzgerald and Florence Macarthy +have Englished Calderon, Messrs. Pope, Gladstone and others have done +their worst with Homer. If Rossetti had not succeeded with _la Vita +Nuova_, if Fitzgerald had not ennobled Omar, if Mr. Lang had not bettered +upon Banville and Gerard de Nerval, the word 'translator' would be odious +as the word 'occupy.' And 'occupy' on the authority of Mrs. Dorothy +Tearsheet is an odious word indeed. + + + +The Proof of It. + + +The fact is, the translator too often forgets the difference between his +subject and himself; he is too often a common graveyard mason that would +play the sculptor. And it is not nearly enough for him to be a decent +craftsman. To give an adequate idea of an artist's work a man must be +himself an artist of equal force and versatility with his original. The +typical translator makes clever enough verses, but Heine's accomplishment +is remote from him as Heine's genius. He perverts his author as rhyme +and rhythm will. No charge of verbal inaccuracy need therefore be made, +for we do not expect a literal fidelity in our workman. Let him convey +the spirit of his original, and that, so far as meaning goes, is enough. +But we do expect of him a something that shall recall his author's form, +his author's personality, his author's charm of diction and of style; and +here it is that such an interpreter as Sir Theodore Martin (say) fails +with such assurance and ill-fortune. The movement of Heine's rhythms, +simple as they seem, is not spontaneous; it is an effect of art: the poet +laboured at his cadences as at his meanings. Artificial he is, but he +has the wonderful quality of never seeming artificial. His verses dance +and sway like the nixies he loved. Their every motion seems informed +with the perfect suavity and spontaneity of pure nature. They tinkle +down the air like sunset bells, they float like clouds, they wave like +flowers, they twitter like skylarks, they have in them something of the +swiftness and the certainty of exquisite physical sensations. In such a +transcript as Sir Theodore's all this is lost: Heine becomes a mere +prentice-metrist; he sets the teeth on edge as surely as Browning +himself; the verse that recalled a dance of naiads suggests a springless +cart on a Highland road; Terpsichore is made to prance a hobnailed +breakdown. The poem disappears, and in its place you have an indifferent +copy of verses. You look at the pages from afar, and your impression is +that they are not unlike Heine; you look into them, and Heine has +vanished. The man is gone, and only an awkward, angular, clumsily +articulated, entirely preposterous lay-figure remains to show that the +translator has been by. + + + + +MATTHEW ARNOLD + + +His Verse. + + +In every page of Arnold the poet there is something to return upon and to +admire. There are faults, and these of a kind this present age is ill- +disposed to condone. The rhymes are sometimes poor; the movement of the +verse is sometimes uncertain and sometimes slow; the rhythms are +obviously simple always; now and then the intention and effect are cold +even to austerity, are bald to uncomeliness. But then, how many of the +rarer qualities of art and inspiration are represented here, and here +alone in modern work! There is little of that delight in material for +material's sake which is held to be essential to the composition of a +great artist; there is none of that rapture of sound and motion and none +of that efflorescence of expression which are deemed inseparable from the +endowment of the true singer. For any of those excesses in technical +accomplishment, those ecstasies in the use of words, those effects of +sound which are so rich and strange as to impress the hearer with +something of their author's own emotion of creation--for any, indeed, of +the characteristic attributes of modern poetry--you shall turn to him in +vain. In matters of form this poet is no romantic but a classic to the +marrow. He adores his Shakespeare, but he will none of his Shakespeare's +fashions. For him the essentials are dignity of thought and sentiment +and distinction of manner and utterance. It is no aim of his to talk for +talking's sake, to express what is but half felt and half understood, to +embody vague emotions and nebulous fancies in language no amount of +richness can redeem from the reproach of being nebulous and vague. In +his scheme of art there is no place for excess, however magnificent and +Shakespearean--for exuberance, however overpowering and Hugoesque. Human +and interesting in themselves, the ideas apparelled in his verse are +completely apprehended; natural in themselves, the experiences he +pictures are intimately felt and thoroughly perceived. They have been +resolved into their elements by the operation of an almost Sophoclean +faculty of selection, and the effect of their presentation is akin to +that of a gallery of Greek marbles. + + + +His Failure. + + +Other poets say anything--say everything that is in them. Browning lived +to realise the myth of the Inexhaustible Bottle; Mr. William Morris is +nothing: if not fluent and copious; Mr. Swinburne has a facility that +would seem impossible if it were not a living fact; even the Laureate is +sometimes prodigal of unimportant details, of touches insignificant and +superfluous, of words for words' sake, of cadences that have no reason of +being save themselves. Matthew Arnold alone says only what is worth +saying. In other words, he selects: from his matter whatever is +impertinent is eliminated and only what is vital is permitted to remain. +Sometimes he goes a little astray, and his application of the principle +on which Sophocles and Homer wrought results in failure. But in these +instances it will always be found, I think, that the effect is due not to +the principle nor the poet's application of it but to the poet himself, +who has exceeded his commission, and attempted more than is in him to +accomplish. The case is rare with Arnold, one of whose qualities--and by +no means the least Hellenic of them--was a fine consciousness of his +limitations. But that he failed, and failed considerably, it were idle +to deny. There is _Merope_ to bear witness to the fact; and of _Merope_ +what is there to say? Evidently it is an imitation Greek play: an essay, +that is, in a form which ceased long since to have any active life, so +that the attempt to revive it--to create a soul under the ribs of very +musty death--is a blunder alike in sentiment and in art. As evidently +Arnold is no dramatist. Empedocles, the Strayed Reveller, even the +Forsaken Merman, all these are expressions of purely personal feeling--are +so many metamorphoses of Arnold. In _Merope_ there is no such basis of +reality. The poet was never on a level with his argument. He knew +little or nothing of his characters--of Merope or AEpytus or Polyphontes, +of Arcas or Laias or even the Messenger; at every step the ground is seen +shifting under his feet; he is comparatively void of matter, and his +application of the famous principle is labour lost. He is winnowing the +wind; he is washing not gold but water. + + + +His Triumphs. + + +It is other-guess work with _Empedocles_, the _Dejaneira_ fragment, +_Sohrab and Rustum_, the _Philomela_, his better work in general, above +all with the unique and unapproached _Balder Dead_. To me this last +stands alone in modern art for simple majesty of conception, sober +directness and potency of expression, sustained dignity of thought and +sentiment and style, the complete presentation of whatever is essential, +the stern avoidance of whatever is merely decorative: indeed for every +Homeric quality save rhythmical vitality and rapidity of movement. Here, +for example, is something of that choice yet ample suggestiveness--the +only true realism because the only perfect ideal of realisation--for +which the similitudes of the 'Ionian father of his race' are +pre-eminently distinguished:-- + + 'And as a spray of honeysuckle flowers + Brushes across a tired traveller's face + Who shuffles through the deep dew-moistened dust + On a May evening, in the darken'd lanes, + And starts him, that he thinks a ghost went by-- + So Hoder brushed by Hermod's side.' + +Here is Homer's direct and moving because most human and comprehensive +touch in narrative:-- + + 'But from the hill of Lidskialf Odin rose, + The throne, from which his eye surveys the world; + And mounted Sleipner, and in darkness rode + To Asgard. And the stars came out in heaven, + High over Asgard, to light home the king. + But fiercely Odin gallop'd, moved in heart; + And swift to Asgard, to the gate, he came. + And terribly the hoofs of Sleipner rang + Along the flinty floor of Asgard streets, + And the Gods trembled on their golden beds + Hearing the wrathful Father coming home-- + For dread, for like a whirlwind Odin came. + And to Valhalla's gate he rode, and left + Sleipner; and Sleipner went to his own stall; + And in Valhalla Odin laid him down.' + +And here--to have done with evidence of what is known to every one--here +is the Homeric mariner, large and majestic and impersonal, of recording +speech:-- + + 'Bethink ye, Gods, is there no other way?-- + Speak, were not this a way, a way for Gods? + If I, if Odin, clad in radiant arms, + Mounted on Sleipner, with the warrior Thor + Drawn in his car beside me, and my sons, + All the strong brood of Heaven, to swell my train, + Should make irruption into Hela's realm, + And set the fields of gloom ablaze with light, + And bring in triumph Balder back to Heaven?' + +One has but to contrast such living work as this with the 'mouldering +realm' of _Merope_ to feel the difference with a sense of pain; + + 'For doleful are the ghosts, the troops of dead, + Whom Hela with austere control presides'; + +while this in its plain, heroic completeness is touched with a stately +life that is a presage of immortality. It is evident, indeed, that +Arnold wrote _Balder Dead_ in his most fortunate hour, and that _Merope_ +is his one serious mistake in literature. For a genius thus peculiar and +introspective drama--the presentation of character through action--is +impossible; to a method thus reticent and severe drama--the expression of +emotion in action--is improper. 'Not here, O Apollo!' It is written +that none shall bind his brows with the twin laurels of epos and drama. +Shakespeare did not, nor could Homer; and how should Matthew Arnold? + + + +His Prose. + + +He has opinions and the courage of them; he has assurance and he has +charm; he writes with an engaging clearness. It is very possible to +disagree with him; but it is difficult indeed to resist his many graces +of manner, and decline to be entertained and even interested by the +variety and quality of his matter. He was described as 'the most +un-English of Britons,' the most cosmopolitan of islanders; and you feel +as you read him that in truth his mind was French. He took pattern by +Goethe, and was impressed by Leopardi; he was judiciously classic, but +his romanticism was neither hidebound nor inhuman; he apprehended Heine +and Marcus Aurelius, Spinoza and Sainte-Beuve, Joubert and Maurice de +Guerin, Wordsworth and Pascal, Rachel and Sarah Bernhardt, Burke and +Arthur Clough, Eliza Cook and Homer; he was an authority on education, +poetry, civilisation, the _Song of Roland_, the love-letters of Keats, +the Genius of Bottles, the significance of _eutrapelos_ and _eutrapelia_. +In fact, we have every reason to be proud of him. For the present is a +noisy and affected age; it is given overmuch to clamorous devotion and +extravagant repudiation; there is an element of swagger in all its words +and ways; it has a distressing and immoral turn for publicity. Matthew +Arnold's function was to protest against its fashions by his own +intellectual practice, and now and then to take it to task and to call it +to order. He was not particularly original, but he had in an eminent +degree the formative capacity, the genius of shaping and developing, +which is a chief quality of the French mind and which is not so common +among us English as our kindest critics would have us believe. He would +take a handful of golden sentences--things wisely thought and finely said +by persons having authority--and spin them into an exquisite prelection; +so that his work with all the finish of art retains a something of the +freshness of those elemental truths on which it was his humour to dilate. +He was, that is to say, an artist in ethics as in speech, in culture as +in ambition. 'Il est donne,' says Sainte-Beuve, 'de nos jours, a un bien +petit nombre, meme parmi les plus delicats et ceux qui les apprecient le +mieux, de recueillir, d'ordonner sa vie selon ses admirations et selon +ses gouts, avec suite, avec noblesse.' That is true enough; but Arnold +was one of the few, and might 'se vanter d'etre reste fidele a soi-meme, +a son premier et a son plus beau passe.' He was always a man of culture +in the good sense of the word; he had many interests in life and art, and +his interests were sound and liberal; he was a good critic of both morals +and measures, both of society and of literature, because he was commonly +at the pains of understanding his matter before he began to speak about +it. It is therefore not surprising that the part he played was one of +considerable importance or that his influence was healthy in the main. He +was neither prophet nor pedagogue but a critic pure and simple. Too well +read to be violent, too nice in his discernment to be led astray beyond +recovery in any quest after strange gods, he told the age its faults and +suggested such remedies as the study of great men's work had suggested to +him. If his effect was little that was not his fault. He returned to +the charge with imperturbable good temper, and repeated his remarks--which +are often exasperating in effect--with a mixture of mischievousness and +charm, of superciliousness and sagacity, and a serene dexterity of +phrase, unique in modern letters. + + + + +HOMER AND THEOCRITUS + + +The Odyssey. + + +I think that of all recent books the two that have pleased me best and +longest are those delightful renderings into English prose of the Greek +of Homer and Theocritus, which we owe, the one to Messrs. Henry Butcher +and Andrew Lang and the other to Mr. Lang's unaided genius. To read this +_Odyssey_ of theirs is to have a breath of the clear, serene airs that +blew through the antique Hellas; to catch a glimpse of the large, new +morning light that bathes the seas and highlands of the young heroic +world. In a space of shining and fragrant clarity you have a vision of +marble columns and stately cities, of men august in single-heartedness +and strength and women comely and simple and superb as goddesses; and +with a music of leaves and winds and waters, of plunging ships and +clanging armours, of girls at song and kindly gods discoursing, the sunny- +eyed heroic age is revealed in all its nobleness, in all its majesty, its +candour, and its charm. The air is yet plangent with echoes of the +leaguer of Troy, and Odysseus the ready-at-need goes forth upon his +wanderings: into the cave of Polypheme, into the land of giants, into the +very regions of the dead: to hear among the olive trees the voice of +Circe, the sweet witch, singing her magic song as she fares to and fro +before her golden loom; to rest and pine in the islet of Calypso, the +kind sea-goddess; to meet with Nausicaa, loveliest of mortal maids; to +reach his Ithaca, and do battle with the Wooers, and age in peace and +honour by the side of the wise Penelope. The day is yet afar when, as he +sailed out to the sunset and the mysterious west, + + Sol con un legno, e con quella compagna + Picciola, dalla qual non fue deserto, + +the great wind rushed upon him from the new-discovered land, and so ended +his journeyings for ever; and all with him is energy and tact and valour +and resource, as becomes the captain of an indomitable human soul. His +society is like old d'Artagnan's: it invigorates, renews, inspires. I +had rather lack the friendship of the good Alonso Quijada himself than +the brave example of these two. + + + +The Idylls. + + +With certain differences it is the same with our Theocritus. From him, +too, the mind is borne back to a 'happier age of gold,' when the world +was younger than now, and men were not so weary nor so jaded nor so +highly civilised as they choose to think themselves. Shepherds still +piped, and maidens still listened to their piping. The old gods had not +been discrowned and banished; and to fishers drawing their nets the +coasts yet kept a something of the trace of amorous Polypheme, the rocks +were peopled with memories of his plaint to Galatea. Inland, among the +dim and thymy woods, bee-haunted and populous with dreams of dryad and +oread, there were rumours of Pan; and dwellers under thatch--the goatherd +mending his sandals, the hind carving his new staff, the girls who busked +them for the vintaging--were conscious, as the wind went by among the +beeches and the pines, and brought with it the sounds of a lonely and +mysterious night, that hard by them in the starry darkness the divine +Huntress was abroad, and about the base of AEtna she and her forest maids +drove the chase with horn and hound. In the cities ladies sang the psalm +of Adonis brought back from 'the stream eternal of Acheron.' Under the +mystic moon love-lorn damsels did their magic rites, and knit up spells +of power to bring home the men they loved. Among the vines and under the +grey olives songs were singing of Daphnis all day long. There were +junketings and dancings and harvest-homes for ever toward; the youths +went by to the gymnasium, and the girls stood near to watch them as they +went; the cicalas sang, the air was fragrant with apples and musical with +the sound of flutes and running water; while the blue Sicilian sky +laughed over all, and the soft Sicilian sea encircled the land and its +lovers with a ring of sapphire and silver. To translate Theocritus, +wrote Sainte-Beuve, is as if one sought to carry away in one's hand a +patch of snow that has lain forgotten through the summer in a cranny of +the rocks of AEtna:--'On a fait trois pas a peine, que cette neige deja +est fondue. On est heureux s'il en reste assez du moins pour donner le +vif sentiment de la fraicheur.' But Mr. Lang has so rendered into +English the graces of the loveliest of Dorian singers that he has earned +the thanks of every lover of true literature. Every one should read his +book, for it will bring him face to face with a very prince among poets +and with a very summer among centuries. That Theocritus was a rare and +beautiful master there is even in this English transcript an abundance of +evidence. Melancholy apart, he was the Watteau of the old Greek world--an +exquisite artist, a rare poet, a true and kindly soul; and it is very +good to be with him. We have changed it all of course, and are as +fortunate as we can expect. But it is good to be with Theocritus, for he +lets you live awhile in the happy age and under the happy heaven that +were his. He gives you leave and opportunity to listen to the tuneful +strife of Lacon and Comatas; to witness the duel in song between Corydon +and Battus; to talk of Galatea pelting with apples the barking dog of her +love-lorn Polypheme; under the whispering elms, to lie drinking with +Eucritus and Lycidas by the altar of Demeter, 'while she stands smiling +by, with sheaves and poppies in her hand.' + + + +Old Lamps and New. + + +It is relief unspeakable to turn from the dust and din and chatter of +modern life, with its growing trade in heroes and its poverty of men, its +innumerable regrets and ambitions and desires, to this immense +tranquillity, this candid and shining calm. They had no Irish Question +then, you can reflect, nor was theology invented. Men were not afraid of +life nor ashamed of death; and you could be heroic without a dread of +clever editors, and hospitable without fear of rogues, and dutiful for no +hope of illuminated scrolls. Odysseus disguised as Irus is still +Odysseus and august. How comes it that Mr. Gladstone in rags and singing +ballads would be only fit for a police-station? that Lord Salisbury +hawking cocoa-nuts would instantly suggest the purlieus of Petticoat +Lane? Is the fault in ourselves? Can it be that we have deteriorated so +much as that? Nerves, nerves, nerves! . . . These many centuries the +world has had neuralgia; and what has come of it is that Robert Elsmere +is an ideal, and the bleat of the sentimentalist might almost be mistaken +for the voice of living England. + + + + +RABELAIS + + +His Essence. + + +Rabelais is not precisely a book for bachelors and maids--at times, +indeed, is not a book for grown men. There are passages not to be read +without a blush and a sensation of sickness: the young giant which is the +Renaissance being filthy and gross as Nature herself at her grossest and +her most filthy. It is argued that this is all deliberate--is an effect +of premeditation: that Rabelais had certain home-truths to deliver to his +generation, and delivered them in such terms as kept him from the fagot +and the rope by bedaubing him with the renown of a common buffoon. But +the argument is none of the soundest in itself, and may fairly be set +aside as a piece of desperate special pleading, the work of counsel at +their wits' end for matter of defence. For Rabelais clean is not +Rabelais at all. His grossness is an essential component in his mental +fabric, an element in whose absence he would be not Rabelais but somebody +else. It inspires his practice of art to the full as thoroughly as it +informs his theory of language. He not only employs it wherever it might +be useful: he goes out of his way to find it, he shovels it in on any and +every occasion, he bemerds his readers and himself with a gusto that +assuredly is not a common characteristic of defensive operations. In +him, indeed, the humour of Old France--the broad, rank, unsavoury _esprit +gaulois_--found its heroic expression; he made use of it because he must; +and we can no more eliminate it from his work than we can remove the +quality of imagination from Shakespeare's or those of art and intellect +from Ben Jonson's. Other men are as foul or fouler; but in none is +foulness so inbred and so ingrained, from none is it so inseparable. Few +have had so much genius, and in none else has genius been so curiously +featured. + + + +His Secret. + + +It is significant enough that with all this against him he should have +been from the first a great moral and literary influence and the delight +of the wisest and soundest minds the world has seen. Shakespeare read +him, and Jonson; Montaigne, a greater than himself, is in some sort his +descendant; Swift, in Coleridge's enlightening phrase, is 'anima +Rabelaesii habitans in sicco'; to Sterne and Balzac and Moliere he was a +constant inspiration; unto this day his work is studied and his meanings +are sought with almost religious devoutness; while his phrases have +passed into the constitution of a dozen languages, and the great figures +he scrawled across the face of the Renaissance have survived the movement +that gave them being, and are ranked with the monuments of literature. +Himself has given us the reasons in the prologue to the first book, where +he tells of the likeness between Socrates and the boxes called Sileni, +and discourses of the manifest resemblance of his own work with Socrates. +'Opening this box,' which is Socrates, says he, 'you would have found +within it a heavenly and inestimable drug, a more than human +understanding, an admirable virtue, matchless learning, invincible +courage, inimitable sobriety, certain contentment of mind, perfect +assurance, and an incredible disregard of all that for which men +cunningly do so much watch, run, sail, fight, travel, toil, and turmoil +themselves.' In such wise must his book be opened, and the 'high +conceptions' with which it is stuffed will presently be apparent. Nay, +more: you are to do with it even as a dog with a marrowbone. 'If you +have seen him you might have remarked with what devotion and +circumspection he watches and wards it; with what care he keeps it; how +fervently he holds it; how prudently he gobbets it; with what affection +he breaks it; with what diligence he sucks it.' And in the same way you +'by a sedulous lecture and frequent meditation' shall break the bone and +suck out the marrow of these books. Since the advice was proffered, +generation after generation of mighty wits have taken counsel with the +Master, and his wisdom has through them been passed out into the practice +of life, the evolution of society, the development of humanity. But the +'prince de toute sapience et de toute comedie' has not yet uttered his +last word. He remains in the front of time as when he lived and wrote. +The Abbey of Thelema and the education of Gargantua are still unrealised +ideals; the Ringing Isle and the Isle of Papimany are in their essentials +pretty much as he left them; Panurge, 'the pollarded man, the man with +every faculty except the reason,' has bettered no whit for the three +centuries of improvement that have passed since he was flashed into +being. We--even we--have much to learn from Master Alcofribas, and until +we have learned it well enough to put it into practice his work remains +half done and his book still one to study. + + + + +SHAKESPEARE + + +A Parallel. + + +Shakespeare and Rembrandt have in common the faculty of quickening +speculation and compelling the minds of men to combat and discussion. +About the English poet a literature of contention has been in process of +accretion ever since he was discovered to be Shakespeare; and about the +Dutch painter and etcher there has gradually accumulated a literature +precisely analogous in character and for the most part of equal quality. +In such an age as this, when the creative faculty of the world is mainly +occupied with commentary and criticism, the reason should not be far to +seek. Both were giants; both were original and individual in the highest +sense of the words; both were leagues ahead of their contemporaries, not +merely as regards the matter of their message but also in respect of the +terms of its delivery; each, moreover--and here one comes upon a capital +point of contact and resemblance--each was at times prodigiously inferior +to himself. Shakespeare often writes so ill that you hesitate to believe +he could ever write supremely well; or, if this way of putting it seem +indecorous and abominable, he very often writes so well that you are loth +to believe he could ever have written thus extremely ill. There are +passages in his work in which he reaches such heights of literary art as +since his time no mortal has found accessible; and there are passages +which few or none of us can read without a touch of that 'burning sense +of shame' experienced in the presence of Mr. Poynter's _Diadumene_ by the +British Matron of _The Times_ newspaper. Now, we have got to be so +curious in ideals that we cannot away with the thought of imperfection. +Our worship must have for its object something flawless, something +utterly without spot or blemish. We can be satisfied with nothing less +than an entire and perfect chrysolite; and we cannot taste our +Shakespeare at his worst without experiencing not merely the burning +sense of shame aforesaid but also a frenzy of longing to father his +faults upon somebody else--Marlowe for instance, or Green, or +Fletcher--and a fury of proving that our divinity was absolutely +incapable of them. That Shakespeare varied--that the matchless prose and +the not particularly lordly verse of _As You Like It_ are by the same +hand; that the master to whom we owe our Hamlet is also responsible for +Gertrude and King Claudius; that he who gave us the agony of Lear and the +ruin of Othello did likewise perpetrate the scene of Hector's murder, in +manner so poor and in spirit so cynical and vile--is beyond all belief +and patience; and we have argued the point to such an extent that we are +all of us in Gotham, and a mooncalf like the ascription of whatever is +good in Shakespeare to Lord Bacon is no prodigy but a natural birth. + + + + +SIDNEY + + +His Expression of Life. + + +Sidney's prime faults are affectation and conceit. His verses drip with +fine love-honey; but it has been so clarified in meta-physics that much +of its flavour and sweetness has escaped. Very often, too, the conceit +embodied is preposterously poor. You have as it were a casket of finest +gold elaborately wrought and embellished, and the gem within is a mere +spangle of paste, a trumpery spikelet of crystal. No doubt there is a +man's heart beating underneath; but so thick is the envelope of buckram +and broidery and velvet through which it has to make itself audible that +its pulsations are sometimes hard to count, while to follow it throb by +throb is impossible. And if this be true of that _Astrophel and Stella_ +series in which the poet outpours the melodious heyday of his youth--in +which he strives to embody a passion as rich and full as ever stirred +man's blood--what shall be said of the _Arcadia_? In that 'cold +pastoral' he is trying to give breath and substance to as thin and frigid +a fashion as has ever afflicted literature; and though he put a great +deal of himself into the result, still every one has not the true +critical insight, and to most of us, I think, those glimpses of the lofty +nature of the writer which make the thing written a thing of worth in the +eyes of the few are merely invisible. + + + +His Fame. + + +In thinking of Sidney, Ophelia's lament for Hamlet springs to the lips, +and the heart reverts to that closing scene at Zutphen with a blessed +sadness of admiration and regret. But frankly, is it not a fact that +that fine last speech of his has more availed to secure him immortality +than all his verse? They call him the English Bayard, and the Frenchman +need not be displeasured by the comparison. But when you come to read +his poetry you find that our Bayard had in him a strong dash of the +pedant and a powerful leaven of the euphuist. Subtle, delicate, refined, +with a keen and curious wit, a rare faculty of verse, a singular capacity +of expression, an active but not always a true sense of form, he wrote +for the few, and (it may be) the few will always love him. But his +intellectual life, intense though it were, was lived among shadows and +abstractions. He thought deeply, but he neither looked widely nor +listened intently, and when all is said he remains no more than a +brilliant amorist, too super-subtle for complete sincerity, whose fluency +and sweetness have not improved with years. + + + + +TOURNEUR + + +His Style. + + +Tourneur was a fierce and bitter spirit. The words in which he unpacked +his heart are vitalised with passion. He felt so keenly that oftentimes +his phrase is the offspring of the emotion, so terse and vigorous and +apt, so vivid and so potent and eager, it appears. As an instance of +this avidity of wrath and scorn finding expression in words the fittest +and most forcible, leaving the well-known scenes embalmed in Elia's +praise, one might take the three or four single words in which Vindici +(_The Revenger's Tragedy_), on as many several occasions, refers to the +caresses of Spurio and the wanton Duchess. Each is of such amazing +propriety, is so keenly discriminated, is so obviously the product of an +imagination burning with rage and hate, that it strikes you like an +affront: each is an incest taken in the fact and branded there and then. +And this quality of verbal fitness, this power of so charging a phrase +with energy and colour as to make it convey the emotion of the writer at +the instant of inspiration, is perhaps the master quality of Tourneur's +work. + + + +His Matter. + + +They that would have it are many; they that achieve their desire are few. +For in the minor artist the passionate--the elemental quality--is not +often found: he being of his essence the ape or zany of his betters. +Tourneur is not a great tragic. _The Atheist's Tragedy_ is but +grotesquely and extravagantly horrible; its personages are caricatures of +passion; its comedy is inexpressibly sordid; its incidents are absurd +when they are not simply abominable. But it is written in excellent +dramatic verse and in a rich and brilliant diction, and it contains a +number of pregnant epithets and ringing lines and violent phrases. And +if you halve the blame and double the praise you will do something less +than justice to that _Revenger's Tragedy_ which is Tourneur's +immortality. After all its companion is but a bastard of the loud, +malignant, antic muse of Marston; the elegies are cold, elaborate, and +very tedious; the _Transformed Metamorphosis_ is better verse but harder +reading than _Sordello_ itself. But the _Revenger's Tragedy_ has merit +as a piece of art and therewith a rare interest as a window on the +artist's mind. The effect is as of a volcanic landscape. An earthquake +has passed, and among grisly shapes and blasted aspects here lurks and +wanders the genius of ruin. + + + + +WALTON + + +The Compleat Angler. + + +I am told that it is generally though silently admitted that, while +Charles Cotton came of a school of fishermen renowned for accomplishment +even now, his master and friend was not in the modern or Cottonian sense +a fisherman at all. There was in him, indeed, a vast deal of the +philosopher and the observer of nature and still more, perhaps, of the +artist in English; but there was also not a little of the cockney +sportsman. He never rose above the low-lived worm and quill; his prey +was commonly those fish that are the scorn of the true angler, for he +knew naught of trout and grayling, yet was deeply interested in such base +creatures (and such poor eating) as chub and roach and dace; and that +part of his treatise which has still a certain authority--which may be +said, indeed, to have placed the mystery of fly-fishing upon something of +a scientific basis--was not his work but that of 'my most honoured +friend, Charles Cotton, Esq.' Again, it is a characteristic of your true +as opposed to your cockney sportsman that, unless constrained thereto by +hunger, he does not eat what he has killed; and it is a characteristic of +Walton--who in this particular at least may stand for the authentic type +of the cockney sportsman as opposed to the true one--that he delighted +not much less in dining or supping on his catch than he did in the act of +making it: as witness some of the most charming parts in a book that from +one end to the other is charm and little besides. Indeed the truth--(with +reverence be it spoken)--appears to be that the _Compleat Angler_ is an +expression in the terms of art of the cit's enjoyment of the country. + + + +Master Piscator. + + +What Walton saw in angling was not that delight in the consciousness of +accomplishment and intelligence which sends the true fisherman to the +river and keeps him there, rejoicing in his strength, whether he kill or +go empty away. It was rather the pretext--with a worm and perhaps a good +supper at one end and a contemplative man at the other--of a day in the +fields: where the skylark soared, and the earth smelled sweet, and the +water flashed and tinkled as it ran, while hard by some milk-maid, +courteous yet innocent, sang as she plied her nimble fingers, and not +very far away the casement of the inn-parlour gleamed comfortable +promises of talk and food and rest. That was the Master Piscator who, +being an excellent man of letters, went out to 'stretch his legs up +Tottenham Hill' in search of fish, and came home with immortal copy; and +that was the Izaak Walton who 'ventured to fill a part' of Cotton's +'margin' with remarks not upon his theory of how to angle for trout or +grayling in a clear stream but 'by way of paraphrase for your reader's +clearer understanding both of the situation of your fishing house, and +the pleasantness of that you dwell in.' He had the purest and the most +innocent of minds, he was the master of a style as bright, as sweet, as +refreshing and delightful, as fine clean home-spun some time in lavender; +he called himself an angler, and he believed in the description with a +cordial simplicity whose appeal is more persuasive now than ever. But he +was nothing if not the citizen afield--the cockney aweary of Bow Bells +and rejoicing in 'the sights and sounds of the open landscape.' After +all it is only your town-bred poet who knows anything of the country, or +is moved to concern himself in anywise for the sensations and experiences +it yields. Milton was born in Bread Street, and Herrick in Cheapside. +Yet Milton gave us the _Allegro_ and the _Penseroso_ and the scenery in +_Comus_ and the epic; while as for Herrick--the _Night-Piece_, the lovely +and immortal verses _To Meadows_, the fresh yet sumptuous and noble _To +Corinna Going a-Maying_, these and a hundred more are there to answer for +_him_. Here Walton is with Herrick and Milton and many 'dear sons of +Memory' besides; and that is why he not only loved the country but was +moved to make art of it as well. + + + + +HERRICK + + +His Muse. + + +In Herrick the air is fragrant with new-mown hay; there is a morning +light upon all things; long shadows streak the grass, and on the +eglantine swinging in the hedge the dew lies white and brilliant. Out of +the happy distance comes a shrill and silvery sound of whetting scythes; +and from the near brook-side rings the laughter of merry maids in circle +to make cowslipballs and babble of their bachelors. As you walk you are +conscious of 'the grace that morning meadows wear,' and mayhap you meet +Amaryllis going home to the farm with an apronful of flowers. Rounded is +she and buxom, cool-cheeked and vigorous and trim, smelling of rosemary +and thyme, with an appetite for curds and cream and a tongue of 'cleanly +wantonness.' For her singer has an eye in his head, and exquisite as are +his fancies he dwells in no land of shadows. The more clearly he sees a +thing the better he sings it; and provided that he do see it nothing is +beneath the caress of his muse. The bays and rosemary that wreath the +hall at Yule, the log itself, the Candlemas box, the hock-cart and the +maypole, nay, + + 'See'st thou that cloud as silver clear, + Plump, soft, and swelling everywhere? + Tis Julia's bed!'-- + +And not only does he listen to the 'clecking' of his hen and know what it +means: he knows too that the egg she has laid is long and white; so that +ere he enclose it in his verse, you can see him take it in his hand, and +look at it with a sort of boyish wonder and delight. This freshness of +spirit, this charming and innocent curiosity, he carries into all he +does. He can turn a sugared compliment with the best, but when Amaryllis +passes him by he is yet so eager and unsophisticate that he can note that +'winning wave in the tempestuous petticoat' which has rippled to such +good purpose through so many graceful speeches since. So that though +Julia and Dianeme and Anthea have passed away, though Corinna herself is +merely 'a fable, song, a fleeting shade,' he has saved enough of them +from the ravin of Time for us to love and be grateful for eternally. +Their gracious ghosts abide in a peculiar nook of the Elysium of Poesy. +There 'in their habit as they lived' they dance in round, they fill their +laps with flowers, they frolic and junket sweetly, they go for ever +maying. Soft winds blow round them, and in their clear young voices they +sing the verse of the rare artist who called them from the multitude and +set them for ever where they are. + + + +His Moral. + + +And Amaryllis herself will not, mayhap, be found so fair as those +younglings of the year she bears with her in 'wicker ark' or 'lawny +continent.' Herrick is pre-eminently the poet of flowers. He alone were +capable of bringing back + + 'Le bouquet d'Ophelie + De la rive inconnue ou les flots l'ont laisse. + +He knows and loves the dear blossoms all. He considers them with tender +and shining eyes, he culls them his sweetest fancies and his fondest +metaphors. Their idea is inseparable from that of his girls themselves, +and it is by the means of the one set of mistresses that he is able so +well to understand the other. The flowers are maids to him, and the +maids are flowers. In an ecstasy of tender contemplation he turns from +those to these, exampling Julia from the rose and pitying the hapless +violets as though they were indeed not blooms insensitive but actually +'poor girls neglected.' His pages breathe their clean and innocent +perfumes, and are beautiful with the chaste beauty of their colour, just +as they carry with them something of the sweetness and simplicity of +maidenhood itself. And from both he extracts the same pathetic little +moral: both are lovely and both must die. And so, between his virgins +that are for love indeed and those that sit silent and delicious in the +'flowery nunnery,' the old singer finds life so good a thing that he +dreads to lose it, and not all his piety can remove the passionate regret +with which he sees things hastening to their end. + + + +His Piety. + + +That piety is equally removed from the erotic mysticism of Richard +Crashaw and from the adoration, chastened and awful and pure, of Cowper. +To find an analogue, you have to cross the borders of English into Spain. +In his _Noble Numbers_ Herrick shows himself to be a near kinsman of such +men as Valdivielso, Ocana, Lope de Ubeda; and there are versicles of his +that in their homely mixture of the sacred and the profane, in their +reverent familiarity with things divine, their pious and simple +gallantry, may well be likened to the graceful and charming romances and +villancicos of these strangers. Their spirit is less Protestant than +Catholic, and is hardly English at all, so that it is scarce to be +wondered at if they have remained unpopular. But their sincerity and +earnestness are as far beyond doubt as their grace of line and inimitable +daintiness of surface. + + + + +LOCKER + + +His Qualities. + + +Mr. Locker's verse has charmed so wisely and so long that it has +travelled the full circle of compliment and exhausted one part of the +lexicon of eulogy. As you turn his pages you feel as freshly as ever the +sweet, old-world elegance, the courtly amiability, the mannerly +restraint, the measured and accomplished ease. True, they are +colourless, and in these days we are deboshed with colour; but then they +are so luminously limpid and serene, they are so sprightly and graceful +and gay! In the gallantry they affect there is a something at once +exquisite and paternal. If they pun, 'tis with an air: even thus might +Chesterfield have stooped to folly. And then, how clean the English, how +light yet vigorous the touch, the manner how elegant and how staid! There +is wit in them, and that so genial and unassuming that as like as not it +gets leave to beam on unperceived. There is humour too, but humour so +polite as to look half-unconscious, so dandified that it leaves you in +doubt as to whether you should laugh or only smile. And withal there is +a vein of well-bred wisdom never breathed but to the delight no less than +to the profit of the student. And for those of them that are touched +with passion, as in _The Unrealized Ideal_ and that lovely odelet to +Mabel's pearls, why, these are, I think, the best and the least +approachable of all. + + + +His Effect. + + +For as English as she is, indeed, his muse is not to be touched off save +in French. To think of her is to reflect that she is _delicate_, +_spirituelle_, _semillante_--_une fine mouche_, _allez_! The _salon_ has +disappeared,--'Iran, indeed, is gone, and all his rose'; but she was born +with the trick of it. You make your bow to her in her Sheraton chair, a +buckle shoe engagingly discovered; and she rallies you with an +incomparable ease, a delicate malice, in a dialect itself a distinction; +and when she smiles it is behind or above a fan that points while it +dissembles, that assists effect as delightfully as it veils intention. At +times she is sensitive and tender, but her graver mood has no more of +violence or mawkishness than has her gallant roguery (or enchanting +archness) of viciousness or spite. Best of all, she is her poet's very +own. You may woo her and pursue her as you will; but the end is +invariable. 'I follow, follow still, but I shall never see her face.' +Even as in her master's finest song. + + + + +BANVILLE + + +His Nature. + + +The Muse of M. de Banville was born not naked but in the most elaborate +and sumptuous evening wear that ever muse put on. To him, indeed, there +is no nature so natural as that depicted on the boards, no humanity half +so human as the actor puts on with his paint. For him the flowers grow +plucked and bound into nosegays; passion has no existence outside the +Porte-Saint-Martin; the universe is a place of rhymes and rhythms, the +human heart a supplement to the dictionary. He delights in babbling of +green fields, and Homer, and Shakespeare, and the Eumenides, and the +'_rire enorme_' of the _Frogs_ and the _Lysistrata_. But it is suspected +that he loves these things rather as words than as facts, and that in his +heart of hearts he is better pleased with Cassandra and Columbine than +with Rosalind and Othello, with the studio Hellas of Gautier than with +the living Greece of Sophocles. Heroic objects are all very well in +their way of course: they suggest superb effects in verse, they are of +incomparable merit considered as colours and jewels for well-turned +sentences in prose. But their function is purely verbal; they are the +raw material of the outward form of poesy, and they come into being to +glorify a climax, to adorn a refrain, to sparkle and sound in odelets and +rondels and triolets, to twinkle and tinkle and chime all over the eight- +and-twenty members of a fair ballade. + + + +His Art. + + +It is natural enough that to a theory of art and life that can be thus +whimsically described we should be indebted for some of the best writing +of modern years. Our poet has very little sympathy with fact, whether +heroic or the reverse, whether essential or accidental; but he is a rare +artist in words and cadences. He writes of 'Pierrot, l'homme subtil,' +and Columbine, and 'le beau Leandre,' and all the marionettes of that +pleasant puppet-show which he mistakes for the world, with the rhetorical +elegance and distinction, the verbal force and glow, the rhythmic beauty +and propriety, of a rare poet; he models a group of flowers in wax as +passionately and cunningly, and with as perfect an interest in the +process and as lofty and august a faith in the result, as if he were +carving the Venus of Milo, or scoring Beethoven's 'Fifth,' or producing +_King Lear_ or the _Ronde de Nuit_. He is profoundly artificial, but he +is simple and even innocent in his artifice; so that he is often +interesting and even affecting. He knows so well what should be done and +so well how to do it that he not seldom succeeds in doing something that +is actually and veritably art: something, that is, in which there is +substance as well as form, in which the matter is equal with the manner, +in which the imagination is human as well as aesthetic and the invention +not merely verbal but emotional and romantic also. The dramatic and +poetic value of such achievements in style as _Florise_ and _Diane au +Bois_ is open to question; but there can be no doubt that _Gringoire_ is +a play. There is an abundance of 'epical ennui' in _le Sang de la Coupe_ +and _les Stalactites_; but the 'Nous n'irons plus au bois' and the +charming epigram in which the poet paints a processional frieze of +Hellenic virgins are high-water marks of verse. But, indeed, if Pierrot +and Columbine were all the race, and the footlights might only change +places with the sun, then were M. de Banville by way of being a +Shakespeare. + + + + +DOBSON + + +Method and Effect. + + +His style has distinction, elegance, urbanity, precision, an exquisite +clarity. Of its kind it is as nearly as possible perfect. You think of +Horace as you read; and you think of those among our own eighteenth +century poets to whom Horace was an inspiration and an example. The +epithet is usually so just that it seems to have come into being with the +noun it qualifies; the metaphor is mostly so appropriate that it leaves +you in doubt as to whether it suggested the poem or the poem suggested +it; the verb is never in excess of the idea it would convey; the effect +of it all is that 'something has here got itself uttered,' and for good. +Could anything, for instance, be better, or less laboriously said, than +this poet's remonstrance _To an Intrusive Butterfly_? The thing is +instinct with delicate observation, so aptly and closely expressed as to +seem natural and living as the facts observed: + + 'I watch you through the garden walks, + I watch you _float_ between + The _avenues_ of dahlia stalks, + And _flicker_ on the green; + You _hover_ round the garden seat, + You _mount_, you _waver_. . . + + * * * * * + + Across the room _in loops of flight_ + I watch you wayward go; + * * * * * + Before the bust you flaunt and flit-- + * * * * * + You _pause_, you _poise_, you _circle up_ + Among my old Japan.' + +And all the rest of it. The theme is but the vagaries of a wandering +insect; but how just and true is the literary instinct, how perfect the +literary _savoir-faire_! The words I have italicised are the only words +(it seems) in the language that are proper to the occasion; and yet how +quietly they are produced, with what apparent unconsciousness they are +set to do their work, how just and how sufficient is their effect! In +writing of this sort there is a certain artistic good-breeding whose like +is not common in these days. We have lost the secret of it: we are too +eager to make the most of our little souls in art and too ignorant to do +the best by them; too egoistic and 'individual,' too clever and skilful +and well informed, to be content with the completeness of simplicity. +Even the Laureate was once addicted to glitter for glitter's sake; and +with him to keep them in countenance there is a thousand minor poets +whose 'little life' is merely a giving way to the necessities of what is +after all a condition of intellectual impotence but poorly redeemed by a +habit of artistic swagger. The singer of Dorothy and Beau Brocade is of +another race. He is 'the co-mate and brother in exile' of Matthew Arnold +and the poet of _The Unknown Eros_. Alone among modern English bards +they stand upon that ancient way which is the best: attentive to the +pleadings of the Classic Muse, heedful always to give such thoughts as +they may breed no more than their due expression. + + + + +BERLIOZ + + +The Critic. + + +One of the very few great musicians who have been able to write their own +language with vigour and perspicuity, Berlioz was for many years among +the kings of the feuilleton, among the most accomplished journalists of +the best epoch of the Parisian press. He had an abundance of wit and +humour; his energy and spirit were inexhaustible; within certain limits +he was a master of expression and style; in criticism as in music he was +an artist to his finger-ends; and if he found writing hard work what he +wrote is still uncommonly easy reading. He is one of the few--the very +few--journalists the worth of whose achievement has been justified by +collection and republication. Louis Veuillot has been weighed in this +balance, and found wanting; and so has Janin prince of critics. With +Berlioz it is otherwise. If you are no musician he appeals to you as a +student of life; if you are interested in life and music both he is +irresistible. The _Memoires_ is one of the two or three essays in +artistic biography which may claim equal honours with Benvenuto's story +of himself and his own doings; the two volumes of correspondence rank +with the most interesting epistolary matter of these times; in the +_Grotesques_, the _A Travers Chants_, the _Soirees de l'Orchestre_ there +is enough of fun and earnest, of fine criticism and diabolical humour, of +wit and fancy and invention, to furnish forth a dozen ordinary critics, +and leave a rich remainder when all's done. These books have been +popular for years; they are popular still; and the reason is not far to +seek. Berlioz was not only a great musician and a brilliant writer; he +was also a very interesting and original human being. His writings are +one expression of an abnormal yet very natural individuality; and when he +speaks you are sure of something worth hearing and remembering. + + + +A Prototype. + + +Apart from Cellini's ruffianism there are several points of contact +between the two men. Berlioz made the roaring goldsmith the hero of an +opera, and it is not doubtful that he was in complete sympathy with his +subject. In the Frenchman there is a full measure of the waywardness of +temper, the impatience of authority, the resolute and daring humour, the +passion of worship for what is great in art and of contempt for what is +little and bad, which entered so largely into the composition of the +Florentine. There is not much to choose between the Berlioz of the +_Debats_, the author of the _Grotesques de la Musique_ and the _A Travers +Chants_, and the Benvenuto who, as Il Lasca writes of him, + + 'Senza alcun ritegno o barbazzale + Delle cose malfatte dicea male.' + +Benvenuto enlarges upon the joys of drawing from the life and expatiates +upon the greatness of Michelangelo in much the same spirit and with much +the same fury of admiration with which Berlioz descants upon the rapture +of conducting an orchestra and dilates upon the beauty of _Divinites du +Styx_ or the adagio of the so-called _Moonlight Sonata_. It is written +of Benvenuto, in connection with Vasari's attack upon that cupola of +Santa Maria del Fiore which himself was wont to call 'the marvel of +beautiful things,' that if he had lived to see the result, + + 'Certo non capirebbe nelle pelle; + _E saltando_, _e correndo_, _e fulminando_, + S' andrebbe querelando, + E per tutto gridando ad alta voce + _Giorgin d'Arezzo meterebbe in croce_, + Oggi universalmente + Odiato della gente + _Quasi publico ladro e assassino_'; + +and you are reminded irresistibly of Berlioz betrampling Lachnith and the +ingenious Castil-Blaze and defending Beethoven against the destructive +pedantry of Fetis. And, just as the _Vita_ is invaluable as a personal +record of artist-life in the Italy of the Renaissance, so are the +_Memoires_ invaluable as a personal record of the works and ways of +musicians in the Paris of the Romantic revival. Berlioz is revealed in +them for one of the race of the giants. He is the musician of 1830, as +Delacroix is the painter; and his work is as typical and as significant +as the _Sardanapale_ and the _Faust_ lithographs. + + + +His Theory of Autobiography. + + +To read the _Memoires_ is to feel that in writing them the great musician +deliberately set himself to win the heart of posterity. He believed in +himself, and he believed in his music: he divined that one day or another +he would be legendary as well as immortal; and he took an infinite deal +of pains to make certain that the ideal which was presently to represent +him in men's minds should be an ideal of which he could thoroughly +approve. It is fair to note that in this care for the good will and the +good word of the future he was not by any means alone. The +_romantiques_, indeed, were keen--from Napoleon downwards--to make the +very best of themselves. The poet of the _Legende des Siecles_, for +example, went early to work to arrange the story of his life and +character at least as carefully as he composed the audiences of his +_premieres_; and he did it with so light a hand, and with such a sense of +the importance of secrecy, that it is even now by no means so well and +widely known as it should be that _Victor Hugo raconte par un Temoin de +sa Vie_ is the work of the hero's wife, and was not only inspired but may +also have been revised and prepared for publication by the hero himself. +Again, the dramatist of _Antony_ and the novelist of _Bragelonne_ was +never so happy as when he was engaged upon the creation of what he hoped +would be the historical Dumas; he made volume after volume of delightful +reading out of his own impressions and adventures; he turned himself into +copy with a frankness, a grace, a gusto, a persistency of egoism, which +are merely enchanting. Berlioz, therefore, had good warrant for his +work. It is more to the point, perhaps, that he would have taken it if +he had not had it. And I hold that he would have done well; for (in any +case) a great man's notion of himself is, _ipso facto_, better and more +agreeable and convincing, especially as he presents it, than the idea of +his inferiors and admirers, especially as presented by them. Berlioz, it +is true, was prodigal in these _Memoires_ of his of wit and fun and +devilry, of fine humanity and noble art, of good things said and great +things dreamed and done and suffered; but he was prodigal of invention +and suppression as well, and the result, while considerably less +veracious, is all the more fascinating, therefor. One feels that for one +thing he was too complete an artist to be merely literal and exact; that +for another he saw and felt things for himself, as Milton did before +him--Milton in the mind's eye of Milton the noblest of created things and +to Mr. Saintsbury almost as unpleasing a spectacle as the gifted but +abject Racine; and for a third that from his own point of view he was +right, and there is an end of it. + + + + +GEORGE ELIOT + + +The Ideal. + + +It was thought that with George Eliot the Novel-with-a-Purpose had really +come to be an adequate instrument for the regeneration of humanity. It +was understood that Passion only survived to point a moral or provide the +materials of an awful tale, while Duty, Kinship, Faith, were so far +paramount as to govern Destiny and mould the world. A vague, decided +flavour of Liberty, Equality, and Fraternity was felt to pervade the +moral universe, a chill but seemly halo of Golden Age was seen to play +soberly about things in general. And it was with confidence anticipated +that those perfect days were on the march when men and women would +propose--(from the austerest motives)--by the aid of scientific +terminology. + + + +The Real. + + +To the Sceptic--(an apostate, and an undoubted male)--another view was +preferable. He held that George Eliot had carried what he called the +'Death's-Head Style' of art a trifle too far. He read her books in much +the same spirit and to much the same purpose that he went to the +gymnasium and diverted himself with parallel bars. He detested her +technology; her sententiousness revolted while it amused him; and when +she put away her puppets and talked of them learnedly and with +understanding--instead of letting them explain themselves, as several +great novelists have been content to do--he recalled how Wisdom crieth +out in the street and no man regardeth her, and perceived that in this +case the fault was Wisdom's own. He accepted with the humility of +ignorance, and something of the learner's gratitude, her woman generally, +from Romola down to Mrs. Pullet. But his sense of sex was strong enough +to make him deny the possibility in any stage of being of nearly all the +governesses in revolt it pleased her to put forward as men; for with very +few exceptions he knew they were heroes of the divided skirt. To him +Deronda was an incarnation of woman's rights; Tito an 'improper female in +breeches'; Silas Marner a good, perplexed old maid, of the kind of whom +it is said that they have 'had a disappointment.' And Lydgate alone had +aught of the true male principle about him. + + + +Appreciations. + + +Epigrams are at best half-truths that look like whole ones. Here is a +handful about George Eliot. It has been said of her books--('on several +occasions')--that 'it is doubtful whether they are novels disguised as +treatises, or treatises disguised as novels'; that, 'while less romantic +than Euclid's Elements, they are on the whole a great deal less improving +reading'; and that 'they seem to have been dictated to a plain woman of +genius by the ghost of David Hume.' Herself, too, has been variously +described: as 'An Apotheosis of Pupil-Teachery'; as 'George Sand _plus_ +Science and _minus_ Sex'; as 'Pallas with prejudices and a corset'; as +'the fruit of a caprice of Apollo for the Differential Calculus.' The +comparison of her admirable talent to 'not the imperial violin but the +grand ducal violoncello' seems suggestive and is not unkind. + + + + +BORROW + + +His Vocation. + + +Three hundred years since Borrow would have been a gentleman adventurer: +he would have dropped quietly down the river, and steered for the Spanish +Main, bent upon making carbonadoes of your Don. But he came too late for +that, and falling upon no sword and buckler age but one that was +interested in Randal and Spring, he accepted that he found, and did his +best to turn its conditions, into literature. As he had that admirable +instinct of making the best of things which marks the true adventurer, he +was on the whole exceeding happy. There was no more use in sailing for +Javan and Gadire; but at home there were highways in abundance, and what +is your genuine tramp but a dry-land sailor? The Red Man is exhausted of +everything but sordidness; but under that round-shouldered little tent at +the bend of the road, beside that fire artistically built beneath that +kettle of the comfortable odours, among those horses and colts at graze +hard by, are men and women more mysterious and more alluring to the +romantic mind than any Mingo or Comanch that ever traded a scalp. While +as for your tricks of fence--your immortal _passado_, your _punto +reverso_--if that be no longer the right use for a gentleman, have not +Spring and Langan fought their great battle on Worcester racecourse? and +has not Cribb of Gloucestershire--that renowned, heroic, irresistible +Thomas--beaten Molyneux the negro artist in the presence of twenty +thousand roaring Britons? and shall the practice of an art which has +rejoiced in such a master as the illustrious Game Chicken, Hannibal of +the Ring, be held degrading by an Englishman of sufficient inches who, +albeit a Tory and a High Churchman, is at bottom as thoroughgoing a +Republican as ever took the word of command from Colonel Cromwell? And +if all this fail, if he get nobody to put on the gloves with him, if the +tents of the Romany prove barren of interest, if the king's highway be +vacant of adventure as Mayfair, he has still philology to fall back upon, +he can still console himself with the study of strange tongues, he can +still exult in a peculiar superiority by quoting the great Ab Gwylim +where the baser sort of persons is content with Shakespeare. So that +what with these and some kindred diversions--a little horse-whispering +and ale-drinking, the damnation of Popery, the study of the Bible--he can +manage not merely to live but to live so fully and richly as to be the +envy of some and the amazement of all. That, as life goes and as the +world wags, is given to few. Add to it the credit of having written as +good a book about Spain as ever was written in any language, the +happiness of having dreamed and partly lived that book ere it was +written, the perfect joy of being roundly abused by everybody, and the +consciousness of being different from everybody and of giving at least as +good as ever you got at several things the world is silly enough to hold +in worship--as the Toryism of Sir Walter, or the niceness of Popery, or +the pleasures of Society: and is it not plain that Borrow was a man +uncommon fortunate, and that he enjoyed life as greatly as most men not +savages who have possessed the fruition of this terrestrial sphere? + + + +Ideals and Achievements. + + +He prepared his effects as studiously and almost as dexterously as Dumas +himself. His instinct of the picturesque was rarely indeed at fault; he +marshalled his personages and arranged his scene with something of that +passion for effect which entered so largely into the theory of M. le +Comte de Monte-Cristo. However closely disguised, himself is always the +heroic figure, and he is ever busy in arranging discovery and triumph. To +his chance-mates he is but an eccentric person, an amateur tinker, a +slack-baked gipsy, an unlettered hack; to his audience he is his own, +strong, indifferent self: presently the rest will recognise him and he +will be disdainfully content. And recognise him they do. He throws off +his disguise; there is a gape, a stare, a general conviction that +Lavengro is the greatest man in the world; and then--as the manner of +Lesage commands--the adventure ends, the stars resume their wonted +courses, and the self-conscious Tinker-Quixote takes the road once more +and passes on to other achievements: a mad preacher to succour, a priest +to baffle, some tramp to pound into a jelly of humility, an applewoman to +mystify, a horse-chaunter to swindle, a pugilist to study and help and +portray. But whatever it be, Lavengro emerges from the ordeal modestly, +unobtrusively, quietly, most consciously magnificent. Circumstantial as +Defoe, rich in combinations as Lesage, and with such an instinct of the +picturesque, both personal and local, as none of these possessed, this +strange wild man holds on his strange wild way, and leads you captive to +the end. His dialogue is copious and appropriate: you feel that like Ben +Jonson he is dictating rather than reporting, that he is less faithful +and exact than imaginative and determined; but you are none the less +pleased with it, and suspicious though you be that the voice is +Lavengro's and the hands are the hands of some one else, you are glad to +surrender to the illusion, and you regret when it is dispelled. Moreover, +that all of it should be set down in racy, nervous, idiomatic English, +with a kind of eloquence at once primitive and scholarly, precious but +homely--the speech of an artist in sods and turfs--if at first it +surprise and charm yet ends by seeming so natural and just that you go on +to forget all about it and accept the whole thing as the genuine outcome +of a man's experience which it purports to be. Add that it is all +entirely unsexual; that there is none with so poor an intelligence of the +heart as woman moves it; that the book does not exist in which the +relations between boy and girl are more miserably misrepresented than in +_Lavengro_ and _The Romany Rye_; that that picaresque ideal of romance +which, finding utterance in Hurtado de Mendoza, was presently to appeal +to such artists as Cervantes, Quevedo, Lesage, Smollett, the Dickens of +_Pickwick_, finds such expression in _Lavengro_ and _The Romany Rye_ as +nowhere else; and the tale of Borrow is complete enough. + + + +Himself. + + +Despite or because of a habit of mystification which obliged him to +jumble together the homely Real and a not less homely Ideal, Lavengro +will always, I think, be found worthy of companionship, if only as the +one exemplary artist-tramp the race has yet achieved. The artist-tramp, +the tinker who can write, the horse-coper with a twang of Hamlet and a +habit of Monte-Cristo--that is George Borrow. For them that love these +differences there is none in whom they are so cunningly and quaintly +blended as George Borrow; and they that love them not may keep the other +side of the road and fare in peace elsewhither. + + + + +BALZAC + + +Under which King? + + +To Goethe it seemed that every one of Balzac's novels had been dug out of +a suffering woman's heart: but Goethe spoke not always wisely, and in +this exacting world there be some that not only have found fault with +Balzac's method and results but have dared to declare his theory of +society the dream of a mind diseased. To these critics Balzac was less +observer than creator: his views were false, his vision was distorted, +and though he had 'incomparable power' he had not power enough to make +them accept his work. This theory is English, and in France they find +Balzac possible enough. There is something of him in Pierre Dupont; he +made room for the work of Flaubert, Feydeau, the younger Dumas, Augier +and Zola and the brothers Goncourt; and to him Charles Baudelaire is as +some fat strange fungus to the wine-cask in whose leakings it springs. +Sainte-Beuve refused to accept him, but his 'Pigault-Lebrun des +duchesses' is only malicious: he resented the man's exuberant and +inordinate personality, and made haste to apply to it some drops of that +sugared vitriol of which he had the secret. Taine is a fitter critic of +the _Comedie humaine_ than Sainte-Beuve; and Taine has come to other +conclusions. Acute, coarse, methodical, exhaustive, he has recognised +the greatness of one still more exhaustive, methodical, coarse, and acute +than himself. English critics fall foul of Balzac's women; but Taine +falls foul of English critics, and with the authority of a Parisian by +profession declares that the _Parisiennes_ of the _Comedie_ are +everything they ought to be--the true daughters of their 'bon gros +libertin de pere.' And while Taine, exulting in his Marneffe and his +Coralie, does solemnly and brilliantly show that he is right and +everybody else is wrong, a later writer--English of course--can find no +better parallel of Balzac than Browning, and knows nothing in art so like +the Pauline of _la Peau de Chagrin_ as the Sistine Madonna. It is +curious, this clash of opinions; and it is plain that one or other party +must be wrong. Which is it? 'Qui trompe-t-on ici?' Is Taine a better +judge than Mr. Leslie Stephen or Mr. Henry James? Or are Messrs. James +and Stephen better qualified to speak with authority than Taine? It may +be that none but a Frenchman can thoroughly and intimately apprehend in +its inmost a thing so essentially French as the _Comedie_; it is a fact +that Frenchmen of all sorts and sizes have accepted the _Comedie_ in its +totality; and that is reason good enough for any commonplace Englishman +who is lacking in the vanity of originality to accept it also. + + + +The Fact. + + +Balzac's ambition was to be omnipotent. He would be Michelangelesque, +and that by sheer force of minuteness. He exaggerated scientifically, +and made things gigantic by a microscopic fulness of detail. His Hulot +was to remain the Antony of modern romance, losing the world for the love +of woman, and content to lose it; his Marneffe, in whom is incarnated the +instinct and the science of sexual corruption, is Hulot's Cleopatra, and +only dies because 'elle va faire le bon Dieu'--as who should say 'to mash +the Old Man'; Frenhoeffer, Philippe Bridau, Vautrin, Marsay, Rastignac, +Grandet, Balthazar Claes, Beatrix, Sarrazine, Lousteau, Esther, Lucien +Chardon--the list is, I believe, some thousands strong! Also the +argument is proved in advance: there is the _Comedie_ itself--'the new +edition fifty volumes long.' Bad or good, foul or fair, impossible or +actual, a monstrous debauch of mind or a triumph of realisation, there is +the _Comedie_. It is forty years since Balzac squared and laid the last +stones of it; and it exists--if a little the worse for wear: the bulk is +enormous--if the materials be in some sort worm-eaten and crumbling. +Truly, he had 'incomparable power.' He was the least capable and the +most self-conscious of artists; his observation was that of an inspired +and very careful auctioneer; he was a visionary and a fanatic; he was +gross, ignorant, morbid of mind, cruel in heart, vexed with a strain of +Sadism that makes him on the whole corrupting and ignoble in effect. But +he divined and invented prodigiously if he observed and recorded +tediously, and his achievement remains a phantasmagoria of desperate +suggestions and strange, affecting situations and potent and inordinate +effects. He may be impossible; but there is French literature and French +society to show that he passed that way, and had 'incomparable power.' +The phrase is Mr. Henry James's, and it is hard to talk of Balzac and +refrain from it. + + + + +LABICHE + + +Teniers or Daumier? + + +To the maker of Poirier and Fabrice, of Seraphine and Giboyer, of Olympe +and the Marquis d'Auberive, there were analogies between the genius of +Labiche and the genius of Teniers. 'C'est au premier abord,' says he, +'le meme aspect de caricature; c'est, en y regardant de plus pres, la +meme finesse de tons, la meme justesse d'expression, la meme vivacite de +mouvement.' For myself, I like to think of Labiche as in some sort akin +to Honore Daumier. Earnestness and accomplishment apart, he has much in +common with that king of caricaturists. The lusty frankness, the jovial +ingenuity, the keen sense of the ridiculous, the insatiable instinct of +observation, of the draughtsman are a great part of the equipment of the +playwright. Augier notes that truth is everywhere in Labiche's work, and +Augier is right. He is before everything a dramatist: an artist, that +is, whose function is to tell a story in action and by the mouths of its +personages; and whimsical and absurd as he loves to be, he is never +either the one or the other at the expense of nature. He is often +careless and futile: he will squander--(as in _Vingt-neuf Degres a +l'Ombre_ and _l'Avare en Gants_ _Jaunes_)--an idea that rightly belongs +to the domain of pure comedy on the presentation of a most uproarious +farce. But he is never any falser to his vocation than this. Now and +then, as in _Moi_ and _le Voyage de M. Perrichon_, he is an excellent +comic poet, dealing with comedy seriously as comedy should be dealt with, +and incarnating a vice or an affectation in a certain character with +impeccable justness and assurance. Now and then, as in _les Petits +Oiseaux_ and _les Vivacites du Capitaine Tic_, he is content to tell a +charming story as pleasantly as possible. Sometimes, as in _Celimare le +Bien-Aime_ (held by M. Sarcey to be the high-water mark of the modern +_vaudeville_), _le Plus Heureux des Trois_, and _le Prix Martin_, he +fights again from a humouristic point of view that triangular duel +between the wife, the husband, and the lover which fills so large a place +in the literature of France; and then he shows the reverse of the medal +of adultery--with the husband at his ease, the seducer haunted by the +ghosts of old sins, the erring wife the slave of her unsuspecting lord. +Or again, he takes to turning the world upside down, and--as in the +_Cagnotte_, the _Chapeau de Paille_, and the _Trente Millions_--to +producing a scheme of morals and society that seems to have been dictated +from an Olympus demoralised by champagne and lobster. But at his wildest +he never forgets that men and women are themselves. His dialogue is +always right and appropriate, however extravagant it be. His vivid and +varied knowledge of life and character supplies him with touches enough +of nature and truth to make the fortune of a dozen ordinary dramatists; +and withal you feel as you read that he is writing, as Augier says of +him, to amuse himself merely, and that he could an if he would be solemn +and didactic with all the impressiveness that a perfect acquaintance with +men and things and an admirable dramatic aptitude can bestow. The fact +that he is always in a good temper has done him some wrong in that it has +led him to be to all appearances amusing only, where he might well have +posed as a severe and serious artist. But he is none the less true for +having elected to be funny, and there is certainly more genuine human +nature and human feeling in such drolleries as the _Chapeau de Paille_ +and _le Plus Heureux des Trois_ than in all the serious dramas of Ponsard +(say) and Hugo put together. + + + +Labiche. + + +Perhaps the most characteristic and individual part of his work is that +in which he has given his invention full swing, and allowed his humour to +play its maddest pranks at will. _Moi_ is an admirable comedy, and De la +Porcheraie is almost hideously egoistic; the _Voyage de M. Perrichon_ is +delightful reading, and Perrichon is as pompous an ass as I know; but the +_Chapeau de Paille_, the _Cagnotte_, the _Trente Millions_, the +_Sensitive_, the _Deux Merles Blancs_, the _Doit-On le Dire_, and their +compeers--with them it is other-guess work altogether. In these +whimsical phantasmagorias men and women move and speak as at the bidding +of destinies drunk with laughing-gas. Time and chance have gone +demented, fate has turned comic poet, society has become its own parody, +everybody is the irrepressible caricature of himself. You are in a topsy- +turvy world, enveloped in an atmosphere instinct with gaiety and folly, +where burlesque is natural and only the extravagant is normal; where your +Chimaera has grown frolic, your Nightmare is first Cousin to the Cheshire +Cat, and your Sphinxes are all upon the spree; and where you have as +little concern for what is real as you have in that hemisphere of the +great globe of Moliere--that has Scapin and Sganarelle for its +breed-bates, and Pourceaugnac for its butt, and Pancrace and Marphurius +for its scientific men, and Lelie and Agnes for its incarnations of love +and beauty. That the creator of such a world as this should have aspired +to the Academy's spare arm-chair--that one above all others but just +vacated by the respectable M. de Sacy--was a fact that roused the _Revue +des Deux Mondes_ even to satire. But if the arm-chair brought honour +with it, then no man better deserved the privilege than Eugene Labiche, +for he had amused and kept awake the public for nearly forty years--for +almost as long, that is, as the _Revue_ had been sending it to sleep. +There are times and seasons when a good laugh makes more for edification +than whole folios of good counsel. 'I regarded him not,' quoth Sir John +of one that would have moved him to sapience, 'and yet he talked wisely.' +Now Sir John, whatever his opinion of the _Revue_, would never have said +all that--the second part of it he might--of anything signed 'Eugene +Labiche,' nor--so I love to believe--would his august creator either. For +is not his work so full of quick, fiery, and delectable shapes as to be +perpetual sherris? And when time and season fit, what more can the heart +of man desire? + + + + +CHAMPFLEURY + + +The Man. + + +Champfleury--novelist, dramatist, archaeologist, humourist, and literary +historian--belonged to a later generation than that of Petrus Borel and +Philothee O'Neddy; but he could remember the production of _les +Burgraves_, and was able of his own personal knowledge to laugh at the +melancholy speech of poor Celestin Nanteuil--the famous 'Il n'y a plus de +jeunesse' of a man grown old and incredulous and apathetic before his +time: the lament over a yesterday already a hundred years behind. He had +lived in the Latin quarter; he had dined with Flicoteaux, and listened to +the orchestras of Habeneck and Musard; he had heard the chimes at +midnight with Baudelaire and Murger, hissed the tragedies of Ponsard, +applauded Deburau and Rouviere, and seen the rise and fall of Courbet and +Dupont. If he was not of the giants he was of their immediate +successors, and he had seen them actually at work. He had hacked for +Balzac, and read romantic prose at Victor Hugo's; he had lived so near +the red waistcoat of Theophile Gautier as to dare to go up and down in +Paris (under the inspiration of the artist of _la Femme qui taille la +Soupe_) in 'un habit en bouracan vert avec col a la Marat, un gilet de +couleur bachique, et une culotte en drap d'un jaune assez malseant,' +together with 'une triomphante cravate de soie jaune'--a vice of +Baudelaire's inventing--and 'un feutre ras dans le gout de la coiffure de +Camille Desmoulins.' And having seen for himself, he could judge for +himself as well. From first to last he showed himself to be out of +sympathy with the ambitions and effects of romanticism. He was born a +humourist and an observer, and he became a 'realist' as soon as he began +to write. + + + +The Writer. + + +His work is an antipodes not only of _Hernani_ and _Notre-Dame_ but of +_Sarrazine_ and _la Cousine Bette_ and _Beatrix_ as well. For the +commonplace types and incidents, the everyday passions and fortunes, of +the _Aventures de Mariette_ and the _Mascarade de la Vie Parisienne_ +represent a reaction not alone against the sublimities and the +extravagance of Hugo but against the heroic aggrandisement of things +trivial of Balzac as well. True, they deal with kindred subjects, and +they purport to be a record of life as it is and not of life as it ought +to be. But the pupil's point of view is poles apart from the master's; +his intention, his ambition, his inspiration, belong to another order of +ideas. He contents himself with observing and noting and reflecting; +with making prose prosaic and adding sobriety and plainness to a plain +and sober story; with being merely curious and intelligent; with using +experience not as an intoxicant but as a staple of diet; with considering +fact not as the raw material of inspiration but as inspiration itself. +Between an artist of this sort--pedestrian, good-tempered, touched with +malice, a little cynical--and the noble desperadoes of 1830 there could +be little sympathy; and there seems no reason why the one should be the +others' historian, and none why, if their historian he should be, his +history should be other than partial and narrow--than at best an +achievement in special pleading. But Champfleury's was a personality +apart. His master quality was curiosity; he was interested in +everything, and he was above all things interested in men and women; he +had a liberal mind and no prejudices; he had the scientific spirit and +the scientific intelligence, if he sometimes spoke with the voice of the +humourist and in the terms of the artist in words; and his studies in +romanticism are far better literature than his experiments in fiction. + + + + +LONGFELLOW + + +Sea Poets. + + +The ocean as confidant, a Laertes that can neither avoid his Hamlets nor +bid them hold their peace, is a modern invention. Byron and Shelley +discovered it; Heine took it into his confidence, and told it the story +of his loves; Wordsworth made it a moral influence; Browning loved it in +his way, but his way was not often the poet's; to Matthew Arnold it was +the voice of destiny, and its message was a message of despair; Hugo +conferred with it as with an humble friend, and uttered such lofty things +over it as are rarely heard upon the lips of man. And so with living +lyrists each after his kind. Lord Tennyson listens and looks until it +strikes him out an undying note of passion, or yearning, or regret-- + + 'Sunset and evening star, + And one clear call for me'; + +Mr. Swinburne maddens with the wind and the sounds and the scents of it, +until there passes into his verse a something of its vastness and its +vehemency, the rapture of its inspiration, the palpitating, +many-twinkling miracle of its light; Mr. William Morris has been taken +with the manner of its melancholy; while to Whitman it has been 'the +great Camerado' indeed, for it gave him that song of the brown bird +bereft of his mate in whose absence the half of him had not been told to +us. + + + +Longfellow. + + +But to Longfellow alone was it given to see that stately galley which +Count Arnaldos saw; his only to hear the steersman singing that wild and +wondrous song which none that hears it can resist, and none that has +heard it may forget. Then did he learn the old monster's secret--the +word of his charm, the core of his mystery, the human note in his music, +the quality of his influence upon the heart and the mind of man; and then +did he win himself a place apart among sea poets. With the most of them +it is a case of _Ego et rex meus_: It is I and the sea, and my egoism is +as valiant and as vocal as the other's. But Longfellow is the spokesman +of a confraternity; what thrills him to utterance is the spirit of that +strange and beautiful freemasonry established as long ago as when the +first sailor steered the first keel out into the unknown, irresistible +water-world, and so established the foundations of the eternal +brotherhood of man with ocean. To him the sea is a place of mariners and +ships. In his verse the rigging creaks, the white sail fills and +crackles, there are blown smells of pine and hemp and tar; you catch the +home wind on your cheeks; and old shipmen, their eyeballs white in their +bronzed faces, with silver rings and gaudy handkerchiefs, come in and +tell you moving stories of the immemorial, incommunicable deep. He +abides in a port; he goes down to the docks, and loiters among the +galiots and brigantines, he hears the melancholy song of the chanty-men; +he sees the chips flying under the shipwright's adze; he smells the pitch +that smokes and bubbles in the caldron. And straightway he falls to +singing his variations on the ballad of Count Arnaldos; and the world +listens, for its heart beats in his song. + + + + +TENNYSON + + +St. Agnes' Eve. + + +In Keats's _St. Agnes' Eve_ nothing is white but the heroine. It is +winter, and 'bitter chill'; the hare 'limps trembling through the frozen +grass; the owl is a-cold for all his feathers; the beadsman's fingers are +numb, his breath is frosted; and at an instant of special and peculiar +romance + + 'The frost-wind blows + Like Love's alarum, pattering the sharp sleet + Against the window-panes.' + +But there is no snow. The picture is pure colour: it blushes with blood +of queens and kings; it glows with 'splendid dyes,' like the +'tiger-moth's deep-damasked wings'--with 'rose bloom,' and warm gules,' +and 'soft amethyst'; it is loud with music and luxurious with 'spiced +dainties,' with lucent syrops tinct with cinnamon,' with 'manna and +dates,' the fruitage of Fez and 'cedared Lebanon' and 'silken Samarcand.' +Now, the Laureate's _St. Agnes' Eve_ is an ecstasy of colourless +perfection. The snows sparkle on the convent roof; the 'first snowdrop' +vies with St. Agnes' virgin bosom; the moon shines an 'argent round' in +the 'frosty skies'; and in a transport of purity the lady prays: + + 'Break up thy heavens, O Lord! and far, + Through all the starlight keen, + Draw me thy bride, a glittering star, + In raiment white and clean.' + +It is all coldly, miraculously stainless: as somebody has said, 'la vraie +_Symphonie en Blanc Majeur_.' + + + +Indian Summer. + + +And at four-score the poet of _St. Agnes' Eve_ is still our greatest +since the Wordsworth of certain sonnets and the two immortal odes: is +still the one Englishman of whom it can be stated and believed that +Elisha is not less than Elijah. His verse is far less smooth and less +lustrous than in the well-filed times of _In Memoriam_ and the Arthurian +idylls. But it is also far more plangent and affecting; it shows a +larger and more liberal mastery of form and therewith a finer, stronger, +saner sentiment of material; in its display of breadth and freedom in +union with particularity, of suggestiveness with precision, of swiftness +of handling with completeness of effect, it reminds you of the later +magic of Rembrandt and the looser and richer, the less artful-seeming but +more ample and sumptuous, of the styles of Shakespeare. And the matter +is worthy of the manner. Everywhere are greatness and a high imagination +moving at ease in the gold armour of an heroic style. There are passages +in _Demeter and Persephone_ that will vie with the best in _Lucretius_; +_Miriam_ is worth a wilderness of _Aylmer's Fields_; _Owd Roa_ is one of +the best of the studies in dialect; in _Happy_ there are stanzas that +recall the passion of _Rizpah_; nothing in modern English so thrills and +vibrates with the prophetic inspiration, the fury of the seer, as +_Vastness_; the verses _To Mary Boyle_--(in the same stanza as Musset's +_le Mie Prigioni_)--are marked by such a natural grace of form and such a +winning 'affectionateness,' to coin a word, of intention and +accomplishment as Lord Tennyson has never surpassed nor very often +equalled. In _Vastness_ the insight into essentials, the command of +primordial matter, the capacity of vital suggestion, are gloriously in +evidence from the first line to the last. Here is no touch of ingenuity, +no trace of 'originality,' no single sign of cleverness; the rhymes are +merely inevitable--there is no visible transformation of metaphor in +deference to their suggestions; nothing is antic, peculiar, superfluous; +but here in epic unity and completeness, here is a sublimation of +experience expressed by means of a sublimation of style. It is unique in +English, and for all that one can see it is like to remain unique this +good while yet. The impression you take is one of singular loftiness of +purpose and a rare nobility of mind. Looking upon life and time and the +spirit of man from the heights of his eighty years, it has been given to +the Master Poet to behold much that is hid to them in the plain or on the +slopes beneath him, and beholding it to frame and utter a message so +lofty in style and in significance so potent that it sounds as of this +world indeed but from the confines of experience, the farthest kingdoms +of mortality. + + + +His Mastership. + + +It is to note, too, that the Laureate of to-day deals with language in a +way that to the Tennyson of the beginning was--unhappily--impossible. In +those early years he neither would nor could have been responsible for +the magnificent and convincing rhythms of _Vastness_, the austere yet +passionate shapeliness of _Happy_, the effects of vigour and variety +realised in _Parnassus_. For in those early years he was rather +Benvenuto than Michelangelo, he was more of a jeweller than a sculptor, +the phrase was too much to him, the inspiration of the incorrect too +little. All that is changed, and for the best. Most interesting is it +to the artist to remark how impatient--(as the Milton of the _Agonistes_ +was)--of rhyme and how confident in rhythm is the whilome poet of +_Oriana_ and _The Lotus-Eaters_ and _The Vision of Sin_; and how this +impatience and this confidence are revealed not merely in a piece of +mysticism naked yet unashamed as _The Gleam_--(whose movement with its +constancy in double endings and avoidance of triplets is perhaps a little +tame)--but also in what should have been a popular piece: the ode, to +wit, _On the Jubilee of Queen Victoria_. In eld, indeed, the craftsman +inclines to play with his material: he is conscious of mastery; he is in +the full enjoyment of his own; he indulges in experiments which to him +are as a crown of glory and to them that come after him--to the noodles +that would walk in his ways without first preparing themselves by prayer +and study and a life of abnegation--are only the devil in disguise. The +Rembrandt of _The Syndics_, the Shakespeare of _The Tempest_ and +_Lear_--what are these but pits for the feet of the Young Ass? and what +else will be the Tennyson of _Vastness_ and _The Gleam_? 'Lord,' quoth +Dickens years ago in respect of the _Idylls_ or of _Maud_, 'what a +pleasure it is to come across a man that can _write_!' He also was an +artist in words; and what he said then he would say now with greater +emphasis and more assurance. From the first Lord Tennyson has been an +exemplar; and now in these new utterances, his supremacy is completely +revealed. There is no fear now that 'All will grow the flower, For all +have got the seed'; for then it was a mannerism that people took and +imitated, and now--! Now it is art; it is the greater Shakespeare, the +consummate Rembrandt, the unique Velasquez; and they may rise to it that +can. + + + + +GORDON HAKE + + +Aim and Equipment. + + +Dr. Hake is one of the most earnest and original of poets. He has taken +nothing from his contemporaries, but has imagined a message for himself, +and has chosen to deliver it in terms that are wholly his own. For him +the accidents and trivialities of individualism, the transitory and +changing facts that make up the external aspect of an age or a character, +can hardly be said to exist. He only concerns himself with absolutes--the +eternal elements of human life and the immutable tides of human destiny. +It is of these that the stuff of his message is compacted; it is from +these that its essence is distilled. His talk is not of Arthur and +Guinevere, nor Chastelard and Atalanta, nor Paracelsus and Luria and Abt +Vogler; of 'the drawing-room and the deanery' he has nothing to say; +nothing of the tendencies of Strauss and Renan, nothing of the New +Renaissance, nothing of Botticelli, nor the ballet, nor the text of +Shakespeare, nor the joys of the book-hunter, nor the quaintness of Queen +Anne, nor the morals of Helen of Troy. To these he prefers the mystery +of death, the significance of life, the quality of human and divine love; +the hopes and fears and the joys and sorrows that are the perdurable +stuff of existence, the inexhaustible and unchanging principles of +activity in man. Now it is only to the few that reduced to their +simplest expression the 'eternal verities' are engaging and impressive. +To touch the many they must be conveyed in human terms; they must be +presented not as impersonal abstractions, not as matter for the higher +intelligence and the higher emotions, but as living, breathing, +individual facts, vivid with the circumstance of terrene life, quick with +the thoughts and ambitions of the hour, full charged with familiar and +neighbourly associations. All this with Dr. Hake is by no means +inevitable. He loves to symbolise; he does not always care that the +symbol shall be appropriate and plain. He prefers to work in allegory +and emblem; but he does not always see that, however representative to +himself, his emblems and his allegories may not be altogether +representative to the world. His imagination is at once quaint and far- +reaching--at once peculiar and ambitious; and it is often guilty of what +is recondite and remote. In his best work--in _Old Souls_, for instance, +and _Old Morality_--the quaintness is merely decorative: the essentials +are sound and human enough to be of lasting interest and to have a +capacity of common application. Elsewhere his imagery is apt to become +strange and unaffecting, his fancy to work in curious and desolate ways, +his message to sound abstruse and strange; and these effects too are +deepened by the qualities and the merits of his style. It is peculiarly +his own, but it is not always felicitous. There are times when it has +the true epic touch--or at least as much of it as is possible in an age +of detail and elaboration; there are times when it has a touch of the +pathetic--when in homeliness of phrase and triviality of rhythm it is +hardly to be surpassed; and there are times, as in _The Snake Charmer_ +when, as in certain pages in the work of Richard Wagner, it is so +studiously laboured and so heavily charged with ornament and colour as to +be almost pedantic in infelicity, almost repellent by sheer force of +superfluous and elaborate suggestiveness. Last of all, in an epoch +trained upon the passionate and subtle cadences of the Laureate and the +large-moulded, ample, irresistible melodies of Mr. Swinburne, Dr. Hake +chooses to deal in rhythms of the utmost naivete and in metrical forms +that are simplicity itself. + + + + +LANDOR + + +Anti-Landor. + + +To the many, Landor has always been more or less unapproachable, and has +always seemed more or less shadowy and unreal. To begin with, he wrote +for himself and a few others, and principally for himself. Then, he +wrote waywardly and unequally as well as selfishly; he published pretty +much at random; the bulk of his work is large; and the majority has +passed him by for writers more accessible and work less freakish and more +comprehensible. It is probable too that even among those who, inspired +by natural temerity or the intemperate curiosity of the general reader, +have essayed his conquest and set out upon what has been described as +'the Adventure of the Seven Volumes which are Seven Valleys of Dry +Bones,' but few have returned victorious. Of course the Seven Volumes +are a world. But (it is objected) the world is peculiar in pattern, +abounding in antres vast and desarts idle, in gaps and precipices and +'manifest solutions of continuity,' and enveloped in an atmosphere which +ordinary lungs find now too rare and now too dense and too anodyne. +Moreover, it is peopled chiefly with abstractions: bearing noble and +suggestive names but all surprisingly alike in stature and feature, all +more or less incapable of sustained emotion and even of logical argument, +all inordinately addicted to superb generalities and a kind of monumental +skittishness, all expressing themselves in a style whose principal +characteristic is a magnificent monotony, and all apparently the outcome +of a theory that to be wayward is to be creative, that human interest is +a matter of apophthegms and oracular sentences, and that axiomatic and +dramatic are identical qualities and convertible terms. This is the +opinion of those adventurers in whom defeat has generated a sense of +injury and an instinct of antagonism. Others less fortunate still have +found Landor a continent of dulness and futility--have come to consider +the Seven Volumes as so many aggregations of tedium. Such experiences +are one-sided and partial no doubt; and considered from a certain point +of view they seem worthless enough. But they exist, and they are in some +sort justified. Landor, when all is said, remains a writers' writer; and +for my part I find it impossible not to feel a certain sympathy with them +that hesitate to accept him for anything else. + + + +His Drama. + + +Again, to some of us Lander's imagination is not only inferior in kind +but poverty-stricken in degree; his creative faculty is limited by the +reflection that its one achievement is Landor; his claim to consideration +as a dramatic writer is negatived by the fact that, poignant as are the +situations with which he loved to deal, he was apparently incapable of +perceiving their capacities: inasmuch as he has failed completely and +logically to develop a single one of them; inasmuch, too, as he has never +once succeeded in conceiving, much less in picturing, such a train of +conflicting emotions as any one of the complications from which he starts +might be supposed to generate. To many there is nothing Greek about his +dramatic work except the absence of stage directions; and to these that +quality of 'Landorian abruptness' which seems to Mr. Sidney Colvin to +excuse so many of its shortcomings is identical with a certain sort of +what in men of lesser mould is called stupidity. + + + + +HOOD + + +How Much of Him? + + +Hood wrote much for bread, and he wrote much under pressure of all manner +of difficulties--want of health and want of money, the hardship of exile +and the bitterness of comparative failure; and not a little of what he +produced is the merest journalism, here to-day and gone to-morrow. At +his highest he is very high, but it was not given to him to enjoy the +conditions under which great work is produced: he had neither peace of +body nor health of mind, his life from first to last was a struggle with +sickness and misfortune. How is it possible to maintain an interest in +all he wrote, when two-thirds of it was produced with duns at the door +and a nurse in the other room and the printer's-devil waiting in the +hall? Of his admirable courage, his fine temper, his unfailing goodness +of heart, his incorruptible honesty, it were hard to speak too highly; +for one has but to read the story of his life to wonder that he should +have written anything at all. At his happiest he had the gift of +laughter; at his deepest and truest the more precious gift of tears. But +for him there were innumerable hours when the best he could affect was +the hireling's motley; when his fun and his pathos alike ran strained and +thin; when the unique poet and wit became a mere comic rhymester. Is it +just to his memory that it should be burdened with such a mass of what is +already antiquated? But one answer is possible. The immortal part of +Hood might be expressed into a single tiny volume. + + + +Death's Jest-Book. + + +Thackeray preferred Hood's passion to his fun; and Thackeray knew. Hood +had an abundance of a certain sort of wit, the wit of odd analogies, of +remote yet familiar resemblances, of quaint conceits and humourous and +unexpected quirks. He made not epigrams but jokes, sometimes purely +intellectual but nearly always with the verbal quality as well. The +wonderful jingle called _Miss Kilmansegg_--hard and cold and glittering +as the gold that gleams in it--abounds in capital types of both. But for +an example of both here is a stanza taken at random from the _Ode to the +Great Unknown_:-- + + 'Thou _Scottish Barmecide_, feeding the hunger + Of curiosity with airy gammon; + Thou mystery-monger, + _Dealing it out like middle cut of salmon_ + _That people buy and can't make head or tail of it_,' + +and so forth, and so forth: the first a specimen of oddness of +analogy--the joke intellectual; the second a jest in which the +intellectual quality is complicated with the verbal. Of rarer merit are +that conceit of the door which was shut with such a slam 'it sounded like +a wooden d---n,' and that mad description of the demented mariner,-- + + 'His head was _turned_, and so he _chewed_ + _His pigtail_ till he died,'-- + +which is a pun as unexpected and imaginative as any that exists, not +excepting even Lamb's renowned achievement, the immortal 'I say, Porter, +is that your own Hare or a Wig?' But as a punster Hood is merely +unsurpassable. The simplest and the most complex, the wildest and the +most obvious, the straightest and the most perverse, all puns came alike +to him. The form was his natural method of expression. His prose +extravaganzas--even to the delightful _Friend in Need_--are pretty well +forgotten; his one novel is very hard to read; there is far less in _Up +the Rhine_ than in _Humphry Clinker_ after all; we have been spoiled for +_Lycus the Centaur_ and _The Plea of the Midsummer Fairies_ by the rich +and passionate verse of the Laureate, the distinction, and the measure of +Arnold, the sumptuous diction and the varied and enchanting music of +_Atalanta_ and _Hesperia_ and _Erechtheus_. We care little for the old- +fashioned whimsicality of the _Odes_, and little for such an inimitable +farrago of vulgarisms, such a _reductio ad absurdum_ of sentiment and +style, as _The Lost Child_. But the best of Hood's puns are amusing +after forty years. They are the classics of verbal extravagance, and +they are a thousand times better known than _The Last Man_, though that +is a work of genius, and almost as popular as the _Song of the Shirt_, +the _Bridge of Sighs_, the _Dream of Eugene Aram_ themselves. By an odd +chance, too, the rhymes in which they are set have all a tragic theme. +'Tout ce qui touche a la mort,' says Champfleury, 'est d'une gaiete +folle.' Hood found out that much for himself before Champfleury had +begun to write. His most riotous ballads are ballads of death and the +grave. Tim Turpin does murder and is hanged + + 'On Horsham drop, and none can say + He took a drop too much'; + +Ben Battle entwines a rope about his melancholy neck, and for the second +time in life _enlists him in the line_; Young Ben expires of grief for +the falsehood of Sally Brown: Lieutenant Luff drinks himself into his +grave; John Day the amorous coachman, + + 'With back too broad to be conceived + By any narrow mind,' + +pines to nothingness, and is found heels uppermost in his cruel +mistress's water-butt. To Hood, with his grim imagination and his +strange fantastic humour, death was meat and drink. It is as though he +saw so much of the 'execrable Shape' that at last the pair grew friends, +and grinned whenever they foregathered even in thought. + + + +His Immortal Part. + + +Was Thackeray right, then, in resenting the waste of Hood's genius upon +mere comicalities? I think he was; but only to a certain point. Hood +was a true poet: but it was not until after years of proof and endeavour +that he discovered the use to which his powers could best be put and the +material on which they could best be employed. He worked hard and with +but partial success at poetry all his life long. He passed his life in +punning and making comic assaults on the Queen's English; but he was +author all the while of _The Plea of the Midsummer Fairies_, the _Ode to +Melancholy_, _Hero and Leander_, _Lycus the Centaur_, and a score and +more of lovable and moving ballads; and he had won himself a name with +two such capital examples of melodrama as _The Last Man_ (1826) and _The +Dream of Eugene Aram_ (1829). But as a poet he profited little. The +public preferred him as a buffoon; and not until his last years (and then +anonymously) was he able to utter his highest word. All was made ready +against his coming--the age, the subject, the public mind, the public +capacity of emotion; and in _The Song of the Shirt_ he approved himself a +great singer. In the days of _Lycus the Centaur_ and the _Midsummer +Fairies_ he could no more have written it than the public could have +heeded had he written. But times were changed--Dickens had come, and the +humanitarian epoch--and the great song went like fire. So, a year or two +after, did _The Bridge of Sighs_. That, says Thackeray, 'was his +Corunna, his Heights of Abraham--sickly, weak, wounded, he fell in the +full blaze and fame of that great victory.' Could he have repeated it +had he lived? Who knows? In both these irresistible appeals to the +heart of man the material is of equal value and importance with the form; +and in poetry such material is rare. A brace of such songs is possible +to a poet; ten couples are not. It is Hood's immortality that he sang +these two. Almost in the uttering they went the round of the world; and +it is not too much to say of them that they will only pass with the +language. + + + + +LEVER + + +How He Lived. + + +The story of Lever's life and adventures only wants telling to be as +irresistibly attractive as Lorrequer's or O'Malley's own. Born in +Dublin, of an English father and an Irish mother, he lived to be +essentially cosmopolitan and a _viveur_ of the first magnitude. At eight +he was master of his schoolmaster--a gentleman given to flogging but not +learned in Greek, and therefore a proper subject for a certain sort of +blackmailing. He was not an industrious boy; but he was apt and ready +with his tongue, he was an expert in fencing and the dance, he was good +at improvising and telling stories, it is on record that he pleaded and +won the cause of himself and certain of his schoolmates accused before a +magistrate of riot and outrage. At college he found work for his high +spirits in wild fun and the perpetration of practical jokes. He and his +chum Ottiwell, the original of Frank Webber, behaved to their governors, +teachers, and companions very much as Charles O'Malley and the +redoubtable Frank behave to theirs. Lever was excellent at a +street-ballad, and made and sang them in the rags of Rhoudlim, just as +Frank Webber does; and he personated Cusack the surgeon to Cusack's +class, just as Frank Webber personates the dean to _his_ class. On the +whole, indeed, he must have been as gamesome and volatile a nuisance as +even Dublin has endured. On leaving college he took charge of an +emigrant ship bound for Quebec. Arrived in Canada, he plunged into the +backwoods, was affiliated to a tribe of Indians, and had to escape like +Bagenal Daly at the risk of his life. Then he went to Germany, became a +student at Gottingen under Blumenbach, was heart and soul a Bursch, and +had the honour of seeing Goethe at Weimar. His diploma gained, he went +to Clare to do battle with the cholera and gather materials for _Harry +Lorrequer_. After this he was for some time dispensary doctor at +Portstewart, where he met Prebendary Maxwell, the wild parson who wrote +_Captain Blake_: so that here and now it is natural to find him leaping +turf-carts and running away from his creditors. At Brussels, where he +physicked the British Embassy and the British tourist, he knew all sorts +of people--among them Commissioner Meade, the original of Major Monsoon, +and Cardinal Pecci, the original of Leo XIII.--and saw all sorts of life, +and ran into all sorts of extravagance: until of a sudden, he is back +again in the capital, editing the _Dublin University Magazine_. Of +course he was the maddest editor ever seen. For him cards, horses, and +high living were not luxuries but necessaries of life; yet all the while +he believed devoutly in medicine, and with his family indulged with +freedom in the use of calomel and such agents. Presently he abandoned +Ireland for the Continent. He took his horses with him, and astonished +Europe with a four-in-hand of his own. Carlsruhe knew him well, as +Belgium and the Rhine had known him. He only left the Reider Schloss at +Bregenz to conquer Italy; and at Florence, Spezzia, and finally Trieste, +he shone like himself. + + + +What He Was. + + +He was a born _poseur_. His vanity made him one of the worst--the most +excessive--of talkers; go where he would and do what he might, he was +unhappy if the first place were another's. In all he did he was greedy +to excel, and to excel incontestably. Like his own Bagenal Daly he would +have taken the big jump with the reins in his mouth and his hands tied, +'just to show the English Lord-Lieutenant how an Irish gentleman rides.' +He was all his life long confounding an English Lord-Lieutenant of some +sort; for without display he would have pined away and died. At +Templeogue he lived at the rate of 3,000 pounds a year on an income of +1,200 pounds; at Brussels he kept open house on little or nothing for all +the wandering grandees of Europe; at Florence they used to liken the +cavalcade from his house to a procession from Franconi's; he found living +in a castle and spending 10 pounds a day on his horses the finest fun in +the world. He existed but to bewilder and dazzle, and had he not been a +brilliant and distinguished novelist he would have been a brilliant and +distinguished something else. As he kept open house everywhere, as he +was fond of every sort of luxury, as he loved not less to lend money to +his intimates than to lose it to them at cards, and as he got but poor +prices for his novels and was not well paid for his consular services, it +is not easy to see how he managed to make ends meet. + + + +How He Wrote. + + +Nor is it easy to see how he contrived to produce his novels. He was too +passionately addicted to society and the enjoyment of life to spare an +instant from them if he could help it; and the wonder is not that he +should have written so well but that he should have written at all. +Fortunately or the other thing, his books cost him no effort. He wrote +or dictated at a gallop and, his copy once produced, had finished his +work. He abhorred revision, and while keenly sensitive to blame and +greedy of praise he ceased to care for his books as soon as they had left +his desk. That he was not in scarce any sense an artist is but too +clear. He never worked on a definite plan nor was at any pains to +contrive a plot; he depended on the morning's impressions for the +evening's task, and wrote _Con Cregan_ under the immediate influence of a +travelled Austrian, who used to talk to him every night ere he sat down +to his story. But he was a wonderful improvisatore. He had +imagination--(even romantic imagination: as the episode of Menelaus Crick +in _Con Cregan_ will show)--a keen, sure eye for character, incomparable +facility in composition, an inexhaustible fund of shrewdness, +whimsicality, high spirits, an admirable knack of dialogue; and as consul +at Spezzia and at Trieste, as a fashionable practitioner at Brussels, as +dispensary doctor on the wild Ulster coast, he was excellently placed for +the kind of literature it was in him to produce. Writing at random and +always under the spur of necessity, he managed to inform his work with +extraordinary vitality and charm. His books were only made to sell, but +it is like enough that they will also live, for they are yet well nigh as +readable as at first, and Nina and Kate O'Donoghue--(for instance)--seem +destined to go down to posterity as typical and representative. Had +their author taken art seriously, and devoted all his energy to its +practice, he could scarce have done more than this. Perhaps, indeed, he +would not have done so much. It could never have been Lorrequer's to +'build the lofty rhyme.' It was an honest as well as a brilliant +creature; and I believe we should all have suffered if some avenging +chance had borne it in upon him that to be really lofty your rhyme must +of necessity be not blown upwards like a bubble but built in air like a +cathedral. He would, I take it, have experimentalised in repentance to +the extent of elaborating his creations and chastising his style; and, it +may be, he would have contrived but to beggar his work of interest and +correct himself of charm. A respectable ambition, no doubt; but how much +better to be the rough-and-ready artist of Darby the Beast and Micky +Free, the humane and charming rattlepate to whom we owe Paul Goslett and +the excellent and pleasing Potts! + + + + +JEFFERIES + + +His Virtue. + + +I love to think of Jefferies as a kind of literary Leatherstocking. His +style, his mental qualities, the field he worked in, the chase he +followed, were peculiar to himself, and as he was without a rival, so was +he without a second. Reduced to its simplest expression, his was a mind +compact of observation and of memory. He writes as one who watches +always, who sees everything, who forgets nothing. As his lot was cast in +country places, among wood and pasturage and corn, by coverts teeming +with game and quick with insect life, and as withal he had the hunter's +patience and quick-sightedness, his faculty of looking and listening and +of noting and remembering, his readiness of deduction and insistence of +pursuit--there entered gradually into his mind a greater quantity of +natural England, her leaves and flowers, her winds and skies, her wild +things and tame, her beauties and humours and discomforts, than was ever, +perhaps, the possession of writing Briton. This property he conveyed to +his countrymen in a series of books of singular freshness and interest. +The style is too formal and sober, the English seldom other than homely +and sufficient; there is overmuch of the reporter and nothing like enough +of the artist, the note of imagination, the right creative faculty. But +they are remarkable books. It is not safe to try and be beforehand with +posterity, but in the case of such works as the _Gamekeeper_ and _Wild +Life_ and with such a precedent as that established by the _Natural +History of Selborne_ such anticipation seems more tempting and less +hazardous than usual. One has only to think of some mediaeval Jefferies +attached to the staff of Robin Hood, and writing about Needwood and +Charnwood as his descendant wrote about the South Downs, to imagine an +historical document of priceless value and inexhaustible interest. And +in years to be, when the whole island is one vast congeries of streets, +and the fox has gone down to the bustard and the dodo, and outside +museums of comparative anatomy the weasel is not and the badger has +ceased from the face of the earth, it is not doubtful that the +_Gamekeeper_ and _Wild Life_ and the _Poacher_--epitomising, as they +will, the rural England of certain centuries before--will be serving as +material and authority for historical descriptions, historical novels, +historical epics, historical pictures, and will be honoured as the most +useful stuff of their kind in being. + + + +His Limitation. + + +In those first books of his Jefferies compels attention by sheer +freshness of matter; he is brimful of new facts and original and +pertinent observation, and that every one is vaguely familiar with and +interested in the objects he is handling and explaining serves but to +heighten his attractiveness. There are so many who but know of hares +disguised as soup, of ants as a people on whose houses it is not good to +sit down, of partridges as a motive of bread sauce! And Jefferies, +retailing in plain, useful English the thousand and one curious facts +that make up life for these creatures and their kind--Jefferies walking +the wood, or tracking the brook, or mapping out the big tree--is some one +to be heeded with gratitude. He is the Scandalous Chronicler of the +warren and the rookery, the newsmonger and intelligencer of creeping +things, and things that fly, and things that run; and his confidences, +unique in quality and type, have the novelty and force of personal +revelations. In dealing with men and women, he surrendered most of his +advantage and lost the best part of his charm. The theme is old, the +matter well worn, the subject common to us all; and most of us care +nothing for a few facts more or less unless they be romantically +conveyed. Reality is but the beginning, the raw material, of art; and it +is by the artist's aid and countenance that we are used to make +acquaintance with our fellows, be they generals in cocked hats or +mechanics in fustian. Now Jefferies was not an artist, and so beside his +stoats and hares, his pike, his rabbits, and his moles, his men and women +are of little moment. You seem to have heard of them and to far better +purpose from others; you have had their author's facts presented +elsewhere, and that in picturesque conjunction with the great eternal +interests of passion and emotion. To be aware of such a difference is to +resent it; and accordingly to read is to know that Jefferies would have +done well to leave Hodge and Hodge's masters alone and keep to his beasts +and birds and fishes. + + + +The General. + + +Is it not plain as the nose on your face that his admirers admire him +injudiciously? It is true, for instance, that he is in a sense, 'too +full' (the phrase is Mr. Besant's) for the generality of readers. But it +is also true that he is not nearly full enough: that they look for +conclusions while he is bent upon giving them only details: that they +clamour for a breath of inspiration while he is bent upon emptying his +note-book in decent English; that they persist in demanding a motive, a +leading idea, a justification, while he with knowledge crammed is fixed +in his resolve to tell them no more than that there are milestones on the +Dover Road, or that there are so many nails of so many shapes and so many +colours in the pig-sty at the back of Coate Farm. They prefer 'their +geraniums in the conservatory.' They refuse, in any case, to call a +'picture' that which is only a long-drawn sequence of statements. They +are naturally inartistic, but they have the tradition of a long and +speaking series of artistic results, and instinctively they decline to +recognise as art the work of one who was plainly the reverse of an +artist. The artist is he who knows how to select and to inspire the +results of his selection. Jefferies could do neither. He was a reporter +of genius; and he never got beyond reporting. To the average reader he +is wanting in the great essentials of excitement: he is prodigal of +facts, and he contrives to set none down so as to make one believe in it +for longer than the instant of perusal. From his work the passionate +human quality is not less absent than the capacity of selection and the +gift of inspiration, and all the enthusiasm of all the enthusiasts of an +enthusiastic age will not make him and his work acceptable to the +aforesaid average reader. In letters he is as the ideal British water- +colourist in paint: the care of both is not art but facts, and again +facts, and facts ever. You consider their work; you cannot see the wood +for the trees; and you are fain to conclude that themselves were so much +interested in the trees they did not even know the wood was there. + + + +Last Words. + + +To come to an end with the man:--his range was very limited, and within +that range his activity was excessive; yet the consequences of his +enormous effort were--and are--a trifle disappointing. He thought, poor +fellow! that he had the world in his hand and the public at his feet; +whereas, the truth to tell, he had only the empire of a kind of back +garden and the lordship of (as Mr. Besant has told us) some forty +thousand out of a hundred millions of readers. You know that he suffered +greatly; you know too that to the last he worked and battled on as became +an honest, much-enduring, self-admiring man: as you know that in death he +snatched a kind of victory, and departed this life with dignity as one +'good at many things,' who had at last 'attained to be at rest.' You +know, in a word, that he took his part in the general struggle for +existence, and manfully did his best; and it is with something like a +pang that you find his biographer insisting on the merits of the feat, +and quoting approvingly the sentimentalists who gathered about his death- +bed. To make eloquence about heroism is not the way to breed heroes; and +it may be that Jefferies, had his last environment been less fluent and +sonorous, would now seem something more heroic than he does. + + + + +GAY + + +The Fabulist. + + +Gay the fabulist is only interesting in a certain sense and to a small +extent. The morality of the _Fables_ is commonplace; their workmanship +is only facile and agreeable; as literature--as achievements in a certain +order of art--they have a poor enough kind of existence. In comparison +to the work of La Fontaine they are the merest journalism. The +simplicity, the wit, the wisdom, the humanity, the dramatic imagination, +the capacity of dramatic expression, the exquisite union of sense and +manner, the faultless balance of matter and style, are qualities for +which in the Englishman you look in vain. You read, and you read not +only without enthusiasm but without interest. The verse is merely brisk +and fluent; the invention is common; the wit is not very witty; the +humour is artificial; the wisdom, the morality, the knowledge of life, +the science of character--if they exist at all it is but as anatomical +preparations or plants in a _hortus siccus_. Worse than anything, the +_Fables_ are monotonous. The manner is consistently uniform; the +invention has the level sameness of a Lincolnshire landscape; the +narrative moves with the equal pace of boats on a Dutch canal. The +effect is that of a host of flower-pots, the columns in a ledger, a +tragedy by the Rev. Mr. Home; and it is heightened by the matchless +triteness of the fabulist's reflections and the uncommon tameness of his +drama. It is hard to believe that this is indeed the Gay of _Polly_ and +_The Beggars' Opera_. True, the dialects of his Peachum and his Lockit +are in some sort one; his gentlemen of the road and his ladies of the +kennel rejoice in a common flippancy of expression; there is little to +choose between the speech of Polly and the speech of Lucy. But in +respect of the essentials of drama the dialogue of the _Beggars' Opera_ +is on the whole sufficient. The personages are puppets; but they are +individual, and they are fairly consistent in their individuality. Miss +Lockit does not think and feel like Miss Diver; Macheath is +distinguishable from Peachum; none is exactly alive, but of stage life +ail have their share. The reverse of this is the case with the +personages of the _Fables_. They think the thoughts and speak the speech +of Mr. Gay. The elephant has the voice of the sparrow; the monkey is one +with the organ on which he sits; there is but a difference of name +between the eagle and the hog; the talk of Death has exactly the manner +and weight and cadence of the Woodman's; a change of label would enable +the lion to change places with the spaniel, would suffice to cage the +wolf as a bird and set free the parrot as a beast of prey. All are +equally pert, brisk, and dapper in expression; all are equally +sententious and smart in aim; all are absolutely identical in function +and effect. The whole gathering is stuffed with the same straw, prepared +with the same dressing, ticketed in the same handwriting, and painted +with the same colours. Any one who remembers the infinite variety of La +Fontaine will feel that Gay the fabulist is a writer whose work the world +has let die very willingly indeed. + + + +The Moralist. + + +And Gay is not a whit less inefficient as a moralist. He is a kindly +soul, and in his easygoing way he has learnt something of the tricks of +the world and something of the hearts of men. He writes as an +unsuccessful courtier; and in that capacity he has remarks to offer which +are not always valueless, and in which there is sometimes a certain +shrewdness. But the unsuccessful courtier is on the whole a creature of +the past. Such interest as he has is rather historical than actual; and +neither in the nursery nor in the schoolroom is he likely to create any +excitement or be received with any enthusiasm. To the world he can only +recommend himself as one anxious to make it known on the smallest +provocation and on any occasion or none that Queen Anne is dead. Open +him where you will, and you find him full of this important news and +determined on imparting it. Thus, in _The Scold and the Parrot_: + + 'One slander must ten thousand get, + The world with int'rest pays the debt'; + +that is to say, Queen Anne is dead. Thus, too, in _The Persian_, _the +Sun_, _and the Cloud_: + + 'The gale arose; the vapour tost + (The sport of winds) in air was lost; + The glorious orb the day refines. + Thus envy breaks, thus merit shines'; + +in _The Goat without a Beard_: + + 'Coxcombs distinguished from the rest + To all but coxcombs are a jest'; + +in _The Shepherd's Dog and the Wolf_: + + 'An open foe may prove a curse, + But a pretended friend is worse'; + +and so to the end of the chapter. The theme is not absorbing, and the +variations are proper to the theme. + + + +After All. + + +How long is it that the wise and good have ceased to say (striking their +pensive bosoms), '_Here_ lies Gay'? It is--how long? But for all that +Gay is yet a figure in English letters. As a song-writer he has still a +claim on us, and is still able to touch the heart and charm the ear. The +lyrics in _Acis and Galatea_ are not unworthy their association with +Handel's immortal melodies, the songs in _The Beggars' Opera_ have a part +in the life and fame of the sweet old tunes from which they can never be +divided. I like to believe that in the operas and the _Trivia_ and _The +Shepherd's Week_ is buried the material of a pleasant little book. + + + + +ESSAYS AND ESSAYISTS + + +The Good of Them. + + +It is our misfortune that of good essayists there should be but few. Men +there have been who have done the essayist's part so well as to have +earned an immortality in the doing; but we have had not many of them, and +they make but a poor figure on our shelves. It is a pity that things +should be thus with us, for a good essayist is the pleasantest companion +imaginable. There are folk in plenty who have never read Montaigne at +all; but there are few indeed who have read but a page of him, and that +page but once. And the same may be said of Addison and Fielding, of Lamb +and Hazlitt, of Sterne and Bacon and Ben Jonson, and all the members of +their goodly fellowship. To sit down with any one of them is to sit down +in the company of one of the 'mighty wits, our elders and our betters,' +who have done much to make literature a good thing, having written books +that are eternally readable. If of all them that have tried to write +essays and succeeded after a fashion a twentieth part so much could be +said the world would have a conversational literature of inexhaustible +interest. But indeed there is nothing of the sort. Beside the 'rare and +radiant' masters of the art there are the apprentices, and these are many +and dull. + + + +Generalities. + + +Essayists, like poets, are born and not made, and for one worth +remembering the world is confronted with a hundred not worth reading. +Your true essayist is in a literary sense the friend of everybody. As +one of the brotherhood has phrased it, it is his function 'to speak with +ease and opportunity to all men.' He must be personal, or his hearers +can feel no manner of interest in him. He must be candid and sincere, or +his readers presently see through him. He must have learned to think for +himself and to consider his surroundings with an eye that is both kindly +and observant, or they straightway find his company unprofitable. He +should have fancy, or his starveling propositions will perish for lack of +metaphor and the tropes and figures needed to vitalise a truism. He does +well to have humour, for humour makes men brothers, and is perhaps more +influential in an essay than in most places else. He will find a little +wit both serviceable to himself and comfortable to his readers. For +wisdom, it is not absolutely necessary that he have it, but in its way it +is as good a property as any: used with judgment, indeed, it does more to +keep an essay sweet and fresh than almost any other quality. And in +default of wisdom--which, to be sure, it is not given to every man, much +less to every essayist, to entertain--he need have no scruples about +using whatever common sense is his; for common sense is a highly +respectable commodity, and never fails of a wide and eager circle of +buyers. A knowledge of men and of books is also to be desired; for it is +a writer's best reason of being, and without it he does well to hold his +tongue. Blessed with these attributes he is an essayist to some purpose. +Give him leisure and occasion, and his discourse may well become as +popular as Montaigne's own. + + + +In Particular. + + +For the British essayists, they are more talked about than known. It is +to be suspected that from the first their reputation has greatly exceeded +their popularity; and of late years, in spite of the declamation of +Macaulay and the very literary enthusiasm of the artist of _Esmond_ and +_The Virginians_, they have fallen further into the background, and are +less than ever studied with regard. In theory the age of Anne is still +the Augustan age to us; but in theory only, and only to a certain extent. +What attracts us is its outside. We are in love with its houses and its +china and its costumes. We are not enamoured of it as it was but as it +seems to Mr. Caldecott and Mr. Dobson and Miss Kate Greenaway. We care +little for its comedy and nothing at all for its tragedy. Its verse is +all that our own is not, and the same may be said of its prose and +ours--of the prose of Mr. Swinburne and Mr. George Meredith and the prose +of Addison and Swift. Mr. Gladstone is not a bit like Bolingbroke, and +between _The Times_ and _The Tatler_, between _The Spectator_ (Mr. +Addison's), and _The Fortnightly Review_, there is a difference of close +upon two centuries and of a dozen revolutions--political, social, +scientific, and aesthetic. We may babble as we please about the +'sweetness' of Steele and the 'humour' of Sir Roger de Coverley, but in +our hearts we care for them a great deal less than we ought, and in fact +Mr. Mudie's subscribers do not hesitate to prefer the 'sweetness' of Mr. +Black and the 'humour' of Mr. James Payn. Our love is not for the +essentials of the time but only its accidents and oddities; and we +express it in pictures and poems and fantasies in architecture, and the +canonisation (in figures) of Chippendale and Sheraton. But it is +questionable if we might not with advantage increase our interest, and +carry imitation a little deeper. The Essayists, for instance, are often +dull, but they write like scholars and gentlemen. They refrain from +personalities; they let scandal alone, nor ever condescend to +eavesdropping; they never go out of their way in search of affectation or +prurience or melancholy, but are content to be merely wise and cheerful +and humane. Above all, they do their work as well as they can. They +seem to write not for bread nor for a place in society but for the +pleasure of writing, and of writing well. In these hysterical times life +is so full, so much is asked and so much has to be given, that tranquil +writing and careful workmanship are impossible. A certain poet has +bewailed the change in a charming rondeau:-- + + 'More swiftly now the hours take flight! + What's read at morn is dead at night; + Scant space have we for art's delays, + Whose breathless thought so briefly stays, + We may not work--ah! would we might, + With slower pen!' + +It must be owned that his melancholy is anything but groundless. The +trick of amenity and good breeding is lost; the graces of an excellence +that is unobtrusive are graces no more. We write as men paint for the +exhibitions: with the consciousness that we must pass without notice if +we do not exceed in colour and subject and tone. The need exists, and +the world bows to it. Mr. Austin Dobson's little sheaf of _Eighteenth +Century Essays_ might be regarded as a protest against the necessity and +the submission. It proves that 'tis possible to be eloquent without +adjectives and elegant without affectation; that to be brilliant you need +not necessarily be extravagant and conceited; that without being maudlin +and sentimental it is not beyond mortal capacity to be pathetic; and that +once upon a time a writer could prove himself a humourist without feeling +it incumbent upon him to be also a jack-pudding. + + + + +BOSWELL + + +His Destiny. + + +It has been Boswell's fate to be universally read and almost as +universally despised. What he suffered at the hands of Croker and +Macaulay is typical of his fortune. In character, in politics, in +attainments, in capacity, the two were poles apart; but they were agreed +in this: that Boswell must be castigated and contemned, and that they +were the men to do it. Croker's achievement, consider it how you will, +remains the most preposterous in literary history. He could see nothing +in the _Life_ but a highly entertaining compilation greatly in need of +annotation and correction. Accordingly he took up Boswell's text and +interlarded it with scraps of his own and other people's; he pegged into +it a sophisticated version of the _Tour_; and he overwhelmed his amazing +compound with notes and commentaries in which he took occasion to snub, +scold, 'improve,' and insult his author at every turn. What came of it +one knows. Macaulay, in the combined interests of Whiggism and good +literature, made Boswell's quarrel his own, and the expiation was as +bitter as the offence was wanton and scandalous. + + + +His Critic. + + +But Macaulay, if he did Jeddart justice on Croker, took care not to +forget that Johnson was a Tory hero, and that Boswell was Johnson's +biographer. He was too fond of good reading not to esteem the _Life_ for +one of the best of books. But he was also a master of the art of +brilliant and picturesque misrepresentation; and he did not neglect to +prove that the _Life_ is only admirable because Boswell was contemptible. +It was, he argued, only by virtue of being at once daft and drunken, +selfish and silly, an eavesdropper and a talebearer, a kind of inspired +Faddle, a combination of butt and lackey and snob, that Boswell contrived +to achieve his wretched immortality. And in the same way Boswell's hero +was after all but a sort of Grub Street Cyclops, respectable enough by +his intelligence--(but even so ridiculous in comparison to gifted +Whigs)--yet more or less despicable in his manners, his English, and his +politics. Now, Macaulay was the genius of special pleading. Admirable +man of letters as he was, he was politician first and man of letters +afterwards: his judgments are no more final than his antitheses are dull, +and his method for all its brilliance is the reverse of sound. When you +begin to inquire how much he really knew about Boswell, and how far you +may accept his own estimate of his own pretentions, he becomes amusing in +spite of himself: much as, according to him, Boswell was an artist. In +his review of Croker he is keen enough about dates and facts and +solecisms; on questions of this sort he bestows his fiercest energies; +for such lapses he visits his Tory opposite with his most savage and +splendid insolence, his heartiest contempt, his most scathing rhetoric. +But on the great question of all--the corruption of Boswell's text--he is +not nearly so implacable, and concerning the foisting on the _Life_ of +the whole bulk of the _Tour_ he is not more than lukewarm. 'We greatly +doubt,' he says, 'whether _even_ the _Tour to the Hebrides_ should have +been inserted in the midst of the _Life_. There is one marked +distinction between the two works. Most of the _Tour_ was seen by +Johnson in manuscript. It does not appear that he ever saw any part of +the _Life_.' This is to say that Croker's action is reprehensible not +because it is an offence against art but because Johnson on private and +personal grounds might not have been disposed to accept the _Life_ as +representative and just, and might have refused to sanction its +appearance on an equal footing with the _Tour_, which on private and +personal grounds he _had_ accepted. In the face of such an argument who +can help suspecting Macaulay's artistic faculty? 'The _Life of +Johnson_,' he says, 'is assuredly a great, a very great, book. Homer is +not more decidedly the first of heroic poets, Shakespeare is not more +decidedly the first of dramatists, Demosthenes is not more decidedly the +first of orators, than Boswell is the first of biographers . . . Eclipse +is first, and the rest nowhere.' That is hearty and exact enough. But, +as I have hinted, Macaulay, furious with Croker's carelessness, is almost +tolerant of Croker's impudence. For Croker as a scholar and an historian +he is merely pitiless; to Croker ruining the _Life_ by the insertion of +the _Tour_--a feat which would scarce be surpassed by the interpolation +of the Falstaff scenes of the _Merry Wives_ in one or other of the parts +of _Henry IV._--he is lenient enough, and lenient on grounds which are +not artistic but purely moral. Did he recognise to the full the fact of +Boswell's pre-eminence as an artist? Was he really conscious that the +_Life_ is an admirable work of art as well as the most readable and +companionable of books? As, not content with committing himself thus +far, he goes on to prove that Boswell was great because he was little, +that he wrote a great book because he was an ass, and that if he had not +been an ass his book would probably have been at least a small one, +incredulity on these points becomes respectable. + + + +Himself. + + +Boswell knew better. A true Scotsman and a true artist, he could play +the fool on occasion, and he could profit by his folly. In his +dedication to the first and greatest President the Royal Academy has had +he anticipates a good many of Macaulay's objections to his character and +deportment, and proves conclusively that if he chose to seem ridiculous +he did so not unwittingly but with a complete apprehension of the effect +he designed and the means he adopted. In the _Tour_, says he, from his +'eagerness to display the wonderful fertility and readiness of Johnson's +wit,' he 'freely showed to the world its dexterity, even when I was +myself the object of it.' He was under the impression that he would be +'liberally understood,' as 'knowing very well what I was about.' But, he +adds, 'it seems I judged too well of the world'; and he points his moral +with a story of 'the great Dr. Clarke,' who, 'unbending himself with a +few friends in the most playful and frolicsome manner,' saw Beau Nash in +the distance, and was instantly sobered. 'My boys,' quoth he, 'let us be +grave--here comes a fool.' Macaulay was not exactly Beau Nash, nor was +Boswell 'the great Dr. Clarke'; but, as Macaulay, working on Wolcot's +lines, was presently to show, Boswell did right to describe the world as +'a great fool,' and to regret in respect of his own silliness that in the +_Tour_ he had been 'arrogant enough to suppose that the tenour of the +rest of the book would sufficiently guard against such a strange +imputation.' In the same way he showed himself fully alive to the +enduring merits of his achievement. 'I will venture to say,' he writes, +'that he (Johnson) will be seen in this work more completely than any man +who has ever lived.' He had his own idea of biography; he had +demonstrated its value triumphantly in the _Tour_ which, though +organically complete, is plainly not a record of travel but a +biographical essay. In the _Tour_, that is, he had approved himself an +original master of selection, composition, and design; of the art of +working a large number of essential details into a uniform and living +whole; and of that most difficult and telling of accomplishments, the +reproduction of talk. In the _Life_ he repeated the proof on a larger +scale and with a finer mastery of construction and effect; and in what +his best editor describes as 'the task of correcting, amending, and +adding to his darling work' he spent his few remaining years. That he +drifted into greatness, produced his two masterpieces unconsciously, and +developed a genius for biography as one develops a disease, is 'a +ridiculous conception,' as Mr. Napier rightly says. In proof of it we +have Boswell's own words, and we have the books themselves. Such +testimony is not to be overborne by any number of paradoxes, however +ingenious, nor by any superflux of rhetoric, however plausible and +persuasive. That Boswell was a gossip, a busybody, and something of a +sot, and that many did and still do call him fool, is certain; but that +is no reason why he should not have been an artist, and none why he +should be credited with the fame of having devoted the best part of his +life to the production of a couple of masterpieces--as M. Jourdain talked +prose--without knowing what he was doing. Turner chose to go +a-masquerading as 'Puggy Booth'; but as yet nobody has put forward the +assertion that Turner was unconscious of the romance and splendour of his +_Ulysses and Polyphemus_, or that he painted his _Rain_, _Speed_, _and +Steam_ in absolute ignorance of the impression it would produce and the +idea it should convey. Goldsmith reminded Miss Reynolds of 'a low +mechanic, particularly . . . a journey-man tailor'; but that he was +unconsciously the most elegant and natural writer of his age is a +position which has not yet been advanced. And surely it is high time +that Boswell should take that place in art which is his by right of +conquest, and that Macaulay's paradox--which is only the opinion +brilliantly put of an ignorant and unthinking world--('Il avait mieux que +personne l'esprit de tout le monde')--should go the way of all its kind. + + + + +CONGREVE + + +His Biographers and Critics. + + +An American literary journal once assured its readers that Congreve has a +'niche in the Valhalla of Ben Jonson.' The remark is injudicious, of +course, even for a literary American, and there is no apparent reason why +it should ever have got itself uttered. It is probably the unluckiest +thing that ever was said of Congreve, who--with some unimportant +exceptions--has been singularly fortunate in his critics and biographers. +Dryden wrote of him with enthusiasm, and in doing so he may be said to +have set a fashion of admiration which is vigorous and captivating even +yet. Swift, Voltaire, Lamb, Hunt, Hazlitt, Thackeray, Macaulay, to name +but these, have dealt with him in their several ways; of late he has been +praised by such masters of the art of writing as Mr. Swinburne and Mr. +George Meredith; while Mr. Gosse, the last on the list, surpasses most of +his predecessors in admiration and nearly all, I think, in knowledge. + + + +The Real Congreve. + + +It is no fault of Mr. Gosse's that with all his diligence he should fail +to give a complete and striking portrait of his man, or to make more of +what he describes as his 'smiling, faultless rotundity.' As he puts it: +'There were no salient points about Congreve's character,' so that 'no +vagaries, no escapades place him in a ludicrous or in a human light,' and +'he passes through the literary life of his time as if in felt slippers, +noiseless, unupbraiding, without personal adventures.' That, I take it, +is absolutely true. It is known that Congreve was cheerful, serviceable, +and witty; that he was a man of many friends; that Pope dedicated his +_Iliad_ to him; that Dryden loved and admired him; that Collier attacked +his work, and that his rejoinder was equally spiritless and ill-bred; +that he was attached to Mrs. Bracegirdle, and left all his money to the +Duchess of Marlborough; that he was a creditable Government official; and +that at thirty, having written a certain number of plays, he suddenly +lost his interest in life and art, and wrote no more. But that is about +all. Thackeray's picture of him may be, and probably is, as unveracious +as his Fielding or his Dick Steele; but there is little or nothing to +show how far we can depend upon it. The character of the man escapes us, +and we have either to refrain from trying to see him or to content +ourselves with mere hypothesis. So abnormal is the mystery in which he +is enshrouded that what in the case of others would be notorious remains +in his case dubious and obscure: so that we cannot tell whether he was +Bracegirdle's lover or only her friend, and the secret of his relations +with the Duchess of Marlborough has yet to be discovered. Mr. Gosse +succeeded no better than they that went before in plucking out the heart +of Congreve's mystery. He was, and he remains, impersonal. At his most +substantial he is (as some one said of him) no more than 'vagueness +personified': at his most luminous only an appearance like the +_Scin-Laeca_, the shining shadow adapted in a moment of peculiar +inspiration by the late Lord Lytton. + + + +The Dramatist. + + +But we have the plays, and who runs may read and admire. I say advisedly +who runs may read, and not who will may see. Congreve's plays are, one +can imagine, as dull in action as they are entertaining in print. They +have dropped out of the _repertoire_, and the truth is they merit no +better fate. They are only plays to the critic of style; to the actor +and the average spectator they are merely so much spoken weariness. To +begin with, they are marked by such a deliberate and immitigable baseness +of morality as makes them impossible to man. Wycherley has done more +vilely; Vanbrugh soars to loftier altitudes of filthiness. But neither +Wycherley nor Vanbrugh has any strain of the admirable intellectual +quality of Congreve. Villainy comes natural to the one, and beastliness +drops from the other as easily as honey from the comb; but in neither is +there evident that admirable effort of the intelligence which is a +distinguishing characteristic of Congreve, and with neither is the result +at once so consummate and so tame. For both Wycherley and Vanbrugh are +playwrights, and Congreve is not. Congreve is only an artist in style +writing for himself and half a dozen in the pit, while Wycherley and +Vanbrugh--and for that matter Etherege and Farquhar--are playwrights +producing for the whole theatre. In fact Congreve's plays were only +successful in proportion as they were less literary and 'Congrevean.' His +first comedy was the talk of the town; his last, _The Way of the World_, +that monument of characterisation (of a kind) and fine English, was only +a 'success of esteem.' The reason is not far to seek. Congreve's plays +were too sordid in conception and too unamusing in effect for even the +audiences to which they were produced; they were excellent literature, +but they were bad drama, and they were innately detestable to boot. +Audiences are the same in all strata of time; and it is easy to see that +Wycherley's Horner and Vanbrugh's Sir John and Lady Brute were amusing, +when Lady Wishfort and Sir Sampson Legend and the illustrious and +impossible Maskwell were found 'old, cold, withered, and of intolerable +entrails.' An audience, whatever its epoch, wants action; and still +action, and again and for the last time action; also it wants a point of +departure that shall be something tinctured with humanity, a touch of the +human in the term of everything, and at least a 'sort of a kind of a +strain' of humanity in the progress of events from the one point to the +other. This it gets in Wycherley, brute as he is; with a far larger and +more vigorous comic sense it gets the same in Vanbrugh; it gets it with a +difference in the light-hearted indecencies of Farquhar. From the +magnificent prose of Congreve it is absent. His it was to sublimate all +that was most artificial in an artificial state of society: he was the +consummate artist of a phase that was merely transient, the laureate of a +generation that was only alive for half-an-hour in the course of all the +twenty-four. He is saved from oblivion by sheer strength of style. It +is a bad dramatic style, as we know; it leaves the Witwoulds and the +Plyants as admirable as the Mirabels and Millamants and Angelicas; it +makes no distinction between the Mrs. Foresights and the Sir Sampson +Legends; it presents an exemplar in Lady Wishfort and an exemplar in +Petulant; it is uneasy, self-conscious, intrusive, even offensive, the +very reverse of dramatic; and in Congreve's hands it is irresistible, +for, thanks to Congreve, it has been forced from the stage, and lives as +literature alone. + + + +The Writer. + + +Congreve was essentially a man of letters; his style is that of a pupil +not of Moliere but of the full, the rich, the excessive, the pedantic +Jonson; his Legends, his Wishforts, his Foresights are the lawful +heirs--refined and sublimated but still of direct descent--of the Tuccas +and the Bobadils and the Epicure Mammons of the great Elizabethan; they +are (that is) more literary than theatrical--they are excellent reading, +but they have long since fled the stage and vanished into the night of +mere scholarship. To compare an author of this type and descent to +Shakespeare is a trifle unfair; to compare him to Moliere is to +misapprehend the differences between pure literature and literature that +is also drama. Congreve, as I have said, has disappeared from the +boards, and is only tolerable or even intelligible to the true reader; +while Shakespeare worked on so imperfect a convention that, though he +keeps the stage and is known indeed for the poet of the most popular play +ever written--(for that, I take it, _Hamlet_ is)--he is yet the prey of +every twopenny actor, or actor-manager, or actor-manager-editor, who is +driven to deal with him. Now, Moliere wrote as one that was first of all +a great actor; who dealt not so much with what is transient in human life +as with what is eternal in human nature; who addressed himself much more +to an audience--(Fenelon who found fault with his style is witness to the +fact)--than to a circle of readers. And the result is that Moliere not +only remains better reading than Congreve, but is played at this time in +the Rue de Richelieu line for line and word for word as he was played at +the Palais-Bourbon over two hundred years ago. + + + + +ARABIAN NIGHTS ENTERTAINMENTS + + +Its Romance. + + +He that has the book of the _Thousand Nights and a Night_ has Hachisch- +made-words for life. Gallant, subtle, refined, intense, humourous, +obscene, here is the Arab intelligence drunk with conception. It is a +vast extravaganza of passion in action and picarooning farce and material +splendour run mad. The amorous instinct and the instinct of enjoyment, +not tempered but heightened greatly by the strict ordinances of dogma, +have leave to riot uncontrolled. It is the old immortal story of Youth +and Beauty and their coming together, but it is coloured with the hard +and brilliant hues of an imagination as sensuous in type and as gorgeous +in ambition as humanity has known. The lovers must suffer, for suffering +intensifies the joy of fruition; so they are subjected to all such modes +of travail and estrangement as a fancy careless of pain and indifferent +to life can devise. But it is known that happy they are to be; and if by +the annihilation of time and space then are space and time annihilated. +Adventures are to the adventurous all the world over; but they are so +with a difference in the East. It is only Sinbad that confesses himself +devoured with the lust of travel. The grip of a humourous and fantastic +fate is tight on all the other heroes of this epic-in-bits. They do not +go questing for accidents: their hour comes, and the finger of God urges +them forth, and thrusts them on in the way of destiny. The air is +horrible with the gross and passionate figments of Islamite mythology. +Afrits watch over or molest them; they are made captive of malignant +Ghouls; the Jinns take bodily form and woo them to their embraces. The +sea-horse ramps at them from the ocean floor; the great roc darkens earth +about them with the shadow of his wings; wise and goodly apes come forth +and minister unto them; enchanted camels bear them over evil deserts with +the swiftness of the wind, or the magic horse outspreads his sail-broad +vannes, and soars with them; or they are borne aloft by some servant of +the Spell till the earth is as a bowl beneath them, and they hear the +angels quiring at the foot of the Throne. So they fare to strange and +dismal places: through cities of brass whose millions have perished by +divine decree; cities guilty of the cult of the Fire and the Light +wherein all life has been striken to stone; or on to the magnetic +mountain by whose horrible attraction the bolts are drawn from the ship, +and they alone survive the inevitable wreck. And the end comes. Comes +the Castle of Burnished Copper, and its gates fly open before them: the +forty damsels, each one fairer than the rest, troop out at their +approach; they are bathed in odours, clothed in glittering apparel, fed +with enchanted meats, plunged fathoms deep in the delights of the flesh. +There is contrived for them a private paradise of luxury and splendour, a +practical Infinite of gold and silver stuffs and jewels and all things +gorgeous and rare and costly; and therein do they abide for evermore. You +would say of their poets that they contract immensity to the limits of +desire; they exhaust the inexhaustible in their enormous effort; they +stoop the universe to the slavery of a talisman, and bind the visible and +invisible worlds within the compass of a ring. + + + +Its Comedy. + + +But there is another side to their imaginings. When the Magian has done +beating his copper drum--(how its mysterious murmur still haunts the +echoes of memory!)--when Queen Lab has finished her tremendous +conjurations, wonder gives place to laughter, the apotheosis of the flesh +to the spirit of comedy. The enchanter turns harlequin; and what the +lovers ask is not the annihilation of time and space but only that the +father be at his prayers, or the husband gone on a fool's errand, while +they have leave to kiss each other's mouths, 'as a pigeon feedeth her +young,' to touch the lute, strip language naked, and 'repeat the +following verses' to a ring of laughing girls and amid all such comfits +and delicates as a hungry audience may rejoice to hear enumerated. And +the intrigue begins, and therewith the presentment of character, the +portraiture of manners. Merry ladies make love to their gallants with +flowers, or scorn them with the huckle-bones of shame; the Mother Coles +of Araby pursue the unwary stranger for their mistress' pleasure; damsels +resembling the full moon carouse with genial merchants or inquiring +calenders. The beast of burden, even the porter, has his hour: he goes +the round at the heels of a veiled but beautiful lady, and lays her in +the materials of as liberal and sumptuous a carouse as is recorded in +history. Happy lady, and O thrice-fortunate porter! enviable even to the +term of time! It is a voluptuous farce, a masque and anti-masque of +wantonness and stratagem, of wine-cups and jewels and fine raiment, of +gaudy nights and amorous days, of careless husbands and adventurous +wives, of innocent fathers and rebel daughters and lovers happy or +befooled. And high over all, his heart contracted with the spleen of the +East, the tedium of supremacy, towers the great Caliph Haroun, the buxom +and bloody tyrant, a Muslim Lord of Misrule. With Giafar, the finest +gentleman and goodliest gallant of Eastern story, and Mesrour, the well- +beloved, the immortal Eunuch, he goes forth upon his round in the +enchanted streets of Bagdad, like Francois Premier in the maze of old- +time Paris. The night is musical with happy laughter and the sound of +lutes and voices; it is seductive with the clink of goblets and the odour +of perfumes: not a shadow but has its secret, or jovial or amorous or +terrible: here falls a head, and there you may note the contrapuntal +effect of the bastinado. But the blood is quickly hidden with flowers, +the bruises are tired over with cloth-of-gold, and the jolly pageant +sweeps on. Truly the comic essence is imperishable. What was fun to +them in Baghdad is fun to us in London after a thousand years. + + + +Sacer Vates. + + +The prose of Mr. Payne's translation is always readable and often +elegant; Sir Richard Burton's notes and 'terminal essays' are a mine of +curious and diverting information; but for me the real author of _The +Arabian Nights_ is called not Burton nor Payne but Antoine Galland. He +it was, in truth, who gave the world as much exactly as it needed of his +preposterous original: who eliminated its tediousness, purged it of its +barbarous and sickening immorality, wiped it clean of cruelty and +unnaturalness, selected its essentials of comedy and romance, and set +them clear and sharp against a light that western eyes can bear and in an +atmosphere that western lungs can breathe. Of course the new +translations are interesting--especially to ethnologists and the critic +with a theory that translated verse is inevitably abominable. But they +are not for the general nor the artist. They include too many pages +revolting by reason of unutterable brutality of incident and point of +view--as also for the vileness of those lewd and dreadful puritans whose +excesses against humanity and whose devotion to Islam they record--to be +acceptable as literature or tolerable as reading. Now, in Galland I get +the best of them. He gave me whatever is worth remembering of Bedreddin +and Camaralzaman and that enchanting Fairy Peri-Banou; he is the true +poet alike of Abou Hassan and the Young King of the Black Islands, of Ali +Baba and the Barber of the Brothers; to him I owe that memory--of Zobeide +alone in the accursed city whose monstrous silence is broken by the voice +of the one man spared by the wrath of God as he repeats his solitary +prayer--which ranks with Crusoe's discovery of the footprint in the +thrilling moments of my life; it was he who, by refraining from the use +of pepper in his cream tarts, contrived to kitchen those confections with +the very essence of romance; it was he that clove asunder the Sultan's +kitchen-wall for me, and took me to the pan, and bade me ask a certain +question of the fish that fried therein, and made them answer me in terms +mysterious and tremendous yet. Nay, that animating and delectable +feeling I cherish ever for such enchanted commodities as gold-dust and +sandal-wood and sesame and cloth of gold and black slaves with +scimitars--to whom do I owe it but this rare and delightful artist? 'O +mes chers _Mille et une Nuits_!' says Fantasio, and he speaks in the name +of all them that have lived the life that Galland alone made possible. +The damsels of the new style may 'laugh till they fall backwards,' etc., +through forty volumes instead of ten, and I shall still go back to my +Galland. I shall go back to him because his masterpiece is--not a book +of reference, nor a curiosity of literature, nor an achievement in +pedantry, nor even a demonstration of the absolute failure of Islamism as +an influence that makes for righteousness, but--an excellent piece of +art. + + + + +RICHARDSON + + +His Fortune. + + +It is many years since Richardson fell into desuetude; it is many years +since he became the novelist not of the world at large but of that +inconsiderable section of the world which is interested in literature. +His methods are those of a bygone epoch; his ideals, with one or two +exceptions, are old-fashioned enough to seem fantastic; his sentiment +belongs to ancient history; to a generation bred upon Ouida's romances +and the plays of Mr. W. S. Gilbert his morality appears not merely +questionable but coarse and improper and repulsive. While he lived he +was adored: he moved and spoke and dwelt in an eternal mist of 'good, +thick, strong, stupefying incense smoke'; he was the idol of female +England, a master of virtue, a king of art, the wisest and best of +mankind. Johnson revered him--Johnson and Colley Gibber; Diderot ranked +him with Moses and Homer; to Balzac and Musset and George Sand he was the +greatest novelist of all time; Rousseau imitated him; Macaulay wrote and +talked of him with an enthusiasm that would have sat becomingly on Lady +Bradshaigh herself. But all that is over. Not even the emasculation to +which the late Mr. Dallas was pleased to subject his _Clarissa_ could +make that _Clarissa_ at all popular; not all the allusions of all the +leader-writers of a leader-writing age have been able to persuade the +public to renew its interest in the works and ways of Grandison the +august and the lovely and high-souled Harriet Byron. Richardson has to +be not skimmed but studied; not sucked like an orange, nor swallowed like +a lollipop, but attacked _secundum artem_ like a dinner of many courses +and wines. Once inside the vast and solid labyrinth of his intrigue, you +must hold fast to the clue which you have caught up on entering, or the +adventure proves impossible, and you emerge from his precincts defeated +and disgraced. And by us children of Mudie, to whom a novel must be +either a solemn brandy-and-soda or as it were a garrulous and vapid +afternoon tea, adventures of that moment are not often attempted. + + + +Pamela. + + +Again, when all is said in Richardson's favour it has to be admitted +against him that in _Pamela_ he produced an essay in vulgarity--of +sentiment and morality alike--which has never been surpassed. In these +days it is hardly less difficult to understand the popularity of this +masterpiece of specious immodesty than to speak or think of it with +patience. That it was once thought moral is as wonderful as that it was +once found readable. What is more easily apprehended is the contempt of +Henry Fielding--is the justice of that ridicule he was moved to visit it +withal. To him, a scholar and a gentleman and a man of the world, +_Pamela_ was a new-fangled blend of sentimental priggishness and prurient +unreality. To him the pretensions to virtue and consideration of the +vulgar little hussy whom Richardson selected for his heroine were +certainly not less preposterous than the titles to life and actuality of +the wooden libertine whom Richardson put forth as his hero. He was +artist enough to know that the book was ignoble as literature and +absolutely false as fact; he was moralist enough to see that its +teachings were the reverse of elevating and improving; and he uttered his +conclusions _more suo_ in one of the best and healthiest books in English +literature. This, indeed, is the only merit of which the history of Miss +Andrews can well be accused: that it set Fielding thinking and provoked +him to the composition of the first of his three great novels. Pamela is +only remembered nowadays as Joseph's sister: the egregious Mr. B--- has +hardly any existence save as Lady Booby's brother. 'Tis an ill wind that +blows good to nobody. There are few more tedious or more unpleasant +experiences than _Pamela_; _or_, _Virtue Rewarded_. But you have but to +remember that without it the race might never have heard of Fanny and +Joseph, of the fair Slipslop and the ingenuous Didapper, of Parson +Trulliber and immortal Abraham Adams, to be reconciled to its existence +and the fact of its old-world fame. Nay, more, to remember its ingenious +author with something of gratitude and esteem. + + + +Grandison. + + +Nor is this the only charge that can be made and sustained against our +poet. It is also to be noted in his disparagement that he is the author +of _Sir Charles Grandison_, and that _Sir Charles Grandison_, epic of the +polite virtues, is deadly dull. 'My dear,' says somebody in one of Mr. +Thackeray's books, 'your eternal blue velvet quite tires me.' That is +the worst of _Sir Charles Grandison_: his eternal blue velvet--his +virtue, that is, his honour, his propriety, his good fortune, his absurd +command over the affections of the other sex, his swordsmanship, his +manliness, his patriotic sentiment, his noble piety--quite tires you. He +is an ideal, but so very, very tame that it is hard to justify his +existence. He is too perfect to be of the slightest moral use to +anybody. He has everything he wants, so that he has no temptation to be +wicked; he is incapable of immorality, so that he is easily quit of all +inducements to be vicious; he has no passions, so that he is superior to +every sort of spiritual contest; he is monstrous clever, so that he has +made up his mind about everything knowable and unknowable; he is +excessively virtuous so that he has made it up in the right direction. He +is, as Mr. Leslie Stephen remarks, a tedious commentary on the truth of +Mrs. Rawdon Crawley's acute reflection upon the moral effect of five +thousand a year. He is only a pattern creature, because he has neither +need nor opportunity, neither longing nor capacity, to be anything else. +In real life such faultless monsters are impossible: one does not like to +think what would happen if they were not. In fiction they are possible +enough, and--what is more to the purpose--they are of necessity +extravagantly dull. This is what is the matter with Sir Charles. He is +dull, and he effuses dulness. By dint of being uninteresting himself he +makes his surroundings uninteresting. In the record of his adventures +and experiences there is enough of wit and character and invention to +make the fortune of a score or more of such novels as the public of these +degenerate days would hail with enthusiasm. But his function is to +vitiate them all. He is a bore of the first magnitude, and of his +eminence in that capacity his history is at once the monument and the +proof. + + + +Clarissa. + + +But if _Grandison_ be dull and _Pamela_ contemptible _Clarissa_ remains; +and _Clarissa_ is what Musset called it, 'le premier roman du monde.' Of +course _Clarissa_ has its faults. Miss Harlowe, for instance, is not +always herself--is not always the complete creation she affects to be: +there are touches of moral pedantry--anticipations of George Eliot--in +her; the scenes in which she is brought to shame are scarcely real, +living, moving, all the rest of it. But on the other hand is there +anything better than Lovelace in the whole range of fiction? Take +Lovelace in all or any of his moods--suppliant, intriguing, repentant, +triumphant, above all triumphant--and find his parallel if you can. +Where, you ask, did the little printer of Salisbury Court--who suggests +to Mr. Stephen 'a plump white mouse in a wig'--where did Richardson +discover so much gallantry and humanity, so much romance and so much +fact, such an abundance of the heroic qualities and the baser veracities +of mortal nature? Lovelace is, if you except Don Quixote, the completest +hero in fiction. He has wit, humour, grace, brilliance, charm; he is a +scoundrel and a ruffian, and he is a gentleman and a man; of his kind and +in his degree he has the right Shakespearean quality. Almost as perfect +in her way is the enchanting Miss Howe--an incarnation of womanliness and +wit and fun, after Lovelace the most brilliant of Richardson's creations. +Or take the Harlowe family: the severe and stupid father, the angry and +selfish uncles, the cub James, the vixen Arabella, a very fiend of envy +and hatred and malice--what a gallery of portraits is here! And Solmes +and Tomlinson, Belford and Brand and Hickman; and the infinite complexity +of the intrigue; the wit, the pathos, the invention; the knowledge of +human nature; the faculty of dialogue--where save in _Clarissa_ shall we +find all these? As for Miss Harlowe herself, all incomplete as she is +she remains the Eve of fiction, the prototype of the modern heroine, the +common mother of all the self-contained, self-suffering, self-satisfied +young persons whose delicacies and repugnances, whose independence of +mind and body, whose airs and ideas and imaginings, are the stuff of the +modern novel. With her begins a new ideal of womanhood; from her +proceeds a type unknown in fact and fiction until she came. When after +outrage she declines to marry her destroyer, and prefers death to the +condonation of her dishonour, she strikes a note and assumes a position +till then not merely unrecognised but absolutely undiscovered. It has +been said of her half in jest and half in earnest that she is 'the +aboriginal Woman's Rights person'; and it is a fact that she and Helena +and Desdemona and Ophelia are practically a thousand years apart. And +this is perhaps her finest virtue as it is certainly her greatest charm: +that, until she set the example, woman in literature as a self-suffering +individuality, as an existence endowed with equal rights to +independence--of choice, volition, action--with man, had not begun to be. +That of itself would suffice to make _Clarissa_ memorable; and that is +the least of its merits. Consider it from which point you will, the book +remains a masterpiece, unique of its kind. It has been imitated but it +has never been equalled. It is Richardson's only title to fame; but it +is enough. Not the Great Pyramid itself is more solidly built nor more +incapable of ruin. + + + + +TOLSTOI + + +The Man and the Artist. + + +There are two men in Tolstoi. He is a mystic and he is also a realist. +He is addicted to the practice of a pietism that for all its sincerity is +nothing if not vague and sentimental; and he is the most acute and +dispassionate of observers, the most profound and earnest student of +character and emotion. These antitheses are both represented in his +novels. He has thought out the scheme of things for himself; his +interpretation, while deeply tinctured with religion, is also largely and +liberally human; he is one to the just and the unjust alike, and he is no +more angry with the wicked than he is partial to the good. He asks but +one thing of his men and women--that they shall be natural; yet he +handles his humbugs and impostors with as cold a kindness and a +magnanimity as equable as he displays in his treatment of their +opposites. Indeed his interest in humanity is inexhaustible, and his +understanding of it is well nigh formidable in its union of breadth with +delicacy. Himself an aristocrat and an official, he is able to +sympathise with the Russian peasant as completely and to express his +sentiments as perfectly as he is able to present the characters and give +utterance to the ambitions and the idiosyncrasies of the class to which +he belongs and might be assumed to have studied best. It is to be noted, +moreover, that he looks for his material at one or other pole of society. +He is equally at home with officers and privates, with diplomats and +carpenters, with princes and ploughmen; but with the intermediary strata +he is out of touch, and he is careful to leave the task of presenting +them to others. It is arguable that only in the highest and lowest +expressions of society is unsophisticated nature to be found; and that +Tolstoi, interested less in manners than in men and studious above all of +the elemental qualities of character, has done right to avoid the middle- +class and attach himself to the consideration and the representation of +the highest and the lowest. Certain it is that here have been his +successes. The Prince Andrew of _War and Peace_--cultured, intelligent, +earnest, true lover and true gentleman--is as noble a hero as modern +fiction has achieved; but he is no more interesting as a human being and +no more successful as art than the Marianna of _les Cosaques_, who is a +savage pure and simple, or the Efim of _les Deux Vieillards_, who would +seem to the haughty Radical no better than a common idiot. It is to be +noted of all three--the prince, the savage, and the peasant--that none in +himself is sophisticate nor vile but that each is rich in the common, +simple, elemental qualities of humanity. It is to these and the +manifestations of these that Tolstoi turns for inspiration first of all. +If he chose he could be as keen a satirist and as indefatigable a student +of the meannesses and the minor miseries of existence, the toothaches and +the pimples of experience, as Thackeray. But he does not choose. The +epic note sounds in his work. The eternal issues of life, the +fundamental interests of character and conduct and emotion, are his +material. Love, valour, self-sacrifice, charity, the responsibilities of +being, these and their like are the only vital facts to him; they +constitute the really important part of the scheme of things as he sees +and comprehends it. In their analysis the artist and the mystic meet and +take hands; sometimes to each other's profit, more often, to each other's +hurt. It is not without significance that no other novelist has looked +so closely and penetrated so far into the secret of death: that none has +divined so much of it, nor presented his results with so complete and +intimate a mastery and so persuasive and inspiring a belief. Plainly +Tolstoi has learned 'la vraie signification de la vie'; his faith in its +capacities is immense, his acceptance of its consequences is +unhesitating. He is the great optimist, and his work is wholesome and +encouraging in direct ratio to the vastness of his talent and the +perfection of his method. + + + + Ivan Iliitch. + + +Who does not know that extraordinary _Death of Ivan Iliitch_? It is an +achievement in realism: not the realism of externals and trivial +details--though of this there is enough for art if not for the common +Zolaphyte--but the higher and better sort, the realism which deals with +mental and spiritual conditions, the realism of _Othello_ and _Hamlet_. +There are many deaths in literature, but there is none, I think, in which +the gradual processes of dissolution are analysed and presented with such +knowledge, such force, such terrible directness, as here. The result is +appalling, but the final impression is one of encouragement and +consolation. Here, as everywhere, Tolstoi appeals to the primitive +nature of man, and the issue is what he wishes it to be. Not for him is +the barren pessimism of the latter-day French rhapsodist in fiction, and +the last word of his study, inexorable till then, is a word of hope and +faith. + + + +War and Peace. + + +Incomparably his greatest book, however, is _War and Peace_. It is the +true Russian epic; alike in the vastness of its scope and in the +completeness of its execution. It tells the story of the great conflict +between Koutouzoff and Russia and Napoleon and France, it begins some +years before Austerlitz, and it ends when Borodino and Moscow are already +ancient history. The canvas is immense: the crowd of figures and the +world of incidents almost bewildering. It is not a complete success. In +many places the mystic has got the better of the artist: he is +responsible for theories of the art of war which, advanced with the +greatest confidence, are disproved by the simple narrative of events; and +he has made a study of Napoleon in which, for the first and only time in +all his work, he appears as an intemperate advocate. But when all is +said in blame so much remains to praise that one scarce knows where to +begin. Tolstoi's theory of war is mystical and untenable, no doubt; but +his pictures of warfare are incomparably good. None has felt and +reproduced as he has done what may be called the intimacy of battle--the +feeling of the individual soldier, the passion and excitement, the terror +and the fury, that taken collectively make up the influence which +represents the advance or the retreat of an army in combat. But also, in +a far greater degree, none has dealt so wonderfully with the vaster +incidents, the more tremendous issues. His Austerlitz is magnificent; +his Borodino is (there is no other word for it) epic; his studies of the +Retreat are almost worthy of what has gone before. For the first time +what has been called 'the peering modern touch' is here applied to great +events, with the result that here is a book unique in literature. Of the +characters--Natasha, Peter, Mary, Dennissoff, the Rostoffs, Helen, +Dologhoff, Bagration, Bolkonsky, and the others; above all, Koutouzoff +and Prince Andrew--Prince Andrew the heroic gentleman, Koutouzoff the +genius of Russia and the war--to meet them once is to take on a set of +friends and enemies for life. + + + + +FIELDING + + +Illusions. + + +Fielding is one of the most striking figures in our literary history, and +he is one of the most popular as well. But it is questionable if many +people know very much about him after all, or if the Fielding of +legend--the potwalloper of genius at whom we have smiled so often--has +many things in common with the Fielding of fact, the indefatigable +student, the vigorous magistrate, the great and serious artist. You hear +but little of him from himself; for with that mixture of intellectual +egoism and moral unselfishness which is a characteristic of his large and +liberal nature he was as careless of Henry Fielding's sayings and doings +and as indifferent to the fact of Henry Fielding's life and personality +as he was garrulous in respect of the good qualities of Henry Fielding's +friends and truculently talkative about the vices of Henry Fielding's +enemies. And what is exactly known people have somehow or other +contrived to misapprehend and misapply. They have preferred the evidence +of Horace Walpole to that of their own senses. They have suffered the +brilliant antitheses of Lady Mary to obscure and blur the man as they +might have found him in his work. Booth and Jones have been taken for +definite and complete reflections of the author of their being: the parts +for the whole, that is--a light-minded captain of foot and a hot-headed +and soft-hearted young man about town for adequate presentments of the +artist of a new departure and the writer of three or four books of +singular solidity and finish. Whichever way you turn, you are confronted +with appearances each more distorted and more dubious than the other. +Some have chosen to believe the foolish fancies of Murphy, and have +pictured themselves a Fielding begrimed with snuff, heady with champagne, +and smoking so ferociously that out of the wrappings of his tobacco he +could keep himself in paper for the manuscripts of his plays. For others +the rancour of Smollett calls up a Fielding who divides his time and +energy between blowing a trumpet on a Smithfield show and playing Captain +Bilkum to a flesh-and-blood Stormandra at the establishment of a living, +breathing, working Mother Punchbowl. With Dr. Rimbault and Professor +Henry Morley others yet evolve from their inner consciousness a Fielding +with a booth in Smithfield, buffooning for the coppers of a Bartlemy Fair +audience. The accomplished lawyer has had as little place in men's +thoughts as the tender father, the admirable artist as little as the +devoted husband and the steadfast friend. Fielding has been so often +painted a hard drinker that few have thought of him as a hard reader; he +has been suspected of conjugal infidelity, so it has seemed impossible +that he should be other than a violent Bohemian. In certain chapters of +_Jonathan Wild the Great_ there is enough of sustained intellectual +effort to furnish forth a hundred modern novels; but you only think of +Fielding reeling home from the Rose, and refuse to consider him except as +sitting down with his head in a wet towel to scribble immodest and +ruffianly trash for the players! A consequence of all these exercises in +sentiment and imagination has been that, while many have been ready to +deal with Fielding as the text for a sermon or the subject of an essay, +as the point of a moral or the adornment of a tale, few have cared to +think of him as worthy to dispute the palm with Cervantes and Sir Walter +as the heroic man of letters. + + + +Facts. + + +He is before all things else a writer to be studied. He wrote for the +world at large and to the end that he might be read eternally. His +matter, his manner, the terms of his philosophy, the quality of his +ideals, the nature of his achievement, proclaim him universal. Like +Scott, like Cervantes, like Shakespeare, he claims not merely our +acquaintance but an intimate and abiding familiarity. He has no special +public, and to be only on nodding terms with him is to be practically +dead to his attraction and unworthy his society. He worked not for the +boys and girls of an age but for the men and women of all time; and both +as artist and as thinker he commands unending attention and lifelong +friendship. He is a great inventor, an unrivalled craftsman, a perfect +master of his material. His achievement is the result of a life-time of +varied experience, of searching and sustained observation, of unwearying +intellectual endeavour. The sound and lusty types he created have an +intellectual flavour peculiar to themselves. His novels teem with ripe +wisdom and generous conclusions and beneficent examples. As Mr. Stephen +tells you, 'he has the undeniable merit of representing certain aspects +of contemporary society with a force and accuracy not even rivalled by +any other writer'; and it is a fact that not to have studied him 'is to +be without a knowledge of the most important documents of contemporary +history.' More: to contrast those fair, large parchments in which he has +stated his results with those tattered and filthy papers which the latter- +day literary rag-picker exists but to grope out from kennel and sewer is +to know the difference between the artist in health and the artist +possessed by an idiosyncrasy as by a devil. + + + +The Worst of It. + + +But the present is an age of sentiment: its ideals and ambitions are +mainly emotional; what it chiefly loves is romance or the affectation of +romance, passion, self-conscious solemnity, and a certain straining after +picturesque effects. In Fielding's time there was doubtless a good deal +of sentimentalism, for his generation delighted not only in Western and +Trunnion and Mrs. Slipslop but in Pamela and Clarissa and the pathetic Le +Fevre. But for all that it was--at all events in so far as it was +interesting to Fielding and in so far as Fielding has pictured it--a +generation that knew nothing of romance but was keenly interested in +common sense, and took a vast deal of honest pleasure in humour and wit +and a rather truculent and full-blooded type of satire. It is plain that +such possibilities of sympathy and understanding as exist between a past +of this sort and such a present as our own must of necessity be few and +small. Their importance, too, is greatly diminished when you reflect on +the nature and tendency of certain essential elements in Fielding's art +and mind. The most vigorous and the most individual of these is probably +his irony; the next is that abundant vein of purely intellectual comedy +by whose presence his work is exalted to a place not greatly inferior to +that of the _Misantrope_ and the _Ecole des Femmes_. These rare and +shining qualities are distinguishing features in the best and soundest +part of Fielding. Of irony he is probably the greatest English master; +of pure comedy--the intellectual manipulation and transmutation into art +of what is spiritually ridiculous in manners and society--he is both in +narrative and in dialogue the greatest between Shakespeare and Mr. George +Meredith. And with both our sympathy is imperfect. We have learned to +be sentimental and self-sufficient with Rousseau, to be romantic and +chivalrous with Scott, to be emotional with Dickens, to take ourselves +seriously with Balzac and George Eliot; there are touches of feeling in +our laughter, even though the feeling be but spite; we have acquired a +habit of politeness--a tradition of universal consideration and respect; +and our theory of satire is rounded by the pleasing generalities of Mr. +Du Maurier on the one hand and the malevolent respectability of Mr. W. S. +Gilbert on the other. It is an age of easy writing and still easier +reading: our authors produce for us much in the manner of the +silkworm--only their term of life is longer; we accept their results in +something of the spirit of them that are interested, and not +commercially, in the processes of silkworms. And M. Guy de Maupassant +can write but hath a devil, and we take him not because of his writing +but because of his devil; and Blank and Dash and So-and-So and the rest +could no more than so many sheep develop a single symptom of possession +among them, and we take them because a devil and they are incompatibles. +And art is short and time is long; and we care nothing for art and almost +as much for time; and there is little if any to choose between Mudie's +latest 'catch' and last year's 'sensation' at Burlington House. And to +one of us it is 'poor Fielding'; and to another Fielding is merely gross, +immoral, and dull; and to most the story of that last journey to Lisbon +is unknown, and Thackeray's dream of Fielding--a novelist's presentment +of a purely fictitious character--is the Fielding who designed and built +and finished for eternity. Which is to be pitied? The artist of +_Amelia_ and _Jonathan Wild_, the creator of the Westerns and Parson +Adams and Colonel Bath? or we the whippersnappers of sentiment--the +critics who can neither read nor understand? + +THE END + +Printed by T. and A. CONSTABLE, Printers to Her Majesty, +at the Edinburgh University Press. + + + +***END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK VIEWS AND REVIEWS*** + + +******* This file should be named 22280.txt or 22280.zip ******* + + +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: +http://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/2/2/2/8/22280 + + + +Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions +will be renamed. + +Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no +one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation +(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without +permission and without paying copyright royalties. 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