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diff --git a/24003-0.txt b/24003-0.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..a044e54 --- /dev/null +++ b/24003-0.txt @@ -0,0 +1,5727 @@ +Project Gutenberg's Confessions of a Book-Lover, by Maurice Francis Egan + +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: Confessions of a Book-Lover + +Author: Maurice Francis Egan + +Release Date: December 24, 2007 [EBook #24003] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: UTF-8 + +*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK CONFESSIONS OF A BOOK-LOVER *** + + + + +Produced by Elaine Walker, Janet Kegg and the Online +Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net + + + + + + + + + + + +CONFESSIONS OF A +BOOK-LOVER + +BY + +MAURICE FRANCIS EGAN + +[Illustration] + +GARDEN CITY NEW YORK + +DOUBLEDAY, PAGE & COMPANY + +1922 + + + + +COPYRIGHT, 1922, BY + +DOUBLEDAY, PAGE & COMPANY + +ALL RIGHTS RESERVED, INCLUDING THAT OF TRANSLATION +INTO FOREIGN LANGUAGES, INCLUDING THE SCANDINAVIAN + +PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES + +AT + +THE COUNTRY LIFE PRESS, GARDEN CITY, N. Y. + + + + +IN MEMORY OF + +THEODORE ROOSEVELT + +A MAN OF ACTION +IN LOVE WITH BOOKS + + + + +CONTENTS + + +CHAPTER PAGE + + I. MY BOYHOOD READING 1 + Early Recollections. + The Bible. + Essays and Essayists. + + II. POETS AND POETRY 76 + France--Of Maurice de Guérin. + Dante. + English and American Verse. + +III. CERTAIN NOVELISTS 134 + + IV. LETTERS, BIOGRAPHIES, AND MEMOIRS 156 + + V. BOOKS AT RANDOM 205 + + + + +CONFESSIONS OF A BOOK-LOVER + + + + +CHAPTER I + +MY BOYHOOD READING + +_Early Recollections_ + + +To get the best out of books, I am convinced that you must begin to love +these perennial friends very early in life. It is the only way to know +all their "curves," all those little shadows of expression and small +lights. There is a glamour which you never _see_ if you begin to read +with a serious intention late in life, when questions of technique and +grammar and mere words begin to seem too important. + +Then you have become too critical to feel through all Fenimore Cooper's +verbiage the real lakes and woods, or the wild fervour of romance +beneath dear Sir Walter's mat of words. You lose the unreclaimable +flavour of books. A friend you may irretrievably lose when you lose a +friend--if you are so deadly unfortunate as to lose a friend--for even +the memories of him are embittered; but no great author can ever have +done anything that will make the book you love less precious to you. + +The new school of pedagogical thought disapproves, I know, of +miscellaneous reading, and no modern moralist will agree with Madame de +Sévigné that "bad books are better than no books at all"; but Madame de +Sévigné may have meant books written in a bad style, or feeble books, +and not books bad in the moral sense. However, I must confess that when +I was young, I read several books which I was told afterward were very +bad indeed. But I did not find this out until somebody told me! The +youthful mind must possess something of the quality attributed to a +duck's back! I recall that once "The Confessions of Rousseau" was +snatched suddenly away from me by a careful mother just as I had begun +to think that Jean Jacques was a very interesting man and almost as +queer as some of the people I knew. I believe that if I had been allowed +to finish the book, it would have become by some mental chemical process +a very edifying criticism of life. + +"Tom Jones" I found in an attic and I was allowed to read it by a pious +aunt, whom I was visiting, because she mixed it up with "Tom Brown of +Rugby"; but I found it even more tiresome than "Eric, or Little by +Little," for which I dropped it. I remember, too, that I was rather +shocked by some things written in the Old Testament; and I retorted to +my aunt's pronouncement that she considered "the 'Arabian Nights' a +dangerous book," by saying that the Old Testament was the worst book I +had ever read; but I supposed "people had put something into it when God +wasn't looking." She sent me home. + +At home, I was permitted to read only the New Testament. On winter +Sunday afternoons, when there was nothing else to do, I became sincerely +attached to the Acts of the Apostles. And I came to the conclusion that +nobody could tell a short story as well as Our Lord Himself. The +Centurion was one of my favourite characters. He seemed to be such a +good soldier; and his plea, "Lord, I am not worthy," flashes across my +mental vision every day of my life. + +In the Catholic churches, a part of the Gospel is read every Sunday, and +carefully interpreted. This always interested me because I knew in +advance what the priest was going to read. Most of the children of my +acquaintance were taught their Scriptures through the International +Sunday-school lessons, and seemed to me to be submerged in the geography +of Palestine and other tiresome details. For me, reading as I did, the +whole of the New Testament was radiant with interest, a frankly human +interest. There were many passages that I did not pretend to understand, +sometimes because the English was obscure or archaic, and sometimes +because my mind was not equal to it or my knowledge too small. Whatever +may be the opinion of other people, mine is that the reading of the New +Testament in the simplicity of childhood, with the flower of intuition +not yet blighted, is one of the most beautiful of mental experiences. In +my own case, it gave a glow to life; it caused me to distinguish between +truth and fairy tales, between fact and fiction--and this is often very +difficult for an imaginative child. + +This kind of reading implies leisure and the absence of distraction. +Unhappily, much leisure does not seem to be left for the modern child. +The unhappy creature is even told that there will be "something in +Heaven for children to do!" As to distractions, the modern child is +surrounded by them; and it appears to be one of the main intentions of +the present system of instruction not to leave to a child any moments of +leisure for the indulgence of the imagination. But I am not offering the +example of my childhood for imitation by the modern parents. + +Nevertheless, it had great consolations. There were no "movies" in those +days, and the theatre was only occasionally permitted; but on long +afternoons, after you had learned to read, you might lose yourself in +"The Scottish Chiefs" to your heart's content. It seems to me that the +beauty of this fashion of leisurely reading was that you had time to +visualize everything, and you felt the dramatic moments so keenly, that +a sense of unreality never obtruded itself at the wrong time. It was not +necessary for you to be told that Helen Mar was beautiful. It was only +necessary for her to say, in tones so entrancing that you heard them, +"My Wallace!" to know that she was the loveliest person in all Scotland. +But "The Scottish Chiefs" required the leisure of long holiday +afternoons, especially as the copy I read had been so misused that I +had to spend precious half hours in putting the pages together. It was +worth the trouble, however. + +Before I could read, I was compelled on rainy days to sit at my mother's +knee and listen to what _she_ read. I am happy to say that she never +read children's books. Nothing was ever adapted to my youthful +misunderstanding. She read aloud what she liked to read, and she never +considered whether I liked it or not. It was a method of discipline. At +first, I looked drearily out at the soggy city street, in which rivulets +of melted snow made any exercise, suitable to my age, impossible. There +is nothing so hopeless for a child as an afternoon in a city when the +heavy snows begin to melt. My mother, however, was altogether regardless +of what happened outside of the house. At two o'clock precisely--after +the manner of the King in William Morris's "Earthly Paradise"--she waved +her wand. After that, all that I was expected to do was to make no +noise. + +In this way I became acquainted with "The Virginians," then running in +_Harper's Magazine_, with "Adam Bede" and "As You Like It" and "Richard +III." and "Oliver Twist" and "Nicholas Nickleby" and "Valentine +Vox"--why "Valentine Vox?"--and other volumes when I should have been +listening to "Alice in Wonderland." But when I came, in turn, to "Alice +in Wonderland," I found Alice's rather dull in comparison with the +adventures of the Warrington brothers. And Thackeray's picture of Gumbo +carrying in the soup tureen! To have listened to Rebecca's description +of the great fight in "Ivanhoe," to have lived through the tournament of +Ashby de la Zouche, was a poor preparation for the vagaries of the queer +creatures that surrounded the inimitable Alice. + +There appeared to be no children's books in the library to which we had +access. It never seemed to me that "Robinson Crusoe" or "Gulliver's +Travels" or "Swiss Family Robinson" were children's books; they were not +so treated by my mother, and I remember, as a small boy, going up to +Chestnut Street in Philadelphia, with divine eagerness, to buy the +latest number of a Dickens serial. I think the name of the shop--the +shop of Paradise--which sold these books was called Ashburnham's. It may +be asked how the episode in "Adam Bede" of Hetty and that of "little +Em'ly" in Dickens struck the child mind. As I remember, the child mind +was awed and impressed, by a sense of horror, probably occasioned as +much by the force of the style, by the suggestions of an unknown terror, +as by any facts which a child could grasp. + +It was a curious thing that my mother, who had remarkably good taste in +literature, admired Mrs. Henry Wood extravagantly. She also admired +Queen Victoria. She never read "East Lynne" aloud, because, I gathered, +she considered it "improper"; and Miss Braddon's "Lady Audley's Secret" +came under the same ban, though I heard it talked of frequently. It was +difficult to discover where my mother drew the line between what was +"proper" and what was "not proper." Shakespeare she seemed to regard as +eminently proper, and, I noticed, hesitated and mumbled only when she +came to certain parts of Ophelia's song. It seems strange now that I +never rated Mrs. Henry Wood's novels with those of George Eliot or +Thackeray or Dickens. There seemed to be some imperceptible difference +which my mother never explained, but which I, instinctively, understood; +and when Anthony Trollope's "Orley Farm" was read, I placed him above +Mrs. Henry Wood, but not on an equality with Dickens or Thackeray. + +_Harper's Magazine_, in those days, contained great treasure! There, for +instance, were the delightful articles by Porte Crayon--General +Strothers, I think. These one listened to with pleasure; but the bane of +my existence was Mr. Abbott's "Life of Napoleon Bonaparte." It seemed to +me as if it would never end, and it stretched as dolorously before me as +that other fearful process which appalled my waking days--the knowledge +that all my life I should be obliged to clean my teeth three times a day +with powdered charcoal! + +After a time, I began to read for myself; but the delights of desultory +reading were gloomed by the necessity of studying long lessons that no +emancipated child of to-day would endure. Misguided people sometimes +came to the school and told childish stories, at which we all laughed, +but which even the most illiterate despised. To have known George +Warrington, to have mingled familiarly in the society of George +Washington, to remember the picture of Beatrix Esmond coming down the +stairs--I am not speaking of Du Maurier's travesties of that delightful +book--to have seen the old ladies in "Cranford," sucking their oranges +in the privacies of their rooms, made one despise foolish little tales +about over-industrious bees and robins which seemed not even to have the +ordinary common sense of geese! + +Suddenly, my mother became a devout Catholic. The scene changed. On one +unhappy Sunday afternoon "Monte Cristo" was rudely snatched from my +entranced hands. Dumas was on the list of the "improper," and to this +day I have never finished the episodes in which I was so deeply +interested. Now the wagon of the circulating library ceased to come as +in the old days. The children of the neighbours offered me Sunday-school +books, taken from the precious store of the Methodist Sunday School +opposite our house. They seemed to me to be stupid beyond all words. +There was not one really good fight in them all, and after an honest +villain like Brian de Bois Guilbert, the bad people in these volumes +were very lacking in stamina. The "Rollo" books were gay compared to +them. I concluded that if anything on earth could make a child hate +religion, it was the perusal of these unreal books. My mother saw that I +had Alban Butler's "Lives of the Saints" for Sunday reading. They were +equally dull; and other "Lives," highly recommended, were quite as +uninspiring as the little volumes from the Protestant library. They were +generally translated from the French, without vitality and without any +regard for the English idiom. I recall, through the mists, sitting down +one Sunday afternoon, to read "The Life of Saint Rose of Lima." As it +concerned itself with South America, it seemed to me that there might be +in it a good fighter or two; or, at least, somebody might cut off the +ear of a High Priest's servant as was done in the New Testament. But no, +I was shocked to read in the very beginning, that + + so pure was the little Saint, even in her infancy, that when her + uncle, who was her godfather, kissed her after her baptism, a rosy + glow, a real blush of shame, overspread her countenance. + +In that book I read no more that day! + +But I discovered a volume I have never forgotten, which probably after +"The Young Marooners," had the greatest influence on me for a short +period. This was "Fabiola," by Cardinal Wiseman. There was good stuff in +it; it made me feel proud to be a Christian; it was full of thrills; +and it taught a lot about the archæology of Rome, for it was part of +that excellent story. I have always looked on "Fabiola" as a very great +book. Then at Christmas, when my father gave me "The Last Days of +Pompeii," I was in a new world, not alien to the world of "Fabiola," but +in some way supplementary to it. This gift was accompanied by Washington +Irving's "Tales of the Alhambra." _Conspuez les livres des poupées!_ +What nice little story books, arranged for the growing mind, could +awaken such visions of the past, such splendid arabesques and trailing +clouds of glory as this book! Read at the right time, it makes the +pomegranate and the glittering crescents live forever, and creates a +love for Spain and a romance of old Spain which can never die. + +After this, I had a cold mental douche. I was given "Les Enfants des +Bois," by Elie Berthet in French, to translate word for word. It was a +horrible task, and the difficulties of the verbs and the laborious +research in the dictionary prevented me from enjoying the adventures of +these infants. I cannot remember anything that happened to them; but I +know that the book gave me an ever-enduring distrust of the subjunctive +mood in the Gallic language. Somebody had left about a copy of a French +romance called "Les Aventures de Polydore Marasquin." It was of things +that happened to a man in a kingdom of monkeys. It went very well, with +an occasional use of the dictionary, until I discovered that the +gentleman was about to engage himself to a very attractive monkeyess. I +gave up the book in disgust, but I have since discovered that there have +been lately several imitators of these adventures, which I think were +written by an author named Léon Gozlan. + +About this time, the book auction became a fashion in Philadelphia. If +your people had respect for art, they invariably subscribed to a +publication called the _Cosmopolitan Art Magazine_, and you received a +steel engraving of Shakespeare and his Friends, with Sir Walter Raleigh +very much in the foreground, wearing a beautifully puffed doublet and +very well-fitting hose, and another steel engraving of Washington at +Lexington. If your people were interested in literature, they frequented +the book auctions. My father had a great respect for what he called +"classical literature." He considered Cowper's "The Task" immensely +classical; it was beautifully bound, and he never read it. One day he +secured a lovely edition of the "Complete Works of Thomas Moore." It had +been a subject of much competition at the auction, and was cherished +accordingly. The binding was tooled. It was put on the centre table and +adored as a work of art. Here was richness! + +Tom Moore's long poems are no doubt classed at present as belonging to +those old and faded gardens in which "The Daisy" and "The Keepsake," by +Lady Blessington, once flourished; but if I could only recall the +pleasure I had in the reading of "Lalla Rookh" and "The Veiled Prophet +of Korhasson," I think I should be very happy. And the notes to "Lalla +Rookh" and to Moore's prose novel of "The Epicurean"! "The Epicurean" +was not much of a novel, but the notes were full of amazing Egyptian +mysteries, which seemed quite as splendid as the machinery in the +"Arabian Nights." The notes to "Lalla Rookh" smelled of roses, and I +remember as a labour of love copying out all the allusions to roses in +these notes with the intention of writing about them when I grew up. My +mother objected to the translations from Anacreon; she said they were +"improper"; but my father said that he had been assured on competent +authority that they were "classic," and of course that settled it. There +was no story in them, and they seemed to me to be stupid. + +Just about this time, one of the book auctions yielded up a copy of the +"Complete Works of Miss Mitford." You perhaps can imagine how a city +boy, who was allowed to spend two weeks each year at the most on the +arid New Jersey seacoast, fell upon "Our Village." It became an +incentive for long walks, in the hope of finding some country lanes and +something resembling the English primroses. I read and reread "Our +Village" until I could close my eyes at any time and see the little +world in which Miss Mitford lived. I tried to read her tragedy, "The Two +Foscari." A tragedy had a faint interest; but, being exiled to the attic +for some offense against the conventionalities demanded of a +Philadelphia child, with no book but Miss Mitford's, I spent my time +looking up all the references to roses in her tragedies. These I +combined with the knowledge acquired from Tom Moore, and made notes for +a paper to be printed in some great periodical in the future. Why roses? +Why Miss Mitford and roses? Why Tom Moore and roses? I do not know, +but, when I was sixteen years of age, I printed the paper in _Appleton's +Journal_, where it may still be found. My parents, who did not look on +my literary attempts, at the expense of mathematics, with favour, +suggested that I was a plagiarist, but as I had no time to look up the +meaning of the word in the dictionary, I let it go. It simply struck me +as one of those evidences of misunderstanding which every honest artist +must be content to accept. + +My mother, evidently fearing the influence of "classical" literature, +gave me one day "The Parent's Assistant," by Miss Edgeworth. I think +that it was in this book that I discovered "Rosamond; or The Purple Jar" +and the story of the good boy or girl who never cut the bit of string +that tied a package; I sedulously devoted myself to the imitation of +this economic child, and was very highly praised for getting the best +out of a good book until I broke a tooth in trying to undo a very tough +knot. + +It was a far cry from the respectable Miss Edgeworth to a series of +Beadle's "Dime Novels." I looked on them as delectable but inferior. +There was a prejudice against them in well-brought-up households; but +if you thoughtfully provided yourself with a brown paper cover, which +concealed the flaring yellow of Beadle's front page, you were very +likely to escape criticism. I never finished "Osceola, the Seminole," +because my aunt looked over my shoulder and read a rapturous account of +a real fight, in which somebody kicked somebody else violently in the +abdomen. My aunt reported to my mother that the book was very +"indelicate" and after that Beadle's "Dime Novels" were absolutely +forbidden. At school, we were told that any boy who read Beadle's was a +moral leper; but as most of us concluded that leper had something to do +with leaper, the effect was not very convincing. + +Perhaps I might have been decoyed back to Beadle's, for all the +youngsters knew that there was nothing really wrong in them, but I +happened to remember the scene in Sir Walter Scott's "Abbot," where +Edward Glendenning wades into the sea to prevent Mary Stuart from +leaving Scotland. I hied me to "The Monastery" and devoured everything +of Sir Walter's except "Saint Ronan's Well." That never seemed worthy of +the great Sir Walter. "The Black Dwarf" and "Anne of Geierstein" were +rather tough reading, and "Count Robert of Paris" might have been +written by Lord Bacon, if Lord Bacon had been a contemporary of Sir +Walter's. "Peveril of the Peak" and "Ivanhoe" and "Bride of Lammermoor" +again and again dazzled and consoled me until I discovered "Nicholas +Nickleby." + +"Nicholas Nickleby" took entire possession of me. In the rainy winter +afternoons, when nothing could occur out of doors which a respectable +city boy was permitted to indulge in, I found that I was expected to +work. Boys worked hard at their lessons in those days. There was a +kitchen downstairs with a Dutch oven not used in the winter. There it +was easy to build a small fire and to toast bread and to read "Nicholas +Nickleby" after one had rushed through the required tasks, which +generally included ten pages of the "Historia Sacra" in Latin. If you +never read "Nicholas Nickleby" when you were young, you cannot possibly +know the flavour of Dickens. You can't laugh now as you laughed then. +Oh, the delight of Mr. Crummles's description of his wife's dignified +manner of standing with her head on a spear! + +The tragedy in "Nicholas Nickleby" never appealed to me. It was +necessary to skip that. When the people were gentlemanly and ladylike, +they became great bores. But what young reader of Dickens can forget the +hostile attitude of Mr. Lillyvick, great-uncle of the little Miss +Kenwigses, when Nicholas attempted to teach them French? As one grows +older, even Mr. Squeers and 'Tilda give one less real delight; but think +of the first discovery of them, and it is like Balboa's--or was it +Cortez's?--discovery of the Pacific in Keats's sonnet. "Nicholas +Nickleby" was read over and over again, with unfailing pleasure. I found +"Little Dorrit" rather tiresome; "Barnaby Rudge" and "A Tale of Two +Cities" seemed to be rather serious reading, not quite Dickensish enough +for my taste, yet better than anything else that anybody had written. My +later impressions of Dickens modified these instinctive intuitions. + +One day, a set of Thackeray arrived, little green volumes, as I +remember, and I began to read "Vanity Fair." My mother seized it and +read it aloud again. Her confessor had told her that a dislike for good +novels was "Puritan" and she, shocked by the implied reproach, took +again to novel reading. I am afraid that I disliked Colonel Dobbin and +Amelia very much. Becky Sharp pleased me beyond words; I don't think +that the morality of the case affected my point of view at all. I was +delighted whenever Becky "downed" an enemy. They were such a lot of +stupid people--the enemies--and I reflected during the course of the +story that, after all, Thackeray had said that poor Becky had no mother +to guide her footsteps. When the Marquis of Steyne was hit on the +forehead with the diamonds, I thought it served him right; but I was +unhappy because poor Becky had lost the jewels. In finishing the book +with those lovely Thackerayan cadences, my mother said severely, "That +is what always happens to bad people!" But in my heart I did not believe +that Becky Sharp was a bad person at all. + +For a time I returned to Dickens, to "Nicholas Nickleby," to "David +Copperfield." I respected Thackeray. He had gripped me in some way that +I could not explain. But Dickens I loved. Later--it was on one June +afternoon I think--when the news of Dickens's death arrived, it seemed +to me that for a while all delight in life had ended. + +One of those experts in psychology who are always seeking questions +sometime ago wrote to me demanding if "Plutarch's Lives" had influenced +me, and whether I thought they were good reading for the young. Our +"Plutarch" was rather appalling to look at. It was bound in mottled +cardboard, and the pages had red edges; but I attacked it one day, when +I was about ten years of age, and became enthralled. It was "actual." My +mother was a veteran politician, and read a daily paper, with Southern +tendencies called the _Age_; my father belonged to the opposite party, +and admired Senator Hoar as greatly as my mother admired the famous +Vallandigham. Between the two, I had formed a very poor opinion of +American statesmen in general; but the statesmen in "Plutarch" were of a +very different type. + +Julius Cæsar interested me; but Brutus filled me with exaltation. I had +not then read Shakespeare's "Julius Cæsar." It seemed to me that Brutus +was a model for all time. Now, understand I was a good Christian child, +and I said my prayers every night and morning, but this did not prevent +me from hating the big bully of the school, who made the lives of the +ten or fifteen small boys a perpetual torment. How we suffered, no +adult human tongue can tell--and our tongues never told because it was a +convention that tales should not be told out of school. One of the +pleasant tricks of the bully and his friends was to chase the little +boys after school in the winter and bury them until they were almost +suffocated in the snow which was piled up in the narrow streets. It was +not only suffocating snow, but it was dirty snow. It happened that I had +been presented with a penknife consisting of two rather leaden blades +covered with a brilliant iridescent mother-of-pearl handle. The bully +wanted this knife, and I knew it. Generally, I left it at home; but it +occurred to me on one inspired morning, after I had read "Plutarch" the +night before, that I would display the knife open in my pocket, and when +he threw the full weight of his body upon me, I would kill him at once, +by an upward thrust of the knife. + +This struck me as a good deed entirely worthy of Brutus. Of course, I +knew that I should be hanged, but then I expected the glory of making a +last dying speech, and, besides, the school would have a holiday. On the +morning preceding the great sacrifice, I gave out dark hints to the +small boys, distributed my various belongings to friends who were about +to be bereaved, and predicted a coming holiday. I was looked on as +rather "crazy," but I reflected that I would soon be considered heroic, +and my friends gladly accepted the gifts. + +The fatal afternoon came. I displayed the penknife. The chase began. The +bully and his chosen friends threw themselves upon me. The moment had +come; I thrust the knife upward; the big boy uttered a howl, and ran, +still howling. I looked for blood, but there was none visible; I came to +the conclusion, with satisfaction, that he was bleeding internally. I +spent a gloomy evening at home uttering dire predictions which were +incomprehensible to the members of my family, and reread Brutus, in the +"Lives." + +The next morning I went to school with lessons unstudied and awaited +events. The mother of the bully appeared, and entered into an excited +colloquy with the very placid and dignified teacher. I announced to the +boy next to me, "My time has come." I was called up to the awful desk. +"Is he dead?" I asked. "Did he bleed internally?" "You little wretch," +the mother of the tyrant said, "you cut such fearful holes in my son's +coat, that he is afraid to come to school to-day!" Then I said, +regretfully, "Oh, I hoped that I had killed him." There was a sensation; +my character was blackened. I was set down as a victim of total +depravity; I endured it all, but I knew in my heart that it was +"Plutarch." This is the effect that "Plutarch" had on the mind of a good +Christian child. + +The effects of "Plutarch" on my character were never discovered at home, +and as I grew older and learned one or two wrestling tricks, the bully +let me alone. Besides, my murderous intention, which had leaked out, +gave me such a reputation that I became a dictator myself, and made +terms for the small boys, in the name of freedom, which were sometimes +rather despotic. + +It was also during these days that I remember carrying confusion into +the family when a patronizing, intellectual lady called and said, "I +hope that this dear little boy is reading the Rollo books?" "No," I +answered quickly and indiscreetly, "I am reading 'The New Magdalen,' by +Wilkie Collins." I did not think much of Wilkie Collins until I read +"The Moonstone." It seemed that "The New Magdalen" had been purchased +inadvertently by my father, in a packet of "classics." + +My father generally arrived at home late in the afternoon, when he read +the evening paper. After a very high tea, he stretched himself on a long +horsehair-covered sofa, and bade me read to him, generally from the +novels of George Eliot, or from certain romances running through the New +York _Ledger_ by Sylvanus Cobb, Jr. These were generally stories of the +times of the Irish Kings, in which gallowglasses and lovely and +aristocratic Celtic maidens disported themselves. My mother, after her +conversion, disapproved of the New York _Ledger_. In fact, there were +families in Philadelphia whose heads regarded it with real horror! In +our house, there was a large stack of this interesting periodical, +which, with many volumes of Godey's _Lady's Book_, were packed in the +attic. + +It happened that a young man, in whom my father had a great interest, +was threatened with tuberculosis. An awful rumour was set abroad that he +was about to die. He sent over a messenger asking my father for the back +numbers of the New York _Ledger_ containing a long serial story by Mrs. +Anna Cora Mowatt. As I remember, it was a story of the French +Revolution, and the last number that I was allowed to read ended with a +description of a dance in an old château, when the Marquise, who was +floating through the minuet, suddenly discovered blood on the white-kid +glove of her right hand! I was never permitted to discover where the +blood came from; I should like to find out now if I could find the +novel. I remember that my mother was terribly shocked when my father +sent the numbers of the New York _Ledger_ to the apparently dying man. +"It's a horrible thing," my mother said, "to think of any Christian +person reading the New York _Ledger_ at the point of death." The young +man, however, did not die; and I rather think my father attributed his +recovery to the exhilarating effect of one of his favourite stories. + +There were certain other serial stories I was ordered to read; they were +stories of the Irish Brigade in France. My mother, I remember, +disapproved of them because Madame de Pompadour was frequently +mentioned, and she thought that my father regarded the lady in question +too tolerantly. These romances were, I think, written by a certain Myles +O'Reilly who was in some way connected with the army. This procedure of +reading aloud was not always agreeable, as my father frequently went to +sleep in the middle of a passage and forgot what I had already read. The +consequence was that I was obliged to begin the same old story over +again on the following evening. + +It happened that my father was one of the directors of a local library, +and in it I found Bates's volume on the Amazon--I forget the exact title +of the book. I found myself in a new world; I lived in Para; I tried to +manufacture an imitation of the Urari poison with a view to +exterminating rats in the warehouse by the use of arrows; I lived and +had my being in the forests of Brazil; and I produced, at intervals, a +thrilling novel, with the glowing atmosphere of the Amazon as a +background. I preferred Mr. Bates to any novelist I had ever read. He +held possession of my imagination, until he was forced out by a Mr. +Jerningham who wrote a most entrancing book on Brittany. Saint Malo +became the only town for me; I adored Henri de la Rochejaquelein; and +the Stuarts, whom I had learned to love at the knees of Sir Walter +Scott, were displaced by the Vendéans. + +Noticing that I was devoted to books of travel, my father asked me to +parse Kane's "Arctic Voyages." I found the volumes cold and repellent. +They gave me a rooted prejudice against the North Pole which even the +adventure of Doctor Cook has never enabled me to overcome. + +About this time, my mother began to feel that I needed to read something +more gentle, which would root me more effectively in my religion. She +began, I think, with Cardinal Newman's "Callista" in which there was a +thrilling chapter called "The Possession of Juba." It seemed to me one +of the most stirring things I had ever read. Then I was presented with +Mrs. Sadlier's "The Blakes and the Flanagans," which struck me as a very +delightful satire, and with a really interesting novel of New York +called "Rosemary," by Dr. J. V. Huntington; and then a terribly +blood-curdling story of the Carbonari in Italy, called "Lionello." After +this I was wafted into a series of novels by Julia Kavanagh; "Natalie," +and "Bessie," and "Seven Years," I think were the principals. My father +declined to read them; he thought they were too sentimental, but as the +author had an Irish name he was inclined to regard them with tolerance. +He thought I would be better employed in absorbing "Tom and Jerry; or +The Adventures of Corinthian Bob," by Pierce Egan. My mother objected to +this, and substituted "Lady Violet; or the Wonder of Kingswood Chace," +by the younger Pierce Egan, which she considered more moral. + +My father was very generous at Christmas, and I bought a large volume of +Froissart for two dollars and a half at an old book stand on Fifth +Street, near Spruce. After this, I was lost to the world during the +Christmas holidays. After breakfast, I saturated myself with the +delightful battles in that precious book. + +My principal duty was to look after the front pavement. In the spring +and summer, it was carefully washed twice a week and reddened with some +kind of paint, which always accompanied a box of fine white sand for the +scouring of the marble steps; but in the winter, this respectable +sidewalk had to be kept free from snow and ice. + +Hitherto my battle with the elements had been rather a diversion. +Besides, I was in competition with the other small boys in the block--or +in the "square," as we Philadelphians called it. Now it became irksome; +I neglected to dig the ice from between the bricks; I skimped my +cleaning of the gutter; I forgot to put on my "gums." The boy next door +became a mirror of virtue; he was quoted to me as one whose pavement was +a model to all the neighbours; indeed, it was rumoured that the Mayor +passing down our street, had stopped and admired the working of his +civic spirit, while the result of my efforts was passed by with evident +contempt. I did not care. I hugged Froissart to my heart. Who would +condescend to wield a broom and a wooden shovel, even for the reward of +ten cents in cash, when he could throw javelins and break lances with +the knights of the divine Froissart? The end of my freedom came after +this. The terrible incident of the Mayor's contempt, invented, I +believe, by the boy next door, induced my mother to believe that I was +not only losing my morals, but becoming too much of a book-worm. For +many long weeks I was deprived of any amusing book except "Robinson +Crusoe." After this interval, vacation came; I seemed to have grown +older, and books were never quite the same again. + +In the vacation, however, when the days were very long and there was a +great deal of leisure, I found myself reduced to Grimms' "Fairy Tales" +and a delightful volume by Madame Perrault, and I was even then very +much struck by the difference. Of course I read Grimm from cover to +cover, and went back again over the pages, hoping that I had neglected +something. The homeliness of the stories touched me; it seemed to me +that you found yourself in the atmosphere of old Germany. Madame +Perrault was more delicate; her fairy tales were pictures of no life +that ever existed, and there was a great dissimilarity between her +"Cendrillon" and the Grimms' story of "Aschenputtel." As I remember, the +haughty sisters in the story of the beautiful girl who lived among the +ashes each cut off one of her toes, in order to make her feet seem +smaller and left bloody marks on the glass slipper. Madame Perrault's +slipper was, I think, of white fur, and there was no such brutality in +_her_ fairyland. But, except Hans Christian Andersen's, there are no +such gripping fairy tales as those of the Brethren Grimm. During this +vacation, too, I discovered the "Leprachaun," the little Irish fairy +with the hammer. He was not at all like the English fairies in +Shakespeare's "Midsummer Night's Dream," and, leaving out Ariel, I +think I liked him best of all. + +That summer, too, I found an old copy of "Midsummer Night's Dream" in +the attic. The print was exceedingly fine, but everything was there. No +doubt there is much to be said by the pedagogues in favour of +scrupulously studying Shakespeare's plays; but if you have never +discovered "As You Like It" or "Midsummer Night's Dream" when you were +very young, you will never know the meaning of that light which never +was on land or sea, and with which Keats surrounds us in the "Ode to the +Nightingale." The love interest did not count much. In my youthful +experience everybody either married or died, in books. That was to be +expected. It was the atmosphere that counted. One could see the troopers +coming into the open space in the Forest of Arden and hear their songs, +making the leaves of the trees quiver before they appeared. And Puck! +and Caliban! When I was young I was always very sorry for Caliban, and, +being very religious, I felt that the potent Prospero might have done +something for his soul. + +There was a boy who lived near us called Lawrence Stockdale--peace be +to his ashes where-ever he rests! His father and mother, who were +persons of cultivation, encouraged him to read, but we were not of one +opinion on any subject. He was devoted to Dumas, the Elder. After the +episode of "Monte Cristo" I was led to believe that Dumas was "wrong." I +preferred Sir Walter Scott, and loved all the Stuarts, having a positive +devotion for Mary, Queen of Scots. One day, however, I discovered +somewhere, under a pile of old geometries and books about navigation, a +fat, red-bound copy of "Boccaccio." Stockdale said that "Boccaccio" was +"wronger" than Dumas, and that his people had warned him against the +stories of this Italian. As we lived near an Italian colony, and he +disliked Italians, while I loved them, I attributed this to mere +prejudice. + +The "Boccaccio" was, as I have said, fat and large. For a boy who likes +to read, a fat book is very tempting, and just as I had seated myself +one afternoon on the front doorstep, to read the story of the Falcon, +and having finished it with great pleasure, dipped into another tale not +so edifying, my mother appeared. She turned pale with horror, and seized +the book at once. My father was informed of what had occurred. He was +little alarmed, I think. My mother said: "We shall have to change the +whole course of this boy's reading." "We shall have to change the boy +first," my father said, with a sigh. But this was not the end. At the +proper time I was led to the Pastor, who was my mother's confessor. The +book was presented to him for destruction. + +"It's a bad book," the Monsignore said. "I hope you didn't talk about +any of these stories to the other boys in school?" + +"Oh, no," I said; "if I did, they would say much worse things, and I +would probably have to tell them in confession. Besides," I added, "all +the people in the Boccaccio book were good Catholics, I suppose, as they +were Italians, and I think, after all, when they caught the plague, they +died good deaths." + +The Pastor looked puzzled, took the book, and gave me his blessing and +dismissed me. And my mother seemed to think that I was sufficiently +exorcised. + +After this the books I read were more carefully considered. I was given +the "Tales of Canon Schmidt"--dear little stories of German children in +the Black Forest, with strange little wood-cuts, which went very well +with another volume I found at this time called "Jack Halifax," not +"John Halifax, Gentleman," which my mother had already read to me--but a +curious little tome long out of print. And then there sailed upon my +vision a long procession of the works of the Flemish novelist, Hendrik +Conscience, whose "Lion of Flanders" opened a new world of romance, and +there were "Wooden Clara," and other pieces which made one feel as if +one lived in Flanders. + +Just about this time I read in Littell's _Living Age_ a novel called +"The Amber Witch," and some of Fritz Reuter's Low German stories; but +these were all effaced by "The Quaker Soldier." This may not have been +much of a novel. I did not put it to the touch of comparison with "The +Virginians" or "Esmond." They were what my father called +"classics"--things superior and apart; but "The Quaker Soldier" was +quite good enough for me. It opened a new view of American Revolutionary +history, and then it was redolent of the country of Pennsylvania. I +recall now the incident of the Pennsylvania Dutch housewife's using her +thumb to spread the butter on the bread for the hungry soldier. This is +all that I can recall of those delectable pages. But, later, neither +Henry Peterson's "Pemberton" nor Dr. Weir Mitchell's "Hugh Wynne" seemed +to have the glory and the fascination of the long-lost "Quaker Soldier." + +After this, I fell under the spell of the French Revolution through a +book, given to me by my mother, about _la Vendée_. It was a dull book, +but nothing, not even a bad translation, could dim the heroism of Henri +de la Rochejaquelein for me, and I became a Royalist of the Royalists, +and held hotly the thesis that if George Washington had returned the +compliment of going over to France in '89, he would have done Lafayette +a great service by restoring the good Louis XVI. and the beautiful Marie +Antoinette! + +When I had reached the age of seventeen I had developed, as the result +of my reading, a great belief in all lost causes. I had become +exceedingly devoted to the cause of Ireland as the kindly Pastor had +sent me a copy of "Willy Reilly and His Colleen Bawn," perhaps as an +antidote to the lingering effects of "Boccaccio." I was rather troubled +to find so many "swear words" in it, but I made all the allowances that +a real lover of literature is often compelled to make! + + +_The Bible_ + +The glimpses I had of the Bible, some of which rather prejudiced me, as +a moral child, against the Sacred Book, were, however, of inestimable +value. Of course the New Testament was always open to me, and I read it +constantly as a pleasure. The language, both in the Douai version and +the King James version, was often very obscure. Although I soon learned +to recognize the beauty of the 23rd Psalm in the King James +version--which I always read when I went to one of my cousins--I found +the sonorous Latinisms of the Douai version interesting. For a time I +was limited to a book of Bible stories given us to read at school, as it +was considered unwise to permit children to read the Old Testament +unexpurgated. After a while, however, the embargo seemed to be raised +for some reason or other, and again I was allowed to revel with a great +deal of profit in the wonderful poems, prophecies, and histories of the +Old Testament. I soon discovered that it was impossible to understand +the allusions in English literature without a knowledge of the Bible. +What would "Ruth among the alien corn" mean to a reader who had never +known the beauty of the story of Ruth? And the lilies of the field, +permeating all poetical literature, would have lost all their perfume if +one knew nothing about the Song of Solomon. + +Putting aside the question as to whether young readers should be let +loose in the Old Testament or not, or whether modern ideas of purity are +justified in including ignorance as the supremest virtue, he who does +not make himself familiar with Biblical ideas and phraseology finds +himself in after-life with an incomplete medium of expression. It used +to be said of the typical English gentleman that all he needed to know +was to ride after the hounds and to construe Horace. This is not so +absurd, after all, as it appears to be to most moderns. To construe +Horace, of course, meant that he should have at least a speaking +acquaintance with one of the masterpieces of Roman literature, and this +knowledge gave him a grip on the universal speech of all cultivated +people. However useless his allusions to Chloë and to Mæcenas were in +the business of practical life, he was at least able to understand what +they meant, and even a slight acquaintance with the Latins stamped him +as speaking the speech of a gentleman. + +Similarly, a man who knows the Scriptures is fitted with allusions that +clarify and illuminate the ordinary speech. He may not have any +technical knowledge, or his technical knowledge may be so great as to +debar him from meeting other men in conversation on equal grounds; but +his reading of the Bible gives his speech or writing a background, a +colour, a metaphorical strength, which illuminate even the commonplace. +Strike the Bible from the sphere of any man's experience and he is in a +measure left out of much of that conversation which helps to make life +endurable. + +Pagan mythology is rather out of fashion. Even the poets often now +assume that Clytie is a name that requires an explanation and that +Daphne and her flight through the laurel do not bring up immediate +memories of Syrinx and the reeds. The Dictionary of Lamprière is covered +with dust; and one may quote an episode from Ovid without an answering +glance of comprehension from the hearer. This does not imply ignorance; +it is only that, in the modern system, the old mythology is not taken +very seriously. + +Since Latin and Greek have almost ceased to be a necessary part of a +gentleman's education, there is no class of allusions from which we can +draw to lighten or strengthen ordinary speech unless we turn to the +Bible. This deprives conversation of much of its colour and renders it +rather commonplace and meagre. Unfortunately, among many of our young +people, the Bible seems to be a book to be avoided or to be treated in a +rather "jocose" manner. To raise a laugh on the vaudeville stage, a +Biblical quotation has only to be produced, and the weary comedian, when +he is at a loss to get a witty speech across the footlights, is almost +sure to speak of Jonah and the whale! + +It is disappointing to notice this gradual change that has taken place +in the attitude of the younger generation toward the Sacred Book. The +Sunday Schools, in their attempt to make the genealogies of importance +and to overload the memories of their little disciples with a multitude +of texts, or to over-explain every allusion in the terms of physical +geography, etc., may in a measure be responsible for this, but they +cannot be entirely responsible. One must admit that diversities of +interpretations of the Sacred Scriptures from a religious point of view +will always be an obstacle to their use in schools where the children of +Jews, of Mohammedans, and of the various Christian denominations +assemble. But there is always the home, where the first impetus to a +satisfactory knowledge of the Sacred Book ought to be given. The decay +of the practice of reading aloud in our homes is very evident in the +lack of real culture--or, rather, rudiments of real culture--in our +children. But there is no use in declaiming against this. Other times, +other manners; accusatory declamation is simply a luxury of Old Age! + +Personally, my desultory reading of the Old and the New Testaments gave +me a background against which I could see the trend of the books I +devoured more clearly; it added immensely to my enjoyment of them; +besides, it was a moral and ethical safeguard. It was easy even for a +boy to discover that the morality of the New Testament was the standard +by which not only life, but literature, which is the finest expression +of life, should be judged. If there are great declamations, declamations +full of dramatic fire, which nearly every boy at school learns to love, +in the Old Testament, there are the most moving, tender, and simple +stories in the New. To the uncorrupted mind, to the unjaded mind, which +has not been forced to look on books as mere recitals of exciting +adventures, the Acts of the Apostles are full of entrancing episodes. It +is very easy for a receptive youth to acquire a taste for St. Paul, and +I soon learned that St. Paul was not only one of the greatest of letter +writers, but as a figure of history more interesting than Julius Cæsar, +and certainly more modern. Young people delight in human documents. They +may not know why they delight in these documents, but it is because of +their humanity. Now who can be more human than St. Paul? And the more +you read his epistles, and the more you know of his life, the more human +he becomes. He knew how to be angry and sin not, and the way he "takes +it out" of those unreasonable people who would not accept his mission +has always been a great delight to me! + +Under the spell of his writing, it was a pleasure to pick out the phases +of his history--a history that even then seemed to be so very modern, +and to a boy, with an unspoiled imagination, so very real. It seemed +only natural that he should be converted by a blast of illumination from +God. It is not hard for young people to accept miracles. All life is a +miracle, and the rising and setting of the sun was to me no more of a +miracle than the conversion of this fierce Jew, who was a Roman citizen. +He seemed so very noble and yet so very humble. He could command and +plead and weep and denounce; and he made you feel that he was generally +right. And then he was a tentmaker who understood Greek and who could +speak to the Greeks in their own language. + +Late in the seventies when nearly every student I knew was a disciple of +Huxley and Tyndal and devoted to that higher criticism of the Bible +which was Germanizing us all, I fortified myself with St. Paul, and with +the belief that, if he could break the close exclusiveness of the Jews, +and take in the Gentiles, if he could throw off, not contemptuously, +many of the rigid ceremonies of his people, Christianity, in the modern +time, could very well afford to accept the new geological interpretation +of the story of Genesis without destroying in any way the faith which +St. Paul preached. + +Somewhat later, too, when I read constantly and with increasing delight +the letters of Madame de Sévigné, I put her second as a writer of +letters to the great St. Paul. The letters of Lord Chesterfield to his +sons came next, I think; long after, Andrew Lang's "Letters to Dead +Authors," and a very great letter I found in an English translation of +Balzac's "Le Lys dans la Vallée." + +It must not be understood that I put St. Paul in the same category with +these mundane persons. Nevertheless, I found St. Paul very often +reasonably mundane. He preferred to work as a tentmaker rather than take +money from his clients, and one could imagine him as preaching while he +worked. He frankly made collections for needy churches, and he was very +grateful to Phœbe for remembering that he was a hungry man and in +need of homely hospitality. He was interested in his fellow passengers +Aquilla and Priscilla whom he met on board the ship that was taking them +from Corinth to Ephesus. It was evident that they had not been able to +make their salt in Corinth, where, however, their poverty had not +interfered with their zeal in the cause of Christ. Any tent marked +"Ephesus" was sure to have a good sale anywhere. The tents from Ephesus +were as fashionable as the purple from Tyre, and St. Paul was pleased +that his two disciples should have a chance of being more prosperous. I +always felt, too, that, in his practical way, he knew that Ephesus would +give him a better chance of supporting himself. + +That Saul of Tarsus had not lacked for luxuries in his youth, one easily +guessed. It was plain, too, that he had had the best possible +instructors, and I liked to believe, when I was young, that his muscles +had been well trained in the sports of gentlemen of his class. +Altogether, so graphic were his descriptions and so potent his +personality that, while Julius Cæsar and Brutus receded, he filled the +foreground, and all the more because at this time I picked up an English +translation of Suetonius, just by chance one dark winter day, and as I +had not yet discovered that Suetonius was a "yellow" gossip, my idols, +some of the Roman heroes, received a great shock. + +The constant reading of St. Paul led me to the Acts of the Apostles, and +I found St. Luke very good reading, though I often wished that, as I +understood he had some reputation as an artist, he had adorned his +writings with illustrations. + +It was a great shock to discover that none of the Apostles wrote in +English, for it seemed to me that their styles were as different from +one another as any styles could be, and as I, having lived a great part +of my time in classes where Nepos and Cæsar were translated by my dear +young friends, had very little confidence in the work of any translator, +I came to the conclusion that God had taken special care of the +translators of the Bible, for I could not help believing that He had no +interest whatever in the translations which we made daily for the +impatient ears of our instructors! + +One could not help loving St. Paul, too, because he was such a good +fighter. When he said he fought with beasts, I was quite sure that these +beasts were the unreasonable and unrighteous persons who persecuted and +contradicted him. No obstacle deterred him, and he was gentle, too, +although he called things by their right names and his denunciations +were so vivid and mouthfilling that you knew his enemies must have been +afraid to open their lips while he was near them, whatever they might +have said behind his back. + +My devotion to St. Paul brought me into disrepute one Friday at school +when discipline was relaxed, and the teacher condescended to +conversation. We were asked who was our favourite hero, and when it came +to my turn I answered "St. Paul." As George Washington, Abraham Lincoln, +Thomas Jefferson, General Grant, General Lee, Napoleon, and Alexander +the Great, had walked in procession before I produced my hero, I was +looked on as rather weakminded. The teacher, too, seemed astonished, and +he asked me on what grounds I founded my worship. This question, coming +suddenly, petrified me for a moment, and I answered, "He fought with +beasts." This was taken as a personal allusion by some of my dear +comrades with whom I had had altercations, and I was made to suffer for +it as much as these dear comrades deemed prudent. However, they +discovered that I had "language" on my side, for on the next composition +day, when we read aloud the work of our brains, I accused them of "being +filled with all iniquity," and other evil things which brought down a +horrified remonstrance from the teacher, who was unaccustomed to such +plain English, but he was knocked high and dry by the proof that I was +only quoting St. Paul to the Romans. + +Perhaps I became too familiar with St. Paul. Be that as it may, I +regarded him as a very good friend indeed, for some of his "language," +quoted in times of crisis, produced a much better effect on one's +enemies than any swear word that could be invented. I am not excusing my +attitude toward the Bible, but merely explaining how it affected my +youthful mind. There was something extremely romantic in the very +phrase, "the tumult of the silversmiths" at Ephesus. It seemed to mean a +whole chapter of a novel in itself. + +And there was the good centurion--Christ always seemed to have a +sympathy for soldiers--who was willing to save Paul when the ship, on +its way to Rome, was run aground. So he reached Melita where the amiable +barbarians showed him no small courtesy. And one could not help liking +the Romans; that is, the official Romans, even Felix, whose wife was a +Jew like St. Paul, and who, disgusted when the Apostle spoke to him of +chastity and of justice to come, yet hoped that money would be given him +by Paul, and frequently sent for, and often spoke with him. And how fine +seemed the Apostle's belief in his nobility as a Roman citizen! He +rendered unto Cæsar the things that were Cæsar's. And one could easily +imagine the pomp and circumstance when Agrippa and Bernice entered into +the hall of audience with the tribunes and principal men of the city! +And one could hear St. Paul saying, protecting himself nobly, through +the nobility of a Roman law: + + For it seemeth to me unreasonable to send a prisoner and not to + signify the things laid to his charge, + +and Agrippa's answer, after Paul's apologia: + + In a little thou persuadest me to become a Christian! + +But the story did not end then. I rehearsed over and over again what the +King Agrippa might have said to his sister, the noble and beautiful +Bernice--I knew nothing of the lady's reputation then--and how finally +they did become Christians. In my imagination, princely dignity and +exquisite grace were added to the external beauty of religion; and Paul +went to Rome protected by the law of the Romans. And yet the very +fineness of his attitude was the cause of his further imprisonment. +"This man," I often repeated with Agrippa, "might have been set at +liberty, if he had not appealed to Cæsar." + +It was St. Paul who sent me back to the Prophet Micheas, who had +previously struck me as of no importance at all, and I read: + + And Thou, Bethlehem Ephrata, art a little one among the thousands + of Juda; out of thee shall he come forth unto me that is to be the + ruler in Israel; and his going forth is from the beginning, from + the days of eternity. + +And back again to St. Matthew-- + + But they said to him: In Bethlehem of Juda; For so it is written by + the prophet; And thou, Bethlehem, the land of Juda, art not the + least among the princes of Juda; for out of thee shall come forth + the captain, who shall rule my people Israel. + +These exercises in completing the prophecies of the Old Testament with +the fulfilments of the New were interesting, and I found great pleasure +in them. And this led me to a greater appreciation of the Old Testament, +against which I had been once rather prejudiced. One day, I was led, by +some reference or other in another book, to read the twenty-third psalm +of David, in the King James version. It struck me as much more simple +and appealing than the version in the Douai Bible, which begins in Latin +"_Dominus regit me_." It runs: + + The Lord ruleth me: and I shall want nothing. + + 2 He hath set me in a place of pasture. + + He hath brought me up, on the water of refreshment: + + 3 He hath converted my soul. He hath led me on the paths of + justice, for his own name's sake. + + 4 For though I should walk in the midst of the shadow of death, I + fear no evils, for thou art with me. + + Thy rod and thy staff, they have comforted me. + + 5 Thou hast prepared a table before me, against them that afflict + me. + + Thou hast anointed my head with oil: and my chalice which + inebriateth me how goodly is it. + + And thy mercy will follow me all the days of my life. + + And that I may dwell in the house of the Lord, unto length of days. + +In the Douai version this psalm was called the twenty-second. + +Without any special guidance--I think most of my teachers would have +looked on as dangerous any attempt to ally English literature with the +Bible--I soon discovered that nearly everything I read owed something to +the Bible. At first, the comparison of the twenty-third psalm in the +King James version enraptured me so much that I began to find fault with +the Latinized phrases of the Vulgate in English. It was the fashion in +the early seventies to be very Saxon in speech, especially in the +little group at school interested in English literature. Street cars at +this time were comparatively new in Philadelphia, and I think we reached +the last extremity of Saxonism in speech when we spoke of them as "folk +wains." The tide then turned toward the Latins; and I preferred the Book +of Job and the story of Ruth in the Latinized version, because the words +were more mouth filling, and because it was very difficult to translate +everything into a bald "early English medium", which for a time I had +been trying to do. It was Keats's lovely phrase "amid the alien corn" +which sent me back to "Ruth"; and a quotation in Quackenbos's +"Rhetoric"--"Can'st thou hook the Leviathan" which made me revel in +"Job." + +Something Meg Merrilies said bore me on toward the roaring storm of +Isaiah. The Latinized medium seemed to suit his denunciations best; and +then, besides, I found more illuminating footnotes in the Douai version +than in the King James. In both versions, some passages were so obscure +that I often wondered how anybody could get any meaning out of them. I +was often astonished to find in English novels that the old people in +the cottages were soothed by texts, quoted at a great length, out of +which I could make nothing, so I limited myself to the Douai version, +which I found more illuminating. + +Whether my system of reading is to be commended or not to young persons, +I am not prepared to say, but for me it made the Bible a really live +book. To be frank, and perhaps shocking at the same time--if anybody had +asked me whether, being marooned on an island, I should have most +preferred the Bible in my loneliness, I should promptly have answered +"No." At this age "Nicholas Nickleby" or "Midsummer Night's Dream," or +"The Tempest," or "As You Like it," or Macaulay's "Lays of Ancient +Rome," would have suited me better, provided, of course, that I could +have chosen only one book. + +It was borne in on me many times that no author could improve on the +phrasing of the Bible. Both in the Vulgate and the King James versions +there are passages which, leaving aside all question of doctrine, it is +sacrilege to try to improve. The French translation of the Bible is, as +everybody knows, very paraphrastic, and that may account for the fact +that, while regarded as a precious depository of doctrine, it is not a +household book, and the dreadfully dull interpretations of Clement +Marot--called hymns--naturally bored a people who, in their hearts, +believe that God listens more amiably to petitions uttered in the +language of the Academy! In their novels, dealing with the beginnings of +Christianity--and there are many such novels in French unknown in other +countries--it is hard for a French author not to be rhetorical, in the +manner of the writer of "Ben Hur" when the death of Christ is described. +No human author could improve on the words of the Vulgate, or the words +of the King James version. What young heart can ponder over these words, +without a thrill, St. John XIX (Douai version: 1609; Rheims; 1582): + + When Jesus therefore had seen his Mother and the disciple standing + whom he loved, he saith to his Mother: Woman, behold thy son. + + After that, he saith to the disciple, Behold thy mother. And from + that day the disciple took her to his own. + + Afterwards, Jesus knowing that all things were now accomplished, + that the Scripture might be fulfilled, said: I thirst. + + Now there was a vessel set there full of vinegar, and they, putting + a sponge full of vinegar about hyssop, put it to his mouth. + + And Jesus therefore when he had taken the vinegar, said, it is + consummated, and bowing his head, gave up the ghost. + +When Marie Corelli became a popular author, there were persons +existing--happily, they have all gone to the great beyond--who thought +that the "talented" author could have done better! + + +_Essays and Essayists_ + +I am aware that many persons look on Emerson as somewhat dangerous +reading for a boy of sixteen. The mothers and fathers of my Baptist +friends and the uncle of my Methodist cousins forbade the reading of +Emerson because of his Unitarianism; but, as the rector of our parish +never denounced Unitarians from the altar, though he frequently offered +his compliments to Martin Luther, I paid no attention whatever to these +objections. I trust that I am not defending the miscellaneous reading of +my boyhood; I do not recommend this course to the approval of parents +and guardians; I am simply expressing the impression that certain books +made on my youthful mind and heart; for, though I never said so in +words, the books I liked were always nearer to my heart than to my mind. +I owe a great debt to Emerson. + +It was on a hot afternoon during the summer vacation that, near sundown, +sitting on the warm marble steps of our house, I dipped into an early +edition of Emerson. I felt inspired at once to think great thoughts and +to do good things, to lift myself above the petty things of the earth, +and to feel that to be an American was to be at once proud and humble. +Emerson's abrupt sentences, like a number of brilliants set close +together, reminded me of "Proverbs"; but the Book of Proverbs did not +get so near to my actual life as the essays of Emerson. I liked the +lessons that he drew from the lives of great men. I was shocked when he +mentioned Confucius and Plato in the same breath as Christ; but I was +amiably tolerant, for I felt that he had never had the privilege of +studying the Little Catechism, and I thought of writing to him on the +subject. But somebody told me that he was an "American Classic" and, +from that, I concluded he was dead, and had doubtless already found out +his mistake. + +Perhaps I might have been better engaged in reading the more practical +books offered to boys in our own time, if we had had them. There were +some books then on scientific subjects, reduced to the comprehension of +the young; but not so many as there are now. One of my uncles +recommended the works of Samuel Smiles--"Self-Help" I think was his +favourite; but Samuel Smiles never appealed to me. My small allowance, +paid weekly, could not have been affected by "Thrift", and when my uncle +quoted passages from this tiresome book I astounded him by replying, in +a phrase I wrongly attributed to the adorable Emerson, that if I had a +quarter to spend instead of twelve cents, I would give half of it for a +hyacinth! My miserly uncle said it sounded just like Mohammed, and that +Emerson had doubtless found it in that dangerous book, the Koran. + +I cannot imagine any other author doing for me just what the essays of +Emerson did. In the first place, they seemed to me to be really +American; in the second, and largely because of their quality, they +offered an antidote to the materialism in the very air, which had +succeeded the Civil War. At this time there was much talk of money and +luxury everywhere about us. Even in our quiet neighbourhood, where +simple living was the rule, many had burst into ostentation, and moved +away into newer and more pretentious quarters, and there was a rumour +that some of these sought unlimited opportunities for extravagant +expenditure. We saw them driving in new carriages, and condescendingly +stopping before the white doors and the green window-shutters of our +old-fashioned colonial houses. They had made money through the war. For +the first time in our lives we boys heard of money making as the +principal aim of life. The fact that these successful persons were +classed as "shoddy" did not lessen the value of the auriferous +atmosphere about us. Emerson was a corrective to this materialism. As to +his philosophy or theology, that did not concern me any more than the +religious opinions of Julius Cæsar, whose "Commentaries" I was obliged +to read. Emerson gave me a taste for the reading of essay. + +By chance I fell upon some essays of Carlyle. The inflation of his style +did not deter me from thoroughly enjoying the paper on "Novalis." That +on "Cagliostro," however, was my favourite. It introduced me intimately +to the French Revolution. I disliked this great charlatan for his motto, +"Tread the lilies under foot." I was for the Bourbons! The French +Revolution, as a fact, was very near to me. My mother had been born (in +Philadelphia) in 1819, and my great-uncle and my grandfather had lived +through the French Revolution. There was a legend, moreover--probably +the same legend exists in every family of Irish descent whose +connections had lived in France--that one of them had been a clerk to +Fabre d'Eglantine, and had spent his time in crossing off the list of +the condemned the names of the Irish-French aristocrats and substituting +in their place others that did not happen to belong to Celts! + +In spite of the Little Catechism and the uplifting influence of Emerson, +I looked on this probably mythical gentleman as one of the glories of +our family. And then there was an old man--very old--who walked up and +down Sixth Street with his head wrapped in a bandanna handkerchief, +bearing a parrot on his shoulder. The boys of the neighbourhood believed +that he was Sanson, the executioner of Louis XVI. and Marie Antoinette. +We shivered when we saw him; but we boasted of his existence in our +neighbourhood, all the same. After I had read "Cagliostro" I devoured +every line on the subject of the French Revolution I could find. It +seemed to me that I would have been willing to give five years out of +my life to have lived in Paris during those horrors, and to have rescued +Marie Antoinette and the Princess Elizabeth! Such brutalities seemed +impossible in our time; and yet I have since lived very near to friends +who went through even greater horrors in Russia--the Baroness Sophie de +Buxhoevenden, second lady-in-waiting to the Czarina, for instance, whose +letters lie before me as I write. + +In spite of my taste for Carlyle, which induced me to dip into Jean Paul +Richter, of whose writings I remember only one line, + + I love God and little children, + +I did not get very far into his "French Revolution." It seemed then an +unreal and lurid book. + +Emerson led to Montaigne, whose essays, in an old edition which I had +from the Mechanics' Institute, of which my father was a committeeman, +delighted me beyond words. I liked Emerson's essay on "Friendship" +better than his, but for wit, quick repartee, general cheerfulness, he +reminded me of my favourite heroine in literature, Sir Walter Scott's +Catherine Seton! Later, I read with astonishment that Montaigne was an +unbeliever, a skeptic, almost a cynic. I was extremely indignant; he +seemed to me to be a very pious gentleman, with that wit and humour +which I seldom found in professedly pious books; and to this day I +cannot hear Montaigne talked of as a precursor of Voltaire without +believing that there is something crooked in the mind of the talker. So +much for the impressions made in youth, so much for the long, long +thoughts of which Longfellow sings. + +Who is more amusingly cheerful than Montaigne, who more amusingly wise, +who so well bred and attractive, who knew the world better and took it +only as the world? Give me the old volume of Montaigne and a loaf of +bread--no Victrola singing to me in the wilderness!--a thermos bottle, +and one or two other things, and I can still spend the day in any wild +place! I did not, of course, know, in those early days, what in his +flavour attracted me. Afterward, I found that it was the very flavour +and essence of Old France. Carlyle's impressions of historical persons +interested me, but Montaigne was the most actual of living persons who +spoke to me in a voice I recognized as wholly his. To be sure, I read +him in Florio's translation. + +I think it was about this time, too, that I discovered a very modern +writer, who charmed me very greatly. It was Justin McCarthy who +contributed a series of sketches of great men of the day to a magazine +called the _Galaxy_. He "did" Victor Emmanuel and Pope Pius IX. and +Bismarck, and many other of the worthies of the times. Nothing that he +wrote before or after this pleased me at all; but these sketches were so +interesting and apparently so true that they really became part of my +life. If I had been asked at this time who was my favourite of all +modern authors, and what the name of the composer I admired most, I +should have said Justin McCarthy and Offenbach! I regarded "Voici le +Sabre" in "La Grande Duchesse" as a masterpiece only to be compared to +an "Ave Verum," by Pergolesi, which was often sung in St. Philip's +Church at the Offertory! A strange mixture, but the truth is the truth. +Although I have not been able to find Justin McCarthy's series of +sketches, they still hold a sweet place in my memory. Perhaps, like +other masterpieces that one loves in youth, one would now find them like +those beautiful creatures of the sea that seem to be vermilion and +purple and gold under the waves, but are drab and ugly things when taken +out of the water. This applies to some books that one reads with +pleasure in early days, and wonders, later, how they were endured! + +There were not so many outdoor books in the late '60's as there are now. +We were all sent to Thoreau's "Walden" and Dana's "Two Years Before the +Mast." "Walden" I learned to like, but I much preferred Fenimore +Cooper's description of nature. "Walden" struck me as the book of a man +playing at out-of-doors, imagining his wildness, and never really liking +to be too far from the town. Singularly enough, it was not until I +discovered Hamerton's "A Painter's Camp" that I began to see that nature +had beauties in all weathers. In truth, I hate to confess that nature +alone never appealed to me. A landscape without human beings seemed +deadly dull; and I did not understand until I grew much older that I had +really believed that good art was an improvement on nature. + +I have not the slightest idea in what light the modern critics see the +works of Philip Gilbert Hamerton. I tried to read one of his novels +recently, and failed; but let me say that, allowing for receptivity and +what one may call temperament, I know of no book more revealing as to +the relations of nature and art than "A Painter's Camp." I recall +vividly the words of the beginning of the preface to the first edition: + + It is known to all who are acquainted with the present condition of + the fine arts in England that landscape-painters rely less on + memory and invention than formerly, and that their work from nature + is much more laborious than it used to be. + +I had seen so many pictures that seemed to be "made up" in the artist's +studio and I knew so well from my experience in the drawing classes at +school, how nature was neglected for artificial models, that I hailed +these words with great joy. + +Everything in life was rather conventional, rather fixed, for the +Centennial Exhibition in Philadelphia, to which our country owes the +beginning of the æsthetic awakening, had not yet taken place. It may +seem strange to this generation that we were limited to the wood-cuts in +Godey's _Lady's Book_, the illustrations in _Harper's Magazine_, and an +occasional picture in some short-lived periodical. The reign of the +chromo had just begun. Rogers's groups were a fixture in nearly every +self-respecting house, though I am glad to say, in my own family, very +good casts of the Clytie and the Discus-thrower filled their place. My +father greatly admired Power's Greek Slave, whose praises had been +celebrated in the _Cosmopolitan Magazine_; but my mother regarded it as +almost "improper." + +Nearly every youth of my generation, in Philadelphia, wanted not exactly +something better, but something more vivid. There were few sports; long +walks and a little cricket supplied the place of the coming baseball and +tennis. + +In his "Steeplejack," James Huneker speaks of his weekly walks with Mr. +Edward Roth, the head of a military school and the author of "Christus +Judex." I, too, looked on these walks with an occasional row on the +Schuylkill with him as the best part of my education. But this was +later. All we could do, then, in our moments of leisure, was to walk and +talk and read. + +The cult of the out-of-doors had not yet begun to be developed. The +beginning of "A Painter's Camp" was most attractive to my thirsty soul. +Mr. Hamerton says: + + I had a wild walk yesterday. I have a notion of encamping on the + Boulsworth moors to study heather; and heartily tired of being + caged up here in my library, with nothing to see but wet + garden-walks and dripping yew trees, and a sundial whereon no + shadow had fallen the livelong day, I determined, in spite of the + rain to be off to the moors to choose a site for my encampment. Not + very far from this house still dwells an old servant of my uncle's + with whom I am on the friendliest terms. So I called upon this + neighbour on my way and asked him if he would take a walk with me + to the hills. Jamie stared a little and remarked that "it ur feefi + weet" but accompanied me nevertheless, and a very pleasant walk we + had of it. + +Hamerton opened his book in Jane Eyre's country; our family had lately +read "Jane Eyre." This added interest to the volume, and there came the +details of the invention of the new hut, intended to be a shelter +against all weathers, so that the artist might study nature on intimate +terms. He made it in order to paint the heather at close range. Now, +this was a revelation! It had never hitherto occurred to me that the +heather changes its aspect day by day, or indeed that our pet place of +beauty, the Wissahickon Creek, or river if you like, was not the same +every day in the year except when the ice bound it! This may seem a +rather stupid state of mind; but it is the stupidity that is very +common. I could understand how interesting it would be to be in +snow-fall while yet safely out of it. Mr. Hamerton thus described his +hut: + + It consists entirely of panels, of which the largest are two feet + six inches square: these panels can be carried separately on + packhorses, or even on men's backs, and then united together by + iron bolts into a strong little building. Four of the largest + panels serve as windows, being each of them filled with a large + pane of excellent plate-glass. When erected, the walls present a + perfectly smooth surface outside, and a panelled interior; the + floor being formed in exactly the same manner, with the panelled or + coffered side turned towards the earth, and the smooth surface + uppermost. By this arrangement all the wall-bolts are inside, and + those of the floor underneath it, which protects them not only from + the weather but from theft, an iron bolt being a great temptation + to country people on account of its convenience and utility. The + walls are bolted to the floor, which gives great strength to the + whole structure, and the panels are carefully ordered, like the + stones in a well-built wall, so that the joints of the lower course + of panels do not fall below those of the upper. The roof is arched + and provides a current of fresh air, by placing ventilators at each + end of the arch, which insures a current without inconvenience to + the occupant. + +The chapters on "Concerning Moonlight in Old Castles," "The Coming of +the Clouds," and the little sketches, like "Loch Awe after Sunset, +Sept. 23, 1860," enchanted me. It had not before struck me that Loch +Awe was different on September 23, 1860, from what it was at other +times, or--to carry the idea further--that the imperial Delaware had +changed since that momentous time when George Washington crossed it, or +the Schuylkill since Tom Moore looked upon it. + +To quote further: + + The mountain is green-grey, colder and greener towards the summit. + All details of field and wood are dimly visible. Two islands nearer + me are distinct against the hill, but their foliage seems black, + and no details are visible in them. The sky is all clouded over. + From the horizon to the zenith it is one veil of formless vapour. + +And: + + There is one streak of dead calm, which reflects the green mountain + perfectly from edge to edge of it. There is another calm shaped + like a great river, which is all green, touched with crimson. + Besides these there are delicate half calms, just dulled over with + faint breathings of the evening air; these, for the most part being + violet (from the sky), except at a distance, where they take a deep + crimson; and there is one piece of crimson calm near me set between + a faint violet breeze and a calm of a different violet. There are + one or two breezes sufficiently strong to cause ripple, and these + rippled spaces take the dull grey slate of the upper sky. + + Realise this picture as well as you may be able, and then put in + the final touch. Between the dull calms and the glassy calms there + are drawn thin threads of division burning with scarlet fire. + + This fire is of course got from the lower sky. I know whence it + comes, but how or why it lies in those thin scarlet threads there + where it is most wanted, and not elsewhere, I cannot satisfactorily + explain. + +Then there was a delightful and illuminating chapter called "A Stream at +Rest." Hamerton, who is probably now very much out of fashion, taught me +the necessity of beauty in life; and, as an accessory to Emerson, the +philosophy of enjoying the little, every-day things. It was Emerson who, +I think, said first to me, "Take short outlooks"; and I still think that +there can be no better introduction to a consideration of the relation +of art to nature than "A Painter's Camp." It was "A Painter's Camp" +which led me to "The Intellectual Life." There is a particular passage +in Hamerton's chapter on "A Little French City" that emphasized the need +of beauty. + + The cathedral is all poetry; I mean that every part of it affects + our emotional nature either by its own grandeur or beauty, or by + its allusion to histories of bright virtue or brave fortitude. And + this emotional result is independent of belief in the historical + truth of these great legends: it would be stronger, no doubt, if we + believed them, but we are still capable of feeling their solemn + poetry and large significance as we feel the poetry and + significance of "Sir Galahad" or "The Idylls of the King." + + Some persons are so constituted that it is necessary to their + happiness to live near some noble work of art or nature. A mountain + is satisfactory to them because it is great and ever new, + presenting itself every hour under aspects so unforeseen that one + can gaze at it for years with unflagging interest. To some minds, + to mine amongst others, human life is scarcely supportable far from + some stately and magnificent object, worthy of endless study and + admiration. But what of life in the plains? Truly, most plains are + dreary enough, but still they may have fine trees, or a cathedral. + And in the cathedral, here, I find no despicable compensation for + the loss of dear old Ben Cruacha. + +There are some humorous and perhaps even comic passages in "The +Intellectual Life"; these passages are unconsciously humorous or comic, +as Mr. Philip Gilbert Hamerton seems to have no sense of humour. For +instance, it was a great surprise to me to discover that poverty was +unfavourable to the intellectual life! It was enlightening to know the +reason why a man should wear evening dress after six o'clock, and why +the sporting of gray clothes in the evening was unworthy of the +Intellectual! Besides, it affects the character! + +And letter XI "To a Master of Arts who said that a Certain Distinguished +Painter was Half-educated," was a useful antidote to youthful +self-conceit. I had not reached the stage, treated in the chapters on +"Women and Marriage," "To a Young Gentleman Who Contemplated Marriage," +but I thought the author very wise indeed, and found many other pages +which were intensely stimulating. Let others decry Hamerton if they +like; I owe a great deal to him; and, though I might be induced to throw +"The Intellectual Life" to the Young Wolves of the Beginning of this +Century, I shall always insist that "A Painter's Camp" ought to be +included in every list of books. + +It was George Eliot who sent me to "The Following of Christ," and she +interested me in Saint Teresa, that illustrious woman so well compounded +of mysticism and common sense, of whom, however, I could find no good +"Life." But Thomas à Kempis was a revelation! He fitted into nearly +every crisis of the soul, but all his words are not for every-day life. +He seems to demand too much of us poor folk of the world. Later, I came +to understand that the counsel of perfection which Christ gave to the +rich young man was not intended for the whole world, and many fine +passages in À Kempis were meant for finer temperaments than my own. + +Somebody at this time presented me with a copy of Marcus Aurelius. I +found him dull, stale, and unprofitable in comparison with À Kempis. His +philosophy of life seemed to lead to nothing except the cultivation of a +very high opinion of oneself. I gave this conclusion to one of my +English friends, who objected to my uncharted course of reading, and he +said, "A person like you who finds nothing humorous or even +philosophical in 'Alice in Wonderland' cannot be expected to like the +works of Marcus Aurelius!" + +It takes a prig to divide his reading into nicely staked off little +plots, each with its own date. The art of injudicious reading, the art +of miscellaneous reading which every normal man ought to cultivate, is a +very fine and satisfactory art; for the best guide to books is a book +itself. It clasps hands with a thousand other books. It has always +seemed to me that "Sesame and Lilies" would not have been conceived by +Ruskin if he had not heard well an echo of "The Following of Christ." +There was a time when the lovers of Ruskin who wanted to read "The +Stones of Venice" and the rest at leisure, felt themselves obliged to +form clubs, and to divide the expense, if they were of moderate means, +in order to get what was good out of him. But somehow or other, probably +because it appealed more to everybody, it was always possible to find a +copy of "Sesame and Lilies" at an old book stand. I think I found one +most unexpectedly at Leary's in Philadelphia, where I also discovered +the copy of Froissart. The Froissart, as I have said, cost me just half +of my father's Christmas present that year, which was five dollars. I +must have managed to get the Ruskin volume out of some other fund, for I +had many things to buy with the other two and one half dollars! + +Ruskin is left alone to-day; he does not seem to fill that "long-felt +want" which we, the young of the sixties and seventies, admitted. No +doubt he is very mannered in his style, mitred and coped when he might +have been very simple in his raiment. He was a priest in literature and +art; and he clothed himself as a priest. He marched with a stately +tread, and yet he stooped to the single violets by the wayside. + +By the way, I often wished when I was reading Ruskin, who once made +apple blossoms fashionable, that he had led a crusade against the double +and the triple violet, which have destroyed the reputation of the real +violet. What can be more repellent to the lovers of simplicity than a +bunch of these artificialities, without perfume, tied by dark green +ribbon, and with all their leaves removed? "Sesame and Lilies" had the +effect of sending me back to the single violet whenever I was inclined +to admire the _camellia japonica_ or any other thing that was +artificial, or distorted from beauty or simplicity. + +Circumstances have a great deal to do with our affection for books. +Propinquity, they say, leads very frequently to marriage, and if a book +happens to be near and if it is any kind of book at all, there is a +great temptation to develop an affection for it. All I can say is that I +think that "Sesame and Lilies" is a good book, for after all a book must +be judged by its effect. It led me further into Ruskin, and helped me to +acquire a reverence for art and to estimate the relations of art and +life. One would steel oneself against the fallacy that art, true art, +might exist only for art's sake, when one had read "Sesame and Lilies" +and "The Stones of Venice." Those wise men who make literary +"selections" for the young have done well to include in their volumes +that graphic description, so carefully modulated in tone, of the +Cathedral of St. Mark. Its only fault is that it comes too near to being +prose poetry; and discriminating readers who ponder over it will find +some epithets possible only to a writer who was an artist in lines and +pigments before he began to paint with the pen. + +Ruskin opened our eyes rather violently to some aspects of life which +we, the young, did not know; for the young after all learn very little +by intuition. They must be taught things. This is perhaps an excuse for +those vagaries in youth, those seemingly inexplicable adventures which +shock the old who have forgotten what it is to be young. + + + + +CHAPTER II + +POETS AND POETRY + +_France--Of Maurice de Guérin_ + + +In 1872, the attention of readers was forced on a few great names. These +were generally the names of Frenchmen. The sympathy of Americans during +the Franco-Prussian War had been with France, and during the latter days +of the French Empire, before the war, Americans had been much more +interested in France than in any other part of the world. There were +letters from Paris in the newspapers. The Empress Eugénie and her +coterie at the Tuileries, the Operas of Offenbach, and the gossip about +literary magnets of the time, which included a great deal of Victor +Hugo, had been a constant subject of conversations. + +One could buy French books easily in Philadelphia; and the Mercantile +Library--now dreadfully shorn of its former pretensions, reduced in +size, no longer so comfortable, so delightfully easy of access as to +its shelves--had an excellent collection of volumes in French. + +How often in later life I blessed the discriminating collectors of that +library! Nothing worth while at that time, even "L'Homme" of Ernest +Hello, seemed to have been left out; I fear that I was not always guided +by the critics of the period. I found Amédée Achard as interesting as +Octave Feuillet; George Sand bored me; I could never get through even +"La Petite Fadette," although the critics were constantly recommending +her for her "vitality." I found Madame de Gérardin's "La Femme qui +Déteste Son Mari" one of the cleverest plays I had yet read. I have not +seen it since; but, outside of some of the pieces of Augier, it seemed +to me to be the best bit of construction I knew, and the human interest +and the suspense were so admirably kept up. There were some plays by +Octave Feuillet--"Redemption" was one and "Le Roman d'un Jeune Homme +Pauvre," which divided my admiration with the management of "Adrienne +Lecouvreur," by Scribe, and "Mademoiselle de la Seiglière," by Jules +Sandeau. The French playwrights of to-day have not even the technique of +their predecessors. + +At this time I was very royalist, an infuriated partisan of the Comte de +Chambord--Henry V., as a few of us preferred to call him. And this +reminds me of my partisanship in things English--if I may turn for the +moment from things French--and of a little incident not without humour. +I was ardently devoted to the cause of the Stuarts, and was for a time +attached to the White Rose Society, whose correspondents in England +invariably sent their letters, with the stamp turned upside down, to +indicate their contempt for the Guelf dynasty. But when, at a small and +frugal reunion at Mr. Green's restaurant in Philadelphia, our host--he +was an American Walsh of the family of de Serrant--insisted on waving +his glass of beer over the finger bowls, to insinuate that we were +drinking to the last of the Stuarts across the water--whoever he might +be--and another member suggested that, if it were not for the brutal +Hanoverians on the throne of England, we, in the British Colonies, might +be still enjoying the blessedness of being ruled by a descendant of Mary +Stuart, I resigned! I was still devoutly faithful to the divine Mary of +Scotland; but I would not have her mixed up in American politics! + +Octave Feuillet satisfied my taste for elegance. Some of his people were +not above reproach--notice the lady in "Redemption," who becomes +suddenly converted to a belief in God because her twenty-fifth lover is +suddenly restored to her. I thought that, though he was somewhat +corrupted by the influence of the Tuileries, he was socially so +admirably correct. + +Everybody at this time talked of Renan. This went by me as an idle +dream, for I could never understand why anybody should take a man +seriously who was palpably wrong. To-day, when Renan's "Life of Jesus" +seems almost forgotten, it is strange to recall the fury of interest it +excited in the seventies. Louis Veuillot interested me much more than +Renan, whom I avoided deliberately because I understood that he had +attacked the Christian religion. Now, Louis Veuillot, in "Les Odeurs de +Paris" and "Les Parfums de Rome" delighted me almost beyond bounds. I +did often wonder how such a good man as Louis Veuillot could have +acquired such un-Christian use of language. When he announced that if +his wife wrote such novels as George Sand, he would hesitate to +recognize her children, it seemed to me that he had gone too far--still +it was a pleasant thing to shock the chaste Philadelphians by quoting +these trenchant words when the novels of the lady in question were +mentioned with rapt admiration. + +But to come to the poets! + +It was, I think, through the reading of the "Lundis" of Sainte-Beuve +that I discovered Maurice de Guérin. He almost drove my beloved Keats +from my mind. Somebody warned me against Maurice de Guérin on the ground +of his pantheism. I had been warned against the poems of Emerson on +account of their paganism; but as I had been brought up on Virgil, I +looked on pantheism and paganism as rather orthodox compared to Renan's +negation and the horrors of Calvinism. And, after all, the Catholic +Church had retained so much that was Jewish and pagan that I was sure to +find myself almost as much at home among the pagans as I was in the Old +Testament at times. + +Keats and Maurice de Guérin will be always associated in my mind. I +discovered them about the same time. I had been solemnly told by an +eminent Philadelphian that Wordsworth was the only poet worth +considering, after Shakespeare, and that Keats had no intellectual value +whatever. But I was not looking for intellectual value. I mixed up the +intellect with a kind of scientific jargon about protoplasm and natural +selection and the survival of the fittest, and bathybius, which was then +all the fashion; so I promptly devoted myself to De Guérin. + +I had already found great pleasure in the "Journal" of his sister +Eugénie. The "Journal" ought never to be allowed to go out of fashion, +and probably it is only out of fashion in those circles which Mr. +Mencken so scorns, that devote themselves to imitations of Marie +Bashkirtseff or Sarah McLean. I had begun to enjoy the flavour of the +calm life of Eugénie at La Cayla when I found it necessary, in order to +understand the allusions, to plunge again into the journals, letters, +and poems of Maurice de Guérin. Thus it happened that I had fallen upon +"Le Centaure" first. It is very short, as everybody knows. It was to me +the most appealing poem I had ever read. + +Keats's Greece seems somehow to be a Greece too full of modern colour, +too unclassical. This was a mistake, of course, due to the fact that all +my Greek reading had been filtered through professors and textbooks; and +all my Greek seeing had been centred on pale white statues. It did not +occur to me then--at least I did not know it--that the great Greek +statues were not colourless, and that at Delphi there were statues that +glowed with the hues of life. Strange to say, though "Le Centaure" +seemed to me to be Greek in the classical sense, yet it palpitated with +human emotion. Who that has read it can forget the simplicity of the +opening? Says the Centaur: + + I received my birth in the fastnesses of these mountains. As the + stream of this valley of which the primitive drops run from the + rocks which weep in a deep grotto, the first moment of my life fell + among the darkness of a secluded place in which the silence was not + troubled. When our mothers come near the time of their deliverance, + they flee towards the caverns, and in the depth of the most remote, + in the darkest of shadows, their children are born without a moan + and the fruits of their womb are as silent as themselves. Their + strong milk enables us to overcome without weakness or a doubtful + struggle the first difficulties of life; however, we go out from + our caves later than you from your cradles. It is understood among + us that we must hide and envelope the first moments of existence as + days filled by the gods. My growth followed its course almost among + the shadows where I was born. The depth of my living place was so + lost in the shadow of the mountain that I would not have known + where the opening was if rushing sometimes into this opening the + winds had not passed about me certain movements suddenly and + refreshing breezes. Sometimes, too, my mother came back carrying + the perfume of the valleys, or dripping with the waves of the water + she frequented. Now these returns of hers gave me no knowledge of + the valleys or the stream, but their suggestions disquieted my + spirit, and I paced agitatedly in my shades. + +After all, it requires leisure to enjoy fully the writings of Eugénie de +Guérin and her brother--I inevitably think of this brother and sister +together. There always lingers about the genius of these two delicate +and sensitive beings a certain perfume of the white lilac which Maurice +loved. It happened that through the amiability of my father, when I read +the Journals of the De Guérins, I had leisure. A period of ill health +stopped my work--I had begun to study law--and there were long days that +could easily be filled by strolls in Fairmount Park in the early spring +days, when it seems most appropriate to associate one's self with these +two who ought to be read in the mood of the early spring, and they ought +to be read slowly and even prayerfully. I hope I may be pardoned for +quoting a sonnet which had a great vogue in the late 'seventies showing +the impression that Maurice de Guérin made. It was a great surprise to +find part of the sestette copied in the "Prose Writings" of Walt +Whitman, who very rarely quoted any verse. + + The old wine filled him, and he saw, with eyes + Anoint of Nature, fauns and dryads fair + Unseen by others; to him maidenhair + And waxen lilacs, and those birds that rise + A-sudden from tall reeds at slight surprise, + Brought charmèd thoughts; and in earth everywhere + He, like sad Jacques, found a music rare + As that of Syrinx to old Grecians wise. + A pagan heart, a Christian soul had he: + He followed Christ, yet for dead Pan he sighed, + Till earth and heaven met within his breast; + As if Theocritus in Sicily + Had come upon the Figure crucified + And lost his gods in deep, Christ given rest. + +I found, too, satisfaction of the taste which Hamerton had corroborated, +in Eugénie de Guérin's little sketches of outdoor scenery--sketches +which always have a human interest. I had not yet begun to take any +pleasure in Wordsworth; and, in fact, all the poets who seemed to be +able to enjoy nature for itself--nature unrelieved or unimproved by +human figures--had no attractions for me. And here the dear Edward Roth +came in, and confirmed my taste. And there were heavy arguments with +other clever Philadelphians, Doctor Nolan, the scientist who loved +letters, and that amateur of literature, Charles Devenny. + +As for Pope and his school, they seemed to represent an aspect of the +world as unreal as the world of Watteau, and with much less excuse; but +pictures of the kind I found in the "Journal" of Eugénie de Guérin had a +living charm. At this time, I had not seen Matthew Arnold's paper on +Maurice de Guérin, and I did not know that any appreciation of his +sister had been written in English. I had seen a paragraph or two +written by some third-rate person who objected to her piety as +sentimental, and incomprehensible to the "Anglo-Saxon" world! That her +piety should be sentimental, if Eugénie's sentiment can be characterized +by that term, seemed to me to be questionable; and it was evident that +any one who read French literature at all must be aware that there were +hundreds of beautiful sentiments and phrases which the average +"Anglo-Saxon" world found it impossible to comprehend. + +The beloved home of Eugénie, La Cayla, was not a gay place. It was even +more circumscribed than Miss Mitford's "Village"; but Eugénie, being +less "Anglo-Saxon" than Miss Mitford, had more sentiment and a more +sensitive perception of the meaning of nature--though, when it comes to +sentimentalism, the English man or woman, who often masquerades under +the shelter of "Anglo-Saxonism," is as sentimental as the most +sentimental of sentimentalists. This is what I mean by the landscape +charm of Eugénie de Guérin, and yet the picture in this case is not a +landscape, but the interior of a room: + + I was admiring just now a little landscape, presented by my room, + as it was being illuminated with the rising sun. How pretty it was! + Never did I see a more beautiful effect of light on the paper, + thrown through painted trees. It was diaphanous, transparent. It + was almost wasted on my eyes; it ought to have been seen by a + painter. And yet does not God create the beautiful for everybody? + All our birds were singing this morning while I was at my prayers. + This accompaniment pleases me, though it distracts me a little. I + stop to listen; then I begin again, thinking that the birds and I + are alike singing a hymn to God, and that, perhaps, those little + creatures sing better than I. But the charm of prayer, the charm of + communion with God, they cannot enjoy that; one must have a soul to + feel it. This happiness that the birds have not is mine. It is + sorrow. How little time is needed for that. The joy comes from the + sun, the mild air, the song of birds, all delights to me; as well + as from a letter of Mimi's (who is now at Gaillac), in which she + tells me of Madame Vialar, who has seen thee, and of other cheerful + things. + +And again: + + However, I had a delightful waking this morning. As I was opening + my eyes a lovely moon faced my window, and shone into my bed, so + brightly that at first I thought it was a lamp suspended to my + shutter. It was very sweet and pretty to look at this white light, + and so I contemplated, admired, watched it till it hid itself + behind the shutter to peep out again, and then conceal itself like + a child playing at hide-and-seek. + +Emerson tried to teach us that there can be infinite beauties in a +little space--untold joys within a day--and he asks us to take short +outlooks. Saint Teresa and Saint Francis de Sales were before him in +this; but Eugénie de Guérin exemplifies its value much more than any +other modern writer. Her soul was often sad, but it never ceased to find +joy in the little happinesses of life. In our country, we are losing +this faculty which the best of the later New Englanders tried to +recover. It is a pity because it deprives us of the real _joie de vivre_ +which is not dependent on ecstasies of restless emotions or violent +amusements. + +The devotion of Eugénie de Guérin to her brother resembles that of +Madame de Sévigné for her daughter, the peerless Pauline. It was George +Sand who discovered the genius of that brother, though her +characterization of the qualities of his genius did not please the +Christian soul of his sister. It was left to Sainte-Beuve to fix De +Guérin's place in French literature; and I recall now that the reading +of Sainte-Beuve led me to find the poems of David Gray, now probably +forgotten, and to go back to Keats. + +After Maurice de Guérin's "Le Centaure" I found Keats even less Greek +than I thought he was, because he was less philosophical than De Guérin, +and because he did not concern himself with the gravest questions of +life; but, after all, Keats is the poet for the poets! + +My dear friend, Edward Roth--whom James Huneker celebrates in his +"Steeplejack"--named Spenser as "the poet of the poets"; but Spenser is +too hard to read--even harder than Chaucer, and certainly more involved, +while no poets that ever lived can make pictures so glowing, so full of +a sensitive and exquisite light as Keats. Later, it seemed absurd for +the French poets of a certain _genre_ to call themselves symbolists. +When Keats wrote, he saw and felt, and he saw because he felt. It was +not necessary for him to search laboriously for the colour of a word. +The thing itself coloured the word--and Keats, working hard in a verbal +laboratory, would have been an anomaly. It was not necessary for him to +study carefully the music of his verse as Campion did or Coventry +Patmore or as Sidney Lanier is supposed to have done--though one cannot +have suspected that Sidney Lanier's elaborate laboratory was erected +after his best verse had been written. + +Maurice de Guérin, a very Christian soul, was probably disturbed in his +religious sentiments by the defection of his old friend and director, +Père de Lamennais--the "M. Féli" of the little paradise of la Chénie. To +the delight of some of the more independent and emancipated of the +literary circle at Paris, which included George Sand, Maurice was +becoming more pantheistic than Christian. He seemed to have tried to +make for humanity an altar on which Christ and Nature might be almost +equally adored, and this gave Eugénie great pain, although it did not +change her love or make a rift in her belief in him. + +De Guérin is a singing poet in a language which is used by few singing +poets for serious themes. There are few lyric poems in French, like the +"Chanson de Fortunio" of Alfred de Musset. It was not strange that the +great Sainte-Beuve found the verse of De Guérin somewhat too unusual. +Sainte-Beuve calls it "the familiar Alexandrine reduced to a +conversational tone, and taking all the little turns of an intimate +talk." Eugénie complains that "it sings too much and does not talk +enough." However, one of the most charming of literary essays, to which +Matthew Arnold's seems almost "common," is that preceding Trébutien's +"Journals, Letters, and Poems of Maurice de Guérin." It would be folly +for me to try to permeate the mind of any other person with the +atmosphere which still palpitates in me when I think of the first +delight of reading at leisure the poems of Maurice and the letters of +Eugénie. I might just as well attempt to make a young man of our time +feel the thrill that came when we were young and first heard the most +beautiful of all love songs--"Come into the Garden, Maud!" + +One can hear the amazed laughter, the superior giggles that would arise +from a group of Greenwich Villagers if they did me the honour to read +this page; but the real Quartier Latin has better taste and is not so +imitative--and paraphrases of this lovely lyric still find admirers in +the gardens of the Luxembourg and on the heights of Montmartre. +Tennyson, like De Guérin, had bent the old classic form to newer usage, +and one can hardly help seeing, in spite of the fact that the admirers +of Swinburne claim this laurel for him, that Tennyson discovered the +secret of making lyrical verse musical while discarding rime. Both +Maurice de Guérin and Tennyson, who have superficial characteristics in +common, send us back to Theocritus, the most human, the most lyrical, +the most unaffectedly pagan of all the poets who wrote before Pan said +his despairing good-bye to all the Grecian Isles. But what a mixture is +this!--Maurice and Eugénie de Guérin, Keats, Madame de Sévigné, +Theocritus, and Tennyson, the Elizabethan Campion--and yet they are all +related. + +In fact, ladies and gentlemen, I have never read any good book that was +not related intimately to at least a score of other books. It is true +that in a measure a book gives to us what we take to it; and we can only +take much out of it when we approach the group of ministering authors +who alone make life both cheerful and endurable. + +The received methods of "teaching" the classics in what people call "the +dead languages" nearly always weaken the faculties of the soul, while +they may develop certain hidden abilities of the mind. This favourite +process of pedagogues very often defeats itself. Mr. Edward Roth +honestly believed that the Roman Empire had risen, declined, and fallen +in order that the Latin language might live! The logical result of this +teaching on the eager young mind, at once logical, ductile, and +obstinate, was to induce it to discover something about the Roman +Empire, in order that it might cease to yawn over the declensions, and +to be bored by prosody; to discover why the glorious Empire had lived +and died in order to produce an elaborate mound of charred bones! Mr. +Roth himself, though a classicist of the classicists, managed to make +the Romans interesting in conversation; he always impressed one that the +Roman baths, or the chariot races, or the banquets, which he admitted +were full of colour and life, were by comparison faded and pale in the +glow and aroma of the sentences invented by the Latins to describe them! + +The impossibility of getting anything out of the study of Greek by hard +work, sent me, after I had read Maurice de Guérin's "Centaure," to read +joyously an edition of the "Idyls of Theocritus" in French. While +browsing I found on the shelves of the Mercantile Library the novels of +Tourguéneff in the same language. This delayed me a little. I found +Theocritus and Bion and Moschus in the Bohn Edition, which I think has +now become the beneficent "Everyman's Library." I revelled! The Mimes of +Herondas had not yet been discovered, but some of the dialogues in these +poems contained all the best of their essences. My friends among the +hard workers at the "Classics" scorned me. The elderly gentleman from +Oxford who gave us lessons three or four times a week and held that, +when we were able to translate at sight a certain page of Greek which he +had composed himself from various great authors, that we were perfect, +treated me as a pariah; but that made no difference. I continued, in +merciful leisure, to saturate myself in the golden glow of the Sicilian +poets. I tried hard to express my devotion to Theocritus by paraphrases, +very slightly from the original Greek, mostly from the French, and +partly from the Bohn Edition. I quote a result which Mr. Edmund Clarence +Stedman said was too paraphrastic. It is from the "Cyclops": + + Softer than lambs and whiter than the curds, + O Galatea, swan-nymph of the sea! + Vain is my longing, worthless are my words; + Why do you come in night's sweet dreams to me, + And when I wake, swift leave me, as in fear + The lambkin hastens when a wolf is near? + + Why did my mother on a dark-bright day + Bring you, for hyacinths, a-near my cave? + I was the guide, and through the tangled way + I thoughtless led you; I am now your slave. + Peace left my soul when you knocked at my heart-- + Come, Galatea, never to depart! + + Though I am dark and ugly to the sight-- + A Cyclops I, and stronger there are few-- + Of you I dream through all the quick-paced night, + And in the morn ten fawns I feed for you, + And four young bears: O rise from grots below, + Soft love and peace with me forever know! + + Last night I dreamed that I, a monster gilled, + Swam in the sea and saw you singing there: + I gave you lilies and your grotto filled + With the sweet odours of all flowers rare; + I gave you apples, as I kissed your hand, + And reddest poppies from my richest land. + + Oh, brave the restless billows of your world: + They toss and tremble; see my cypress-grove, + And bending laurels, and the tendrils curled + Of honeyed grapes, and a fresh treasure-trove + In vine-crowned Ætna, of pure-running rills! + O Galatea, kill the scorn that kills! + + Softer than lambs and whiter than the curds, + O Galatea, listen to my prayer: + Come, come to land, and hear the song of birds; + Rise, rise, from ocean-depths, as lily-fair + As you are in my dreams! Come, then, O Sleep, + For you alone can bring her from the deep. + + And Galatea, in her cool, green waves, + Plaits her long hair with purple flower-bells, + And laughs and sings, while black-browed Cyclops raves + And to the wind his love-lorn story tells: + For well she knows that Cyclops will ere long + Forget, as poets do, his pain in song. + +No sensitive mind can dwell on Theocritus, even when interpreted in +English prose, without feeling something of the joy of the old Syracusan +in life. His human nature is of the kind that makes the nymphs and +swains of Alexander Pope dull and artificial. There are flies in this +delicious ointment, one must admit, touches of corruption which a +degenerate paganism condoned and palliated, but we must remember, as an +extenuation of the Greek attitude, that the oracle of Delphi protested +against them. The cyprus plains of Theocritus yet echo with the call of +the cicada, and the anemones still bloom. The pipes of Pan are not all +silent. The world would lose some of its beauty if Theocritus and the +Sicilian poets did not entice us to hear their echoes. + +But to how many links of a long chain does Maurice de Guérin lead us! +Here is another link--José de Herédia, and his jewelled and chiselled +sonnets--the "Antique Medal" with its peerless sestette, which combines +the essential meanings of Keats's "Ode to a Grecian Urn." + + _Le temps passe. Tout meurt. Le marbre même s'use. + Argrigente n'est plus qu'une ombre, et Syracuse + Dort sous le bleu linceul de son ciel indulgent;_ + + _Et seul le dur métal que l'amour fit docile + Garde encore en sa fleur, aux médailles d'argent, + L'immortelle beauté des vierges de Sicile."_ + +A translation of which reads: + + Time goes; all dies; marble itself decays; + A shadow Agrigentum; Syracuse + Sleeps, still in death, beneath her kind sky's shades; + But the hard metal guards through all the days, + Silver grown docile unto love's own use, + The immortal beauty of Sicilian maids. + +I always felt that Dante would have been less devoted to Virgil had he +known Theocritus. The artificial Roman seems faded when one compares his +rural elegies with the lovely pictures of the first of all the Syracusan +poets. Horatius Flaccus had more of the quality of Theocritus than of +Virgil; and though Virgil might have been a good guide for Dante in his +sublime wanderings, he was a guide of the intellect rather than of the +heart. It requires some courage, perhaps, to confess that one reads +Theocritus in English rather than in Greek. The French rendering is too +paraphrastic; but, although my classical friends, or rather my friends +_enragé_ of the "Classics," honestly despise me for making this +confession, I shamelessly enjoy Theocritus in the Bohn Edition, without +even using it as a "crib" to the forgotten Greek text rather than begin +a course of Grecian philology and to lose the perfume of the crushed +thyme or the sight of the competing shepherds on the shrub-dotted +prairie. + + +_Dante_ + +A constant reader is one who always returns to his first loves. He may +find them changed because he has changed; but the soul of that reader is +dead who never goes back to "Ivanhoe" to renew the thrill of the famous +tournament or to discover whether Leather Stocking is the superman he +once seemed to be. I find myself, in old age, divided between two +conflicting opinions. "There is no leisure in this country," I am told. +"A great change has taken place. The motor car has destroyed the art of +reading, and, as for the good old books--nobody reads them any more." On +the other hand, I hear, "People do read, but they read only frivolous +books which follow one another like the hot-cakes made at noon in the +windows of Mr. Child's restaurants." + +Personally, I cannot accept either opinion. In the first place, the +winter is the time for reading--I recall Robert Underwood Johnson's +"Winter Hour" when I think of this--and the motor car, especially in +country places, does not function violently in the winter time. Many +journeys from Boston, through New England, to the Middle West have +taught me that folk are reading and discussing books more than ever. +Whatever may be said of the mass of American people, who are probably +learning slowly what national culture means, there are at the top of +this mass thousands of Americans who love good books, who possess good +books, and who return each year to the loves of their youth. + +The celebration of the sixth centenary of the death of Dante Alighieri +proves this. It is true enough that Dante and Goethe and Milton are more +talked about in English-speaking countries than read, and when the +enthusiasm awakened in honour of the great Florentine reached its +height, there were found many people in our country who were quite +capable of asking why Dante should be read. + +Looking back I found it easy to answer this question myself, for, +perhaps, beginning with a little gentle aversion to the English rimed +translations of the "Divine Comedy," my love for Dante has been a slow +growth. The Dante specialists discourage us with their learning. There +are few who, like Mr. Plimpton, can lucidly expose the foundations of +the educations of Dante to us without frightening us by the sight of a +wall of impregnable erudition. Naturally, one cannot approach Dante in +order to begin an education in the Middle Ages and the Renascence which +one never began in one's own time; but to be consoled by Dante it is not +necessary to be erudite. In fact, to the mind bent on spiritual +enlightenment, the notes of the erudite, above all, the conjectures of +the erudite, are frequently wrong. Even Israel Gollancz, in his three +valuable volumes in the Temple Edition, nods over his notes +occasionally. And by the way, for all amateurs in the reading of the +"Divine Comedy" nothing can be better than this Temple Edition, which +contains the Italian on one page and a lucid prose translation into +English on the next. As I grew older I grew more and more enamoured of +Longfellow's Dantean Sonnets, but not of his translation, for all rime +translations must be one half, at least, the author and the other half +the translator. Gollancz is best for anybody who does not enjoy poetic +_tours de force_. + +In his note on the most popular lines in the "Divine Comedy," + + _Nessun maggior dolors, + che ricordarsi del tempo felice + nella miseria;_ + +Gollancz says: + + Although these words are translated literally from Boëthius, and + although we know that Dante had made a special study of Boëthius, + yet we cannot well identify the _dottore_ with this philosopher: + for how can we be expected to assume that Francesca was acquainted + with these two facts? The reference is probably to Virgil, and to + his position in Limbo. + +Into this Limbo Christ descended fifty-two years after Virgil's death +and drew certain souls up with him to Heaven. We are, however, by no +means certain that Virgil was happier on earth than he was "upon the +green enamel" (_verde smalto_) in this place of quiet leisure which was +the vestibule to Hell, but not Hell itself, and which, to some chosen +souls, had already been a vestibule to the Palace of the Beatific +Vision. If Dante had been translated in the old days of rigid Calvinism +in Scotland and New England, his tolerance of the pagans who found parts +of Hell not entirely uncomfortable would have caused him to be looked on +as a corruptor of the faith. But what would they have said to the +"Paradiso" which I have always found more full of consolation than any +sermon that was ever preached? Let us take the description of the Church +Triumphant in Canto XXXII. How sweetly Dante disposes of the heresy that +all children unbaptized by material water are doomed: + + _Dunque, senza merce di lor costume, + locati son per gradi differenti, + sol differendo nel primiero acume._ + + _Bastava si nei secoli recenti + con l'innocenza, per aver salute, + solamente la fede dei parenti;_ + + _poiche le prime etadi fur compiute, + convenne ai maschi all' innocenti penne, + per circoncidere, acquistar virtute._ + + _Ma poichee il tempo della grazia venne, + senza battesmo perfetto di Cristo, + tale innocenza laggiu si ritenne._ + +And then remembering the innocence of the little children Dante turns to +that face "which is most likest unto Christ's" the face of Mary the +Mother, who is the protectress and friend of all children. If the strict +Calvinists had known the "Paradiso" of Dante as well as they knew their +Old Testament, their theology might have found more adherence among the +merciful, for the "Paradiso" is a triumphant song of mercy, of love, and +of the final triumph of every soul that has sincerely hoped in, or +sought, the truth, even if the truth were not crowned in its fullness in +this world. + +And Dante, put by Raphael without protest from the Church Militant, +among the Doctors of the Faith, glorifies Trajan among the Saved and +opens Heaven to Cato. This shows, by the way, the falsity of the +Voltairean _mauvais mot_, that all the people worth meeting are in Hell! +And Dante sees Constantine in Heaven, although he thinks that this +Emperor's donation of territory was an evil gift. Dante, who, by the +way, was nearer to the old records and this tradition of the older time, +is a witness against Lord Bryce's assertion that the documents of +Constantine's donation were mediæval forgeries. Dante believed, however, +that the donation was invalid, because the successor of St. Peter, being +of the spirit, could not accept temporal power. This he asserts in his +"De Monarchia," which was for a time on the "Index." Times have changed, +and "De Monarchia" and Milton's "Paradise Lost" are no longer in the +"Index," though Balzac and Dumas, in French, are. But many of the +Faithful in the United States console themselves by assuming that, as in +the case of Dr. Zahm's "Religion and Science," this the method of the +Sacred Congregation is not without its distinctions. Dr. Zahm's book, +suppressed in Italian, received the proper "imprimatur" in English! So +may "The Three Musketeers" and may "Monte Cristo" be regarded as coming +under the ban in the original, but as tolerated in the translation? + +Dante's bitterness against certain Popes made no rift in his creed, nor +does it seem to have made him less respected by the Roman Court. There +is in the "Paradiso" that great passage on the poet's faith-- + + _Così spirò di quell' amore acceso; + indi soggiunse: "Assai bene è trascorsa + d'esta moneta già la lega e il peso; + ma dimmi se tu l' hai nella tua borsa." + ed' io: "Si, l'ho, si lucida e si tonda, + che nel suo conio nulla mi s' inforsa."_ + + _Appresso usci della luce profonda, + che li splendeva; "Questa cara gioia, + sopra la quale ogni virtù si fonda, + onde ti venne?" Ed io: "La larga ploia + dello Spirito Santo, ch' è diffusa + in su le vecchie e in su le nuove cuoia,_ + + _È sillogismo, che la mia ha conchiusa + acutamente si, che in verso d' ella + ogni dimostrazion mi pare ottusa."_ + +If the reading of the "Paradiso" turns one to other books, so much the +better. Aristotle is worth while; he holds the germ of what is best in +modern life; and St. Thomas Aquinas, his echo, with new harmonies added +the Wagner to Aristotle's Mozart. No--that is going too far!--the +musical comparison fails. "If thou should'st never see my face again, +pray for my soul," is King Arthur's prayer. It is the prayer of Pope +Gregory that saved Trajan. + +When we come to the "Purgatorio," like the "Paradiso" too neglected, we +find much that illuminates our minds and touches our hearts. The +"Purgatorio" is not without humour, and it is certainly very human. For +instance, there is the case of the negligent ruler, Nino de' Visconti. +Dante is frankly pleased to meet him, but his address is hardly tactful. +He is evidently surprised to find that Nino is not in Hell, + + When he came near to me I said to him; + gentle Judge Nino, how I'm delighted well + that I have seen thee here and not in Hell. + +Nino begs that his innocent daughter, Giovanna, may be asked by Dante, +on his return to earth, to pray for him. He is not pleased that his +widow should desire to marry + + the Milanese who blazoned a viper on his shield. + +He thinks that his wife has ceased to love him as she has discarded her +"white wimples," which, if she marries this inferior person, she may +long for once again! And he adds, rather cynically, for a blessed soul +in Purgatory, that through her one may mightily well + + know how short a time love may last in woman, if the eye and the + touch do not keep it alive. + +One must admit that there is an element of humour--not for the +victim--in the "Inferno," when Dante puts Pope Boniface VIII. into Hell +three and a half years before he died! Nicholas III., whom Dante thought +guilty of the unpardonable sin of simony, had preceded Boniface; and he +says, + + _E se non fosse ch' ancor lo mi vieta + la riverenza delle somme chiavi, + che tu tenesti nella vita lieta + l' userei parole ancor più gravi--_ + +But for consolation, there is no great poem so good as the "Paradiso." + + +_English and American Verse_ + +Edmund Clarence Stedman tells us how thrilled the youths of his +generation were when the new poet, Tennyson, "swam into their ken." It +is difficult for the young of to-day to believe this. There is no great +reigning poet to-day; there are great numbers of fair poets, who are +hailed as crown princes by the groups that gather about them. Whatever +the old may say, this is a good sign. Any evidence of a sincere interest +in poetry is a good sign. Tennyson's "Dream of Fair Women" and his +portrait studies broke in on the old tradition. "The Lady of Shalott," +with its pictures of silence and its fine transmutation of commonplace +into something very beautiful, was new. + +We who succeeded Stedman by some years loved all the beauty of Tennyson +while we were not especially struck by those mediæval lay figures which +he labelled "King Arthur" and "Sir Galahad" and "Sir Percival." They +were too much like what the English people at that time insisted that +the Prince Consort was. Even Sir Lancelot would have profited in our +eyes by a touch of the fire of Milton's "Lucifer." But the lyricism of +Tennyson, the music of Tennyson, is as real now as it was then. It is +the desire for "independence," the fear of following a conventionality, +a fear that calls itself audacity, which brushes away the delicate and +scientific of this exquisite poet simply because he does not represent a +Movement. And yet all these new movements are very old movements. The +result of the education given me by books was to convince me that the +man of culture proclaims himself third-rate if he looks on any literary +expression as really new and if he cannot enjoy the old, when the old is +of all time. The beautiful and the real can never be old or new because +they are the same through the movement of time. To explain what I mean, +let me come suddenly down to date and permit me to quote from Sir Arthur +Quiller-Couch's "On the Art of Reading." He is writing of the Bible, +which is never old: + + I daresay, after all, that the best way is not to bother a boy too + early and overmuch with history; that the best way is to let him + ramp at first through the Scriptures even as he might through "The + Arabian Nights": to let him take the books as they come, merely + indicating, for instance, that Job is a great poem, the Psalms + great lyrics, the story of Ruth a lovely idyll, the Song of Songs + the perfection of an Eastern love-poem. Well, and what then? He + will certainly get less of "The Cotter's Saturday Night" into it, + and certainly more of the truth of the East. There he will feel the + whole splendid barbaric story for himself: the flocks of Abraham + and Laban; the trek of Jacob's sons to Egypt for corn; the figures + of Rebekah at the well, Ruth at the gleaning, and Rizpah beneath + the gibbet; Sisera bowing in weariness; Saul--great Saul--by the + tent-prop with the jewels in his turban: + + "All its lordly male-sapphires, and rubies courageous at heart." + + Or consider--to choose one or two pictures out of the tremendous + procession--consider Michal, Saul's royal daughter: how first she + is given in marriage to David to be a snare for him; how, loving + him, she saves his life, letting him down from the window and + dressing up an image on the bed in his place; how, later, she is + handed over to another husband Phaltiel, how David demands her + back, and she goes: + + "And her husband (Phaltiel) went with her along weeping behind her + to Bahurim. Then said Abner unto him, Go, return. And he returned." + + Or, still later, how the revulsion takes her, Saul's daughter as + she sees David capering home before the ark, and how her affection + had done with this emotional man of the ruddy countenance, so prone + to weep in his bed: + + "And as the ark of the Lord came into the city of David, Michal, + Saul's daughter"-- + + Mark the three words-- + + "Michal, Saul's daughter looked through a window, and saw King + David leaping and dancing before the Lord; and she despised him in + her heart." + +Mr. Galsworthy or Mr. W. L. George or Mr. Maxwell, who are rapidly +becoming too old-fashioned for the young, or Mrs. Wharton, or Mrs. +Gertrude Atherton would treat this episode in sympathy with what they +might conceive to be the trend of present emotion; for it is with the +emotions and not with the mind or the will that the novelist of the day +before yesterday mostly deals. If Mr. James Huneker had translated this +into the prose of his moment, it would have flamed with minutely carved +jewels, glowed with a perfume and colour of crushed roses, and choked +the reader with the odour of musk. But could he have made it any +"newer"? Or if he could have made it "newer," could he have made it more +splendid and appealing? + +The old is new, and the new is old in art and literature--in life +itself, and the man who scorned Keats because Swinburne and Rossetti +were new; or who scorns Browning--the best of Browning--lacks the first +requisite of true cultivation which is founded on the truth that beauty +is beyond the touch of time. The women in François Villon's "Ballade of +Dead Ladies" are gone, but their beauty remains in that song. This +beauty might be none the less beautiful if expressed in _vers libre_; +its beauty might take a new flavour from our time. The fact only that it +was of our time and treated in the manner of our time, could not give it +that essential and divine something which is perennial, universal, and +perhaps eternal. + +Much affectionate reading of poetry--and poetry read in any other way +is like the crackling of small sticks under a pot in the open air on a +damp day--leads one to consider the structure of verse and to ask how +singing effects are best produced. This inquiry has led some of the +sincerest of the younger poets to throw aside the older conventions, +and, imitating Debussy, Richard Strauss, and even newer composers, to +produce that "free verse" which, in the hands of the inexpert, the lazy, +or the ignorant, becomes lawless verse. It is exasperating to the +intolerant to find writers, young in experience if not always young in +age, talking of themselves as discoverers--brave or audacious +discoverers--as adventurers, reckless as Balboa, or Cortez, or Ponce de +León; and then, to hear some of the old and conventional violently +attacking these verse makers as if they were new and dangerous +revolutionists. + +The truth is that _vers libre_ has its place, and it ought to have a +high place; but the writer who attempts it must have a very perfect ear +for the nuances of music and great art in his technique applied to the +use of words. Some of the disciples of Miss Amy Lowell have this, but +they are few. Whether Miss Lowell has mastered the science or not, she +has the fine art of producing musical effects, delicate and various and +even splendid. But there are others! + +It may have been Tennyson, or Theocritus, or Campion that led me to read +Coventry Patmore. I know that it was not his "The Angel in the House" +which led me on. That seemed as little interesting or important as the +proverbial sayings of Martin Farquhar Tupper; but one day I found "The +Unknown Eros" and a little later "The Toys," and then his "Night and +Sleep," one of the most musical poems in our language. + + How strange at night the bay + Of dogs, how wild the note + Of cocks that scream for day, + In homesteads far remote; + How strange and wild to hear + The old and crumbling tower, + Amid the darkness, suddenly + Take tongue and speak the hour! + +Although the music of "Night and Sleep" is not dependent upon the rime, +it is plain--as the form of poetry appeals to the ear--that the rime is +a gain. Yet one does not miss it in the fifth and seventh lines of each +stanza. The real musical charm of the poem--only one stanza, of four, +is given here--lies in the management of the rhythm. + + We have only to fill up the measure in every line as well as in the + seventh, in order to change this verse from the slowest and most + mournful to the most rapid and high-spirited of all English, the + common eight-syllable quatrain, + +says Mr. Patmore in his "Essay on English Metrical Law," + + a measure particularly recommended by the early critics, and + continually chosen by poets in all times for erotic poetry on + account of its joyful air. The reason of this unusual rapidity of + movement is the unusual character of the eight-syllable verse as + acatalectic, almost all other kinds of verse being catalectic on at + least one syllable, implying a final pause of corresponding + duration. + +Mr. Patmore here shows that the rime in this lovely "Night and Sleep" is +merely accessory, a lightly played accompaniment to a song which would +be as beautiful a song without it, yet which gains a certain accent +through this accompaniment; and that the real questions in verse are of +rhythm and time. Tennyson, whose technique, even in the use of +sibilants, will bear the closest scrutiny, often proves the merely +accessory value of rime, but in no instance more fully than in + + Tears, idle tears, I know not what they mean, + Tears from the depth of some divine despair + Rise in the heart and gather in the eyes, + In looking on the happy autumn fields, + And thinking of the days that are no more. + +There is every reason why the modern reader should have become tired of +academic poetry. When poetry divorced itself from music and became the +slave of fixed rules of metre which could not be imitated with any real +success in English, it sealed its own fate as a beloved visitant to the +hearts of the people. Pope and his coterie closed the door on lyrical +poets like Thomas Campion, and in their hearts they, like Voltaire, +rather despised Shakespeare for his vulgarisms. + +The truth that poetry was primarily written to be sung is forgotten, and +even in France the chant of the Alexandrine, which both Rachel and Sarah +Bernhardt restored, was lost in a monotonous recitation. For myself, I +tried to get to the root of the matter by reading Thomas +Campion--Charles Scribner's Sons print a good edition of his songs, +masks, etc., edited by A. H. Bullen--as an antidote to Walt Whitman. In +fact, my acquaintance with the Poet of Camden convinced me that his use +of what is to-day called _vers libre_ resembled somewhat Carlyle's +Teutonic contortions of style. It was impossible to get from the "Good +Gray Poet" the reasons of his method. I gathered that he looked on +rhythm as sometimes a walk, a quick-step, a saunter, a hop-and-skip, a +hurried dash, or a slow march; it seemed to depend with him on the +action of the heart, the acceleration of the pulse, or the movement of +the thought. + +But no one who knows the best in Walt Whitman's poems can fail to +perceive that there were times when he understood thoroughly that +poetry, expressed poetically, must be musical. It is a great pity that +some of our newer poets do not understand this. In their revolt from the +outworn academic rules, they have gone the length of the most advanced +Cubists, and do not realize that no amount of splendid visualization +compensates for a lack of knowledge of the art of making melodies. It is +unfortunate, too, that the imitators of Amy Lowell, many of whom have +neither her feeling for colour, her great power of concentration, nor +her naturally good ear, should imagine that _vers libre_ means the +throwing together of words in chaos. Even Strauss's "Electra" is founded +on carefully considered rules; his discords are not accidents. + +It seems to me that the study of Sidney Lanier's "Science of English +Verse" would suppress the art of expression, even in a genius. By the +time he learned how to write verse he would be too old to write verse at +all! There are less intricate books. I learned from the theories and the +odes of Coventry Patmore and the "Observations in the Art of English +Poesy" of Thomas Campion and his practice that the best _vers libre_ has +freedom, unexpectedness, lyrical lightness, and an apparently unstudied +charm, because the poet had striven, not to sing as a bird sings, +without art, but to sing in a civilized world as a great tenor in the +opera sings, because he had acquired his method of almost perfect +expression through science and art. And, if one wants an example of the +intangible "something," expressed artistically, why not take Benet's +"Immoral Ballad"? A little thing, sir; but a poet's own and so, +incapable of being analyzed by any rules known to the pundits. But it is +not _vers libre_. If it were, its intangible appeal would not exist. + +Nearly every versifier who disregards those models of form in verse +which include rime, or whose cadences are informal, is set down as an +imitator of Walt Whitman. When I was young, Walt Whitman seemed to have +been established as a strange, erratic, and godless person, whose +indecencies were his principal stock in trade. Emerson's practical +repudiation of him had had its effect, and the very respectable--that +is, gentlemen of the class of the vestrymen of Grace Church in New York +of his time--looked on him with horror. He had, it seems, attacked +established religion when he made his onslaught in the Brooklyn _Eagle_ +on that eminently important body. + +The shock of the arrival of Walt Whitman had been broken by the time +that I had begun to read poetry wherever I found it; and I accepted the +curious mixture of prose and poetry in Walt Whitman just as I accepted +the musical Wagner. At that time we had not yet learned to know that +Wagner's music was melodious; we had not yet discovered that +"Lohengrin," for instance, was woven of many melodies, for they were not +detached and made into arias. What could be expected of young persons +brought up on "The Bohemian Girl" and "Maritana"? + +And yet we soon found out without any help from the critics that Walt +Whitman was essentially a poet, and we suspected that his roughness had +been deliberately adopted as the best possible form in which to clothe +ideas which were not conventional, and to attract attention. Most of the +young at that time thought that he had as much right to do this as +Browning had to be wilfully inarticulate. The critics did not concern us +much. There was always a little coterie of students at the University of +Pennsylvania or at Jefferson College, or young men under the influence +of Mr. Edward Roth or Mr. Henry Peterson. Among these was a brilliant +Mexican, David Cerna; Charles Arthur Henry, who died young; Daniel +Dawson, whose "Seeker in the Marshes" ought still to live. He was a +devout Whitmanite. Much younger was Harrison Morris, whose opinions, +carrying great weight, occasionally floated to us. As I have said, +Whitman neither startled nor shocked us nor did he cause us to imitate +him. At this time, I was deep in Heinrich Heine, whose prose was not +easy to read, but whose lyrics, with a very slight help from the +dictionary, were entrancing! I could never understand, being enraptured +with Heine's lyrics at that time, why Whitman should have chosen such a +poor medium for lyrical expression or such a rude utterance for some +noble ideas. That he chose at times to put into speech sensual dreams or +passing shadows of evil thoughts astonished us no more than the +existence of the photographic reproductions, then the fashion, of the +gargoyles from the Cathedral of Notre Dame, or the strange and very +improper representations of the Seven Deadly Sins which were sometimes +carved on the backs and the undersides of the stalls in old cathedrals. +We Philadelphians thought that it was not a gentlemanly performance. +There were persons who wallowed in pools of de-civilization, and, though +they might whisper of their mental wallowings in intimate circles, there +was no point whatever in putting them into print. But the great +passages--there are very many--and the noble complete poems--there are a +few--of Whitman were chosen and recited and enjoyed. + +Besides, Whitman lived just across the Delaware River, and one could +meet him almost at any time in a street car or lounging about his haunts +in Camden. As he was part of our everyday life he did not for us +represent anything essentially new. When Swinburne and Rossetti and the +Preraphaelites, however, came into our possession, it was quite another +thing! There was no Whitman movement among our young. There was a +marked, but not concentrated, reflection of the Preraphaelites. + +Swinburne's music took us by storm! It did not mean that a young man had +a depraved mind because he spouted "Faustine" or quoted verse after +verse of the roses and raptures of Swinburne. It simply meant that a +breath of rich, sensuous odours from an exotic island had swept across +the conventional lamp-posts and well-trimmed gardens of his life. I +wonder if any young man feels to-day, in reading Masefield's poems, or +Walter de la Mare's, or Seeger's, or Amy Lowell's, or Robert Frost's, or +even Alfred Noyes's, the thrill that stirred us when we heard the +choruses in "Atalanta in Calydon" or Rossetti's "Blessed Damozel"? And +there was William Morris and "The Earthly Paradise!" + +The first appearance of Kipling's poems recalled the old thrills of +"new" poets, but of late, though the prospects of poetry are beginning +to revive, no very modern poet seems to have become a part of the daily +lives of the young, who declare that the world is changed, and that the +Old hold no torches for them by which they can discover what they really +want! The more things change, the more they remain the same! And the +young woman who read Swinburne surreptitiously and smoked a cigarette in +private now reads Havelock Ellis on summer porches, and puffs at a +cigarette in public whenever she feels like it. She is really no more +advanced than the girl of the period of the eighties, and not any more +astonishing. It's the same old girl! And the young men who discovered +Swinburne and Rossetti, and who were rather bored by the thinness of +their aftermath, the æsthetic poets, really got more colour and +amazement and delight out of the flashing of the meteors than the youth +of to-day seem to get. It was the fashion then to be blasé and cynical +and bored with life; but nobody was really bored because there were too +many amusing and delightful things in the world--as there are now. + +Joaquin Miller, with his gorgeous parrots and burning Southern lights +and his intensities and his simulated passion, did not last long. In +England he was looked on as a typical American poet, more decent than +Walt Whitman, less vulgar, but with the charm Whitman had for the +English--that no Englishman could ever be like him! In England they +wanted the Americans raw and fresh and with a savage flavour about them. + +I read the poems of Richard Watson Gilder, of Edith Thomas, of Robert +Underwood Johnson--whose "Italian Rhapsody" and "The Winter Hour" can +never be forgotten--and certain verses of Edmund Clarence Stedman. But +_les jeunes_ prefer the new verse makers. There is even a kind of cult +for the Imagists. A spokesman for the Imagists tells us briefly that +"free verse" is a term that may be attached to all that increasing +amount of writing whose cadence is more marked, more definite, and +closer knit than that of prose, but which is not so violently or so +obviously accented as the so-called "regular verse." Richard Aldington's +"Childhood" is a very typical example of _vers libre_. It is also an +Imagist poem. It will be remarked that it is so free that there is no +cadence that any musician could find. It is a pretty little joyful +trifle! + + There was nothing to see, + Nothing to do, + Nothing to play with, + Except that in an empty room upstairs + There was a large tin box + Containing reproductions of the Magna Charta, + Of the Declaration of Independence, + And of a letter from Raleigh after the Armada; + There were also several packets of stamps, + Yellow and blue Guatemala parrots, + Blue stags and red baboons and birds from Sarawak, + Indians and Men-of-war + From the United States, + And the green and red portraits + Of King Francobollo + Of Italy. + + I don't believe in God + I do believe in avenging gods + Who plague us for sins we never sinned + But who avenge us. + That's why I'll never have a child, + Never shut up in a chrysalis in a match-box + For the moth to spoil and crush its bright colours, + Beating its wings against the dingy prison-wall. + +Alfred Kreymborg is also very free, and only sometimes musical, but he +hammers in his images with a vengeance. But of all the new Americans, +Vachel Lindsay's jolly fantasies, with a slightly heard banjo +accompaniment, are the most fascinating and least tiresome of all the +New. + +When one has wallowed for a time with the Imagists and carefully +examined the _vers librists_, with the aid of a catalogue and +explanations, one turns to the "Collected Poems" of Walter de la Mare. +Come, now! Listen to this: + + When slim Sophia mounts her horse + And paces down the avenue, + It seems an inward melody + She paces to. + + Each narrow hoof is lifted high + Beneath the dark enclustering pines, + A silver ray within his bit + And bridle shines. + + His eye burns deep, his tail is arched, + And streams upon the shadowy air, + The daylight sleeks his jetty flanks, + His mistress' hair. + + Her habit flows in darkness down, + Upon the stirrup rests her foot, + Her brow is lifted, as if earth + She heeded not. + + 'Tis silent in the avenue, + The sombre pines are mute of song, + The blue is dark, there moves no breeze + The boughs among. + + When slim Sophia mounts her horse + And paces down the avenue, + It seems an inward melody + She paces to. + +It is difficult for the simple minded to understand why Walter de la +Mare, who is a singer with something to sing about, cannot be classed as +an Imagist. He uses the language of common speech and tries always to +say exactly what he means; he suits his mood to his rhythm, and his +cadences to his ideas; he believes passionately in the artistic value of +modern life; but he does not seem to see why he should not write about +an old-fashioned aëroplane of the year 1914, if he can make it the +centre of something interesting. + +The professional Imagist tries to produce poetry that is hard and clear +and never blurred or indefinite, and he holds that concentration is the +very essence of poetry. The Imagist fights for "free verse" as for the +principle of liberty. But why does he fight? If "free verse" is musical, +if it expresses a mood or an emotion or a thought in terms that appeal +to the mind or the heart or the imagination, why should it be necessary +to fight for it? It may suit certain verse makers to make men of straw +in order "to fight" for them; but all the world loves a poet, if the +poet once touches its heart. "The Toys" of Coventry Patmore is a good +example of what "free verse" ought to be. But it is not free because it +is lawless; its freedom is the freedom of all true art which does not +ignore, which obediently accepts, certain laws that govern the +expression of the beautiful. Mr. Richard Aldington's "Daisy" is +certainly a less appealing poem than that one in which Swinburne sings +of the lady who forgot his kisses, and he forgot her name! + +José de Herédia, in "Les Trophées," is both an Imagist and a Symbolist. +He has the inspiration and the science of the Sibyl without her +contortions. It is unfortunate that the truculent attitude of the +professional makers of "free verse" should have arrayed a small and +angry group against them; and this group will have none of Robert Frost, +who is certainly a poet and a poet of great courage and originality. +There are others, however, who may not be imitators of Robert Frost, but +who seem as if they were. Tennyson's "Owl," which is looked on to-day as +an example of Victorian idiocy, is really better than Mr. T. S. Eliot's +"Cousin Nancy": + + Miss Nancy Ellicott + Strode across the hills and broke them, + Rode across the hills and broke them-- + The barren New England hills-- + Riding to hounds + Over the cow-pasture. + + Miss Nancy Ellicott smoked + And danced all the modern dances; + And her aunts were not quite sure how they felt about it, + But they knew that it was modern. + + Upon the glazen shelves kept watch + Matthew and Waldo, guardians of the faith, + The army of unalterable law. + +The Imagist does not believe in ornament, and this glimpse of character +might be uttered in one sentence. Perhaps, however, a tendency to +ornamentation might have made the poem at least decorative. After all, +when one has emerged from the rarefied atmosphere of the Imagist, the +Symbolist, and the _vers librist_, one swims into the splendours of +Francis Thompson as one might take refuge from a wooden farmhouse +unprotected by trees, in a Gothic spire, a Byzantine altar-piece, or a +series of Moorish arabesques. It is a frightful descent from the heaven +of Crashaw and the places of the Seraphim in "The Hound of Heaven," by +Francis Thompson, to Richard Aldington. + +Each lover of poetry has his favourite poem and his favourite poet, and +it has always seemed to me that one of the hardest tasks of the critic +is to decide on the position of a poet among poets, or of a poet in +relation to life. For myself, to speak modestly, I cannot see how I +could condemn the taste of the man who thinks that Browning and +Swinburne and Tennyson, and, in fact, nearly all the modern English +poets, deserve to be classed indiscriminately together as "inspiring." +And I cannot even scorn the man who declares that Tennyson is _demodé_ +because his heroines are in crinoline and conventional, and his mediæval +knights cut out of pasteboard. + +By comparison with the original of the "Idylls of the King" this +statement seems to be true. Sir Thomas Malory's knights and ladies--by +modern standards they would hardly be called "ladies"--do not bear the +test of even the most elemental demands of modern taste. They are as +different as the characters in Saxo Grammaticus's "Hamblet" are from +those in Shakespeare's "Hamlet." But I may enjoy the smoothness of the +"Idylls of the King," their bursts of exquisite lyricism, their +cadences, and their impossibilities, and at the same time read Sir +Thomas Malory with delight. When I hear raptures over Browning and +Swinburne, when people grow dithyrambic over John Masefield and Alfred +Kreymborg and others new--_chacun à son goût_--I feel that by comparison +with Francis Thompson, these poets are not rich. They are poor because +they seem to leave out God; that is, the God of the Christians. + +Swinburne could never be a real pagan, because he could not escape the +shadow of the Crucifixion. Theocritus was a real pagan because he knew +neither the sorrow of the Crucifixion nor the joy of the Resurrection. +Keats was a lover of Greece, was ardent, inexpressibly beautiful, +sensuously charming; but Keats could no more be a real Greek than +Shakespeare, in "Julius Cæsar," could be a real Roman. Nor could +Tennyson, nor Browning, nor William Morris, nor the Preraphaelites be +really out of their time, for they could not understand the essentially +religious qualities of the times into which they tried to project +themselves. + +If you compare the "Idylls" of Tennyson with those idylls of Theocritus +he imitated, you easily see that his pictures are not even bad copies of +the originals; they are not even paraphrases--to turn again from +painting to literature. They are fine in themselves, and the critics of +the future, more reasonable than ours and less reactionary, will give +them their true place. As for Browning, it is only necessary to read the +Italian writers of the Renascence, to find how very modern he is in his +poems that touch on that period. He is always modern. With all his +efforts he cannot understand that mixture of paganism and Catholicism +which made the Renascence possible. He seems to assume that the Catholic +Church in the time of the Renascence produced men in whom paganism +struggled with Christianity. The fact is that paganism had melted into +Christianity and Christianity had given it a new light and a new form. + +It was not difficult for an artist of the Renascence to look on a +statuette of Leda and the Swan or Danaë and the Descent of Jupiter as a +shower of gold, as prefiguring the Incarnation. There was nothing +blasphemous in this pagan symbolism of a pagan prophecy of the birth of +a God from a virgin. It does not follow that Browning is not powerfully +beautiful and essentially poetical, even when he reads modern meanings +impossibly into the life of older days. Nevertheless, he is +unsatisfactory, as almost all modern poets, when they interpret the +past, are unsatisfactory. A great poet may look into his heart and +write, but with Tennyson, with Browning, with Swinburne, one feels that +very often they mistake the beating of their own hearts for the sound of +the pulsations of the hearts of others. + +Similarly, modern Christians who claim to be orthodox are sometimes +shocked when they are told that Saint Peter, for example, did not +believe that a man might not be both circumcised and baptized. According +to a common belief, the two could not exist together among the converted +Jews. And the modern man of letters seems to think that paganism and +Christianity were at odds at all points. A deeper knowledge of the +manifestations of religion, before the Reformation, would dissipate an +illusion which spoils so much fine modern poetry. + +Another point, in applying my canons of criticism to poets whom I love +in spite of this defect, is that I find that they have no desire to be +united with God--you may call him Jehovah, Jove, or Lord, to quote Pope. +They are, as a rule, without mysticism and constantly without that +ecstasy which makes Southwell, Crashaw, and the greatest of all the +mystical poets writing in English, Francis Thompson, so satisfactory. + +Wordsworth may have been transcendental, as Emerson certainly was, but +in different ways they made their search for the Absolute, and the +search, especially in Wordsworth's case, was fervent. Neither had the +splendours, the ecstasies of that love that casteth out fear, the almost +fierce and violent fervour of desire, reflected from the Apocalypse of +Saint John and the poems of Saint Teresa and of Saint John of the Cross, +which we find in Francis Thompson. In this respect, all modern poets +pale before him. He sees life as a glory as Baudelaire saw it as a +corpse. After a reading of "The Hound of Heaven," with its glorious +colour, its glow, its flame, all other modern poets seem to me to be a +pale mauve by comparison to its flaming gold and crimson. + +To many of my friends who love modern poets each in his degree, this +seems unreasonable and even incomprehensible; but to me it is very real; +and all literature which assumes to treat our lives as if Christianity +did not exist lacks that satisfactory quality which one finds in Dante, +in Calderon, in Sir Thomas More, and in Shakespeare. It is possible that +the prevalence of doubt in modern poetry is the cause of its lack of +gaiety. There is a modern belief that gaiety went out of fashion when +Pan died or disappeared into hidden haunts. This is not true. The Greeks +were gay at times and joyous at times, but if their philosophers +represent them, joyousness and gaiety were not essential points of their +lives. + +The highest cultivation of its time could not save Athens from +despondency and destruction, and when the leaders in the city of Rome +came to believe so little in life that only the proletariat had +children, it was evident that their very tolerant system of adopting any +god that pleased them did not add to the joy of life. The poet, then, +who misunderstands the paganism of the Greeks, who does not desire to be +united to an absolute Perfection, who is sad by profession, cannot be, +according to my canons, a true poet. I speak, not as a critic, but as a +man who loves only the poetry that appeals to him. + + + + +CHAPTER III + +CERTAIN NOVELISTS + + +My friendship with Thackeray and Dickens was an evolution rather than a +discovery. Once having read "Vanity Fair" or "Nicholas Nickleby," the +book became not so much a book but a state of mind--and, as is sometimes +felt about a friend--it is hard to remember a time when we did not know +him! + +Mark Twain was a discovery. "The Jumping Frog of Calavaras" and that +chuckling scene in "Innocents Abroad," where the unhappy Italian guide +introduces Christopher Columbus to the American travellers, were joys +indeed. These were more delightful and satisfying than the kind of +humour that preceded them--they seemed better than the whimsicalities of +Artemus Ward, and not to be compared to the laboured humour of Mrs. +Partington. But, leaving out these amusing passages, my pleasure in the +works of Mark Twain faded more and more as I came to the age of reason, +which is somewhat over twenty-five. It was hard to laugh at Mark after a +time. Compared to him, the "Pickwick Papers" had an infinite variety. +There were other things in Dickens which were finer than anything in +"Pickwick," but the humour of Pickwick had a softness about it, a human +interest, a lack of coarseness, which placed it immeasurably above that +of Mark Twain. + +The greatest failure of Dickens was "A Tale of Two Cities." And the +greatest failure of Mark Twain is his "Joan of Arc." But Dickens +redeemed himself in a hundred ways, while Mark Twain sank deeper and +deeper into coarseness and pessimism. As Mark Twain is by all odds +apparently the national American author, it is heresy to say this; and I +know persons who have assumed an air of coldness as long as they could +in my presence, because I declined to look on "Joan of Arc" as a +masterpiece. + +It shows some faults of Mark Twain's philosophy of life, it suggests his +narrow and materialistic point of view, and makes plain his lack of +knowledge of the perspectives of history. It is all the worse for an +appearance of tenderness. Mark Twain was neither mystical nor spiritual. +That does not mean that he was not a good husband and father, a kind +friend and a man very loyal to all his engagements. There are many other +authors who had not all these qualities, but who would have more easily +understood the character of Joan than did Mark Twain. + +Dickens's failure in "A Tale of Two Cities" was from very different +causes. It was not through a failure of tenderness, a lack of an +understanding of the real pathos of life, or through the want of a +spirituality without which no great work can be effective. It was +because Dickens relied very largely on Carlyle for the foundation of his +study of the historical atmosphere of that novel--the best, from the +point of view of style, except "Barnaby Rudge," that he ever wrote, +probably due to the fact that, treading as he did on ground that was new +to him, he had to guide his steps very carefully. The novel is +nevertheless a failure because it is untrue; it concerns itself with a +France that never existed seen through as artificial a medium as the +mauve tints through which certain artists see their figures and +landscapes. It was not with Dickens a case of defect in vision, but a +lack of knowledge. It was not lack of perception or the absence of a +great power of feeling. It was pure ignorance. He was without that +training which would have enabled him to go intelligently to the sources +of French history. + +In Mark Twain's case it was not a lack of the power to reach the +sources; it was an inability to understand the character of the woman +whom he reverenced, so far as he could feel reverence, and an invincible +ignorance of the character of her time. Mark Twain was modern; but +modern in the vulgarest way. I know that "Huckleberry Finn" and the +other young Americans--whom our youth are expected to like, if not to +imitate--are looked on as sacred by the guardians of those libraries who +recommend typical books to eager juvenile readers. But let that pass for +the moment. To take a case in point, there is hardly any man or woman of +refinement who will hold a brief in defense of the vulgarity of "A +Connecticut Yankee at the Court of King Arthur." + +It may be said that the average reader of Mark Twain's books--that is, +the average American reader--for Mark Twain is read the world +over--cares nothing for his philosophy of life. The average American +reads Mark Twain only to be amused, or to recall the adventures of a +time not far away when we were less sophisticated. Still, whether my +compatriots are in the habit of looking into books for a philosophy or +not, or of considering the faiths or unfaiths of the writer in hand, it +does not follow that it is to their credit if they neglect an analysis +which cultivated readers in other countries seldom omit. + +If I thought that any words of mine would deprive anybody of the gaiety +which Mark Twain has added to life, I should not write these words; but +as this little volume is a book of impressions, and sincere impressions, +I may be frank in the full understanding that the average American +reader will not take seriously what I say of Mark Twain, since he has +become an integral part of American literature. There may perhaps come a +time when his works will be sold in sets, carefully arranged on all +self-respecting bookshelves, pointed to with pride as a proof of +culture, and never read. They will perhaps one day be the Rogers's +statuettes of literature. But that day is evidently far off. I do not +think that any jester of the older day--the day of Touchstone or of +Rigoletto, with a rooted sorrow in his heart, could have been more +pessimistic and more hopeless than Mark Twain. To change the words of +Autolycus--"For the life to come, I jest out the thought of it!" + +"You who admire Don Quixote," said an infuriated Mark Twainite, "should +not talk of coarseness. There are pages in that romance of Cervantes +which I would not allow my son or daughter to read." + +One should give both sides of an argument, and I give this other side to +show what may be said against my views. But the coarseness of Cervantes +is, after all, a healthy coarseness. Modern ideas of purity were not +his. Ignorance in those days--the days of Cervantes--did not mean +innocence. Even the fathers of the Church were quite willing to admit +that the roots of water lilies were in the mud, and there was no +conspiracy to conceal the existence of the mud. Mark Twain's coarseness, +however, is more than that of Cervantes or Shakespeare. Neither +Cervantes nor Shakespeare is ever irreverent. + +To them, even the ordinary things of life have a certain sacerdotal +quality; but Mark Twain abhorred the sacerdotal quality as nature abhors +a vacuum. To say that he has affected the American spirit or the +American heart would be to go too far--for Americans are irreverent only +on the surface. It seems to me that they are the most reverent people in +the world toward those essential qualities which make up the spiritual +parts of life. Curiously enough, however, Mark Twain is just at present +the one author to whom all Europe and all outlanders point as the great +typical American writer! + +That a delightful kind of American humour may exist without +exaggeration, or the necessity of debasing the moral currency, many +joyous books in our literature show. There are a few, of course, that +are joyous without self-consciousness; but for real joyousness and charm +and innocent gaiety, united to a knowledge of the psychology of the +American youth, none so far has equalled Booth Tarkington's "Penrod," +or, what is better, "Seventeen." + +Now nobody has yet done anything so delightful, so mirth provoking, so +pathetic, in a way, as "Seventeen." In my youth I was deprived of the +knowledge of this book, for when I swam into the tide of literature, +Booth Tarkington was in that world from which Wordsworth's boy came, +bringing rainbows, which moved to all the music of the spheres. It was +during the late war that "Seventeen" was cast on the coasts of Denmark, +at a time when American books scarcely reached those coasts at all. St. +Julian, the patron of merry travellers, must have guided it through the +maze and labyrinths of bombs and submarines in the North Sea. It arrived +just when the world seemed altogether upside down; when death was the +only real thing in life, and pain as much a part of the daily routine as +the sunshine, and when joy seemed to have been inexplicably crushed from +the earth, because sorrow was ever so recurrent that it could not be +forgotten for a moment. Then "Seventeen" arrived. + +Booth Tarkington may have his ups and downs in future, as he has had in +the past. "The Gentleman from Indiana" seemed to me to be almost one of +the most tiresome books ever invented, while "Monsieur Beaucaire" was +one of the most fascinating, charming. You can hardly find a better +novel of American life than "The Turmoil," unless it is Judge Grant's +"Unleavened Bread." + +But the best novels of American life seem to be written in order to be +forgotten. Who reads "The Breadwinners" now? Or who, except the +professional "teacher" of literature, recalls "Prue and I"? Or that +succession of Mrs. Harriet Beecher Stowe's novels, almost unequalled as +pictures of a section of our life, each of which better expresses her +talent than "Uncle Tom's Cabin"? The English and the French have longer +memories. Mrs. Oliphant's "Chronicles of Carlingford"--some of us +remember "Miss Majoribanks" or "Phœbe Junior"--finds a slowly +decreasing circle of readers. And while "Sapho" is almost forgotten, +"Les Rois en Exilé" and "Jack" are still parts of current French +literature. But "Unleavened Bread" or "The Damnation of Theron Ware" or +"Elsie Venner" or the "Saxe Holm's Stories" are so much of the past as +to be unread. + +To the credit of the gentle reader, Miss Alcott's stories perennially +bloom. And, for some strange reason, the weird "Elsie Dinsmore" series +is found under the popular Christmas tree, while nobody gives the Rollo +books to anybody. Why? One may begin to believe that that degeneracy +which the prevalence of jazz, lip-sticks, and ballet costumes adapted to +the subway is supposed to indicate, is a real menace when one discovers +that "Penrod" or "Seventeen" has ceased to be read! + +We may read Mark Twain and wallow in vulgarity, but it is my belief that +Sodom and Gomorrah would have escaped their fate, if a Carnegie of that +time had made it possible to keep books like "Penrod" and "Seventeen" in +general circulation! + +It was once said of Anthony Trollope that as long as English men and +women of the upper and middle classes continued to exist, he might go on +writing novels with ever-increasing zest. And the same thing might be +said of Booth Tarkington in relation to his unique chronicles of +youth--that is, the youth of the Middle West, with a universal Soul. His +types are American, but there are Americas and Americas. Usage permits +us to use a term for our part of the continent to which our Canadian and +South and Central Americans and Mexicans might reasonably object; but +while the young Americans of Booth Tarkington are typically American, +they personally could belong only to the Middle West. The hero of +"Seventeen" would not be the same boy if he had been born in +Philadelphia or New York or Boston. Circumstances would have made him +different. The consciousness of class distinction would have made him +old before his time; and though he might be just as amusing--he would +not have been amusing quite in the same way. + +And this is one of the fine qualities of Mr. Tarkington's imaginative +synthesis. He is individual and of his own soil; he knows very well that +it is unnecessary to exaggerate or even to invent; he has only to +perceive with those rare gifts of perception which he possesses. It all +seems so easy until you try to do it yourself! + +The state of mind of Penrod, when he is being prepared for the pageant +of the "Table Round," is inexpressibly amusing to the adult reader; but +no child can look on it as entirely amusing, because every child has +suffered more or less, as Penrod suffered, from the unexplainable +hardness of heart and dullness of mind of older people. Something or +other prevents the most persecuted boy from admitting that his parents +are bad parents because they force impositions which tear all the fibres +of his soul and make him helpless before a jeering world. When Penrod +has gone through horrors, which are nameless because they seem to be so +unreasonable, he murmurs aloud, "_Well, hasn't this been a day!_" +Because of the humour in "Penrod" there is a pathos as true and real as +those parts in the "Pickwick Papers" where fortunately Dickens is +pathetic in a real sense because he did not strive for pathos. Everybody +admits now that Dickens becomes almost repellent when he wilfully tries +to be pathetic. + +One could pick out of "Seventeen" a score of delightful situations which +seem to ripple from the pen of Booth Tarkington, one of the best being +the scene between the hero and his mother when that _esprit terrible_, +his sister, seems to stand between him and the lady of his thoughts. And +"Penrod" is full of them. The description of that young gallant's +entrance into society is of Mr. Tarkington's best. Penrod is expected to +find, according to the rules of dancing academies, a partner for the +cotillion. It is his duty to call on the only young lady unengaged, who +was Miss Rennsdale, aged eight. Penrod, carefully tutored, makes his +call. + + A decorous maid conducted the long-belated applicant to her where + she sat upon a sofa beside a nursery governess. The decorous maid + announced him composedly as he made his entrance. + + "Mr. Penrod Schofield!" + + Miss Rennsdale suddenly burst into loud sobs. + + "Oh!" she wailed. "I just knew it would be him!" + + The decorous maid's composure vanished at once--likewise her + decorum. She clapped her hand over her mouth and fled, uttering + sounds. The governess, however, set herself to comfort her + heartbroken charge, and presently succeeded in restoring Miss + Rennsdale to a semblance of that poise with which a lady receives + callers and accepts invitations to dance cotillons. But she + continued to sob at intervals. + + Feeling himself at perhaps a disadvantage, Penrod made offer of his + hand for the morrow with a little embarrassment. Following the form + prescribed by Professor Bartet, he advanced several paces toward + the stricken lady and bowed formally. + + "I hope," he said by rote, "you're well, and your parents also in + good health. May I have the pleasure of dancing the cotillon as + your partner t'-morrow afternoon?" + + The wet eyes of Miss Rennsdale searched his countenance without + pleasure, and a shudder wrung her small shoulders; but the + governess whispered to her instructively, and she made a great + effort. + + "I thu-thank you fu-for your polite invu-invu-invutation; and I + ac----" Thus far she progressed when emotion overcame her again. + She beat frantically upon the sofa with fists and heels. "Oh, I did + want it to be Georgie Bassett!" + + "No, no, no!" said the governess, and whispered urgently, whereupon + Miss Rennsdale was able to complete her acceptance. + + "And I ac-accept wu-with pu-pleasure!" she moaned, and immediately, + uttering a loud yell, flung herself face downward upon the sofa, + clutching her governess convulsively. + + Somewhat disconcerted, Penrod bowed again. + + "I thank you for your polite acceptance," he murmured hurriedly; + "and I trust--I trust--I forget. Oh, yes--I trust we shall have a + most enjoyable occasion. Pray present my compliments to your + parents; and I must now wish you a very good afternoon." + + Concluding these courtly demonstrations with another bow he + withdrew in fair order, though thrown into partial confusion in the + hall by a final wail from his crushed hostess: + + "Oh! Why couldn't it be anybody but him!" + +Dickens would not have done the scene quite this way; he could not have +so conceived it, and he might have overdone it, but Booth Tarkington +gets it just right. He has created boy characters which will live +because they are alive. One of the most detestable books, after Mark +Twain's "Yankee at the Court of King Arthur," is Dickens's "Child's +History of England." The two books have various gross faults in common +and these faults are due to colossal ignorance. Mr. Gilbert Chesterton +says that one of Dickens's is due to + + the application of a plain rule of right and wrong to all + circumstances to which it was applied. It is not that they wrongly + enforce the fixed principle that life should be saved; it is that + they take a fire-engine to a shipwreck and a life-boat to a house + on fire. The business of a good man in Dickens's time was to bring + justice up to date. The business of a good man in Dunstan's time + was to toil to ensure the survival of any justice at all. + +It seems to me that if all the works of Dickens were lost we might do +very well with the "Pickwick Papers" and "Nicholas Nickleby." To these, +one is tempted to add "Our Mutual Friend." + +When I was young enough to assist at meetings of Literary Societies, +where papers on Dickens were read, I was invariably informed that +"Charles Dickens could not paint a lady or a gentleman." There was no +reason given for this censure. It was presumed that the authors of the +papers meant an English lady or gentleman. Nobody, to my knowledge, ever +defined what an English gentleman or lady was. When one considers that +for a long period an English gentleman's status was determined by the +fact that he owned land, had not even a remote connection with "trade" +or that he was instructed at Eton or Harrow, in Oxford or Cambridge, the +more modern definition would have been very different from what the +English of the olden time would have called a gentleman. Even now, when +a levelling education has rather blurred the surface marks of class in +England, it might be difficult for an American to define what was meant +by this criticism of Dickens. It seems to me that no one could define +exactly what was meant. The convention that makes the poet in +Pennsylvania write as if the banks of the Wissahickon were peopled by +thrushes, or orchestrated by the mavis, or the soaring lark, causes him +often to borrow words from the English vocabulary of England without +analyzing their exact meaning. There can be no doubt that Don Quixote +was a gentleman but not exactly in the English conventional sense. And, +if he was a gentleman, why are not Mr. Pickwick and Sam Weller +gentlemen? An interesting thesis might be written on the application of +Cardinal Newman's definition of a gentleman to both Mr. Pickwick and Sam +Weller. Why not? + +There is a truth about the English people, at least the lower classes, +which Mr. Chesterton in his illuminating "Appreciations and Criticisms +of the Works of Charles Dickens"--one of his best books--brings out, +though he does not accentuate it sufficiently: this is that the lower +classes of the English are both witty and humorous. Witty because they +are satirical and humorous because they are ironical. Sam Weller +represents a type--a common type--more exactly than Samuel Lover's +"Handy Andy" or any of Charles Lever's Irish characters. When one +examines the foundation for the assertion that Dickens could not draw a +lady or a gentleman, one discovers that his ladies and gentlemen, in the +English sense, are deadly dull. It is very probable that all +conventional ladies and gentlemen bored Dickens, who never ceased to be +a cockney, though he became the most sublimated of that class. Doctor +Johnson was a cockney, too, but, though it may seem paradoxical to say +it, not so greatly impressed by class distinctions as Dickens was. + +Dickens had the art of making insupportable bores most interesting. This +was an art in which the delicate Miss Austen excelled, too; but +Dickens's methods compared to hers are like those of a scene painter +when compared to those of an etcher in colours. There are times when +Dickens is consciously "common," and then he is almost unbearable; but +this objection cannot be made to the "Pickwick Papers." This book is +inartistic; it is made up of unrelated parts; the characters do not +grow; they change. But all this makes no difference. They are +spontaneous. You feel that for once Dickens is doing the thing he likes +to do--and all the world loves a lover who loves his work. + +There are doubtless some people still living who can tolerate the +romantic quality in "Nicholas Nickleby." There are no really romantic +qualities in the "Pickwick Papers"--thank heaven!--no stick of a hero, +no weeping willow of a heroine. The heroic sticks of Dickens never bloom +suddenly as the branch in "Tannhäuser" bloomed. Even Dickens can work no +miracle there. + +It increases our admiration of him to examine the works of those +gentlemen who are set down in the textbooks of literature as his +predecessors. Some of these learned authors mention Sterne's "Tristram +Shandy," a very dull and tiresome narrative; and "Tom Jones," very +tiresome, too, in spite of its fidelity to certain phases of +eighteenth-century life. And later, Pierce Egan's "Tom and Jerry." I was +brought up to consider the renown of the two Pierce Egans with reverence +and permitted to read "Tom and Jerry; or The Adventures of Corinthian +Bob" as part of the family pedigree, but it requires the meticulous +analysis of a German research-worker to find any real resemblance +between the artificial dissipations of "Tom and Jerry" and the +adventures of the peerless Pickwick. + +If the elder Pierce Egan had the power of influencing disciples, he +ought to have induced his son to produce something better than "The Poor +Boy; or, The Betrayed Baffled," "The Fair Lilias," and others too +numerous to mention. + +The voracious reader of Dickens, as he grows older, perhaps becomes a +student of Dickens, and is surprised to find that the development of +Dickens is much more marked and easily noted than the development of +Thackeray. In fact, Thackeray, like his mild reflector, Du Maurier, +sprang into the public light fully equipped and fully armed. Both these +men had wide experience and a careful training in form and proportion +before they attempted to write seriously. They were educated in art and +life and letters. The education of Dickens, on the other hand, was only +begun with "Pickwick," which knew neither method nor proportion; and he +who reads "Barnaby Rudge" for the flavour of Dickens finds a new and +good perspective and proportion, and even self-restraint. Artistically, +it is the best of all Dickens's novels. For that reason it lacks that +flavour which we find in the earlier books. I could not get such +thorough enjoyment from it as from "Nicholas Nickleby." In it Dickens +sacrificed too much to his self-restraint, and there is no moment in it +that gives us the joy of the discovery of Mr. and Mrs. Vincent Crummles +or of 'Tilda Price. + +Anthony Trollope, in his "Autobiography," which ought to be a textbook +in all those practical classes of literature that work to turn out +self-supporting authors, tells us that the most important part of a +novel is the plot. This may be true, but the inefficiency of the plot in +the works of Charles Dickens may easily be shown in an attempt to +summarize any of them, except "The Mystery of Edwin Drood." + +Still, when all is said for Dickens, one cannot even in old age begin to +read him over and over again, as one can read Thackeray. But who reads +an American book over and over again? Hawthorne never wearies the elect, +and one may go back to Henry James, in order to discover whether one +thinks that he means the same thing in 1922 one thought he meant in +1912. But who makes it a practice in middle age to read any novel of +Mrs. Wharton's or Mrs. Deland's or Mr. Marion Crawford's or Mr. Booth +Tarkington's at least once a year? There are thousands of persons who +find leisure to love Miss Austen, that hardiest of hardy perennials; +and during the war, when life in the daytime became a nightmare, there +was a large group of persons who read Trollope from end to end! This is +almost incredible; but it is true. And I must confess that if I do not +read Miss Austen's novels once every year, preferably cozily in the +winter, or "Cranford," or parts of Froissart--whose chronicle takes the +bad taste of Mark Twain's "Joan of Arc" from my memory--I feel as if I +had had an ill-spent year. It makes me seem as slothful as if I omitted +a daily passage from "The Following of Christ" or, at least, a weekly +chapter from the Epistles of St. Paul! + +George Eliot I had known even before the time I had begun to read. No +well-brought-up child could escape "Adam Bede" and the drolleries of +Mrs. Poyser. As I grew older, however, "Romola" attracted me most. The +heroine is perhaps a little too good for human nature's daily food, but +she is a great figure in the picture. I suspect that the artificiality +of Kingsley's "Hypatia," which I read at almost the same time, made me +admire, if I did not love, Romola, by way of contrast. No youth could +ever love Romola as Walter Scott made him love Mary Stuart or Catherine +Seton. But as it happened that just at this time I was labouring with +Blackstone (Judge Sharswood's Notes), with a volume of scholastic +philosophy "on the side"--I think it was Jourdain's _consommé_ of St. +Thomas Aquinas in French--Romola was a decided relief, and she seemed +truer and more interesting in every way than Hypatia, who was as +_papier-maché_ as her whole environment is untrue to the history of the +time. An historical novel ought not necessarily to be true to history, +but it ought to be illuminating and interesting, as "Hypatia" is not and +as "Romola" is. So it makes no difference whether George Eliot's reading +of Savonarola is correct or not, though it ought to be correct, of +course. Then there is Tito, the delicious and treacherous Tito! and the +scene in the barber shop! And if you want a good, mouth-filling novel, +give me "Middlemarch." Few persons read it now, and probably fewer will +read it in the future. It is nevertheless a great monument to the genius +of a woman who had such an infinite quality for taking pains, that it +almost defeated the end for which she worked. + + + + +CHAPTER IV + +LETTERS, BIOGRAPHIES, AND MEMOIRS + + +Some of us have acquired a state of mind which helps us to believe that +whenever a man mentions a book he either condemns or approves of it. In +a word, the mere naming a book means a criticism of the book at once. It +is true that books are criticisms of life, and that life, if it is not +very narrow and limited, is a good criticism of books; but one of the +most pleasant qualities of a reader who has lived among books all his +life is that he does not attempt always to recommend books to others, or +to preach about them. Besides, it is too dangerous to recommend +unreservedly or to condemn unreservedly. The teachers of literature have +undertaken the recommendation of books for the young; there are schools +of critics who spend their time in approving of them for the old; and +the "Index" at Rome assumes the difficult task of disapproval and +condemnation. That lets me out, I feel. + +One of my most cherished books is the "Letters to People in the World," +by Saint Francis de Sales. I have known people who have declared that it +is entirely exotic and has no meaning whatever for them. For me, it is a +book of edification and a guide to life; and the "Letters" of Saint +Francis himself, not entirely concerned with spiritual matters or the +relations of spiritual matters to life, are to me a constant source of +pleasure. I remember reading aloud to a friend the passage in which this +charming Bishop writes that, when he slept at his paternal château, he +never allowed the peasants on the domain to perform their usual duty, +which was to stay up all night and beat the waters of the ponds, or +perhaps of the moat, around the castle, so that the seigneur and his +friends might sleep peacefully. My friend was very much bored and could +not see that it represented a social point of view, which showed that +the Saint was much ahead of his time! It did not bring old France back +to him; he could not see the old château and the water in the moonlight, +or conceive how glad the peasants were to be relieved of their duty. I +can read the "Letters" of Saint Francis de Sales over and over again, as +I read the "Letters" of Madame de Sévigné or the "Memoirs" of the Duc +de Saint Simon. + +I think I first made acquaintance of Saint Simon in an English +translation by Bayle St. John. If you have an interest in interiors--the +interiors of rooms, of gardens, of palaces--you must like Saint Simon. +Most people to-day read these "Memoirs" in little "collections"; but I +think it is worth while taking the trouble to learn French in order to +become an understanding companion of this malicious but very graphic +author. To me the Palace of Versailles would be an empty desert without +the "Memoirs" of Saint Simon. Else, how could anybody realize a picture +of Mademoiselle de la Vallière looking hopelessly out of the window of +her little room just before the birth of her child? Or what would the +chapel be without a memory of those devout ladies who knelt regularly, +holding candles to their faces, at the exercises in Lent, after Louis +XIV. had become devout, in order that he might see them? + +But because I love to linger in the society of the Duc de Saint Simon +and Cardinal de Retz, it does not follow that I mean to introduce modern +and ingenuous youth to the society of these gentlemen. Each man has his +pet book. I still retain a great affection for a man of my own age who +gives on birthdays and great feasts copies of "The Wide, Wide World" and +"Queechy" to his grandchildren and their friends! Could you believe +that? He dislikes Miss Austen's novels and sneers at Miss Farrar's +"Marriage." He has never been able to read Miss Edgeworth's book; and he +considers Pepys's "Diary" an immoral book! Now, I find it very hard to +exist without at least a weekly peep into Pepys. And, by the way, in a +number of the _Atlantic Monthly_ not so long ago there is a vivid, +pathetic, and excellently written piece of literature. It is "A Portion +of the Diurnal of Mrs Eliz^th Pepys" by E. Barrington. + +If anybody asks me why I like Pepys, I do not feel obliged to reply. I +might incriminate myself. Very often, indeed, by answering a direct +question about books, one does incriminate oneself. + +However, to return to what I was saying--while I love the "Memoirs of +Cardinal de Retz," I adore--to be a little extravagant--the "Letters of +Saint Vincent de Paul." The man that does not know the real story of the +life of Saint Vincent de Paul knows nothing of the evolution of the +brotherhood of man in the seventeenth century. This Frenchman really +fought with beasts for the life of children, and was the only real +reformer in the France of his time. + +Now it is not because Saint Vincent was for a time the preceptor of +Cardinal de Retz that I find the Cardinal so delightful! On the +contrary! I enjoy the Cardinal, famous coadjutor of his uncle, the +Archbishop of Paris, because he is a true type of the polite, the +worldly, and the intriguing gentleman of his time. He died a good +peaceful death, as all the gay and the gallant did at his time. He +earned the deepest affection and respect of Madame de Sévigné, for which +any discerning man might have been willing to spend half a lifetime. But +even that is beside the point. He lives for me because he gives a +picture of the French ruling classes of his time which is shamelessly +true. No living man to-day in political office, although he might be as +great an intriguer as the Cardinal, would dare to be so interestingly +shameless. That is a great charm in itself. And, then, if you read him +in French, you discover that he knew how to make literature. + +The only wonder in my mind has always been how a man who became so +penitent during the last years of his life as Paul de Gondi should not +have been forced by his confessor to destroy his book of revelations. +But one must remember that the confessors of his period--the period of +the founding of the French Academy--had a great respect for mere +literature. His father was Philip Emanuel de Gondi, Count de Joigni, +General of the Gallies of France, and Knight of the Order of the Holy +Ghost; who retired in the year 1640, to live among the Fathers of the +Oratory. There he entered into holy orders, and there he died, with the +reputation of a mightily pious man, on June 29, 1662, aged eighty-one. + + Give me leave, madame [Cardinal de Retz says] to reflect a little + here upon the nature of the mind of man. I believe that there was + not in the world a man of an uprighter heart than my father, and I + may say that he was stampt in the very mold of virtue. Yet my duels + and love-intrigues did not hinder the good man from doing all he + could to tye to the Church, the soul in the world perhaps the least + ecclesiastical. His predilection for his eldest son, and the view + of the archbishoprick of Paris for me, were the true causes of his + acting thus; though he neither believed it, nor felt it. I dare say + that he thought, nay would have sworn, that he was led in all this + by no other motive than the spiritual good of my soul, and the fear + of the danger to which it might be exposed in another profession. + So true it is that nothing is more subject to delusion than piety. + All manner of errors creep and hide themselves under that vail. + Piety takes for sacred all her imaginations, of what sort soever; + but the best intention in the world is not enough to keep it in + that respect free from irregularity. In fine, after all that I have + related I remained a churchman; but certainly I had not long + continued so, if an accident had not happened which I am now to + acquaint you with. + +This is not at all what is called "edifying," but, from the moral point +of view, it shows what Saint Vincent de Paul had to struggle against in +the Church of France; and the position of Paul de Gondi in relation to +an established church was just as common in contemporary England, where +"livings" were matters of barter and sale but where the methods of the +clergymen highly placed were neither so intellectual nor so romantic. + +It must be admitted that Cardinal de Retz, like a later French prelate, +Talleyrand, made no pretense of being fitted for the Church. +Talleyrand's only qualification was that he was lame; and, as a younger +son, he had to be provided for. But Cardinal de Retz, with all his +faults, had a saving grace in spite of many unsaving graces. He did his +best to escape the priesthood. He fought his first duel with +Bassompierre behind the Convent of the Minims, in the Bois de +Vincennes; but it was of no use. His friends stopped the inquiry of the +Attorney General, "and so I remained in my cassock notwithstanding my +duel." His next duel was with Praslin. He tried his best to give it the +utmost publicity, but, he says, "there's no use in opposing one's +destiny; nobody took the slightest notice of the scandal." + +The elder Dumas has probably had his day, though "Monte Cristo" and "The +Three Musketeers" are still read. The newer romance writers are less +diffuse, and, not writing _feuilletons_, are not forced to be diffuse. +The constant reader of French memoirs of the seventeenth century can +hardly help wondering why anybody should read Dumas who could go +directly to the sources of his romances. + +Speaking of the relation of books to books, it was the "Memoirs" of +Madame Campan that took me into the society of Benjamin Franklin. There +were legends about him in Philadelphia, where we thought we knew more +about this distinguished American than anybody else; but it was through +certain passages in the "Memoirs on Marie Antoinette and her Court" that +I turned to his autobiography, and then to such letters of his as could +be found. That autobiography is one of the gems of American history, +though it does not reveal the whole man. If he had been as frank as +Cardinal de Retz, his autobiography would have been suppressed; but, +then, no Philadelphian could ever be quite frank in his memoirs. It has +never been done! Even the seemingly reckless James Huneker understood +that thoroughly. But the autobiography of Benjamin Franklin is +sufficiently frank. It is of its own time, and it seems to me that it +should be read just after one has finished for the second or third time +the memoirs of Gouverneur Morris. Everybody feels it his duty to acclaim +the charm of the confessions of Benvenuto Cellini, and I have known a +young woman who read them reverently in the holy service of culture as a +pendant to a textbook on the Renascence, and followed him by Jowett's +translation of the "Republic of Plato." She may safely be left to her +fate. The diaries of Gouverneur Morris were not in her course of +reading, and they seem almost to have been forgotten. I do not recommend +them to anybody. There are passages in them which might shock the +Prohibitionist, and also those persons who believe in divorce _à la +mode de_ Madame de Staël. + +For me, they are not only constantly amusing, constantly instructive, +but they give the best pictures of Parisian interiors of the time before +and during the French Revolution. Because I am firmly convinced of this, +is it necessary that I should be expected to place them among the Best +One Hundred Books? To me they will be always among my best twenty-five +books. + +In the first place Gouverneur Morris knew well how to serve his country +efficiently; and he was too sensible of the debt of that country to +France and too sympathetic with the essential genius of the French +people not to do his best to serve her, too. The original verses in his +memoirs are the worst things in the volumes; but then, everybody has the +faults of his virtues, and nearly everybody wrote verses at that time. +He was one of the wisest of all our diplomatists. He was broad minded, +cultivated, plastic within reasonable limits, and not corroded with a +venom of partisan politics. I repeat, with a polite anticipation of +contradiction, that no better picture has ever been given of the +aristocratic society of the late eighteenth century in Paris. + +His gallantries are amusing; yet there is underneath his affectation of +the frivolous vice of the time, which might be euphemistically called +"exaggerated chivalry, a fundamental morality which one does not find in +that class of systematic _roués_" who were astonished at the virtue of +the ladies at Newport when the Count de Lauzun and his friends dwelt in +that town. There may be dull pages in these memoirs, but if so I have +not yet found them. + +In "The Diary and Letters" there are many bits of gossip about certain +great persons, notably about Talleyrand, who got rid of his mitre as +soon as he could, and Madame de Flahaut. It seems to me that Talleyrand +and Philippe Égalité were the most fascinating characters of the French +Revolution, for the same reason perhaps that moved a small boy who was +listening to a particularly dull history of the New Testament to exclaim +suddenly, "Oh, skip about the other apostles; read to me about Judas!" + +To persons who might censure Gouverneur Morris's frankness one may quote +a short passage from Boswell's "Johnson." "To discover such weakness," +said Mrs. Thrale to Doctor Johnson, speaking of the autobiography of +Sir Robert Sibbald, "exposes a man when he is gone." "Nay," said the +pious and great lexicographer, "it is an honest picture of human +nature." + +This, then, excuses the clever and wise Gouverneur Morris for +enlightening us as to the paternity of a son of Madame de Flahaut. +Morris, for a time that condoned the amourettes of Benjamin Franklin, +was virtuous. Madame de Flahaut, afterward Madame de Souza, gave Morris +a hint that he might easily supplant Talleyrand in her affection. "I +may, if I please, wean her from all regard toward him, but he is the +father of her child, and it would be unjust." In this noble moment Mr. +Morris chivalrously forgets the existence of the Count de Flahaut! + +In 1789, Mr. Morris continues to write platonic verses to Madame de +Flahaut; the Queen's circle at Versailles is worried about the fidelity +of the troops; the Count d'Artois holds high revelry in the Orangery; De +Launey's head is carried on a pipe in the streets of Paris, and murdered +men lie in the gutters. But the fashionable life of Paris is not +disturbed. Mr. Morris goes to dinner. He is invited for three o'clock, +to the house of Madame la Comtesse de Beauharnais. Toward five o'clock +the Countess herself came to announce dinner. Morris is happy in the +belief that his hunger will be equal to the delayed feast. For this day, +he thinks he will be free from his enemy, indigestion. He is +corroborated in his opinion that Madame de Beauharnais is a poetess by + + a very narrow escape from some rancid butter of which the cook had + been very liberal. + +But this is froth, and yet indicative of the depth beneath. It seems to +me that there is no more interesting and useful book on the French +Revolution than this autobiography. It ought to be placed near De +Tocqueville's "Ancient Régime" and "Democracy in America." + +On December 2, 1800, he believed it to be the general opinion that Mr. +Jefferson was considered a demagogue, and that Aaron Burr would be +chosen President by the House of Representatives. The gentlemen of the +House of Representatives believed that Burr was vigorous, energetic, +just, and generous, and that Mr. Jefferson was "afflicted with all the +cold-blooded vices, and particularly dangerous from false principles of +government which he had imbibed." Virginia would be, of course, against +Burr, because, Morris writes, + + Virginia can not bear to see any other than a Virginian in the + President's chair! + +John Adams was President and Thomas Jefferson vice-President, in 1800. +It is edifying for us who look on the "demigods" of 1787 with profound +reverence, to see them at close range in Gouverneur Morris's pages. + +Washington fares well at his hands, Lafayette not nearly so well: + + one could not expect the blast of a trumpet from a whistle. + +But, then, Morris had had money transactions with the Lafayettes. Morris +believed that no man ever existed who controlled himself so well as +Washington. Shall we put the "Diary" just after the "Autobiography of +Benjamin Franklin," not far from Beveridge's "Marshall" and at least on +the same shelf with the perennial Boswell? + +I read the confessions of Cardinal de Retz and of Gouverneur Morris many +times with a dip now and then, by way of a change, into the +Autobiography of Anthony Trollope. This is rather a change from the +kickshaws of France to the roast beef of old England. This +autobiography never seems to me to be merely a book made to encourage +authors to be industrious and hard-working. It is more than that. It is +the expression of the life of an unusual man, who did an unusual thing, +and who writes about himself so well and so sincerely that he gives us +an insight into a phase of English character which none of his novels +ever elaborated. + +What Trollope did may be done again, but hardly in the American +atmosphere, with the restless American nerves and that lack of +doggedness which characterizes us. The picture Trollope gives of himself +as a member of the English gentry, deprived of all the advantages of his +caste except an inborn class feeling, is worth while, and the absence of +self-pity is at once brave and pathetic. He knew very well what he +wanted, and he secured it by the most honest and direct means. He knew +he could get nothing without work, and he worked. His exercise of +literature as an avocation did not prevent him from being a good public +servant. + +As a typical Englishman brought up in the country, he liked to hunt. +Hunting is a prerogative of the leisurely and the rich. He obtained +leisure at a great sacrifice, and he became fairly rich through the +same sacrifice. He tells us of all this with a manliness and lack of +sentimentalism which endears this book to me. It is so much the fashion +in our day to declare that society is against us when we have to work +unremittingly for what we want, that Trollope's honesty is refreshing, +and, though most readers will consider the word rather absurd as applied +to him--inspiring! + +In earlier days every American was brought up with a prejudice against +Mrs. Trollope's "Domestic Manners of the Americans," as we were all +taught to hate "American Notes," by Dickens. We all softened toward +Dickens later, and it would be difficult to read the simply told story +of the heroic devotion and courage which Trollope relates of his mother +without believing that the recording angel in no way holds her +responsible for her rather vulgar book. + +How fascinating to the budding author is the record of sales of the +books written by Trollope as he ascended the ladder of popularity! How +he managed to cajole the publishers in the beginning he does not tell +us. They are not so easily managed now. And there is the story of the +pious editor who began the serial publication of "Rachel Ray," and +although paying Trollope his honorarium, stopped it abruptly because +there was a dancing party in the story! In all this the author of "The +Warden" and "Barchester Towers" nothing extenuates nor puts down aught +in malice. And I must say that for me this autobiography is very good +reading. As the sailor once said of a piece of rather solid beef, +"There's a great deal of chaw in it." + +I pause a moment to reflect on a letter which I have just received from +a young college woman who has so far read the manuscript of this book. +She writes that it is really not a book so far for professing +Christians. + + My mother and I had expected of you something more edifying, + something that would lead us to the reading of good and elevating + books. At college I looked on literature as something apart. Since + I have come home to Georgia, I find that it is better for me to + submit myself to the direction of our good Baptist clergyman, and + have no books on our library shelves that I cannot read aloud to + the young. One of your favourites, Madame de Sévigné, shocks me by + the cruelty of her description of the death of the famous poisoner, + Madame de Brinvilliers. And I do not think that the pages of the + Duc de Saint-Simon should be read by young people. + +This is an example of what a refined atmosphere may do to a Georgia +girl! I have written to her by way of an apology that this is a little +volume of impressions and confessions, and that personally I should find +life rather duller if I had not the Duc de Saint-Simon at hand. Besides, +I do not think that there is a single young person of my acquaintance +who would allow me to read any of his pages to him or her! + +Most young persons prefer "Main Street" or any other novel that happens +to be the vogue. As I have said, I do not agree with Madame de Sévigné +when she says, writing of her granddaughter, that bad books ought to be +preferred to no books at all. But it would be almost better for the +young not to begin to read until they are old, if one is to gauge the +value of books by the unfledged taste of youth. Purity, after all, is +not ignorance, though a certain amount of ignorance at a certain age is +very desirable. + +While I write this, I have in mind a little essay of great charm and +value by Coventry Patmore on "Modern Ideas of Purity," which goes deeper +into the fundamentals of morality than any other modern work on the +subject. And, by the way, having read "The Age of Innocence," "Main +Street," "Moon Calf," "Miss Lulu Bett," and several other novels, I turn +from their lack of gaiety to find a reason why art should not be gloomy, +and here it is, from Coventry Patmore's "Cheerfulness in Life and Art." + + "Rejoice always: and again I say, Rejoice," says one of the highest + authorities; and a poet who is scarcely less infallible in + psychological science writes, "A cheerful heart is what the Muses + love." + + Dante shows Melancholy dismally punished in Purgatory; though his + own interior gaiety--of which a word by and by--is so interior, and + its outward aspect often so grim, that he is vulgarly considered to + have himself been a sinner in this sort. Good art is nothing but a + representation of life; and that the good are gay is a commonplace, + and one which, strange to say, is as generally disbelieved as it + is, when rightly understood, undeniably true. The good and brave + heart is always gay in this sense: that, although it may be + afflicted and oppressed by its own misfortunes and those of others, + it refuses in the darkest moment to consent to despondency; and + thus a habit of mind is formed which can discern in most of its own + afflictions some cause for grave rejoicing, and can thence infer at + least a probability of such cause in cases where it cannot be + discerned. Regarding thus cheerfully and hopefully its own sorrows, + it is not overtroubled by those of others, however tender and + helpful its sympathies may be. It is impossible to weep much for + that in others which we should smile at in ourselves; and when we + see a soul writhing like a worm under what seems to us a small + misfortune, our pity for its misery is much mitigated by contempt + for its cowardice. + +There may be gaiety and joy in the novels of Harold Bell Wright and Mrs. +Gene Stratton-Porter, but it seems to me to be a cheerfulness which is +not quite the real thing. It is too sentimental and rather too laboured. +These two authors, who, if the value of a writer could really depend on +the majority of the votes cast for him, would, with the goldenrod, be +our national flowers, seem to work too hard in the pursuit of +cheerfulness. + +Once I remember asking a scornful Englishman what supported the pleasant +town of Stratford-on-Avon. He replied at once, "The Shakespearian +industry!" Now the cheerfulness of both Mr. Harold Bell Wright and Mrs. +Gene Stratton-Porter, like the cheerfulness of "Pollyanna," seems to be +very much of an industry. It is not at all like the joyousness, that +delight in life, spontaneous and unconscious, which one finds in the +really great authors. Why the modern realist should believe that to be +real he must be joyless--in the United States, at least--is perhaps +because he feels the public need of protest against the optimistic +sentimentalism of the Harold Bell Wrights and the Gene Stratton-Porters. +But it would be a serious mistake to assume that neither Mr. Wright nor +Mrs. Porter has a gleam of value. It is just as serious a mistake as to +assume that the late Mary Jane Holmes and Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth +had no value. They pleased exactly the same class of people, in their +day, which delights in Mr. Wright and Mrs. Porter in ours. They answered +to the demand of a public that is moral and religious, that needs to be +taken into countries which savoured something of Fairyland, and yet +which are framed by reality. However, as long as Mrs. Gene +Stratton-Porter and Mr. Harold Bell Wright, and novelists of higher +philosophical aspirations, like the author of "The Age of Innocence," +and "Blind Mice," and "Zell," and "Main Street," continue to write, +there is no danger that the general crowd of American readers will be +shocked or corrupted by the "Memoirs" of the Duc de Saint-Simon or of +the Comtesse de Boigne. So I feel that I am absolved from the +responsibility of misleading any young reader to sup on the horrors of +the description of the death of Madame de Brinvilliers as painted by +Madame de Sévigné or to revel among the groups of Italians who range +through the scenes drawn by Benvenuto Cellini. + +While Pepys is always near at hand, I treat his contemporary, Evelyn, +with very distant politeness and respect. Now Evelyn should not be +treated in that way. He is always so edifying and so very correct, +except when he moralizes about the Church of Rome, that he ought to be +read nearly every day by the serious as an example of propriety and as a +model of the expression of the finest sentiments on morals, philosophy, +literature, and art. But I do not find in his "Diary" any such passages +as this, which Pepys writes on October 19, 1662 (Lord's day): + + Put on my first new lace-band: and so neat it is, that I am + resolved my great expense shall be lace-bands, and it will set off + anything else the more. I am sorry to hear that the news of the + selling of Dunkirk is taken so generally ill, as I find it is among + the merchants; and other things, as removal of officers at Court, + good for worse; and all things else made much worse in their report + among people than they are. And this night, I know not upon what + ground, the gates of the City ordered to be all shut, and double + guards everywhere. Indeed I do find everybody's spirit very full of + trouble: and the things of the Court and Council very ill taken; so + as to be apt to appear in bad colours, if there should ever be a + beginning of trouble, which God forbid! + +Or, + + 29th (Lord's day). + + This morning I put on my best black cloth suit, trimmed with + scarlet ribbon, very neat, with my cloak lined with velvet, and a + new beaver, which altogether is very noble, with my black silk knit + canons I bought a month ago. + +Evelyn never condescends to such weaknesses as we find in our beloved +Pepys! + +One wonders whether, if the noble Mr. Evelyn had been able to decipher +some of the hidden things in Mr. Pepys's "Diary," he would have written +this tribute, under the date of May 26, 1703: + + This day died Mr. Sam Pepys, a very worthy, industrious and curious + person.... He lived at Clapham with his partner, Mr. Hewer, + formerly his clerk, in a very noble house and sweete place, where + he enjoyed the fruite of his labours in greate prosperity. He was + universally belov'd, hospitable, generous, learned in many things, + skill'd in music, a very greate cherisher of learned men of whom he + had the conversation. His library and collection of other + curiosities were of the most considerable, the models of ships + especially.... Mr. Pepys had been for neere 40 years so much my + particular friend, that Mr. Jackson sent me compleat mourning, + desiring me to be one to hold up the pall at his magnificent + obsequies, but my indisposition hindered me from doing him this + last office. + +All the teachings of the histories of our student days force us to look +on Charles II. as one of the weakest of English kings; but when we come +to enjoy Pepys and to revere Evelyn, we begin to see that there is much +to be said for him as a monarch, and that he did more for England under +difficult circumstances than conventional history has given him credit +for. + +It took many years for me to find any diary or memoir that appealed to +me as much as that of Pepys. His great charm is that he does for you +what formal history never does; he takes you into the heart of his time, +and introduces you into the centre of his mind and heart. In literature, +in poetry and prose, the reader hopes that the roofs of houses or the +tops of heads might be taken off, so that we could see with an +understanding eye what goes on. The interest of the human race, though +it may be disguised rhetorically, is the interest that everybody finds +in gossip. Malicious gossip is one thing; but that gossip that makes us +know our fellow men and women somewhat as we know ourselves--but perhaps +more clearly--can never be rooted out of normal human nature. + +I read and re-read favourite parts of Pepys's "Diary" many times, and I +sat myself down in many cozy corners, on hills, on valleys, by land, and +by sea, to dip into the "Memoirs of Saint-Simon"; and then there was +always Madame de Sévigné. Much was hoped from the long-promised "Memoirs +of Talleyrand." They came; they were disappointing. + +Suddenly arrived a very complete and egoistical book that compares in a +way with the perennial favourites of mine I have been writing about. And +this is "The Education of Henry Adams," and almost contemporaneously the +"Letters of William James." It is easy to understand the delight with +which intelligent people welcomed "The Education of Henry Adams." +Unconsciously to most of us, it showed elaborately what we talked about +in our graduation essays and what we believed in a vague way--that +education consists in putting value on the circumstances of life, and +regarding each circumstance as a step either forward or backward in +one's educational progress. This is the lesson which young Americans +are taught by Harold Bell Wright and Gene Stratton-Porter; and which +Samuel Smiles beat into the heads of the English. Henry Adams's lesson, +however, is not taught in the same way at all. There is no preaching; it +is a series of pictures, painted by a gentleman, with a sure hand, who +looks on the phenomena of life as no other American has ever looked on +them, or, at least, as no other American has ever expressed them. The +judicious and the sensitive and the nicely discerning may shrink with +horror from me when I say that I put at once "The Education of Henry +Adams," for my delectation, beside the "Apologia pro Vita Sua" of +Cardinal Newman! + +There is the same delicate egoism in both; there is the same reasonable +and well-bred reticence. There is one great difference, however; while +Cardinal Newman ardently longs for truth and is determined to find it, +Henry Adams seems not quite sure whether truth is worth searching for or +not. And yet Henry Adams is more human, more interesting than Cardinal +Newman, for, while Newman is almost purely intellectual and so much +above the reach of most of us, Adams is merely intelligent--but +intelligent enough to discern the richness of life, and mystical enough +to long for a religious key to its meaning. Newman not only longs, but +reasons and acts. It was not the definition of the unity of God that +troubled Adams. It was the question of His personality. The existence of +pain and wretchedness in the world was a bar to his understanding that a +personal Christ should be equal in divinity with God, in fact, God +Himself. + +Newman, who was more spiritual, saw that pain was no barrier to faith in +a personal God. I am speaking now only from my own point of view; others +who like to read both Newman and Adams may look on this view as entirely +negligible. What other American than Adams would have so loved without +understanding the spirit of Saint Francis d'Assisi: + + Vast swarms of Americans knew the Civil War only by school history, + as they knew the story of Cromwell or Cicero, and were as familiar + with political assassination as though they had lived under Nero. + The climax of empire could be seen approaching, year after year, as + though Sulla were a President or McKinley a Consul. + + Nothing annoyed America more than to be told this simple and + obvious--in no way unpleasant--truth; therefore one sat silent as + ever on the Capitol; but, by way of completing the lesson, the + Lodges added a pilgrimage to Assisi and an interview with St. + Francis, whose solution of historical riddles seemed the most + satisfactory--or sufficient--ever offered; worth fully forty years' + more study, and better worth it than Gibbon himself, or even St. + Augustine, St. Ambrose, or St. Jerome. The most bewildering effect + of all these fresh crosslights on the old Assistant Professor of + 1874 was due to the astonishing contrast between what he had taught + them and what he found himself confusedly trying to learn + five-and-twenty years afterwards--between the twelfth century of + his thirtieth and that of his sixtieth years. At Harvard College, + weary of spirit in the wastes of Anglo-Saxon law, he had + occasionally given way to outbursts of derision at shedding his + life-blood for the sublime truths of Sac and Soc:-- + + Hic Jacet + Homunculus Scriptor + Doctor Barbaricus + Henricus Adams + Adae Filius et Evae + Primo Explicuit + Socnam + + The Latin was as twelfth century as the law, and he meant as satire + the claim that he had been first to explain the legal meaning of + Sac and Soc, although any German professor would have scorned it as + a shameless and presumptuous bid for immortality; but the whole + point of view had vanished in 1900. Not he, but Sir Henry Maine and + Rudolph Sohm, were the parents or creators of Sac and Soc. + Convinced that the clue of religion led to nothing, and that + politics led to chaos, one had turned to the law, as one's scholars + turned to the Law School, because one could see no other path to a + profession. + + The law had proved as futile as politics or religion, or any other + single thread spun by the human spider; it offered no more + continuity than architecture or coinage, and no more force of its + own. St. Francis expressed supreme contempt for them all, and + solved the whole problem by rejecting it altogether. Adams returned + to Paris with a broken and contrite spirit, prepared to admit that + his life had no meaning, and conscious that in any case it no + longer mattered. + +After all, the speculations of Henry Adams, his thrusts at philosophy, +seem as futile as those of that very great American John Burroughs. It +is the facts of life as seen through his personality, the changes in our +political history as analyzed so skilfully by him after the manner of no +other man that make his book supremely interesting. + +The real man is not hidden in "The Education of Henry Adams." We can no +longer talk of the degeneracy of American literary taste when we know +that this very American, characteristic, and illuminating book was a +"best seller" in our country for several months. Some who like to bewail +the degeneracy of our art and literature and of our drama, declare that +its popularity is simply due to a fashion. Biographies are the fashion, +and therefore it is the transitory habit of the illiterate book buyer to +purchase, if he does not read, biographies. This view may be dismissed +with a scornful wave of the hand. + +When I took up "The Education of Henry Adams," I was informed that it +was "pathetic." Personally, it has never struck me that Henry Adams, as +far as I know him, is at all pathetic. He did not assume an air of +pathos when he read my review in _Scribner's Monthly_--before it became +the _Century_--of the novel "Democracy." Mr. Richard Watson Gilder, the +editor, was away at the time, and I recall his whimsical horror when on +his return he read the things I had said about a novel, which I, in the +heat of youth, held to be entirely un-American. + +Mr. Henry Adams's book, in my opinion, has no element of pathos. Adams +lived a rare and interesting life. He loved beauty, and was so prepared +by tradition and education that he knew how to appreciate beauty +wherever he found it, and to give reasons for its being beautiful. +Against the rough material obstacles in life, which are supposed to be +good for a man, but are not at all good, since they absorb a great deal +of energy that is subtracted from his later life, he was not obliged to +struggle. Like Theodore Roosevelt, the greatest of all modern +Americans, who was a man of letters in love with life, Adams was not +compelled to look up to social strata above him, and, whatever the +enraged democrats may say, this in itself is a great advantage. One can +see from his "Education" that his material difficulties were so slight +that he could take them cheerfully, even in our world where poverty is +both a blunder and a crime. This in itself tends toward happiness. Henry +Adams, it is true, suffered terribly in his heart. His description of +the death of his sister is heart-rending; he does not dwell on the worst +of his griefs. No man had a more agreeable circle of friends, no man +more pleasant surrounding. He was free in a way that few other men are +free, and to my mind it is this sense of freedom, of which he does not +always take advantage, that is one of the most appealing qualities of +his book. It is a great relief to meet a man and to be intimate with +him, as we are with Henry Adams, who has the power of using wings, +whether he uses them or not. + +There are many reasons for the success of his book. The chapters on +"Diplomacy," on "Friends and Foes," on "Political Morality," and on "The +Battle of the Rams" are new contributions to our history. More than +that, they elucidate conditions of mind which are generally wrapped up, +for motives of policy, in misty and often hypocritical verbiage. + +Some of the reviewers found "The Education" egotistical. This is too +strong a term. These memoirs would have no value if they were not +egotistical; and if the term "egotistical" implies conceit or +self-complacency or the desire to show one's better side to the public, +"The Education" does not deserve it. A man cannot write about himself +without writing about himself. This seems very much like a platitude. +And Henry Adams writes about himself with no affectation of modesty. If +anything, he underrates himself, as in conversation he sometimes took a +tone which made him appear to those who knew him slightly as below the +average of the real Henry Adams. + +Here, for instance, is a good passage: + + Swinburne tested him [Henry Adams] then and there by one of his + favourite tests--Victor Hugo; for to him the test of Victor Hugo + was the surest and quickest of standards. French poetry is at best + a severe exercise for foreigners; it requires extraordinary + knowledge of the language and rare refinement of ear to appreciate + even the recitation of French verse; but unless a poet has both, he + lacks something of poetry. Adams had neither. To the end of his + life he never listened to a French recitation with pleasure, or + felt a sense of majesty in French verse; but he did not care to + proclaim his weakness, and he tried to evade Swinburne's vehement + insistence by parading an affection for Alfred de Musset. Swinburne + would have none of it; De Musset was unequal; he did not sustain + himself on the wing. + + Adams would have given a world or two, if he owned one, to sustain + himself on the wing like De Musset, or even like Hugo; but his + education as well as his ear was at fault, and he succumbed. + Swinburne tried him again on Walter Savage Landor. In truth the + test was the same, for Swinburne admired in Landor's English the + qualities that he felt in Hugo's French; and Adams's failure was + equally gross, for, when forced to despair, he had to admit that + both Hugo and Landor bored him. Nothing more was needed. One who + could feel neither Hugo nor Landor was lost. + + The sentence was just and Adams never appealed from it. He knew his + inferiority in taste as he might know it in smell. Keenly mortified + by the dullness of his senses and instincts, he knew he was no + companion for Swinburne; probably he could be only an annoyance; no + number of centuries could ever educate him to Swinburne's level, + even in technical appreciation; yet he often wondered whether there + was nothing he had to offer that was worth the poet's acceptance. + Certainly such mild homage as the American insect would have been + only too happy to bring, had he known how, was hardly worth the + acceptance of any one. Only in France is the attitude of prayer + possible; in England it became absurd. Even Monckton Milnes, who + felt the splendours of Hugo and Landor, was almost as helpless as + an American private secretary in personal contact with them. Ten + years afterwards Adams met him at the Geneva Conference, fresh + from Paris, bubbling with delight at a call he had made on Hugo; "I + was shown into a large room," he said, "with women and men seated + in chairs against the walls, and Hugo at one end throned. No one + spoke. At last Hugo raised his voice solemnly, and uttered the + words: "Quant a moi, je crois en Dieu!" Silence followed. Then a + woman responded as if in deep meditation: "Chose sublime! un Dieu + qui croit en Dieu!" + +The _Chose sublime_ is an Adamesque touch! It gives the last delicate +tint to the impression. Page after page gleams with such impressions and +such touches. He looks deep, and he sees clearly. But he lacks faith! He +is the discoverer of the twelfth century; and, in a lesser sense, the +discoverer of the real meaning of the nineteenth. He perceived the real +architecture of both the Cathedral of Chartres and of "The Song of +Roland." How useless all the tomes of the learned Teutons seem in +comparison with his volume on Chartres, and their conclusions are so +laboured and ineffective in comparison with the lightning-like glance +with which he pierces the real meaning of the twelfth century. He has +his limitations, and he is not unaware of them. But when one reflects on +the hideous self-complacency, the eighteenth-century ignorance, the +half-educated vulgarity of most of the writers in German and English +who pretend to interpret the Middle Ages, one cannot help giving +grateful thanks for having found Henry Adams. + +To be sure, he does not respect Harvard, and one of his reasons seems to +be that the Harvard man, though capable of valuing the military +architecture of the walls of Constantinople, cannot sympathize with the +beauties of Chartres or Sancta Sophia. Yale, he assumes, is more +receptive. However, Henry Adams, if he were alive to-day, would have +discovered that both Yale and Harvard, both seekers after culture and +the cultivated, the hitherto prejudiced and self-opinionated, have +profited greatly by the education he has given them. It seems that Henry +Adams fancied that he had failed as an educator. He did not realize that +he would give his countrymen an education which they greatly lacked, and +which many of them are sincerely grateful for. + +The man that cannot read his chapter on "Eccentricity" over and over +again is incapable of appreciating some of Pepys's best passages! Books +to be read and re-read ought to occupy only a small space on any shelf, +and not many of them, in my opinion, are among the One Hundred Best +Books listed by the late Sir John Lubbock. Each of us will make his own +shelf of books. The book for me is the book that delights, attracts, +soothes, or uplifts me. Let those critics go hang whose criticisms are +not literature! Sainte-Beuve makes literature when he exercises his +critical vocation; Brunetière has too heavy a hand; Francisque Sarcey +has some touches of inspiration that give delight. There are no really +good French critics to-day, probably because they have so little +material to work on. Our own Mencken, with all his vagaries, is worth +while, and Brander Matthews knows his line and the value of background +and perspective; William Lyon Phelps has a light hand; but there are +many leaves in our forests of critical writing and not much wood. +Literary criticism is becoming a lost art with our English brethren, who +once claimed Saintsbury and George Lewes. The admitted existence of +cliques and claques in London makes us distrustful. You were worked into +great enthusiasm for Stephen Phillips's "Herod" until you found that +half a score of notices of this tragedy were written by the same hand! + +It seems almost impossible that "The Letters of William James" should +appear shortly after "The Education of Henry Adams," and, though the +Jameses were New Yorkers, they are certainly redolent of New England. We +had begun to forget our debt to the writers of New England. Mrs. Freeman +and Mr. Lincoln hold up their heads as writers of modern folk stories; +but the _Atlantic Monthly_ has become eclectic. It has lost the flavour +of New England. That Boston which in the _Atlantic_ had always been a +state of mind has become different from the real old Boston. + +In truth, Indiana had begun to blot out the whole of New England, and +Miss Agnes Repplier had begun to stain our map of culture with the +modulated tints of Philadelphia. For myself, I had returned to the +novels of Harriet Beecher Stowe--leaving out "Uncle Tom's Cabin," which +I always found detestable--to "Elsie Venner" and to "The Autocrat of the +Breakfast Table," in the hope that the flavour of New England, which I +found to my horror was growing faint in me, might be retained. There is +always "The House of the Seven Gables!" + +But, while I was lingering over some almost forgotten pages of Mrs. +Stowe with great pleasure, something she said reminded me of Walter +Savage Landor, and I turned to the only work of Landor which had ever +attracted me, "The Imaginary Conversations." There was an interlude of +enjoyment and exasperation. He shows himself so malicious, so bigoted, +so narrow, and so incapable of comprehending some of the historical +persons he presents to us. But there are compensations, all the same. +Whatever one may think of the animus of Landor, one cannot get on +without an occasional dip into "The Imaginary Conversations." Suddenly +Landor reminded me of Marion Crawford's "With the Immortals," and I +rediscovered Marion Crawford's Heinrich Heine! To have discovered Heine +in Zangwill's "In a Mattress Grave" was worth a long search through many +magazines. Like Stevenson's "Lodging for the Night," Zangwill's few +pages can never be obliterated from the heart of a loving reader--by a +loving reader I mean a reader who loves men a little more than books. + +You will remember that Crawford's Immortals appear at Sorrento where +Lady Brenda and Augustus and Gwendolyn Chard are enjoying the fine +flower of life. If Sir Conan Doyle and Sir Oliver Lodge could only bring +back to life, or induce to come back to life, King Francis I. and Julius +Cæsar and Heinrich Heine and Doctor Johnson,[1] together with that +group of semi-happy souls who live on the "enamelled green" of Dante, +spiritism might have more to say for itself! + + "'I call a cat a cat,' as Boileau put it," remarked Heine. "I would + like to know how many men in a hundred are disappointed in the + women they marry." + + "Just as many as have too much imagination," said Augustus. + + "No," said Johnson, shaking his head violently and speaking + suddenly in an excited tone. "No. Those who are disappointed are + such as are possessed of imagination without judgment; but a man + whose imagination does not outrun his judgment is seldom deceived + in the realisation of his hopes. I suspect that the same thing is + true in the art of poetry, of which Herr Heine is at once a master + and a judge. For the qualities that constitute genius are + invention, imagination and judgment; invention, by which new trains + of events are formed, and new scenes of imagery displayed; + imagination, which strongly impresses on the writer's mind, and + enables him to convey to the reader the various form of nature, + incidents of life and energies of passion; and judgment, which + selects from life or nature what the present purpose requires, and + by separating the essence of things from its concomitants, often + makes the representation more powerful than the reality. A man who + possesses invention and imagination can invent and imagine a + thousand beauties, gifts of mind and virtues of character; but + unless he have judgment which enables him to discern the bounds of + possibility and to detect the real nature of the woman he has + chosen as the representative of his self-formed ideal, he runs + great risk of being deceived. As a general rule, however, it has + pleased Providence to endow man with much more judgment than + imagination; and to this cause we may attribute the small number of + poets who have flourished in the world, and the great number of + happy marriages among civilised mankind." + + "It appears that I must have possessed imagination after all," said + Francis. + + "If you will allow me to say it," said Cæsar in his most suave + tones, and turning his heavy black eyes upon the king's face, "you + had too much. Had you possessed less imagination and more judgment, + you might many times have destroyed the Emperor Charles. To + challenge him to fight a duel was a gratuitous and very imaginative + piece of civility; to let him escape as you did more than once when + you could easily have forced an engagement on terms advantageous to + yourself, was unpardonable." + + "I know it," said Francis, bitterly. "I was not Cæsar." + + "No, sir," said Johnson in loud, harsh tones, "nor were you happy + in your marriages--" + + "I adore learned men," whispered Francis to Lady Brenda. He had at + once recovered his good humour. + + "A fact that proves what I was saying, that the element of judgment + is necessary in the selection of a wife," continued the doctor. + + "I think it is intuition which makes the right people fall in love + with each other," said Lady Brenda. + + "Intuition, madam," replied Johnson, "means the mental view; as + you use it you mean a very quick and accurate mental view, followed + immediately by an unconscious but correct process of deduction. The + combination of the two, when they are nicely adjusted, constitutes + a kind of judgment which, though it be not always so correct in its + conclusions, as that exercised by ordinary logic, has nevertheless + the advantage of quickness combined with tolerable precision. For, + in matters of love, it is necessary to be quick." + + "Who sups with the devil must have a long spoon," said Francis, + laughing. + + "And he who hopes to entertain an angel must keep his house clean," + returned the doctor. + + "Do you believe that people always fall in love very quickly?" + asked Lady Brenda. + + "Frequently, though not always. Love dominates quite as much + because its attacks are sudden and unexpected, as because most + persons believe that to be in love is a desirable state." + + "Love," said Cæsar, "is a great general and a great strategist, for + he rarely fails to surprise the enemy if he can, but he never + refuses an open engagement when necessary." + +[1] + + "_Cola diritto, sopra il verde smalto + mi fur moetrati gli spiriti magni + che del verderli in me stesso 'n esalto_" + + --INFERNO. + +Strange as it may appear, it does not seem to be so much of a descent, +or of a break in the chain of continuity, to turn to hear William James +speak in letters, which have the effect of conversation. From the very +beginning of his precious book I somehow feel that I am part of the +little circle about him. The conversation goes on--Mr. James never loses +sight of the point of view and sympathies of the party of the second +part--and you are not made to feel as an eavesdropper. + +Standing on the ladder, unhappily a rather shaky ladder, to put back +"With the Immortals" on the shelf, I pass Wells's great novel of +"Marriage," which I would clutch to read again, if I had not already +begun this Letter of James--written to his wife: + + I have often thought that the best way to define a man's character + would be to seek out the particular mental or moral attitude in + which, when it came upon him, he felt himself most deeply and + intensely active and alive. At such moments there is a voice inside + which speaks and says: "This is the real me!" And afterwards, + considering the circumstances in which the man is placed, and + noting how some of them are fitted to evoke this attitude, whilst + others do not call for it, an outside observer may be able to + prophesy where the man may fail, where succeed, where be happy and + where miserable. Now as well as I can describe it, this + characteristic attitude in me always involves an element of active + tension, of holding my own, as it were, and trusting outward things + to perform their part so as to make it a full harmony, but without + any _guaranty_ that they will. Make it a guaranty--and the attitude + immediately becomes to my consciousness stagnant and stingless. + Take away the guaranty, and I feel (provided I am _überhaupt_ in + vigorous condition) a sort of deep enthusiastic bliss, of bitter + willingness to do and suffer anything, which translates itself + physically by a kind of stinging pain inside my breast-bone (don't + smile at this--it is to me an essential element of the whole + thing!), and which, although it is a mere mood or emotion to which + I can give no form in words, authenticates itself to me as the + deepest principle of all active and theoretic determination which I + possess.... + +Personal expression is, after all, what we long for in literature. +Cardinal Newman tells us, I think, in his "Idea of a University," that +it _is_ the very essence of literature. _Scientia_ is truth, or +conclusions stated as truths which stand irrespective of the personality +of the speaker or writer. But literature, to be literature, must be +personal. It is good literature when it is expressed plastically, and in +accordance with a good usage of its time. A reader like myself does not, +perhaps, trouble himself sufficiently with the philosophy of William +James as represented in these "Letters." One has a languid interest in +knowing what he thought of Bergson and Nietzsche or even of Hegel; but +for the constant reader his detachment or attachment to Aristotle and +St. Thomas Aquinas is not nearly so important as his personal +impressions of both the little things and the big things of our +contemporary life. Whether you are pragmatic or not, you must, if you +are at all in love with life, become a Jamesonian after you have read +the "Letters"! And his son, Mr. Henry James, who, we may hope, may +resemble his father in time, has arranged them so well, and kept himself +so tactfully in the background, that you feel, too, that whether young +Henry is a pragmatist or not, he is a most understanding human being. +The only way to read these "Letters" is to dip into them here and there, +as the only way to make a good salad is to pour the vinegar on drop by +drop. To use an oriental metaphor, the oil of appreciation is stimulated +by the acid of wit, the salt of wisdom, and the pepper of humour. +Frankly, since I discovered William James as a human being I have begun +to read him for the same reason that I read Pepys--for pure enjoyment! + +A friend of mine, feeling that I had taken the "Letters of William +James" too frivolously, told me that I ought to go to Mr. Wells to +counteract my mediæval philosophy and too cheerful view of life. Just as +if I had not struggled with Mr. Wells, and irritated myself into a +temperature in trying to get through his latest preachments! I am not +quite sure what I said of Mr. Wells, but I find, in an article by Mr. +Desmond MacCarthy in the "New Statesman," just what I ought to have +said. + + This doctrine of the inspired priesthood of authors is exaggerated + and dangerous. Neither has it, you see, prevented him from writing + "The Wonderful Visit." Artists should feel, and if necessary be + told, that they are on their honour to do their best. That will do. + If they flatter themselves that they are messengers from the Father + of Light whenever they put pen to paper, they are apt to take any + emotional hubble-bubble in themselves as a sign that the Spirit has + been brooding upon the waters, and pour out; though a short time + afterwards they may let loose a spate flowing in a quite different + direction. Sincerity of the moment is not sincerity; those who have + watched England's prime minister know that. + +William James helped me to wash the bad taste of Mr. Wells's god out of +my mouth. It seems remarkable that such a distinguished man of +talent--if he were dead, one would be justified in saying a man of +genius--should not have been able to invent a more attractive and potent +Deity. Voltaire, while making no definition, did better than that; but +Voltaire was a much cleverer man than Wells, and he had an education +such as no modern writer has. When Mr. Wells preaches, he becomes a +bore. Who, except the empty-minded, or those who, like the Athenians, +are always seeking new things, can take Mr. Wells's dogmatisms +seriously? Is it not in one of his "Sermones" that Horace tells us that +the merchant wants to be a sailor and the sailor a merchant? Does he not +begin with--_Qui fit, Mæcenas?_ But Horace says nothing of the authors +of fiction--Stevenson calls them very lightly "_filles de joie_,"--who +insist on being boldly and brutally theologians and philosophers. Horace +might have invented a better god than Wells; but he had too much good +taste and too much knowledge of man in the world to attempt it. + +The more one reads of the very moderns, the more one falls in love with +the ancients. Take the peerless Horatius Flaccus, for instance. Do you +think anybody would read his Odes and Epodes and love him as we do if he +insisted that we should "sit under him" and assumed a pulpit manner? +This is as near as he ever comes to teaching us anything: + + _Lenit albescens animos capillus + Litium et rixae cupidos protervae; + Non ego hoc ferrem calidus juventa, + Consule Planco._ + +Even Sir Edward Bulwer-Lytton, who loved himself very much, showed in +his translations of "The Odes and Epodes" that he could almost love +something as well as himself. It does not become me to recommend +books--everybody to his own taste!--but I should like to say that for +those whose Latin has become only a faint perfume of attar of roses, +like that which is said to cling faintly to one of the desks of Marie +Antoinette at Versailles, the translations of our dear Horatius by Lord +Lytton is a very precious aid to a knowledge of one of the most charming +and most wise of pagan poets. + +Horace says: + + Postumus, Postumus, the years glide by us, + Alas! no piety delays the wrinkles, + Nor old age imminent, + Nor the indomitable hand of Death. + +We might have, in spite of the awful examples of Mr. Wells and the other +preachers, who ought to confine themselves to finer things, desired that +Horace should have gone further and told us what kind of books we ought +to read in our old age. His choice was naturally limited; it was +impossible for him to buy a book every week, or every month. The +publishers were not so active in those days. But he might have indicated +the kind of book that old age might read, in order to renew its youth. I +have tried "Robinson Crusoe,"--the unequalled--and "Swiss Family +Robinson"; but they seem too grown up for me now. I have taken to "King +Solomon's Mines" and "Treasure Island" and that perfect gem of +excitement and illusion, "The Mutineers," by Charles Boardman Hawes. I +read it, and I'm young again. I trust that some enterprising bookseller +will unblushingly compile a library for the old, and begin it with "The +Mutineers!" The main difficulty with the Old or the Near Old is that the +fear of shocking the Young makes them such hypocrites. They pretend that +they like Mr. Wells and the other preachers; they express intense +interest in new and ponderous books, in the presence of Youth--when they +ought to yawn frankly and bury themselves in romances. But if the Old +really want to save their faces, and at the same time enjoy glimpses of +that fountain of youth which we long for at every age, let them acquire +two books--Clifford Smyth's "The Gilded Man" and "The Quest of El +Dorado," by Dr. J. A. Zahm, whose _nom de plume_ was H. J. Mozans. There +you have the real stuff. Together, these two books are a combination of +just what the Old need to found dreams on. If a man does not smoke he +cannot dream with any facility when he grows old; and if he has not +possessed himself of these two volumes, he cannot have acquired that +basis for dreams which the energetic Aged greatly need. "The Gilded Man" +is frankly a romance, and yet, strangely enough, a romance of facts, and +"The Quest of El Dorado" is the only volume in the English language when +it deals with the El Dorado; it has all the most attractive qualities of +a romance. + +But they are not enough. To them I add, "Bob, Son of Battle," which the +author of "Alice For Short," discovered late in life. It is the greatest +animal-human story ever written, for Owd Bob is nobly human, and the +Black Killer devilishly human, and yet they are dogs; not fabulous dogs, +invented by clever writers. A great book! It is too thrilling; it +reminds of "Wuthering Heights"; I shall, therefore, read this evening +some of Henry Van Dyke's Canadian stories, and end the day with "Pride +and Prejudice." + + + + +CHAPTER V + +BOOKS AT RANDOM + + +Among nature books that gave me many happy hours on the banks of the +Delaware--imperial river!--is Charles C. Abbott's "Upland and Meadow." +"Better," Mr. Abbott says, "repeat the twelve labours of Hercules than +attempt to catalogue the varied forms of life found in the area of an +average ramble!" _Soit!_ And better than that, "to feel that whatever +creature we may meet will prove companionable--that is, no stranger, but +rather an amusing and companionable friend--assures both pleasure and +profit whenever we chance abroad." + +Who that has made "Upland and Meadow" his companion can forget the +extracts from the diary of the Ancient Man, dated Ninth Month, 1734, in +the Delaware Valley? Noisy guns had reduced the number of wild ducks and +geese, he says, even then. But, nevertheless, Watson's Creek was often +black with the smaller fowl. + + I do seldom see the great swans, but father says that they are not + unusual in the wide stretches of the Delaware. + +Happy day! when the wedge-shaped battalions of wild geese were almost as +frequently seen as the spattering sparrows now! + + Father allowed me [writes the good Quaker boy, in 1734] to + accompany my Indian friend, Oconio, to Watson's creek, that we may + gather wild fowl after the Indian manner. With great eagerness, I + accompanied Oconio, and thus happened it. We did reach the widest + part of that creek early in the morning, I think the sun was + scarcely an half-hour high. Oconio straightway hid himself in the + tall grass by the water, while I was bidden to lie in the tall + grass at a little distance. With his bow and arrows, Oconio quickly + shot a duck that came near, by swimming within a short distance of + him. I marvelled much with what skill he shot, for his arrow + pierced the head of the duck which gave no alarming cry.... Oconio + now did fashion a circlet of green boughs, and so placed them about + his head and shoulders that I saw not his face; he otherwise + disrobed and walked into the stream. He held in one hand a shotten + duck, so that it swam lustily, and, so equipped, was in the midst + of a cluster of fowl, of which he deftly seized several so quickly + that their fellows took no alarm. These he strangled beneath the + water, and, when he had three of them, came back with caution to + where the thick bushes concealed him. He desired that I should do + the same, and with much hesitation I disrobed and assumed the + disguise Oconio had fashioned; then I put forth boldly towards the + gathered fowl, at which they did arise with a great clamour, and + were gone. I marvel much why this should have been, but Oconio did + not make it clear, and I forbore, through foolish pride, to ask + him. And let it not be borne in mind against me [pleads the good + Quaker boy] that, when I reached my home, I wandered to the barn, + and writing an ugly word upon the door, sat long and gazed at it. + Chagrin doth make me feel very meek, I find, but I set no one an + example by speech or act, in thus soothing my feelings in so + worldly a manner. + +This example may be commended to players of golf, who are inclined to be +"worldly." The episode of Oconio at the best is too long to quote; it, +too, has its lesson! One reads Mr. Abbott's defence of the skunk +cabbage, for it harbours at its root + + the earliest salamanders, the pretty Maryland yellow throat nests + in the hollows of its broad leaves, and rare beetles find a + congenial home in the shelter it affords. + +"Upland and Meadow" gives one occasion for thought on the subject of +raccoons. "Foolish creatures, like opossums, thrive while cunning coons +are forced to quest or die." + +For a stroll by the Thames--I mean the New England Thames--there is no +book like Ik Marvel's "Dream Life," but for a day near the +Delaware--imperial river!--give me "Upland and Meadow." + +And then with what assurance of satisfaction may one turn for +refreshment to the continual charm of John Burroughs's books, "Riverby" +and "Pepacton." Burroughs's opinions upon the problems of humanity are +more tiresome than John Bunyan's opinions on theology; but to go with +him among the birds and the plants, to hope with him that the soaring +lark of England may find its way down through Canada to our hedges, to +look with him into the nests in the shrubs that border our roads is to +begin to feel that joy in being an American of the soil that no other +author gives. He cured the young New England poets and the singers of +the Berkshire Hills and of the Catskills of celebrating the English +thrush and the nightingale, as if those birds sang on the Palisades. + +There is an epithet I should like to apply to John Burroughs, but he +might not like it if he were alive. I recall the case of a pleasant +Englishman who admired two American girls very much, because, as he +said, they were "so homely." In fact, they were rather pretty girls, and +he had not used the term in reference to their looks. It is the word +with which I like to describe John Burroughs. Forty years ago, I met him +at Richard Watson Gilder's. He was young then, and delightfully +"homely" in the sense in which the Englishman used the word. Some of the +refined ladies at Mrs. Gilder's objected to his "crude speech," for even +in the eighties there were still _précieuses_. The truth is that his +rural use of the vernacular was part of the charm. It never spoiled his +style; but it gave that touch of homeliness to it which smelt of the +good soil of the country. + +Thoreau's "Walden" always reminds me--a far-fetched comparison but I +will not apologize for it--of "As You Like It" played in one way by +Dybwad, the Norwegian actress, and by Julia Marlowe in another. Madame +Dybwad, being nearer to the Elizabethan time in her daily life, gives us +an Elizabethan maiden with a touch of "homeliness"; but Julia Marlowe's, +like Ada Rehan's "Rosalind," has something of the artificial character +of Watteau. "Walden," then, is somewhat too varnished; but "Riverby" and +"Pepacton" are "homely" and "homey." + +To return to memoirs for a moment, that most delightful of all mental +dissipations for a leisurely man. In looking for the second volume of +"Walden"--for fear that I should have done Thoreau an injustice--I find +the "Memoirs of the Comtesse de Boigne." One cannot imagine anything +more unlike Madame de Boigne than Thoreau and John Burroughs! Why is +Madame de Boigne on the same shelf with these two lovers of nature? +Madame de Boigne was never a lover of nature. She loved the world and +the manifestations of the world, and--not to be ungallant--she is more +like an irritated mosquito than like the elegant _camellia japonica_ to +which she would prefer to be compared. + +There is a great deal of solid comfort in the revelations of Madame de +Boigne; she is at times so very untruthful that her malice does no real +harm; she is so very clever; and she paints interiors so well; and gives +the atmosphere of French Society before and during the Revolution in a +most fascinating way. She always thinks the worst, of course; but a +writer of memoirs who always thought the best would be as painfully +uninteresting as Froude is when he describes the character of Henry +VIII. But this is a digression. + +Mr. John Addington Symonds speaks of the style of Sir Thomas Browne as +displaying a "rich maturity and heavy-scented blossom." Mr. Mencken +cannot accuse any modern Englishman or American of imitating, in his +desire to be academic, Browne's hyperlatinism or his use of Latin words, +like "corpage," "confinium," "angustias," or "Vivacious abominations" +and "congaevous generations." + +Mr. Symonds says: + + He professes a mixture of the boldest scepticism and the most + puerile credulity. But his scepticism is the prelude to confessions + of impassioned faith, and his credulity is the result of tortuous + reflections on the enigmas of life and revelation. Perhaps the + following paragraph enables us to understand the permanent temper + of his mind most truly: + + "As for those wingy mysteries in divinity, and airy subtleties in + religion, which have unhinged the brains of better heads, they + never stretched the pia mater of mine. Methinks there be not + impossibilities enough in religion for an active faith: the deepest + mysteries ours contains have not only been illustrated but + maintained by syllogism and the rule of reason. I love to lose + myself in a mystery; to pursue my reason to an O altitudo! 'Tis my + solitary recreation to pose my apprehension with those involved + enigmas and riddles of the Trinity, Incarnation, and Resurrection. + I can answer all the objections of Satan and my rebellious reason + with that odd resolution I learned of Tertullian, _Certum est quia + impossible est_. I desire to exercise my faith in the difficultest + point, for to credit ordinary and visible objects, is not faith, + but persuasion." + +Leaving all question of theology, or criticism of theology, aside, Sir +Thomas lends himself to those moments when a man wants to dip a little +into the interior life. It is a strange thing that nearly all the modern +novelists who describe men seem to think that their interior life is +purely emotional. Even Mr. Hugh Walpole,[2] my favourite among the +writers in the spring of middle age, is inclined to make his heroes, or +his semi-heroes (there are no good real honest villains in fiction now) +lead lives that are not at all interior. And yet every man either leads +an interior life, or longs to lead an interior life, of which he seldom +talks. He wants inarticulately to know something of the art of +meditation; his dissatisfaction with life, even when he is successful, +is largely due to the fact that he has never been taught how to +cultivate the spiritual sense. This is an art. In it St. Francis de +Sales was very proficient. It gave George Herbert and a group of his +imitators great contentment in the state to which they were called. As a +book of secular meditation the "Religio Medici" is full of good points. +For instance, Sir Thomas starts one on the road to meditation on the +difference between democracy and freedom, humanity and nationalism in +this way: + + Let us speak like politicians; there is a nobility without + heraldry, a natural dignity, whereby one man is ranked with another + filed before him, according to the quality of his desert and + pre-eminence of his good parts. Though the corruption of these + times and the bias of present practice wheel another way, thus it + was in the first and primitive commonwealths, and is yet in the + integrity and cradle of well-ordered politics: till corruption + getteth ground;--ruder desires labouring after that which wiser + considerations contemn;--every one having a liberty to amass and + heap up riches, and they a license or faculty to do or purchase + anything. + +[2] Mr. Walpole has almost forfeited the allegiance of people who + admired his quality of well-bred distinction by writing in "The + Young Enchanted" of George Eliot as a "horse-faced genius." + +There are singular beings who have tried to read "Religio Medici" +continuously. Was it Shakespeare, whose works were presented to one of +this class? "How do you like Shakespeare?" the amiable donor asked. "I +can't say yet; I have not finished him!" It seems almost miraculous that +human beings should exist who take this attitude toward Sir Thomas +Browne, his "Urn Burial" or his "Christian Morals." It seems almost more +miraculous that this attitude should be taken toward Montaigne, and that +some folk should prefer the "Essays of Montaigne" in the pleasant, +curtailed edition of John Florio's translation, edited by Justin Huntly +McCarthy! These small books are convenient, no doubt. If you cannot have +the original French, or the leisure to browse over the big volume of +Florio's old book as it was written, Mr. McCarthy's edition is an +agreeable but not satisfactory substitute. It somehow or other reminds +one of that appalling series of cutdown "Classics," so largely +recommended to a public that is seduced to run and read. A condensed +edition of Froissart may do very well for boys; but who can visualize +the kind of mind content with a reduced version of "Vanity Fair"? + +Montaigne is a city of refuge from the whirling words of the uplifters. +At times I have been compelled from a sense of duty, a mistaken one, to +read whole pages of Mr. Wells, whose "Marriage" and "The New +Machiavelli" and "Tono-Bungay," will be remembered when "Mr. +Britling"--by the way, what did Mr. Britling see through?--shall be +forgotten. As an antidote, I invariably turn to Montaigne. It amazed me +to hear Montaigne called a skeptic. He is even more reverent toward the +eternal verities than Sir Thomas Browne, and he has fewer superstitions. +It was his humanity and his love for religion that turned him from +Aristotle to Plato, and yet he is no fanatic for Plato. He is a real +amateur of good books. Listen to this: + + As for Cicero, I am of the common judgment, that besides learning + there was an exquisite eloquence in him: He was a good citizen, of + an honest, gentle nature, as are commonly fat and burly men: for so + was he. But to speake truly of him, full of ambitious vanity and + remisse niceness. And I know not well how to excuse him, in that he + deemed his Poesie worthy to be published. It is no great + imperfection to make bad verses, but it is an imperfection in him + that he never perceived how unworthy they were of the glorie of his + name. Concerning his eloquence it is beyond all comparison, and I + verily believe that none shall ever equall it. + +Montaigne sorrowed it a thousand times that ever the book written by +Brutus on Virtue was lost. He consoles himself, however, by remembering +that Brutus is so well represented in Plutarch. He would rather know +what talk Brutus had with some of his familiar friends in his tent on +the night before going to battle than the speech he made to his army. He +had no sympathy with eloquent prefaces, or with circumlocutions that +keep the reader back from the real matter of books. He does not want to +hear heralds or criers. How he would have hated the flare of trumpets +that precedes the entrance of the best sellers! And the blazing +"jackets," the lowest form of modern art, would have made him rip out +the favourite oaths of his province with violence. + +"The Romans in their religion," he says, "were wont to say 'Hoc age'; +which in ours we say, 'Sursum corda.'" + +He goes to a book as he goes to a good dinner; he does not care for the +_hors d'œuvres_. Note how he rushes with rather rough weapons to the +translation, by his dying father's command, of _Theologia naturalis sive +liber creaturarum magistri Raimondi de Sebonde_. He thinks that it is a +good antidote for the "new fangles" of Luther, who is leading the vulgar +to think for themselves and to reject authority. His analysis of himself +in the essay "Of Cruelty" is the message of a sane man to sane men; and +he does not hesitate to point out the fact that no hatred is so absolute +as that which Christians can cover with the cloak of Christianity. The +discord between zeal for religion and the fury of nationality concerns +him greatly, and he does not hesitate to read a well-deserved lesson to +his contemporaries on the subject. + +In Montaigne's time the theories which Machiavelli had gathered together +in "The Prince," governed Europe. One can see that they do not satisfy +Montaigne. To him they are nefarious. + +"'The Prince,'" declares Villari, "had a more direct action on real life +than any other book in the world, and a larger share in emancipating +Europe from the Middle Ages." + +It is a shocking confession to make, and yet the "Essays" of Michel de +Montaigne give me as much pleasure, but not so much edification, as the +precious sentences of Thomas à Kempis. They are foils; at first sight +there seems to be no relationship between them; and yet at heart Michel +de Montaigne, who was really not a skeptic, has much in common with +Thomas à Kempis. If there were no persons in the world capable of being +Montaignes, Thomas à Kempis would have written for God alone. He would +have resembled an altar railing which I once heard Father Faber had +erected. On the side toward the altar it was foliated and exquisitely +carved in a manner that pleased Ruskin. On the outer side, the side +toward the people and not the side toward the Presence of God, it was +entirely plain and unornamented! + +The friendship of Thomas à Kempis I owe to George Eliot. Emerson might +easily perish; Plato might go, and even Horace be drowned in his last +supply of Falernian; Marcus Aurelius and even Rudyard Kipling might +exist only in tradition; but the loss of all their works would be as +nothing compared to the loss of that little volume which is a marvellous +guide to life. The translations of Thomas à Kempis into English vary in +value. Certain dissenters have cut out the very soul of À Kempis in +deleting the passages on the Holy Eucharist. Think of Bowdlerizing +Thomas à Kempis! He was, above all, a mystic, and all the philosophy of +his love of Christ limps when the mystical centre of it, the Eucharist, +is cut out. If that meeting in the upper room had not taken place during +the paschal season, if Christ had not offered His body and blood, soul +and divinity to his amazed, yet reverent, disciples, Thomas à Kempis +would never have written "The Following of Christ." The Bible, even the +New Testament, is full of sayings which, as St. James says of St. Paul's +Epistles, are not easy sayings, but what better interpretation of the +doctrines of Christ as applied to everyday life can there be found than +in this precious little book? + +You may talk of Marcus Aurelius and gather what comfort you can from the +philosophy of Thoreau's "Walden"--which might, after all, be more +comfortable if it were more pagan. The Pan of Thoreau was a respectable +Pan, because he was a Unitarian; you may find some comfort in Keble's +"Christian Year" if you can; but À Kempis overtops all! It is strange, +too, what an appeal this great mystic has to the unbelievers in +Christianity. It is a contradiction we meet with every day. And George +Eliot was a remarkable example of this, for, in spite of her habitual +reverence, she cannot be said to have accepted orthodox dogmas. Another +paradox seems to be in the fact that Thomas à Kempis appeals so directly +and consciously to the confirmed mystic and to those who have secluded +themselves from the world. At first, I must confess that I found this a +great obstacle to my joy in having found him. + +If Montaigne frequently drove me to À Kempis, À Kempis almost as +frequently in the beginning drove me back to Montaigne. It was not +until I had become more familiar with the New Testament that I began to +see that À Kempis spoke as one soul to another. In this world for him +there were only three Facts--God, his own soul, and the soul to whom he +spoke. + +It was a puzzle to me to observe that so many of my friends who looked +on the Last Supper as a mere symbol of love and hospitality, should +cling to "The Following of Christ" with such devotion. Even the example +of an intellectual friend of mine, a Bostonian who had lived much in +Italy, could not make it clear. He often asserted that he did not +believe in God; and yet he was desolate if on a certain day in the year +he did not pay some kind of tribute at the shrine of St. Antony of +Padua! + +I have known him to break up a party in the Adirondacks in order to +reach the nearest church where it was possible for him to burn a candle +in honour of his favourite saint on this mysterious anniversary! As long +as he exists, as long as he continues to burn candles--_les chandelles +d'un athée_--I shall accept without understanding the enthusiasm of so +many lovers of À Kempis, who cut out the mystical longings for the +reception of that divine food which Christ gave out in the upper room. +À Kempis says: + + My soul longs to be nourished with Thy body; my heart desires to be + united with Thee. + + Give Thyself to me and it is enough; for without Thee no comfort is + available. + + Without Thee I cannot subsist; and without Thy visitation I cannot + live. + + And, therefore, I must come often to Thee, and receive Thee for the + remedy, and for the health and strength of my soul; lest perhaps I + faint in the way, if I be deprived of this heavenly food. + + For so, O most merciful Jesus, Thou wast pleased once to say, when + Thou hadst been preaching to the people, and curing sundry + diseases: "I will not send them away fasting, lest they faint in + the way." + + Deal now in like manner with me, who has left Thyself in the + sacrament for the comfort of Thy faithful. + + For Thou art the most sweet reflection of the soul; and he that + shall eat Thee worthily shall be partaker and heir of everlasting + glory. + +To every soul, oppressed and humble, À Kempis speaks more poignantly +than even David, in that great cry of the heart and soul, the De +Profundis: + + Behold, then, O Lord, my abjection and frailty [Ps. xxiv. 18], + every way known to Thee. + + Have pity on me and draw me out of the mire [Ps. lxviii. 15], that + I stick not fast therein, that I may not be utterly cast down + forever. + + This it is which often drives me back and confounds me in Thy + sight, to find that I am so subject to fall and have so little + strength to resist my passions. + + And although I do not altogether consent, yet their assaults are + troublesome and grievous to me, and it is exceedingly irksome to + live thus always in a conflict. + + Hence my infirmity is made known to me, because wicked thoughts do + always much more easily rush in upon me than they can be cast out + again. + + Oh, that Thou, the most mighty God of Israel, the zealous lover of + faithful souls, wouldst behold the labour and sorrow of Thy + servant, and stand by me in all my undertakings. + + Strengthen me with heavenly fortitude, lest the old man, the + miserable flesh, not fully subject to the spirit, prevail and get + the upper hand, against which we must fight as long as we breathe + in this most wretched life. + + Alas! what kind of life is this, where afflictions and miseries are + never wanting; where all things are full of snares and enemies. + +There is no pessimism here, for Thomas à Kempis gives the remedies, the +only remedies offered to the world since light was created before the +sun. He offers no maudlin consolation; to him the sins of the intellect +are worse than the sins of the flesh. He believed in hell, which he +never defined, as devoutly as Dante, who did describe it. They both knew +their hearts and the world; and the world has never invented any remedy +so effective as that which À Kempis offers. + +It is the divine remedy of love; but love cannot exist without the fear +of hurting or offending the Beloved. + +The best book yet written on the causes that made for the World War and +on their remedy is "The Rebuilding of Europe," by David Jayne Hill. +There we find this quotation from Villari illuminated: + + but it would be more exact to say that Machiavelli's work written + in 1513 and published in 1532 was the perfect expression of an + emancipation from moral restraints far advanced. The + Christ-idealism of the Middle Ages had already largely disappeared. + The old grounds of obligation had been swept away. Men looked for + their safety to the nation-state rather than to the solidarity of + Christendom; and the state, as Machiavelli's gospel proclaimed it, + consisted in absolute and irresponsible control exercised by one + man who should embody its unity, strength, and authority. + +Montaigne felt rather than understood the cruelty and brutality of the +state traditions of his time; and these traditions were seriously +combatted when the United States made brave efforts both at Versailles +and Washington. Doctor Hill sums up the essential principles which +guided the world from the Renascence to the year 1918: + + (1) The essence of a State is "sovereignty," defined as "supreme + power." (2) A sovereign State has the right to declare war upon any + other sovereign State for any reason that seems to it sufficient. + (3) An act of conquest by the exercise of superior military force + entitles the conqueror to the possession of the conquered + territory. (4) The population goes with the land and becomes + subject to the will of the conqueror. + +What member of the memorable conference, which began at Washington on +November 12, 1921, would have dared to assert these unmoral principles, +accepted alike by the Congress of Vienna and the Congress of Berlin, in +principle? King John of England looked on their negation as an unholy +novelty, though that negation was the leaven of the best of the life of +the Middle Ages. + +There can be no doubt that the germ of the idea of freedom was kept +alive, in the miasma which poisoned "The Prince" and Machiavelli's +world, by men like Sir Thomas Browne and Montaigne. A better +understanding of the principles of these men would have made Milton less +autocratic--Lucifer, though a rebel, was not a democrat--and Voltaire +less destructive. And yet Voltaire, for whom the French Republic lately +named a war vessel, was the friend of Frederick the Great and of +Catherine II. Doctor Hill, to whom some of the passages in Sir Thomas +Browne and Montaigne sent me, says: + + Down to the invasion of Belgium in 1914 the most odious crime ever + committed against a civilized people was, no doubt, the first + partition of Poland; yet at the time not a voice was raised against + it. Louis XV. was "infinitely displeased," but he did not even + reply to the King of Poland's appeal for help. George III. coolly + answered that "justice ought to be the invariable rule of + sovereigns"; but concluded, "I fear, however, misfortunes have + reached the point where redress can be had from the hands of the + Almighty alone." Catherine II. thought justice satisfied when + "everyone takes something." Frederick II. wrote to his brother, + "The partition will unite the three religions, Greek, Catholic, and + Calvinist; for we would take our communion from the same + consecrated body, which is Poland." Only Maria Theresa felt a + twinge of conscience. She took but she felt the shame of it. She + wrote: "We have by our moderation and fidelity to our engagements + acquired the confidence, I may venture to say the admiration, of + Europe.... One year has lost it all. I confess, it is difficult to + endure it, and that nothing in the world has cost me more than the + loss of our good name." It is a strange phenomenon that in matters + where the unsophisticated human conscience so promptly pronounces + judgment and spontaneously condemns, the solid mass of moral + conviction should count for nothing in affairs of state. Against it + a purely national prejudice has never failed to prevail. + +Montaigne does not formulate his comparisons so clearly; nor does Sir +Thomas Browne touch so unerringly the canker in the root of the +politics of his time; but one cannot saturate oneself in the works of +either without contrasting them with the physiocrats of the eighteenth +century, who tore up the cockles and the wheat together. + +Of all American writers Mr. H. L. Mencken is the most adventurous, and +one might almost say the cleverest. He could not be dull if he tried. +This is admirably exemplified in "The American Language," which appears +in a second edition, revised and enlarged and dated 1921. We are told +that Mencken was born in Baltimore on September 12, 1880; that his +family has been settled in Maryland for nearly a hundred years; and that +he is of mixed ancestry, chiefly German, Irish, and English. He is, +therefore, a typical American, and well qualified to write on "The +American Language." Mr. Mencken truly says that the weakest courses in +our universities are those which concern themselves with written and +spoken English. He adds that such grammar as is taught in our schools +and colleges + + is a grammar standing four-legged upon the theorizings and false + inferences of English Latinists of a past generation, eager only to + break the wild tongue of Shakespeare to a rule; and its frank aim + is to create in us a high respect for a book language which few of + us ever actually speak and not many of us even learn to write. That + language, elaborately artificial though it may be, undoubtedly has + merits. It shows a sonority and a stateliness that you must go to + the Latin and the Golden Age to match; its "highly charged and + heavy-shotted" periods, in Matthew Arnold's phrase, serve admirably + the obscurantist purposes of American pedagogy and of English + parliamentary oratory and leader-writing; it is something new for + the literary artists of both countries to prove their skill upon by + flouting it. But to the average American, bent upon expressing his + ideas, not stupendously but merely clearly, it must always remain + something vague and remote, like Greek history or the properties of + the parabola, for he never speaks it or hears it spoken, and seldom + encounters it in his everyday reading. If he learns to write it, + which is not often, it is with a rather depressing sense of its + artificiality. He may master it as a Korean, bred in the colloquial + Onmun, may master the literary Korean-Chinese, but he never thinks + in it or quite feels it. + +Mr. Mencken is both instructive and destructive; but he is not so +constructive as to build a road through the marsh of confusion into +which that conflict of dialects in the English language--a language +which is grammarless and dependent upon usage--has left us. He tells us +that good writing consists, as in the case of Howells, in deliberately +throwing overboard the principles so elaborately inculcated, or, as in +the case of Lincoln, in standing unaware of them. Whether this is true +in the case of Howells or not, it must be remembered that Lincoln was +fed, through his reading, on the results of those linguistic principles +which are with us in English tradition. It is the usage of Cardinal +Newman or Hawthorne or Stevenson or Agnes Repplier, or of Lincoln +himself, which those who want to write good English follow rather than +the elaborate rules of confused English grammar which are forgotten +almost as soon as they are learned. + +Personally, in youthful days, I could make nothing out of the "grammar" +of the English language until I had begun to study Latin prosody; and +then it became clear to me that only a few bones in the structure of +English, taken from the Latin practice, were valuable; that the flesh of +the English tongue would not fit the whole skeleton. + +As the English language, spoken everywhere, must depend on good usage, +and the bad usage of to-day often becomes the good usage of to-morrow, +it is regrettable that no scientific study of the American vocabulary or +of the influences lying at the root of American word-formation--to quote +Mr. Mencken--has as yet been made. The elder student was content with +correcting the examples of bad English in Blair's "Rhetoric." Later, he +read "The Dean's English," very popular at one time, Richard Grant +White's "Words and Their Uses," and perhaps a little book called "The +Verbalist." To this, one of the most bewildering books on the manner of +writing English ever written, Herbert Spencer's "Philosophy of Style" +was added. Whether it is Herbert Spencer's lack of a sense of humour or +the fallibility of his theories that has put him somewhat out of date is +not easy to say. In no book of his is a sense of humour so lacking as in +the "Philosophy of Style." Its principles have a perennial value and +nearly every author on style, since Spencer wrote, has repeated them +with variations; but Spencer's method of presenting them is as involved +as any method adopted by a philosopher could be--and that is saying a +good deal. + +The English of the universities hold that Americans are the slave of +Webster's Dictionary; and this is true of a certain limited class of +Americans. The English public speaker allows himself more freedom in the +matter of pronunciation than very scrupulous Americans do. Lord +Balfour's speeches at the Washington Conference offered several +examples of this. + +"The Supreme Court of the United States has decided that Webster's +Dictionary is _the_ American dictionary, and I propose to consider all +its decisions as final," said, in hot argument, a New York lawyer who +habitually uses "dontcha know" and "I wanta." Shakespeare, he regards as +an author whose English ought to be corrected; and he became furious +over what he called the mispronunciation of "apotheosis," which he said +a favourite preacher had not uttered according to Webster. And I have +known literary societies in the South to be disrupted over the use of +the word "nasty" by a Northern woman; and, as for "bloody," Mr. Mencken +shows us that one of the outrages committed by Mr. Shaw against English +convention was his permitting the heroine of "Pygmalion" to use it on +the stage. There is one Americanism, however, against which, as far as I +can find, Mr. Mencken does not protest. It is the use of the word +"consummated" in a phrase like "the marriage was consummated in the +First Baptist Church at high noon"! + +In spite of democratic disapproval, some will still hold that "lift" is +better than "elevator," and "station" better than "dépot." Though these +are departures from the current vernacular. We speak English often when +our critical friends in England imagine that we are speaking American. I +have known a gentleman in New Jersey who has cultivated English +traditions of speech, to shrink in horror at the mention of "flap-jack" +and "ice-cream." He could never find a substitute in _real_ English for +"flap-jack," but he always substituted "ices" for "ice-cream." On one +occasion I heard him inveigh against the horror of the word "pies," for +those "detestable messy things sold by the ton to the uncivilized"; and +he spent the time of lunch in pointing out that no such composition +really existed in polite society; but when his "cook general" was seen +approaching with an unmistakable "pie," the kind supposed by the readers +of advertisements to be made by "mothers," and ordered hastily because +of the coming of the unexpected guest, he was cast down. The guest tried +to save the situation by speaking of the obnoxious pastry as "a tart." +The host shook his head--"a tart," in English, could never be covered! + +Mr. Mencken shows us that "flap-jack," "molasses," "home-spun," +"ice-cream" are old English; that "Bub," which used to shock London +visitors to Old Philadelphia, is a bit of provincial English; and that +"muss" is found in "Antony and Cleopatra." I wish I had known that when +I was young; it would have saved me a bad mark for paraphrasing +"Menelaus and Paris got into a muss over Helen." But probably the use of +"row" to express that little difficulty would not have saved me! + +The best judge of Madeira in Philadelphia always said "cheer" for +"chair" and "sasser" for "saucer" and "tay" for "tea" and "obleged" for +"obliged"; and he drank from his saucer, too; and his table was always +provided with little dishes, like butter plates, for the discarded cups. +His example gave me a profound contempt for those newly rich in learning +who laugh without understanding, who are the slaves of the dictionary, +and who are so "vastly" meticulous. This old gentleman was an education +in himself; he had lived at the "English court"--or near it--and when he +came to visit us once a year, we listened enraptured. I once fell from +grace; but not from my reverence for him, by making a mistake in my +search for knowledge which involved his age. It was very easy to ask +him whether Anne Boleyn had asked for a "cheer" but not easy to escape +from the family denunciation that followed. It seemed that he had not +lived at or near the court of Henry VIII! + +Mr. Mencken explains why the use of "sick" for "ill" is taboo in +England, except among the very youngest Realists. And, by the way, Mr. +Hugh Walpole in "The Young Enchanted" goes so far in one of the speeches +of the atrocious Mrs. Tennsen, that the shocking word "bloody" used by +Mr. Bernard Shaw on one famous occasion sinks into a pastel tint! Mr. +Mencken says: + + The Pilgrims brought over with them the English of James I. and the + Authorized Version, and their descendants of a century later, + inheriting it, allowed the fundamentals to be but little changed by + the academic overhauling that the mother tongue was put to during + the early part of the Eighteenth Century. + +The Bible won against the prudery of the new English; prudery will go +very far, and I can recall the objection of an evangelical lady, in +Philadelphia, who disliked the nightly saying of the "Ave Maria" by a +little Papist relative. This was not on religious grounds; it was +because of "blessed is the fruit of thy womb, Jesus," in the prayer. The +little Papist had been taught to repeat the salutation of the Angel +Gabriel in Latin, so, at bedtime, he changed to "Benedictus fructus +ventris tui" and the careful lady thought it sounded "more decent"! + +Poker players may be interested in Mr. Mencken's revelation that "ante" +came into our language through the Spanish; he says, + + cinch was borrowed from the Spanish "cincha" in the early Texas + days, though its figurative use did not come in until much later. + +It is pleasant to note the soundness of Mr. Mencken's judgment in regard +to that very great philologer, the Dane, Doctor Jespersen, and he +quotes, in favour of the clarity and directness of the English language, +another great Dane, Doctor Thomson. Doctor Jespersen admits that our +tongue has a certain masculine ungainliness. It has rare elements of +strength in its simplicity. In English the subject almost invariably +precedes the verb and the object follows it; even in English poetry this +usage is seldom violated. In Tennyson, its observance might be counted +at 80, + + but in the poetry of Holger Drachmann, the Dane, it falls to 61, in + Anatole France's prose, to 66, in Gabriele d' Annunzio to 49, and + in the poetry of Goethe to 30. + +That our language has only five vowels, which have to do duty for more +than a score of sounds, is a grave fault; and the unhappy French +preacher who, from an English pulpit, pronounced "plough" as "pluff" had +much excuse. But on the other hand, why do the French make us say "fluer +de lis," instead of "fleur de lee"? And "Rheims"? How many +conversational pitfalls is "Rheims" responsible for! + +There is no book that ought to give the judicious such quiet pleasure or +more food for thought or for stimulating conversation than Mr. Mencken's +"The American Language," except Burton's "Anatomy of Melancholy," +Boswell's "Johnson," the "Devout Life" of Saint Francis de Sales, +Pepys's "Diary," the "Letters" of Madame de Sévigné, Beveridge's "Life" +of Marshall, and the "Memoirs" of Gouverneur Morris! It is a book for +odd moments; yet it is a temptation to continuous reading; and a +precious treasure is its bibliography! And how pleasant it is to verify +the quotations in a library; preferably with the snow falling in thick +flakes, and an English victim who cannot escape, even after dinner is +announced. Mr. Mencken is a benefactor! + +It is very remarkable that Mr. Mencken's audacious disregard of English +grammar in theory has not impaired the clearness of his point of view +and of his own style. If dead authors could write after the manner in +which Mr. Andrew Lang has written to them, I should like to read Herbert +Spencer's opinions of Mr. Mencken's volumes. If Sir Oliver Lodge and Sir +Conan Doyle want really to please a small but discriminating public, let +them induce Herbert Spencer to analyze Mr. Mencken's statements on the +growth of the English language! In my time we were expected to take +Spencer's "Philosophy of Style" very seriously. There is no doubt that +his principles have been repeated by every writer on style, including +Dr. Barrett Wendell in his important "English Composition," since Mr. +Spencer wrote; but the method of Spencer's expression of his principles +reminds one of the tangled wood in which Dante languished before he met +Beatrice. + +There is no doubt that Mr. Spencer makes us think of writing as a +science and art; his philosophy of style is right enough. But while he +provokes puzzled thought, he does no more. There is more meat in Robert +Louis Stevenson's "A College Magazine" than in all the complications in +style in the brochure of the idol of the eighties. + +And a greater stylist than even Stevenson is the author of a little +volume which I keep by my side ever since Mr. Frederick O'Brien and the +terrifying Gaugain have turned us to the islands of the Pacific. It is +Charles Warren Stoddard's "South Sea Idyls." And if one wants to know +how to read for pleasure or comfort--for reading or writing does not +come by nature--there is "Moby Dick," by Herman Melville, the close +friend of the Hawthornes and a writer so American that Mr. Mencken must +love him. But he ought to be read as a novelist. + +Mr. Herbert Spencer and "The South Sea Idyls" bring the _flâneur_--the +chief business of a _flâneur_ of the pavements (we were forbidden in old +Philadelphia to say "sidewalks") is to look into unrelated shop-windows; +but the _flâneur_ among books finds none of his shop-windows +unrelated--back to Mr. Mencken, who does not give us the genesis of a +word that sounded something like "sadie." It meant "thank you." Every +Pennsylvania child used it, until the elegants interfered, and they +often did interfere. You might say "apothecary" or "chemist"; but you +should never say "druggist." I trust that it is no breach of confidence +to repeat that the devout and very distinguished of modern +Philadelphians, Mr. John Drew, discovered that there were two languages +in his neighbourhood, one for the ears of his parents and one for the +boys in the street. One was very much in the position of the Yorkshire +lad I met the other day. "But you haven't a Yorkshire accent!" "No, +sir," he said, "my parents whipped it out of me." But there is, in New +York City, at least the beginning of one American language--the language +of the street. + + * * * * * + +In considering the impression that books have usually made on me, I have +often asked myself why they are such an unfailing source of pleasure and +even of joy. Every reader has, of course, his own answer to this. For +the plots of novels, I have always had very little respect, although I +believe, with Anthony Trollope, that a plot is absolutely necessary to a +really good novel, and that it is the very soul of a romance. Of +memoirs--even the apocryphal writings of the Marquise de Créquy have +always been very agreeable to me; I have never been so dull or so tired, +that I could not find some solace in the Diary of Mr. Pepys, in the +Autobiography of Franklin, in the peerless journal of Mr. Boswell; and +even the revelations of Madame Campan, as a last resource, were worth +returning to. As for the diary of Madame d'Arblay, it reproduces so +admirably the struggles of a bright spirit against the dullest of all +atmospheres, that it seems like a new discovery in psychology. And now +comes Professor Tinker's "Young Boswell" and those precious diaries +including that of Mrs. Pepys by a certain E. Barrington. Life _is_ worth +living! + +I must confess that I have never found any poet excepting King David +whom I liked because he taught me anything. Didactic "poetry" wearies +me, probably because it is not poetry at all. When people praise +Thompson's "Hound of Heaven," because it is dogmatic, I am +surprised--for if I found anything dogmatic in it, it would lose all its +splendour for me. The Apocalypse and "The Hound of Heaven" are glorious +visions of truth at a white heat. + +Tennyson's "Two Voices" loses all its value when it ceases to be a +picture and becomes an important sermon. And as for Spenser, the +didactic symbolism of his "Faerie Queen" might be lost forever with no +great disadvantage to posterity if his splendid "Epithalamion" could be +preserved. Browning's optimism has always left me cold, and I never +could quite understand why most of his readers have set him down as a +great philosopher. All may be well with the world, but I could never see +that Browning's poetry proved it in any way. When the time comes for a +cultivated English world--a thoughtful English-speaking world--to weigh +the merits of English-speaking poets, Browning will be found among the +first. Who has done anything finer in English than "A Grammarian's +Funeral"? Or "My Last Duchess," or "A Toccata of Galuppi's" or some of +the passages in "Pippa Passes"? Who has conceived a better fable for a +poem than that of "Pippa"? And as for Keats, the world he discovered for +us is of greater value to the faculties of the mind than all the +philosophies of Wordsworth. + +To me, the intense delight I have in novels and poems is due to their +power of taking me out of myself, of enlightening me as to my own +faults and peculiarities, not by preaching but by example, and of +raising me to a higher plane of toleration and of gaiety of heart. + +As I grow older, I find that the phrase Stevenson once applied to works +of fiction becomes more and more regrettable. He compared the followers +of this consoling art to "_filles de joie_." He doubtless meant that +these goddesses--"_les filles de joie_" are always young--gave us +visions of the joy of life; that they might be sensuous without being +sensual; but his phrase falls far short of the truth. There are novels, +like Mrs. Jackson's "Ramona," which are joyous and serious at once. Or +take "The Cardinal's Snuff Box" or "Pepita Jiminez." + +Every constant reader has his favourite essayists. As a rule, he reads +them to be soothed or to be amused. In making my confession, I must say +that only a few of the essayists really amuse me. They are, as a rule, +more witty than humorous, and generally they make one self-conscious, +being self-conscious themselves. There are a hundred different types of +the essayist. Each of us has his favourite bore among them. Once I found +all the prose works of a fine poet and friend of mine, Aubrey de Vere, +on the shelves of a constant reader. "Why?" I asked. "The result of a +severe sense of duty!" he said. + +Madame Roland tried hard for a title of nobility and failed, though she +gained in the end a greater title. Her works are insufferably and +complacently conceited, and yet I always look at their bindings with +respect. Mrs. Blashfield, who died too soon, has given us, in her first +volume--unfortunately the only one--a new view of this Empress of +Didacticism. It is strange indeed that Madame Roland could have been +nourished by that most stimulating of all books--"The Devout Life of St. +Francis de Sales." Monseigneur de Sales is, to my mind, the most +practical of all the essayists, even when he puts his essays in the form +of letters. Next comes Fénelon's and--I know that I shall shock those +who regard his philosophy as merely Deistic--next comes, for his power +of stimulation, Emerson. + +It has certainly occurred to me, perhaps too late, that these +confessions may be taken as didactic in themselves; in writing them I +have had not the slightest intention of improving anybody's mind but +simply of relieving my own, by button-holing the reader who happens to +come my way. I should like to add that what is called the coarseness of +the eighteenth-century novel and romance is much more healthful than the +nasty brutality of a school of our novelists--who make up for their lack +of talent and of wide experience by trying to excite animal instincts. +Eroticism may be delicately treated; but art has nothing in common with +the process of "cooking stale cabbage over farthing candles," to use +Charles Reade's phrase. + +If my habit of constant reading had not taught me the value of calmness +and patience, I should like to say, with violent emphasis, that a reason +for thanking God is that Americans have produced a literature--the +continuation of an older literature with variations, it is true,--that +has added to the glory of civilization. To prove this, I need mention +only one book, "The Scarlet Letter," and I am glad to end my book by +writing the name of Hawthorne. Literary comparisons with England, or +with France, Italy, Spain, or any of the other continental nations, are +no longer to our disadvantage. It is the fashion of the American who +writes of American books to put--in his own mind, at least--a title to +his discourse that reminds me of Miss Blanche Amory's "Mes Larmes." It +is an outworn tradition. American literature is robust enough for +smiles. + +It can smile and laugh. It can be serious and not self-conscious. It is +rapidly taking to itself all the best traditions of the older literature +and assimilating them. Christopher Morley and Heywood Broun and Don +Marquis and Mencken write--at their best--as lightly and as trippingly +as any past master of the _feuilleton_. There is nobody writing in the +daily press in Paris to-day who does the _feuilleton_ as well as they do +it. If you ask me whether I, as a constant reader, pay much attention to +what they say, I shall answer, No. But their method is the thing. Will +they live? Of course not. Is Émile de Girardin alive? Or all the clever +ones that James Huneker found buried and could not revive? One still +reads the "Portraits de Femmes," of Sainte-Beuve; but Sainte-Beuve was +something more than a "columnist." And these folk will be, too, in time! +At any rate, they are good enough for the present. + +Who, writing in French or in any language, _outre-mer_, does better, or +as well, as Holliday? And where is the peer of Charles S. Brooks in +"Hints to Pilgrims"? "Luca Sarto," the best novel of old Italian life by +an American--since Mrs. Wharton's "Valley of Decision"--proved him to be +a fine artist. He perhaps knew his period better psychologically than +Mrs. Wharton, but here there's room for argument. Mrs. Wharton, although +she is an admirable artist, grows indifferent and insular at long +intervals. + +"Luca Sarto" dropped like the gentle rain from heaven; and then came +"Hints to Pilgrims." This I wanted to write about in the _Yale Review_, +but the selfish editor, Mr. Cross, said that he preferred to keep it for +himself! + +"Hints to Pilgrims" is the essence of the modern essay. Strangely +enough, it sent me back to the "Colour of Life" by the only real +_précieuse_ living in our world to-day, Alice Meynell; and I read that +with new delight between certain paragraphs in Brooks's paper "On +Finding a Plot." Why is not "Hints to Pilgrims" in its fourteenth +edition? Or why has it no _claque_? The kind of _claque_ that is so +common now--which opens suddenly like a chorus of cicadas in the "Idylls +of Theocritus"? After all, your education must have been well begun +before you can enjoy "Hints to Pilgrims," while for "Huckleberry Finn" +the less education you have, the better. Mr. Brooks writes: + + Let us suppose, for example, that Carmen, before she got into that + ugly affair with the Toreador, had settled down in Barchester + beneath the towers. Would the shadow of the cloister, do you think, + have cooled her Southern blood? Would she have conformed to the + decent gossip of the town? Or, on the contrary, does not a hot + colour always tint the colder mixture? Suppose that Carmen came to + live just outside the Cathedral close and walked every morning with + her gay parasol and her pretty swishing skirts past the Bishop's + window. + + We can fancy his pen hanging dully above his sermon, with his eyes + on space for any wandering thought, as if the clouds, like treasure + ships upon a sea, were freighted with riches for his use. The + Bishop is brooding on an address to the Ladies' Sewing Guild. He + must find a text for his instructive finger. It is a warm spring + morning and the daffodils are waving in the borders of the grass. A + robin sings in the hedge with an answer from his mate. There is + wind in the tree-tops with lively invitation to adventure, but the + Bishop is bent to his sober task. Carmen picks her way demurely + across the puddles in the direction of the Vicarage. Her eyes turn + modestly toward his window. Surely she does not see him at his + desk. That dainty inch of scarlet stocking is quite by accident. It + is the puddles and the wind frisking with her skirt. + + "Eh! Dear me!" The good man is merely human. He pushes up his + spectacles for nearer sight. He draws aside the curtain. "Dear me! + Bless my soul! Who is the lady? Quite a foreign air. I don't + remember her at our little gatherings for the heathen." A text is + forgotten. The clouds are empty caravels. He calls to Betsy, the + housemaid, for a fresh neckcloth and his gaiters. He has recalled a + meeting with the Vicar and goes out whistling softly, to disaster. + +You do not find delightful fooling like this every day; and there is +much more of it. Take this: + + Suppose, for a better example, that the cheerful Mark Tapley, who + always came out strong in adversity, were placed in a modern + Russian novel. As the undaunted Taplovitch he would have shifted + its gloom to a sunny ending. Fancy our own dear Pollyanna, the glad + girl, adopted by an aunt in "Crime and Punishment." Even + Dostoyevsky must have laid down his doleful pen to give her at last + a happy wedding--flower-girls and angel-food, even a shrill soprano + behind the hired palms and a table of cut glass. + + Oliver Twist and Nancy--merely acquaintances in the original + story--with a fresh hand at the plot, might have gone on a bank + holiday to Margate. And been blown off shore. Suppose that the + whole excursion was wrecked on Treasure Island and that everyone + was drowned except Nancy, Oliver, and perhaps the trombone player + of the ships' band, who had blown himself so full of wind for + fox-trots on the upper deck that he couldn't sink. It is Robinson + Crusoe, lodging as a handsome bachelor on the lonely + island--observe the cunning of the plot!--who battles with the + waves and rescues Nancy. The movie-rights alone of this are worth a + fortune. And then Crusoe, Oliver, Friday, and the trombone player + stand a siege from John Silver and Bill Sikes, who are pirates, + with Spanish doubloons in a hidden cove. And Crusoe falls in love + with Nancy. Here is a tense triangle. But youth goes to youth. + Crusoe's whiskers are only dyed their glossy black. The trombone + player, by good luck (you see now why he was saved from the wreck), + is discovered to be a retired clergyman--doubtless a Methodist. The + happy knot is tied. And then--a sail! A sail! Oliver and Nancy + settle down in a semi-detached near London, with oyster shells + along the garden path and cat-tails in the umbrella jar. The story + ends prettily under their plane-tree at the rear--tea for three, + with a trombone solo, and the faithful Friday and Old Bill, + reformed now, as gardener, clipping together the shrubs against the + sunny wall. + +When I found Brooks, I felt again the pang of loss, that Theodore +Roosevelt had not read "Hints to Pilgrims," before he passed into "the +other room" and eternal light shone upon him! He would have discovered +"Hints to Pilgrims," and celebrated it as soon as any of us. + +How he loved books! And he seemed to have read all the right things in +his youth; you forgot time and kicked Black Care away when he talked +with you about them. He could drop from Dante to Brillat-Savarin (in +whom he had not much interest, since he was a _gourmet_ and did not +regard sausages as the highest form of German art!) and his descents and +ascents from book to book were as smooth as Melba's sliding scales--and +her scales were smoother than Patti's. + +Do you remember his "Dante in the Bowery," and "The Ancient Irish +Sagas"? He caught fire at the quotation from the "Lament of Deirdre"; +and concluded at once that the Celts were the only people who, before +Christianity invented chivalry, understood the meaning of romantic love. +It is a great temptation to write at length on the books he liked, and +how he fought for them, and explained them, and lived with them. +Thinking of him, the most constant of book-lovers, I can only say, +"Farewell and Hail!" + + +THE END + +[Transcriber's notes: +People using this book as a reference should be aware that some of +the spelling and quotations are not necessarily accurate. +Some obvious printing errors were corrected +(gu'une->qu'une p96; natio->nation p223) +Consistent archaic spellings of names of people and times were retained +as is. +Accenting was not 'corrected'. +Some potential printer's errors left as is include: +Gaugain may be Gauguin p237 (Paul Gauguin from context) +Who the Holliday refered to in chapter V p244 was is unknown.] + + + + + +End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Confessions of a Book-Lover, by +Maurice Francis Egan + +*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK CONFESSIONS OF A BOOK-LOVER *** + +***** This file should be named 24003-0.txt or 24003-0.zip ***** +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: + http://www.gutenberg.org/2/4/0/0/24003/ + +Produced by Elaine Walker, Janet Kegg and the Online +Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net + + +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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