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diff --git a/.gitattributes b/.gitattributes new file mode 100644 index 0000000..6833f05 --- /dev/null +++ b/.gitattributes @@ -0,0 +1,3 @@ +* text=auto +*.txt text +*.md text diff --git a/24946-h.zip b/24946-h.zip Binary files differnew file mode 100644 index 0000000..7df64cb --- /dev/null +++ b/24946-h.zip diff --git a/24946-h/24946-h.htm b/24946-h/24946-h.htm new file mode 100644 index 0000000..cd6986c --- /dev/null +++ b/24946-h/24946-h.htm @@ -0,0 +1,10214 @@ +<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01 Transitional//EN"> +<html> +<head> +<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=iso-8859-1"> +<title>The Project Gutenberg eBook of From a Cornish Window by A. T. Quiller-Couch</title> +<style type="text/css"> + body {background:#fdfdfd; + color:black; + font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; + font-size: medium; + margin-top:100px; + margin-left:12%; + margin-right:12%; + text-align:justify; } + h1, h2, h3, h4, h5 {text-align: center; } + p {text-indent: 4%; } + p.noindent {text-indent: 0%; } + hr.full { width: 100%; + height: 5px; } + hr.narrow { width: 40%; + text-align: center; } + blockquote.footnote { font-size: small; } + .caption { font-size: small; + font-weight: bold; } + .center { text-align: center; } + .ind1 {margin-left: 1em; } + .ind2 {margin-left: 2em; } + .ind3 {margin-left: 3em; } + .ind4 {margin-left: 4em; } + .ind5 {margin-left: 5em; } + .ind6 {margin-left: 6em; } + .ind7 {margin-left: 7em; } + .ind8 {margin-left: 8em; } + .ind9 {margin-left: 9em; } + .ind10 {margin-left: 10em; } + .ind11 {margin-left: 11em; } + .ind12 {margin-left: 12em; } + .ind13 {margin-left: 13em; } + .ind14 {margin-left: 14em; } + .ind15 {margin-left: 15em; } + .ind16 {margin-left: 16em; } + .ind17 {margin-left: 17em; } + .ind18 {margin-left: 18em; } + .ind19 {margin-left: 19em; } + .ind20 {margin-left: 20em; } + .large {font-size: large; } + table { font-size: medium; } + a:link {color:blue; + text-decoration:none} + link {color:blue; + text-decoration:none} + a:visited {color:blue; + text-decoration:none} + a:hover {color:red} +</style> +</head> +<body> + + +<pre> + +Project Gutenberg's From a Cornish Window, by Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch + +This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with +almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + + +Title: From a Cornish Window + A New Edition + +Author: Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch + +Release Date: March 29, 2008 [EBook #24946] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1 + +*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK FROM A CORNISH WINDOW *** + + + + +Produced by Lionel Sear + + + + + +</pre> + +<hr class="full" noshade> + + +<h2>FROM A CORNISH WINDOW.</h2> + +<h4>By</h4> + +<h2>ARTHUR THOMAS QUILLER-COUCH.</h2> +<br><br><br> +<h5>1912</h5> +<h5> This etext prepared from a reprint of a version published in 1906.</h5> +<br><br><br><br> + + +<h3>DEDICATION.</h3> +<br> +<p>MY DEAR WILLIAM ARCHER,</p> + +<p>Severe and ruthlessly honest man that you are, you will find that the +levities and the gravities of this book do not accord, and will say so.</p> + +<p>I plead only that they were written at intervals, and in part for +recreation, during years in which their author has striven to maintain a +cheerful mind while a popular philosophy which he believed to be cheap +took possession of men and translated itself into politics which he knew +to be nasty. I may summarise it, in its own jargon, as the philosophy of +the Superman, and succinctly describe it as an attempt to stretch a part +of the Darwinian hypothesis and make it cover the whole of man's life and +conduct. I need not remind you how fatally its doctrine has flattered, in +our time and in our country, the worst instincts of the half-educated: +but let us remove it from all spheres in which we are interested and +contemplate it as expounded by an American Insurance 'Lobbyist,' a few days +ago, before the Armstrong Committee:—</p> + +<p> "The Insurance world to-day is the greatest financial proposition in + the United States; and, <i>as great affairs always do, it commands a + higher law.</i>"</p> + +<p>I have read precisely the same doctrine in a University Sermon preached by +an Archbishop; but there its point was confused by pietistic rhetoric: +the point being that in life, which is a struggle, success has in itself +something divine, by virtue of which it can be to itself a law of right +and wrong; and (inferentially) that a man is relieved of the noble +obligation to command himself so soon and in so far as he is rich enough +or strong enough to command other people.</p> + +<p>But why (you will ask) do I drag this doctrine into a dedication? +Because, my dear Archer, I have fought against it for close upon seventeen +years; because seventeen years is no small slice of a man's life—rather, +so long a time that it has taught me to prize my bruises and prefer that, +if anybody hereafter care to know me, he shall know me as one whose spirit +took its cheer in intervals of a fight against detestable things; +that—let him rank me in talent never so low beside my contemporaries who +preached this doctrine—he shall at least have no excuse but to acquit me +of being one with them in mind or purpose; and lastly, because in these +times few things have brought me such comfort (stern comfort!) as I have +derived from your criticism, so hospitable to ideas, so inflexible in +judging right from wrong. As I have lived lonelier it has been better for +me, and a solace beyond your guessing, to have been reminded that +criticism still lives amongst us and has a Roman spirit.</p> + +<span class = "ind18">A. T. QUILLER-COUCH</span> + +<p class = "noindent">The Haven,<br> +FOWEY,<br> +April 3rd, 1906.</p> +<br><br><br><br> + + +<h3>PREFACE.</h3> + +<p>My old friend and publisher, Mr. Arrowsmith, maintains that the time has +come for a cheap edition of this book. Should the public endorse that +opinion, he will probably go about pretending that his head is as good as +his heart.</p> + +<p><i>From a Cornish Window</i> first appeared between cloth covers some six or +seven years ago. I see that its Dedication bears the date, April 3rd, +1906. But parts of it were written years before in the old <i>Pall Mall +Magazine</i>, under the editorship of Lord Frederic Hamilton (who invented +its title for me), and a few fragments date back almost to undergraduate +days. The book, in short, is desultory to the last degree, and discourses +in varying moods on a variety of topics. Yet, turning the pages again, +I find them curiously and somewhat alarmingly consistent—consistent not +only in themselves, but with their surviving author as he sits here +to-day, using the same pen-holder which he bought for twopence in 1886, +and gazing out of the same window, soon to be exchanged for another with a +view more academic: and 'alarmingly consistent' because (as Emerson has +very justly observed) a foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little +minds. To persevere in one fixed outlook upon life may be evidence of +arrested capacity to grow, while on the other hand mere flightiness +is a sure sign that the mind has not even arrived at man's estate. +The best plan seems to be to care not a farthing for consistency or +inconsistency, but to keep the eye turned outwards, and to keep it fresh +by taking on new interests (however trivial), and reading new books, but +still comparing them with the old. I think we ought to be especially +careful to read new poetry as we get on in life, if only as a discipline— +as men with increasing waists practise calisthenics—because poetry is +always trying to reach beyond the phenomena of life, and because these are +all the while, if imperceptibly, narrowing us within the round of daily +habit. As the author of <i>Ionica</i> put it (I quote from memory)—</p> + +<blockquote><blockquote> +<p class = "noindent">Our feelings lose poetic flow<br> + Soon after thirty years or so:<br> + Professionising modern men<br> + Thenceforth admire what pleased them then.<br></p> +</blockquote></blockquote> + +<p>But on the whole I do not regret this consistency, believing that the +years 1896-1906 laid an almost holy constraint on the few who believed +neither in Sham-Imperialism nor in the Superman, to stand together, +to be stubborn, to refuse as doggedly as possible to bow the knee to these +idols, to miss no opportunity of drawing attention to their feet of clay.</p> + +<p>I seem to perceive that the day of the Superman is drawing to its close. +He is a recurring nuisance, like the influenza, and no doubt will afflict +mankind again in due season. But our generation has enjoyed a peculiarly +poisonous variety of him. In his Renaissance guise, whether projected +upon actual history, as in the person of Richard III, or strutting +sublimated through Marlowe's blank verse, he spared at any rate to +sentimentalise his brutality. Our forefathers summed him up in the +byword that an Italianate Englishman was a devil incarnate; but he <i>had</i> +the grace of being Italianate. It is from the Germanised avatar—the +Bismarck of the 'Ems telegram,' with his sentimentalising historians and +philosophers—that Europe would seem to be recovering to-day. Well, I +believe that the Christian virtues, the lovable and honourable code of +ancient gentlemen, may always be trusted to win in the long run, and +extrude the impostor. But while his vogue lasts, it may be of service to +keep reminding men that to falsify another man's dispatch is essentially a +stupider action than to tilt at windmills: and that is the main moral of +my book.</p> + +<span class = "ind18">ARTHUR QUILLER-COUCH.</span> + +<p class = "noindent">December 2nd, 1912.</p> + +<br><br><br> +<br> +<h2>CHAPTER LINKS</h2> +<center> +<table summary=""> +<tbody><tr><td> + +<p class="toc"><a href="#2HCH0001"> +JANUARY. +</a></p> +<p class="toc"><a href="#2HCH0002"> +FEBRUARY. +</a></p> +<p class="toc"><a href="#2HCH0003"> +MARCH. +</a></p> +<p class="toc"><a href="#2HCH0004"> +APRIL. +</a></p> +<p class="toc"><a href="#2HCH0005"> +MAY. +</a></p> +<p class="toc"><a href="#2HCH0006"> +JUNE. +</a></p> +<p class="toc"><a href="#2HCH0007"> +JULY. +</a></p> +<p class="toc"><a href="#2HCH0008"> +AUGUST. +</a></p> +<p class="toc"><a href="#2HCH0009"> +SEPTEMBER. +</a></p> +<p class="toc"><a href="#2HCH0010"> +OCTOBER. +</a></p> +<p class="toc"><a href="#2HCH0011"> +NOVEMBER. +</a></p> +<p class="toc"><a href="#2HCH0012"> +DECEMBER. +</a></p> +</td></tr> +</tbody></table> +</center> + + +<br><br> +<a name="2HCH0001"><!-- H2 anchor --></a> +<br><br> +<h3>JANUARY.</h3> + +<p>Should any reader be puzzled by the title of this discursive volume, the +following verses may provide him with an explanation. They were written +some time ago for a lady who had requested, required, requisitioned +(I forget the precise shade of the imperative) something for her album. +"We are in the last ages of the world," wrote Charles Lamb to Barry +Cornwall, "when St. Paul prophesied that women should be 'headstrong, +lovers of their own will, having albums.—'"</p> + + +<br><br> +<blockquote><blockquote> +<h4>BEATUS POSSIDENS.</h4><br><br> + +<p class = "noindent">I can't afford a mile of sward,<br> +<span class = "ind3">Parterres and peacocks gay;</span><br> + For velvet lawns and marble fauns<br> +<span class = "ind3">Mere authors cannot pay.</span><br><br> + + And so I went and pitched my tent<br> +<span class = "ind3">Above a harbour fair,</span><br> + Where vessels picturesquely rigg'd<br> +<span class = "ind3">Obligingly repair.</span><br><br> + + The harbour is not mine at all:<br> +<span class = "ind3">I make it so—what odds?</span><br> + And gulls unwitting on my wall<br> +<span class = "ind3">Serve me for garden-gods.</span><br><br> + + By ships that ride below kaleid-<br> +<span class = "ind3">oscopically changed,</span><br> + Unto my mind each day I find<br> +<span class = "ind3">My garden rearranged.</span><br><br> + + These, madam, are my daffodils,<br> +<span class = "ind3">My pinks, my hollyhocks,</span><br> + My herds upon a hundred hills,<br> +<span class = "ind3">My phloxes and my flocks.</span><br><br> + + And when some day you deign to pay<br> +<span class = "ind3">The call that's overdue,</span><br> + I'll wave a landlord's easy hand<br> +<span class = "ind3">And say, "Admire <i>my</i> view!"</span><br><br></p> +</blockquote></blockquote> + +<br><br> + +<p>Now I do not deny that a part of the content expressed in these lines may +come of resignation. In some moods, were I to indulge them, it were +pleasant to fancy myself owner of a vast estate, champaign and woodland; +able to ride from sea to sea without stepping off my own acres, with +villeins and bondmen, privileges of sak and soke, infangthef, +outfangthef, rents, tolls, dues, royalties, and a private gallows for +autograph-hunters. These things, however, did not come to me by +inheritance, and for a number of sufficient reasons I have not amassed +them. As for those other ambitions which fill the dreams of every healthy +boy, a number of them had become of faint importance even before a +breakdown of health seemed definitely to forbid their attainment. +Here at home, far from London, with restored strength, I find myself less +concerned with them than are my friends and neighbours, yet more keenly +interested than ever in life and letters, art and politics—all that men +and women are saying and doing. Only the centre of gravity has shifted, +so to speak.</p> + +<p>I dare say, then, that resignation may have some share in this content; +but if so 'tis an unconscious and happy one. A man who has been writing +novels for a good part of his life should at least be able to sympathise +with various kinds of men; and, for an example or two, I can understand—</p> +<br><br> +<blockquote><blockquote> +<p class = "noindent">1. Why Alexander cried (if he ever did) because he had no second + world to conquer.<br><br> + + 2. Why Shakespeare, as an Englishman, wanted a coat of arms and + a respectable estate in his own native country town.<br><br> + + 3. What and how deep are the feelings beneath that <i>cri du + cœur</i> of Mr. Wilfrid Blunt's 'Old Squire:'—<br><br> + + "I like the hunting of the hare<br> +<span class = "ind3">Better than that of the fox;</span><br> + I like the joyous morning air,<br> +<span class = "ind3">And the crowing of the cocks.</span><br><br> + + "I covet not a wider range<br> +<span class = "ind3">Than these dear manors give;</span><br> + I take my pleasures without change,<br> +<span class = "ind3">And as I lived I live.</span><br><br> + + "Nor has the world a better thing,<br> +<span class = "ind3">Though one should search it round,</span><br> + Than thus to live one's own sole king<br> +<span class = "ind3">Upon one's own sole ground.</span><br><br> + + "I like the hunting of the hare;<br> +<span class = "ind3">It brings me day by day</span><br> + The memory of old days as fair,<br> +<span class = "ind3">With dead men past away.</span><br><br> + + "To these as homeward still I ply,<br> +<span class = "ind3">And pass the churchyard gate,</span><br> + Where all are laid as I must lie,<br> +<span class = "ind3">I stop and raise my hat.</span><br><br> + + "I like the hunting of the hare:<br> +<span class = "ind3">New sports I hold in scorn.</span><br> + I like to be as my fathers were<br> +<span class = "ind3">In the days ere I was born."</span><br><br> + + + 4. What—to start another hare—were Goldsmith's feelings when he + wrote—<br><br> + + "And as a hare whom hounds and horns pursue + Pants to the place from whence at first she flew, + I still had hopes, my long vexations past, + Here to return—and die at home at last."<br><br> + + 5. With what heart Don Quixote rode forth to tilt at sheep and + windmills, and again with what heart in that saddest of all + last chapters he bade his friends look not for this year's + birds in last year's nests.<br><br> + + 6. Why the young man went away sadly, because he had great + possessions and could not see his way to bestowing them all + on the poor; why, on the contrary, St. Paulinus of Nola and + St. Francis of Assisi joyfully renounced their wealth; what + Prudhon meant by saying that 'property is theft'; and what a + poor Welsh clergyman of the seventeenth century by + proclaiming in verse and prose that he was heir of all the + world, and properties, hedges, boundaries, landmarks meant + nothing to him, since all was his that his soul enjoyed; yes, + and even what inspired him to pen this golden sentence—<br><br> + + "<i>You will never enjoy the world aright till the sea itself + floweth in your veins, till you are clothed with the heavens + and crowned with the stars.</i>"</p><br><br><br> +</blockquote></blockquote> + +<p>My window, then, looks out from a small library upon a small harbour +frequented by ships of all nations—British, Danish, Swedish, Norwegian, +Russian, French, German, Italian, with now and then an American or a +Greek—and upon a shore which I love because it is my native country. Of +all views I reckon that of a harbour the most fascinating and the most +easeful, for it combines perpetual change with perpetual repose. It +amuses like a panorama and soothes like an opiate, and when you have +realised this you will understand why so many thousands of men around this +island appear to spend all their time in watching tidal water. Lest you +should suspect me of taking a merely dilettante interest in the view, I +must add that I am a Harbour Commissioner.</p> + +<p>As for the house, it is a plain one; indeed, very like the house a child +draws on a slate, and therefore pleasing even externally to me, who prefer +the classical to any Gothic style of architecture. Why so many strangers +mistake it with its modest dimensions for a hotel, I cannot tell you. +I found one in the pantry the other day searching for a brandy-and-soda; +another rang the dining-room bell and dumbfoundered the maid by asking +what we had for lunch; and a third (a lady) cried when I broke to her that +I had no sitting-room to let. We make it a rule to send out a chair +whenever some unknown invader walks into the garden and prepares to make a +water-colour sketch of the view.</p> + +<p>There are some, too, whose behaviour cannot be reconciled with the +hallucination of a hotel, and they must take the house for a public +institution of some kind, though of what kind I cannot guess. +There was an extremely bashful youth, for instance, who roamed the garden +for a while on the day after the late Duke of Cambridge's funeral, and, +suddenly dashing in by the back door, wanted to know why our flag was not +at half-mast. There was also a lady who called on the excuse that she had +made a life-study of the Brontës, and after opining (in a guarded manner) +that they came, originally, from somewhere in Yorkshire, desired to be +informed how many servants we kept. I have sometimes thought of +rechristening our house The Hotel of the Four Seasons, and thereby +releasing its true name (The Haven) to a friend who covets it for his own.</p> + +<p>On the whole, however, these visitors disturb the house and the view from +my window very little. The upper halves of them, as they pass up and down +the road, appear above my garden wall much as the shadows that passed in +Plato's cave. They come, enjoy their holiday, and go, leaving the window +intent upon the harbour, its own folk and its own business.</p> + +<br><br><br><br> +<p>And now for the book, which is really not a book at all, but a chapter of +one.</p> + +<p>Last autumn I returned from a holiday to find that the publishing season +had begun. This was announced by a stack of new books, review copies and +presentation copies, awaiting me on my window-seat. I regarded it sourly. +A holiday is the most unsettling thing in the world. At the end of it I +regain the well-worn chair with a sigh of pleasure and reach for the +familiar tobacco-jar, wondering how I could have been fool enough to leave +them; yet somehow this lively sense of repurchased habit does not go far +enough and compel me to work. Being at home is a game, and so good a game +that I play at it merely, rearranging my shelves and, under pretence of +dealing with arrears of correspondence, skimming the literary papers and +book-catalogues found amid the pile of letters.</p> + +<p>It happened that the first postal-wrapper to be broken enclosed a copy of +<i>The Academy</i>, and <i>The Academy</i> opened with this sentence: "Since our +last issue we have received one hundred and nineteen new books and +reprints." I looked across to the pile on my window-seat and felt it to +be insignificant, though it interfered with my view of the English +Channel. One hundred and nineteen books in a single week! Yet who was I +to exclaim at their number?—I, who (it appeared) had contributed one of +them? With that I remembered something which had happened just before my +holiday, and began to reflect on it, for the first time seriously.</p> + +<p>A publisher had asked me for a complete list of my published works, to +print it on the fly-leaf of another of them. I sat down with the best +intention and compiled it for him, and, in honest oblivion, omitted a +couple—of books, mind you—not of pamphlets, reviews, stray articles, +short stories, or any such trifles, but of books solemnly written for this +and future ages, solemnly printed, bound, and put into circulation at the +shops and libraries. (Here, for the due impressiveness of the tale, it +becomes necessary to tell you that their author is an indolent and painful +writer, slow at the best of times.)</p> + +<p>Well, the discovery that I had forgotten two of my own books at first +amused and then set me thinking. "Here you are," said I to myself, +"a writer of sorts; and it's no use to pretend that you don't wish to be +remembered for a while after you are dead and done with."</p> + +<p>"Quite right," the other part of me assented cheerfully.</p> + +<p>"Well, then," urged the inquisitor, "this is a bad look-out. If you had +been born a Dumas—I am speaking of fecundity, if you please, and of +nothing else—if you had been born a Dumas, and could rattle off a romance +in a fortnight, you might be excused for not keeping tally of your +productions. Pitiful, dilatory worker that you are, if <i>you</i> cannot +remember them, how can you expect the world (good Heavens!) to take the +trouble?"</p> + +<p>"I suppose it won't," responded the other part of me, somewhat dashed; +then, picking up its spirits again, "But, anyhow, I shall know where to +lay the blame."</p> + +<p>"On yourself?"</p> + +<p>"Most assuredly not."</p> + +<p>"Where, then?"</p> + +<p>"Why, on the publishers."</p> + +<p>"Ah, of course!" (This with fine irony.)</p> + +<p>"Yes, on the publishers. Most authors do this during life, and now I +begin to see that all authors do it sooner or later. For my part, I shall +defer it to the future state."</p> + +<p>"Why?"</p> + +<p>"Obviously because there will be no publishers thereabouts to contradict +me."</p> + +<p>"And of what will you accuse them?"</p> + +<p>"That they never issued my work in the form it deserved."</p> + +<p>"I see. Poor fellow! You have the 'Edinburgh' Stevenson or something of +that sort on your mind, and are filled with nasty envy."</p> + +<p>Upon this the other part of me fairly lost its temper.</p> + +<p>"The 'Edinburgh' Stevenson! The 'Edinburgh' Ste—, and you have known me +all these years! The 'Edinburgh' Stevenson is a mighty handsome edition +of a mighty fine writer, but I have no more desire to promenade the ages +in that costume than to jump the moon. No, I am not going to break any +more of the furniture. I am handing you this chair that you may seat +yourself and listen… Now! The book which I shall accuse my +publishers of not having produced will be in one volume—"</p> + +<p>"Come, come. Modesty is all very well, but don't overdo it."</p> + +<p>"—folio."</p> + +<p>"Oh!"</p> + +<p>"—Of three thousand odd pages, printed (blunt type) in double columns, +and here and there in triple."</p> + +<p>"O—oh!"</p> + +<p>"—with marginalia by other hands, and footnotes running sometimes to +twenty thousand words, and, including above six thousand quotations from +the best poets—every one, in short, which has given me pleasure of a +certain quality, whether gentle or acute, at one time or another in my +life."</p> + +<p>"!!!"</p> + +<p>"—The whole profusely, not to say extravagantly, adorned with woodcuts in +the text, not to mention fifty or sixty full-page illustrations in +copper."</p> + +<p>"By eminent artists?"</p> + +<p>"Some of them by eminent artists, for the reason only that I number such +among my friends; the rest by amateurs and members of my household who +would help, out of mere affection, in raising this monument."</p> + +<p>"They would do it execrably."</p> + +<p>"I dare say; but that would not matter in the least. The book should be +bound in leather and provided with serviceable clasps, as well as with a +couple of inner pockets for maps and charts. The maps should contain +plenty of sea, with monsters rising from it—leviathans and sea-serpents— +as they do in Speed's map of Cornwall which hangs in the hall."</p> + +<p>"Your book will need a window-seat to hold it."</p> + +<p>"Ah, now you talk intelligently! It was designed for a window-seat, and +its fortunate possessor will take care to provide one. Have you any +further objections?"</p> + +<p>"Only this: that a book of such a size written by one man (I make the +objection as little personal as I can) must perforce contain many dull +pages."</p> + +<p>"Hundreds of them; whole reams of dull pages."</p> + +<p>"They will be skipped."</p> + +<p>"They will be inserted with that object."</p> + +<p>"Oh!"</p> + +<p>"It is one of the conditions of becoming a classic."</p> + +<p>"Who will read you?"</p> + +<p>"Look here. Do you remember the story of that old fellow—a Dutchman, I +think—who took a fancy to be buried in the church porch of his native +town, that he might hear the feet of the townsfolk, generation after +generation, passing over his head to divine service?"</p> + +<p>"Well?"</p> + +<p>"Well. I shall stand on my shelf, bound in good leather, between (say) +<i>Bayle's Dictionary</i> and <i>Sibrandus Schnafnaburgensis, his Delectable +Treatise</i>; and if some day, when the master of the house has been coaxed +by his womenfolk to take a holiday, and they descend upon the books, which +he (the humbug) never reads, belabour and bang the dust out of them and +flap them with dusters, and all with that vindictiveness which is the good +housewife's right attitude towards literature—"</p> + +<p>"Had you not better draw breath?"</p> + +<p>"Thank you. I will: for the end of the protasis lies yet some way off. +If, I say, some child of the family, having chosen me out of the heap as a +capital fellow for a booby-trap, shall open me by hazard and, attracted by +the pictures, lug me off to the window-seat, why then God bless the child! +I shall come to my own. He will not understand much at the time, but he +will remember me with affection, and in due course he will give me to his +daughter among her wedding presents (much to her annoyance, but the +bridegroom will soothe her). This will happen through several generations +until I find myself an heirloom.…"</p> + +<p>"You begin to assume that by this time you will be valuable. +Also permit me to remark that you have slipped into the present +indicative."</p> + +<p>"As for the present indicative, I think you began it."</p> + +<p>"No."</p> + +<p>"Yes. But it doesn't matter. I begin precisely at the right moment to +assume a value which will be attached to me, not for my own sake, but on +account of dear grandpapa's book-plate and autograph on the fly-leaf. (He +was the humbug who never read me—a literary person; he acquired me as a +'review copy,' and only forbore to dispose of me because at the current +railway rates I should not have fetched the cost of carriage.)"</p> + +<p>"Why talk of hindrances to publishing such a book, when you know full well +it will never be written?"</p> + +<p>"I thought you would be driven to some such stupid knock-down argument. +Whether or not the book will ever be finished is a question that lies on +the knees of the gods. I am writing at it every day. And just such a +book was written once and even published; as I discovered the other day in +an essay by Mr. Austin Dobson. The author, I grant you, was a Dutchman +(Mr. Dobson calls him 'Vader Cats,') and the book contains everything from +a long didactic poem on Marriage (I also have written a long didactic poem +on Marriage) to a page on Children's Games. (My book shall have a chapter +on Children's Games, with their proper tunes.) As for poetry—poetry, +says Mr. Dobson, with our Dutch poet is not by any means a trickling rill +from Helicon: 'it is an inundation <i>à la mode du pays</i>, a flood in a flat +land, covering everything far and near with its sluggish waters.' +As for the illustrations, listen to this for the kind of thing I demand:—</p> + +<blockquote><blockquote> +<p class = "noindent">"Perhaps the most interesting of these is to be found in the + large head-piece to the above-mentioned Children's Games, the + background of which exhibits the great square of Middleburgh, + with its old Gothic houses and central clump of trees. + This is, moreover, as delightful a picture as any in the + gallery. Down the middle of the foreground, which is filled by + a crowd of figures, advances a regiment of little Dutchmen, + marching to drum and fife, and led by a fire-eating captain of + fifteen. Around this central group are dispersed knots of + children playing leap-frog, flying kites, blowing bubbles, + whipping tops, walking on stilts, skipping, and the like. + In one corner the children are busy with blind man's buff; + in the other the girls, with their stiff head-dresses and + vandyked aprons, are occupied with their dolls. Under the pump + some seventeenth-century equivalent for chuck-farthing seems to + be going on vigorously; and, not to be behind-hand in the fun, + two little fellows in the distance are standing upon their + heads. The whole composition is full of life and movement, + and—so conservative is childhood—might, but for the costume + and scene, represent a playground of to-day."</p> +</blockquote></blockquote> + +<p>"Such are the pictures which shall emerge, like islands, among my dull +pages. And there shall be other pages, to be found for the looking.… +I must make another call upon your memory, my friend, and refer it to a +story of Hans Andersen's which fascinated the pair of us in childhood, +when we were not really a pair but inseparables, and before you had grown +wise; the story of the Student and the Goblin who lodged at the +Butterman's. The Student, at the expense of his dinner, had rescued a +book from the butter-tub and taken it off to his garret, and that night +the Goblin, overcome by curiosity, peeped through the keyhole, and lo! the +garret was full of light. Forth and up from the book shot a beam of +light, which grew into the trunk of a mighty tree, and threw out branches +over the bowed head of the student; and every leaf was fresh, and every +flower a face, and every fruit a star, and music sang in the branches. +Well, there shall be even such pages in my book."</p> + +<p>"Excuse me," said I, "but, knowing your indolence, I begin to tire of the +future indicative, which (allow me to repeat) you first employed in this +discussion."</p> + +<p>"I did not," said the other part of me stoutly. "And if I did, 'tis a +trick of the trade. You of all people ought to know that I write +romances."</p> + +<br><br><br><br> +<p>I do not at all demur to having the value of my books enhanced by +the contributions of others—by dear grandpapa's autograph on the +fly-leaf, for example. But it annoys me to be blamed for other folks' +opinions.</p> + +<p>The other day a visitor called and discoursed with me during the greater +part of a wet afternoon. He had come for an interview—'dreadful trade,' +as Edgar said of samphire-gathering—and I wondered, as he took his +departure, what on earth he would find to write about: for I love to smoke +and listen to other men's opinions, and can boast with Montaigne that +during these invasive times my door has stood open to all comers. He was +a good fellow, too; having brains and using them: and I made him an +admirable listener.</p> + +<p>It amused me, some while after, to read the interview and learn that <i>I</i> +had done the talking and uttered a number of trenchant sayings upon female +novelists. But the amusement changed to dismay when the ladies began to +retort. For No. 1 started with an airy restatement of what I had never +said, and No. 2 (who had missed to read the interview) misinterpreted No. +1.'s paraphrase; and by these and other processes within a week my +digestive silence had passed through a dozen removes, and was incurring +the just execration of a whole sex. I began to see that my old college +motto—<i>Quod taciturn velis nemini dixeris</i>—which had always seemed to me +to err, if at all, on the side of excess, fell short of adequacy to these +strenuous times.</p> + +<p>I have not kept the letters; but a friend of mine, Mr. Algernon Dexter, +has summarised a very similar experience and cast it into chapters, which +he allows me to print here. He heads them—</p> + +<br><br><br><br> +<h3>HUNTING THE DRAG.</h3> + + + +<h4>CHAPTER I.</h4> + +<p class = "noindent"><i>Scene:</i></p> +<blockquote><blockquote> +<p class = "noindent"><i>The chastely-furnished writing-room of Mr. Algernon Dexter, a +well-known male novelist. Bust of Pallas over practicable door L.U.E. +Books adorn the walls, interspersed with portraits of female relatives. +Mr. Dexter discovered with Interviewer. Mr. D., poker in hand, is bending +over the fire, above which runs the legend, carved in Roman letters across +the mantelpiece, 'Ne fodias ignem gladio.</i>'</p> +</blockquote></blockquote> + +<p class = "noindent">INTERVIEWER (<i>pulling out his watch</i>):</p> +<blockquote><blockquote> +<p class = "noindent">"Dear me! Only five minutes to +catch my train! And I had several other questions to ask. +I suppose, now, it's too late to discuss the Higher Education of Women?"</p> +</blockquote></blockquote> + +<p class = "noindent">Mr. D. (<i>smiling</i>):</p> +<blockquote><blockquote> +<p class = "noindent">"Well, I think there's hardly time. It will take you +a good four minutes to get to the station."</p> +</blockquote></blockquote> + +<p class = "noindent">INTERVIEWER:</p> +<blockquote><blockquote> +<p class = "noindent">"And I must get my typewriter out of the cloakroom. +Good-day, then, Mr. Dexter!" (<i>They shake hands and part with mutual +esteem.</i>)</p> +</blockquote></blockquote> + +<br><br><br><br> +<h4>CHAPTER II.</h4> + +<h4><i>Extract from 'The Daily Post</i>.'</h4> + +<h4>"MONDAY TALKS WITH OUR NOVELISTS.—No. MCVI. Mr. ALGERNON DEXTER.</h4> + + +<p>"'And now, Mr. Dexter,' said I, 'what is your opinion of the Higher +Education of Women?'</p> + +<p>"The novelist stroked his bronze beard. 'That's a large order, eh? +Isn't it rather late in the day to discuss Women's Education?' +And with a humorous gesture of despair he dropped the poker."</p> + + +<br><br><br><br> +<h4>CHAPTER III.</h4> + +<h4><i>Tuesday's Letter</i>.</h4> + +<p>Sir,—In your issue of to-day I read with interest an account of an +interview with Mr. Dexter, the popular novelist, and I observe that +gentleman thinks it 'rather late in the day' to discuss the Higher +Education of Women. One can only be amused at this flippant dismissal of +a subject dear to the hearts of many of us; a movement consecrated by the +life-energies—I had almost said the life-blood—of a Gladstone, a +Sidgwick, a Fitch, and a Platt-Culpepper. Does Mr. Dexter really imagine +that he can look down on such names as these? Or are we to conclude that +the recent successes of 'educated' women in fiction have got on his +nerves? To suggest professional jealousy would be going too far, no +doubt.</p> + +<span class = "ind16">Yours faithfully.</span><br> +<span class = "ind18">'HIGH SCHOOL'</span> + +<br><br><br><br> +<h4>CHAPTER IV.</h4> + +<h4><i>Wednesday's Letters</i>.</h4> + +<p>(1) Sir,—I, too, was disgusted with Mr. Algernon Dexter's cheap sneer at +women's education. He has, it seems, 'no opinion' on it. Allow me to +point out that, whatever his opinion may be, Women's Education has come to +stay. The time is past when Women could be relegated to the kitchen or +the nursery, and told, in the words of the poet Byron, that these +constituted her 'whole existence.' Not so; and if Mr. Dexter is inclined +to doubt it let him read the works of George Elliot (Mrs. J. W. Cross) or +Marion Crawford. They will open his eyes to the task he has undertaken.</p> + +<span class = "ind16">I am, Sir, yours, etc,</span><br> +<span class = "ind18">"AUDI ALTERAM PARTEM."</span><br><br><br> + +<p>(2) SIR,—Mr. Algernon Dexter thinks women's education 'a large order'— +not a very elegant expression, let me say, <i>en passant</i>, for one who +aspires to be known as a 'stylist.' Still a large order it is, and one +that as an imperial race we shall be forced to envisage. If our children +are to be started in life as fit citizens of this empire, with a grasp on +its manifold and far reaching complexities of interest, and unless the +Germans are to beat us, we must provide them with educated mothers. 'The +child is father of the man,' but the mother has, <i>me judice</i>, no less +influence on his subsequent career. And this is not to be done by putting +back the hands of the clock, or setting them to make pies and samplers, +but by raising them to mutually co-operate and further what has been aptly +termed 'The White Man's Burden.' Such, at any rate, though I may not live +to see it, is the conviction of:</p> + +<span class = "ind16">"A MUS. DOC. OF FORTY YEARS' STANDING."</span><br><br><br> + +<p>(3) SIR,—'High School' has done a public service. A popular novelist may +be licensed to draw on his imagination; but hitting below the belt is +another thing, whoever wears it. Mr Dexter's disdainful treatment of that +eminent educationalist Mr. Platt-Culpepper—who is in his grave and +therefore unable to reply (so like a man!)—can be called nothing less. +I hope it will receive the silent contempt it deserves.</p> + +<span class = "ind16">Yours indignantly,</span><br> +<span class = "ind18">"MERE WOMAN."</span> + + +<br><br><br><br> +<h4>CHAPTER V.</h4> + +<h4><i>Thursday's letters</i>.</h4> + +<p>(1) SIR,—Your correspondents, with whose indignation I am in sympathy, +have to me most unaccountably overlooked the real gravamen of Mr. Dexter's +offence. Unlike them, I have read several of that gentleman's brochures, +and can assure you that he once posed as the unbounded license for women +in Higher Education, if not in other directions. This <i>volte face</i> +(I happen to know) will come as a severe disappointment to many; for we +had quite counted him one of us.</p> + +<blockquote><blockquote> +<p class = "noindent">"We that had loved him so, followed him, honoured him,<br> +<span class = "ind3">Lived in his mild and magnificent eye,"</span><br></p> +</blockquote></blockquote> + + +<p>Shall have, it seems, to 'record one lost soul more, one more devil's +triumph,' etc. I subscribe myself, sir, more in sorrow than in anger.</p> + +<span class = "ind16">PERCY FLADD,</span><br> +<span class = "ind18"><i>President, H.W.E.L.</i></span><br> +<span class = "ind12">(<i>Hoxton Women's Emancipation League</i>).</span> + +<br><br><br> +<p>(2) Sir,—Why all this beating about the bush? The matter in dispute +between Mr. Dexter and his critics was summed up long ago by Scotia's +premier poet (I refer to Robert Burns) in the lines—</p> + +<blockquote><blockquote> +<p class = "noindent">"To make a happy fireside clime<br> +<span class = "ind3">To weans and wife,</span><br> + That's the true pathos and sublime<br> +<span class = "ind3">Of human life,"</span><br></p> +</blockquote></blockquote> + +<p>And <i>vice versa</i>. Your correspondents are too hasty in condemning Mr. +Dexter. He may have expressed himself awkwardly; but, as I understood +him, he never asserted that education necessarily unsexed a woman, if kept +within limits. 'A man's a man for a' that'; then why not a woman? +At least, so says:</p> + +<span class = "ind16">"AULD REEKIE."</span><br><br><br><br> + +<p>(3) Sir,—Let Mr. Dexter stick to his guns. He is not the first who has +found the New Woman an unmitigated nuisance, and I respect him for saying +so in no measured terms. Let women, if they want husbands, cease to write +oratorios and other things in which man is, by his very constitution, +<i>facile princeps</i>, and let her cultivate that desideratum in which she +excels—a cosy home and a bright smile to greet him on the doorstep when +he returns from a tiring day in the City. Until that is done I, for one, +shall remain:</p> + +<span class = "ind16">"UNMARRIED."</span><br> + +<p>P.S.—Could a woman have composed Shakespeare?</p><br><br><br><br> + +<p>(4) Sir,—I had no intention of mixing in this correspondence, and +publicity is naturally distasteful to me. Nor do I hold any brief for the +Higher Education of Women; but when I see writer after writer—apparently +of my own sex—taking refuge in what has been called the 'base shelter of +anonymity,' I feel constrained to sign myself:</p> + +<span class = "ind16">Yours faithfully,</span><br> +<span class = "ind18">(Mrs.) RACHEL RAMSBOTHAM.</span><br><br><br><br> + + + +<h4>CHAPTER VI.</h4> + +<h4><i>Friday's Letters</i>.</h4> + +<p>(1) Sir,—After reading 'Unmarried's' letter, one can hardly wonder that +he is so. He asks if any woman could have written Shakespeare, and +insinuates that she would be better occupied in meeting him ('Unmarried') +on the doorstep 'with a bright smile.' As to that, there may be two +opinions. Everyone to his taste, but for my part, if his insufferable +male conceit will allow him to believe it—I would rather have written +Shakespeare a hundred times over, and I am not alone in this view. Such +men as Mr. Dexter and 'Unmarried' are the cause why half of us women +prefer to remain single; the former may deny it, poker in hand, but murder +will out. In conclusion, let me add that I have never written an oratorio +in my life, though I sometimes attend them.</p> + +<span class = "ind16">Yours, etc.,</span><br> +<span class = "ind18">"MERE WOMAN."</span><br><br><br><br> + +<p>(2) Sir,—Allow me to impale Mr. Dexter on the horns of a dilemma. +Either it is too late in the day to discuss woman's education, or it is +not. If the latter, why did he say it is? And if the former, why did he +begin discussing it? That is how it strikes.</p> + +<span class = "ind16">"B.A. (Lond.)."</span><br><br><br><br> + +<p>(3) Sir,—<i>Re</i> this woman's education discussion: I write to inquire if +there is any law of the land which can hinder a woman from composing +Shakespeare if she wants to?</p> + +<span class = "ind16">Yours truly,</span><br> +<span class = "ind18">"INTERESTED."</span><br><br><br><br> + +<p>(4) Sir,—Allusion has been made in this correspondence (I think by Mr. +Dexter) to the grave of that eminent educationist, the late +Platt-Culpepper, which is situate in the Highgate Cemetery. My interest +being awakened, I made a pilgrimage to it the other day, and was shocked +by its neglected condition. The coping has been badly cemented, and a +crack extends from the upper right-hand corner to the base of the plinth, +right across the inscription. Doubtless a few shillings would repair the +damage; but may I suggest, Sir, that some worthier memorial is due to this +pioneer of woman's higher activities? I have thought of a plain obelisk on +Shakespeare's Cliff, a locality of which he was ever fond; or a small and +inconspicuous lighthouse might, without complicating the navigation of +this part of the Channel, serve to remind Englishmen of one who diffused +so much light during his all too brief career. Choice, however, would +depend on the funds available, and might be left to an influential +committee. Meanwhile, could you not open a subscription list for the +purpose? I enclose stamps for 2 shillings, with my card, and prefer to +remain, for the present.</p> + +<span class = "ind16">"HAUD IMMEMOR."</span><br><br><br><br> + + + +<h4>CHAPTER VII.</h4> + +<h4><i>Saturday's Letters</i></h4> + +<p>(1) Sir,—H. Immemor's suggestion clears the air, and should persuade +Mr. Dexter and his reactionary friends to think twice before again +inaugurating a crusade which can only recoil upon their own heads. +I enclose 5 shillings, if only as a protest against this un-English +'hitting below the belt,' and am:</p> + +<span class = "ind16">Yours, etc.,</span><br> +<span class = "ind18">"PRACTICAL."</span><br><br><br><br> + +<p>(2) Sir,—It is only occasionally that I get a glimpse of your invaluable +paper, and (perhaps, fortunately) missed the issues containing Mr. +Dexter's diatribes anent woman. But what astounds me is their cynical +audacity. Your correspondents, though not in accord as to the name of the +victim (can it be more than one?) agree that, after encouraging her to +unbridled license, Mr. Dexter turned round and attacked her with a poker— +whether above or below the belt is surely immaterial. 'Tis true, +'tis pity, and pity 'tis 'tis true; but not once or twice, I fear me, in +'our fair island-story' has a similar thing occurred. The unique (I hope) +feature in this case is the man Dexter's open boast that the incident is +closed, and it is now 'too late in the day' to reopen it. 'Too late,' +indeed! There is an American poem describing how a young woman was raking +hay, and an elderly judge came by, and wasn't in a position to marry her, +though he wanted to; and the whole winds up by saying that 'too late' are +the saddest words in the language—especially, I would add, in this +connection. But, alas! that men's memories should be so short! Is the +reflection of:</p> + +<span class = "ind16">"A MOTHER OF SEVEN."</span><br><br><br><br> + +<p>[This correspondence is now closed, unless Mr. Dexter should wish to reply +to his numerous critics. We do not propose to open a subscription list, +at any rate for the present.—Ed. <i>Daily Post.</i>]</p> + +<br><br> +<a name="2HCH0002"><!-- H2 anchor --></a> +<br><br> +<h3>FEBRUARY.</h3> + +<p>"O That I were lying under the olives!"—if I may echo the burthen of +a beautiful little poem by Mrs. Margaret L. Woods. I have not yet +consulted Zadkiel: but if I may argue from past experience of +February—'fill-dyke'—in a week or so my window here will be +alternately crusted with Channel spray and washed clean by lashing +south-westerly showers; and a wave will arch itself over my garden wall +and spoil a promising bed of violets; and I shall grow weary of +oilskins, and weary of hauling the long-line with icily-cold hands +and finding no fish. February—<i>Pisces?</i> The fish, before February +comes, have left the coast for the warmer deeps, and the zodiac is +all wrong. Down here in the Duchy many believe in Mr. Zadkiel and +Old Moore. I suppose the dreamy Celt pays a natural homage to a +fellow-mortal who knows how to make up his mind for twelve months +ahead. All the woman in his nature surrenders to this businesslike +decisiveness. "O man!"—the exhortation is Mr. George Meredith's, or +would be if I could remember it precisely—"O man, amorously +inclining, before all things <i>be positive!</i>" I have sometimes, +while turning the pages of Mrs. Beeton's admirable cookery book, +caught myself envying Mr. Beeton. I wonder if her sisters envy +Mrs. Zadkiel. She, dear lady, no doubt feels that, if it be not in +mortals to command the weather her husband prophesies for August, yet +he does better—he deserves it. And, after all, a prophecy in some +measure depends for its success on the mind which receives it. +Back in the forties—I quote from a small privately-printed volume by +Sir Richard Tangye—when the potato blight first appeared in England, +an old farmer in the Duchy found this warning in his favourite +almanack, at the head of the page for August:—</p> + +<blockquote><blockquote> +<p class = "noindent"> "And potentates shall tremble and quail."</p> +</blockquote></blockquote> + +<p>Now, 'to quail' in Cornwall still carries its old meaning, +'to shrink,' 'to wither.' The farmer dug his potatoes with all +speed, and next year the almanack was richer by a score of +subscribers.</p> + +<p>Zadkiel or no Zadkiel, I will suspire, and risk it, "O that I were +lying under the olives!" "O to be out of England now that February's +here!"—for indeed this is the time to take the South express and be +quit of fogs, and loaf and invite your soul upon the Mediterranean +shore before the carnivals and regattas sweep it like a mistral. +Nor need you be an invalid to taste those joys on which Stevenson +dilates in that famous little essay in "<i>Virginibus Puerisque</i>" +(or, as the young American lady preferred to call it, "Virginis +Pueribusque."):—</p> + +<blockquote><blockquote> +<p class = "noindent"> "Or perhaps he may see a group of washer-women relieved, on a + spit of shingle, against the blue sea, or a meeting of + flower-gatherers in the tempered daylight of an olive-garden; + and something significant or monumental in the grouping, + something in the harmony of faint colour that is always + characteristic of the dress of these Southern women, will come + home to him unexpectedly, and awake in him that satisfaction + with which we tell ourselves that we are richer by one more + beautiful experience.… And then, there is no end to the + infinite variety of the olive-yards themselves. Even the colour + is indeterminate, and continually shifting: now you would say it + was green, now grey, now blue; now tree stands above tree, like + 'cloud on cloud,' massed in filmy indistinctness; and now, at + the wind's will, the whole sea of foliage is shaken and broken + up with little momentary silverings and shadows."</p> +</blockquote></blockquote> + +<p>English poets, too, have been at their best on the Riviera: from +Cette, where Matthew Arnold painted one of the most brilliant little +landscapes in our literature, along to Genoa, where Tennyson visited +and:</p> + +<blockquote><blockquote> +<p class = "noindent"><span class = "ind3">"Loved that hall, tho' white and cold,</span><br> + Those nichèd shapes of noble mould,<br> +<span class = "ind3">A princely people's awful princes,</span><br> + The grave, severe Genovese of old."<br></p> +</blockquote></blockquote> + +<p>[I suppose, by the way, that every one who has taken the trouble to +compare the stanza of 'The Daisy' with that of the invitation 'To the +Rev. F. D. Maurice,' which immediately follows, will have noted the +pretty rhythmical difference made by the introduction of the double +dactyl in the closing line of the latter; the difference between:</p> + +<blockquote><blockquote> +<p class = "noindent"> "Of ólive, áloe, and maíze, and víne,"</p> +</blockquote></blockquote> + +<p>And:</p> + +<blockquote><blockquote> +<p class = "noindent">"Máking the líttle one leáp for jóy."]</p> +</blockquote></blockquote> + +<p>But let Mrs. Woods resume the strain:—</p> + +<blockquote><blockquote> +<p class = "noindent"> "O that I were listening under the olives!<br> + So should I hear behind in the woodland<br> + The peasants talking. Either a woman,<br> + A wrinkled granddame, stands in the sunshine,<br> + Stirs the brown soil in an acre of violets—<br> + Large odorous violets—and answers slowly<br> + A child's swift babble; or else at noon<br> + The labourers come. They rest in the shadow,<br> + Eating their dinner of herbs, and are merry.<br> + Soft speech Provençal under the olives!<br> + Like a queen's raiment from days long perished,<br> + Breathing aromas of old unremembered<br> + Perfumes, and shining in dust-covered palaces<br> + With sudden hints of forgotten splendour—<br> + So on the lips of the peasant his language,<br> + His only now, the tongue of the peasant."<br></p> +</blockquote></blockquote> + +<p>Say what you will, there is a dignity about these Latin races, even +in their trivial everyday movements. They suggest to me, as those +lines of Homer suggested to Mr. Pater's Marius, thoughts which almost +seem to be memories of a time when all the world was poetic:—</p> + + +<br> +<br> +<center> +<img alt="Fig. 1 (24.3K)" src="images/fig1.jpg" height="147" width="739" > +</center> +<br> +<br> + + +<p>"And how poetic," says Pater, "the simple incident seemed, told just +thus! Homer was always telling things after this manner. +And one might think there had been no effort in it: that here was but +the almost mechanical transcript of a time naturally, intrinsically +poetic, a time in which one could hardly have spoken at all without +ideal effect, or the sailors pulled down their boat without making a +picture in 'the great style' against a sky charged with marvels."</p> + +<p>One evening in last February a company of Provençal singers, pipers, +and tambour players came to an hotel in Cannes, and entertained us. +They were followed next evening by a troupe of German-Swiss jödelers; +and oh, the difference to me—and, for that matter, to all of us! +It was just the difference between passion and silly sentiment—silly +and rather vulgar sentiment. The merry Swiss boys whooped, and +smacked their legs, and twirled their merry Swiss girls about, until +vengeance overtook them—a vengeance so complete, so surprising, that +I can hardly now believe what my own eyes saw and my own ears heard. +One of the merry Swiss girls sang a love-ditty with a jödeling +refrain, which was supposed to be echoed back by her lover afar in +the mountains. To produce this pleasing illusion, one of the merry +Swiss boys ascended the staircase, and hid himself deep in the +corridors of the hotel. All went well up to the last verse. +Promptly and truly the swain echoed his sweetheart's call; softly it +floated down to us—down from the imaginary pasture and across the +imaginary valley. But as the maiden challenged for the last time, as +her voice lingered on the last note of the last verse… +There hung a Swiss cuckoo-clock in the porter's office, and at that +very instant the mechanical bird lifted its voice, and nine times +answered 'Cuckoo' <i>on the exact note!</i> "Cuckoo, Cuckoo, O word of +fear!" I have known coincidences, but never one so triumphantly +complete. The jaw of the Swiss maiden dropped an inch; and, as well +as I remember, silence held the company for five seconds before we +recovered ourselves and burst into inextinguishable laughter.</p> +<br><br><br> +<p>The one complaint I have to make of the Mediterranean is that it does +not in the least resemble a real sea; and I daresay that nobody who +has lived by a real sea will ever be thoroughly content with it. +Beautiful—oh, beautiful, of course, whether one looks across from +Costebelle to the lighthouse on Porquerolles and the warships in +Hyères Bay; or climbs by the Calvary to the lighthouse of la Garoupe, +and sees on the one side Antibes, on the other the Isles de Lérins; +or scans the entrance of Toulon Harbour; or counts the tiers of +shipping alongside the quays at Genoa! But somehow the Mediterranean +has neither flavour nor sparkle, nor even any proper smell. +The sea by Biarritz is champagne to it. But hear how Hugo draws the +contrast in time of storm:—</p> + +<blockquote><blockquote> +<p class = "noindent">"Ce n'étaient pas les larges lames de l'Océan qui vont devant elles + et qui se deroulent royalement dans l'immensité; c'étaient des + houles courtes, brusques, furieuses. L'Océan est à son aise, + il tourne autour du monde; la Mediterranée est dans un vase et + le vent la secoue, c'est ce qui lui donne cette vague haletante, + brève et trapue. Le flot se ramasse et lutte. Il a autant de + colère que la flot de l'Océan et moins d'espace."</p> +</blockquote></blockquote> + +<p>Also, barring the sardine and anchovy, I must confess that the fish +of the Mediterranean are what, in the Duchy, we should call +'poor trade.' I don't wish to disparage the Bouillabaisse, which is +a dish for heroes, and deserves all the heroic praises sung of it:—</p> + +<blockquote><blockquote> +<p class = "noindent">"This Bouillabaisse a noble dish is—<br> +<span class = "ind3"> A sort of soup, or broth, or brew,</span><br> + Or hotchpotch of all sorts of fishes,<br> +<span class = "ind3">That Greenwich never could outdo;</span><br> + Green herbs, red peppers, mussels, saffron,<br> +<span class = "ind3">Soles, onions, garlic, roach and dace:</span><br> + All these you eat at Terré's tavern,<br> +<span class = "ind3">In that one dish of Bouillabaisse."<br></span></p> +</blockquote></blockquote> + +<p>To be precise, you take a langouste, three rascas (an edible but +second-rate fish), a slice of conger, a fine 'chapon,' or red rascas, +and one or two 'poissons blancs' (our grey mullet, I take it, would +be an equivalent). You take a cooking-pot and put your langouste in +it, together with four spoonfuls of olive-oil, an onion and a couple +of tomatoes, and boil away until he turns red. You then take off the +pot and add your fish, green herbs, four cloves of garlic, and a +pinch of saffron, with salt and red pepper. Pour in water to cover +the surface of the fish, and cook for twenty minutes over a fast +fire. Then take a soup-plate, lay some slices of bread in it, and +pour the bouillon over the bread. Serve the fish separately. +Possibly you incline to add, in the immortal words of the late Mr. +Lear, "Serve up in a clean dish, and throw the whole out of window as +fast as possible." You would make a great mistake. The marvel to me +is that no missionary has acclimatised this wonderful dish upon our +coasts, where we have far better fish for compounding it—red mullet, +for instance, in place of the rascas; and whiting, or even pollack or +grey mullet, in place of the 'poissons blancs.' For the langouste, a +baby lobster might serve; and the saffron flavour would be no severe +trial to us in the Duchy, who are brought up (so to say) upon saffron +cake. As for Thackeray's 'dace,' I disbelieve in it. No one would +add a dace (which for table purposes has been likened to an old +stocking full of mud and pins: or was that a tench?) except to make a +rhyme. Even Walton, who gives instructions for cooking a chavender +or chub, is discreetly silent on the cooking of a dace, though he +tells us how to catch him. "Serve up in a clean dish," he might have +added, "and throw him out of window as fast as possible."</p> +<br><br><br> +<p>"O that I were lying under the olives!" And O that to olive orchards +(not contiguous) I could convey the newspaper men who are almost +invariably responsible when a shadow of distrust or suspicion falls +between us Englishmen and the race which owns and tills these +orchards. "The printing-press," says Mr. Barrie, "is either the +greatest blessing or the greatest curse of modern times, one +sometimes forgets which." I verily believe that if English newspaper +editors would nobly resolve to hold their peace on French politics, +say for two years, France and England would 'make friends' as easily +as Frenchmen and Englishmen 'make friends' to-day.[1] One hears talk +of the behaviour of the English abroad. But I am convinced that at +least one-half of their bad manners may be referred to their +education upon this newspaper nonsense, or to the certainty that no +complaint they may make upon foreign shortcomings is too silly or too +ill-bred to be printed in an English newspaper. Here is an example. +I suppress the name of the writer—a lady—in the devout hope that +she has repented before this. The letter is headed—</p> + +<h4>"THE AMENITIES OF RAILWAY TRAVELLING IN FRANCE.</h4> + +<blockquote><blockquote> +<p class = "noindent"> "Sir,—As your newspaper is read in France, may I in your columns + call attention to what I witnessed yesterday? I left Dinard by + the 3.33 p.m. train <i>en route</i> for Guingamp, having to change + carriages at Lamballe. An instant before the train moved off + from the station, a dying man belonging to the poorest class was + thrust into our second class carriage and the door slammed to. + The poor creature, apparently dying of some wasting disease, + was absolutely on the point of death, and his ghastly appearance + naturally alarmed a little girl in the carriage. + At the next station I got down with my companion and changed + into a first-class compartment, paying the difference. + On remonstrating with the guard (<i>sic</i>), he admitted that a + railway carriage ought not to be turned into an hospital, + but added, 'We have no rules to prevent it.'</p> + +<p> "I ask, sir, is it decent or human, especially at such a time, + to thrust dying persons in the last stage of poverty into a + second-class carriage full of ladies and children?"</p> +</blockquote></blockquote> + +<p>There's a pretty charity for you! 'A dying man belonging to the +<i>poorest class</i>.'—'<i>Our</i> second-class carriage'—here's richness! +as Mr. Squeers observed. Here's sweetness and light! But England +has no monopoly of such manners. There was a poor little Cingalese +girl in the train by which I travelled homeward last February from +Genoa and through the Mont Cenis. And there were also three +Englishmen and a Frenchman—the last apparently (as Browning put it) +a person of importance in his day, for he had a bit of red ribbon in +his buttonhole and a valet at his heels. At one of the small +stations near the tunnel our train halted for several minutes; +and while the little Cingalese leaned out and gazed at the unfamiliar +snows—a pathetic figure, if ever there was one—the three Englishmen +and the Frenchman gathered under the carriage door and stared up at +her just as if she were a show. There was no nonsense about the +performance—no false delicacy: it was good, steady, eye-to-eye +staring. After three minutes of it, the Frenchman asked +deliberately, "Where do you come from?" in a careless, level tone, +which did not even convey that he was interested in knowing. +And because the child didn't understand, the three Englishmen +laughed. Altogether it was an unpleasing but instructive little +episode.</p> +<br><br><br> +<p>No: nastiness has no particular nationality: and you will find a +great deal of it, of all nationalities, on the frontier between +France and Italy. I do not see that Monte Carlo provides much cause +for indignation, beyond the <i>tir aux pigeons</i>, which is quite +abominable. I have timed it for twenty-five minutes, and it averaged +two birds a minute—fifty birds. Of these one escaped, one fluttered +on to the roof of the railway station and died there slowly, under my +eyes. The rest were killed within the enclosure, some by the first +barrel, some by the second, or if they still lingered, were retrieved +and mouthed by a well-trained butcher dog, of no recognisable breed. +Sometimes, after receiving its wound, a bird would walk about for a +second or two, apparently unhurt; then suddenly stagger and topple +over. Sometimes, as the trap opened, a bird would stand dazed. +Then a ball was trundled at it to compel it to rise. Grey breast +feathers strewed the whole inclosure, in places quite thickly, like a +carpet. As for the crowd at the tables inside the Casino, it was +largely Semitic. On the road between Monte Carlo and Monaco, as +Browning says—</p> + +<blockquote><blockquote> +<p class = "noindent"> "It was noses, noses all the way."</p> +</blockquote></blockquote> + +<p>Also it smelt distressingly: but that perhaps was its misfortune +rather than its fault. It did not seem very happy; nor was it +composed of people who looked as if they might have attained to +distinction, or even to ordinary usefulness, by following any other +pursuit. On the whole, one felt that it might as well be gathered +here as anywhere else.</p> +<br><br><br> +<p>"O that I were lying under the olives!" But since my own garden must +content me this year, let me conclude with a decent letter of thanks +to the friend who sent me, from Devonshire, a box of violet roots +that await the spring in a corner which even the waves of the equinox +cannot reach:—</p> + +<h4>TO A FRIEND WHO SENT ME A BOX OF VIOLETS.</h4> + +<blockquote><blockquote> +<p class = "noindent"> Nay, more than violets<br> + These thoughts of thine, friend!<br> + Rather thy reedy brook<br> + —Taw's tributary—<br> + At midnight murmuring,<br> + Descried them, the delicate,<br> + The dark-eyed goddesses.<br> + There by his cressy beds<br> + Dissolved and dreaming<br> + Dreams that distilled in a dewdrop<br> + All the purple of night,<br> + All the shine of a planet.<br><br> + + Whereat he whispered;<br> + And they arising<br> + —Of day's forget-me-nots<br> + The duskier sisters—<br> + Descended, relinquished<br> + The orchard, the trout-pool,<br> + The Druid circles,<br> + Sheepfolds of Dartmoor,<br> + Granite and sandstone,<br> + Torridge and Tamar;<br> + By Roughtor, by Dozmare,<br> + Down the vale of the Fowey<br> + Moving in silence.<br> + Brushing the nightshade<br> + By bridges Cyclopean,<br> + By Glynn, Lanhydrock,<br> + Restormel, Lostwithiel,<br> + Dark woodland, dim water,<br> + <span class = "ind3">dreaming town—</span><br> + Down the vale of the Fowey,<br> + Each in her exile<br> + Musing the message—<br> + Message illumined by love<br> + As a starlit sorrow—<br> + Passed, as the shadow of Ruth<br> + From the land of the Moabite.<br> + So they came—<br> + Valley-born, valley-nurtured—<br> + Came to the tideway,<br> + The jetties, the anchorage,<br> + The salt wind piping,<br> + Snoring in equinox,<br> + By ships at anchor,<br> + By quays tormented,<br> + Storm-bitten streets;<br> + Came to the Haven<br> + Crying, "Ah, shelter us,<br> + The strayed ambassadors!<br> + Lost legation of love<br> + On a comfortless coast!"<br><br> + + Nay, but a little sleep,<br> + A little folding<br> + Of petals to the lull<br> + Of quiet rainfalls,—<br> + Here in my garden,<br> + In angle sheltered<br> + From north and east wind—<br> + Softly shall recreate<br> + The courage of charity,<br> + Henceforth not to me only<br> + Breathing the message.<br><br> + + Clean-breath'd Sirens!<br> + Henceforth the mariner,<br> + Here on the tideway<br> + Dragging, foul of keel,<br> + Long-strayed but fortunate,<br> + Out of the fogs,<br> + the vast Atlantic solitudes,<br> + Shall, by the hawser-pin<br> + Waiting the signal—<br> + "Leave-go-anchor!"<br> + Scent the familiar<br> + Fragrance of home;<br> + So in a long breath<br> + Bless us unknowingly:<br> + Bless them, the violets,<br> + Bless me, the gardener,<br> + Bless thee, the giver.</p><br><br><br> +</blockquote></blockquote> + +<p>My business (I remind myself) behind the window is not to scribble +verses: my business, or a part of it, is to criticise poetry, which +involves reading poetry. But why should anyone read poetry in these +days?</p> + +<p>Well, one answer is that nobody does.</p> + +<p>I look around my shelves and, brushing this answer aside as flippant, +change the form of my question. Why do we read poetry? What do we +find that it does for us? We take to it (I presume) some natural +need, and it answers that need. But what is the need? And how does +poetry answer it?</p> + +<p>Clearly it is not a need of knowledge, or of what we usually +understand by knowledge. We do not go to a poem as we go to a work +on Chemistry or Physics, to add to our knowledge of the world about +us. For example, Keats' glorious lines to the Nightingale—</p> + + +<blockquote><blockquote> +<p class = "noindent"> "Thou wast not born for death, immortal bird…"</p> +</blockquote></blockquote> + +<p>Are unchallengeable poetry; but they add nothing to our stock of +information. Indeed, as Mr. Bridges pointed out the other day, the +information they contain is mostly inaccurate or fanciful. Man is, +as a matter of fact, quite as immortal as a nightingale in every +sense but that of sameness. And as for:</p> + +<blockquote><blockquote> +<p class = "noindent"><span class = "ind3">"Magic casements opening on the foam</span><br> + Of perilous seas, in faëry lands forlorn,"<br></p> +</blockquote></blockquote> + +<p>Science tells us that no such things exist in this or any other +ascertained world. So, when Tennyson tells us that birds in the high +Hall garden were crying, "Maud, Maud, Maud," or that:</p> + +<blockquote><blockquote> +<p class = "noindent"> "There has fallen a splendid tear<br> + From the passion-flower at the gate:<br> + She is coming, my dove, my dear;<br> + She is coming, my life, my fate;<br> + The red rose cries, 'She is near, she is near';<br> + And the white rose weeps, 'She is late'…"<br></p> +</blockquote></blockquote> + +<p>The poetry is unchallengeable, but the information by scientific +standards of truth is demonstrably false, and even absurd. +On the other hand (see Coleridge's <i>Biographia Literaria</i>, c. xiv.), +the famous lines—</p> + +<blockquote><blockquote> +<p class = "noindent"> "Thirty days hath September, + April, June, and November,…"</p> +</blockquote></blockquote> + +<p>Though packed with trustworthy information, are quite as demonstrably +unpoetical. The famous senior wrangler who returned a borrowed +volume of <i>Paradise Lost</i> with the remark that he did not see what it +proved, was right—so far as he went. And conversely (as he would +have said) no sensible man would think to improve Newton's +<i>Principia</i> and Darwin's <i>Origin of Species</i> by casting them into +blank verse; or Euclid's <i>Elements</i> by writing them out in ballad +metre—</p> + +<blockquote><blockquote> +<p class = "noindent">The king sits in Dunfermline town,<br> +<span class = "ind3">Drinking the blude-red wine;</span><br> + 'O wha will rear me an equilateral triangle<br> +<span class = "ind3">Upon a given straight line?'</span><br></p> +</blockquote></blockquote> + +<p>We may be sure that Poetry does not aim to do what Science, with +other methods, can do much better. What craving, then, does it +answer? And if the craving be for knowledge of a kind, then of what +kind?</p> + +<p>The question is serious. We agree—at least I assume this—that men +have souls as well as intellects; that above and beyond the life we +know and can describe and reduce to laws and formulas there exists a +spiritual life of which our intellect is unable to render account. +We have (it is believed) affinity with this spiritual world, and we +hold it by virtue of something spiritual within us, which we call the +soul. You may disbelieve in this spiritual region and remain, I dare +say, an estimable citizen; but I cannot see what business you have +with Poetry, or what satisfaction you draw from it. Nay, Poetry +demands that you believe something further; which is, that in this +spiritual region resides and is laid up that eternal scheme of +things, that universal <i>order</i>, of which the phenomena of this world +are but fragments, if indeed they are not mere shadows.</p> + +<p>A hard matter to believe, no doubt! We see this world so clearly; +the spiritual world so dimly, so rarely, if at all! We may fortify +ourselves with the reminder (to be found in Blanco White's famous +sonnet) that the first man who lived on earth had to wait for the +darkness before he saw the stars and guessed that the Universe +extended beyond this earth—</p> + +<blockquote><blockquote> +<p class = "noindent">"Who could have thought such darkness lay conceal'd<br> +<span class = "ind3">Within thy beams, O Sun! or who could find,</span><br> + Whilst fly and leaf and insect stood reveal'd,<br> +<span class = "ind3">That to such countless orbs thou mad'st us blind?"</span><br></p> +</blockquote></blockquote> + +<p>He may, or may not, believe that the same duty governs his +infinitesimal activity and the motions of the heavenly bodies—</p> + +<blockquote><blockquote> +<p class = "noindent">"Awake, my soul, and <i>with the sun</i><br> + Thy daily stage of duty run…"</p> +</blockquote></blockquote> + +<p>—That his duty is one with that of which Wordsworth sang—</p> + +<blockquote><blockquote> +<p class = "noindent">"Thou dost preserve the stars from wrong;<br> + And the most ancient heavens, through thee, are + fresh and strong."<br></p> +</blockquote></blockquote> + +<p>But in a higher order of some sort, and his duty of conforming with +it, he does not seem able to avoid believing.</p> + +<p>This, then, is the need which Poetry answers. It offers to bring men +knowledge of this universal order, and to help them in rectifying and +adjusting their lives to it. It is for gleams of this spiritual +country that the poets watch—</p> + +<blockquote><blockquote> +<p class = "noindent"><span class = "ind10">"The gleam,</span><br> + The light that never was on sea or land.…"<br></p> +</blockquote></blockquote> + +<p>"I am Merlin," sang Tennyson, its life-long watcher, in his old age—</p> + +<blockquote><blockquote> +<p class = "noindent"> "I am Merlin,<br> + And I am dying;<br> + I am Merlin,<br> + Who follow the gleam."<br></p> +</blockquote></blockquote> + +<p>They do not claim to see it always. It appears to them at rare and +happy intervals, as the Vision of the Grail to the Knights of the +Round Table. "Poetry," said Shelley, "is the record of the best and +happiest moments of the happiest and best minds."</p> +<br><br><br> +<p>If this be the need, how have our poets been answering it of late +years? How, for instance, did they answer it during the South +African War, when (according to our newspapers) there was plenty of +patriotic emotion available to inspire the great organ of national +song? Well, let us kick up what dust we will over 'Imperial ideals,' +we must admit, at least, that these ideals are not yet 'accepted of +song': they have not inspired poetry in any way adequate to the +nobility claimed for them. Mr. Swinburne and Mr. Henley saluted the +Boer War in verse of much truculence, but no quality; and when Mr. +Swinburne and Mr. Henley lacked quality one began to inquire into +causes. Mr. Kipling's Absent-minded Beggars, Muddied Oafs, Goths and +Huns, invited one to consider why he should so often be first-rate +when neglecting or giving the lie to his pet political doctrines, and +invariably below form when enforcing them. For the rest, the Warden +of Glenalmond bubbled and squeaked, and Mr. Alfred Austin, like the +man at the piano, kept on doing his best. It all came to nothing: as +poetry it never began to be more than null. Mr. Hardy wrote a few +mournfully memorable lines on the seamy side of war. Mr. Owen Seaman +(who may pass for our contemporary Aristophanes) was smart and witty +at the expense of those whose philosophy goes a little deeper than +surface-polish. One man alone—Mr. Henry Newbolt—struck a note +which even his opponents had to respect. The rest exhibited plenty +of the turbulence of passion, but none of the gravity of thoughtful +emotion. I don't doubt they were, one and all, honest in their way. +But as poetry their utterances were negligible. As writers of real +poetry the Anti-Jingoes, and especially the Celts, held and still +hold the field.</p> + +<p>I will not adduce poets of admitted eminence—Mr. Watson, for +instance, or Mr. Yeats—to prove my case. I am content to go to a +young poet who has his spurs to win, and will ask you to consider +this little poem, and especially its final stanza. He calls it—</p> + +<h4>A CHARGE</h4> + +<blockquote><blockquote> +<p class = "noindent">If thou hast squander'd years to grave a gem<br> +<span class = "ind3">Commissioned by thy absent Lord, and while</span><br> +<span class = "ind6">'Tis incomplete,</span><br> + Others would bribe thy needy skill to them—<br> +<span class = "ind6">Dismiss them to the street!</span><br><br> + + Should'st thou at last discover Beauty's grove,<br> +<span class = "ind3"> At last be panting on the fragrant verge,</span><br> +<span class = "ind6">But in the track,</span><br> + Drunk with divine possession, thou meet Love—<br> +<span class = "ind6">Turn, at her bidding, back.</span><br><br> + + When round thy ship in tempest Hell appears,<br> +<span class = "ind3">And every spectre mutters up more dire</span><br> +<span class = "ind6">To snatch control</span><br> + And loose to madness thy deep-kennell'd Fears,—<br> +<span class = "ind6">Then to the helm, O Soul!</span><br><br> + + Last, if upon the cold, green-mantling sea<br> +<span class = "ind3">Thou cling, alone with Truth, to the last spar,</span><br> +<span class = "ind6">Both castaway,</span><br> + And one must perish—let it not be he<br> +<span class = "ind6">Whom thou art sworn to obey.</span><br><br> +</blockquote></blockquote> + +<p>The author of these lines is a Mr. Herbert Trench, who (as I say) has +his spurs to win. Yet I defy you to read them without recognising a +note of high seriousness which is common to our great poets and +utterly foreign to our modern bards of empire. The man, you will +perceive, dares to talk quite boldly about the human soul. Now you +will search long in our Jingo bards for any recognition of the human +soul: the very word is unpopular. And as men of eminence write, so +lesser wits imitate. A while ago I picked up a popular magazine, and +happened on these verses—fluently written and, beyond a doubt, +honestly meant. They are in praise of King Henry VIII.:—</p> + +<blockquote><blockquote> +<p class = "noindent">King Harry played at tennis, and he threw the dice a-main,<br> + And did all things that seemed to him for his own + and England's gain;<br> + He would not be talked to lightly, he would not be + checked or chid;<br> + And he got what things he dreamed to get, and did— + what things he did.<br><br> + + When Harry played at tennis it was well for this our Isle—<br> + He cocked his nose at Interdicts; he 'stablished us the while—<br> + He was lustful; he was vengeful; he was hot and hard and proud;<br> + But he set his England fairly in the sight of all the crowd.<br><br> + + So Harry played at tennis, and we perfected the game<br> + Which astonished swaggering Spaniards when the fat Armada came.<br> + And possession did he give us of our souls in sturdiness;<br> + And he gave us peace from priesthood: and he gave us English + Bess!<br><br> + + When Harry played at tennis we began to know this thing—<br> + That a mighty people prospers in a mighty-minded king.<br> + We boasted not our righteousness—we took on us our sin,<br> + For Bluff Hal was just an Englishman who played the game to win.<br></p> +</blockquote></blockquote> + +<p>You will perceive that in the third stanza the word 'soul' occurs: +and I invite you to compare this author's idea of a soul with Mr. +Trench's. This author will have nothing to do with the old advice +about doing justice, loving mercy, and walking humbly before God. +The old notion that to conquer self is a higher feat than to take a +city he dismisses out of hand. "Be lustful be vengeful," says he, +"but play the game to win, and you have my applause. Get what you +want, set England fairly in sight of the crowd, and you are a +mighty-minded man." Now the first and last comment upon such a +doctrine must be that, if a God exist, it is false. It sets up a +part to override the whole: it flaunts a local success against the +austere majesty of Divine law. In brief, it foolishly derides the +universal, saying that it chooses to consider the particular as more +important. But it is not. Poetry's concern is with the universal: +and what makes the Celts (however much you may dislike them) the most +considerable force in English poetry at this moment is that they +occupy themselves with that universal truth, which, before any +technical accomplishment, is the guarantee of good poetry.</p> + +<p>Now, when you tell yourself that the days of 'English Bess' were +jolly fine empire-making days, and produced great poets (Shakespeare, +for example) worthy of them; and when you go on to reflect that these +also are jolly fine empire-making days, but that somehow Mr. Austin +is your laureate, and that the only poetry which counts is being +written by men out of harmony with your present empire-making mood, +the easiest plan (if you happen to think the difference worth +considering) will be to call the Muse a traitress, and declare that +every poem better than Mr. Austin's is a vote given to—whatever +nation your Yellow Press happens to be insulting at this moment. +But, if you care to look a little deeper, you may find that some +difference in your methods of empire-making is partly accountable for +the change. A true poet must cling to universal truth; and by +insulting it (as, for example, by importing into present-day politics +the spirit which would excuse the iniquities of Henry VIII. on the +ground that 'he gave us English Bess'!) you are driving the true poet +out of your midst. Read over the verses above quoted, and then +repeat to yourself, slowly, these lines:—</p> + +<blockquote><blockquote> +<p class = "noindent">"Last, if upon the cold, green-mantling sea<br> +<span class = "ind3">Thou cling, alone with Truth, to the last spar,</span><br> +<span class = "ind6">Both castaway,</span><br> + And one must perish—let it not be he<br> +<span class = "ind6">Whom thou art sworn to obey."</span><br></p> +</blockquote></blockquote> + +<p>I ask no more. If a man cannot see the difference at once, I almost +despair of making him perceive why poetry refuses just now even more +obstinately than trade (if that be possible) to 'follow the flag.' +It will not follow, because you are waving the flag over +self-deception. You may be as blithe as Plato in casting out the +poets from your commonwealth—though for other reasons than his. +You may be as blithe as Dogberry in determining, of reading and +writing, that they may appear when there is no need of such vanity. +But you are certainly driving them forth to say, in place of +"O beloved city of Cecrops!" "O beloved city of God!" There was a +time, not many years ago, when an honest poet could have used both +cries together and deemed that he meant the same thing by the two. +But the two cries to-day have an utterly different meaning—and by +your compulsion or by the compulsion of such politics as you have +come to tolerate.</p> + +<p>And therefore the young poet whom I have quoted has joined the band +of those poets whom we are forcing out of the city, to leave our +ideals to the fate which, since the world began, has overtaken all +ideals which could not get themselves 'accepted by song.' Even as we +drum these poets out we know that they are the only ones worth +reckoning with, and that man cannot support himself upon assurances +that he is the strongest fellow in the world, and the richest, and +owns the biggest house, and pays the biggest rates, and wins whatever +game he plays at, and stands so high in his clothes that while the +Southern Cross rises over his hat-brim it is already broad day on the +seat of his breeches. For that is what it all comes to: and the +sentence upon the man who neglects the warning of these poets, while +he heaps up great possessions, is still, "Thou fool, this night thy +soul shall be required of thee." And where is the national soul you +would choose, at that hasty summons, to present for inspection, +having to stand your trial upon it? Try Park Lane, or run and knock +up the Laureate, and then come and report your success!</p> + +<br><br><br><p> +Weeks ago I was greatly reproached by a correspondent for misusing +the word 'Celtic,' and informed that to call Mr. Yeats or Mr. Trench +a Celt is a grave abuse of ethnical terms; that a notable percentage +of the names connected with the 'Celtic Revival'—Hyde, Sigerson, +Atkinson, Stokes—are not Celtic at all but Teutonic; that, in short, +I have been following the multitude to speak loosely. Well, I +confess it, and I will confess further that the lax use of the word +'Celt' ill beseems one who has been irritated often enough by the +attempts of well-meaning but muddle-headed people who get hold of +this or that poet and straightly assign this or that quality of his +verse to a certain set of corpuscles in his mixed blood. Although I +believe that my correspondent is too hasty in labelling men's descent +from their names—for the mother has usually some share in producing +a child; although I believe that Mr. Yeats, for instance, inherits +Cornish blood on one side, even if Irish be denied him on the other; +yet the rebuke contains some justice.</p> + +<p>Still, I must maintain that these well-meaning theorists err only in +applying a broad distinction with overmuch nicety. There is, after +all, a certain quality in a poem of Blake's, or a prose passage of +Charlotte Brontë's, which a critic is not only unable to ignore, but +which—if he has any 'comparative' sense—he finds himself accounting +for by saying, "This man, or this woman, must be a Celt or have some +admixture of Celtic blood." I say quite confidently that quality +cannot be ignored. You open (let us say) a volume of Blake, and your +eye falls on these two lines—</p> + +<blockquote><blockquote> +<p class = "noindent">"When the stars threw down their spears<br> + And watered heaven with their tears,"<br></p> +</blockquote></blockquote> + +<p>And at once you are aware of an imagination different in kind from +the imagination you would recognise as English. Let us, if you +please, rule out all debate of superiority; let us take Shakespeare +for comparison, and Shakespeare at his best:—</p> + +<blockquote><blockquote> +<p class = "noindent"><span class = "ind10">"These our actors,</span><br> + As I foretold you, were all spirits, and<br> + Are melted into air, into thin air;<br> + And, like the baseless fabric of this vision,<br> + The cloud-capp'd towers, the gorgeous palaces,<br> + The solemn temples, the great globe itself,<br> + Yea, all which it inherit, shall dissolve<br> + And, like this insubstantial pageant faded,<br> + Leave not a rack behind. We are such stuff<br> + As dreams are made of, and our little life<br> + Is rounded with a sleep."<br></p> +</blockquote></blockquote> + +<p>Finer poetry than this I can hardly find in English to quote for you. +But fine as it is, will you not observe the matter-of-factness +(call it healthy, if you will, and I shall not gainsay you) beneath +Shakespeare's noble language? It says divinely what it has to say; +and what it has to say is full of solemn thought. But, for better or +worse (or, rather, without question of better or worse), Blake's +imagination is moving on a different plane. We may think it an +uncomfortably superhuman plane; but let us note the difference, and +note further that this plane was habitual with Blake. Now because of +his immense powers we are accustomed to think of Shakespeare as +almost superhuman: we pay that tribute to his genius, his strength, +and the enormous impression they produce on us. But a single couplet +of Blake's will carry more of this uncanny superhuman imagination +than the whole five acts of <i>Hamlet</i>. So great is Shakespeare, that +he tempts us to think him capable of any flight of wing; but set down +a line or two of Blake's—</p> + +<blockquote><blockquote> +<p class = "noindent">"A robin redbreast in a cage<br> + Puts all heaven in a rage…<br> + A skylark wounded on the wing<br> + Doth make a cherub cease to sing."<br></p> +</blockquote></blockquote> + +<p>—And, simple as the thought is, at once you feel it to lie outside +the range of Shakespeare's philosophy. Shakespeare's men are fine, +brave, companionable fellows, full of passionate love, jealousy, +ambition; of humour, gravity, strength of mind; of laughter and rage, +of the joy and stress of living. But self-sacrifice scarcely enters +into their notion of the scheme of things, and they are by no means +men to go to death for an idea. We remember what figure Shakespeare +made of Sir John Oldcastle, and I wish we could forget what figure he +made of Joan of Arc. Within the bounds of his philosophy—the +philosophy, gloriously stated, of ordinary brave, full-blooded men— +he is a great encourager of virtue; and so such lines as—</p> + +<blockquote><blockquote> +<p class = "noindent">"The expense of spirit in a waste of shame<br> + Is lust in action…"<br></p> +</blockquote></blockquote> + +<p>Are thoroughly Shakespearean, while such lines as—</p> + +<blockquote><blockquote> +<p class = "noindent">"A robin redbreast in a cage<br> + Puts all heaven in a rage…"</p> +</blockquote></blockquote> + +<p>Are as little Shakespearean in thought as in phrasing. He can tell us that:</p> + +<blockquote><blockquote> +<p class = "noindent"><span class = "ind10">"We are such stuff</span><br> + As dreams are made of, and our little life<br> + Is rounded with a sleep."<br></p> +</blockquote></blockquote> + +<p>He can muse on that sleep to come:—</p> + +<blockquote><blockquote> +<p class = "noindent"><span class = "ind3">"To die, to sleep;</span><br> + To sleep; perchance to dream; aye, there's the rub;<br> + For in that sleep of death what dreams may come<br> + When we have shuffled off this mortal coil,<br> + Must give us pause."<br></p> +</blockquote></blockquote> + +<p>But that even in this life we may be more truly ourselves when +dreaming than when waking—that what we dream may perchance turn out +to be more real and more important than what we do—such a thought +overpasses his imaginative range; or, since to dogmatise on his +imaginative range is highly dangerous, let us be content with saying +that it lies outside his temperament, and that he would have hit on +such a thought only to dismiss it with contempt. So when we open a +book of poems and come upon a monarch crying out that:</p> + +<blockquote><blockquote> +<p class = "noindent">"A wild and foolish labourer is a king,<br> + To do and do and do and never dream,"<br></p> +</blockquote></blockquote> + +<p>We know that we are hearkening to a note which is not Shakespearean +at all, not practical, not English. And we want a name for that +note.</p> + +<p>I have followed the multitude to call it Celtic because in practice +when we come upon this note we are pretty safe to discover that the +poet who utters it has Celtic blood in him (Blake's poetry, for +instance, told me that he must be an Irishman before ever I reflected +that his name was Irish, or thought of looking up his descent). +Since, however the blood of most men in these islands is by this time +mixed with many strains: since also, though the note be not native +with him, nothing forbids even a pure-blooded Anglo-Saxon from +learning it and assimilating it: lastly, since there is obvious +inconvenience in using the same word for an ethnical delimitation and +a psychological, when their boundaries do not exactly correspond—and +if some Anglo-Saxons have the 'Celtic' note it is certain that many +thousands of Celts have not; why then I shall be glad enough to use a +better and a handier and a more exact, if only some clever person +will provide it.</p> + +<p>Meanwhile, let it be understood that in speaking of a 'Celtic' note I +accuse no fellow-creature of being an Irishman, Scotsman, Welshman, +Manxman, Cornishman, or Breton. The poet will as a rule turn out to +be one or other of these, or at least to have a traceable strain of +Celtic blood in him. But to the note only is the term applied, +Now this note may be recognised by many tokens; but the first and +chiefest is its insistence upon man's brotherhood with bird and +beast, star and flower, everything, in short, which we loosely call +'nature,' his brotherhood even with spirits and angels, as one of an +infinite number of microcosms reflecting a common image of God. +And poetry which holds by this creed will hardly be subservient to +societies and governments and legalised doctrines and conventions; +it will hold to them by a long and loose chain, if at all. +It flies high enough, at any rate, to take a bird's-eye view of all +manner of things which in the temple, the palace, or the +market-place, have come to be taken as axiomatic. It eyes them with +an extraordinary 'dissoluteness'—if you will give that word its +literal meaning. It sees that some accepted virtues carry no +reflection of heaven; it sees that heaven, on the other hand—so +infinite is its care—may shake with anger from bound to bound at the +sight of a caged bird. It sees that the souls of living things, even +of the least conspicuous, reach up by chains and are anchored in +heaven, while 'great' events slide by on the surface of this skimming +planet with empires and their ordinances.</p> + +<blockquote><blockquote> +<p class = "noindent">"And so the Emperor went in the procession under the splendid + canopy. And all the people in the streets and at the windows + said, 'Bless us! what matchless new clothes our Emperor has!' + But he hasn't anything on!' cried a little child. 'Dear me, + just listen to what the little innocent says,' observed his + father, and the people whispered to each other what the child + had said. 'He hasn't anything on!' they began to shout at last. + This made the Emperor's flesh creep, because he thought that + they were right; but he said to himself, 'I must keep it up + through the procession, anyhow.' And he walked on still more + majestically, and the Chamberlains walked behind and carried the + train, though there was none to carry."</p> +</blockquote></blockquote> + +<p>This parable of the Emperor without clothes can be matched, for +simplicity and searching directness, against any parable outside of +the Gospels, and it agrees with the Divine parables in exalting the +wisdom of a child. I will not dare to discuss that wisdom here. +I observe that when the poets preach it we tender them our applause. +We applaud Vaughan's lines:—</p> + +<blockquote><blockquote> +<p class = "noindent">"Happy those early days, when I<br> + Shin'd in my angel-infancy…<br> + When yet I had not walk'd above<br> + A mile or two from my first love,<br> + And looking back—at that short space—<br> + Could see a glimpse of His bright face;<br> + When on some gilded cloud or flow'r<br> + My gazing soul would dwell an hour,<br> + And in those weaker glories spy<br> + Some shadows of eternity.…"<br></p> +</blockquote></blockquote> + +<p>We applaud Wordsworth's glorious ode—</p> + +<blockquote><blockquote> +<p class = "noindent">"Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting:<br> + The Soul that rises with us, our life's Star,<br> +<span class = "ind3">Hath had elsewhere its setting,</span><br> +<span class = "ind6">And cometh from afar:</span><br> +<span class = "ind3">Not in entire forgetfulness,</span><br> +<span class = "ind6">And not in utter nakedness,</span><br> + But trailing clouds of glory do we come<br> +<span class = "ind3">From God, who is our home:</span><br> + Heaven lies about us in our infancy!…"<br></p> +</blockquote></blockquote> + +<p>We applaud even old John Earle's prose when he tells us of a Child +that—</p> + +<blockquote><blockquote> +<p class = "noindent">"The elder he grows, he is a stair lower from God; and, like his + first father, much worse in his breeches. He is the Christian's + example, and the old man's relapse; the one imitates his + pureness, the other falls into his simplicity.… His father + hath writ him as his own little story, wherein he reads those + days of his life that he cannot remember, and sighs to see what + innocence he hath outlived.… Could he put off his body with + his little coat, he had got eternity without a burden, and + exchanged but one heaven for another."</p> +</blockquote></blockquote> + +<p>But while we applaud this pretty confident attribution of divine +wisdom to children, we are much too cautious to translate it into +practice. "It is far too shadowy a notion," says Wordsworth +prudently, "to be recommended to faith as more than an element in our +instincts of immortality;" and he might have added that, while the +Child may be Father of the Man, the Man reserves the privilege of +spanking. Even so I observe that, while able to agree cordially with +Christ on the necessity of becoming as little children as a condition +of entering the Kingdom of Heaven, we are not so injudicious as to +act upon any such belief; nay, we find ourselves obliged to revise +and re-interpret the wisdom of the Gospels when we find it too +impracticably childish. When Christ, for instance, forbids oaths of +all kinds, we feel sure He cannot be serious, or we should have to +upset a settled practice of the courts. And as for resisting no evil +and forgiving our enemies, why, good Heavens! what would become of +our splendid armaments! The suggestion, put so down rightly, is +quite too wild. In short, as a distinguished Bishop put it, society +could not exist for forty-eight hours on the lines laid down in the +Sermon on the Mount. (I forget the Bishop's exact words, but they +amounted to a complete and thoroughly common-sense repudiation of +Gospel Christianity.)</p> + +<p>No; it is obvious that, in so far as the Divine teaching touches +on conduct, we must as practical men correct it, and with a +special look-out for its indulgent misunderstanding of children. +Children, as a matter of experience, have no sense of the rights of +property. They steal apples.</p> + +<p>And yet—there must be something in this downright wisdom of +childishness since Christ went (as we must believe) out of His way to +lay such stress on it; and since our own hearts respond so readily +when Vaughan or Wordsworth claim divinity for it. We cannot of +course go the length of believing that the great, wise, and eminent +men of our day are engaged one and all in the pursuit of shadows. +'Shadows we are and shadows we pursue' sounded an exquisitely solemn +note in an election speech; but after all, we must take the world as +we find it, and the world as we find it has its own recognised +rewards. No success attended the poet who wrote that—</p> + +<blockquote><blockquote> +<p class = "noindent">"Those little new-invented things—<br> + Cups, saddles, crowns, are childish joys,<br> + So ribbands are and rings,<br> + Which all our happiness destroys.<br> +<span class = "ind6"> Nor God</span><br> +<span class = "ind6"> In His abode,</span><br> +<span class = "ind6"> Nor saints, nor little boys,</span><br> + Nor Angels made them; only foolish men,<br> + Grown mad with custom, on those toys<br> + Which more increase their wants to date.…"<br></p> +</blockquote></blockquote> + +<p>He found no publisher, and they have been rescued by accident after +two hundred years of oblivion. (It appears, nevertheless, that he +was a happy man.)</p> + +<p>And yet—I repeat—since we respond to it so readily, whether in +welcome or in irritation, there must be something in this claim set +up for childish simplicity; and I cannot help thinking it fortunate +and salutary for us that the Celtic poets have taken to sounding its +note so boldly. Whatever else they do, on the conventional ideals of +this generation they speak out with an uncompromising and highly +disconcerting directness. As I said just now, they are held, if at +all, by a long and loose chain to the graven images to which we stand +bound arm-to-arm and foot-to-foot. They fly far enough aloof to take +a bird's-eye view. What they see they declare with a boldness which +is the more impressive for being unconscious. And they declare that +they see us tied to stupid material gods, and wholly blind to ideas.</p> + +<br><br><br><p>P.S.—I made bold enough to say in the course of these remarks that +Euclid's <i>Elements</i> could hardly be improved by writing them out in +ballad metre. A friend, to whom I happened to repeat this assertion, +cast doubt on it and challenged me to prove it. I do so with +pleasure in the following—</p> + + +<br> +<br> +<center> +<img alt="Fig. 2 (31.3K)" src="images/fig2.jpg" height="422" width="634" > +</center> +<br> +<br> + +<h3> NEW BALLAD OF SIR PATRICK SPENS.</h3> + +<blockquote><blockquote> +<p class = "noindent">The King sits in Dunfermline toun<br> +<span class = "ind3">Drinking the blude-red wine:</span><br> + "O wha will rear me an equilateral triangle<br> +<span class = "ind3">Upon a given straight line?"</span><br><br> + + O up and spake an eldern knight,<br> +<span class = "ind3">Sat at the King's right knee—</span><br> + "Of a' the clerks by Granta side<br> +<span class = "ind3">Sir Patrick bears the gree.</span><br><br> + + "'Tis he was taught by the Tod-huntére<br> +<span class = "ind3">Tho' not at the tod-hunting;</span><br> + Yet gif that he be given a line,<br> +<span class = "ind3">He'll do as brave a thing."</span><br><br> + + Our King has written a braid letter<br> +<span class = "ind3">To Cambrigge or thereby,</span><br> + And there it found Sir Patrick Spens<br> +<span class = "ind3">Evaluating Π.</span><br><br> + + He hadna warked his quotient<br> +<span class = "ind3">A point but barely three,</span><br> + There stepped to him a little foot-page<br> +<span class = "ind3">And louted on his knee.</span><br><br> + + The first word that Sir Patrick read,<br> +<span class = "ind3">"<i>Plus</i> x," was a' he said:</span><br> + The neist word that Sir Patrick read,<br> +<span class = "ind3">'Twas "<i>plus</i> expenses paid."</span><br><br> + + The last word that Sir Patrick read,<br> +<span class = "ind3">The tear blinded his e'e:</span><br> + "The pound I most admire is not<br> +<span class = "ind3">In Scottish currencie."</span><br><br> + + Stately stepped he east the wa',<br> +<span class = "ind3">And stately stepped he north:</span><br> + He fetched a compass frae his ha'<br> +<span class = "ind3">And stood beside the Forth,</span><br><br> + + Then gurly grew the waves o' Forth,<br> +<span class = "ind3">And gurlier by-and-by—</span><br> + "O never yet was sic a storm,<br> +<span class = "ind3">Yet it isna sic as I!"</span><br><br> + + Syne he has crost the Firth o' Forth<br> +<span class = "ind3">Until Dunfermline toun;</span><br> + And tho' he came with a kittle wame<br> +<span class = "ind3">Fu' low he louted doun.</span><br><br> + + "A line, a line, a gude straight line,<br> +<span class = "ind3">O King, purvey me quick!</span><br> + And see it be of thilka kind<br> +<span class = "ind3">That's neither braid nor thick."</span><br><br> + + "Nor thick nor braid?" King Jamie said,<br> +<span class = "ind3">"I'll eat my gude hat-band</span><br> + If arra line as ye define<br> +<span class = "ind3">Be found in our Scotland."</span><br><br> + + "Tho' there be nane in a' thy rule,<br> +<span class = "ind3">It sail be ruled by me;"</span><br> + And lichtly with his little pencil<br> +<span class = "ind3">He's ruled the line A B.</span><br><br> + + Stately stepped he east the wa',<br> +<span class = "ind3">And stately stepped he west;</span><br> + "Ye touch the button," Sir Patrick said,<br> +<span class = "ind3">"And I sall do the rest."</span><br><br> + + And he has set his compass foot<br> +<span class = "ind3">Untill the centre A,</span><br> + From A to B he's stretched it oot—<br> +<span class = "ind3">"Ye Scottish carles, give way!"</span><br><br> + + Syne he has moved his compass foot<br> +<span class = "ind3">Untill the centre B,</span><br> + From B to A he's stretched it oot,<br> +<span class = "ind3">And drawn it viz-a-vee.</span><br><br> + + The tane circle was BCD,<br> +<span class = "ind3">And A C E the tither:</span><br> + "I rede ye well," Sir Patrick said,<br> +<span class = "ind3">"They interseck ilk ither.</span><br><br> + + "See here, and where they interseck—<br> +<span class = "ind3">To wit with yon point C—</span><br> + Ye'll just obsairve that I conneck<br> +<span class = "ind3">The twa points A and B.</span><br><br> + + "And there ye have a little triangle<br> +<span class = "ind3">As bonny as e'er was seen;</span><br> + The whilk is not isosceles,<br> +<span class = "ind3">Nor yet it is scalene."</span><br><br> + + "The proof! the proof!" King Jamie cried:<br> +<span class = "ind3">"The how and eke the why!"</span><br> + Sir Patrick laughed within his beard—<br> +<span class = "ind3">"'Tis <i>ex hypothesi</i>—</span><br><br> + + "When I ligg'd in my mither's wame,<br> +<span class = "ind3">I learn'd it frae my mither,</span><br> + That things was equal to the same,<br> +<span class = "ind3">Was equal ane to t'ither.</span><br><br> + + "Sith in the circle first I drew<br> +<span class = "ind3">The lines B A, B C,</span><br> + Be radii true, I wit to you<br> +<span class = "ind3">The baith maun equal be.</span><br><br> + + "Likewise and in the second circle,<br> +<span class = "ind3">Whilk I drew widdershins,</span><br> + It is nae skaith the radii baith,<br> +<span class = "ind3">A B, AC, be twins.</span><br><br> + + "And sith of three a pair agree<br> +<span class = "ind3">That ilk suld equal ane,</span><br> + By certes they maun equal be<br> +<span class = "ind3">Ilk unto ilk by-lane."</span><br><br> + + "Now by my faith!" King Jamie saith,<br> +<span class = "ind3">"What <i>plane</i> geometrie!</span><br> + If only Potts had written in Scots,<br> +<span class = "ind3">How loocid Potts wad be!"</span><br><br> + + "Now wow's my life!" said Jamie the King,<br> +<span class = "ind3">And the Scots lords said the same,</span><br> + For but it was that envious knicht,<br> +<span class = "ind3">Sir Hughie o' the Graeme.</span><br><br> + + "Flim-flam, flim-flam!" and "Ho indeed?"<br> +<span class = "ind3">Quod Hughie o' the Graeme;</span><br> + "'Tis I could better upon my heid<br> +<span class = "ind3">This prabblin prablem-game."</span><br><br> + + Sir Patrick Spens Was nothing laith<br> +<span class = "ind3">When as he heard "flim-flam,"</span><br> + But syne he's ta'en a silken claith<br> +<span class = "ind3">And wiped his diagram.</span><br><br> + + "Gif my small feat may better'd be,<br> +<span class = "ind3">Sir Hew, by thy big head,</span><br> + What I hae done with an A B C<br> +<span class = "ind3">Do thou with X Y Z."</span><br><br> + + Then sairly sairly swore Sir Hew,<br> +<span class = "ind3">And loudly laucht the King;</span><br> + But Sir Patrick tuk the pipes and blew,<br> +<span class = "ind3">And <i>played</i> that eldritch thing!</span><br><br> + + He's play'd it reel, he's play'd it jig,<br> +<span class = "ind3">And the baith alternative;</span><br> + And he's danced Sir Hew to the Asses' Brigg,<br> +<span class = "ind3">That's Proposetion Five.</span><br><br> + + And there they've met, and there they've fet,<br> +<span class = "ind3">Forenenst the Asses' Brigg,</span><br> + And waefu', waefu' was the fate<br> +<span class = "ind3">That gar'd them there to ligg.</span><br><br> + + For there Sir Patrick's slain Sir Hew,<br> +<span class = "ind3">And Sir Hew Sir Patrick Spens—</span><br> + Now was not that a fine to-do<br> +<span class = "ind3">For Euclid's Elemen's?</span><br><br> + + But let us sing Long live the King!<br> +<span class = "ind3">And his foes the Deil attend 'em:</span><br> + For he has gotten his little triangle,<br> +<span class = "ind3"><i>Quod erat faciendum!</i></span></p><br><br> +</blockquote></blockquote> + +<p>[1] This was written some time before the <i>entente cordiale</i>.</p> + +<br><br> +<a name="2HCH0003"><!-- H2 anchor --></a> +<h3>MARCH.</h3> +<br><br> + +<p>How quietly its best things steal upon the world! And in a world where a +single line of Sappho's survives as a something more important than the +entire political history of Lesbos, how little will the daily newspaper +help us to take long views!</p> + +<p>Whether England could better afford to lose Shakespeare or her Indian +Empire is no fair question to put to an Englishman. But every Englishman +knows in his heart which of these two glories of his birth and state will +survive the other, and by which of them his country will earn in the end +the greater honour. Though in our daily life we—perhaps wisely—make a +practice of forgetting it, our literature is going to be our most +perdurable claim on man's remembrance, for it is occupied with ideas which +outlast all phenomena.</p> + +<p>The other day Mr. Bertram Dobell, the famous bookseller of Charing Cross +Road, rediscovered (we might almost say that he discovered) a poet. +Mr. Dobell has in the course of his life laid the Republic of Letters +under many obligations. To begin with, he loves his trade and honours the +wares in which he deals, and so continues the good tradition that should +knit writers, printers, vendors and purchasers of books together as +partakers of an excellent mystery. He studies—and on occasion will fight +for—the whims as well as the convenience of his customers. It was he who +took arms against the Westminster City Council in defence of the +out-of-door-stall, the 'classic sixpenny box,' and at least brought off a +drawn battle. He is at pains to make his secondhand catalogues better +reading than half the new books printed, and they cost us nothing. +He has done, also, his pious share of service to good literature. +He has edited James Thomson, him of <i>The City of Dreadful Night</i>. +He has helped us to learn more than we knew of Charles Lamb. He has even +written poems of his own and printed them under the title of <i>Rosemary and +Pansies</i>, in a volume marked 'Not for sale'—a warning which I, as one of +the fortunate endowed, intend strictly to observe. On top of this he has +discovered, or rediscovered, Thomas Traherne.</p> + +<p>Now before we contemplate the magnitude of the discovery let us rehearse +the few facts known of the inconspicuous life of Thomas Traherne. +He was born about the year 1636, the son of a Hereford shoemaker, and came +in all probability (like Herbert and Vaughan) of Welsh stock. In 1652 he +entered Brasenose College, Oxford, as a commoner. On leaving the +University he took orders; was admitted Rector of Credenhill, in +Herefordshire, in 1657; took the degree of Bachelor of Divinity in 1669; +became the private chaplain of Sir Orlando Bridgman, at Teddington; and +died there a few months after his patron, in 1674, aged but thirty-eight. +He wrote a polemical tract on <i>Roman Forgeries</i>, which had some success; a +treatise on <i>Christian Ethicks</i>, which, being full of gentle wisdom, was +utterly neglected; an exquisite work, <i>Centuries of Meditations</i>, never +published; and certain poems, which also he left in manuscript. And there +the record ends.</p> + +<p>Next let us tell by how strange a chance this forgotten author came to his +own. In 1896 or 1897 Mr. William T. Brooke picked up two volumes of MS. +on a street bookstall, and bought them for a few pence. Mr. Brooke +happened to be a man learned in sacred poetry and hymnology, and he no +sooner began to examine his purchase than he knew that he had happened on +a treasure. At the same time he could hardly believe that writings so +admirable were the work of an unknown author. In choice of subject, in +sentiment, in style, they bore a strong likeness to the poems of Henry +Vaughan the Silurist, and he concluded that they must be assigned to +Vaughan. He communicated his discovery to the late Dr. Grosart, who +became so deeply interested in it that he purchased the manuscripts and +set about preparing an edition of Vaughan, in which the newly-found +treasures were to be included. Dr. Grosart, one may say in passing, was +by no means a safe judge of characteristics in poetry. With all his +learning and enthusiasm you could not trust him, having read a poem with +which he was unacquainted or which perchance he had forgotten, to assign +it to its true or even its probable author. But when you hear that so +learned a man as Dr. Grosart considered these writings worthy of Vaughan, +you may be the less apt to think me extravagant in holding that man to +have been Vaughan's peer who wrote the following lines:—</p> + +<blockquote><blockquote> +<p class = "noindent">"How like an Angel came I down!<br> +<span class = "ind3"> How bright are all things here!</span><br> + When first among His works I did appear<br> +<span class = "ind3"> how their Glory me did crown!</span><br> + The world resembled His Eternity,<br> +<span class = "ind3"> In which my soul did walk;</span><br> + And everything that I did see<br> +<span class = "ind3"> Did with me talk.</span><br><br> + + "The streets were paved with golden stones,<br> +<span class = "ind3"> The boys and girls were mine,</span><br> + O how did all their lovely faces shine!<br> +<span class = "ind3"> The sons of men were holy ones;</span><br> + In joy and beauty they appeared to me:<br> +<span class = "ind3"> And everything which here I found,</span><br> + While like an angel I did see,<br> +<span class = "ind3"> Adorned the ground."</span><br><br> + +'Proprieties.'— +</blockquote></blockquote> + +<p>That is to say, 'properties,' 'estates.'—</p> + +<blockquote><blockquote> +<p class = "noindent"> "Proprieties themselves were mine,<br> +<span class = "ind3"> And hedges ornaments,</span><br> + Walls, boxes, coffers, and their rich contents<br> +<span class = "ind3"> Did not divide my joys, but all combine.</span><br> + Clothes, ribbons, jewels, laces, I esteemed<br> +<span class = "ind3"> My joys by others worn;</span><br> + For me they all to wear them seemed<br> +<span class = "ind3"> When I was born."</span><br></p> +</blockquote></blockquote> + +<p>Dr. Grosart then set about preparing a new and elaborate edition of +Vaughan, which, only just before his death, he was endeavouring to find +means to publish. After his death the two manuscripts passed by purchase +to Mr. Charles Higham, the well-known bookseller of Farringdon Street, who +in turn sold them to Mr. Dobell. Later, when a part of Dr. Grosart's +library was sold at Sotheby's, Mr. Dobell bought—and this is perhaps the +strangest part of the story—a third manuscript volume, which Dr. Grosart +had possessed all the time without an inkling that it bore upon Mr. +Brooke's discovery, "though nothing is needed but to compare it with the +other volumes in order to see that all these are in the same handwriting."</p> + +<p>Mr. Dobell examined the writings, compared them with Vaughan's, and began +to have his doubts. Soon he felt convinced that Vaughan was not their +author. Yet, if not Vaughan, who could the author be?</p> + +<p>Again Mr. Brooke proved helpful. To a volume of Giles Fletcher's, +<i>Christ's Victory and Triumph</i>, which he had edited, Mr. Brooke had +appended a number of seventeenth-century poems not previously collected; +and to one of these, entitled 'The Ways of Wisdom,' he drew Mr. Dobell's +attention as he had previously drawn Mr. Grosart's. To Mr. Dobell the +resemblance between it and the manuscript poems was at once evident. +Mr. Brooke had found the poem in a little book in the British Museum +entitled, <i>A Serious and Patheticall Contemplation of the Mercies of God, +in several most Devout and Sublime Thanksgivings for the same</i> +(a publisher's title it is likely): and this book contained other pieces +in verse. These having been copied out by Mr. Dobell's request, he +examined them and felt no doubt at all that the author of the manuscript +poem and of the <i>Devout and Sublime Thanksgivings</i> must be one and the +same person. But, again, who could he be?</p> + +<p>A sentence in an address 'To the Reader' prefixed to the <i>Devout and +Sublime Thanksgivings</i> provided the clue. The editor of this work +(a posthumous publication), after eulogising the unnamed author's many +virtues wound up with a casual clue to his identity:—</p> + +<blockquote><blockquote> +<p class = "noindent"> "But being removed out of the Country to the service of the late Lord + Keeper Bridgman as his Chaplain, he died young and got early to those + blissful mansions to which he at all times aspir'd."</p> +</blockquote></blockquote> + +<p>But for this sentence, dropped at haphazard, the secret might never have +been resolved. As it was, the clue—that the author of <i>Devout and +Sublime Thanksgivings</i> was private chaplain to Sir Orlando Bridgman—had +only to be followed up; and it led to the name of Thomas Traherne. +This information was obtained from Wood's <i>Athenae Oxonienses</i>, which +mentioned Traherne as the author of two books, <i>Roman Forgeries</i> and +<i>Christian Ethicks</i>.</p> + +<p>The next step was to get hold of these two works and examine them, +if perchance some evidence might be found that Traherne was also the +author of the manuscripts, which as yet remained a guess, standing on Mr. +Dobell's conviction that the verses in the manuscripts and those in +<i>Devout and Sublime Thanksgivings</i> must be by the same hand.</p> + +<p>By great good fortune that evidence was found in <i>Christian Ethicks</i>, in a +poem which, with some variations, occurred too in the manuscript +<i>Centuries of Meditations</i>. Here then at last was proof positive, or as +positive as needs be.</p> +<br><br><br> +<p>The most of us writers hope and stake for a diuturnity of fame; and some +of us get it. <i>Sed ubi sunt vestimenta eorum qui post vota nuncupata +perierunt?</i> "That bay leaves were found green in the tomb of St. Humbert +after a hundred and fifty years was looked upon as miraculous," writes Sir +Thomas Browne. But Traherne's laurel has lain green in the dust for close +on two hundred and thirty years, and his fame so cunningly buried that +only by half a dozen accidents leading up to a chance sentence in a dark +preface to a forgotten book has it come to light.</p> + +<p>I wonder if his gentle shade takes any satisfaction in the discovery? +His was by choice a <i>vita fallens</i>. Early in life he made, as we learn +from a passage in <i>Centuries of Meditations</i>, his election between worldly +prosperity and the life of the Spirit, between the chase of fleeting +phenomena and rest upon the soul's centre:—</p> + +<blockquote><blockquote> +<p class = "noindent"> "When I came into the country and, being seated among silent trees and + woods and hills, had all my time in my own hands, I resolved to spend + it all, whatever it cost me, in the search of Happiness, and to + satiate the burning thirst which Nature had enkindled in me from my + youth; in which I was so resolute that I chose rather to live upon + ten pounds a year, and to go in leather clothes, and to feed upon + bread and water, so that I might have all my time clearly to myself, + than to keep many thousands per annum in an estate of life where my + time would be devoured in care and labour. And God was so pleased to + accept of that desire that from that time to this I have had all + things plentifully provided for me without any care at all, my very + study of Felicity making me more to prosper than all the care in the + whole world. So that through His blessing I live a free and kingly + life, as if the world were turned again into Eden, or, much more, as + it is at this day."</p> +</blockquote></blockquote> + +<p>Yet Traherne is no quietist: a fervent, passionate lover, rather, of +simple and holy things. He sees with the eyes of a child: the whole world +shines for him 'apparell'd in celestial light,' and that light, he is well +aware, shines out on it, through the eyes which observe it, from the +divine soul of man. The verses which I quoted above strike a note to +which he recurs again and again. Listen to the exquisite prose in which +he recounts the 'pure and virgin apprehension' of his childhood:—</p> + +<blockquote><blockquote> +<p class = "noindent"> "The corn was orient and immortal wheat which never should be reaped + nor was ever sown. I thought it had stood from everlasting to + everlasting. The dust and stones of the street were as precious as + gold; the gates were at first the end of the world. The green trees + when I saw them first through one of the gates transported and + ravished me; their sweetness and unusual beauty made my heart to leap + and almost mad with ecstasy, they were such strange and wonderful + things. The Men! O what venerable and reverend creatures did the + aged seem! Immortal Cherubim! And young men glittering and + sparkling angels, and maids strange seraphic pieces of life and + beauty! Boys and girls tumbling in the street were moving jewels; + I knew not that they were born, or should die.… The streets were + mine, the temple was mine, the people were mine, their clothes and + gold and silver were mine, as much as their sparkling eyes, fair + skins, and ruddy faces. The skies were mine, and so were the sun and + moon and stars, and all the world was mine; and I the only spectator + and enjoyer of it.…"</p> +</blockquote></blockquote> +<p>All these things he enjoyed, his life through, uncursed by the itch for +'proprietorship': he was like the Magnanimous Man in his own <i>Christian +Ethicks</i>—'one that scorns the smutty way of enjoying things like a slave, +because he delights in the celestial way and the Image of God.' In this +creed of his all things are made for man, if only man will inherit them +wisely: even God, in conferring benefits on man, is moved and rewarded by +the felicity of witnessing man's grateful delight in them:—</p> + +<blockquote><blockquote> +<p class = "noindent"> "For God enjoyed is all His end,<br> + Himself He then doth comprehend<br> + When He is blessed, magnified,<br> + Extoll'd, exalted, prais'd, and glorified."<br></p> +</blockquote></blockquote> + +<p>Yes, and 'undeified almost, if once denied.' A startling creed, this; but +what a bold and great-hearted one! To Traherne the Soul is a sea which not +only receives the rivers of God's bliss but 'all it doth receive returns +again.' It is the Beloved of the old song, 'Quia Amore Langueo;' whom God +pursues, as a lover. It is the crown of all things. So in one of his +loveliest poems he shows it standing on the threshold to hear news of a +great guest, never dreaming that itself is that great guest all the +while—</p> + +<blockquote><blockquote> +<h4> ON NEWS</h4> + +<h4> I.</h4> + +<p class = "noindent"> News from a foreign country came,<br> +<span class = "ind3"> As if my treasure and my wealth lay there:</span><br> + So much it did my heart enflame,<br> +<span class = "ind3"> 'Twas wont to call my soul into mine ear,</span><br> +<span class = "ind10"> Which thither went to meet</span><br> +<span class = "ind10"> The approaching sweet,</span><br> +<span class = "ind6"> And on the threshold stood</span><br> +<span class = "ind6">To entertain the unknown Good.</span><br> +<span class = "ind10"> It hover'd there</span><br> +<span class = "ind10"> As if 'twould leave mine ear,</span><br> +<span class = "ind6"> And was so eager to embrace</span><br> +<span class = "ind9"> The joyful tidings as they came,</span><br> +<span class = "ind6"> 'Twould almost leave its dwelling-place</span><br> +<span class = "ind9"> To entertain that same.</span><br><br> + +<h4> II.</h4> + + As if the tidings were the things,<br> +<span class = "ind3"> My very joys themselves, my foreign treasure,</span><br> + Or else did bear them on their wings—<br> +<span class = "ind3"> With so much joy they came, with so much pleasure—</span><br> +<span class = "ind10"> My Soul stood at that gate</span><br> +<span class = "ind10"> To recreate</span><br> +<span class = "ind6"> Itself with bliss, and to</span><br> +<span class = "ind6"> Be pleased with speed. A fuller view</span><br> +<span class = "ind10"> It fain would take,</span><br> +<span class = "ind10"> Yet journeys back again would make</span><br> +<span class = "ind6"> Unto my heart: as if 'twould fain</span><br> +<span class = "ind9"> Go out to meet, yet stay within</span><br> +<span class = "ind6"> To fit a place to entertain</span><br> +<span class = "ind9"> And bring the tidings in.</span><br><br> + +<h4> III.</h4> + + What sacred instinct did inspire<br> +<span class = "ind3"> My Soul in childhood with a hope so strong?</span><br> + What secret force moved my desire<br> +<span class = "ind3"> To expect my joy, beyond the seas, so young?</span><br> +<span class = "ind10"> Felicity I knew</span><br> +<span class = "ind10"> Was out of view;</span><br> +<span class = "ind6"> And being here alone,</span><br> +<span class = "ind6"> I saw that happiness was gone</span><br> +<span class = "ind10"> From me! For this</span><br> +<span class = "ind10"> I thirsted absent bliss,</span><br> +<span class = "ind6"> And thought that sure beyond the seas,</span><br> +<span class = "ind9"> Or else in something near at hand</span><br> +<span class = "ind6"> I knew not yet (since nought did please</span><br> +<span class = "ind9"> I knew), my bliss did stand,</span><br><br> + +<h4> IV.</h4> + + But little did the infant dream<br> +<span class = "ind3"> That all the treasures of the world were by:</span><br> + And that himself was so the cream<br> +<span class = "ind3"> And crown of all which round about did lie.</span><br> +<span class = "ind10"> Yet thus it was: The Gem,</span><br> +<span class = "ind10"> The Diadem,</span><br> +<span class = "ind6"> The Ring enclosing all</span><br> +<span class = "ind6"> That stood upon this earthly ball;</span><br> +<span class = "ind10"> The Heavenly Eye,</span><br> +<span class = "ind10"> Much wider than the sky,</span><br> +<span class = "ind6"> Wherein they all included were,</span><br> +<span class = "ind9"> The glorious Soul that was the King</span><br> +<span class = "ind6"> Made to possess them, did appear</span><br> +<span class = "ind9"> A small and little thing.</span><br> +</blockquote></blockquote> + +<p>I must quote from another poem, if only for the pleasure of writing down +the lines:—</p> + +<blockquote><blockquote> +<h4> THE SALUTATION.</h4> + +<p class = "noindent"><span class = "ind10"> These little limbs,</span><br> +<span class = "ind3"> These eyes and hands which here I find,</span><br> + These rosy cheeks wherewith my life begins—<br> +<span class = "ind6"> Where have ye been? Behind</span><br> + What curtain were ye from me hid so long?<br> + Where was, in what abyss, my speaking tongue?<br> +<span class = "ind10"> When silent I</span><br> +<span class = "ind3"> So many thousand, thousand years</span><br> + Beneath the dust did in a chaos lie,<br> +<span class = "ind6"> How could I smiles or tears</span><br> + Or lips or hands or eyes or ears perceive?<br> + Welcome ye treasures which I now receive!<br></p> +</blockquote></blockquote> +<br><br> + +<p>These poems waited for two hundred and thirty years to be discovered on a +street bookstall! There are lines in them and whole passages in the +unpublished <i>Centuries of Meditations</i> which almost set one wondering with +Sir Thomas Browne "whether the best of men be known, or whether there be +not more remarkable persons forgot than any that stand remembered in the +known account of Time?" +</p> +<br><br><br> +<p>I am tempted, but will not be drawn to discuss how Traherne stands related +to Vaughan on the one hand and Cowley on the other. I note the discovery +here, and content myself with wondering if the reader share any of my +pleasure in it and enjoyment of the process which brought it to pass. +For me, I was born and bred a bookman. In my father's house the talk +might run on divinity, politics, the theatre; but literature was the great +thing. Other callings might do well enough, but writers were a class +apart, and to be a great writer was the choicest of ambitions. I grew up +in this habit of mind, and have not entirely outgrown it yet; have not so +far outgrown it but that literary discussions, problems, discoveries +engage me though they lie remote from literature's service to man +(who has but a short while to live, and labour and vanity if he outlast +it). I could join in a hunt after Bunyan's grandmothers, and have +actually spent working days in trying to discover the historical facts of +which <i>Robinson Crusoe</i> may be an allegory. One half of my quarrel with +those who try to prove that Bacon wrote Shakespeare rests on resentment of +the time they force me to waste; and a new searcher for the secret of the +Sonnets has only to whistle and I come to him—though, to be sure, that +gentleman almost cured me who identified the Dark Lady with Ann Hathaway, +resting his case upon—</p> + +<br><br> +<blockquote><blockquote> +<h4> SONNET CCXVIII.</h4> + +<p class = "noindent"> Whoever hath my wit, thou hast thy Will:<br> + And where is Will alive but <i>hath a way?</i><br> + So in device thy wit is starvèd still<br> + And as devised by Will. That is to say,<br> + My second-best best bed, yea, and the gear withal<br> + Thou hast; but all that capital messuage<br> + Known as New Place goes to Susanna Hall.<br> + Haply the disproportion may engage<br> + The harmless ail-too-wise which otherwise<br> + Might knot themselves disknitting of a clue<br> + That Bacon wrote me. Lastly, I devise<br> + My wit, to whom? To wit, to-whit, to-whoo!<br> + And here revoke all previous testaments:<br> + Witness, J. Shaw and Robert Whattcoat, Gents.<br></p> +</blockquote></blockquote> +<br><br> + +<p>After this confession you will pardon any small complacency that may +happen to betray itself in the ensuing narrative.</p> + +<p>Mr. Dobell followed up his discovery of Traherne by announcing another +<i>trouvaille</i>, and one which excited me not a little:—</p> + +<blockquote><blockquote> +<p class = "noindent"> "Looking recently over a parcel of pamphlets which I had purchased, + I came upon some loose leaves which were headed <i>A Prospect of + Society</i>. The title struck me as familiar, and I had only to + read a few lines to recognise them as belonging to [Goldsmith's] + <i>The Traveller</i>. But the opening lines of my fragment are not the + opening lines of the poem as it was published; in fact, the first two + lines of <i>A Prospect of Society</i> are lines 353-4 in the first edition + of <i>The Traveller</i>.… A further examination of the fragment which + I had discovered showed that it is not what is usually understood as + a 'proof' of <i>The Traveller</i>, but rather the material, as yet + formless and unarranged, out of which it was to be finally evolved."</p> +</blockquote></blockquote> + +<p>Now—line for corresponding line—the text discovered by Mr. Dobell often +differs, and sometimes considerably, from that of the first edition of +<i>The Traveller</i>, and these variations are highly interesting, and make Mr. +Dobell's 'find' a valuable one. But on studying the newly discovered +version I very soon found myself differing from Mr. Dobell's opinion that +we had here the formless, unarranged material out of which Goldsmith built +an exquisitely articulated poem.[1] And, doubting this, I had to doubt +what Mr. Dobell deduced from it—that "it was in the manner in which a +poem, remarkable for excellence of form and unity of design, was created +out of a number of verses which were at first crudely conceived and +loosely connected that Goldsmith's genius was most triumphantly +displayed." For scarcely had I lit a pipe and fallen to work on +<i>A Prospect of Society</i> before it became evident to me (1) that the lines +were not "unarranged," but disarranged; and (2) that whatever the reason +of this disarray, Goldsmith's brain was not responsible; that the disorder +was too insane to be accepted either as an order in which he could have +written the poem, or as one in which he could have wittingly allowed it to +circulate among his friends, unless he desired them to believe him mad. +Take, for instance, this collocation:—</p> + +<blockquote><blockquote> +<p class = "noindent"> "Heavens! how unlike their Belgic sires of old!<br> + Rough, poor, content, ungovernably bold;<br> + Where shading elms beside the margin grew,<br> + And freshen'd from the waves the zephyr blew."<br></p> +</blockquote></blockquote> + +<p>Or this:—</p> + +<blockquote><blockquote> +<p class = "noindent"> "To kinder skies, where gentler manners reign,<br> + We turn, where France displays her bright domain.<br> + Thou sprightly land of mirth and social ease,<br> + Pleas'd with thyself, whom all the world can please,<br> + How often have I led thy sportive choir<br> + With tuneless pipe, along the sliding Loire?<br> + No vernal bloom their torpid rocks display,<br> + But Winter lingering chills the lap of May;<br> + No zephyr fondly sooths the mountain's breast,<br> + But meteors glare and frowning storms invest."<br></p> +</blockquote></blockquote> + +<p>Short of lunacy, no intellectual process would account for that sort of +thing, whereas a poem more pellucidly logical than <i>The Traveller</i> does +not exist in English. So, having lit another pipe, I took a pencil and +began some simple counting, with this result:—</p> + +<blockquote><blockquote> +<p class = "noindent"> The first 42 lines of <i>The Prospect</i> correspond with lines 353-400 of + <i>The Traveller</i>.<br> + The next 42 with lines 311-352.<br> + The next 34 with lines 277-310.<br> + The next 36 with lines 241-276.<br> + The next 36 with lines 205-240.<br> + The next 36 with lines 169-204.<br> + The next 38 with lines 131-168.<br> + The next 28 with lines 103-130.<br> + And the remaining fragment of 18 lines with lines 73-92.<br></p> +</blockquote></blockquote> + +<p>In other words, <i>The Prospect</i> is merely an early draft of <i>The Traveller</i> +printed backwards in fairly regular sections.</p> + +<p>But how can this have happened? The explanation is at once simple and +ridiculous. As Goldsmith finished writing out each page of his poem for +press, he laid it aside on top of the pages preceding; and, when all was +done, he forgot to sort back his pages in reverse order. That is all. +Given a good stolid compositor with no thought beyond doing his duty with +the manuscript as it reached him, you have what Mr. Dobell has recovered— +an immortal poem printed wrong-end-foremost page by page. I call the +result delightful, and (when you come to think of it) the blunder just so +natural to Goldsmith as to be almost postulable.</p> + +<p>Upon this simple explanation we have to abandon the hypothesis that +Goldsmith patiently built a fine poem out of a congeries of fine passages +pitchforked together at haphazard—a splendid rubbish heap; and Mr. +Dobell's find is seen to be an imperfect set of duplicate proofs—fellow, +no doubt, to that set which Goldsmith, mildly objurgating his own or the +printer's carelessness, sliced up with the scissors and rearranged before +submitting it to Johnson's friendly revision.</p> +<br><br><br> +<p>The pleasantest part of the story (for me) has yet to come. We all know +how easy it is to turn obstinate and defend a pet theory with acrimony. +Mr. Dobell did nothing of the sort. Although his enthusiasm had committed +him to no little expense in publishing <i>The Prospect</i>, with a preface +elaborating his theory, he did a thing which was worth a hundred +discoveries. He sat down, convinced himself that my explanation was the +right one, and promptly committed himself to further expense in bringing +out a new edition with the friendliest acknowledgment. So do men behave +who are at once generous of temper and anxious for the truth.</p> + +<p>He himself had been close upon the explanation. In his preface he had +actually guessed that the "author's manuscript, written on loose leaves, +had fallen into confusion and was then printed without any attempt at +rearrangement." In fact, he had hit upon the right solution, and only +failed to follow up the clue.</p> + +<p>His find, too, remains a valuable one; for so far as it goes we can +collate it with the first edition of <i>The Traveller</i>, and exactly discover +the emendations made by Johnson, or by Goldsmith after discussion with +Johnson. Boswell tells us that the Doctor "in the year 1783, at my +request, marked with a pencil the lines which he had furnished, which are +only line 420, 'To stop too faithful, and too faint to go,' and the +concluding ten lines, except the last couplet but one.… He added, +'These are all of which I can be sure.'" We cannot test his claim to the +concluding lines, for the correspondent passage is missing from Mr. +Dobell's fragment; but Johnson's word would be good enough without the +internal evidence of the verses to back it. "To stop too faithful, and +too faint to go," is his improvement, and an undeniable one, upon +Goldsmith's "And faintly fainter, fainter seems to go." I have not been +at pains to examine all the revised lines, but they are numerous, and +generally (to my thinking) betray Johnson's hand. Also they are almost +consistently improvements. There is one alteration, however,— +unmistakably due to Johnson,—which some of us will join with Mr. Dobell +in regretting. Johnson, as a fine, full-blooded Jingo, naturally showed +some restiveness at the lines—</p> + +<blockquote><blockquote> +<p class = "noindent"> "Yes, my lov'd brother, cursed be that hour<br> + When first ambition toil'd for foreign power,"<br></p> +</blockquote></blockquote> + +<p>And induced Goldsmith to substitute—</p> + +<blockquote><blockquote> +<p class = "noindent"> "Yes, brother, curse with me that baleful hour<br> + When first ambition struck at regal power,"<br></p> +</blockquote></blockquote> + +<p>Which may or may not be more creditable in sentiment, but is certainly +quite irrelevant in its context, which happens to be a denunciation of the +greed for gold and foreign conquest. It is, in that context, all but +meaningless, and must have irritated and puzzled many readers of a poem +otherwise clearly and continuously argued. In future editions of <i>The +Traveller</i>, Goldsmith's original couplet should be restored; and I urge +this (let the Tory reader be assured) not from any ill-will towards our +old friend the Divine Right of Kings, but solely in the sacred name of +Logic.</p> +<br><br><br> +<p>Such be the bookman's trivial adventures and discoveries. They would be +worse than trivial indeed if they led him to forget or ignore that by +which Goldsmith earned his immortality, or to regard Traherne merely as a +freak in the history of literary reputations, and not primarily as the +writer of such words as these—</p> + +<blockquote><blockquote> +<p class = "noindent"> "A little touch of something like pride is seated in the true sense of + a man's own greatness, without which his humility and modesty would + be contemptible virtues." +<br><br><br> + + "It is a vain and insipid thing to suffer without loving God or man. + Love is a transcendent excellence in every duty, and must of + necessity enter into the nature of every grace and virtue. + That which maketh the solid benefit of patience unknown, its taste so + bitter and comfortless to men, is its <i>death</i> in the separation and + absence of its soul. We suffer but love not."<br><br><br> + + + "All things do first receive that give:<br> +<span class = "ind3"> Only 'tis God above</span><br> + That from and in Himself doth live;<br> +<span class = "ind3"> Whose all-sufficient love</span><br> + Without original can flow,<br> + And all the joys and glories show<br> + Which mortal man can take delight to know.<br> + He is the primitive, eternal Spring,<br> + The endless Ocean of each glorious thing.<br> +<span class = "ind3"> The soul a vessel is,</span><br> + A spacious bosom, to contain<br> +<span class = "ind3"> All the fair treasures of His bliss,</span><br> + Which run like rivers from, into, the main,<br> + And all it doth receive, return again."<br><br><br> + + "You never enjoy the world aright till the sea itself floweth in your + veins, till you are clothed with the heavens and crowned with the + stars."</p> +</blockquote></blockquote> +<p>[1] Early editions of Goldsmith's poem bore the title, <i>The Traveller; or, +A Prospect of Society</i>. Later editions dropped the sub-title.</p> + +<br><br> +<a name="2HCH0004"><!-- H2 anchor --></a> +<br><br> +<h3>APRIL.</h3> + +<blockquote><blockquote> +<p class = "noindent"> "Thus, then, live I<br> +<span class = "ind3"> Till 'mid all the gloom</span><br> + By Heaven! the bold sun<br> +<span class = "ind3"> Is with me in the room</span><br> +<span class = "ind6"> Shining, shining!</span><br><br> + + "Then the clouds part,<br> +<span class = "ind3"> Swallows soaring between;</span><br> + The spring is alive<br> +<span class = "ind3"> And the meadows are green!</span><br><br> + + "I jump up like mad,<br> +<span class = "ind3"> Break the old pipe in twain,</span><br> + And away to the meadows,<br> +<span class = "ind3"> The meadows again!"</span></p><br><br> +</blockquote></blockquote> + +<p>The poem of FitzGerald's from which these verses come was known, +I believe, to very few until Mr. E. V. Lucas exhumed it from <i>Half-hours +with the Worst Authors</i>, and reprinted it in that delightful little book +<i>The Open Road</i>. I have a notion that even FitzGerald's most learned +executor was but dimly aware of its existence. For my part, at this time +of the day, I prefer it to his Omar Khayyàm—perversely, no doubt. +In the year 1885 or thereabouts Omar, known only to a few, was a wonder +and a treasure to last one's lifetime; but I confess that since a club +took him up and feasted his memory with field-marshals and other +irrelevant persons in the chair, and since his fame has become vulgarised +not only in Thames-side hotels, but over the length and breadth of the +North American continent, one at least of his admirers has suffered a not +unnatural revulsion, until now he can scarcely endure to read the immortal +quatrains. Immortal they are, no doubt, and deserve to be by reason of +their style—"fame's great antiseptic." But their philosophy is thin +after all, and will not bear discussion. As exercise for a grown man's +thought, I will back a lyric of Blake's or Wordsworth's, or a page of +Ibsen's <i>Peer Gynt</i> against the whole of it, any day.</p> + +<p>This, however, is parenthetical. I caught hold of FitzGerald's verses to +express that jollity which should be every man's who looks up from much +reading or writing and knows that Spring has come.</p> + +<blockquote><blockquote> +<p class = "noindent"> "<i>Solvitur acris hiems grata vice veris et favoni<br> Trahuntque siccas + machinæ carinas</i>…"<br></p> +</blockquote></blockquote> + +<p>In other words, I look out of the window and decide that the day has +arrived for launching the boat—</p> + +<blockquote><blockquote> +<p class = "noindent"> "This is that happy morn,<br> + That day, long wishèd day!"<br></p> +</blockquote></blockquote> + +<p>And, to my mind, the birthday of the year. Potentates and capitalists who +send down orders to Cowes or Southampton that their yachts are to be put +in commission, and anon arrive to find everything ready (if they care to +examine), from the steam capstan to the cook's apron, have little notion +of the amusement to be found in fitting out a small boat, say of five or +six tons. I sometimes doubt if it be not the very flower, or at least the +bloom, of the whole pastime. The serious face with which we set about it; +the solemn procession up the river to the creek where she rests, the high +tide all but lifting her; the silence in which we loose the moorings and +haul off; the first thrill of buoyant water underfoot; the business of +stepping the mast; quiet days of sitting or pottering about on deck in the +sunny harbour; vessels passing up and down, their crews eyeing us +critically as the rigging grows and the odds and ends—block, tackle and +purchase—fall into their ordered places; and through it all the +expectation running of the summer to come, and 'blue days at sea' and +unfamiliar anchorages—unfamiliar, but where the boat is, home will be—</p> + +<blockquote><blockquote> +<p class = "noindent"><span class = "ind10"> "Such bliss</span><br> + Beggars enjoy, when princes oft do miss."<br></p> +</blockquote></blockquote> + +<p>Homer, who knew what amused men, constantly lays stress on this business +of fitting out:—</p> + +<blockquote><blockquote> +<p class = "noindent"> "Then at length she (Athene) let drag the swift ship to the sea, and + stored within it all such tackling as decked ships carry. And she + moored it at the far end of the harbour.… So they raised the + mast of pine tree, and set it in the hole of the cross plank, and + made it fast with forestays, and hauled up the white sails with + twisted ropes of oxhide."</p> +</blockquote></blockquote> + +<p>And again:</p> + +<blockquote><blockquote> +<p class = "noindent"> "First of all they drew the ship down to the deep water, and fixed the + oars in leathern loops all orderly, and spread forth the white sails. + And squires, haughty of heart, bare for them their arms,"—but you'll + observe that it was the masters who did the launching, etc., like + wise men who knew exactly wherein the fun of the business consisted. + "And they moored her high out in the shore water, and themselves + disembarked. There they supped and waited for evening to come on."</p> +</blockquote></blockquote> + +<p>You suggest, perhaps, that our seafaring is but play: and you are right. +But in our play we catch a cupful of the romance of the real thing. +Also we have the real thing at our doors to keep us humble. Day by day +beneath this window the statelier shipping goes by; and our twopenny +adventurings and discoveries do truly (I believe) keep the greater wonder +and interest awake in us from day to day—the wonder and interest so +memorably expressed in Mr. Bridges's poem, <i>A Passer By</i>:—</p> + +<blockquote><blockquote> +<p class = "noindent"> "Whither, O splendid ship, thy white sails crowding,<br> +<span class = "ind3"> Leaning across the bosom of the urgent West,</span><br> + That fearest nor sea rising, nor sky clouding,<br> +<span class = "ind3"> Whither away, fair rover, and what thy quest?</span><br> + Ah! soon when Winter has all our vales opprest,<br> +<span class = "ind3"> When skies are cold and misty, and hail is hurling,</span><br> + Wilt thou glide on the blue Pacific, or rest<br> +<span class = "ind3"> In a summer haven asleep, thy white sails furling?</span><br><br> + + "I there before thee, in the country so well thou knowest,<br> +<span class = "ind3"> Already arrived am inhaling the odorous air:</span><br> + I watch thee enter unerringly where thou goest,<br> +<span class = "ind3"> And anchor queen of the strange shipping there,</span><br> + Thy sails for awnings spread, thy masts bare.".…<br><br><br> + + + + "And yet, O splendid ship, unhailed and nameless,<br> +<span class = "ind3"> I know not if, aiming a fancy, I rightly divine</span><br> + That thou hast a purpose joyful, a courage blameless,<br> +<span class = "ind3"> Thy port assured in a happier land than mine.</span><br> + But for all I have given thee, beauty enough is thine.<br> +<span class = "ind3"> As thou, aslant with trim tackle and shrouding,</span><br> + From the proud nostril curve of a prow's line<br> +<span class = "ind3"> In the offing scatterest foam, thy white sails crowding."</span><br><br></p> +</blockquote></blockquote> + +<p>Though in all human probability I shall never be the first to burst into a +silent sea, I can declare quite seriously that I never steer into an +unfamiliar creek or haven but, as its recesses open, I can understand +something of the awe of the boat's crew in Andrew Marvell's "Bermudas;" +yes, and something of the exultation of the great Columbus himself!</p> + +<br><br><br> + +<p>In a later paper I may have to tell of these voyages and traffickings. +For the while I leave the reader to guess how and in what corner of the +coast I happened on the following pendant to Mr. Dobell's <i>trouvaille</i>.</p> + +<p>It may not challenge comparison with Mr. Flinders Petrie's work in Egypt +or with Mr. Hogarth's Cretan explorations; but I say confidently that, +since Mr. Pickwick unearthed the famous inscribed stone, no more fortunate +or astonishing discovery has rewarded literary research upon our English +soil than the two letters which with no small pride I give to the world +this month.</p> + +<p>Curiously enough, they concern Mr. Pickwick.</p> + +<p>But, perhaps, by way of preface I shall remind the reader that the final +number of <i>Pickwick</i> was issued in November, 1837. The first French +version—which Mr. Percy Fitzgerald justly calls 'a rude adaptation rather +than a translation'—appeared in 1838, and was entitled <i>Le Club de +Pickwickistes, Roman Comique, traduit librement de l'Anglais par Mdme. +Eugenie Giboyet</i>. With equal justice Mr. Fitzgerald complains +(<i>The History of Pickwick</i>, p. 276) that "the most fantastic tricks are +played with the text, most of the dialogue being left out and the whole +compressed into two small volumes." Yet, in fact, Mme. Giboyet (as will +appear) was more sinned against than sinning. Clearly she undertook to +translate the immortal novel in collaboration with a M. Alexandre D—', +and was driven by the author's disapproval to suppress M. D—'s share of +the work. The dates are sufficient evidence that this was done (as it no +doubt had to be done) in haste. I regret that my researches have yielded +no further information respecting this M. Alexandre D—'. The threat in +the second letter may or may not have been carried out. I am inclined to +hope that it was, feeling sure that the result, if ever discovered, will +prove in the highest degree entertaining. With this I may leave the +letters to speak for themselves.</p> + +<h4>(1)</h4> +<blockquote><blockquote> +<p class = "noindent"><span class = "ind10">"45 Doughty Street,"</span><br> +<span class = "ind15">"September 25th, 1837."</span><br> + + "MY DEAR MADAM,—It is true that when granting the required permission + to translate <i>Pickwick</i> into French, I allowed also the license you + claimed for yourself and your <i>collaborateur</i>—of adapting rather than + translating, and of presenting my hero under such small disguise as + might commend him better to a Gallic audience. But I am bound to say + that—to judge only from the first half of your version, which is all + that has reached me—you have construed this permission more freely + than I desired. In fact, the parent can hardly recognise his own + child.<br><br> + + "Against your share in the work, Madame, I have little to urge, though + the damages you represent Mrs. Bardell as claiming—300,000 francs, + or £12,000 of our money—strikes me as excessive. It is rather + (I take as my guide the difference in the handwriting) to your + <i>collaborateur</i> that I address, through you, my remonstrances.<br><br> + + "I have no radical objection to his making Messrs. Snodgrass, Winkle, + and Tupman members of His Majesty King Louis XIII.'s corps of + Musketeers, if he is sincerely of opinion that French taste will + applaud the departure. I even commend his slight idealisation of + Snodgrass (which, by the way, is not the name of an English + mountain), and the amorousness of Tupman (Aramis) gains—I candidly + admit—from the touch of religiosity which he gives to the character; + though I do not, as he surmises, in the course of my story, promote + Tupman to a bishopric. The development—preferable as on some points + the episcopal garb may be considered to the green velvet jacket with + a two-inch tail worn by him at Madame Chasselion's <i>fête champetre</i>— + would jar upon our Anglican prejudices. As for Winkle (Porthos), the + translation nicely hits off his love of manly exercises, while + resting his pretensions on a more solid basis of fact than appears in + the original. In the incident of the baldric, however, the imposture + underlying Mr. W.'s green shooting-coat is conveyed with sufficient + neatness.<br><br> + + "M. D—' has been well advised again in breaking up the character of + Sam Weller and making him, like Cerberus, three gentlemen at once. + Buckingham (Jingle) and Fenton (a capital rendering of the Fat Boy) + both please me; and in expanding the episode of the sausage and the + trouser-buttons M. D—' has shown delicacy and judgment by altering + the latter into diamond studs.<br><br> + + "Alas! madam, I wish the same could be said for his treatment of my + female puppets, which not only shocks but bewilders me. In her + earlier appearances Mrs. Bardell (Milady) is a fairly consistent + character; and why M. D—' should hazard that consistency by + identifying her with the middle-aged lady at the great White Horse, + Ipswich, passes my comprehension. I say, madam, that it bewilders + me; but for M. D—'s subsequent development of the occurrences at + that hostelry I entertain feelings of which mere astonishment is, + perhaps, the mildest. I can hardly bring myself to discuss this with + a lady; but you will allow me to protest in the very strongest terms + that Mr. Pickwick made that unfortunate mistake about the sleeping + apartment in the completest innocence, that in ejaculating 'ha-hum' + he merely uttered a note of warning, and that 'ha-hum' is <i>not</i> + (as M. D—' suspects) an English word from which certain syllables + have been discreetly removed; that in thrusting his head through the + bed-curtains he was, as I am careful to say, 'not actuated by any + definite object'; and that, as a gentleman should, he withdrew at the + earliest possible moment. His intercepted duel with Mr. Peter Magnus + (De Wardes) rests, as I fondly imagined I had made clear, upon a + complete misunderstanding. The whole business of the <i>fleur-de-lys</i> + on Mrs. Bardell's shoulder is a sheer interpolation and should be + expunged, not only on grounds of morality, but because when you reach + the actual trial, 'Bardell <i>v</i>. Pickwick,' you will find this + discovery of the defendant's impossible either to ignore or to + reconcile with the jury's verdict. Against the intervention of + Richelieu (Mr. Nupkins) I have nothing to urge. M. D—' opines that I + shall in the end deal out poetical justice to Mrs. Bardell as Milady. + He is right. I have, indeed, gone so far as to imprison her; + but I own that her execution (as suggested by him) at the hands of + the Queer Client, with Pickwick and his friends (or, alternatively, + Mrs. Cluppins, Mr. Perker, and Bob Sawyer) as silent spectators, + seems to me almost as inconsistent with the spirit of the tale as his + other proposal to kidnap Mr. Justice Stareleigh in the boot of Mr. + Weller's coach, and substitute for his lordship the Chancery prisoner + in an iron mask. I trust, madam, that these few suggestions will, + without setting any appreciable constraint on your fancy, enable you + to catch something more of the spirit of my poor narrative than I + have been able to detect in some of the chapters submitted; and I am, + with every assurance of esteem,<br> +<span class = "ind15">Your obliged servant,</span><br> +<span class = "ind18">Boz."</span><br><br> + + "P.S.—The difference between Anjou wine and the milk punch about + which you inquire does not seem to me to necessitate any serious + alteration of the chapter in question. M. D—'s expressed intention + of making Master Bardell in later life the executioner of King + Charles I. of England must stand over for some future occasion. + The present work will hardly yield him the required opportunity for + dragging in King Charles' head."<br><br></p> +</blockquote></blockquote> +<br><br><br> +<h4>(2)</h4> + +<blockquote><blockquote> +<p class = "noindent"> "MADAME,—Puisque M. Boz se méfie des propositions lui faites sans but + quelconque que de concilier les gens d'esprit, j'ai l'honneur de vous + annnoncer nettement que je me retire d'une besogne aussi rude que + malentendue. Il dit que j'ai conçu son <i>Pickwick</i> tout autrement que + lui. Soit! Je l'écrirai, ce <i>Pickwick</i>, selon mon propre goût. + Que M. Boz redoute mes <i>Trois Pickwickistes!</i> Agréez, Madame, etc., + etc.,<br> +<span class = "ind15">Alexandre (le Grand)."</span><br><br><br></p> +</blockquote></blockquote> + + +<p>I am told that literary aspirants in these days do not read books, or read +them only for purposes of review-writing. Yet these pages may happen to +fall in the way of some literary aspirant faint on a false scent, yet +pursuing; and to him, before telling of another discovery, I will address +one earnest word of caution. Let him receive it as from an elder brother +who wishes him well.</p> + +<p>My caution is—Avoid irony as you would the plague.</p> + +<p>Years ago I was used to receive this warning (on an average) once a week +from my old and dear friend Sir Wemyss Reid; and once a week I would set +myself, assailing his good nature, to cajole him into printing some piece +of youthful extravagance which he well knew—and I knew—and he knew that +I knew—would infuriate a hundred staid readers of <i>The Speaker</i> and +oblige him to placate in private a dozen puzzled and indignant +correspondents. For those were days before the beards had stiffened on +the chins of some of us who assembled to reform politics, art, literature, +and the world in general from a somewhat frowsy upstairs coffee-room in +C—' Street: days of old—</p> + +<blockquote><blockquote> +<p class = "noindent"> "When fellowship seem'd not so far to seek<br> + And all the world and we seem'd much less cold<br> + And at the rainbow's foot lay surely gold.…"<br></p> +</blockquote></blockquote> + +<p>Well, these cajoleries were not often successful, yet often enough to keep +the sporting instinct alive and active, and a great deal oftener than +F—'s equally disreputable endeavours: it being a tradition with the staff +that F—' had sworn by all his gods to get in an article which would force +the printer to flee the country. I need scarcely say that the tradition +was groundless, but we worked it shamelessly.</p> + +<p>In this way on January 9th, 1897 (a year in which the Westminster Aquarium +was yet standing), and shortly after the issue of the New Year's Honours' +List, the following article appeared in <i>The Speaker</i>. The reader will +find it quite harmless until he comes to the sequel. It was entitled—</p> + + +<blockquote><blockquote> +<h4>NOOKS OF OLD LONDON.</h4> + +<h4> I.—THE WESTMINSTER SCUTORIUM.</h4> + +<p class = "noindent"> Let me begin by assuring the reader that the Westminster Scutorium + has absolutely no connection with the famous Aquarium across the + road. I suppose that every Londoner has heard, at least, of the + Aquarium, but I doubt if one in a hundred has heard of the little + Scutorium which stands removed from it by a stone's throw, or less; + and I am certain that not one in a thousand has ever stooped his head + to enter by its shy, squat, fifteenth-century doorway. It is a fact + that the very policeman at the entrance to Dean's Yard did not know + its name, and the curator assures me that the Post Office has made + frequent mistakes in delivering his letters. So my warning is not + quite impertinent.<br><br> + + But a reader of antiquarian tastes, who cares as little as I do for + hypnotisers and fasting men, and does not mind a trifle of dust, so + it be venerable, will not regret an hour spent in looking over the + Scutorium, or a chat with Mr. Melville Robertson, its curator, or + Clerk of the Ribands (<i>Stemmata</i>)—to give him his official title. + Mr. Robertson ranks, indeed, with the four pursuivants of Heralds' + College, from which the Scutorium was originally an offshoot. + He takes an innocent delight in displaying his treasures and + admitting you to the stores of his unique information; and I am sure + would welcome more visitors.<br><br> + + Students of Constitutional History will remember that strange custom, + half Roman, half Medieval, in accordance with which a baron or + knight, on creation or accession to his title and dignities, + deposited in the king's keeping a waxen effigy, or mask, of himself + together with a copy of his coat of arms. And it has been argued— + plausibly enough when we consider the ancestral masks of the old + Roman families, the respect paid to them by the household, and the + important part they played on festival days, at funerals, &c.—that + this offering was a formal recognition of the <i>patria potestas</i> of + the monarch as father of his people. Few are aware, however, that + the custom has never been discontinued, and that the cupboards of + Westminster contain a waxen memorial of almost every man whom the + king has delighted to honour, from the Conquest down to the very + latest knight gazetted. The labour of modelling and painting these + effigies was discontinued as long ago as 1586; and the masks are no + longer likenesses, but oval plates of copper, each bearing its name + on a label. Mr. Robertson informed me that Charles I. made a brief + attempt to revive the old practice. All the Stuarts, indeed, set + store on the Scutorium and its functions; and I read in an historical + pamphlet, by Mr. J. Saxby Hine, the late curator, that large + apartments were allocated to the office in Inigo Jones's first + designs for Whitehall. But its rosy prospects faded with the + accession of William of Orange. Two years later the custody of the + shields (from which it obtained its name) was relegated to the + Heralds' College; and the Scutorium has now to be content with the + care of its masks and the performance of some not unimportant duties + presently to be recounted.<br><br> + + A reference from the Heralds' College sent me in quest of Mr. + Melville Robertson. But even in Dean's Yard I found it no easy + matter to run him to earth. The policeman (as I have said) could + give me no help. At length, well within the fourth doorway on the + east side, after passing the railings, I spied a modest brass plate + with the inscription <i>Clerk of the Ribands. Hours 11 to 3</i>. + The outside of the building has a quite modern look, but the + architect has spared the portal, and the three steps which lead down + to the flagged entrance hall seem to mark a century apiece. + I call it an entrance hall, but it is rather a small adytum, spanned + by a pointed arch carrying the legend <i>Stemmata Quid Faciunt</i>. + The modern exterior is, in fact, but a shell. All within dates from + Henry VI.; and Mr. Robertson (but this is only a theory) would + explain the sunken level of the ground-floor rooms by the action of + earthworms, which have gradually lifted the surface of Dean's Yard + outside. He contends the original level to be that of his office, + which lies on the right of the adytum. A door on the left admits to + two rooms occupied by the <i>nomenclator</i>, Mr. Pender, and two + assistant clerks, who comprise the staff. Straight in front, a + staircase leads to the upper-apartments.<br><br> + + Mr. Robertson was writing when the clerk ushered me in, but at once + professed himself at my service. He is a gentleman of sixty, or + thereabouts, with white hair, a complexion of a country squire, and + very genial manners. For some minutes we discussed the difficulty + which had brought me to him (a small point in county history), and + then he anticipated my request for permission to inspect his masks.<br><br> + + "Would you like to see them? They are really very curious, and I + often wonder that the public should evince so small an interest."<br><br> + + "You get very few visitors?"<br><br> + + "Seldom more than two a day; a few more when the Honours' Lists + appear. I thought at first that your visit might be in connection + with the new List, but reflected that it was too early. In a day or + two we shall be comparatively busy."<br><br> + + "The Scutorium is concerned then with the Honours' Lists?"<br><br> + + "A little," replied Mr. Robertson, smiling. "That is to say, we make + them." Then, observing my evident perplexity, he laughed. + "Well, perhaps that is too strong an expression. I should have said, + rather, that we fill up the blanks."<br><br> + + "I had always understood that the Prime Minister drew up the Lists + before submitting them to Her Majesty."<br><br> + + "So he does—with our help. Oh, there is no secrecy about it!" said + Mr. Robertson, in a tone almost rallying. "The public is free of all + information, only it will not inquire. A little curiosity on its + part would even save much unfortunate misunderstanding."<br><br> + + "In what way?"<br><br> + + "Well, the public reads of rewards (with which, by the way, I have + nothing to do) conferred on really eminent men—Lord Roberts, for + instance, or Sir Henry Irving, or Sir Joseph Lister. It then goes + down the List and, finding a number of names of which it has never + heard, complains that Her Majesty's favour has been bestowed on + nonentities; whereas this is really the merit of the List, that they + <i>are</i> nonentities."<br><br> + + "I don't understand."<br><br> + + "Well, then, <i>they don't exist</i>."<br><br> + + "But surely—"<br><br> + + "My dear sir," said Mr. Robertson, still smiling, and handing me his + copy of <i>The Times</i>, "cast your eye down that column; take the names + of the new knights—'Blain, Clarke, Edridge, Farrant, Laing, Laird, + Wardle'—what strikes you as remarkable about them?"<br><br> + + "Why, that I have never heard of any of them."<br><br> + + "Naturally, for there are no such people. I made them up; and a good + average lot they are, though perhaps the preponderance of + monosyllables is a little too obvious."<br><br> + + "But see here. I read that 'Mr. Thomas Wardle is a silk merchant of + Staffordshire.'"<br><br> + + "But I assure you that I took him out of <i>Pickwick</i>."<br><br> + + "Yes, but here is 'William Laird,' for instance. I hear that already + two actual William Lairds—one of Birkenhead, the other of Glasgow— + are convinced that the honour belongs to them."<br><br> + + "No doubt they will be round in a day or two. The Heralds' College + will refer them to me—not simultaneously, if I may trust Sir Albert + Woods's tact—and I shall tell them that it belongs to neither, but + to another William Laird altogether. But, if you doubt, take the + Indian promotions. Lord Salisbury sometimes adds a name or two after + I send in the List, and—well, you know his lordship is not fond of + the dark races and has a somewhat caustic humour. Look at the new + C.I.E.'s: 'Rai Bahadur Pandit Bhag Rum.' Does it occur to you that a + person of that name really exists? 'Khan Bahadur Naoraji + ('Naoraji,' mark you) Pestonji Vakil'—it's the language of + extravaganza! The Marquis goes too far: it spoils all + verisimilitude."<br><br> + + Mr. Robertson grew quite ruffled.<br><br> + + "Then you pride yourself on verisimilitude?" I suggested.<br><br> + + "As I think you may guess; and we spare no pains to attain it, whether + in the names or In the descriptions supplied to the newspapers. + 'William Arbuthnot Blain, Esq.'—you have heard of Balzac's scouring + Paris for a name for one of his characters. I assure you I scoured + England for William Arbuthnot Blain—'identified with the movement + for improving the dwellings of the labouring classes'—or is that + Richard Farrant, Esq.? In any case, what more likely, on the face of + it? 'Frederick Wills, Esq., of the well-known tobacco firm of + Bristol'—the public swallows that readily: and yet it never buys a + packet of their Westward Ho! Mixture (which I smoke myself) without + reading that the Wills's of Bristol are W. D. and H. O.—no Frederick + at all."<br><br> + + "But," I urged, "the purpose of this—"<br><br> + + "I should have thought it obvious; but let me give you the history of + it. The practice began with William III. He was justly scornful of + the lax distribution of honours which had marked all the Stuart + reigns. You will hardly believe it, but before 1688 knighthoods, and + even peerages, went as often as not to men who qualified by an + opportune loan to the Exchequer, or even by presiding at a public + feast. (I say nothing of baronetcies, for their history is + notorious.) At first William was for making a clean sweep of the + Honours' List, or limiting it to two or three well-approved + recipients. But it was argued that this seeming niggardliness might + injure His Majesty's popularity, never quite secure. The Scutorium + found a way out of the dilemma. Sir Crofton Byng, the then Clerk of + the Ribands, proposed the scheme, which has worked ever since. + I may tell you that the undue <i>largesse</i> of honours finds in the very + highest quarters as little favour as ever it did. Of course, there + are some whose services to science, literature, and art cannot be + ignored—the late Lord Leighton, for instance, or Sir George Newnes, + or Sir Joseph Lister again; and these are honoured, while the public + acclaims. But the rest are represented only in my collection of + masks—and an interesting one it is. Let me lead the way."<br><br> + + But I have left myself no space for describing the treasures of the + Scutorium. The two upper stories are undoubtedly the least + interesting, since they contain the modern, unpainted masks. + Each mask has its place, its label, and on the shelf below it, + protected by a slip of glass, a description of the imaginary + recipient of the royal favour. One has only to look along the + crowded shelves to be convinced that Mr. Melville Robertson's office + is no sinecure. The first floor is devoted to a small working + library and a museum (the latter undergoing rearrangement at the time + of my visit). But the cellars!—or (as I should say) the crypt! + In Beaumont's words—<br><br> + +<span class = "ind3"> "Here's a world of pomp and state</span><br> +<span class = "ind3"> Buried in dust, once dead by fate!"</span><br><br> + + Here in their native colours, by the light of Mr. Robertson's duplex + lantern, stare the faces of the illustrious dead, from Rinaldus + FitzTurold, knighted on Senlac field, to stout old Crosby Martin, + sea-rover, who received the accolade (we'll hope he deserved it) from + the Virgin Queen in 1586. A few even are adorned with side-locks, + which Mr. Pender, the <i>nomenclator</i>, keeps scrupulously dusted. + In almost every case the wax has withstood the tooth of time far + better than one could have expected. Mr. Robertson believes that the + pigments chosen must have had some preservative virtue. If so, the + secret has been lost. But Mr. Pender has touched over some of the + worst decayed with a mixture of copal and pure alcohol, by which he + hopes at least to arrest the mischief; and certainly the masks in the + Scutorium compare very favourably with the waxen effigies of our + royalties preserved in the Abbey, close by. Mr. Robertson has a + theory that these, too, should by rights belong to his museum: but + that is another story, and a long one. Suffice it to say that I took + my leave with the feelings of one who has spent a profitable + afternoon: and for further information concerning this most + interesting nook of old London I can only refer the reader to the + pamphlet already alluded to, <i>The Westminster Scutorium: Its History + and Present Uses</i>. By J. Saxby Hine, C.B., F.S.A. Theobald & Son, + Skewers Alley, Chancery Lane, E.C.<br><br></p> +</blockquote></blockquote> + + +<p>This article appeared to my beloved editor innocent enough to pass, and to +me (as doubtless to the reader) harmless enough in all conscience. +Now listen to the sequel.</p> + +<p>Long afterwards an acquaintance of mine—a barrister with antiquarian +tastes—was dining with me in my Cornish home, and the talk after dinner +fell upon the weekly papers and reviews. On <i>The Speaker</i> he touched with +a reticence which I set down at first to dislike for his politics. +By and by, however, he let slip the word "untrustworthy."</p> + +<p>"Holding your view of its opinions," I suggested, "you might fairly say +'misleading.' 'Untrustworthy' is surely too strong a word."</p> + +<p>"I am not talking," said he, "of its opinions, but of its mis-statements +of fact. Some time ago it printed an article on a place which it called +'The Westminster Scutorium,' and described in detail. I happened to pick +the paper up at my club and read the article. It contained a heap of +historical information on the forms and ceremonies which accompany the +granting of titles, and was apparently the work of a specialist. +Being interested (as you know) in these matters, and having an hour to +spare, I took a hansom down to Westminster. At the entrance of Dean's +Yard I found a policeman, and inquired the way to the Scutorium. He eyed +me for a moment, then he said, 'Well, I thought I'd seen the last of 'em. +You're the first to-day, so far; and yesterday there was only five. +But Monday—<i>and</i> Tuesday—<i>and</i> Wednesday! There must have been thirty +came as late as Wednesday; though by that time I'd found out what was the +matter. All Monday they kept me hunting round and round the yard, +following like a pack. Very respectable-looking old gentlemen, too, the +whole of 'em, else I should have guessed they were pulling my leg. +Most of 'em had copies of a paper, <i>The Speaker</i>, and read out bits from +it, and insisted on my searching in this direction and that… and me +being new to this beat, and seeing it all in print! We called in the +postman to help. By and by they began to compare notes, and found they'd +been kidded, and some of 'em used language.… I really think, sir, you +must be the last of 'em.'"</p> + +<br><br> +<a name="2HCH0005"><!-- H2 anchor --></a> +<br><br> +<h3>MAY.</h3> + +<p>I was travelling some weeks ago by a railway line alongside of which ran a +quickset hedge. It climbed to the summit of cuttings, plunged to the base +of embankments, looped itself around stations, flickered on the skyline +above us, raced us along the levels, dipped into pools, shot up again on +their farther banks, chivvied us into tunnels, ran round and waited for us +as we emerged. Its importunity drove me to the other side of the +carriage, only to find another quickset hedge behaving similarly. +Now I can understand that a railway company has excellent reasons for +planting quickset hedges alongside its permanent way. But their +unspeakable monotony set me thinking. Why do we neglect the real parks of +England?—parks enormous in extent, and yet uncultivated, save here and +there and in the most timid fashion. And how better could our +millionaires use their wealth (since they are always confiding to us their +difficulties in getting rid of it) than by seeking out these gardens and +endowing them, and so, without pauperising anyone, build for themselves +monuments not only delightful, but perpetual?—for, as Victor Hugo said, +the flowers last always. So, you may say, do books. I doubt it; and +experts, who have discussed with me the modern products of the paper +trade, share my gloomy views. Anyhow, the free public library has been +sufficiently exploited, if not worked out. So, you may say again, have +free public gardens and parks been worked out. I think not. Admit that a +fair percentage of the public avails itself of these libraries and parks; +still the mass does not, and they were intended for the mass. +Their attractiveness does not spread and go on spreading. The stream of +public appreciation which pours through them is not fathomless; beyond a +certain point it does not deepen, or deepens with heart-breaking slowness; +and candid librarians and curators can sound its shallows accurately +enough. What we want is not a garden into which folk will find their way +if they have nothing better to do and can spare the time with an effort. +Or, to be accurate, we do want such gardens for deliberate enjoyment; but +what we want more is to catch our busy man and build a garden about him in +the brief leisure which, without seeking it, he is forced to take.</p> + +<p>Where are these gardens? Why, beside and along our railway lines. +These are the great public parks of England; and through them travels +daily a vast population held in enforced idleness, seeking distraction in +its morning paper. Have you ever observed how a whole carriageful of +travellers on the Great Western line will drop their papers to gaze out on +Messrs. Sutton's trial-beds just outside Reading? A garish appeal, no +doubt: a few raying spokes of colour, and the vision has gone. And I +forestall the question, "Is that the sort of thing you wish to see +extended?—a bed of yellow tulips, for instance, or of scarlet lobelias, +or of bright-blue larkspurs, all the way from London to Liverpool?" +I suggest nothing of the sort. Our railway lines in England, when they +follow the valleys—as railway lines must in hilly districts—are +extraordinarily beautiful. The eye, for example, could desire nothing +better, in swift flight, than the views along the Wye Valley or in the +Derbyshire Peak country, and even the rich levels of Somerset have a +beauty of their own (above all in May and June, when yellow with sheets of +buttercups) which artificial planting would spoil. But—cant about Nature +apart—every line has its dreary cuttings and embankments, all of which +might be made beautiful at no great cost. I need not labour this: here +and there by a casual bunch of rhododendrons or of gorse, or by a sheet of +primroses or wild hyacinths in springtime, the thing is proved, and has +been proved again and again to me by the comments of fellow-passengers.</p> + +<p>Now I am honestly enamoured of this dream of mine, and must pause to dwell +on some of its beauties. In the first place, we could start to realise it +in the most modest fashion and test the appreciation of the public as we +go along. Our flowers would be mainly wild flowers, and our trees, for +the most part, native British plants, costing, say, from thirty shillings +to three pounds the hundred. A few roods would do to begin with, if the +spot were well chosen; indeed, it would be wiser in every way to begin +modestly, for though England possesses several great artists in landscape +gardening, their art has never to my knowledge been seriously applied to +railway gardening, and the speed of the spectators introduces a new and +highly-amusing condition, and one so singular and so important as to make +this almost a separate art. At any rate, our gardeners would have to +learn as they go, and if any man can be called enviable it is an artist +learning to express art's eternal principles in a new medium, under new +conditions.</p> + +<p>Even if we miss our millionaire, we need not despond over ways and means. +The beauty-spots of Great Britain are engaged just now in a fierce rivalry +of advertisement. Why should not this rivalry be pressed into the service +of beautifying the railway lines along which the tourist must travel to +reach them? Why should we neglect the porches (so to speak) of our +temples? Would not the tourist arrive in a better temper if met on his +way with silent evidence of our desire to please? And, again, is the +advertising tradesman quite wise in offending so many eyes with his +succession of ugly hoardings standing impertinently in green fields? +Can it be that the sight of them sets up that disorder of the liver which +he promises to cure? And if not, might he not call attention to his wares +at least as effectively, if more summarily, by making them the excuse for +a vision of delight which passengers would drop their newspapers to gaze +upon? Lastly, the railway companies themselves have discovered the +commercial value of scenery. Years ago, and long before their discovery +(and as if by a kind of instinct they were blundering towards it) they +began to offer prizes for the best-kept station gardens—with what happy +result all who have travelled in South Wales will remember. They should +find it easy to learn that the 'development' of watering-places and +holiday resorts may be profitably followed up by spending care upon their +approaches.</p> + +<p>But I come back to my imaginary millionaire—the benevolent man who only +wants to be instructed how to spend his money—the 'magnificent man' of +Aristotle's <i>Ethics</i>, nonplussed for the moment, and in despair of +discovering an original way of scattering largesse for the public good. +For, while anxious to further my scheme by conciliating the commercial +instinct, I must insist that its true beauty resides in the conception of +our railways as vast public parks only hindered by our sad lack of +inventiveness from ministering to the daily delight of scores of thousands +and the occasional delight of almost everyone. The millionaire I want is +one who can rise to this conception of it, and say with Blake—</p> + +<blockquote><blockquote> +<p class = "noindent"> "I will not cease from mental fight,"</p> +</blockquote></blockquote> + +<p>(Nor from pecuniary contribution, for that matter)</p> + +<blockquote><blockquote> +<p class = "noindent"> "Nor shall my sword sleep in my hand + Till we have built Jerusalem + In England's green and pleasant land."</p> +</blockquote></blockquote> + +<p>For these millionaires are bediamonded all over with good intentions. +The mischief with them is their lack of inventiveness. Most of my readers +will agree that there is no easier game of solitaire than to suppose +yourself suddenly endowed with a million of money, and to invent modes of +dispensing it for the good of your kind. As a past master of that game I +offer the above suggestion gratis to those poor brothers of mine who have +more money than they know how to use.</p> + +<br><br><br><br> +<p>The railway—not that of the quickset hedges, but the Great Western, on to +which I changed after a tramp across Dartmoor—took me to pay a pious +visit to my old school: a visit which I never pay without thinking— +especially in the chapel where we used to sing 'Lord, dismiss us with Thy +blessing' on the evening before holidays—of a passage in Izaak Walton's +<i>Life of Sir Henry Wotton</i>:—</p> + +<blockquote><blockquote> +<p class = "noindent"> "He yearly went also to Oxford. But the summer before his death he + changed that for a journey to Winchester College, to which school he + was first removed from Bocton. And as he returned from Winchester + towards Eton College, said to a friend, his companion in that + journey, 'How useful was that advice of a holy monk who persuaded his + friend to perform his customary devotions in a constant place, + because in that place we usually meet with those very thoughts which + possessed us at our last being there! And I find it thus far + experimentally true that at my now being in that school, and seeing + the very place where I sat when I was a boy, occasioned me to + remember those very thoughts of my youth which then possessed me: + sweet thoughts indeed, that promised my growing years numerous + pleasures without mixtures of cares: and those to be enjoyed when + time—which I therefore thought slow-paced—had changed my youth into + manhood. But age and experience have taught me that those were but + empty hopes: for I have always found it true, as my Saviour did + foretell, 'Sufficient for the day is the evil thereof.' + Nevertheless, I saw there a succession of boys using the same + recreations and, questionless, possessed with the same thoughts that + then possessed me. Thus one generation succeeds another, both in + their lives, recreations, hopes, fears, and death.'"</p> +</blockquote></blockquote> + +<p>But my visit on this occasion was filled with thought less of myself than +of a poet I had known in that chapel, those cloisters, that green close; +not intimately enough to call him friend, yet so intimately that his +lately-departed shade still haunted the place for me—a small boy whom he +had once, for a day or two, treated with splendid kindness and thereafter +(I dare say) had forgotten.</p> +<br><br><br><br> +<h4>"T. E. B."</h4> + +<p>Thomas Edward Brown was born on May 5th, 1830, at Douglas, in the Isle of +Man, where his father held the living of St. Matthew's. Sixty-five years +later he wrote his last verses to aid a fund raised for a new St. +Matthew's Church, and characteristically had to excuse himself in a letter +penetrated with affection for the old plain edifice and its memories.</p> + +<blockquote><blockquote> +<p class = "noindent"> "I was baptised there; almost all whom I loved and revered were + associated with its history… 'The only church in Douglas where + the poor go'—I dare say that is literally true. But I believe it + will continue to be so.… I postulate the continuity.…"</p> +</blockquote></blockquote> + +<p>I quote these words (and so leave them for a while) with a purpose, aware +how trivial they may seem to the reader. But to those who had the +privilege of knowing Brown that cannot be trivial which they feel to be +characteristic and in some degree explicative of the man; and with this +'I postulate the continuity' we touch accurately and simply for once a +note which sang in many chords of the most vocal, not to say orchestral, +nature it has ever been my lot to meet.</p> + +<p>Let me record, and have done with, the few necessary incidents of what was +by choice a <i>vita fallens</i> and "curiously devoid of incident." The boy +was but two years old when the family removed to Kirk Braddan Vicarage, +near Douglas; the sixth of ten children of a witty and sensible Scots +mother and a father whose nobly humble idiosyncrasies continued in his son +and are worthy to live longer in his description of them:—</p> + +<blockquote><blockquote> +<p class = "noindent"> "To think of a <i>Pazon</i> respecting men's vices even; not as vices, God + forbid! but as parts of <i>them</i>, very likely all but inseparable from + them; at any rate, <i>theirs!</i> Pitying with an eternal pity, but not + exposing, not rebuking. My father would have considered he was + 'taking a liberty' if he had confronted the sinner with his sin. + Doubtless he carried this too far. But don't suppose for a moment + that the 'weak brethren' thought he was conniving at their weakness. + Not they: they saw the delicacy of his conduct. You don't think, do + you, that these poor souls are incapable of appreciating delicacy? + God only knows how far down into their depths of misery the sweetness + of that delicacy descends.… He loved sincerity, truth and + modesty. It seemed as if he felt that, with these virtues, the + others could not fail to be present."</p> +</blockquote></blockquote> + +<p>Add to this that the Vicar of Kirk Braddan, though of no University, was a +scholar in grain; was, for example, so fastidious about composition that +he would make his son read some fragment of an English classic to him +before answering an invitation! "To my father style was like the instinct +of personal cleanliness." Again we touch notes which echoed through the +life of his son—who worshipped continuity.</p> + +<p>From a course of tuition divided between his father and the parish +schoolmaster, Brown went, at fifteen or over, to King William's College, +and became its show scholar; thence, by the efforts of well-meaning +friends (but at the cost of much subsequent pain), to Christ Church, +Oxford, as a servitor. He won his double first; but he has left on record +an account of a servitor's position at Christ Church in the early fifties, +and to Brown the spiritual humiliation can have been little less than one +long dragging anguish. He had, of course, his intervals of high spirits; +but (says Mr. Irwin, his friend and biographer) "there is no doubt he did +not exaggerate what the position was to him. I have heard him refer to it +over and over again with a dispassionate bitterness there was no +mistaking." Dean Gaisford absolutely refused to nominate him, after his +two first classes, to a fellowship, though all the resident dons wished +it. "A servitor never has been elected student—<i>ergo</i>, he never shall +be." Brown admired Gaisford, and always spoke kindly of him "in all his +dealings with me." Yet the night after he won his double first was "one +of the most intensely miserable I was ever called to endure." Relief, and +of the right kind, came with his election as Fellow of Oriel in April, +1854. In those days an Oriel Fellowship still kept and conveyed its +peculiar distinction, and the brilliant young scholar had at length the +ball at his feet.</p> + +<blockquote><blockquote> +<p class = "noindent"> "This is none of your empty honours," he wrote to his mother; "it + gives me an income of about £300 per annum as long as I choose + to reside at Oxford, and about £220 in cash if I reside + elsewhere. In addition to this it puts me in a highly commanding + position for pupils, so that on the whole I have every reason to + expect that (except perhaps the first year) I shall make between £500 + and £600 altogether per annum. So you see, my dear mother, + that your prayers have not been unanswered, and that God will bless + the generation of those who humbly strive to serve Him. . . I have + not omitted to remark that the election took place on April 21st, the + anniversary of your birth and marriage."</p> +</blockquote></blockquote> + +<p>How did he use his opportunity? "He never took kindly to the life of an +Oxford fellow," thought the late Dr. Fowler (an old schoolfellow of +Brown's, afterwards President of Corpus and Vice-Chancellor of the +University). Mr. Irwin quotes another old friend, Archdeacon Moore, to +much the same effect. Their explanations lack something of definiteness. +After a few terms of private pupils Brown returned to the Island, and +there accepted the office of Vice-principal of his old school. We can +only be sure that his reasons were honourable, and sufficed for him; we +may include among them, if we choose, that <i>nostalgia</i> which haunted him +all his days, until fate finally granted his wish and sent him back to his +beloved Argos "for good."</p> + +<p>In the following year (1857) he married his cousin, Miss Stowell, daughter +of Dr. Stowell, of Ramsay; and soon after left King William's College to +become 'by some strange mischance' Head Master of the Crypt School, +Gloucester. Of this "Gloucester episode," as he called it, nothing needs +to be recorded except that he hated the whole business and, incidentally, +that one of his pupils was Mr. W. E. Henley—destined to gather into his +<i>National Observer</i>, many years later, many blooms of Brown's last and not +least memorable efflorescence in poesy.</p> + +<p>From Gloucester he was summoned, on a fortunate day, by Mr. Percival +(now Bishop of Hereford), who had recently been appointed to Clifton +College, then a struggling new foundation, soon to be lifted by him into +the ranks of the great Public Schools. Mr. Percival wanted a man to take +the Modern Side; and, as fate orders these things, consulted the friend +reserved by fate to be his own successor at Clifton—Mr. Wilson (now Canon +of Worcester). Mr. Wilson was an old King William's boy; knew Brown, and +named him.</p> +<blockquote><blockquote> +<p class = "noindent"> "Mr. Wilson having told me about him," writes the bishop, "I made an + appointment to see him in Oxford, and there, as chance would have it, + I met him standing at the corner of St. Mary's Entry, in a somewhat + Johnsonian attitude, four-square, his hands deep in his pockets to + keep himself still, and looking decidedly <i>volcanic</i>. We very soon + came to terms, and I left him there under promise to come to Clifton + as my colleague at the beginning of the following Term; and, needless + to say, St. Mary's Entry has had an additional interest to me ever + since. Sometimes I have wondered, and it would be worth a good deal + to know, what thoughts were crossing through that richly-furnished, + teeming brain as he stood there by St. Mary's Church, with Oriel + College in front of him, thoughts of his own struggles and triumphs, + and of all the great souls that had passed to and fro over the + pavement around him; and all set in the lurid background of the + undergraduate life to which he had been condemned as a servitor at + Christ Church."</p> +</blockquote></blockquote> + +<p>Was he happy in his many years' work at Clifton? On the whole, and with +some reservation, we may say 'yes'—'yes,' although in the end he escaped +from it gladly and enjoyed his escape. One side of him, no doubt, loathed +formality and routine; he was, as he often proclaimed himself, a +nature-loving, somewhat intractable Celt; and if one may hint at a fault +in him, it was that now and then he soon <i>tired</i>. A man so spendthrift of +emotion is bound at times to knock on the bottom of his emotional coffers; +and no doubt he was true <i>to a mood</i> when he wrote—</p> + +<blockquote><blockquote> +<p class = "noindent"> "I'm here at Clifton, grinding at the mill<br> +<span class = "ind3"> My feet for thrice nine barren years have trod,</span><br> + But there are rocks and waves at Scarlett still,<br> +<span class = "ind3"> And gorse runs riot in Glen Chass—thank God!</span><br><br> + + "Alert, I seek exactitude of rule,<br> +<span class = "ind3"> I step and square my shoulders with the squad,</span><br> + But there are blaeberries on old Barrule,<br> +<span class = "ind3"> And Langness has its heather still—thank God!"</span><br><br> +</blockquote></blockquote> + +<p>—With the rest of the rebellious stanzas. We may go farther and allow +that he played with the mood until he sometimes forgot on which side lay +seriousness and on which side humour. Still it <i>was</i> a mood; and it was +Brown, after all, who wrote 'Planting':—</p> + +<blockquote><blockquote> +<p class = "noindent"> "Who would be planted chooseth not the soil<br> +<span class = "ind3"> Or here or there,</span><br> +<span class = "ind3"> Or loam or peat,</span><br> +<span class = "ind3"> Wherein he best may grow</span><br> + And bring forth guerdon of the planter's toil—<br> +<span class = "ind3"> The lily is most fair,</span><br> +<span class = "ind3"> But says not' I will only blow</span><br> + Upon a southern land'; the cedar makes no coil<br> +<span class = "ind3"> What rock shall owe</span><br> +<span class = "ind3"> The springs that wash his feet;</span><br> + The crocus cannot arbitrate the foil<br> +<span class = "ind3"> That for his purple radiance is most meet—</span><br> +<span class = "ind3"> Lord, even so</span><br> +<span class = "ind3"> I ask one prayer,</span><br> +<span class = "ind6"> The which if it be granted,</span><br> +<span class = "ind3"> It skills not where</span><br> +<span class = "ind6"> Thou plantest me, only I would be planted."</span><br></p> +</blockquote></blockquote> +<br><br> +<blockquote><blockquote> +<p class = "noindent"> "You don't care for school-work," he writes to an Old Cliftonian. + … "I demur to your statement that when you take up + schoolmastering your leisure for this kind of thing will be + practically gone. Not at all. If you have the root of the matter in + you the school-work will insist upon this kind of thing as a relief. + My plan always was to recognise two lives as necessary—the one the + outer Kapelistic life of drudgery, the other the inner and cherished + life of the spirit. It is true that the one has a tendency to kill + the other, but it must not, and you must see that it does not.… + The pedagogic is needful for bread and butter, also for a certain + form of joy; of the inner life you know what I think."</p> +</blockquote></blockquote> +<br><br> +<p>These are wise words, and I believe they represent Brown more truly than +utterances which only seem more genuine because less deliberate. He was +as a house master excellent, with an excellence not achievable by men +whose hearts are removed from their work: he awoke and enjoyed fervent +friendships and the enthusiastic admiration of many youngsters; he must +have known of these enthusiasms, and was not the man to condemn them; he +had the abiding assurance of assisting in a kind of success which he +certainly respected. He longed for the day of emancipation, to return to +his Island; he was impatient; but I must decline to believe he was +unhappy.</p> + +<p>Indeed, his presence sufficiently denied it. How shall I describe him? +A sturdy, thick-set figure, inclining to rotundity, yet athletic; a face +extraordinarily mobile; bushy, grey eyebrows; eyes at once deeply and +radiantly human, yet holding the primitive faun in their coverts; a broad +mouth made for broad, natural laughter, hearty without lewdness. "There +are nice Rabelaisians, and there are nasty; but the latter are not +Rabelaisians. I have an idea," he claimed, "that my judgment within this +area is infallible." And it was. All honest laughter he welcomed as a +Godlike function.</p> + +<blockquote><blockquote> +<p class = "noindent"> "God sits upon His hill,<br> +<span class = "ind3"> And sees the shadows fly;<br> + And if He laughs at fools, why should He not?"</span><br></p> +</blockquote></blockquote> + +<p>And for that matter, why should not we? Though at this point his fine +manners intervened, correcting, counselling moderation. "I am certain God +made fools for us to enjoy, but there must be <i>an economy of joy</i> in the +presence of a fool; you must not betray your enjoyment." Imagine all this +overlaid with a certain portliness of bearing, suggestive of the +high-and-dry Oxford scholar. Add something of the parsonic (he was +ordained deacon before leaving Oxford, but did not proceed to priest's +orders till near the end of his time at Clifton); add a simple natural +piety which purged the parsonic of all "churchiness."</p> + +<blockquote><blockquote> +<p class = "noindent"> "This silence and solitude are to me absolute food," he writes from + the Clifton College Library on the morning of Christmas Day, 1875, + "especially after all the row and worry at the end of Term.… + Where are the men and women? Well, now look here, you'll not mention + it again. They're all in church. See how good God is! See how He + has placed these leitourgic traps in which people, especially + disagreeable people, get caught—and lo! the universe for me!!! me— + me.…"</p> +</blockquote></blockquote> + +<p>I have mentioned his fine manners, and with a certain right, since it once +fell to me—a blundering innocent in the hands of fate—to put them to +severest proof. A candidate for a scholarship at Clifton—awkward, and +abominably conscious of it, and sensitive—I had been billeted on Brown's +hospitality without his knowledge. The mistake (I cannot tell who was +responsible) could not be covered out of sight; it was past all aid of +kindly dissimulation by the time Brown returned to the house to find the +unwelcome guest bathing in shame upon his doorstep. Can I say more than +that he took me into the family circle—by no means an expansive one, or +accustomed, as some are, to open gleefully to intruders—and for the +inside of a week treated me with a consideration so quiet and pleasant, so +easy yet attentive, that his dearest friend or most distinguished visitor +could not have demanded more? A boy notes these things, and remembers. +… "If I lose my manners," Mr. Irwin quotes him as saying once over +some trivial forgetfulness, "what is to become of me?" He was shy, too, +like the most of his countrymen—"jus' the shy "—but with a proud reserve +as far removed as possible from sham humility—being all too sensible and +far too little of a fool to blink his own eminence of mind, though willing +on all right occasions to forget it. "Once," records Mr. Irwin, "when I +remarked on the omission of his name in an article on 'Minor Poets' in one +of the magazines, he said, with a smile, 'Perhaps I am among the major!'" +That smile had just sufficient irony—no more.</p> + +<p>To this we may add a passion for music and a passion for external nature— +external to the most of us, but so closely knit with his own that to be +present at his ecstasies was like assisting a high priest of elemental +mysteries reserved for him and beyond his power to impart. And yet we are +beating about the bush and missing the essential man, for he was +imprehensible—"Volcanic," the Bishop of Hereford calls him, and must go +to the Bay of Naples to fetch home a simile:</p> + +<blockquote><blockquote> +<p class = "noindent"> "We can find plenty of beauty in the familiar northern scenes; but we + miss the pent-up forces, the volcanic outbursts, the tropic glow, and + all the surprising manifold and tender and sweet-scented outpourings + of soil and sunshine, so spontaneous, so inexhaustibly rich, and with + the heat of a great fire burning and palpitating underneath all the + time."</p> +</blockquote></blockquote> + +<p>Natures more masterfully commanding I have known: never one more +remarkable. In the mere possession of him, rather than in his direct +influence, all Cliftonians felt themselves rich. We were at least as +proud of him as Etonians of the author of "Ionica." But no comparisons +will serve. Falstaffian—with a bent of homely piety; Johnsonian—with a +fiery Celtic heat and a passionate adoration of nature: all such epithets +fail as soon as they are uttered. The man was at once absolute and +Protean: entirely sincere, and yet a different being to each separate +friend. "There was no getting to the end of Brown."</p> + +<p>I have said that we—those of us, at any rate, who were not of Brown's +House—were conscious of a rich and honourable possession in him, rather +than of an active influence. Yet that influence must not be underrated. +Clifton, as I first knew it, was already a great school, although less +than twenty years old. But, to a new-comer, even more impressive than its +success among schools, or its aspirations, was a firmness of tradition +which (I dare to say) would have been remarkable in a foundation of five +times its age. It had already its type of boy; and having discovered it +and how to produce it, fell something short of tolerance towards other +types. For the very reason which allows me with decency to call the type +an admirable one, I may be excused for adding that the tradition demanded +some patience of those who could not easily manage to conform with it. +But there the tradition stood, permanently rooted in a school not twenty +years old. Is it fanciful to hold that Brown's passion for 'continuity' +had much to do with planting and confirming it? Mr. Irwin quotes for us a +passage from one of his sermons to the school: "Suffer no chasm to +interrupt this glorious tradition.… Continuous life… that is +what we want—to feel the pulses of hearts that are now dust." Did this +passage occur, I wonder, in the sermon of which I rather remember a +fierce, hopeless, human protest against 'change and decay'?—the voice +ringing down on each plea, "What do the change-and-decay people say to +<i>that?</i>"</p> + +<p>"I postulate the continuity." Vain postulate it often seems, yet of all +life Brown demanded it. Hear him as he speaks of his wife's death in a +letter to a friend:—</p> + +<blockquote><blockquote> +<p class = "noindent"> "My dear fellow-sufferer, what is it after all? Why this sinking of + the heart, this fainting, sorrowing of the spirit? There is no + separation: life is continuous. All that was stable and good, good + and therefore stable, in our union with the loved one, is + unquestionably permanent, will endure for ever. It cannot be + otherwise.… When love has done its full work, has wrought soul + into soul so that every fibre has become part of the common life— + <i>quis separabit?</i> Can you conceive yourself as existing at all + without <i>her?</i> No, you can't; well, then, it follows that you don't, + and never will."</p> +</blockquote></blockquote> + +<p>I believe it to have been this passion for continuity that bound and kept +him so absolute a Manxman, drawing his heart so persistently back to the +Island that there were times (one may almost fancy) when the prospect of +living his life out to the end elsewhere seemed to him a treachery to his +parents' dust. I believe this same passion drew him—master as he was of +varied and vocal English—to clothe the bulk of his poetry in the Manx +dialect, and thereby to miss his mark with the public, which inevitably +mistook him for a rustic singer, a man of the people, imperfectly +educated.</p> +<blockquote><blockquote> + +<p class = "noindent"> "I would not be forgotten in this land."—</p> +</blockquote></blockquote> + +<p>This line of another true poet of curiously similar temperament[1] +has haunted me through the reading of Brown's published letters. +But Brown's was no merely selfish craving for continuity—to be +remembered. By a fallacy of thought, perhaps, but by a very noble one, he +transferred the ambition to those for whom he laboured. His own terror +that Time might obliterate the moment:</p> + +<blockquote><blockquote> +<p class = "noindent"> "And all this personal dream be fled,"</p> +</blockquote></blockquote> + +<p>Became for his countrymen a very spring of helpfulness. <i>Antiquam +exquirite matrem</i>—he would do that which they, in poverty and the stress +of earning daily bread, were careless to do—would explore for them the +ancient springs of faith and custom.</p> + +<blockquote><blockquote> +<p class = "noindent"> "Dear countrymen, whate'er is left to us<br> +<span class = "ind3"> Of ancient heritage—</span><br> +<span class = "ind3"> Of manners, speech, of humours, polity,</span><br> +<span class = "ind3"> The limited horizon of our stage—</span><br> +<span class = "ind3"> Old love, hope, fear,</span><br> +<span class = "ind3"> All this I fain would fix upon the page;</span><br> +<span class = "ind3"> That so the coming age,</span><br> +<span class = "ind3"> Lost in the empire's mass,</span><br> +<span class = "ind3"> Yet haply longing for their fathers, here</span><br> +<span class = "ind3"> May see, as in a glass,</span><br> +<span class = "ind3"> What they held dear—</span><br> + May say, ''Twas thus and thus<br> +<span class = "ind3"> They lived'; and as the time-flood onward rolls</span><br> +<span class = "ind3"> Secure an anchor for their Keltic souls."</span><br></p> +</blockquote></blockquote> + +<p>This was his task, and the public of course set him down for a rustic. +"What ought I to do?" he demands. "Shall I put on my next title-page, +'Late Fellow of Oriel, etc.'? or am I always to abide under this ironic +cloak of rusticity?" To be sure, on consideration (if the public ever +found time to consider), the language and feeling of the poems were +penetrated with scholarship. He entered his countrymen's hearts; but he +also could, and did, stand outside and observe them with affectionate, +comprehending humour. Scholarship saved him, too—not always, but as a +rule—from that emotional excess to which he knew himself most dangerously +prone. He assigns it confidently to his Manx blood; but his mother was +Scottish by descent, and from my experience of what the Lowland Scot can +do in the way of pathos when he lets himself go, I take leave to doubt +that the Manxman was wholly to blame. There can, however, be no doubt +that the author of "The Doctor," of "Catherine Kinrade," of "Mater +Dolorosa," described himself accurately as a "born sobber," or that an +acquired self-restraint saved him from a form of intemperance by which of +late our literature has been somewhat too copiously afflicted.</p> + +<p>To scholarship, too, imposed upon and penetrating a taste naturally +catholic, we owe the rare flavour of the many literary judgments scattered +about his letters. They have a taste of native earth, beautifully +rarefied: to change the metaphor, they illuminate the page with a kind of +lambent common sense. For a few examples:—</p> + +<blockquote><blockquote> +<p class = "noindent"> "I have also read a causerie on Virgil and one on Theocritus. So many + French <i>littérateurs</i> give me the idea that they don't go nearer the + Greek authors than the Latin translations.… Sainte Beuve + [<i>Nouveaux Lundis</i>, vii. 1—52, on 'The Greek Anthology'] is an + enthusiastic champion for our side, but, oddly enough, he never + strikes me as knowing much about the matter!"<br><br><br> + + "Your Latin verses [translating Cowley] I greatly enjoy. The dear old + Abraham goes straight off into your beautiful lines. Of course he + has not a scrap of modern <i>impedimenta</i>. You go through the customs + at the frontier with a whistle and a smile. You have <i>nothing to + declare</i>. The blessed old man by your side is himself a Roman to + begin with, and you pass together as cheerfully as possible.…"<br><br><br> + + "I have also been reading Karl Elze's <i>Essays on Shakespeare</i>. + He is not bad, but don't you resent the imperturbable confidence of + men who, after attributing a play of Shakespeare's to two authors, + proceed to suggest a third, urged thereto by some fatuous and + self-sought exigency?"<br><br><br> + + "Did you ever try to write a Burns song? I mean the equivalent in + ordinary English of his Scotch. Can it be done? A Yorkshireman— + could he do it? A Lancashire man (Waugh)? I hardly think so. + The Ayrshire dialect has a <i>Schwung</i> and a confidence that no-English + county can pretend to. Our dialects are apologetic things, + half-ashamed, half-insolent. Burns has no doubts, and for his + audience unhesitatingly demands the universe.…"<br><br><br> + + "There is an ethos in Fitzgerald's letters which is so exquisitely + idyllic as to be almost heavenly. He takes you with him, exactly + accommodating his pace to yours, walks through meadows so tranquil, + and yet abounding in the most delicate surprises. And these + surprises seem so familiar, just as if they had originated with + yourself. What delicious blending! What a perfect interweft of + thought and diction! What a <i>sweet</i> companion!"<br><br><br> +</blockquote></blockquote> + + +<p>Lastly, let me quote a passage in which his thoughts return to Clifton, +where it had been suggested that Greek should be omitted from the ordinary +form-routine and taught in "sets," or separate classes:—</p> + +<blockquote><blockquote> +<p class = "noindent"> "This is disturbing about Greek, 'set' Greek. Yes, you would fill + your school to overflowing, of course you would, so long as other + places did not abandon the old lines. But it would be detestable + treachery to the cause of education, of humanity. To me the + <i>learning</i> of any blessed thing is a matter of little moment. + Greek is not learned by nineteen-twentieths of our Public School + boys. But it is a baptism into a cult, a faith, not more irrational + than other faiths or cults; the baptism of a regeneration which + releases us from I know not what original sin. And if a man does not + see that, he is a fool, such a fool that I shouldn't wonder if he + gravely asked me to explain what I meant by original sin in such a + connection.…"</p> +</blockquote></blockquote> + +<p>So his thoughts reverted to the school he had left in 1892. In October, +1897, he returned to it on a visit. He was the guest of one of the house +masters, Mr. Tait, and on Friday evening, October 29th, gave an address to +the boys of the house. He had spoken for some minutes with brightness and +vigour, when his voice grew thick and he was seen to stagger. He died in +less than two hours.</p> + +<p>His letters have been collected and piously given to the world by Mr. +Irwin, one of his closest friends. By far the greatest number of them +belong to those last five years in the Island—the happiest, perhaps, of +his life, certainly the happiest temperamentally. "Never the time and the +place…" but at least Brown was more fortunate than most men. +He realised his dream, and it did not disappoint him. He could not carry +off his friends to share it (and it belongs to criticism of these volumes +to say that he was exceptionally happy in his friends), but he could +return and visit them or stay at home and write to them concerning the +realisation, and be sure they understood. Therefore, although we desire +more letters of the Clifton period—although twenty years are omitted, +left blank to us—those that survive confirm a fame which, although never +wide, was always unquestioned within its range. There could be no +possibility of doubt concerning Brown. He was absolute. He lived a +fierce, shy, spiritual life; a wise man, keeping the child in his heart: +he loved much and desired permanence in the love of his kind. +"Diuturnity," says his great seventeenth-century namesake, "is a dream and +folly of expectation. There is nothing strictly immortal but +immortality." And yet, <i>prosit amâsse!</i></p> +<br><br><br><br> + +<p>The railway took me on to Oxford—</p> + +<blockquote><blockquote> +<p class = "noindent"><span class = "ind3"> "Like faithful hound returning</span><br> + For old sake's sake to each loved track<br> +<span class = "ind3"> With heart and memory burning."</span><br></p> +</blockquote></blockquote> + +<p>"I well remember," writes Mrs. Green of her husband, the late John Richard +Green, "the passionate enthusiasm with which he watched from the train for +the first sight of the Oxford towers against the sky:" and although our +enthusiasm nowadays has to feed on a far tamer view than that which +saluted our forefathers when the stage-coach topped the rise of Shotover +and its passengers beheld the city spread at their feet, yet what faithful +son of Oxford can see her towers rise above the water-meadows and re-greet +them without a thrill?</p> + +<p>In the year 1688, and in a book entitled <i>The Guardian's Instruction</i>, +a Mr. Stephen Penton gave the world a pleasing and lifelike little +narrative—superior, in my opinion, to anything in <i>Verdant Green</i>— +telling us how a reluctant father was persuaded to send his son to Oxford; +what doubts, misgivings, hesitations he had, and how they were overcome. +I take the story to be fictitious. It is written in the first person, +professedly by the hesitating parent: but the parent can hardly have been +Penton, for the story will not square with what we know of his life. +The actual Penton was born, it seems, in 1640, and educated at Winchester +and New College; proceeded to his fellowship, resided from 1659 to 1670, +and was Principal of St. Edmund's Hall from 1675 to 1683. He appears to +have been chaplain to the Earl of Aylesbury, and, according to Antony à +Wood, possessed a "rambling head." He died in 1706.</p> + +<p>The writer in <i>The Guardian's Instruction</i> is portrayed for us—or is +allowed to portray himself—rather as an honest country squire, who had +himself spent a year or so of his youth at the University, but had +withdrawn when Oxford was invaded by the Court and the trouble between +King Charles and Parliament came to a head: and "God's grace, the Good +example of my parents, and a natural love of virtue secured me so far as +to leave Oxford, though not much more learned, yet not much worse than I +came thither." A chill testimonial! In short, the old squire (as I will +take leave to call him) nursed a somewhat crotchety detestation of the +place, insomuch "that when I came to have children, I did almost <i>swear</i> +them in their childhood never to be friends with Oxford."</p> + +<p>He tried his eldest son with a course of foreign travel as a substitute +for University training; but this turned out a failure, and he had the +good sense to acknowledge his mistake. So for his second boy he cast +about to find a profession; "but what course to take I was at a loss: +Cambridge was so far off, I could not have an eye upon him; Oxford I was +angry with."</p> + +<p>In this fix he consulted with a neighbour, "an old grave learned divine," +and rigid Churchman, who confessed that many of the charges against Oxford +were well grounded, but averred that the place was mending. The truth +was, the University had been loyal to the monarchy all through the +Commonwealth times; and when Oliver Cromwell was dead, and Richard +dismounted, its members perceived, through the maze of changes and +intrigues, that in a little time the heart of the nation would revert to +the government which twenty years before it had hated. And their +impatient hopes of this "made the scholars talk aloud, drink healths, and +curse Meroz in the very streets; insomuch that when the King came in, they +were not only like them that dream, but like them who are out of their +wits, mad, stark, staring mad." This unholy 'rag' (to modernise the old +gentleman's language) continued for a twelvemonth: that is to say, until +the Vice-Chancellor—holding that the demonstration, like Miss Mary +Bennet's pianoforte playing in <i>Pride and Prejudice</i>, had delighted the +company long enough—put his foot down. And from that time the University +became sober, modest, and studious as perhaps any in Europe. The old +gentleman wound up with some practical advice, and a promise to furnish +the squire with a letter of recommendation to one of the best tutors in +Oxford.</p> + +<p>Thus armed, the squire (though still with misgivings) was not long in +getting on horseback with his wife, his daughters, and his young hopeful, +and riding off to Oxford, where at first it seemed that his worst +suspicions would be confirmed; "for at ten o'clock in the inn, there arose +such a roaring and singing that my hair stood on end, and my former +prejudices were so heightened that I resolved to lose the journey and +carry back my son again, presuming that no noise in Oxford could be made +but <i>scholars</i> must do it,"—a hoary misconception still cherished, or +until recently, by the Metropolitan Police and the Oxford City Bench. +In this instance a proctor intervened, and quelled the disturbance by +sending 'two young pert townsmen' to prison; "and quickly came to my +chamber, and perceiving my boy designed for a gown, told me that it was +for the preservation of such fine youths as he that the proctors made so +bold with gentlemen's lodgings." The squire had some talk with this +dignitary, who was a man of presence and suitable address, and of +sufficient independence to deny—not for the first time in history—that +dons were overpaid.</p> + +<p>Next morning the whole family trooped off to call upon the tutor whom +their old neighbour had recommended. Oddly enough, the tutor seemed by no +means overwhelmed by the honour. "I thought to have found him mightily +pleased with the opinion we had of his conduct, and the credit of having a +gentleman's son under his charge, and the father with cap in hand. +Instead of all this he talked at a rate as if the gentry were <i>obliged</i> to +tutors more than tutors to them." The tutor, in short, was decidedly tart +in his admonitions to this honest family—he did not forget, either, to +assure them that (<i>generally</i>) a college tutor was worse paid than a +dancing-master. Here is a specimen of his advice—sound and practical +enough in its way:—</p> + +<blockquote><blockquote> +<p class = "noindent"> "I understand by one of your daughters that you have brought him up a + <i>fine padd</i> to keep here for his health's sake. Now I will tell you + the use of an horse in Oxford, and then do as you think fit. + The horse must be kept at an <i>ale-house</i> or an <i>inn</i>, and he must + have leave to go once <i>every day</i> to see him eat oats, because the + master's eye makes him fat; and it will not be genteel to go often + to an house and spend nothing; and then there may be some danger of + the horse growing <i>resty</i> if he be not used often, so you must give + him leave to go to <i>Abingdon</i> once every week, to look out of the + tavern window and see the maids sell turnips; and in one month or + two come home with a surfeit of poisoned wine, and save <i>any + farther trouble</i> by dying, and then you will be troubled to send + for your horse <i>again</i>.…"</p> +</blockquote></blockquote> + +<p>The humour of college tutors has not greatly altered in two hundred years. +I have known one or two capable of the sardonic touch in those concluding +words. But conceive its effect upon the squire's lady and daughters! +No: you need not trouble to do so, for the squire describes it: "When the +tutor was gone out of the room, I asked how they liked the person and his +converse. My boy clung about his mother and cry'd to go home again, and +she had no more wit than to be of the same mind; she thought him too +weakly to undergo so much hardship as she foresaw was to be expected. +My daughter, who (instead of catechism and <i>Lady's Calling</i>) had been used +to read nothing but speeches in romances, and hearing nothing of <i>Love</i> +and <i>Honour</i> in all the talk, fell into downright <i>scolding</i> at him; +call'd him the <i>merest</i> scholar; and if this were your <i>Oxford</i> breeding, +they had rather he should go to <i>Constantinople</i> to learn manners! +But I, who was older and understood the language, call'd them all great +fools.…"</p> + +<p>On the tutor's return they begged to have his company at dinner, at their +inn: but he declined, kept the young man to dine with him, and next day +invited the family to luncheon. They accepted, fully expecting (after the +austerity of his discourse) to be starved: "and the girles drank +chocolette at no rate in the morning, for fear of the <i>worst</i>." But they +were by no means starved. "It was very pleasant," the squire confesses, +"to see, when we came, the <i>constrain'd</i> artifice of an unaccustomed +complement." There were silver tankards 'heaped upon one another,' +'napkins some twenty years younger than the rest,' and glasses 'fit for a +<i>Dutchman</i> at an <i>East-India Return</i>.' The dinner was full enough for +ten. "I was asham'd, but would not disoblige him, considering with myself +that I should put this man to such a charge of forty shillings at least, +to entertain me; when for all his honest care and pains he is to have but +forty or fifty shillings a quarter; so that for one whole quarter he must +doe the drudgery to my son for nothing." After dinner, our good squire +strolled off to a public bowling-green, "that being the onely recreation I +can affect." And "coming in, I saw half a score of the finest youths the +sun, I think, ever shined upon. They walked to and fro, with their hands +in their pockets, to see a match played by some scholars and some +gentlemen fam'd for their skill. I gaped also and stared as a man in his +way would doe; but a country ruff gentleman, being like to <i>lose</i>, did +swear, at such a rate that my heart did grieve that those fine young men +should <i>hear</i> it, and know there was such a thing as swearing in the +kingdom. Coming to my lodging, I charged my son never to go to such +publick places unless he resolved to quarrel with me."</p> + +<p>And so, having settled the lad and fitted him up with good advice, +the father, mother, and sisters returned home. But the squire, being +summoned to Oxford shortly after to "sit in <i>parliament</i>" (presumably in +the last Parliament held at Oxford, in March, 1681), took that opportunity +to walk the streets and study the demeanour of the "scholars." And this +experiment would seem to have finally satisfied him. "I walk'd the +streets as late as most people, and never in ten days ever saw any scholar +rude or disordered: so that as I grow old, and more engaged to speak the +<i>truth</i>, I do repent of the <i>ill-opinion</i> I have had of that place, +and hope to be farther obliged by a very good <i>account</i> of my son."</p> + +<p>Old Stephen Penton may have had a rambling head; but unless I have thumbed +the bloom off his narrative in my attempt to summarise it, the reader will +allow that he knew how to write. He gives us the whole scene in the +fewest possible touches: he wastes no words in describing the personages +in his small comedy—comic idyll I had rather call it, for after a fashion +it reminds me of the immortal chatter between Gorgo and Praxinoë in the +fifteenth idyll of Theocritus. There the picture is: the honest +opinionated country squire; the acidulous tutor; the coltish son; the +fond, foolish, fussing mother; the prinking young ladies with their curls +and romantic notions; the colours of all as fresh as if laid on yesterday, +the humour quite untarnished after two hundred years. And I wonder the +more at the vivacity of this little sketch because, as many writers have +pointed out, no one has yet built upon University life a novel of anything +like first-class merit, and the conclusion has been drawn that the +elements of profound human interest are wanting in that life. "Is this +so?" asks the editor of Stephen Penton's reminiscences in a volume +published by the Oxford Historical Society—</p> + +<blockquote><blockquote> +<p class = "noindent"> "In spite of the character given to Oxford of being a city of short + memories and abruptly-ended friendships, in spite of the inchoative + qualities of youths of eighteen or twenty, especially in respect to + the 'ruling passion' so dear to novelists, yet surely in the three or + four years spent at Oxford by an incredible company of young students + 'fresh from public schools, and not yet tossed about and hardened in + the storms of life'—some of them Penton's 'finest youths,' some + obviously otherwise—there must be, one would think, abundance of + romantic incident awaiting its Thackeray or Meredith. For how many + have these years been the turning point of a life!…"</p> +</blockquote></blockquote> + +<p>There at any rate is the fact: <i>the</i> novel of University life has not been +written yet, and perhaps never will be. I am not at all sure that <i>The +Adventures of Mr. Verdant Green</i> do not mark the nearest approach to it— +save the mark! And I am not at all sure that <i>The Adventures of Mr. +Verdant Green</i> can be called a novel at all, while I am quite certain it +cannot be called a novel of first-class merit. <i>Tom Brown at Oxford</i> +still counts its admirers, and has, I hear, attained the dignity of +translation into French; but Tom Brown, though robust enough, never seemed +to get over his transplantation from Rugby—possibly because his author's +heart remained at Rugby. 'Loss and Gain' is not a book for the many; and +the many never did justice to Mr. Hermann Merivale's 'Faucit of Balliol' +or Mr. St. John Tyrwhitt's 'Hugh Heron of Christ Church.' Neither of +these two novels obtained the hearing it deserved—and 'Faucit of Balliol' +was a really remarkable book: but neither of them aimed at giving a full +picture of Oxford life. And the interest of Miss Broughton's 'Belinda' +and Mr. Hardy's 'Jude the Obscure' lies outside the proctor's rounds. +Yes (and humiliating as the confession may be), with all its crudities and +absurdities, <i>Verdant Green</i> does mark the nearest approach yet made to a +representative Oxford novel.</p> + +<p>How comes this? Well, to begin with, <i>Verdant Green</i>, with all his +faults, did contrive to be exceedingly youthful and high-spirited. And in +the second place, with all its faults, it did convey some sense of what I +may call the 'glamour' of Oxford. Now the University, on its part, being +fed with a constant supply of young men between the ages of eighteen and +twenty, does contrive, with all its faults, to keep up a fair show of +youth and high spirits; and even their worst enemies will admit that +Oxford and Cambridge wear, in the eyes of their sons at any rate, a +certain glamour. You may argue that glamour is glamour, an illusion which +will wear off in time; an illusion, at all events, and to be treated as +such by the wise author intent on getting at truth. To this I answer +that, while it lasts, this glamour is just as much a fact as <i>The Times</i> +newspaper, or St. Paul's Cathedral, just as real a feature of Oxford as +Balliol College, or the river, or the Vice-Chancellor's poker: and until +you recognise it for a fact and a feature of the place, and allow for it, +you have not the faintest prospect of realising Oxford. Each succeeding +generation finds that glamour, or brings it; and each generation, as it +passes, deems that its successor has either found or brought less of it. +But the glamour is there all the while. In turning over a book the other +day, written in 1870 by the Rev. Robert Stephen Hawker, I come on this +passage:—</p> + +<blockquote><blockquote> +<p class = "noindent"> "When I recall my own undergraduate life of thirty years and upwards + agone, I feel, notwithstanding modern vaunt, the <i>laudator temporis + acti</i> earnest within me yet, and strong. Nowadays, as it seems to + me, there is but little originality of character in the still famous + University; a dread of eccentric reputation appears to pervade + College and Hall: every 'Oxford man,' to adopt the well-known name, + is subdued into sameness within and without, controlled as it were + into copyism and mediocrity by the smoothing-iron of the nineteenth + century. Whereas <i>in</i> my time and before it there were distinguished + names, famous in every mouth for original achievements and 'deeds of + daring-do.' There were giants in those days—men of varied renown— + and they arose and won for themselves in strange fields of fame, + record and place. Each became in his day a hero of the Iliad or + Odyssey of Oxford life—a kind of Homeric man."</p> +</blockquote></blockquote> + +<p>To which I am constrained to reply, "Mere stuff and nonsense!" +Mr. Hawker—and more credit to him—carried away Homeric memories of his +own seniors and contemporaries. But was it in nature that Mr. Hawker +should discover Homeric proportions in the feats of men thirty years his +juniors? How many of us, I ask, are under any flattering illusion about +the performances of our juniors? We cling to the old fond falsehood that +there were giants in <i>our</i> days. We honestly believed they were giants; it +would hurt us to abandon that belief. It does not hurt us in the least to +close the magnifying-glass upon the feats of those who follow us. +But this generation, too, will have its magnifying-glass. "There were +giants in our days?" To be sure there were; and there are giants, too, in +these, but others, not we, have the eyes to see them.</p> + +<p>Say that the scales have fallen from our eyes. Very well, we must e'en +put them on again if we would write a novel of University life. And, be +pleased to note, it does not follow, because we see the place differently +now, that we see it more truly. Also, it does not follow, because Oxford +during the last twenty years has, to the eye of the visitor, altered very +considerably, that the characteristics of Oxford have altered to anything +like the same extent. Undoubtedly they have been modified by the +relaxation and suspension of the laws forbidding Fellows to marry. +Undoubtedly the brisk growth of red-brick houses along the north of the +city, the domestic hearths, afternoon teas and perambulators, and all +things covered by the opprobrious name of "Parks-system," have done +something to efface the difference between Oxford and other towns. +But on the whole I think they have done surprisingly little.</p> +<br><br><br><br> + +<p>Speaking as a writer of novels, then, I should say that to write a good +novel entirely concerned with Oxford lies close upon impossibility, and +will prophesy that, if ever it comes to be achieved, it will be a story of +friendship. But her glamour is for him to catch who can, whether in prose +or rhyme.</p> + +<h4>ALMA MATER.</h4> + +<blockquote><blockquote> +<p class = "noindent"> Know you her secret none can utter?<br> +<span class = "ind3"> Hers of the Book, the tripled Crown?</span><br> + Still on the spire the pigeons flutter;<br> +<span class = "ind3"> Still by the gateway flits the gown;</span><br> + Still on the street, from corbel and gutter,<br> +<span class = "ind3"> Faces of stone look down.</span><br><br> + + Faces of stone, and other faces—<br> +<span class = "ind3"> Some from library windows wan</span><br> + Forth on her gardens, her green spaces<br> +<span class = "ind3"> Peer and turn to their books anon.</span><br> + Hence, my Muse, from the green oases<br> +<span class = "ind3"> Gather the tent, begone!</span><br><br> + + Nay, should she by the pavement linger<br> +<span class = "ind3"> Under the rooms where once she played,</span><br> + Who from the feast would rise and fling her<br> +<span class = "ind3"> One poor <i>sou</i> for her serenade?</span><br> + One poor laugh from the antic finger<br> +<span class = "ind3"> Thrumming a lute string frayed?</span><br><br> + + Once, my dear—but the world was young then—<br> +<span class = "ind3"> Magdalen elms and Trinity limes—</span><br> + Lissom the blades and the backs that swung then.<br> +<span class = "ind3"> Eight good men in the good old times—</span><br> + Careless we, and the chorus flung then<br> +<span class = "ind3"> Under St. Mary's chimes!</span><br><br> + + Reins lay loose and the ways led random—<br> +<span class = "ind3"> Christ Church meadow and Iffley track—</span><br> + 'Idleness horrid and dogcart' (tandem)—<br> +<span class = "ind3"> Aylesbury grind and Bicester pack—</span><br> + Pleasant our lines, and faith! we scanned 'em:<br> +<span class = "ind3"> Having that artless knack.</span><br><br> + + Come, old limmer, the times grow colder:<br> +<span class = "ind3"> Leaves of the creeper redden and fall.</span><br> + Was it a hand then clapped my shoulder?<br> +<span class = "ind3"> —Only the wind by the chapel wall.</span><br> + Dead leaves drift on the lute; so… fold her<br> +<span class = "ind3"> Under the faded shawl.</span><br><br> + + Never we wince, though none deplore us,<br> +<span class = "ind3"> We, who go reaping that we sowed;</span><br> + Cities at cock-crow wake before us—<br> +<span class = "ind3"> Hey, for the lilt of the London road!</span><br> + One look back, and a rousing chorus!<br> +<span class = "ind3"> Never a palinode!</span><br><br> + + Still on her spire the pigeons hover;<br> +<span class = "ind3"> Still by her gateway haunts the gown;</span><br> + Ah, but her secret? You, young lover,<br> +<span class = "ind3"> Drumming her old ones forth from town,</span><br> + Know you the secret none discover?<br> +<span class = "ind3"> Tell it—when <i>you</i> go down.</span><br><br> + + Yet if at length you seek her, prove her,<br> +<span class = "ind3"> Lean to her whispers never so nigh;</span><br> + Yet if at last not less her lover<br> +<span class = "ind3"> You in your hansom leave the High;</span><br> + Down from her towers a ray shall hover—<br> +<span class = "ind3"> Touch you, a passer-by!</span><br><br><br> +</blockquote></blockquote> + +<p>[1] "The Quest of the Sangraal," R. S. Hawker.</p> + + +<br><br> +<a name="2HCH0006"><!-- H2 anchor --></a> +<br><br> +<h3>JUNE.</h3> + + + +<p>The following verses made their appearance some years ago in the pages of +the <i>Pall Mall Magazine</i>. Since then (I am assured) they have put a +girdle round the world, and threaten, if not to keep pace with the banjo +hymned by Mr. Kipling, at least to become the most widely-diffused of +their author's works. I take it to be of a piece with his usual +perversity that until now they have never been republished except for +private amusement.</p> + +<p>They belong to a mood, a moment, and I cannot be at pains to rewrite a +single stanza, even though an allusion to 'Oom Paul' cries out to be +altered or suppressed. But, after all, the allusion is not likely to +trouble President Kruger's massive shade as it slouches across the Elysian +fields; and after all, though he became our enemy, he remained a +sportsman. So I hope we may glance at his name in jest without a +suspicion of mocking at the tragedy of his fate.</p> + +<h4> THE FAMOUS BALLAD OF THE JUBILEE CUP.</h4> + +<blockquote><blockquote> +<p class = "noindent"> You may lift me up in your arms, lad, and turn my face to the sun,<br> + For a last look back at the dear old track where the Jubilee Cup was + won;<br> + And draw your chair to my side, lad—no, thank ye, I feel no pain—<br> + For I'm going out with the tide, lad, but I'll tell you the tale + again.<br><br> + + I'm seventy-nine, or nearly, and my head it has long turned grey,<br> + But it all comes back as clearly as though it was yesterday—<br> + The dust, and the bookies shouting around the clerk of the scales,<br> + And the clerk of the course, and the nobs in force, and + Is 'Ighness, the Prince of Wales.<br><br> + + 'Twas a nine-hole thresh to wind'ard, but none of us cared for that,<br> + With a straight run home to the service tee, and a finish along the + flat.<br> + "Stiff?" Ah, well you may say it! Spot-barred, and at + five-stone-ten!<br> + But at two and a bisque I'd ha' run the risk; for I was a greenhorn + then.<br><br> + + So we stripped to the B. Race signal, the old red swallow-tail—<br> + There was young Ben Bolt, and the Portland colt, and Aston Villa, and + Yale;<br> + And W. G., and Steinitz, Leander, and The Saint,<br> + And the German Emperor's Meteor, a-looking as fresh as paint;<br><br> + + John Roberts (scratch), and Safety Match, The Lascar, and Lorna + Doone,<br> + Oom Paul (a bye), and Romany Rye, and me upon Wooden Spoon;<br> + And some of us cut for partners, and some of us strung to baulk,<br> + And some of us tossed for stations—But there, what use to talk?<br><br> + + Three-quarter-back on the Kingsclere crack was station enough for me,<br> + With a fresh jackyarder blowing and the Vicarage goal a-lee!<br> + And I leaned and patted her centre-bit, and eased the quid in her + cheek,<br> + With a 'Soh, my lass!' and a 'Woa, you brute!'—for she could do all + but speak.<br><br> + + She was geared a thought too high, perhaps; she was trained a trifle + fine;<br> + But she had the grand reach forward! <i>I</i> never saw such a line!<br> + Smooth-bored, clean-run, from her fiddle head with its dainty ear + half-cock,<br> + Hard-bit, <i>pur sang</i>, from her overhang to the heel of her off hind + sock.<br><br> + + Sir Robert he walked beside me as I worked her down to the mark;<br> + "There's money on this, my lad," said he, "and most of 'em's running + dark;<br> + But ease the sheet if you're bunkered, and pack the scrimmages tight,<br> + And use your slide at the distance, and we'll drink to your health + to-night!"<br><br> + + But I bent and tightened my stretcher. Said I to myself, said I,—<br> + "John Jones, this here is the Jubilee Cup, and you have to do or die."<br> + And the words weren't hardly spoken when the umpire shouted "Play!"<br> + And we all kicked off from the Gasworks end with a "Yoicks!" and a + "Gone away!"<br><br> + + And at first I thought of nothing, as the clay flew by in lumps,<br> + But stuck to the old Ruy Lopez, and wondered who'd call for trumps,<br> + And luffed her close to the cushion, and watched each one as it + broke,<br> + And in triple file up the Rowley mile we went like a trail of smoke.<br><br> + + The Lascar made the running: but he didn't amount to much,<br> + For old Oom Paul was quick on the ball, and headed it back to touch;<br> + And the whole first flight led off with the right, as The Saint took + up the pace,<br> + And drove it clean to the putting green and trumped it there with an + ace.<br><br> + + John Roberts had given a miss in baulk, but Villa cleared with a + punt;<br> + And keeping her service hard and low, The Meteor forged to the front,<br> + With Romany Rye to windward at dormy and two to play,<br> + And Yale close up—but a Jubilee Cup isn't run for every day.<br><br> + + We laid our course for the Warner—I tell you the pace was hot!<br> + And again off Tattenham Corner a blanket covered the lot.<br> + Check side! Check side! Now steer her wide! And barely an inch of + room,<br> + With The Lascar's tail over our lee rail, and brushing Leander's + boom!<br><br> + + We were running as strong as ever—eight knots—but it couldn't last;<br> + For the spray and the bails were flying, the whole field tailing + fast;<br> + And the Portland colt had shot his bolt, and Yale was bumped at the + Doves,<br> + And The Lascar resigned to Steinitz, stale-mated in fifteen moves.<br><br> + + It was bellows to mend with Roberts—starred three for a penalty + kick:<br> + But he chalked his cue and gave 'em the butt, and Oom Paul scored the + trick—<br> + "Off-side—no-ball—and at fourteen all! Mark cock! and two for his + nob!"—<br> + When W. G. ran clean through his lee, and yorked him twice with a + lob.<br><br> + + He yorked him twice on a crumbling pitch, and wiped his eye with a + brace,<br> + But his guy-rope split with the strain of it, and he dropped back out + of the race;<br> + And I drew a bead on The Meteor's lead, and challenging none too + soon,<br> + Bent over and patted her garboard strake, and called upon Wooden + Spoon.<br><br> + + She was all of a shiver forward, the spoondrift thick on her flanks,<br> + But I'd brought her an easy gambit, and nursed her over the banks;<br> + She answered her helm—the darling!—and woke up now with a rush,<br> + While The Meteor's jock he sat like a rock—he knew we rode for his + brush!<br><br> + + There was no one else left in it. The Saint was using his whip,<br> + And Safety Match, with a lofting catch, was pocketed deep at slip;<br> + And young Ben Bolt with his niblick took miss at Leander's lunge,<br> + But topped the net with the ricochet, and Steinitz threw up the + sponge.<br><br> + + But none of the lot could stop the rot—nay, don't ask <i>me</i> to + stop!—<br> + The Villa had called for lemons, Oom Paul had taken his drop,<br> + And both were kicking the referee. Poor fellow! He done his best;<br> + But, being in doubt, he'd ruled them out—which he always did when + pressed.<br><br> + + So, inch by inch, I tightened the winch, and chucked the sandbags + out—<br> + I heard the nursery cannons pop, I heard the bookies shout:<br> + "The Meteor wins!" "No, Wooden Spoon!" "Check!" "Vantage!" + "Leg before!"<br> + "Last lap!" "Pass Nap!" At his saddle-flap I put up the helm and + wore.<br><br> + + You may overlap at the saddle-flap, and yet be loo'd on the tape:<br> + And it all depends upon changing ends, how a seven-year-old will + shape;<br> + It was tack and tack to the Lepe and back—a fair ding-dong to the + Ridge,<br> + And he led by his forward canvas yet as we shot neath Hammersmith + Bridge.<br><br> + + He led by his forward canvas—he led from his strongest suit—<br> + But along we went on a roaring scent, and at Fawley I gained a foot.<br> + He fisted off with his jigger, and gave me his wash—too late!<br> + Deuce—vantage—check! By neck and neck, we rounded into the + straight.<br><br> + + I could hear the 'Conquering 'Ero' a-crashing on Godfrey's band,<br> + And my hopes fell sudden to zero, just there with the race in hand—<br> + In sight of the Turf's Blue Ribbon, in sight of the umpire's tape,<br> + As I felt the tack of her spinnaker crack, as I heard the steam + escape!<br><br> + + Had I lost at that awful juncture my presence of mind?… but no!<br> + I leaned and felt for the puncture, and plugged it there with my toe + …<br> + Hand over hand by the Members' Stand I lifted and eased her up,<br> + Shot—clean and fair—to the crossbar there, and landed the Jubilee + Cup!<br><br> + + "The odd by a head, and leg before," so the Judge he gave the word:<br> + And the Umpire shouted "Over!" but I neither spoke nor stirred.<br> + They crowded round: for there on the ground I lay in a dead-cold + swoon,<br> + Pitched neck and crop on the turf atop of my beautiful Wooden Spoon.<br><br> + + Her dewlap tire was punctured, her bearings all red-hot;<br> + She'd a lolling tongue, and her bowsprit sprung, and her running gear + in a knot;<br> + And amid the sobs of her backers, Sir Robert loosened her girth<br> + And led her away to the knacker's. She had raced her last on earth!<br><br> + + But I mind me well of the tear that fell from the eye of our noble + Prince,<br> + And the things he said as he tucked me in bed—and I've lain there + ever since;<br> + Tho' it all gets mixed up queerly that happened before my spill,<br> + —But I draw my thousand yearly: it'll pay for the doctor's bill.<br><br> + + I'm going out with the tide, lad.—You'll dig me a humble grave,<br> + And whiles you will bring your bride, lad, and your sons + (if sons you have),<br> + And there, when the dews are weeping, and the echoes murmur "Peace!"<br> + And the salt, salt tide comes creeping and covers the popping-crease,<br><br> + + In the hour when the ducks deposit their eggs with a boasted force,<br> + They'll look and whisper "How was it?" and you'll take them over the + course,<br> + And your voice will break as you try to speak of the glorious first + of June,<br> + When the Jubilee Cup, with John Jones up, was won upon Wooden Spoon.<br><br> +</blockquote></blockquote> + +<br><br><br><br> +<p>"To me," said a well-known authority upon education, "these athletics are +the devil." To me no form of athletics is the devil but that of paying +other people to be athletic for you; and this, unhappily—and partly, I +believe, through our neglect to provide our elementary schools with decent +playgrounds—is the form affected nowadays by large and increasing crowds +of Englishmen. The youth of our urban populations would seem to be +absorbed in this vicarious sport. It throngs the reading-rooms of free +public libraries and working men's institutes in numbers which delight the +reformer until he discovers that all this avidity is for racing tips and +cricket or football "items." I am not, as a rule, a croaker; but I do not +think the young Briton concerns himself as he did in the fifties, sixties, +and seventies of the last century with poetry, history, politics, or +indeed anything that asks for serious thought. I believe all this +professional sport likely to be as demoralising for us as a nation as were +the gladiatorial shows for Rome; and I cannot help attributing to it some +measure of that combativeness at second-hand—that itch to fight anyone +and everyone by proxy—which, abetted by a cheap press, has for twenty +years been our curse.</p> + +<p>Curse or no curse, it is spreading; and something of its progress may be +marked in the two following dialogues, the first of which was written in +1897. Many of the names in it have already passed some way toward +oblivion; but the moral, if I mistake not, survives them, and the warning +has become more urgent than ever.</p> + + +<br><br><br> +<h4> THE FIRST DIALOGUE ON CRICKET.</h4> + +<h4> 1897.</h4> + +<p>Some time in the summer of 1897—I think towards the end of August—I was +whiling away the close of an afternoon in the agreeable twilight of +Mr. D—'s bookshop in the Strand, when I heard my name uttered by some one +who had just entered; and, turning about, saw my friend Verinder, in +company with Grayson and a strapping youth of twenty or thereabouts, a +stranger to me. Verinder and Grayson share chambers in the Temple, on the +strength (it is understood) of a common passion for cricket. Longer ago +than we care to remember—but Cambridge bowlers remember—Grayson was +captain of the Oxford eleven. His contemporary, Verinder, never won his +way into the team: he was a comparatively poor man and obliged to read, +and reading spoiled his cricket. Therefore he had to content himself with +knocking up centuries in college matches, and an annual performance among +the Seniors. It was rumoured that Grayson—always a just youth, too— +would have given him his blue, had not Verinder's conscientiousness been +more than Roman. My own belief is that the distinction was never offered, +and that Verinder liked his friend all the better for it. At the same +time the disappointment of what at that time of life was a serious +ambition may account for a trace of acidity which began, before he left +college, to flavour his comments on human affairs, and has since become +habitual to him.</p> + +<p>Verinder explained that he and his companions were on their way home from +Lord's, where they had been 'assisting'—he laid an ironical stress on the +word—in an encounter between Kent and Middlesex. "And, as we were +passing, I dragged these fellows in, just to see if old D—' had +anything." Verinder is a book-collector. "By the way, do you know Sammy +Dawkins? You may call him the Boy when you make his better acquaintance +and can forgive him for having chosen to go to Cambridge. Thebes did his +green, unknowing youth engage, and—as the <i>Oxford Magazine</i> gloomily +prophesied—he bowls out Athens in his later age." The Boy laughed +cheerfully and blushed. I felt a natural awe in holding out an +exceedingly dusty hand to an athlete whose fame had already shaken the +Antipodes. But it is the way of young giants to be amiable; and indeed +this one saluted me with a respect which he afterwards accounted for +ingenuously enough—"He always felt like that towards a man who had +written a book: it seemed to him a tremendous thing to have done, don't +you know?"</p> + +<p>I thought to myself that half an hour in Mr. D—'s shop (which contains +new books as well as old) would correct his sense of the impressiveness of +the feat. Indeed, I read a dawning trouble in the glance he cast around +the shelves. "It takes a fellow's breath away," he confessed. "Such a +heap of them! But then I've never been to the British Museum." + +"Then," said I, "you must be employing researchers for the book you are +writing."</p> + +<p>"What?" he protested. "<i>Me</i> writing a book? Not likely!"</p> + +<p>"An article for some magazine, then?"</p> + +<p>"Not a line."</p> + +<p>"Well, at least you have been standing for your photograph, to illustrate +some book on Cricket that another fellow is writing."</p> + +<p>He laughed.</p> + +<p>"You have me there. Yes, I've been photographed in the act of bowling— +'Before' and 'After': quite like Somebody's Hair Restorer."</p> + +<p>"Well," said I, "and I wish you had contributed to the letterpress, too. +For the wonder to me is, not that you cricketers write books (for all the +world wants to read them), but that you do it so prodigiously well."</p> + +<p>"Oh," said he, "you mean Ranji! But he's a terror."</p> + +<p>"I was thinking of him, of course; but of others as well. Here, for +instance, is a book I have just bought, or rather an instalment of one: +<i>The Encyclopædia of Sport</i>, edited by the Earl of Suffolk and Berkshire, +Mr. Hedley Peek, and Mr. Aflalo, published by Messrs. Lawrence and Bullen: +Part IV., CHA to CRO. I turn to the article on Cricket, and am referred +'for all questions connected with fast bowling, and for many questions +associated with medium and slow' to 'the following paper by Tom +Richardson.'"</p> + +<p>"Tom Richardson ought to know," put in Grayson.</p> + +<p>"Good Heavens!" said I, "I am not disputing that! But I remember Ruskin's +insisting—I think in <i>Sesame and Lilies</i>—that no true artist ever talks +much of his art. The greatest are silent. 'The moment,' says Ruskin, +'a man can really do his work he becomes speechless about it. All words +become idle to him—all theories.' And he goes on to ask, in his +vivacious way, 'Does a bird theorise about building its nest?' +Well, as to that one cannot be sure. But I take it we may call Richardson +a true artist?"</p> + +<p>"Certainly we may."</p> + +<p>"And allow that he can really do his work?"</p> + +<p>"Rather!"</p> + +<p>"Then it seems to me that Ruskin's rule may apply to other arts, but not +to Cricket. For here is Richardson not only talking about fast bowling, +but expressing himself with signal ease and precision. Listen to this, +for instance:—</p> + +<blockquote><blockquote> +<p class = "noindent"> "'A ball is said to <i>break</i> when, on touching the ground, it deviates + sharply from its original line of flight.'</p> +</blockquote></blockquote> + +<p>"And again:—"</p> + +<blockquote><blockquote> +<p class = "noindent"> "'A ball is said to have 'spin' on it when it gains an acceleration of + pace, not necessarily a variation of direction, on touching the + ground.'</p> +</blockquote></blockquote> + +<p>"It would be hard, I think, to improve upon these definitions. But let me +satisfy you that I was not exaggerating when I spoke of the dignity of +Mr. Richardson's English style:—</p> + +<blockquote><blockquote> +<p class = "noindent"> "'The bowler, whether born or made, should cultivate and acquire a + high action and a good swing of arm and body, as such a delivery will + make the ball rise quickly and perpendicularly from the pitch; but + the action must at all costs be easy and free, qualities which + neither imitation nor education must allow to disappear.'</p> +</blockquote></blockquote> + +<p>"We often hear complaints—and reasonable ones for the most part—that the +wage given to first-class professional cricketers is no longer adequate. +But one of the pet arguments for increasing it is that their employment +begins and ends with the summer. Now, I certainly think that, while +bowlers write in this fashion, they can have little or nothing to dread +from the winter months."</p> + +<p>"I declare," said Grayson, "I believe you are jealous!"</p> + +<p>"Well, and why not? For, mark you, Mr. Richardson's is no singular case, +of which we might say—to comfort ourselves—that the Goddess of Cricket, +whom he serves so mightily, has touched his lips and inspired him for a +moment. Turn over these pages. We poor novelists, critics, men of +letters, have no such paper, such type, as are lavished on the experts who +write here upon their various branches of sport. <i>Our</i> efforts are not +illustrated by the Swan Engraving Company. And the rub for us is that +these gentlemen deserve it all! I am not going to admit—to you, at any +rate—that their subjects are of higher interest than ours, or of more +importance to the world. But I confess that, as a rule, they make theirs +more interesting. When Mr. C. B. Fry discourses about Long Jumping, or +Mr. W. Ellis about Coursing, or Mr. F. C. J. Ford upon Australian Cricket, +there are very few novelists to whom I had rather be listening. It cannot +be mere chance that makes them all so eloquent; nor is it that they have +all risen together to the height of a single great occasion; for though +each must have felt it a great occasion when he was invited to assist in +this sumptuous work, I remarked a similar eloquence in those who +contributed, the other day, to Messrs. Longmans' 'Badminton Library.' +When sportsmen take to writing admirable English, and peers of the realm +to editing it, I hardly see where we poor men of letters can expect to +come in."</p> + +<p>"The only cure that I can see," said Verinder, "is for Her Majesty to turn +you into peers of the realm. Some of you suggest this from time to time, +and hitherto it has puzzled me to discover why. But if it would qualify +you to edit the writings of sportsmen—"</p> + +<p>"And why not? These books sell: and if aristocracy have its roots in +Commerce, shall not the sale of books count as high as the sale of beer? +The principle has been granted. Already the purveyors of cheap and +wholesome literature are invited to kneel before the Queen, and receive +the <i>accolade</i>."</p> + +<p>"She must want to cut Tit-bits out of them," put in the Boy.</p> + +<p>"Of course we must look at the proportion of profit. Hitherto the profits +of beer and literature have not been comparable; but this wonderful boom +in books of sport may redress the balance. Every one buys them. When you +entered I was glancing through a volume of new verse, but without the +smallest intention of buying it. My purchases, you see, are all sporting +works, including, of course, Prince Ranjitsinhji's <i>Jubilee Book of +Cricket</i>."</p> + +<p>"Just so," snapped Verinder. "You buy books about sport: we spend an +afternoon in looking on at sport. And so, in one way or another, we +assist at the damnation of the sporting spirit in England."</p> + +<p>When Verinder begins in this style an oration is never far distant. +I walked back with the three to the Temple. On our way he hissed and +sputtered like a kettle, and we had scarcely reached his chamber before he +boiled over in real earnest.</p> + +<p>"We ought never to have been there! It's well enough for the Boy: he has +been playing steadily all the summer, first for Cambridge and afterwards +for his county. Now he has three days off and is taking his holiday. +But Grayson and I—What the deuce have we to do in that galley? +Far better we joined a club down at Dulwich or Tooting and put in a little +honest play, of a week-end, on our own account. We should be crocks, of +course: our cricketing is done. But we should be honest crocks. +At least it is better to take a back row in the performance, and find out +our own weakness, than pay for a good seat at Lord's or the Oval, and be +Connoisseurs of what Abel and Hearne and Brockwell can and cannot do. +If a man wants to sing the praises of cricket as a national game, let him +go down to one of the Public Schools and watch its close or cricket-ground +on a half-holiday: fifteen acres of turf, and a dozen games going on +together, from Big Side down to the lowest form match: from three to four +hundred boys in white flannels—all keen as mustard, and each occupied +with his own game, and playing it to the best of his powers. +<i>Playing it</i>—mark you: not looking on. That's the point: and that's what +Wellington meant by saying—if he ever said it—that Waterloo was won upon +the playing-fields at Eton. In my old school if a boy shirked the game he +had a poor time. Say that he shirked it for an afternoon's lawn-tennis: +it was lucky for him if he didn't find his racquet, next day, nailed up on +the pavilion door like a stoat on a gamekeeper's tree. That was the +sporting spirit, sir, if the sporting spirit means something that is to +save England: and we shall not win another Waterloo by enclosing +twenty-two gladiators in a ring of twenty-two thousand loafers, whose only +exercise is to cheer when somebody makes a stroke, howl when some other +body drops a catch, and argue that a batsman was not out when the umpire +has given him 'leg-before.' Even at football matches the crowd has <i>some</i> +chance of taking physical exercise on its own account—by manhandling the +referee when the game is over. Sport? The average subscriber to Lord's +is just as much of a sportsman as the Spaniard who watches a bull-fight, +and just a trifle more of a sportsman than the bar-loafer who backs a +horse he has never clapped eyes on. You may call it Cricket if you like: +I call it assisting at a Gladiatorial Show. True cricket is left to the +village greens."</p> + +<p>"Steady, old man!" protested the Boy.</p> + +<p>"I repeat it. For the spirit of the game you might have gone, a few years +ago, to the Public Schools; but even they are infected now with the +gladiatorial ideal. As it is you must go to the village green; for the +spirit, you understand—not the letter—"</p> + +<p>"I believe you!" chuckled young Dawkins. "Last season I put in an off day +with the villagers at home. We played the nearest market town, and I put +myself on to bowl slows. Second wicket down, in came the fattest man I +ever saw. He was a nurseryman and seedsman in private life, and he fairly +hid the wicket-keep. In the first over a ball of mine got up a bit and +took him in the ab-do-men. 'How's that?' I asked. 'Well,' said the +umpire, 'I wasn't azackly looking, so I leave it to you. If it hit en in +the paunch, it's 'not out' and the fella must have suffered. But if it +took en in the rear, I reckon it didn't hurt much, and it's 'leg-before.'' +I suppose that is what you would call the 'spirit' of cricket. But, I +say, if you have such a down on Lord's and what you call the gladiatorial +business, why on earth do you go?"</p> + +<p>"Isn't that the very question I've been asking myself?" replied Verinder +testily.</p> + +<p>"Perhaps we have an explanation here," I suggested; for during Verinder's +harangue I had settled myself in the window-seat, and was turning over the +pages of Prince Ranjitsinhji's book.</p> + +<blockquote><blockquote> +<p class = "noindent"> "'It is a grand thing for people who have to work most of their time + to have an interest in something or other outside their particular + groove. Cricket is a first-rate interest. The game has developed to + such a pitch that it is worth taking interest in. Go to Lord's and + analyse the crowd. There are all sorts and conditions of men there + round the ropes—bricklayers, bank-clerks, soldiers, postmen, and + stockbrokers. And in the pavilion are Q.C.'s, artists, archdeacons, + and leader-writers.…'"</p> +</blockquote></blockquote> + +<p>"Oh, come!" Grayson puts in. "Isn't that rather hard on the stockbroker?"</p> + +<p>"It is what the book says.</p> + +<blockquote><blockquote> +<p class = "noindent"> "'Bad men, good men, workers and idlers, all are there, and all at one + in their keenness over the game.… Anything that puts very many + different kinds of people on a common ground must promote sympathy + and kindly feelings. The workman does not come away from seeing + Middlesex beating Lancashire, or vice versa, with evil in his heart + against the upper ten; nor the Mayfair <i>homme de plaisir</i> with a + feeling of contempt for the street-bred masses. Both alike are + thinking how well Mold bowled, and how cleanly Stoddart despatched + Briggs's high-tossed slow ball over the awning. Even that cynical + <i>nil admirari</i> lawyer—'"</p> +</blockquote></blockquote> + +<p>I pointed a finger at Verinder.</p> + +<blockquote><blockquote> +<p class = "noindent"> "'Even that cynical <i>nil admirari</i> lawyer caught himself cheering + loudly when Sir Timothy planted Hallam's would-be yorker into the + press-box. True, he caught himself being enthusiastic, and broke off + at once—'"</p> +</blockquote></blockquote> + +<p>"When I found it hadn't killed a reporter," Verinder explained. "But I +hope Ranjitsinhji has some better arguments than these if he wants to +defend gladiatorial cricket. At least he allows that a change has come +over the game of late years, and that this change has to be defended?"</p> + +<p>"Yes, he admits the change, and explains how it came about. In the +beginning we had local club cricket pure and simple—the game of your +Village Green, in fact. Out of this grew representative local cricket— +that is, district or county cricket which flourished along with local club +cricket. Out of county cricket, which in those days was only local +cricket glorified, sprang exhibition or spectacular or gladiatorial +cricket, which lived side by side with, but distinct from, the other. +Finally, exhibition and county cricket merged and became one. And that is +where we are now."</p> + +<p>"Does he explain how exhibition and county cricket came, as he puts it, to +be merged into one?"</p> + +<p>"Yes. The introduction of spectacular cricket (he says) changed the basis +of county cricket considerably. For many years the exhibition elevens and +the counties played side by side; but gradually the former died out, and +the new elements they had introduced into the game were absorbed into +county cricket. The process was gradual, but in the end complete. +The old county clubs and the new ones that from time to time sprang up +added the exhibition side of cricket to the old local basis. The county +clubs were no longer merely glorified local clubs, but in addition +business concerns. They provided popular amusement and good cricket; in +fact, they became what they are now—local in name, and partly local in +reality, but also run upon exhibition or spectacular lines."</p> + +<p>"A truly British compromise! Good business at the bottom of it, and a +touch of local sentiment by way of varnish. For of course the final +excuse for calling an eleven after Loamshire (let us say), and for any +pride a Loamshire man may take in its doings, is that its members have +been bred and trained in Loamshire. But, because any such limitation +would sorely affect the gate-money, we import players from Australia or +Timbuctoo, stick a Loamshire cap with the county arms on the head of each, +and confidently expect our public to swallow the fiction and provide the +local enthusiasm undismayed."</p> + +<p>"My dear Verinder, if you propose to preach rank Chauvinism, I have done. +But I don't believe you are in earnest."</p> + +<p>"In a sense, I am not. My argument would exclude Ranjitsinhji himself +from all matches but a few unimportant ones. I vote for Greater Britain, +as you know: and in any case my best arguments would go down before the +sheer delight of watching him at the wicket. Let the territorial fiction +stand, by all means. Nay, let us value it as the one relic of genuine +county cricket. It is the other side of the business that I quarrel +with."</p> + +<p>"Be good enough to define the quarrel."</p> + +<p>"Why, then, I quarrel with the spectacular side of the New Cricket; which, +when you come to look into it, is the gate-money side. How does +Ranjitsinhji defend it?"</p> + +<p>"Let me see. 'Its justification is the pleasure it provides for large +numbers of the public.'"</p> + +<p>"Quite so: the bricklayer and the stockbroker by the ropes, and the +cynical lawyer in the pavilion! But I prefer to consider the interests of +the game."</p> + +<p>"'From a purely cricket point of view,' he goes on, 'not much can be said +against it.'"</p> + +<p>"Let us inquire into that. The New Cricket is a business concern: it +caters for the bricklayer, the stockbroker, and the whole crowd of +spectators. Its prosperity depends on the attraction it offers them. +To attract them it must provide first-class players, and the county that +cannot breed first-class players is forced to hire them. This is costly; +but again the cash comes out of the spectators' pockets, in subscriptions +and gate-money. Now are you going to tell me that those who pay the piper +will refrain from calling the tune? Most certainly they will not. +More and more frequently in newspaper reports of cricket-matches you find +discussions of what is 'due to the public.' If stumps, for some reason or +other, are drawn early, it is hinted that the spectators have a grievance; +a captain's orders are canvassed and challenged, and so is the choice of +his team; a dispute between a club and its servants becomes an affair of +the streets, and is taken up by the press, with threats and +counter-threats. In short, the interest of the game and the interest of +the crowd may not be identical; and whereas a captain used to consider +only the interest of the game, he is now obliged to consider both. +Does Ranjitsinhji point this out?"</p> + +<p>"He seems, at any rate, to admit it; for I find this on page 232, in his +chapter upon 'Captaincy':—</p> + +<blockquote><blockquote> +<p class = "noindent"> "'The duties of a captain vary somewhat according to the kind of match + in which his side is engaged, and to the kind of club which has + elected him. To begin with, first-class cricket, including + representative M.C.C., county and university matches, is quite + different from any other—partly because the results are universally + regarded as more important, partly <i>because certain obligations + towards the spectators have to be taken into consideration. + The last point applies equally to any match which people pay to come + to see</i>.… With regard to gate-money matches. The captains of + the two sides engaged are, during the match, responsible for + everything in connection with it. <i>They are under an obligation to + the public to see that the match is played in such a way as the + public has a reasonable right to expect</i>.'"</p> +</blockquote></blockquote> + +<p>"And pray," demanded Verinder, "what are these 'obligations towards the +spectators,' and 'reasonable rights' of the public?"</p> + +<p>"Well, I suppose the public can reasonably demand punctuality in starting +play; a moderate interval for luncheon and between innings; and that +stumps shall not be drawn, nor the match abandoned, before the time +arranged, unless circumstances make it absolutely necessary."</p> + +<p>"And who is to be judge of these circumstances."</p> + +<p>"The captain, I suppose."</p> + +<p>"In theory, yes; but he has to satisfy the crowd. It is the crowd's +'reasonable right' to be satisfied; and by virtue of it the crowd becomes +the final judge. It allows the captain to decide, but will barrack him if +displeased with his decision. Moreover, you have given me examples to +illustrate this 'reasonable right,' but you have not defined it. +Now I want to know precisely how far it extends, and where it ceases. +Does Ranjitsinhji provide this definition?"</p> + +<p>"No," said I; "I cannot find that he does."</p> + +<p>"To be sure he does not; and for the simple reason that these claims on +the side of the public are growing year by year. Already no one can say +how much they cover, and assuredly no one can say where they are likely to +stop. You observe that our author includes even University matches under +the head of exhibition cricket, in which obligations towards the +spectators have to be taken into account. You remember the scene at +Lord's in 1893 when Wells purposely bowled no-balls; and again in 1896 +when Shine bowled two no-balls to the boundary and then a ball which went +for four byes, the object in each case being to deprive Oxford of the +follow-on. This policy was hotly discussed; and luckily the discussion +spent itself on the question whether play could be at the same time within +the laws and clean contrary to the ethics of cricket. But there was also +a deal of talk about what was 'due to the public'; talk which would have +been altogether wide of the mark in the old days, when Oxford and +Cambridge met to play a mere friendly match and the result concerned them +alone."</p> + +<p>"And is this," I asked, "the sum of your indictment?"</p> + +<p>"Yes, I think that is all. And surely it is enough."</p> + +<p>"Then, as I make out, your chief objections to spectacular cricket are +two. You hold that it gives vast numbers of people a false idea that they +are joining in a sport when in truth they are doing no more than look on. +And you contend that as the whole institution resolves itself more and +more into a paid exhibition, the spectators will tend more and more to +direct the development of the game; whereas cricket in your opinion should +be uninfluenced by those who are outside the ropes?"</p> + +<p>"That is my case."</p> + +<p>"And I think, my dear Verinder, it is a strong one. But there is just one +little point which you do not appear to have considered. And I was coming +to it just now—or rather Prince Ranjitsinhji was coming to it—when you +interrupted us. 'From a purely cricket point of view,' he was saying, +'not much can be said against exhibition cricket.' And in the next +sentence he goes on: 'At any rate it promotes skill in the game and keeps +up the standard of excellence.'"</p> + +<p>"To be sure it does that."</p> + +<p>"And cricket is played by the best players to-day with more skill than it +was by the best players of twenty or forty years ago?"</p> + +<p>"Yes, I believe that; in spite of all we hear about the great Alfred Mynn +and other bygone heroes."</p> + +<p>"Come then," said I, "tell me, Is Cricket an art?"</p> + +<p>"Decidedly it is."</p> + +<p>"Then Cricket, like other arts, should aim at perfection?"</p> + +<p>"I suppose so."</p> + +<p>"And that will be the highest aim of Cricket—its own perfection? And its +true lovers should welcome whatever helps to make it perfect?"</p> + +<p>"I see what you are driving at," said he. "But Cricket is a social art, +and must be judged by the good it does to boys and men. You, I perceive, +make it an art-in-itself, and would treat it as the gardeners treat a fine +chrysanthemum, nipping off a hundred buds to feed and develop a single +perfect bloom."</p> + +<p>"True: we must consider it also as a social art. But, my dear fellow, are +you not exaggerating the destruction necessary to produce the perfect +bloom? You talk of the crowd at Lord's or the Oval as if all these +thousands were diverted from honest practice of the game to the ignoble +occupation of looking on; whereas two out of three of them, were this +spectacle not provided, would far more likely be attending a horse-race, +or betting in clubs and public-houses. The bricklayer, the stockbroker, +the archdeacon, by going to see Lockwood bowl, depopulate no village +green. You judge these persons by yourself, and tell yourself +reproachfully that but for this attraction <i>you</i>, John Verinder, would be +creditably perspiring at a practice-net in Tooting or Dulwich; whereas, +the truth is—"</p> + +<p>"Why are you hesitating?"</p> + +<p>"Because it is not a very pleasant thing to say. But the truth is, your +heart and your conscience in this matter of athletics are a little younger +than your body."</p> + +<p>"You mean that I am getting on for middle age."</p> + +<p>"I mean that, though you talk of it, you will never subscribe to that +suburban club. You will marry; you will be made a judge: you will attend +cricket matches, and watch from the pavilion while your son takes block +for his first score against the M.C.C.</p> + +<blockquote><blockquote> +<p class = "noindent"> "And when with envy Time transported,<br> +<span class = "ind3"> Shall think to rob us of our joys,</span><br><br> + I, with my girls (if I ever have any), will sit on the top of a drag + (if I ever acquire one) and teach them at what to applaud,<br> +<span class = "ind3"> While you go a-batting with your boys."</span></p> +</blockquote></blockquote> + +<p>Verinder pulled a wry face, and the Boy smacked him on the back and +exhorted him to "buck up."</p> + +<p>"And the round world will go on as before, and the sun will patrol Her +Majesty's dominions, and still where the Union Jack floats he will pass +the wickets pitched and white-flannelled Britons playing for all they are +worth, while men of subject races keep the score-sheet. And still when he +arrives at this island he will look down on green closes and approve what +we all allow to be one of the most absolutely gracious sights on earth— +the ordered and moving regiments of schoolboys at cricket. Grayson, +reach round to that shelf against which your chair is tilted; take down +poor Lefroy's poems, and read us that sonnet of his, 'The Bowler.'"</p> + +<p>Grayson found the book and the place, and read:—</p> + +<blockquote><blockquote> +<p class = "noindent"> "Two minutes' rest till the next man goes in!<br> + The tired arms lie with every sinew slack<br> + On the mown grass. Unbent the supple back,<br> + And elbows apt to make the leather spin<br> + Up the slow bat and round the unwary shin,—<br> + In knavish hands a most unkindly knack;<br> + But no guile shelters under the boy's black<br> + Crisp hair, frank eyes, and honest English skin.<br> + Two minutes only! Conscious of a name,<br> + The new man plants his weapon with profound<br> + Long-practised skill that no mere trick may scare.<br> + Not loth, the rested lad resumes the game:<br> + The flung ball takes one maddening, tortuous bound,<br> + And the mid-stump three somersaults in air!"<br></p> +</blockquote></blockquote> + +<p>"Topping!" the Boy ejaculated. "Who wrote it?"</p> + +<p>"His name was Lefroy. He died young. He left Oxford a few years before +we went up. And I think," continued Verinder, musing, "that I, who detest +making acquaintances, would give at this moment a considerable sum to have +known him. Well," he continued, turning to me and puffing at his pipe, +"so you warn Grayson and me that we must prepare to relinquish these and +all the other delights sung by Lefroy and Norman Gale and that other +poet—anonymous, but you know the man—in his incomparable parody of +Whitman: 'the perfect feel of a fourer'—</p> + +<blockquote><blockquote> +<p class = "noindent"> "'The thousand melodious cracks, delicious cracks, the responsive + echoes of my comrades and the hundred thence resulting runs, + passionately yearned for, never, never again to be forgotten.<br><br> + + "'Overhead meanwhile the splendid silent sun, blending all, fusing + all, bathing all in floods of soft ecstatic perspiration.'<br></p> +</blockquote></blockquote> + +<p>"—To all this we must say good-bye. And what do you offer us in +exchange?"</p> + +<p>"Merely the old consolation that life is short, art is long; that while +you grow old, cricket in other hands will be working out its perfection, +and your son, when you have one, will start with higher ideals than you +ever dreamed of."</p> + +<p>"And this perfection—will it ever be attained?"</p> + +<p>"I dare say never. For perhaps we may say after Plato, and without +irreverence, that the pattern of perfect cricket is laid up somewhere in +the skies, and out of man's reach. But between it and ordinary cricket we +may set up a copy of perfection, as close as man can make it, and, by +little and little, closer every year. This copy will be preserved, and +cared for, and advanced, by those professional cricketers against whom the +unthinking have so much to say; by these and by the few amateurs who, as +time goes on, will be found able to bear the strain. For the search after +perfection is no light one, and will admit of no half-hearted service. +I say nothing here of material rewards, beyond reminding you that your +professional cricketer is poorly paid in comparison with an inferior +singer of the music-halls, although he gives twice as much pleasure as +your <i>lion comique</i>, and of a more innocent kind. But he does more than +this. He feeds and guards the flame of art; and when his joints are stiff +and his vogue is past, he goes down as groundman and instructor to a +public school, and imparts to a young generation what knowledge he can of +the high mysteries whose servant he has been: quite like the philosopher +in the <i>Republic</i>—"</p> + +<p>"Steady on!" interposed Grayson. "How on earth will the Boy stand up to +Briggs' bowling if you put these notions in his head? He'll be +awe-struck, and begin to fidget with his right foot."</p> + +<p>"Oh, fire ahead!" said that cheerful youth. He had possessed himself of +Prince Ranjitsinhji's book and coiled himself comfortably into a wicker +chair.—"You're only rotting, I know. And you've passed over the most +important sentence in the whole book. Listen to this: 'There are very few +newspaper readers who do not turn to the cricket column first when the +morning journal comes; who do not buy a halfpenny evening paper to find +out how many runs W.G. or Bobby Abel has made.' That's the long and short +of the matter. Verinder, which do you read first in your morning paper— +the Foreign Intelligence or the Cricket News?"</p> + +<br><br><br> +<h4> THE SECOND DIALOGUE.</h4> + +<h4> 1905.</h4> + +<p>A few days ago—to be precise, on Saturday the 24th of this month—my +friend Verinder reminded me of the long-past conversation. We had met by +appointment at Paddington to travel down to Windsor for the second day of +the Eton and Winchester match, taking with us (or rather, being taken by) +a youngster whom we call The Infant. The Infant, who talks little save in +the bosom of his family, and even so preserves beneath his talk that fine +reticence of judgment which most adorns the age of fifteen, not +unfrequently surprises me by his experiments in the art of living. +On this occasion, while I was engaged in the booking-office and Verinder +in scanning the shelves of Messrs. Smith's bookstall, he had found our +train, chosen our compartment, and laid out twopence in four halfpenny +papers, which he spread on the cushions by way of reserving our seats.</p> + +<p>"But why four," I asked, "seeing there are but three of us?"</p> + +<p>"It will give us more room," he answered simply.</p> + +<p>He had hoped, I doubt not, by this devise to retain the whole compartment; +but the hope was soon and abruptly frustrated by a tall, well-dressed and +pompous man who came striding down the platform while we idled by the +door, and thrusting past us almost before we could give way, entered the +compartment, dropped into a corner seat, tossed his copy of <i>The Times</i> on +to the seat opposite, took off his top-hat, examined it, replaced it when +satisfied of its shine, drew out a spare handkerchief, opened it, flicked +a few specks of dust from his patent-leather boots, looked up while +reaching across for <i>The Times</i>, recognised me with a nod and a "Good +morning!" and buried himself in his paper.</p> + +<p>I on my part, almost before glancing at his face, had recognised him by +his manner for a personage next to whom it has been my lot to sit at one +or two public banquets. I will call him Sir John Crang. He is a +K.C.M.G., a Colonial by birth and breeding, a Member of Parliament, and a +person of the sort we treat in these days with consideration. Since the +second year of Jubilee (in which he was knighted) he and his kind have +found themselves at ease in Sion, and of his kind he has been perhaps the +most fortunate. In his public speeches he alludes to himself humorously +as a hustler. He has married a wealthy lady, in every other respect too +good for him, entertains largely at dinners which should be private but +are reported in the press, and advocates conscription for the youth of +Great Britain. Upon conscription for his native colony, as upon any other +of its duties towards Imperial defence, if you question him, you will find +him sonorously evasive.</p> + +<p>The Infant, accustomed to surprise at the extent of my acquaintance, +gazed at him politely for a moment as we took our seats and the train +moved out of the station. I noted a veiled disapproval in his eye as he +picked up a newspaper, and at that moment Verinder, who had picked up +another, emitted a noise not unlike the snort of the engine as it gathered +speed. I glanced at him in some apprehension. Verinder's bearing toward +strangers is apt to be brutal, and by an instinct acquired as his +companion on old reading-parties I was prepared to be apologetic.</p> + +<p>His ill-humour, however, had nothing to do with Sir John Crang. He had +laid the newspaper across his knee, and was pointing to it with a scornful +forefinger.</p> + +<p>"Look here," he said. "Do you remember a talk we had some years ago—you +and I and Grayson? It started in D—'s shop one afternoon after a Kent +and Middlesex match. You ought to remember, for I picked up the <i>Pall +Mall Magazine</i> a month later and found you had made copy out of it."</p> + +<p>"To be sure," said I. "We discussed cricket, and a number of reputations +then well known, about which the public troubles itself no longer. +Let us try their names upon The Infant here, and discover with how many of +them he is acquainted."</p> + +<p>"We discussed," said Verinder, "the vulgarisation of cricket. You made +me say some hard things about it, but be hanged to me if anything I +prophesied then came near to <i>this</i>! Listen—</p> + +<blockquote><blockquote> +<p class = "noindent"> "'I suppose I may say that, after some luck at starting, I played a + pretty good innings: but a total of 240 is poor enough for first + knock on such a wicket as Hove, and, as things stand, the omens are + against us. However, as I write this wire the clouds are gathering, + and there's no denying that a downfall during the night may help our + chances.'"</p> +</blockquote></blockquote> + +<p>"What on earth are you reading?" I asked.</p> + +<p>"Stay a moment. Here's another—</p> + +<blockquote><blockquote> +<p class = "noindent"> "'With Jones's wicket down, the opposition declared, somewhat to the + annoyance of the crowd: and indeed, with Robinson set and playing the + prettiest strokes all around the wicket, I must admit that they + voiced a natural disappointment. They had paid their money, and, + after the long period of stonewalling which preceded the tea + interval, a crowded hour of glorious life would have been + exhilarating, and perhaps was no more than their due. + Dickson, however, took his barracking good-humouredly. Towards the + end Jones had twice appealed against the light.'"</p> +</blockquote></blockquote> + +<p>"I suppose," said I, "that is how cricket strikes the Yellow Press. +Who are the reporters?"</p> + +<p>"The reporters are the captains of two county teams—two first-class +county teams; and they are writing of a match actually in progress at this +moment. Observe A.'s fine sense of loyalty to a captain's duty in his +published opinion that his side is in a bad way. Remark his chivalrous +hope for a sodden wicket to-morrow."</p> + +<p>"It is pretty dirty," I agreed.</p> + +<p>Verinder snorted. "I once tried to kill a man at mid-on for wearing a +pink shirt. But these fellows! They ought to wear yellow flannels."</p> + +<p>"What, by the way, is the tea interval?" I asked.</p> + +<p>"It is an interval," answered Verinder seriously, "in which the opposing +captains adjourn to the post office and send telegrams about themselves +and one another."</p> + +<p>"Excuse me," put in Sir John Crang, looking up from his <i>Times</i> and +addressing me, "but I quite agree with what you and your friend are +saying. Interest in the Australian tour, for instance, I can understand; +it promotes good feeling, and anything that draws closer the bonds of +interest between ourselves and the colonies is an imperial asset."</p> + +<p>"Good Lord!" murmured Verinder.</p> + +<p>Sir John fortunately did not hear him. "But I agree with you," he +continued, "in condemning this popular craze for cricket <i>per se</i>, which +is after all but a game with a ball and some sticks. I will not go the +length of our imperial poet and dub its votaries 'flannelled fools.' +That was poetical license, eh? though pardonable under the circumstances. +But, as he has said elsewhere, 'How little they know of England who only +England know.'" (At this point I reached out a foot and trod hard on +Verinder's toe.) "And to the broader outlook—I speak as a pretty wide +traveller—this insular absorption in a mere game is bewildering."</p> + +<p>"Infant!" said Verinder suddenly, still under repression of my foot, +"What are you reading?"</p> + +<p>The Infant looked up sweetly, withdrawing himself from his paper, however, +by an effort.</p> + +<p>"There's a Johnny here who tells you how Bosanquet bowls with what he +calls his 'over-spin.' He has a whole column about it with figures, just +like Euclid; and the funny thing is, Bosanquet writes just after to say +that the Johnny knows nothing about it."</p> + +<p>"Abandoned child," commanded Verinder, "pass me the paper. You are within +measurable distance of studying cricket for its own sake, and will come to +a bad end."</p> + +<p>Within twenty seconds he and The Infant were intently studying the +diagrams, which Verinder demonstrated to be absurd, while Sir John, a +little huffed by his manner, favoured me with a vision of England as she +should be, with her ploughshares beaten into Morris Tubes.</p> + +<p>In the midst of this discourse Verinder looked up.</p> + +<p>"Let us not despair of cricket," says he. "She has her victories, but as +yet no prizes to be presented with public speeches."</p> + +<p>"Curious fellow that friend of yours," said Sir John, as he took leave of +me on Windsor platform. "Yes, yes, I saw how you humoured him: but why +should he object to a man's playing cricket in a pink shirt?"</p> + +<p>He went on his way toward the Castle, while we turned our faces for Agar's +Plough and the best game in the world.</p> +<br><br> +<a name="2HCH0007"><!-- H2 anchor --></a> +<br><br> +<h3>JULY.</h3> + + +<p>Our Parliamentary Candidate—or Prospective Candidate, as we cautiously +call him—has been visiting us, and invited me to sit on the platform and +give the speeches my moral support. I like our candidate, who is young, +ardent, good-natured, and keeps his temper when he is heckled; seems, +indeed, to enjoy being heckled, and conciliates his opponents by that +bright pugnacity which a true Briton loves better than anything else in +politics. I appreciate, too, the compliment he pays me. But I wish he +would not choose to put his ardour in competition with Sirius and the +dog-days; and I heartily wish he had not brought down Mr. Blank, M.P., +to address us in his support.</p> + +<p>Mr. Blank and I have political opinions which pass, for convenience, under +a common label. Yet there are few men in England whose attitude of mind +towards his alleged principles I more cordially loathe. Not to put too +fine a point upon it, I think him a hypocrite. But he has chosen the side +which is mine, and I cannot prevent his saying a hundred things which I +believe.</p> + +<p>We will suppose that Mr. Blank is a far honester fellow than I am able to +think him. Still, and at the best, he is a sort of composite photograph +of your average Member of Parliament—the type of man to whom Great +Britain commits the direction of her affairs and, by consequence, her +well-doing and her well-being and her honour. Liberal or Conservative, +are not the features pretty much the same? a solid man, well past fifty, +who has spent the prime of his life in business and withdrawn from it with +a good reputation and a credit balance equally satisfactory to himself and +his bankers. Or it may be that he has not actually retired but has turned +to politics to fill up those leisure hours which are the reward or +vexation (as he chooses to look at them) of a prosperous man of business; +for, as Bagehot pointed out, the life of a man of business who employs his +own capital, and employs it nearly always in the same way, is by no means +fully employed. "If such a man is very busy, it is a sign of something +wrong. Either he is working at detail, which subordinates would do +better, or he is engaged in too many speculations." In consequence our +commerce abounds with men of great business ability and experience who, +being short of occupation, are glad enough to fill up their time with work +in Parliament, as well as proud to write M.P. after their names. +For my part I can think of nothing better calculated to reassure anyone +whose dreams are haunted by apprehensions of wild-cat legislative schemes, +or the imminence of a Radical millennium, than five minutes' contemplation +of our champions of progress as they recline together, dignified and +whiskered and bland, upon the benches of St. Stephen's.</p> + +<p>But let us proceed with our portrait, which I vow is a most pleasing one. +Our typical legislator is of decent birth, or at least hopeful of +acquiring what he rightly protests to be but 'the guinea stamp' by +judiciously munificent contributions to his party's purse; honest and +scrupulous in dealing; neither so honest nor so scrupulous in thinking; +addicted to phrases and a trifle too impatient of their meaning, yet of +proved carefulness in drawing the line between phrase and practice; a +first-rate committeeman (and only those who have sat long in committee can +sound the depths of this praise); locally admired; with much <i>bonhomie</i> +of manner, backed by a reputation for standing no nonsense; good-tempered, +honestly anxious to reconcile conflicting interests and do the best for +the unconflicting ones of himself and his country; but above all a man who +knows where to stop. I vow (I repeat) he makes a dignified and amiable +figure. One can easily understand why people like to be represented by +such a man. It gives a feeling of security—a somewhat illusory one, I +believe; and security is the first instinct of a state. One can +understand, why the exhortations, dehortations, precepts, and instructions +of parents, preachers, schoolmasters tend explicitly and implicitly to the +reproduction of this admired bloom.</p> + +<p>Yet one may whisper that it has—shall we say?—its failings; and its +failings are just those which are least to be commended to the emulation +of youth. It is, for instance, constitutionally timid. Violent action of +any kind will stampede it in a panic, and, like the Countess in <i>Evan +Harrington</i>, it "does not ruffle well." It betrays (I think) ill-breeding +in its disproportionate terror whenever an anarchist bomb explodes, and in +the ferocity of its terror it can be crueller than the assailant. +"My good people," it provokes one to say, "by all means stamp out these +dangers, but composedly, as becomes men conscious of their strength. +Even allowing for the unscrupulousness of your assailant, you have still +nine hundred and ninety-nine out of a thousand of the odds in your favour; +and so long as you answer the explosions of weak anarchy by cries +suggestive of the rage of the sheep, you merely raise the uncomfortable +suspicion that, after all, there must be something amiss with a +civilisation which counts you among its most expensive products."</p> + +<p>But in the untroubled hour of prosperity this weakness of breeding is +scarcely less apparent. Our admired bloom is admired rather for not doing +certain things than for doing others. His precepts are cautious and +mainly negative. He does not get drunk (in public at any rate), and he +expends much time and energy in preventing men from getting drunk. But +he does not lead or heartily incite to noble actions, although at times— +when he has been badly frightened—he is ready to pay men handsomely to do +them. He wins and loses elections on questions of veto. He had rather +inculcate the passive than the active virtues. He prefers temperance and +restraint to energy and resolve. He thinks more of the organisation than +the practice of charity, esteems a penny saved as three halfpence gained, +had liefer detect an impostor than help a deserving man. He is apt to +label all generous emotions as hysterical, and in this he errs; for when a +man calls the generous emotions hysterical he usually means that he would +confuse them with hysterics if they happened to him.</p> + +<p>Now the passive virtues—continence, frugality, and the like—are +desirable, but shade off into mere want of pluck; while the active +virtues—courage, charity, clemency, cheerfulness, helpfulness—are ever +those upon which the elect and noble souls in history have laid the +greater stress. I frankly detest Blank, M.P., because I believe him to be +a venal person, a colourable (and no doubt self-deceiving) imitation of +the type. But, supposing him to be the real thing, I still think that, if +you want a model for your son, you will do better with Sir Philip Sidney. +If ever a man illustrated the beauty of the active virtues in his life and +in his death, that man was Sidney; but he also gave utterance in noble +speech to his belief in them. In the <i>Apologie for Poetrie</i> you will find +none of your art-for-art's-sake chatter: Sidney boldly takes the line that +poetry helps men, and helps them not to well-being only, but to +well-doing, and again helps them to well-doing not merely by teaching +(as moral philosophy does) but by inciting. For an instance—</p> + +<blockquote><blockquote> +<p class = "noindent"> "Who readeth Æneas carrying old Anchises on his back that wisheth not + it were his fortune to perform so-excellent an act?"</p> +</blockquote></blockquote> + +<p>There speaks, anticipating Zutphen, the most perfect knight in our +history. Again—</p> + +<blockquote><blockquote> +<p class = "noindent"> "Truly I have known men that even with reading <i>Amadis de Gaule</i> + (which, God knoweth, wanteth much of a perfect poesy) have found + their hearts moved to the exercise of courtesy, liberality, and + especially courage."—</p> +</blockquote></blockquote> + +<p>All active virtues be it noted. "We are not damned for doing wrong," +writes Stevenson, "but for not doing right. Christ will never hear of +negative morality: <i>Thou shalt</i> was ever His word, with which He +superseded <i>Thou shalt not</i>. To make our morality centre on forbidden +acts is to defile the imagination and to introduce into our judgments of +our fellow-men a secret element of gusto.… In order that a man may be +kind and honest it may be needful that he should become a total abstainer: +let him become so then, and the next day let him forget the circumstance. +Trying to be kind and honest will require all his thoughts." Yet how many +times a day will we say 'don't' to our children for once that we say 'do'? +But here I seem to be within reasonable distance of discussing original +sin, and so I return to Mr. Blank.</p> + +<br><br><br><br> +<p>I do not like Mr. Blank; and I disliked his speech the other night so +heartily that it drove me to sit down when I reached home and put my +reflections into verse; into a form of verse, moreover, which (I was +scornfully aware) Mr. Blank would understand as little as the matter of +it. He would think them both impractical. Heaven help the creature!</p> + +<h4> CHANT ROYAL OF HIGH VIRTUE.</h4> + + +<blockquote><blockquote> +<p class = "noindent"> Who lives in suit of armour pent,<br> + <span class = "ind3">And hides himself behind a wall,</span><br> + For him is not the great event,<br> +<span class = "ind3"> The garland, nor the Capitol.</span><br> + And is God's guerdon less than they?<br> + Nay, moral man, I tell thee Nay:<br> + Nor shall the flaming forts be won<br> + By sneaking negatives alone,<br> +<span class = "ind3"> By Lenten fast or Ramazàn,</span><br> + But by the challenge proudly thrown—<br> +<span class = "ind3"> <i>Virtue is that beseems a Man!</i></span><br><br> + + God, in His Palace resident<br> +<span class = "ind3"> Of Bliss, beheld our sinful ball,</span><br> + And charged His own Son innocent<br> +<span class = "ind3"> Us to redeem from Adam's fall.</span><br> + —"Yet must it be that men Thee slay."<br> + —"Yea, tho' it must must I obey,"<br> + Said Christ,—and came, His royal Son,<br> + To die, and dying to atone<br> +<span class = "ind3"> For harlot and for publican.</span><br> + Read on that rood He died upon—<br> +<span class = "ind3"> <i>Virtue is that beseems a Man!</i></span><br><br> + + And by that rood where He was bent<br> +<span class = "ind3"> I saw the world's great captains all</span><br> + Go riding to the tournament—<br> +<span class = "ind3"> Cyrus the Great and Hannibal,</span><br> + Cæsar of Rome and Attila,<br> + Lord Charlemagne with his array,<br> + Lord Alisaundre of Macedon—<br> + With flaming lance and habergeon<br> +<span class = "ind3"> They passed, and to the rataplan</span><br> + Of drums gave salutation—<br> +<span class = "ind3"> <i>Virtue is that beseems a Man!</i></span><br><br> + + Had tall Achilles lounged in tent<br> +<span class = "ind3"> For aye, and Xanthus neigh'd in stall,</span><br> + The towers of Troy had ne'er been shent,<br> +<span class = "ind3"> Nor stay'd the dance in Priam's hall.</span><br> + Bend o'er thy book till thou be grey,<br> + Read, mark, perpend, digest, survey—<br> + Instruct thee deep as Solomon—<br> + One only chapter thou shalt con,<br> +<span class = "ind3"> One lesson learn, one sentence scan,</span><br> +<span class = "ind3"> One title and one colophon—</span><br> + <i>Virtue is that beseems a Man!</i><br><br> + + High Virtue's hest is eloquent<br> +<span class = "ind3"> With spur and not with martingall:</span><br> + Sufficeth not thou'rt continent:<br> +<span class = "ind3"> BE COURTEOUS, BRAVE, AND LIBERAL.</span><br> + God fashion'd thee of chosen clay<br> + For service, nor did ever say<br> + "Deny thee this," "Abstain from yon,"<br> + Save to inure thee, thew and bone,<br> +<span class = "ind3"> To be confirmèd of the clan</span><br> + That made immortal Marathon—<br> +<span class = "ind3"> <i>Virtue is that beseems a Man!</i></span><br><br> +</blockquote></blockquote> +<h4> ENVOY.</h4> + +<blockquote><blockquote> +<p class = "noindent"> Young Knight, the lists are set to-day:<br> + Hereafter shall be long to pray<br> + In sepulture with hands of stone.<br> + Ride, then! outride the bugle blown<br> +<span class = "ind3"> And gaily dinging down the van</span><br> + Charge with a cheer—Set on! Set on!<br> +<span class = "ind3"> <i>Virtue is that beseems a Man!</i></span><br><br> +</blockquote></blockquote> + +<p>A friend to whom I showed these verses remarked that Mr. Blank was indeed +a person who fed his soul upon negatives; but that I possibly did him some +injustice in charging so much of this to timidity, whereas the scent lay +rather in the gusto with which he judged his fellow-men.</p> + +<p>"And, by the way," said he, "is there not some gusto in the scorn with +which you are judging Mr. Blank at this moment?" "Do you remember," I +answered, "how that man, after voting for war the other day, went straight +off to a meeting of the Peace Society and put up a florid appeal to the +Prince of Peace for a time when wars should be no more? Let him be, +however: I do wrong to lose my temper with him. But on this matter of +national timidity I have something to say.…"</p> + +<p>I have been reading John Holland's two <i>Discourses of the Navy</i>, written +in 1638 and 1659, and published the other day by the Navy Records Society. +The object of Mr. Holland's discourses was to reform the Navy, purge it of +abuses, and strengthen it for the defence of this realm; and I have been +curious to compare his methods with those of our own Navy League, which +has been making such a noise for ten years or so. The first thing I +observe is the attitude of mind in which he approaches his subject:—</p> + +<blockquote><blockquote> +<p class = "noindent"> "If either the honour of a nation, commerce or trust with all nations, + peace at home, grounded upon our enemies' fear or love of us abroad, + and attended with plenty of all things necessary either for the + preservation of the public weal or thy private welfare, be things + worthy thy esteem (though it may be beyond thy shoal conceit) then + next to God and thy King give thy thanks for the same to the Navy. + As for honour, who knows not (that knows anything) that in all + records of late times of actions, chronicled to the everlasting fame + and renown of this nation, still the naval part is the thread that + runs through the whole wooft, the burden of the song, the scope of + the text?…"</p> +</blockquote></blockquote> + +<p>He proceeds to enumerate some particular commercial advantages due to our +mastery of the sea, and sums up in these words:—</p> + +<blockquote><blockquote> +<p class = "noindent"> "Suffice it thus far, nothing under God, who doth all, hath brought so + much, so great commerce to this Kingdom as the rightly noble + employments of our navy; a wheel, if truly turned, that sets to work + all Christendom by its motion; a mill, if well extended, that in a + sweet yet sovereign composure contracts the grist of all nations to + its own dominions, and requires only the tribute of its own people, + not for, but towards, its maintenance."</p> +</blockquote></blockquote> + +<p>The eloquence may be turgid, but the attitude is dignified. The man does +not scold; does not terrify. He lays his stress on the benefits of a +strong navy—on the renown it has won for England in the past. He assumes +his readers to be intelligent men, amenable to advice which will help them +to perpetuate this renown and secure these benefits in time to come. +His exordium over, he settles down to an exposition of the abuses which +are impairing our naval efficiency, and suggests reforms, some wisely +conceived, others not so wisely, with the business-like, confident air of +one who knows what he is talking about.</p> + +<p>Now I open the prospectus in which our Navy League started out to make +everyone's flesh creep, and come plump upon language of this sort:—</p> + +<blockquote><blockquote> +<p class = "noindent"> "It is the close, let us suppose, of our second month of war. + The fleet has been neglected, and has been overwhelmed, unready and + unprepared. We have been beaten twice at sea, and our enemies have + established no accidental superiority, but a permanent and + overwhelming one. The telegraph cables have been severed, one and + all; these islands are in darkness."—</p> +</blockquote></blockquote> + +<p>For presumably the gas-mains, as well as the cables, have been 'severed' +(imposing word!)—</p> + +<blockquote><blockquote> +<p class = "noindent"> —"Under a heavy cloud of woe. Invasion is in the air, our armies + are mustering in the south. We are cut off from the world, and can + only fitfully perceive what is happening. Our liners have been + captured or sunk on the high seas; our ocean tramps are in our + enemies' hands; British trade is dead, killed by the wholesale + ravages of the hostile cruisers. Our ports are insulted or held up + to ransom, when news reaches us from India it is to the effect that + the enemy is before our troops, a native insurrection behind. + Malta has fallen, and our outlying positions are passing from our + hands. Food is contraband, and may not be imported. Amid the jeers + of Europe 'the nation of shopkeepers' is writhing in its death + agony."</p> +</blockquote></blockquote> + +<p>Pretty, is it not? But let us have just a little more.</p> + +<h4> "COMMERCIAL COLLAPSE.</h4> + +<blockquote><blockquote> +<p class = "noindent"> "And what of the internal, of the social position? Consols have + fallen to nearly 30; our vast investments in India have been lost; + trade no longer exists.… The railways have no traffic to carry. + … Banks and companies are failing daily. . . The East End of + London is clamouring for bread and peace at any price. If we fall, + we fall for ever.… The working man has to choose whether he will + have lighter taxation for the moment, starvation and irretrievable + ruin for the future…"</p> +</blockquote></blockquote> + +<p>—And so on, till Z stands for Zero, or nothing at all. Or, as the late +Mr. Lear preferred to write:—</p> + +<blockquote><blockquote> +<p class = "noindent"> "Z said, 'Here is a box of Zinc, Get in, my little master! + We'll shut you up; we'll nail you down: we will, my little master! + We think we've all heard quite enough of this your sad disaster!'"</p> +</blockquote></blockquote> + +<p>To speak as seriously as may be, the language is no longer hortatory, like +Holland's, but minatory, even comminatory. It is (as its author would not +deny) the language of panic deliberately employed, a calculated attempt to +strengthen the <i>matériel</i> of the navy at the cost of Englishmen's fears. +Now let me define my feeling towards the Navy League. As an ordinary +British citizen, I must heartily approve its aim of strengthening the navy +and keeping it efficient. As an ordinary reasonable man, I must admit +that its efforts, if rightly directed, may be of great national service. +But language such as I have quoted must (so far as it is not merely +contemptible) be merely demoralising, and anyone who works on the fears of +a nation—and especially of a nation which declines conscription and its +one undoubted advantage of teaching men what war means—does a harm which +is none the less wicked for being incalculable. These Navy Leaguers cry +incessantly for more <i>material</i> strength. They tell us that in material +strength we should at least be equal to any two other countries. +A few months pass, and then, their appetite growing with the terror it +feeds upon, they insist that we must be equal to any three other +countries. Also "it does not appear," they sagely remark, "that Nelson +and his contemporaries left any record as to what the proportion of the +blockading should bear (<i>sic</i>) to one blockaded,"—a curious omission of +Nelson's, to be sure! He may perhaps have held that it depended on the +quality of the antagonists.</p> + +<p>To this a few ordinary stupid Britons like myself have always answered +that no amount of <i>matériel</i> can ever replace <i>morale</i>; and that all such +panic-making is a mischievous attempt to lower the breed, and the more +mischievous because its mischief may for a while be imperceptible. +We can see our warships growing: we cannot see the stamina decaying; yet +it is our stamina on which we must rely finally in the fatal hour of +trial. We said this, and we were laughed at; insulted as unpatriotic—a +word of which one may say in kindness that it would not so readily leap to +the lips of professional patriots if they were able to understand what it +means and, by consequence, how much it hurts.</p> + +<p>Yes, and behold, along comes Admiral Togo, and at one stroke proves that +we were simply, absolutely and henceforward incontestably right! +What were our little three-power experts doing on the morrow of Togo's +victory? They are making irrelevant noises in the halfpenny press, +explaining how Admiral Togo did it with an inferior force, and in a +fashion that belies all their axioms. But I turn to <i>The Times</i> and I +read:—</p> + +<blockquote><blockquote> +<p class = "noindent"> "The event shows that mere material equality is but as dust in the + balance when weighed in the day of battle against superiority of + moral equipment."</p> +</blockquote></blockquote> + +<p>—Which, when you come to think of it, is precisely what Bacon meant when +he wrote:—</p> + +<blockquote><blockquote> +<p class = "noindent"> "Walled Townes, stored Arcenalls and Armouries, Goodly Races of Horse, + Chariots of Warre, Elephants, Ordnance, Artillery and the like: all + this is but a Sheep in a Lion's skin except the Breed and disposition + of the People be stout and warlike. Nay, Number (it selfe) in Armies + importeth not much where the People is of weake Courage: For + (as <i>Virgil</i> saith) <i>it never troubles a Wolfe how many the Sheepe + be</i>."</p> +</blockquote></blockquote> + +<p>Do our friends of the Navy League seriously believe that a principle as +old as humankind can be suddenly upset by the invention of a submarine or +of some novelty in guns? Even in their notions of what material strength +means I hold them to be mistaken. The last resource which a nation ought +to neglect is its financial credit. It was Walpole's long policy of peace +which made possible Pitt's conquests. But I hold with far stronger +conviction that he does wickedly who trades on a nation's cowardice to +raise money for its protection. An old text, my masters! It seems a long +while that some of us were preaching it in vain until Admiral Togo came +along and proved it.</p> + + +<br><br><br><br> +<p>I observe that a Member of Parliament for a West of England constituency +(a better fellow than Mr. Blank, too) has been using one of the arguments +with which these precious experts attacked me; that because I sometimes +write novels I cannot be supposed to think seriously on public affairs. +My only wonder is that those who hold this cloistral view of the province +of a man of letters consider him worthy to pay income-tax.</p> + +<p>I pass over some tempting reflections on the queer anomaly that this +prohibition should be addressed (as it so often is) by writers to writers, +by newspaper writers to men who write books, and (so far as a distinction +can be drawn) by men who write in a hurry to men who write deliberately. +I wish to look quietly into the belief on which it rests and to inquire +how that belief was come by.</p> + +<p>There certainly was a time when such a belief would have been laughed at +as scarcely reasonable enough to be worth discussing. And that time, +oddly enough, was almost conterminous with the greatest era of the +world's literature, the greatest era of political discovery, and the +greatest era of Empire-making. The men who made Athens and the men +who made Rome would have disputed (I fear somewhat contemptuously) the +axiom on which my friend the West Country member builds his case. +They held it for axiomatic that the artist and man of letters ought +not to work in cloistral isolation, removed from public affairs, and +indifferent to them; that on the contrary they are direct servants of +their State, and have a peculiar call to express themselves on matters of +public moment. To convince you that I am not advancing any pet theory of +my own let me present it in the words of a grave and judicious student, +Mr. W. J. Courthope, late Professor of Poetry at Oxford:—</p> + +<blockquote><blockquote> +<p class = "noindent"> "The idea of the State lay at the root of every Greek conception of + art and morals. For though, in the view of the philosopher, the + virtue of the good citizen was not always necessarily identical with + the virtue of the individual man, and though, in the city of Athens + at all events, a large amount of life was possible to the individual + apart from public interests, yet it is none the less true that the + life of the individual in every Greek city was in reality moulded by + the customary life, tradition and character, in one intranslatable + word, by the ηθος of the State. Out of this native soil grew + that recognised, though not necessarily public, system of education + (πολιτικη παιδεια), consisting of reading and writing, music + and gymnastic, which Plato and Aristotle themselves accepted as the + basis of the constitution of the State. But this preliminary + education was only the threshold to a subsequent system of political + training, of which, in Athens at least, every citizen had an + opportunity of availing himself by his right to participate in public + affairs; so that, in the view of Pericles, politics themselves were + an instrument of individual refinement. 'The magistrates,' said he, + in his great funeral oration, 'who discharge public trusts, fulfil + their domestic duties also; the private citizen, while engaged in + professional business, has competent knowledge of public affairs; for + we stand alone in regarding the man who keeps aloof from these latter + not as harmless, but as useless. Moreover, we always hear and + pronounce on public matters when discussed by our leaders, or perhaps + strike out for ourselves correct reasonings upon them; far from + accounting discussion an impediment to action, we complain only if we + are not told what is to be done before it becomes our duty to do it.' + + + "The strenuous exertion of the faculties of the individual in the + service of the State, described in these eloquent words, reflects + itself in the highest productions of Greek art and literature, and is + the source of that 'political' spirit which every one can detect, + alike in the poems of Homer and the sculpture of the Parthenon, as + the inspiring cause of the noblest efforts of imitation. + It prevailed most strongly through the period between the battle of + Marathon and the battle of Chaeronea, and has left its monuments in + such plays as the <i>Persae</i> and <i>Eumeuides</i> of Æschylus, the + <i>Antigone</i> of Sophocles, the <i>Clouds</i> of Aristophanes, the History + of Thucydides and the Orations of Demosthenes, its last embodiment + being perhaps the famous oath of that orator on the souls of those + who risked their lives at Marathon."—<i>History of English Poetry</i>, + vol. i., c 2.</p> +</blockquote></blockquote> + +<p>In the most brilliant age of Greece, then, and of Greek art and letters, +the civic spirit was the inspiring spirit. But as the Greek cities sank +one by one before the Macedonian power and forfeited their liberties, this +civic spirit died for lack of nourishment and exercise, and literature was +driven to feed on itself—which is about the worst thing that can ever +happen to it, and one of the worst things that can happen to a nation. +The old political education gave place to an 'encyclopædic' education. +The language fell into the hands of grammarians and teachers of rhetoric, +whose inventions may have a certain interest of their own, but—to quote +Mr. Courthope again—no longer reflect the feelings and energies of free +political life. Roman literature drives home the same, or a similar, +moral. "The greatness of Rome was as entirely civic in its origin as that +of any Greek city, and, like the Greek cities, Rome in the days of her +freedom, and while she was still fighting for the mastery, preserved a +system of political education, both in the hearth and the Senate, which +was suited to her character. Cato, the Censor, according to Plutarch, + 'wrote histories for his son, with his own hand, in large characters; so +that without leaving his father's house he might gain a knowledge of the +illustrious actions of the ancient Romans and the customs of his country': +and what is of importance to observe," adds Mr. Courthope, "is that, even +after the introduction of Greek culture, Cato's educational ideal was felt +to be the foundation of Roman greatness by the orators and poets who +adorned the golden age of Latin literature." The civic spirit was at once +the motive and vitalising force of Cicero's eloquence, and still acts as +its antiseptic. It breaks through the conventional forms of Virgil's +Eclogues and Georgics, and declares itself exultantly in such passages as +the famous eulogy—</p> + +<blockquote><blockquote> +<p class = "noindent"> "Sed neque Medorum silvae, ditissima terra,<br> + Nec pulcher Ganges atque auro turbidus Hermus<br> + Laudibus Italiæ certent.…"<br></p> +</blockquote></blockquote> + +<p>It closes the last Georgic on a high political note. Avowedly it inspires +the <i>Æneid</i>. It permeates all that Horace wrote. These two poets never +tire of calling on their countrymen to venerate the Roman virtues, to hold +fast by the old Sabine simplicity and:</p> + +<blockquote><blockquote> +<p class = "noindent"> "Pure religion breathing household laws."</p> +</blockquote></blockquote> + +<p>Again, when the mischief was done, and Rome had accepted the Alexandrine +model of education and literary culture, Juvenal reinvoked the old spirit +in his denunciation of the hundred and more trivialities which the new +spirit engendered. It was a belated, despairing echo. You cannot expect +quite the same shout from a man who leads a forlorn sortie, and a man who +defends a proud citadel while yet it is merely threatened. But, allowing +for changed circumstances, you will find that Juvenal's is just the old +civic spirit turned to fierceness by despair. And he strikes out +unerringly enough at the ministers of Rome's decline—at the poets who +chatter and the rhetoricians who declaim on merely 'literary' topics; the +rich who fritter away life on private luxuries and the pursuit of trivial +aims; the debased Greek with his "smattering of encyclopædic knowledge," +but no devotion to the city in which he only hopes to make money.</p> + +<p>Now is this civic spirit in literature (however humble its practitioners) +one which England can easily afford to despise? So far as I know, it has +been reserved for an age of newspapers to declare explicitly that such a +spirit is merely mischievous; that a poet ought to be a man of the study, +isolated amid the stir of passing events, serenely indifferent to his +country's fortunes, or at least withholding his gift (allowed, with +magnificent but unconscious irony, to be 'divine') from that general +contribution to the public wisdom in which journalists make so brave a +show. He may, if he have the singular luck to be a Laureate, be allowed +to strike his lyre and sing of an <i>accouchement</i>; this being about the +only event on which politicians and journalists have not yet claimed the +monopoly of offering practical advice. But farther he may hardly go: and +all because a silly assertion has been repeated until second-rate minds +confuse it with an axiom. People of a certain class of mind seem capable +of believing anything they see in print, provided they see it often. +For these, the announcement that somebody's lung tonic possesses a +peculiar virtue has only to be repeated at intervals along a railway line, +and with each repetition the assurance becomes more convincing, until +towards the journey's end it wears the imperativeness almost of a revealed +truth. And yet no reasonable inducement to belief has been added by any +one of these repetitions. The whole thing is a psychological trick. +The moral impressiveness of the first placard beyond Westbourne Park +Station depends entirely on whether you are travelling from London to +Birmingham, or from Birmingham to London. A mind which yields itself to +this illusion could probably, with perseverance, be convinced that pale +pills are worth a guinea a box for pink people, were anyone interested in +enforcing such a harmless proposition: and I have no doubt that the Man in +the Street has long since accepted the reiterated axiom that a poet should +hold aloof from public affairs, having no more capacity than a child for +understanding their drift.</p> + +<p>Yet, as a matter of fact, the cry is just a cant party trick, used by each +party in its turn. Mr. Kipling writes "Cleared," Mr. Alfred Austin hymns +"Jameson's Ride," and forthwith the Liberals lift hands and voices in +horror. Mr. Watson denounces the Armenian massacres or the Boer War, and +the Unionists can hardly find words to express their pained surprise. +Mr. Swinburne inveighed against Irishmen, and delighted a party; inveighed +against the Czar, and divided a whole Front Bench between shocked +displeasure and half-humorous astonishment that a poet should have any +opinions about Russia, or, having some, should find anybody to take them +seriously. It is all cant, my friends—nothing but cant; and at its base +lies the old dispute between principle and casuistry. If politics and +statecraft rest ultimately on principles of right and wrong, then a poet +has as clear a right as any man to speak upon them: as clear a right now +as when Tennyson lifted his voice on behalf of the Fleet, or Wordsworth +penned his 'Two Voices' sonnet, or Milton denounced the massacres at +Piedmont. While this nation retains a conscience, its poets have a clear +right and a clear call to be the voice of that conscience. They may err, +of course; they may mistake the voice of party for the voice of +conscience: 'Jameson's Ride' and 'The Year of Shame'—one or both—may +misread that voice. Judge them as severely as you will by their rightness +or wrongness, and again judge them by their merits or defects as +literature. Only do not forbid the poet to speak and enforce the moral +conviction that is in him.</p> + +<p>If, on the other hand, politics be a mere affair of casuistry; or worse—a +mere game of opportunism in which he excels who hits on the cleverest +expedient for each several crisis as it occurs; then indeed you may bid +the poet hush the voice of principle, and listen only to the sufficiently +dissonant instruction of those specialists at the game who make play in +Parliament and the press. If politics be indeed that base thing connoted +by the term "<i>drift</i> of public affairs," then the axiom rests on wisdom +after all. The poet cannot be expected to understand the "drift," and had +better leave it to these specialists in drifting.</p> + +<p>But if you search, you will find that poetry—rare gift as it is, and +understood by so few—has really been exerting an immense influence on +public opinion all the while that we have been deluged with assertions of +this unhappy axiom. Why, I dare to say that one-half of the sense of +Empire which now dominates political thought in Great Britain has been the +creation of her poets. The public, if it will but clear its mind of cant, +is grateful enough for such poetry as Mr. Kipling's 'Flag of England' and +Mr. Henley's 'England, my England'; and gratefully recognises that the +spirit of these songs has passed on to thousands of men, women, and +children, who have never read a line of Mr. Henley's or Mr. Kipling's +composition.</p> + +<p>As for the axiom, it is merely the complement of that 'Art for Art's sake' +chatter which died a dishonoured death but a short while ago, and which it +is still one of the joys of life to have outlived. You will remember how +loftily we were assured that Art had nothing to do with morality: that the +novelist, e.g. who composed tales of human conduct, had no concern with +ethics—that is to say with the principles of human conduct: that +"Art's only business was to satisfy Art," and so forth. Well, it is all +over now, and packed away in the rag-bag of out-worn paradoxes; and we are +left to enjoy the revived freshness of the simple truth that an artist +exists to serve his art, and his art to serve men and women.</p> + +<br><br> +<a name="2HCH0008"><!-- H2 anchor --></a> +<br><br> +<h3>AUGUST.</h3> + + +<p>As it was reported to me, the story went that one Sunday morning in August +a family stood in a window not far from this window of mine—the window of +an hotel coffee-room—and debated where to go for divine worship. +They were three: father, mother, and daughter, arrived the night before +from the Midlands, to spend their holiday. "The fisher-folk down here are +very religious," said the father, contemplating the anchored craft— +yachts, trading-steamers, merchantmen of various rigs and nationalities— +in which he supposed the native population to go a-fishing on week-days: +for he had been told in the Midlands that we were fisher-folk. +"Plymouth Brethren mostly, I suppose," said the wife: "we changed at +Plymouth." "Bristol." "Was it Bristol? Well, Plymouth was the last big +town we stopped at: I am sure of <i>that</i>. And this is on the same coast, +isn't it?" "What <i>are</i> Plymouth Brethren?" the daughter asked. +"Oh, well, my dear, I expect they are very decent, earnest people. +It won't do us any harm to attend their service, if they have one. +What I say is, when you're away on holiday, do as the Romans do." +The father had been listening with an unprejudiced air, as who should say, +"I am here by the seaside for rest and enjoyment." He called to the +waiter, "What places of worship have you?" The waiter with professional +readiness hinted that he had some to suit all tastes, "Church of England, +Wesleyan, Congregational, Bible Christian—" "Plymouth Brethren?" +The waiter had never heard of them: they had not, at any rate, been asked +for within his recollection. He retired crestfallen. "That's the worst +of these waiters," the father explained: "they get 'em down for the season +from Lord knows where, Germany perhaps, and they can tell you nothing of +the place." "But this one is not a German, and he told me last night he'd +been here for years." "Well, the question is, Where we are to go? +Here, Ethel,"—as a second daughter entered, buttoning her gloves—"your +mother can't make up her mind what place of worship to try." +"Why, father, how can you <i>ask?</i> We must go to the Church, of course—I +saw it from the 'bus—and hear the service in the fine old Cornish +language."</p> + +<p>Now, I suspect that the friend to whom I am indebted for this story +introduced a few grace-notes into his report. But it is a moral story in +many respects, and I give it for the sake of the one or two morals which +may be drawn from it. In the first place, absurd as these people appear, +their ignorance but differs by a shade or two from the knowledge of +certain very learned people of my acquaintance. That is to say, they know +about as much concerning the religion of this corner of England to-day as +the archaeologists, for all their industry, know concerning the religion of +Cornwall before it became subject to the See of Canterbury in the reign of +Athelstan, A.D. 925-40; and their hypotheses were constructed on much the +same lines. Nay, the resemblance in method and in the general muddle of +conclusions obtained would have been even more striking had these good +persons mixed up Plymouth Brethren (founded in 1830) with the Pilgrim +Fathers who sailed out of Plymouth in 1620, and are already undergoing the +process of mythopœic conversion into Deucalions and Pyrrhas of the United +States of America. Add a slight confusion of their tenets with those of +Mormonism, or at least a disposition to lay stress on all discoverable +points of similarity between Puritans and Mormons, and really you have a +not unfair picture of the hopeless mess into which our researchers in the +ancient religions of Cornwall have honestly contrived to plunge themselves +and us. It was better in the happy old days when we all believed in the +Druids; when the Druids explained everything, and my excellent father +grafted mistletoe upon his apple-trees—in vain, because nothing will +persuade the mistletoe to grow down here. But nobody believes in the +Druids just now: and the old question of the Cassiterides has never been +solved to general satisfaction: and the Indian cowrie found in a barrow at +Land's End, the tiny shell which raised such a host of romantic +conjectures and inspired Mr. Canton to write his touching verses:—</p> + +<blockquote><blockquote> +<p class = "noindent"> +<span class = "ind6"> "What year was it that blew</span><br> +<span class = "ind6"> The Aryan's wicker-work canoe</span><br> +<span class = "ind3"> Which brought the shell to English land?</span><br> +<span class = "ind3"> What prehistoric man or woman's hand,</span><br> + With what intent, consigned it to this grave—<br> + This barrow set in sound of the Ancient World's last wave?"<br><br> + +<span class = "ind6"> "Beside it in the mound</span><br> +<span class = "ind6"> A charmèd bead of flint was found.</span><br> +<span class = "ind3"> Some woman surely in this place</span><br> +<span class = "ind3"> Covered with flowers a little baby-face,</span><br> + And laid the cowrie on the cold dead breast;<br> + And, weeping, turned for comfort to the landless West?"<br><br><br> + +<span class = "ind6"> "No man shall ever know.</span><br> +<span class = "ind6"> It happened all so long ago</span><br> +<span class = "ind3"> That this same childless woman may</span><br> +<span class = "ind3"> Have stood upon the cliffs around the bay</span><br> + And watched for tin-ships that no longer came,<br> + Nor knew that Carthage had gone down in Roman flame."<br></p> +</blockquote></blockquote> + +<p>This cowrie—are we even certain that it was Indian?—that it differed so +unmistakably from the cowries discoverable by twos and threes at times on +a little beach off which I cast anchor half a dozen times every summer? +I speak as a man anxious to get at a little plain knowledge concerning the +land of his birth, and the researchers seem honestly unable to give me any +that does not tumble to pieces even in their own hands. For—and this +seems the one advance made—the researchers themselves are honest +nowadays. Their results may be disappointing, but at least they no longer +bemuse themselves and us with the fanciful and even mystical speculations +their predecessors indulged in. Take the case of our inscribed stones and +wayside crosses. Cornwall is peculiarly rich in these: of crosses alone +it possesses more than three hundred. But when we make inquiry into their +age we find ourselves in almost complete fog. The merit of the modern +inquirer (of Mr. Langdon, for instance) is that he acknowledges the fog, +and does not pretend to guide us out of it by haphazard hypotheses +propounded with pontifical gravity and assurance—which was the way of +that erratic genius, the Rev. R. S. Hawker:—</p> + +<blockquote><blockquote> +<p class = "noindent"> "Wheel-tracks in old Cornwall there were none, but there were strange + and narrow paths across the moorlands, which, the forefathers said, in + their simplicity, were first traced by Angels' feet. These, in truth, + were trodden and worn by religious men: by the Pilgrim as he paced his + way towards his chosen and votive bourne; or by the Palmer, whose + listless footsteps had neither a fixed Kebla nor future abode. + Dimly visible, by the darker hue of the crushed grass, these strait + and narrow roads led the traveller along from one Hermitage to another + Chapelry, or distant and inhabited cave; or the byeways turned aside + to reach some legendary spring, until at last, far, far away, the + winding track stood still upon the shore, where St. Michael of the + Mount rebuked the dragon from his throne of rock above the seething + sea. But what was the wanderer's guide along the bleak unpeopled + surface of the Cornish moor? The Wayside Cross!…"</p> +</blockquote></blockquote> + +<p>Very pretty, no doubt! but, unlike the Wayside Cross, this kind of writing +leads nowhere. We want Mr. Hawker's authority for what 'the forefathers +said, in their simplicity'; without that, what the forefathers said +resembles what the soldier said in being inadmissible as evidence. +We want Mr. Hawker's authority for saying that these paths '<i>in truth</i>, +were trodden, and worn by religious men.' Nay we want his authority for +saying that there were any paths at all! The hypotheses of symbolism are +even worse; for these may lead to anything. Mr. Langdon was seriously +told on one occasion that the four holes of a cross represented the four +evangelists. "This," says he plaintively, "it will be admitted, is going +a little too far, as nothing else but four holes could be the result of a +ring and cross combined." At Phillack, in the west of Cornwall, there is +<i>part</i> of a coped stone having a rude cable mounting along the top of the +ridge. Two sapient young archaeologists counted the remaining notches of +this cable, and, finding they came to <i>thirty-two</i>, decided at once that +they represented our Lord's age! They were quite certain, having counted +them twice. In fact, there seems to be nothing that symbolism will not +prove. Do you meet with a pentacle? Its five points are the fingers of +Omnipotence. With a six-pointed star? Then Omnipotence has taken an +extra finger, to include the human nature of the Messiah: and so on. +It reminds one of the Dilly Song:—</p> + +<blockquote><blockquote> +<p class = "noindent"> "I will sing you Five, O!"<br> + "What is your Five, O?"<br> + "Five it is the Dilly Bird that's never seen but heard, O!"<br> + "I will sing you Six, O!…"<br></p> +</blockquote></blockquote> + +<p>And six is 'The Cherubim Watchers,' or 'The Crucifix,' or 'The Cheerful +Waiters,' or 'The Ploughboys under the Bowl,' or whatever local fancy may +have hit on and made traditional.</p> + +<p>The modern researcher is honest and sticks to facts; but there are next to +no facts. And when he comes to a tentative conclusion, he must hedge it +about with so many 'ifs,' that practically he leaves us in total +indecision. Nothing, for instance, can exceed the patient industry +displayed in the late Mr. William Copeland Borlase's <i>Age of the Saints</i> +—a monograph on Early Christianity in Cornwall: but, in a way, no more +hopeless book was ever penned. The author confessed it, indeed, on his +last page. "There seems to be little ground for hope that we shall be +ever able to gain a perfectly true insight into the history of the epoch +with which we have attempted to deal, or to unravel the meshes of so +tangled a web." He felt his task, as he put it, to be not unlike that of +gathering up the broken pieces of pottery from some ancient tomb, with the +hope of fitting them together so as to make one large and perfect vase, +but finding during the process that they belong to several vessels, not +one of which is capable of restoration as a whole, though some faint +notion of the pristine shape of each may be gained from the general +pattern and contour of its shards. All that can be gained from the +materials at hand is a reasonable probability that Cornwall, before it +bent its neck to the See of Canterbury, had been invaded by three distinct +streams of missionary effort—from Ireland, from Wales, and from Brittany. +But even in what order they came no man can say for certain.</p> + +<p>The young lady in my friend's story wished to hear the service of the +Church of England in 'the fine old Cornish language.' Alas! if Edward VI. +and his advisers had been as wise, the religious history of Cornwall, +during two centuries at least, had been a happier one. It was liberal to +give Englishmen a Liturgy in their own tongue; but it was neither liberal +nor conspicuously intelligent to impose the same upon the Cornishmen, who +neither knew nor cared about the English language. It may be easy to lay +too much stress upon this grievance; since Cornishmen of this period had a +knack of being 'agin the government, anyway,' and had contrived two +considerable rebellions less than sixty years before, one because they did +not see their way to subscribing £2,500 towards fighting King James +IV. of Scotland for protecting Perkin Warbeck, and the other under +Perkin's own leadership. But it was at least a serious grievance; and the +trouble began in the first year of Edward VI.'s reign. The King began by +issuing several Injunctions about religion; and among them, this one: +That all images found in churches, for divine worship or otherwise, should +be pulled down and cast forth out of those churches; and that all +preachers should persuade the people from praying to saints, or for the +dead, and from the use of beads, ashes, processions, masses, dirges, and +praying to God publicly in an unknown tongue. A Mr. Body, one of the +commissioners appointed to carry out this Injunction, was pulling down +images in Helston church, near the Lizard, when a priest stabbed him with +a knife: "of which wound he instantly fell dead in that place. And though +the murderer was taken and sent up to London, tried, found guilty of +murder in Westminster Hall, and executed in Smithfield, yet the Cornish +people flocked together in a tumultuous and rebellious manner, by the +instigation of their priests in divers parts of the shire or county, and +committed many barbarities and outrages in the same." These disturbances +ended in Arundel's rebellion, the purpose of which was to demand the +restoration of the old Liturgy; and, in truth, the Seven Articles under +which they formulated this demand must have seemed very moderate indeed to +their conservative minds. The rebellion failed, of course, after a five +weeks' siege of Exeter; and was bloodily revenged, with something of the +savage humour displayed by Jeffreys in punishing a later Western +rebellion. This part of the business was committed to Sir Anthony +(<i>alias</i> William) Kingston, Knight, a Gloucestershire man, as Provost +Marshal; and "it is memorable what sport he made, by virtue of his office, +upon men in misery." Here are one or two of his merry conceits, which +read strangely like the jests reported by Herodotus:—</p> + +<blockquote><blockquote> +<p class = "noindent"> (1) "One Boyer, Mayor of Bodmin in Cornwall, had been amongst the + rebels, not willingly, but enforced: to him the Provost sent word he + would come and dine with him: for whom the Mayor made great + provision. A little before dinner, the Provost took the Mayor aside, + and whispered him in the ear, that an execution must that day be done + in the town, and therefore required to have a pair of gallows set up + against dinner should be done. The Mayor failed not of the charge. + Presently after dinner the Provost, taking the Mayor by the hand, + intreated him to lead him where the gallows was, which, when he + beheld, he asked the Mayor if he thought them to be strong enough. + 'Yes' (said the Mayor),'doubtless they are.' 'Well, then'(said the + Provost), 'get you up speedily, for they are provided for you.' + 'I hope' (answered the Mayor), 'you mean not as you speak.' + 'In faith' (said the Provost), 'there is no remedy, for you have been + a busie rebel.' And so without respite or defence he was hanged to + death; a most uncourteous part for a guest to offer his host." + —Sir Rich. Baker, 1641.<br><br> + + (2) "Near the same place dwelt a Miller, who had been a busie actor + in that rebellion; who, fearing the approach of the Marshal, told a + sturdy fellow, his servant, that he had occasion to go from home, and + therefore bid him, that if any man came to inquire after the miller, + he should not speak of him, but say that himself was the miller, and + had been so for three years before. So the Provost came and called + for the miller, when out comes the servant and saith he was the man. + The Provost demanded how long he had kept the mill? 'These three + years' (answered the servant). Then the Provost commanded his men to + lay hold on him and hang him on the next tree. At this the fellow + cried out that he was not the miller, but the miller's man. + 'Nay, sir' (said the Provost), 'I will take you at your word, and if + thou beest the miller, thou art a busie knave; if thou beest not, + thou art a false lying knave; and howsoever, thou canst never do thy + master better service than to hang for him'; and so, without more + ado, he was dispatched."—<i>Ibid</i>.<br></p> +</blockquote></blockquote> + +<p>The story of one Mayow, whom Kingston hanged at a tavern signpost in the +town of St. Columb, has a human touch. "Tradition saith that his crime +was not capital; and therefore his wife was advised by her friends to +hasten to the town after the Marshal and his men, who had him in custody, +and beg his life. Which accordingly she prepared to do; and to render +herself the more amiable petitioner before the Marshal's eyes, this dame +spent so much time in attiring herself and putting on her French hood, +then in fashion, that her husband was put to death before her arrival."</p> + +<p>Such was the revenge wreaked on a population which the English of the day +took so little pains to understand that (as I am informed) in an old +geography book of the days of Elizabeth, Cornwall is described as +'a foreign country on that side of England next to Spain.'</p> + +<br><br><br><br> +<p>And now that the holiday season is upon us, and the visitor stalks our +narrow streets, perhaps he will not resent a word or two of counsel in +exchange for the unreserved criticism he lavishes upon us. We are +flattered by his frequent announcement that on the whole he finds us clean +and civil and fairly honest; and respond with the assurance that we are +always pleased to see him so long as he behaves himself. We, too, have +found him clean and fairly honest; and if we have anything left to desire, +it is only that he will realise, a little more constantly, the extent of +his knowledge of us, and the extent to which his position as a visitor +should qualify his bearing towards us. I address this hint particularly +to those who make copy out of their wanderings in our midst; and I believe +it has only to be suggested, and it will be at once recognised for true, +that the proper attitude for a visitor in a strange land is one of +modesty. He may be a person of quite considerable importance in his own +home, even if that home be London; but when he finds himself on strange +soil he may still have a deal to learn from the people who have lived on +that soil for generations, adapted themselves to its conditions and sown +it with memories in which he cannot have a share.</p> + +<p>In truth, many of our visitors would seem to suffer from a confusion of +thought. Possibly the Visitors' Books at hotels and places of public +resort may have fostered this. Our guest makes a stay of a few weeks in +some spot to which he has been attracted by its natural beauty: he idles +and watches the inhabitants as they go about their daily business; and at +the end he deems it not unbecoming to record his opinion that they are +intelligent, civil, honest, and sober—or the reverse. He mistakes. +It is <i>he</i> who has been on probation during these weeks—<i>his</i> +intelligence, <i>his</i> civility, <i>his</i> honesty, <i>his</i> sobriety. For my +part, I look forward to a time when Visitors' Books shall record the +impressions which visitors leave behind them, rather than those which they +bear away. For an instance or two:—</p> + +<blockquote><blockquote> +<p class = "noindent"> (1) "The Rev. and Mrs. '—', of '—', arrived here in August, 1897, + and spent six weeks. We found them clean, and invariably sober and + polite. We hope they will come often."<br><br> + + (2) "Mr. X and his friend Y, from Z, came over here, attired in + flannels and the well-known blazer of the Tooting Bec Cricket Club. + They shot gulls in the harbour, and made themselves a public + nuisance by constant repetition of a tag from a music-hall song, + with an indecent sub-intention. Their behaviour towards the young + women of this town was offensive. Seen in juxtaposition with the + natural beauties of this coast, they helped one to realise how small + a thing (under certain conditions) is man."<br><br> + + (3) "Mr. and Mrs. So-and-so and family spent a fortnight here. + The lady complained that the town was dull, which we (who would have + the best reason to complain of such a defect) do not admit. + She announced her opinion in the street, at the top of her voice; and + expressed annoyance that there should be no band to play of an + evening. She should have brought one. Her husband carried about a + note-book and asked us questions about our private concerns. + He brought no letters of introduction, and we do not know his + business. The children behaved better."<br><br> + + (4) "Mr. Blank arrived here on a bicycle, and charmed us with the + geniality of his address. We hope to see him again, as he left + without discharging a number of small debts."<br><br> +</blockquote></blockquote> + +<p>It is, I take it, because the Briton has grown accustomed to invading +other people's countries, that he expects, when travelling, to find a +polite consideration which he does not import. But the tourist pushes the +expectation altogether too far. When he arrives at a town which lays +itself out to attract visitors for the sake of the custom they bring, he +has a right to criticise, <i>if he feel quite sure he is a visitor of the +sort which the town desires</i>. This is important: for a town may seek to +attract visitors, and yet be exceedingly unwilling to attract some kinds +of visitors. But should he choose to plant himself upon a spot where the +inhabitants ask only to go about the ordinary occupations of life in +quietness, it is the height of impertinence to proclaim that the life of +the place does not satisfy his needs. Most intolerable of all is the +conduct of the uninvited stranger who settles for a year or two in some +quiet town—we suffer a deal from such persons along the south-western +littoral—and starts with the intention of "putting a little 'go' into +it," or, in another of his favourite phrases, of "putting the place to +rights." Men of this mind are not to be reasoned with; nor is it +necessary that they should be reasoned with. Only, when the inevitable +reaction is felt, and they begin to lose their temper, I would beg them +not to assume too hastily that the 'natives' have no sense of humour. +All localities have a sense of humour, but it works diversely with them. +A man may even go on for twenty years, despising his neighbours for the +lack of it. But when the discovery comes, he will be lucky if the +remembrance of it do not wake him up of nights, and keep him writhing in +his bed—that is, if we suppose <i>him</i> to have a sense of humour too.</p> + +<p>An aëronaut who had lost his bearings, descending upon some farm labourers +in Suffolk, demanded anxiously where he was. "Why, don't you know? +You be up in a balloon, bo." A pedestrian in Cornwall stopped a labourer +returning from work, and asked the way to St.—'. "And where might +you come from?" the labourer demanded. "I don't see what affair that is +of yours. I asked you the way to St. '—'." "Well then, if you don't +tell us where you be come from, we bain't goin' to tell you the way to +St. '—'" It seems to me that both of these replies contain humour, and +the second a deal of practical wisdom.</p> + +<p>The foregoing remarks apply, with very little modification, to those +strangers who take up their residence in Cornwall and, having sojourned +among us for a while without ever penetrating to the confidence of the +people, pass judgment on matters of which, because they were above +learning, knowledge has been denied to them. A clergyman, dwelling in a +country parish where perhaps he finds himself the one man of education +(as he understands it), is prone enough to make the mistake; yet not more +fatally prone than your Gigadibs, the literary man, who sees his +unliterary (even illiterate) neighbours not as they are, but as a clever +novelist would present them to amuse an upper or middle class reader. +Stevenson (a greater man than Gigadibs) frankly confessed that he could +make nothing of us:—</p> + +<blockquote><blockquote> +<p class = "noindent"> "There were no emigrants direct from Europe—save one German family + and a knot of Cornish miners who kept grimly by themselves, one + reading the New Testament all day long through steel spectacles, the + rest discussing privately the secrets of their old-world mysterious + race. Lady Hester Stanhope believed she could make something great + of the Cornish: for my part, I can make nothing of them at all. + A division of races, older and more original than that of Babel, + keeps this close esoteric family apart from neighbouring Englishmen. + Not even a Red Indian seems more foreign in my eyes. This is one of + the lessons of travel—that some of the strangest races dwell next + door to you at home."</p> +</blockquote></blockquote> + +<p>This straightforward admission is worth (to my mind) any half-dozen of +novels written about us by 'foreigners' who, starting with the +Mudie-convention and a general sense that we are picturesque, write +commentaries upon what is a sealed book and deal out judgments which are +not only wrong, but wrong with a thoroughness only possible to entire +self-complacency.</p> + +<br><br><br><br> +<p>And yet… It seems to a Cornishman so easy to get at Cornish hearts— +so easy even for a stranger if he will approach them, as they will at once +respond, with that modesty which is the first secret of fine manners. +Some years ago I was privileged to edit a periodical—though short-lived +not wholly unsuccessful—the <i>Cornish Magazine</i>. At the end of each +number we printed a page of 'Cornish Diamonds,' as we called them—scraps +of humour picked up here and there in the Duchy by Cornish correspondents; +and in almost all of them the Cornishman was found gently laughing at +himself; in not one of them (so far as I remember) at the stranger. +Over and over again the jest depended on our small difficulties in making +our own distinctions of thought understood in English. Here are a few +examples:—</p> + +<blockquote><blockquote> +<p class = "noindent">(1) "Please God," said Aunt Mary Bunny, "if I live till this evenin' + and all's well I'll send for the doctor."<br><br> + +(2) "I don't name no names," said Uncle Billy "but Jack Tremenheere's + the man."<br><br> + +(3) "I shan't go there nor nowhere else," said old Jane Caddy, + "I shall go 'long up Redruth."<br><br> + +(4) "I thought 'twere she, an' she thought 'twere I," said Gracey + Temby, "but when we come close 'twadn't narry wan o' us."<br><br> + +(5) A crowd stood on the cliff watching a stranded vessel and the + lifeboat going out to her.<br> + "What vessel is it?" asked a late arrival.<br> + "The <i>Dennis Lane</i>."<br> + "How many be they aboord?"<br> + "Aw, love and bless 'ee, there's three poor dear sawls and wan old + Irishman."<br><br> + +(6) Complainant (cross-examining defendant's witness): "What colour + was the horse?"<br> + "Black."<br> + "Well, I'm not allowed to contradict you, and I wouldn' for worlds: + but I say he wasn't."<br><br> + +(7) A covey of partridges rose out of shot, flew over the hedge, and was + lost to view.<br> + "Where do you think they've gone?" said the sportsman + to his keeper.<br> + "There's a man digging potatoes in the next field. + Ask if he saw them."<br> + "Aw, that's old Sam Petherick: he hasna seed 'em, he's hard o' + hearin'."<br><br> + +(8) <i>Schoolmaster</i>: "I'm sorry to tell you, Mr. Minards, that your son + Zebedee is little better than a fool."<br> + <i>Parent</i>: "Naw, naw, schoolmaster; my Zebedee's no fule; only a bit + easy to teach."<br><br></p> +</blockquote></blockquote> + +<p>[I myself know a farmer who approached the head master of a Grammar School +and begged for a reduction in terms: "because," he pleaded, "I know my +son: he's that thick you can get very little into en, and I believe in +payment by results."]</p> + +<p>Here we pass from confusion of language into mere confusion of thought, +the classical instance of which is the Mevagissey man who, having been +asked the old question, "If a herring and a half cost three-halfpence, how +many can you buy for a shilling?'" and having given it up and been told +the answer, responded brightly, "Why, o' course! Darn me, if I wasn' +thinkin' of pilchards!" I met with a fair Devon rival to this story the +other day in the reported conversation of two farmers discussing the +electric light at Chagford (run by Chagford's lavish water-power). +"It do seem out of reason," said the one, "to make vire out o' watter." +"No," agreed the other, "it don't seem possible: but there,"—after a slow +pause—"'tis bütiful water to Chaggyford!"</p> + +<p>It was pleasant, while the Magazine lasted, to record these and like +simplicities: and though the voyage was not long, one may recall without +regret its send-off, brave enough in its way:—</p> + +<h4> "'WISH 'EE WELL!'</h4> + +<blockquote><blockquote> +<p class = "noindent"> "The ensign's dipped; the captain takes the wheel.<br> +<span class = "ind3"> 'So long!' the pilot waves, and 'Wish 'ee well!'</span><br> + Go little craft, and with a home-made keel<br> + 'Mid loftier ships, but with a heart as leal,<br> +<span class = "ind3"> Learn of blue waters and the long sea swell!</span><br><br> + + "Through the spring days we built and tackled thee,<br> +<span class = "ind3"> Tested thy timbers, saw thy rigging sound,</span><br> + Bent sail, and now put forth unto the sea<br> + Where those leviathans, the critics, be,<br> +<span class = "ind3"> And other monsters diversely profound.</span><br><br> + + "Some bronzed Phoenician with his pigmy freight<br> +<span class = "ind3"> Haply thy herald was, who drave of yore</span><br> + Deep-laden from Bolerium by the Strait<br> + Of Gades, and beside his city's gate<br> +<span class = "ind3"> Chaffered in ingots cast of Cornish ore.</span><br><br> + + "So be thou fortunate as thou art bold;<br> +<span class = "ind3"> Fare, little craft, and make the world thy friend:</span><br> + And, it may be—when all thy journey's told<br> + With anchor dropped and tattered canvas rolled,<br> +<span class = "ind3"> And some good won for Cornwall in the end—</span><br><br> + + "Thou wilt recall, as best, a lonely beach,<br> +<span class = "ind3"> And a few exiles, to the barter come,</span><br> + Who recognised the old West-country speech,<br> + And touched thee, reverent, whispering each to each—<br> +<span class = "ind3"> 'She comes from far—from very far—from home.'"</span><br><br> +</blockquote></blockquote> + +<br><br><br><br> +<p>I have a special reason for remembering <i>The Cornish Magazine</i>, because it +so happened that the first number (containing these hopeful verses) was +put into my hands with the morning's letters as I paced the garden below +this Cornish Window, careless of it or of anything but a doctor's verdict +of life or death in the house above. The verdict was for life.…</p> + +<p>Years ago as a child I used to devour in that wonderful book <i>Good Words +for the Young</i>, the <i>Lilliput Levee</i> and <i>Lilliput Lyrics</i> of the late +William Brighty Rands: and among Rands' lyrics was one upon "The Girl that +Garibaldi kissed." Of late years Rands has been coming to something like +his own. His verses have been republished, and that excellent artist Mr. +Charles Robinson has illustrated them. But I must tell Mr. Robinson that +his portrait of the Girl that Garibaldi kissed does not in the least +resemble her. I speak with knowledge—I the child who have lived to meet +and know the child whom Garibaldi kissed and blessed as the sailors were +weighing anchor to carry him out of this harbour and away from England. +Wild horses shall not drag from me the name of that young person; because +it happened—well, at an easily discoverable date—and she may not care +for me to proclaim her age (as certainly she does not look it).</p> + +<blockquote><blockquote> +<p class = "noindent"> "He bowed to my own daughter,<br> +<span class = "ind3"> And Polly is her name;</span><br> + She wore a shirt of slaughter,<br> +<span class = "ind3"> Of Garibaldi flame—</span><br><br> + + "Of course I mean of scarlet;<br> +<span class = "ind3"> But the girl he kissed—who knows?—</span><br> + May be named Selina Charlotte,<br> +<span class = "ind3"> And dressed in yellow clothes!"</span><br><br></p> +</blockquote></blockquote> + +<p>But she isn't; and she wasn't; for she wore a scarlet pelisse as they +handed her up the yacht's side, and the hero took her in his arms.</p> + +<blockquote><blockquote> +<p class = "noindent"> "It would be a happy plan<br> +<span class = "ind3"> For everything that's human,</span><br> + If the pet of such a man<br> +<span class = "ind3"> Should grow to such a woman!</span><br><br> + + "If she does as much in her way<br> +<span class = "ind3"> As he has done in his—</span><br> + Turns bad things topsy-turvy,<br> +<span class = "ind3"> And sad things into bliss—</span><br><br> + + "O we shall not need a survey<br> +<span class = "ind3"> To find that little miss,</span><br> + Grown to a woman worthy<br> +<span class = "ind3"> Of Garibaldi's kiss!"</span><br><br></p> +</blockquote></blockquote> + +<p>Doggrel? Yes, doggrel no doubt! Let us pass on.</p> + +<br><br><br><br> +<p>In the early numbers of our <i>Cornish Magazine</i> a host of contributors +(some of them highly distinguished) discussed the question, +'How to develop Cornwall as a holiday resort.' 'How to bedevil it' was, I +fear, our name in the editorial office for this correspondence. More and +more as the debate went on I found myself out of sympathy with it, and +more and more in sympathy with a lady who raised an indignant protest—</p> + +<blockquote><blockquote> +<p class = "noindent"> "Unless Cornishmen look to it, their country will be spoilt before + they know it. Already there are signs of it—pitiable signs; + Not many months ago I visited Tintagel, which is justly one of the + prides of the Duchy. The 'swinging seas' are breaking against the + great cliffs as they broke there centuries ago when Arthur and + Launcelot and the Knights of the Round Table peopled the place. + The castle is mostly crumbled away now, but some fraction of its old + strength still stands to face the Atlantic gales, and to show us how + walls were built in the grand old days. In the valley the grass is + green and the gorse is yellow, and overhead the skies are blue and + delightful: but facing Arthur's Castle—grinning down, as it were, + in derision—there is being erected a modern hotel—'built in + imitation of Arthur's Castle,' as one is told!… There is not yet + a rubbish shoot over the edge of the cliff, but I do not think I am + wrong in stating that the drainage is brought down into that cove + where long ago (the story runs) the naked baby Arthur came ashore on + the great wave!"</p> +</blockquote></blockquote> + +<p>In summing up the discussion I confess with shame that I temporised. +It was hard to see one's native country impoverished by the evil days in +which mining (and to a lesser degree, agriculture) had fallen; to see +her population diminishing and her able-bodied sons emigrating by the +thousand. It is all very pretty for a visitor to tell us that the charm +of Cornwall is its primæval calm, that it seems to sleep an enchanted +sleep, and so on; but we who inhabit her wish (and not altogether from +mercenary motives) to see her something better than a museum of a dead +past. I temporised therefore with those who suggested that Cornwall might +yet enrich herself by turning her natural beauty to account: yet even so I +had the sense to add that—</p> + +<blockquote><blockquote> +<p class = "noindent"> "Jealous as I am for the beauty of our Duchy, and delighted when + strangers admire her, I am, if possible, more jealous for the + character of her sons, and more eager that strangers should respect + <i>them</i>. And I do see (and hope to be forgiven for seeing it) that a + people which lays itself out to exploit the stranger and the tourist + runs an appreciable risk of deterioration in manliness and + independence. It may seem a brutal thing to say, but as I had rather + be poor myself than subservient, so would I liefer see my countrymen + poor than subservient. It is not our own boast—we have it on the + fairly unanimous evidence of all who have visited us—that hitherto + Cornishmen have been able to combine independence with good manners. + For Heaven's sake, I say, let us keep that reputation, though at + great cost! But let us at the same time face the certainty that, + when we begin to take pay for entertaining strangers it will be a + hard reputation to keep. Were it within human capacity to decide + between a revival of our ancient industries, fishing and mining, and + the development of this new business, our decision would be prompt + enough. But it is not."</p> +</blockquote></blockquote> + +<p>I despaired too soon. Our industries seem in a fair way to revive, and +with that promise I recognise that even in despair my willingness to +temporise was foolish. For my punishment—though I helped not to erect +them,—hideous hotels thrust themselves insistently on my sight as I walk +our magnificent northern cliffs, and with the thought of that drain +leading down to Arthur's cove I am haunted by the vision of Merlin erect +above it, and by the memory of Hawker's canorous lines:—</p> + +<blockquote><blockquote> +<p class = "noindent"> "He ceased; and all around was dreamy night:<br> + There stood Dundagel, throned; and the great sea<br> + Lay, like a strong vassal at his master's gate,<br> + And, like a drunken giant, sobbed in sleep!"<br><br></p> +</blockquote></blockquote> + + +<br><br> +<a name="2HCH0009"><!-- H2 anchor --></a> +<br><br> +<h3>SEPTEMBER.</h3> + + + +<p>IN THE BAG, <i>August 30th</i>.</p> + +<p>At the village shop you may procure milk, butter, eggs, peppermints, +trowsers, sun-bonnets, marbles, coloured handkerchiefs, and a number of +other necessaries, including the London papers. But if you wish to pick +and choose, you had better buy trowsers than the London papers; for this +is less likely to bring you into conflict with the lady who owns the shop +and asserts a prior claim on its conveniences. One of us (I will call him +X) went ashore and asked for a London 'daily.' "Here's <i>Lloyd's Weekly +News</i> for you," said the lady; "but you can't have the daily, for I +haven't finished reading it myself." "Very well," said I, when this was +reported; "if I cannot read the news I want, I will turn to and write it." +So I descended to the shop, and asked for a bottle of ink; since, oddly +enough, there was none to be found on board. The lady produced a bottle +and a pen. "But I don't want the pen," I objected. "They go together," +said she: "Whatever use is a bottle of ink without a pen?" For the life +of me I could discover no answer to this. I paid my penny, and on +returning with my purchases to the boat, I propounded the following +questions:—</p> + +<blockquote><blockquote> +<p class = "noindent"> (1) <i>Quære</i>. If, as the lady argued, a bottle of ink be + useless without a pen, by what process of reasoning did she omit + a sheet of paper from her pennyworth?<br><br> + + (2) Suppose that I damage or wear out this pen before exhausting + the bottle of ink, can she reasonably insist on my taking a + second bottle as a condition of acquiring a second pen?<br><br> + + (3) Suppose, on the other hand, that (as I compute) one pen will + outlast two and a half bottles of ink; that one bottle will + distil thirty thousand words; and that the late James Anthony + Froude (who lived close by) drew his supply of writing materials + from this shop: how many unused pens (at a guess) must that + distinguished man have accumulated in the process of composing + his <i>History of England?</i><br><br></p> +</blockquote></blockquote> + +<p>We sailed into Salcombe on Saturday evening, in a hired yacht of +twenty-eight tons, after beating around the Start and Prawl against a +sou'westerly wind and a strong spring tide. Now the tide off the Start +has to be studied. To begin with, it does not coincide in point of time +with the tide inshore. The flood, or east stream, for instance, only +starts to run there some three hours before it is high water at Salcombe; +but, having started, runs with a vengeance, or, to be more precise, at +something like three knots an hour during the high springs; and the +consequence is a very lively race. Moreover, the bottom all the way from +Start Point to Bolt Tail is extremely rough and irregular, which means +that some ten or twelve miles of vicious seas can be set going on very +short notice. Altogether you may spend a few hours here as uncomfortably +as anywhere up or down Channel, with the single exception of Portland +Race. If you turn aside for Salcombe, there is the bar to be considered; +and Salcombe bar is a danger to be treated with grave respect. The +<i>Channel Pilot</i> will tell us why:—</p> + +<blockquote><blockquote> +<p class = "noindent"> "There is 8 ft. water at L.W. springs on the bar at the entrance, + but there are patches of 6 feet. Vessels drawing 20 ft. can + cross it (<i>when the sea is smooth</i>) at H.W. springs, and those + of 16 ft. at H.W. neaps. In S. gales there is a breaking, heavy + sea, and no vessel should then attempt the bar; in moderate S. + winds vessels may take it at high water."</p> +</blockquote></blockquote> + +<p>The bearing of these observations on the present narrative will appear +anon. For the present, entering Salcombe with plenty of water and a +moderate S.W. breeze, we had nothing to distract our attention from the +beauty of the spot. I suppose it to be the most imposing river-entrance +on the south coast; perhaps the most imposing on any of the coasts of +Britain. But being lazy and by habit a shirker of word-painting, I must +have recourse to the description given in Mr. Arthur Underhill's <i>Our +Silver Streak</i>, most useful and pleasant of handbooks for yachtsmen +cruising in the Channel:—</p> + +<blockquote><blockquote> +<p class = "noindent"> "As we approach Salcombe Head (part of Bolt Head), its + magnificent form becomes more apparent. It is said to be about + four hundred and thirty feet in height, but it looks very much + more. Its base is hollowed out into numerous caverns, into + which the sea dashes, while the profile of the head, often + rising some forty or fifty feet sheer from the water, slopes + back at an angle of about forty-five degrees in one long upward + sweep, broken in the most fantastic way into numerous pinnacles + and needles, which remind one forcibly of the <i>aiguilles</i> of the + valley of Chamounix. I do not think that any headland in the + Channel is so impressive as this."</p> +</blockquote></blockquote> + +<p>As we passed it, its needles stood out darkly against a rare amber sky— +such a glow as is only seen for a brief while before a sunset following +much rain; and it had been raining, off and on, for a week past. +I daresay that to the weatherwise this glow signified yet dirtier weather +in store; but we surrendered ourselves to the charm of the hour. +Unconscious of their doom the little victims played. We crossed the bar, +sailed past the beautiful house in which Froude spent so many years, +sailed past the little town, rounded a point, saw a long quiet stretch of +river before us, and cast anchor in deep water. The address at the head +of this paper is no sportive invention of mine. You may verify it by the +Ordnance Map. We were in the Bag.</p> + +<p>I awoke that night to the hum of wind in the rigging and the patter of +rain on deck. It blew and rained all the morning, and at noon took a +fresh breath and began to blow viciously. After luncheon we abandoned our +project of walking to Bolt Head, and chose such books from the cabin +library as might decently excuse an afternoon's siesta. A scamper of feet +fetched me out of my berth and up on deck. By this time a small gale was +blowing, and to our slight dismay the boat had dragged her anchors and +carried us up into sight of Kingsbridge. Luckily our foolish career was +arrested for the moment; and, still more luckily, within handy distance of +a buoy—laid there, I believe, for the use of vessels under quarantine. +We carried out a hawser to this buoy, and waited until the tide should +ease and allow us to warp down to it. Our next business was with the +peccant anchors. We had two down—the best anchor and kedge; and supposed +at first that the kedge must have parted. But a couple of minutes at the +capstan reassured us. It was the kedge which had been holding us, to the +extent of its small ability. And the Bag is an excellent anchorage after +all, but not if you happen to get your best anchor foul of its chain. We +hauled up, cleared, warped down to the buoy; and then, hoisting mizzen and +headsails, cast loose and worked back to our old quarters.</p> + +<p>The afternoon's amusement, though exciting enough in its way, was not what +we had come to Salcombe to seek. And since the weather promised nothing +better, and already a heap of more or less urgent letters must be +gathering dust in the post office at Plymouth, we resolved to beat over +the bar at high water next morning (<i>this</i> morning), and, as Mr. Lang puts +it, 'know the brine salt on our lips, and the large air again': for there +promised to be plenty of both between Bolt Head and the Mewstone.</p> + +<br><br><br><br> +<p>'Shun delays, they breed remorse,' and 'Time wears all his locks before' +(or, as the Fourth-form boy translated it in pentameter, +"<i>Tempus habet nullat posteriori comas</i>"). The fault was mine for wasting +an invaluable hour among the 'shy traffickers' of Salcombe. By the time +we worked down to the bar the tide had been ebbing for an hour and a half. +The wind still blew strong from the south-west, and the seas on the bar +were not pleasant to contemplate. Let alone the remoter risk of scraping +on one of the two shallow patches which diversify the west (and only +practicable) side of the entrance, it one of those big fellows happened to +stagger us at the critical moment of 'staying' it would pretty certainly +mean disaster. Also the yacht (as I began by saying) was a hired one, and +the captain tender about his responsibility. Rather ignominiously, +therefore, we turned tail; and just as we did so, a handsome sea, arched +and green, the tallest of the lot, applauded our prudence. All the same, +our professional pride was wounded. To stay at anchor is one thing: to +weigh and stand for the attempt and then run home again 'hard up,' as a +sailor would say, is quite another. There was a Greek mariner, the other +day, put on his trial with one or two comrades for murder and mutiny on +the high seas. They had disapproved of their captain's altering the helm, +and had pitched him incontinently overboard. On being asked what he had +to say in his defence, the prisoner merely cast up his hands and sobbed, +"Oh, cursed hour in which we put about!" We recalled this simple but +apposite story.</p> + +<p>Having seen to our anchor and helped to snug down the mainsail, I went +below in the very worst of tempers, to find the cabin floor littered with +the contents of a writing-case and a box of mixed biscuits, which had +broken loose in company. As I stooped to collect the <i>débris</i>, this +appeal (type-written) caught my eye:—</p> + +<blockquote><blockquote> +<p class = "noindent"> "Dear Sir,—Our paper is contemplating a Symposium of literary + and eminent men—"</p> +</blockquote></blockquote> + +<p>(Observe the distinction.)</p> + +<blockquote><blockquote> +<p class = "noindent"> "—On the subject of 'What is your favourite Modern Lyric?' I need + not say how much interest would attach to the opinion of one + who," etc.</p> +</blockquote></blockquote> + +<p>I put my head up the companion and addressed a friend who was lacing tight +the cover of the mainsail viciously, with the help of his teeth.</p> + +<p>"Look here, X," I said. "What is your favourite Modern Lyric?"</p> + +<p>"That one," he answered (still with the lace between his teeth), "which +begins—</p> + +<blockquote><blockquote> +<p class = "noindent"> "'Curse the people, blast the people,<br> + Damn the lower orders!'"</p> +</blockquote></blockquote> + +<p>X as a rule calls himself a Liberal-Conservative: but a certain acerbity +of temper may be forgiven in a man who has just assisted (against all his +instincts) in an act of poltroonery. He explained, too, that it was a +genuine, if loosely remembered, quotation from Ebenezer Elliott, the Corn +Law Rhymer. "Yet in circumstances of peril," he went on, "and in moments +of depression, you cannot think what sustenance I have derived from those +lines."</p> + +<p>"Then you had best send them up," said I, "to the <i>Daily Post</i>. +It is conducting a Symposium."</p> + +<p>"If two wrongs do not make a right," he answered tartly, "even less will +an assembly of deadly dry persons make something to drink."</p> + + +<br><br><br><br> +<p>That evening, in the cabin, we held a symposium on our own account and in +the proper sense of the term, while the rain drummed on the deck and the +sky-lights.</p> + +<p>X said, "The greatest poem written on love during these fifty years—and +we agree to accept love as the highest theme of lyrical poetry—is George +Meredith's <i>Love in the Valley</i>. I say this and decline to argue about +it."</p> + +<p>"Nor am I disposed to argue about it," I answered, "for York Powell—peace +to his soul for a great man gone—held that same belief. In his rooms in +Christ Church, one night while <i>The Oxford Book of Verse</i> was preparing +and I had come to him, as everyone came, for counsel.… I take it, +though, that we are not searching for the absolute best but for our own +prime favourite. You remember what Swinburne says somewhere of Hugo's +<i>Gastibelza</i>:—</p> + +<blockquote><blockquote> +<p class = "noindent"> "'Gastibelza, l'homme à la carabine,<br> +<span class = "ind3"> Chantait ainsi:</span><br> + Quelqu'un a-t-il connu Doña Sabine?<br> +<span class = "ind3"> Quelqu'un d'ici?</span><br> + Dansez, chantez, villageois! la nuit gagne<br> +<span class = "ind3"> Le mont Falou—</span><br> + Le vent qui vient à travers la montagne<br> +<span class = "ind3"> Me rendra fou!'</span><br><br></p> +</blockquote></blockquote> + +<p>"'The song of songs which is Hugo's,' he calls it; and goes on to ask how +often one has chanted or shouted or otherwise declaimed it to himself, on +horseback at full gallop or when swimming at his best as a boy in holiday +time; and how often the matchless music, ardour, pathos of it have not +reduced his own ambition to a sort of rapturous and adoring despair—yes, +and requickened his old delight in it with a new delight in the sense that +he will always have this to rejoice in, to adore, and to recognise as +something beyond the reach of man. Well, that is the sense in which our +poem should be our favourite poem. Now, for my part, there's a page or so +of Browning's <i>Saul</i>—"</p> + +<p>"What do you say to Meredith's <i>Phœbus with Admetus?</i>" interrupted X.</p> + +<p>I looked up at him quickly, almost shamefacedly. "Now, how on earth did +you guess—"</p> + +<p>X laid down his pipe, stared up at the sky-light, and quoted, almost under +his breath:—</p> + +<blockquote><blockquote> +<p class = "noindent"> "'Bulls that walk the pasture in kingly-flashing coats!<br> + Laurel, ivy, vine, wreath'd for feasts not few!'"<br></p> +</blockquote></blockquote> + +<br><br><br><br> +<p>Why is it possible to consider Mr. Meredith—whose total yield of verse +has been so scanty and the most of it so 'harsh and crabbed,' as not only +'dull fools' suppose—beside the great poets who have been his +contemporaries, and to feel no impropriety in the comparison? That was +the question X and I found ourselves discussing, ten minutes later.</p> + +<p>"Because," maintained X, "you feel at once that with Meredith you have +hold of a man. You know—as surely, for example, as while you are +listening to Handel—that the stuff is masculine, and great at that."</p> + +<p>"That is not all the secret," I maintained, "although it gets near to the +secret. Why is it possible to consider Coleridge alongside of Wordsworth +and Byron, yet feel no impropriety? Coleridge's yield of verse was +ridiculously scanty beside theirs, and a deal more sensuous than +Wordsworth's, at any rate, and yet more manly, in a sense, than Byron's, +which again was thoroughly manly within the range of emotion? Why? +Because Coleridge and Meredith both have a philosophy of life: and he who +has a philosophy of life may write little or much; may on the one hand +write <i>Christabel</i> and leave it unfinished and decline upon opium; or may, +on the other hand, be a Browning or a Meredith, and 'keep up his end' (as +the saying is) nobly to the last, and vex us all the while with his +asperities; and yet in both cases be as certainly a masculine poet. +Poetry (as I have been contending all my life) has one right background +and one only: and that background is philosophy. You say, Coleridge and +Meredith are masculine. I ask, Why are they masculine? The answer is, +They have philosophy."</p> + +<p>"You are on the old tack again: the old το καθολου!"</p> + +<p>"Yes, and am going to hold upon it until we fetch land, so you may e'en +fill another pipe and play the interlocutor.… You remember my once +asking why our Jingo poets write such rotten poetry (for that their stuff +is rotten we agreed). The reason is, they are engaged in mistaking the +part for the whole, and that part a non-essential one; they are setting up +the present potency of Great Britain as a triumphant and insolent +exception to laws which (if we believe in any gods better than anarchy and +chaos) extend at least over all human conduct and may even regulate 'the +most ancient heavens.' You may remember my expressed contempt for a +recent poem which lauded Henry VIII because—"</p> + +<blockquote><blockquote> +<p class = "noindent"> "'He was lustful, he was vengeful, he was hot and hard and proud;<br> + But he set his England fairly in the sight of all the crowd.'<br></p> +</blockquote></blockquote> + +<p>"—A worse error, to my mind, than Froude's, who merely idolised him for +chastising the clergy. Well, after our discussion, I asked myself this +question: 'Why do we not as a great Empire-making people, +ruling the world for its good, assassinate the men who oppose us?' +We do not; the idea revolts us. But why does it revolt us?</p> + +<p>"We send our armies to fight, with the certainty (if we think at all) that +we are sending a percentage to be killed. We recently sent out two +hundred thousand with the sure and certain knowledge that some thousands +must die; and these (we say) were men agonising for a righteous cause. +Why did it not afflict us to send them?—whereas it would have afflicted +us inexpressibly to send a man to end the difficulty by putting a bullet +or a knife into Mr. Kruger, who <i>ex hypothesi</i> represented an unrighteous +cause, and who certainly was but one man.</p> + +<p>"Why? Because a law above any that regulates the expansion of Great +Britain says, 'That shalt do no murder.' And that law, that Universal, +takes the knife or the pistol quietly, firmly, out of your hand. You +send a battalion, with Tom Smith in it, to fight Mr. Kruger's troops; you +know that some of them must in all likelihood perish; but, thank your +stars, you do not know their names. Tom Smith, as it happens, is killed; +but had you known with absolute certainty that Tom Smith would be killed, +you could not have sent him. You must have withdrawn him, and substituted +some other fellow concerning whom your prophetic vision was less +uncomfortably definite. You can kill Tom Smith if he has happened to kill +Bob Jones: you are safe enough then, being able to excuse yourself—how? +By Divine law again (as you understand it). Divine law says that whoso +sheddeth man's blood, by man shall his blood be shed—that is to say, by +you: so you can run under cover and hang Tom Smith. But when Divine law +does not protect you, you are powerless. At the most you can send him off +to take his ten-to-one chance in a battalion, and when you read his name +in the returns, come mincing up to God and say: 'So poor old Tom's gone! +How the deuce was <i>I</i> to know?'</p> + +<p>"I say nothing of the cowardice of this, though it smells to Heaven. I +merely point out that this law 'Thou shalt do no murder'—this Universal— +must be a tremendous one, since even you, my fine swashbuckling, +Empire-making hero, are so much afraid of it that you cannot send even a +Reservist to death without throwing the responsibility on luck—<i>nos te, +nos facimus, Fortuna, deam</i>—and have not even the nerve, without its +sanction, to stick a knife into an old man whom you accuse as the wicked +cause of all this bloodshed. If you believed in your accusations, why +couldn't you do it? Because a universal law forbade you, and one you have +to believe in, truculent Jingo though you be. Why, consider this; your +poets are hymning King Edward the Seventh as the greatest man on earth, +and yet, if he might possess all Africa to-morrow at the expense of +signing the death-warrant of one innocent man who opposed that possession, +he could not write his name. His hand would fall numb. Such power above +kings has the Universal, though silly poets insult it who should be its +servants.</p> + +<p>"Now of all the differences between men and women there is none more +radical than this: that a man naturally loves law, whereas a woman +naturally hates it and never sees a law without casting about for some way +of dodging it. Laws, universals, general propositions—her instinct with +all of them is to get off by wheedling the judge. So, if you want a test +for a masculine poet, examine first whether or no he understands the +Universe as a thing of law and order."</p> + +<p>"Then, by your own test, Kipling—the Jingo Kipling—is a most masculine +poet, since he talks of little else."</p> + +<p>"I will answer you, although I believe you are not serious. At present +Mr. Kipling's mind, in search of a philosophy, plays with the +contemplation of a world reduced to law and order; the law and order being +such as universal British rule would impose. There might be many worse +worlds than a world so ruled, and in verse the prospect can be made to +look fair enough:—"</p> + +<blockquote><blockquote> +<p class = "noindent"> "'Keep ye the Law—be swift in all obedience—<br> + Clear the land of evil, drive the road and bridge the ford.<br> +<span class = "ind3"> Make ye sure to each his own</span><br> +<span class = "ind3"> That he reap where he hath sown;</span><br> + By the peace among Our peoples let men know we serve the Lord!'<br></p> +</blockquote></blockquote> + +<p>"Clean and wholesome teaching it seems, persuading civilised men that, as +they are strong, so the obligation rests on them to set the world in +order, carry tillage into its wildernesses, and clean up its bloodstained +corners. Yet as a political philosophy it lacks the first of all +essentials, and as Mr. Kipling develops it we begin to detect the flaw in +the system:—</p> + +<blockquote><blockquote> +<p class = "noindent"> "'The 'eathen in 'is blindness bows down to wood and stone;<br> + 'E don't obey no orders unless they is his own;<br> + 'E keeps 'is side-arms awful: 'e leaves 'em all about,<br> + An' then comes up the regiment an' pokes the 'eathen out.<br> +<span class = "ind3"> All along o' dirtiness, all along o' mess,</span><br> +<span class = "ind3"> All along o' doin' things rather-more-or-less.</span><br> +<span class = "ind15"> Etc.'</span></p> +</blockquote></blockquote> + +<p>"What is wrong with this? Why, simply that it leaves Justice altogether +out of account. The system has no room for it; even as it has no room for +clemency, mansuetude; forbearance towards the weak. My next-door +neighbour may keep his children in rags and his house in dirt, may be a +loose liver with a frantically foolish religious creed; but all this does +not justify me in taking possession of his house, and either poking him +out or making him a serf on his own hearthstone. If there be such a thing +as universal justice, then all men have their rights under it—even +verminous persons. We are obliged to put constraint upon them when their +habits afflict us beyond a certain point. And civilised nations are +obliged to put constraint upon uncivilised ones which shock their moral +sense beyond a certain point—as by cannibalism or human sacrifice. But +such interference should stand upon a nice sense of the offender's rights, +and in practice does so stand. The custom of polygamy, for instance (as +practised abroad), horribly offends quite a large majority of His +Majesty's lieges; yet Great Britain tolerates polygamy even in her own +subject races. Neither polygamy nor uncleanliness can be held any just +excuse for turning a nation out of its possessions.</p> + +<p>"And another reason for insisting upon the strictest reading of justice in +these dealings between nations is the temptation which the least laxity +offers to the stronger—a temptation which Press and Pulpit made no +pretence of resisting during the late war. 'We are better than they,' was +the cry; 'we are cleanlier, less ignorant; we have arts and a literature, +whereas they have none; we make for progress and enlightenment, while they +are absurdly conservative, if not retrogressive. Therefore the world will +be the better by our annexing their land, and substituting our government +for theirs. Therefore our cause, too, is the juster.' But therefore it +is nothing of the sort. A dirty man may be in the right, and a clean man +in the wrong; an ungodly man in the right, and a godly man in the wrong; +and the most specious and well-intentioned system which allows justice to +be confused with something else will allow it to be stretched, even by +well-meaning persons, to cover theft, lying and flat piracy.</p> + +<p>"Are you trying to prove," demanded X, "that Mr. Kipling is a feminine +poet?"</p> + +<p>"No, but I am about to bring you to the conclusion that in his worse mood +he is a sham-masculine one. The 'Recessional' proves that, man of genius +that he is, he rises to a conception of Universal Law. But too often he +is trying to dodge it with sham law. A woman would not appeal to law at +all: she would boldly take her stand on lawlessness. He, being an +undoubted but misguided man, has to find some other way out; so he takes a +twopenny-halfpenny code as the mood seizes him—be it the code of a +barrack or of a Johannesburg Jew—and hymns it lustily against the +universal code: and the pity and the sin of it is that now and then by +flashes—as in 'The Tale of Purun Bhagat'—he sees the truth.</p> + +<p>"You remember the figure of the Cave which Socrates invented and explained +to Glaucon in Plato's 'Republic'? He imagined men seated in a den which +has its mouth open to the light, but their faces are turned to the wall of +the den, and they sit with necks and legs chained so that they cannot +move. Behind them, and between them and the light, runs a raised way with +a low wall along it, 'like the screen over which marionette-players show +their puppets.' Along this wall pass men carrying all sorts of vessels +and statues and figures of animals. Some are talking, others silent; and +as the procession goes by the chained prisoners see only the shadows +passing across the rock in front of them, and, hearing the voices echoed +from it, suppose that the sound comes from the shadows.</p> + +<p>"To explain the fascination of Mr. Kipling's verse one might take this +famous picture and make one fearsome addition to it. There sits (one +might go on to say) among the prisoners a young man different from them in +voice and terribly different to look upon, because he has two pairs of +eyes, the one turned towards the light and realities, the other towards +the rock-face and the shadows. Using, now one, now the other of these two +pairs of eyes, he never knows with which at the moment he is gazing, +whether on the realities or on the shadows, but always supposes what he +sees at the moment to be the realities, and calls them 'Things as They +Are.' Further, his lips have been touched with the glory of the greater +vision, and he speaks enchantingly when he discourses of the shadows on +the rock, thereby deepening the delusion of the other prisoners whom his +genius has played the crimp to, enticing them into the den and hocussing +and chaining them there. For, seeing the shadows pass to the +interpretation of such a voice, they are satisfied that they indeed behold +Things as They Are, and that these are the only things worth knowing.</p> + +<p>"The tragedy of it lies in this, that Mr. Kipling in his greater moments +cannot help but see that he, with every inspired singer, is by right the +prophet of a law and order compared with which all the majestic law and +order of the British Empire are but rags and trumpery:—"</p> + +<blockquote><blockquote> +<p class = "noindent"> "'I ha' harpit ye up to the throne o' God,<br> +<span class = "ind3"> I ha' harpit your midmost soul in three;</span><br> + I ha' harpit ye down to the Hinges o' Hell,<br> +<span class = "ind3"> And—ye—would—make—a Knight o' me!'"</span><br></p> +</blockquote></blockquote> + +<br><br><br><br> +<p>"Not long ago an interviewer called on Mr. Meredith, and brought away this +for his pains:—</p> +<blockquote><blockquote> +<p class = "noindent"> "'I suppose I should regard myself as getting old—I am + seventy-four. But I do not feel to be growing old either in + heart or mind. I still look on life with a young man's eye. + I have always hoped I should not grow old as some do—with a + palsied intellect, living backwards, regarding other people as + anachronisms because they themselves have lived on into other + times, and left their sympathies behind them with their years.'</p> +</blockquote></blockquote> + +<p>"He never will. He will always preserve the strength of manhood in his +work because hope, the salt of manhood, is the savour of all his +philosophy. When I think of his work as a whole—his novels and poems +together—this confession of his appears to me, not indeed to summarise +it—for it is far too multifarious and complex—but to say the first and +the last word upon it. In poem and in novel he puts a solemnity of his +own into the warning, <i>ne tu pueri contempseris annos</i>. He has never +grown old, because his hopes are set on the young; and his dearest wish, +for those who can read beneath his printed word, is to leave the world not +worse, but so much the better as a man may, for the generations to come +after him. To him this is 'the cry of the conscience of life':—"</p> + +<blockquote><blockquote> +<p class = "noindent"> "'Keep the young generations in hail,<br> + And bequeath them no tumbled house.'<br></p> +</blockquote></blockquote> + +<p>"To him this is at once a duty and a 'sustainment supreme,' and perhaps +the bitterest words this master of Comedy has written are for the seniors +of the race who—</p> + +<blockquote><blockquote> +<p class = "noindent"><span class = "ind7"> "'On their last plank,</span><br> + Pass mumbling it as nature's final page,'</p> +</blockquote></blockquote> + +<p>"And cramp the young with their rules of 'wisdom,' lest, as he says +scornfully:—</p> + +<blockquote><blockquote> +<p class = "noindent"> "'Lest dreaded change, long dammed by dull decay,<br> + Should bring the world a vessel steered by brain,<br> + And ancients musical at close of day.'<br></p> +</blockquote></blockquote> + +<p>"'Earth loves her young,' begins his next sonnet:—</p> + +<blockquote><blockquote> +<p class = "noindent"> "'Her gabbling grey she eyes askant, nor treads<br> + The ways they walk; by what they speak oppressed.'<br></p> +</blockquote></blockquote> + +<p>"But his conviction, if here for a moment it discharges gall, is usually +cheerful with the cheerfulness of health. Sometimes he consciously +expounds it; oftener he leaves you to seek and find it, but always (I +believe) you will find this happy hope in youth at the base of everything +he writes.</p> + +<p>"The next thing to be noted is that he does not hope in youth because it +is a period of license and waywardness, but because it is a period of +imagination—</p> + +<blockquote><blockquote> +<p class = "noindent"> "'Days, when the ball of our vision<br> + Had eagles that flew unabashed to sun,'<br></p> +</blockquote></blockquote> + +<p>"And because it therefore has a better chance of grasping what is Universal +than has the prudential wisdom of age which contracts its eye to +particulars and keeps it alert for social pitfalls—the kind of wisdom +seen at its best (but its best never made a hero) in Bubb Doddington's +verses:—</p> + +<blockquote><blockquote> +<p class = "noindent"> "'Love thy country, wish it well,<br> +<span class = "ind3"> <i>Not with too intense a care</i>;</span><br> + 'Tis enough that, when it fell,<br> +<span class = "ind3"> Thou its ruin didst not share.'</span><br></p> +</blockquote></blockquote> + +<p>"Admirable caution! Now contrast it for a moment with, let us say, the +silly quixotic figure of Horatius with the broken bridge behind him:—</p> + +<blockquote><blockquote> +<p class = "noindent"> "'Round turned he, as not deigning<br> +<span class = "ind3"> Those craven ranks to see:</span><br> + Nought spake he to Lars Porsena,<br> +<span class = "ind3"> To Sextus nought spake he;</span><br> + But he saw on Palatinus<br> +<span class = "ind3"> The white porch of his home—'</span><br></p> +</blockquote></blockquote> + +<p>"I protest I have no heart to go on with the quotation: so unpopular is +its author, just now, and so certainly its boyish heroism calls back the +boyish tears to my eyes. Well, this boyish vision is what Mr. Meredith +chooses to trust rather than Bubb Doddington's, and he trusts it as being +the likelier to apprehend universal truths: he believes that Horatius with +an army in front and a broken bridge behind him was a nobler figure than +Bubb Doddington wishing his country well but not with too intense a care; +and not only nobler but—this is the point—more obedient to divine law, +more expressive of that which man was meant to be. If Mr. Meredith trusts +youth, it is as a time of imagination; and if he trusts imagination, it is +as a faculty for apprehending the Universal in life—that is to say, a +divine law behind its shows and simulacra.</p> + +<p>"In 'The Empty Purse' you will find him instructing youth towards this +law; but that there may be no doubt of his own belief in it, as an order +not only controlling men but overriding angels and demons, first consider +his famous sonnet, 'Lucifer in Starlight'—to my thinking one of the +finest in our language:—</p> + +<blockquote><blockquote> +<p class = "noindent"> "'On a starred night Prince Lucifer uprose.<br> +<span class = "ind3"> Tired of his dark dominion swung the fiend</span><br> +<span class = "ind3"> Above the rolling ball in cloud part screened,</span><br> + Where sinners hugged their spectre of repose.<br> + Poor prey to his hot fit of pride were those.<br> +<span class = "ind3"> And now upon his western wing he leaned,</span><br> +<span class = "ind3"> Now his huge bulk o'er Afric's sands careened,</span><br> + Now the black planet shadowed Arctic snows.<br> +<span class = "ind3"> Soaring through wider zones that pricked his scars</span><br> +<span class = "ind6"> With memory of the old revolt from Awe,</span><br> +<span class = "ind3"> He reached a middle height, and at the stars,</span><br> + Which are the brain of Heaven, he looked, and sank.<br> + Around the ancient track marched, rank on rank,<br> +<span class = "ind3"> The army of unalterable law.'"</span><br></p> +</blockquote></blockquote> + +<br><br><br><br> +<p>"Suppose my contention—that poetry should concern itself with +universals—to be admitted: suppose we all agreed that Poetry is an +expression of the universal element in human life, that (as Shelley puts +it) 'a poem is the very image of life expressed in its eternal truth.' +There remains a question quite as important: and that is, How to recognise +the Universal when we see it? We may talk of a Divine law, or a Divine +order—call it what we will—which regulates the lives of us poor men no +less than the motions of the stars, and binds the whole universe, high and +low, into one system: and we may have arrived at the blessed wish to +conform with this law rather than to strive and kick against the pricks +and waste our short time in petulant rebellion. So far, so good: but how +are we to know the law? How, with the best will in the world, are we to +distinguish order from disorder? What assurance have we, after striving +to bring ourselves into obedience, that we have succeeded? We may agree, +for example, with Wordsworth that Duty is a stern daughter of the Voice of +God, and that through Duty 'the most ancient heavens,' no less than we +ourselves, are kept fresh and strong. But can we always discern this +Universal, this Duty? What is the criterion? And what, when we have +chosen, is the sanction of our choice?</p> + +<p>"A number of honest people will promptly refer us to revealed religion. +'Take (they say) your revealed religion on faith, and there you have the +law and the prophets, and your universals set out for you, and your +principles of conduct laid down. What more do you want?'</p> + +<p>"To this I answer, 'We are human, and we need also the testimony of +Poetry; and the priceless value of poetry for us lies in this, that it +does <i>not</i> echo the Gospel like a parrot. If it did, it would be servile, +superfluous. It is ministerial and useful because it approaches truth by +another path. It does not say ditto to Mr. Burke—it corroborates. And +it corroborates precisely because it does not say ditto, but employs a +natural process of its own which it employed before ever Christianity was +revealed. You may decide that religion is enough for you, and that you +have no need of poetry; but if you have any intelligent need of poetry it +will be because poetry, though it end in the same conclusions, reaches +them by another and separate path.</p> + +<p>"Now (as I understand him) Mr. Meredith connects man with the Universal, +and teaches him to arrive at it and recognise it by strongly reminding him +that he is a child of Earth. 'You are amenable,' he says in effect, 'to a +law which all the firmament obeys. But in all that firmament you are tied +to one planet, which we call Earth. If therefore you would apprehend the +law, study your mother, Earth, which also obeys it. Search out her +operations; honour your mother as legitimate children, and let your honour +be the highest you can pay—that of making yourself docile to her +teaching. So will you stand the best chance, the only likely chance, of +living in harmony with that Will which over-arches Earth and us all.'</p> + +<p>"In this doctrine Mr. Meredith believes passionately; so let there +be no mistake about the thoroughness with which he preaches it. +Even prayer, he tells us in one of his novels, is most useful when like a +fountain it falls back and draws refreshment from earth for a new spring +heavenward:—</p> + +<blockquote><blockquote> +<p class = "noindent"> "'And there vitality, there, there solely in song<br> +<span class = "ind3"> Besides, where earth and her uses to men, their needs,</span><br> + Their forceful cravings, the theme are: there is it strong,<br> +<span class = "ind3"> The Master said: and the studious eye that reads,</span><br> + (Yea, even as earth to the crown of Gods on the mount),<br> +<span class = "ind3"> In links divine with the lyrical tongue is bound.</span><br> + Pursue thy craft: it is music drawn of the fount<br> +<span class = "ind3"> To spring perennial; well-spring is common ground.'</span><br></p> +</blockquote></blockquote> + +<p>"And it follows that to one who believes in the teaching of earth so +whole-heartedly earth is not a painted back-cloth for man to strut against +and attitudinise, but a birth-place from which he cannot escape, and in +relation with which he must be considered, and must consider himself, on +pain of becoming absurd. Even:</p> + +<blockquote><blockquote> +<p class = "noindent"> "'His cry to heaven is a cry to her<br> + He would evade.'<br></p> +</blockquote></blockquote> + +<p>"She is a stern mother, be it understood, no coddling one:—</p> + +<blockquote><blockquote> +<p class = "noindent"> "'He may entreat, aspire,<br> + He may despair, and she has never heed,<br> + She, drinking his warm sweat, will soothe his need,<br> + Not his desire.'<br></p> +</blockquote></blockquote> + +<p>"When we neglect or misread her lessons, she punishes; at the best, she +offers no fat rewards to the senses, but—</p> + +<blockquote><blockquote> +<p class = "noindent"> "'The sense of large charity over the land;<br> + Earth's wheaten of wisdom dispensed in the rough,<br> + And a bell ringing thanks for a sustenance meal.'<br></p> +</blockquote></blockquote> + +<p>"('Lean fare,' as the poet observes; and unpalatable, for instance, to our +Members of Parliament, to whom our Mr. Balfour one evening paid the +highest compliment within their range of apprehension by assuming that +quite a large number of them could write cheques for £69,000 without +inconvenience.) At the best, too, she offers, with the loss of things we +have desired, a serene fortitude to endure their loss:—</p> + +<blockquote><blockquote> +<p class = "noindent"> "'Love born of knowledge, love that gains<br> +<span class = "ind3"> Vitality as Earth it mates,</span><br> + The meaning of the Pleasures, Pains,<br> +<span class = "ind3"> The Life, the Death, illuminates.</span><br><br> + + "'For love we Earth, then serve we all;<br> +<span class = "ind3"> Her mystic secret then is ours:</span><br> + We fall, or view our treasures fall,<br> +<span class = "ind3"> Unclouded—as beholds her flowers</span><br><br> + + "'Earth, from a night of frosty wreck,<br> +<span class = "ind3"> Enrobed in morning's mounted fire,</span><br> + When lowly, with a broken neck,<br> +<span class = "ind3"> The crocus lays her cheek to mire.'</span><br><br></p> +</blockquote></blockquote> + + +<p>"But at least it is the true milk for man that she distils—</p> + + +<blockquote><blockquote> +<p class = "noindent"> "'From her heaved breast of sacred common mould';</p> +</blockquote></blockquote> + +<p>"The breast (to quote from another poem)—</p> + +<blockquote><blockquote> +<p class = "noindent"> "'Which is his well of strength, his home of rest,<br> + And fair to scan.'<br></p> +</blockquote></blockquote> + +<p>"And so Mr. Meredith, having diagnosed our disease, which is Self— +our 'distempered devil of Self,' gluttonous of its own enjoyments and +therefore necessarily a foe to law, which rests on temperance and +self-control—walks among men like his own wise physician, Melampus, with +eyes that search the book of Nature closely, as well for love of her as to +discover and extract her healing secrets.</p> + +<blockquote><blockquote> +<p class = "noindent"> "'With love exceeding a simple love of the things +<span class = "ind3"> That glide in grasses and rubble of woody wreck;</span><br> + Or change their perch on a beat of quivering wings<br> +<span class = "ind3"> From branch to branch, only restful to pipe and peck;</span><br> + Or, bristled, curl at a touch their snouts in a ball;<br> +<span class = "ind3"> Or cast their web between bramble and thorny hook;</span><br> + The good physician Melampus, loving them all,<br> +<span class = "ind3"> Among them walked, as a scholar who reads a book.</span><br><br> + + "'For him the woods were a home and gave him the key<br> +<span class = "ind3"> Of knowledge, thirst for their treasures in herbs and + flowers.</span><br> + The secrets held by the creatures nearer than we<br> +<span class = "ind3"> To earth he sought, and the link of their life with + ours.…'</span><br></p> +</blockquote></blockquote> + + +<p>"Here by another road we come to a teaching which is also the Gospels': +that to apprehend the highest truth one must have a mind of extreme +humility. 'Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth,' +'Neither shall they say, Lo here! or Lo there! for behold the kingdom of +God is within you,' 'And He took a little child and set him in the midst +of them,' &c. Poetry cannot make these sayings any truer than they are, +but it can illuminate for us the depths of their truth, and so (be it +humbly said) can help their acceptance by man. If they come down from +heaven, derived from arguments too high for his ken, poetry confirms them +by arguments taken from his own earth, instructing him the while to read +it as—</p> + +<blockquote><blockquote> +<p class = "noindent"> "'An Earth alive with meanings, wherein meet<br> + Buried, and breathing, and to be,'<br></p> +</blockquote></blockquote> + +<p>"And teaching him, 'made lowly wise,' that the truth of the highest heavens +lies scattered about his feet.</p> + +<blockquote><blockquote> +<p class = "noindent"> "'Melampus dwelt among men, physician and sage,<br> +<span class = "ind3"> He served them, loving them, healing them; sick or maimed,</span><br> + Or them that frenzied in some delirious rage<br> +<span class = "ind3"> Outran the measure, his juice of the woods reclaimed.</span><br> + He played on men, as his master Phœbus on strings<br> +<span class = "ind3"> Melodious: as the God did he drive and check,</span><br> + Through love exceeding a simple love of the things<br> +<span class = "ind3"> That glide in grasses and rubble of woody wreck.'</span><br></p> +</blockquote></blockquote> + +<p>"I think, if we consider the essence of this teaching, we shall have no +difficulty now in understanding why Mr. Meredith's hopes harp so +persistently on the 'young generations,' why our duty to them is to him +'the cry of the conscience of life,' or why, as he studies Earth, he +maintains that—</p> + +<blockquote><blockquote> +<p class = "noindent"><span class = "ind6"> "'Deepest at her springs,</span><br> + Most filial, is an eye to love her young.'"<br></p> +</blockquote></blockquote> + +<br><br><br><br> +<p>"But Meredith, if a true poet, is also and undeniably a hard one: and a +poet must not only preach but persuade. 'He dooth not only show the way,' +says Sidney, 'but giveth so sweet a prospect into the way as will intice +any man to enter into it.'</p> + +<p>"Here, my dear X, I lay hands on you and drag you in as the Conscientious +Objector. 'How?' you will ask. 'Is not the plain truth good enough for +men? And if poetry must win acceptance for her by beautiful adornments, +alluring images, captivating music, is there not something deceptive in +the business, even if it be not downright dishonest?' Well, I think you +have a right to be answered."</p> + +<p>"Thank you," said X.</p> + +<p>"And I don't think you are convincingly answered by Keats'—</p> + +<blockquote><blockquote> +<p class = "noindent"> "'Beauty is truth, truth beauty—that is all<br> + Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know.'<br></p> +</blockquote></blockquote> + +<p>"With all respect to the poet, we don't know it; and if we did it would +come a long way short of all we need to know. The Conscientious Objector +will none the less maintain that truth and beauty have never been +recognised as identical, and that, in practice, to employ their names as +convertible terms would lead to no end of confusion. I like the man (you +will be glad to hear), because on an important subject he will be +satisfied with nothing less than clear thinking. My own suspicion is +that, when we have yielded him the inquiry which is his due into the +relations between truth and beauty, we shall discover that spiritual +truth—with which alone poetry concerns itself—is less a matter of +ascertained facts than of ascertained harmonies, and that these harmonies +are incapable of being expressed otherwise than in beautiful terms. +But pending our inquiry (which must be a long one) let us put to the +objector a practical question: 'What forbids a man, who has the truth to +tell, from putting it as persuasively as possible? Were not the truths of +the Gospel conveyed in parables? And is their truth diminished because +these parables are exquisite in form and in language? Will you only +commend persuasiveness in a sophist who engages to make the worst argument +appear the better, and condemn it in a teacher who employs it to enforce +truth?' The question, surely, is answered as soon as we have asked it.</p> + +<p>"And the further particular question, Is Mr. Meredith a persuasive poet? +will be answered as promptly by us. He can be—let us grant—a plaguily +forbidding one. His philosophy is not easy; yet it seems to me a deal +easier than many of his single verses. I hope humbly, for instance, one +of these days, to discover what is meant by such a verse as this:—</p> + +<blockquote><blockquote> +<p class = "noindent"> "'Thou animatest ancient tales,<br> +<span class = "ind3"> To prove our world of linear seed;</span><br> + Thy very virtue now assails<br> +<span class = "ind3"> A tempter to mislead.'</span><br></p> +</blockquote></blockquote> + +<p>"Faint, yet pursuing, I hope; but I must admit that such writing does not +obviously allure, that it rather dejects the student by the difficulty of +finding a stool to sit down and be stoical on. 'Nay,' to parody Sidney, +'he dooth as if your journey should lye through a fayre Vineyard, at the +first give you a handful of nuts, forgetting the nut-crackers.' He is, in +short, half his time forbiddingly difficult, and at times to all +appearance so deliberately and yet so wantonly difficult, that you wonder +what on earth you came out to pursue and why you should be tearing your +flesh in these thickets.</p> + +<p>"And then you remember the swinging cadences of 'Love in the Valley' +—the loveliest love-song of its century. Who can forget it?</p> + +<blockquote><blockquote> +<p class = "noindent"> "'Lovely are the curves of the white owl sweeping<br> +<span class = "ind3"> Wavy in the dusk lit by one large star,</span><br> + Lone on the fir-branch, his rattle-note unvaried,<br> +<span class = "ind3"> Brooding o'er the gloom, spins the brown evejar.</span><br> + Darker grows the valley, more and more forgetting;<br> +<span class = "ind3"> So were it with me if forgetting could be willed.</span><br> + Tell the grassy hollow that holds the bubbling well-spring,<br> +<span class = "ind3"> Tell it to forget the source that keeps it filled.'</span><br></p> +</blockquote></blockquote> + +<p>"And you swear that no thickets can be so dense but you will wrestle +through them in the hope of hearing that voice again, or even an echo of +it.</p> + +<p>"'Melampus,' 'The Nuptials of Attila,' 'The Day of the Daughter of Hades,' +'The Empty Purse,' 'Jump-to-Glory Jane,' and the splendid 'Phœbus with +Admetus'—you come back to each again and again, compelled by the wizardry +of single lines and by a certain separate glamour which hangs about each +of them. Each of them is remembered by you as in its own way a superb +performance; lines here and there so haunt you with their beauty that you +must go back and read the whole poem over for the sake of them. Other +lines you boggle over, and yet cannot forget them; you hope to like them +better at the next reading; you re-read, and wish them away, yet find +them, liked or disliked, so embedded in your memory that you cannot do +without them. Take, for instance, the last stanza of 'Phœbus with +Admetus':—</p> + +<blockquote><blockquote> +<p class = "noindent"> "'You with shelly horns, rams! and promontory goats,<br> +<span class = "ind3"> You whose browsing beards dip in coldest dew!</span><br> + Bulls that walk the pasture in kingly-flashing coats!<br> +<span class = "ind3"> Laurel, ivy, vine, wreathed for feasts not few!</span><br> + You that build the shade-roof, and you that court the rays,<br> +<span class = "ind3"> You that leap besprinkling the rock stream-rent;</span><br> + He has been our fellow, the morning of our days;<br> +<span class = "ind3"> Us he chose for house-mates, and this way went.'</span><br></p> +</blockquote></blockquote> + +<p>"The first thing that made this stanza unforgettable was the glorious +third line: almost as soon 'promontory goats' fastened itself on memory; +and almost as soon the last two lines were perceived to be excellent, and +the fourth also. These enforced you, for the pleasure of recalling them, +to recall the whole, and so of necessity to be hospitably minded toward +the fifth and sixth lines, which at first repelled as being too obscurely +and almost fantastically expressed. Having once passed it in, I find 'You +that leap besprinkling the rock stream-rent,' with its delicate labial +pause and its delicate consonantal chime, one of the most fascinating +lines in the stanza. And since, after being the hardest of all to admit, +it has become one of the best liked, I am forced in fairness to ask myself +if hundreds of lines of Mr. Meredith's which now seem crabbed or fantastic +may not justify themselves after many readings.</p> + +<p>"The greatest mistake, at all events, is to suppose him ignorant or +careless of the persuasiveness which lies in technical skill; though we +can hardly be surprised that he has not escaped a charge which was freely +brought against Browning, than whom, perhaps, no single poet was ever more +untiring in technical experiment. Every poem of Browning's is an +experiment—sometimes successful, sometimes not—in wedding sense with +metre; and so is every poem of Mr. Meredith's (he has even attempted +galliambics), though he cannot emulate Browning's range. But he, too, has +had his amazing successes—in the long, swooping lines of 'Love in the +Valley':—</p> + +<blockquote><blockquote> +<p class = "noindent"> "'Shy as the squirrel and wayward as the swallow,<br> +<span class = "ind3"> Swift as the swallow along the river's light,</span><br> + Circleting the surface to meet his mirrored winglets,<br> +<span class = "ind3"> Fleeter she seems in her stay than in her flight.'</span><br></p> +</blockquote></blockquote> + +<p>"—In the 'Young Princess,' the stanzas of which are a din of +nightingales' voices; in 'The Woods of Westermain' and 'The Nuptials of +Attila,' where the ear awaits the burthen, as the sense awaits the horror, +of the song, and the poet holds back both, increasing the painful +expectancy; or in the hammered measure of 'Phœbus with Admetus'—a real +triumph. Of each of these metres you have to admit at once that it is +strange and arresting, and that you cannot conceive the poem written in +any other. And, as I have said, their very asperities tend, with +repetition, to pass into beauties.</p> + +<p>"But, in the end, he is remembered best for his philosophy, as the poet +who tells us to have courage and trust in nature, that thereby we may +attain whatever heaven may be. 'Neither shall they say, Lo, here! or Lo, +there! for behold the kingdom of heaven is within you'—yes, and hell, +too, Mr. Meredith wants us:—</p> + +<blockquote><blockquote> +<p class = "noindent"><span class = "ind7"> "'In tragic life, God wot,</span><br> + No villain need be! Passions spin the plot:<br> + We are betrayed by what is false within.'<br></p> +</blockquote></blockquote> + +<p>"So, again, in 'The Woods of Westermain,' we are warned that the worst +betrayal for man lies in the cowardice of his own soul:—</p> + +<blockquote><blockquote> +<p class = "noindent"> "'But have care.<br> + In yourself may lurk the trap.'<br></p> +</blockquote></blockquote> + +<p>"Are you at heart a poltroon or a palterer, cruel, dull, envious, full of +hate? Then Nature, the mother of the strong and generous, will have no +pity, but will turn and rend you with claws. 'Trust her with your whole +heart,' says Mr. Meredith, 'and go forward courageously until you follow:"</p> + +<blockquote><blockquote> +<p class = "noindent"><span class = "ind3"> "'Where never was track</span><br> + On the path trod of all.'<br></p> +</blockquote></blockquote> + +<p>"The fight is an ennobling one, when all is said: rejoice in it, because +our children shall use the victory.</p> + +<blockquote><blockquote> +<p class = "noindent"><span class = "ind9"> "'Take stripes or chains;</span><br> +<span class = "ind6"> Grip at thy standard reviled.</span><br> +<span class = "ind3"> And what if our body be dashed from the steeps?</span><br> +<span class = "ind6"> Our spoken in protest remains.</span><br> +<span class = "ind9"> A younger generation reaps.'"</span><br></p> +</blockquote></blockquote> + + +<br><br><br><br><p>FROM A CORNISH WINDOW, <i>Thursday, Sept. 2nd</i>.</p> + +<blockquote><blockquote> +<p class = "noindent"> "Hoist up sail while gale doth last.…"</p> +</blockquote></blockquote> + +<p>I do not call this very sound advice: but we followed it, and that is the +reason why I am able to send off my monthly packet from the old address. +Also it came very near to being a reason why I had no letter to send. The +wind blew as obstinately as ever on the Tuesday morning; but this time we +arranged our start more carefully, and beat out over the bar in +comparatively smooth water. The seas outside were not at all smooth, but +a Newlyn-built boat does not make much account of mere seas, and soon +after midday we dropped anchor in Plymouth Cattewater, and went ashore for +our letters.</p> + +<p>We were sworn to reach home next day, and somehow we forgot to study the +barometer, which was doing its best to warn us. The weather was dirtier +than ever and the wind harder. But we had grown accustomed to this: and +persuaded ourselves that, once outside of the Rame, we could make a pretty +fetch of it for home and cover the distance at our best speed—which +indeed we did. But I confess that as we passed beyond the breakwater, and +met the Plymouth trawlers running back for shelter, I began to wonder +rather uneasily how the barometer might be behaving, and even dallied with +the resolution to go below and see. We were well dressed down, however— +double-reefed mainsail, reefed mizzen, foresail and storm jib—and after +our beating at Salcombe none of us felt inclined to raise the question of +putting back. There was nothing to hurt, as yet: the boat was shaking off +the water like a duck, and making capital weather of it; we told each +other that once beyond the Rame, with the sea on our quarter, we should do +handsomely. And the gale—the newspapers called it a hurricane, but it +was merely a gale—waited patiently until we were committed to it. Half +an hour later we took in the mizzen, and, soon after, the foresail: and +even so, and close-hauled, were abreast of Looe Island just forty-seven +minutes after passing the Rame—nine miles. For a 28-ton cruiser this +will be allowed to be fair going. For my own part I could have wished it +faster: not from any desire to break 'records,' but because, should +anything happen to our gear, we were uncomfortably close to a lee-shore, +and the best behaved of boats could not stand up against the incessant +shoreward thrust of the big seas crossing us. Also, to make matters +worse, the shore itself now and then vanished in the 'dirt.' On the +whole, therefore, it was not too soon for us that we opened the harbour +and:</p> + +<blockquote><blockquote> +<p class = "noindent"><span class = "ind3"> "Saw on Palatinus</span><br> + The white porch of our home,"<br></p> +</blockquote></blockquote> + +<p>Though these were three or four times hidden from us by the seas over +which we toppled through the harbour's mouth and into quiet water. +While the sails were stowing I climbed down the ladder and sat in front of +the barometer, and wondered how I should like this sort of thing if I had +to go through it often, for my living.</p> + +<br><br> +<a name="2HCH0010"><!-- H2 anchor --></a> +<br><br> +<h3>OCTOBER.</h3> + +<blockquote><blockquote> +<p class = "noindent"> "Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness.…"</p> +</blockquote></blockquote> + +<p>I have been planting a perennial border in the garden and consulting, +with serious damage to the temper, a number of the garden-books now in +fashion. When a man drives at practice—when he desires to know precisely +at what season, in what soil, and at what depth to plant his martagon +lilies, to decide between <i>Ayrshire Ruga</i> and <i>Fellenberg</i> for the pillar +that requires a red rose, to fix the right proportion of sand and +leaf-mould to suit his carnations—when 'his only plot' is to plant the +bergamot—he resents being fobbed off with prattle:—</p> + +<blockquote><blockquote> +<p class = "noindent"> "My squills make a brave show this morning, and the little petticoated + Narcissus Cyclamineus in the lower rock-garden (surely Narcissus + ought to have been a girl!) begins to 'take the winds of March with + beauty.' I am expecting visitors, and hope that mulching will + benefit the Yellow Pottebakkers, which I don't want to flower before + Billy comes home from school," etc.</p> +</blockquote></blockquote> + +<p>But the other day, in 'The Garden's Story,' by Mr. George H. Ellwanger, +I came upon a piece of literary criticism which gave me a pleasurable +pause in my search for quite other information. Mr. Ellwanger, a great +American gardener, has observed that our poets usually sing of autumn in a +minor key, which startles an American who, while accustomed to our +language, cannot suit this mournfulness with the still air and sunshine +and glowing colour of his own autumn. With us, as he notes, autumn is a +dank, sodden season, bleak or shivering. 'The sugar and scarlet maple, +the dogwood and sumac, are wanting to impart their warmth of colour; and +St. Martin's summer somehow fails to shed a cheerful influence' comparable +with that of the Indian summer over there. The Virginia creeper which +reddens our Oxford walls so magnificently in October is an importation of +no very long standing—old enough to be accepted as a feature of the +place, not yet old enough to be inseparably connected with it in song. +Yet—</p> + +<blockquote><blockquote> +<p class = "noindent"> "Of all odes to autumn, Keats's, I believe, is most universally + admired. This might almost answer to our own fall of the leaf, + and is far less sombre than many apostrophes to the season that occur + throughout English verse."</p> +</blockquote></blockquote> + +<p>From this Mr. Ellwanger proceeds to compare Keats's with the wonderful +'Ode to Autumn' which Hood wrote in 1823 (each ode, by the way, belongs to +its author's twenty-fourth year), less perfect, to be sure, and far less +obedient to form, but with lines so haunting and images so full of beauty +that they do not suffer in the comparison. Listen to the magnificent +opening:—</p> + +<blockquote><blockquote> +<p class = "noindent"> "I saw old Autumn in the misty morn<br> +<span class = "ind3"> Stand shadowless like Silence, listening</span><br> +<span class = "ind3"> To silence, for no lonely bird would sing</span><br> + Into his hollow ear from woods forlorn,<br> + Nor lonely hedge, nor solitary thorn.…"<br><br></p> +</blockquote></blockquote> + +<p>I had never (to my shame) thought of comparing the two odes until Mr. +Ellwanger invited me. He notes the felicitous use of the O-sounds +throughout Hood's ode, and points out, shrewdly as correctly, that the two +poets were contemplating two different stages of autumn. Keats, more +sensuous, dwells on the stage of mellow fruitfulness, and writes of late +October at the latest. Hood's poem lies close 'on the birth of trembling +winter': he sings more austerely of November's desolation:—</p> + +<blockquote><blockquote> +<p class = "noindent"> "Where is the pride of Summer—the green prime—<br> +<span class = "ind3"> The many, many leaves all twinkling?—Three</span><br> + On the moss'd elm; three on the naked lime<br> +<span class = "ind3"> Trembling,—and one upon the old oak tree!</span><br> +<span class = "ind6"> Where is the Dryad's immortality?</span><br> + Gone into mournful cypress and dark yew,<br> + Or wearing the long gloomy Winter through<br> +<span class = "ind3"> In the smooth holly's green eternity.</span><br> + "The squirrel gloats o'er his accomplished hoard,<br> + The ants have brimm'd their garners with ripe grain,<br> +<span class = "ind6"> And honey bees have stored</span><br> + The sweets of summer in their luscious cells;<br> + The swallows all have wing'd across the main;<br> + But here the Autumn melancholy dwells,<br> +<span class = "ind6"> And sighs her tearful spells</span><br> + Amongst the sunless shadows of the plain.<br> +<span class = "ind6"> Alone, alone</span><br> +<span class = "ind6"> Upon a mossy stone</span><br> + She sits and reckons up the dead and gone<br> + With the last leaves for a love-rosary…"<br></p> +</blockquote></blockquote> + +<p>The last image involves a change of sex in personified Autumn: an +awkwardness, I allow. But if the awkwardness of the change can be +excused, Hood's lines excuse it:—</p> + +<blockquote><blockquote> +<p class = "noindent"> "O go and sit with her and be o'er-shaded<br> + Under the languid downfall of her hair;<br> + She wears a coronal of flowers faded<br> + Upon her forehead, and a face of care;<br> + There is enough of wither'd everywhere<br> + To make her bower,—and enough of gloom.…"<br></p> +</blockquote></blockquote> +<br><br><br><br> +<p>In spite of its ambiguity of sex and in spite of its irregular metre, +I find, with Mr. Ellwanger, more force of poetry in Hood's ode than in +Keats's; and this in spite of one's prejudice in favour of the greater +poet. It came on me with a small shock therefore to find that +Mr. Bridges, in his already famous Essay on Keats, ranks 'Autumn' as the +very best of all Keats's Odes.</p> + +<p>Now whether one agrees with him or not, there is no loose talk in Mr. +Bridges's criticism. He tells us precisely why he prefers this poem to +that other: and such definiteness in critical writing is not only useful +in itself but perhaps the severest test of a critic's quality. No task +can well be harder than to take a poem, a stanza, or a line, to decide +"Just here lies the strength, the charm; or just here the looseness, the +defect." In any but the strongest hands these methods ensure mere +niggling ingenuity, in which all appreciation of the broader purposes of +the author—of Aristotle's 'universal'—disappears, while the critic +reveals himself as an industrious pick-thank person concerned with matters +of slight and secondary importance. But if well conducted such criticism +has a particular value. As Mr. Bridges says:—</p> + +<blockquote><blockquote> +<p class = "noindent"> "If my criticism should seem sometimes harsh, that is, I believe, due + to its being given in plain terms, a manner which I prefer, because + by obliging the writer to say definitely what he means, it makes his + mistakes easier to point out, and in this way the true business of + criticism may be advanced; nor do I know that, in a work of this + sort, criticism has any better function than to discriminate between + the faults and merits of the best art: for it commonly happens, when + any great artist comes to be generally admired, that his faults, + being graced by his excellences, are confounded with them in the + popular judgment, and being easy of imitation, are the points of his + work which are most liable to be copied."</p> +</blockquote></blockquote> + +<p>Further, Mr. Bridges leaves us in no doubt that he considers the Odes to +be in many respects the most important division of Keats's poetry. +"Had Keats," he says, "left us only his Odes, his rank among the poets +would be not lower than it is, for they have stood apart in literature, at +least the six most famous of them."</p> + +<p>These famous six are: (1) 'Psyche,' (2) 'Melancholy,' (3) 'Nightingale,' +(4) 'Grecian Urn,' (5) 'Indolence,' (6) 'Autumn'; and Mr. Bridges is not +content until he has them arranged in a hierarchy. He draws up a list in +order of merit, and in it gives first place—'for its perfection'—to +'Autumn':—</p> + +<blockquote><blockquote> +<p class = "noindent"> "This is always reckoned among the faultless masterpieces of English + poetry; and unless it be objected as a slight blemish that the words + 'Think not of them' in the second line of the third stanza are + somewhat awkwardly addressed to a personification of Autumn, I do not + know that any sort of fault can be found in it."</p> +</blockquote></blockquote> + +<p>But though 'Autumn' (1) is best as a whole, the 'Nightingale' (2) +altogether beats it in splendour and intensity of mood; and, after +pointing out its defects, Mr. Bridges confesses, "I could not name any +English poem of the same length which contains so much beauty as this +ode." Still, it takes second place, and next comes 'Melancholy' (3). +"The perception in this ode is profound, and no doubt experienced;" but in +spite of its great beauty "it does not hit so hard as one would expect. +I do not know whether this is due to a false note towards the end of the +second stanza, or to a disagreement between the second and third stanzas." +Next in order come 'Psyche' (4) and, disputing place with it, the +'Grecian Urn' (5). 'Indolence' (6) closes the procession; and I dare say +few will dispute her title to the last place. + +But with these six odes we must rank (a) the fragment of the 'May Ode,' +immortal on account of the famous passage of inimitable beauty descriptive +of the Greek poets—</p> + +<blockquote><blockquote> +<p class = "noindent"> "'Leaving great verse unto a little clan.'"—</p> +</blockquote></blockquote> + +<p>And (b) (c) the Odes to 'Pan' and to 'Sorrow' from 'Endymion.' Of the +latter Mr. Sidney Colvin has written:—</p> + +<blockquote><blockquote> +<p class = "noindent"> "His later and more famous lyrics, though they are free from the + faults and immaturities which disfigure this, yet do not, to my mind + at least, show a command over such various sources of imaginative and + musical effect, or touch so thrillingly so many chords of the spirit. + A mood of tender irony and wistful pathos like that of the best + Elizabethan love-songs; a sense as keen as Heine's of the immemorial + romance of India and the East; a power like that of Coleridge, and + perhaps caught from him, of evoking the remotest weird and beautiful + associations almost with a word; clear visions of Greek beauty and + wild wood-notes of Celtic imagination; all these elements come here + commingled, yet in a strain perfectly individual."</p> +</blockquote></blockquote> + +<p>With this Mr. Bridges entirely agrees; but adds:—</p> + +<blockquote><blockquote> +<p class = "noindent"> "It unfortunately halts in the opening, and the first and fourth + stanzas especially are unequal to the rest, as is again the third + from the end, 'Young Stranger,' which for its matter would with more + propriety have been cast into the previous section; and these + impoverish the effect, and contain expressions which might put some + readers off. If they would begin at the fifth stanza and omit the + third from the end, they would find little that is not admirable."</p> +</blockquote></blockquote> + +<p>Now, for my part, when in book or newspaper I come upon references to +Isaiah lxi. 1-3, or Shakespeare, K. Henry IV., Pt. ii., Act 4, Sc. 5, l. +163, or the like, I have to drop my reading at once and hunt them up. +So I hope that these references of Mr. Bridges will induce the reader to +take his Keats down from the shelf. And I hope further that, having his +Keats in hand, the reader will examine these odes again and make out an +order for himself, as I propose to do.</p> + +<br><br><br><br> +<p>Mr. Bridges's order of merit was: (1) 'Autumn,' (2) the 'Nightingale,' +(3) 'Melancholy,' (4) 'Psyche,' (5) 'Grecian Urn,' (6) 'Indolence'; +leaving us to rank with these (a) the fragment of the 'May Ode,' and +(b) (c) the Odes to 'Pan' and to 'Sorrow' from 'Endymion.'</p> + +<p>Now of 'Autumn,' to which he gives the first place 'for its perfection,' +one may remark that Keats did not entitle it an Ode, and the omission may +be something more than casual. Certainly its three stanzas seem to me to +exhibit very little of that <i>progression</i> of thought and feeling which I +take to be one of the qualities of an ode as distinguished from an +ordinary lyric. The line is notoriously hard to draw: but I suppose that +in theory the lyric deals summarily with its theme, whereas the ode treats +it in a sustained progressive manner. But sustained treatment is hardly +possible within the limits of three stanzas, and I can discover no +progression. The first two stanzas elaborate a picture of Autumn; the +third suggests a reflection—</p> + +<blockquote><blockquote> +<p class = "noindent"> "Where are the songs of Spring? Ay, where are they?<br> + Think not of them, thou hast thy music too—"</p> +</blockquote></blockquote> + +<p>And promptly, with a few added strokes, all pictorial, the poet works that +reflection into decoration. A sonnet could not well be more summary. +In fact, the poem in structure of thought very closely resembles a sonnet; +its first two stanzas corresponding to the octave, and its last stanza to +the sestett.</p> + +<p>This will perhaps be thought very trivial criticism of a poem which most +people admit to be, as a piece of writing, all but absolutely flawless. +But allowing that it expresses perfectly what it sets out to express, +I yet doubt if it deserve the place assigned to it by Mr. Bridges. +Expression counts for a great deal: but ideas perhaps count for more. +And in the value of the ideas expressed I cannot see that 'Autumn' comes +near to rivalling the 'Nightingale' (for instance) or 'Melancholy.' +The thought that Autumn has its songs as well as Spring has neither the +rarity nor the subtlety nor the moral value of the thought that:</p> + +<blockquote><blockquote> +<p class = "noindent"><span class = "ind9">"In the very temple of Delight</span><br> +<span class = "ind3"> Veil'd Melancholy has her sovran shrine,</span><br> +<span class = "ind6"> Though seen of none save him whose strenuous tongue</span><br> +<span class = "ind3"> Can burst joy's grape against his palate fine;</span><br> + His soul shall taste the sadness of her might,<br> +<span class = "ind6"> And be among her cloudy trophies hung."</span><br><br></p> +</blockquote></blockquote> + +<p>To test it in another way:—It is perfect, no doubt: but it has not the +one thing that now and then in poetry rises (if I may use the paradox) +above perfection. It does not contain, as one or two of the Odes contain, +what I may call the Great Thrill. It nowhere compels that sudden +'silent, upon a peak in Darien' shiver, that awed surmise of the magic of +poetry which arrests one at the seventh stanza of the 'Nightingale' or +before the closing lines of 'Psyche.' Such verse as:</p> + +<blockquote><blockquote> +<p class = "noindent"> "Perhaps the self-same song hath found a path<br> +<span class = "ind3"> Through the sad heart of Ruth, when, sick for home,</span><br> +<span class = "ind6"> She stood in tears amid the alien corn;</span><br> +<span class = "ind9"> The same that oft-times hath</span><br> +<span class = "ind3"> Charm'd magic casements, opening on the foam</span><br> +<span class = "ind6"> Of perilous seas in faery lands forlorn—"</span><br><br></p> +</blockquote></blockquote> + +<p>Reaches beyond technical perfection to the very root of all tears and joy. +Such verse links poetry to Love itself—</p> + +<blockquote><blockquote> +<p class = "noindent"><span class = "ind3"> "Half angel and half bird,</span><br> + And all a wonder and a wild desire."<br><br></p> +</blockquote></blockquote> + +<p>The 'Ode on a Grecian Urn' does not perhaps quite reach this divine +thrill: but its second and third stanzas have a rapture that comes very +near to it (I will speak anon of the fourth stanza): and I should not +quarrel with one who preferred these two stanzas even to the close of +'Psyche.'</p> + +<p>Now it seems to me that the mere touching of this poetic height—the mere +feat of causing this most exquisite vibration in the human nerves—gives a +poem a quality and a rank apart; a quality and a rank not secured to +'Autumn' by all its excellence of expression. I grant, of course, that it +takes two to produce this thrill—the reader as well as the poet. +And if any man object to me that he, for his part, feels a thrill as +poignant when he reads stanza 2 of 'Autumn' as when he reads stanza 7 of +the 'Nightingale,' then I confess that I shall have some difficulty in +answering him. But I believe very few, if any, will assert this of +themselves. And perhaps we may get at the truth of men's feelings on this +point in another way. Suppose that of these four poems, 'Autumn,' +'Nightingale,' 'Psyche,' and 'Grecian Urn,' one were doomed to perish, and +fate allowed us to choose which one should be abandoned. Sorrowful as the +choice must be, I believe that lovers of poetry would find themselves +least loth to part with 'Autumn'; that the loss of either of the others +would be foreseen as a sharper wrench.</p> + +<p>For the others lie close to human emotion; are indeed interpenetrated with +emotion; whereas 'Autumn' makes but an objective appeal, chiefly to the +visual sense. It is, as I have said, a decorative picture; and even so it +hardly beats the pictures in stanza 4 of the 'Grecian Urn'—</p> + +<blockquote><blockquote> +<p class = "noindent"> "What little town by river or sea-shore,<br> + Or mountain, built with peaceful citadel,<br> + Is emptied of its folk, this pious morn?"<br></p> +</blockquote></blockquote> + +<p>Though Keats, to be sure, comes perilously near to spoiling these lines by +the three answering ones—</p> + +<blockquote><blockquote> +<p class = "noindent"> "And, little town, thy streets for evermore<br> + Will silent be; and not a soul to tell<br> + Why thou art desolate, can e'er return."<br></p> +</blockquote></blockquote> + +<p>—Which, though beautiful in themselves, involve a confusion of thought; +since (in Mr. Colvin's words) "they speak of the arrest of life as though +it were an infliction in the sphere of reality, and not merely a necessary +condition in the sphere of art, having in that sphere its own +compensations."</p> + +<p>But it is time to be drawing up one's own order for the Odes. The first +place, then, let us give to the 'Nightingale,' for the intensity of its +emotion, for the sustained splendour and variety of its language, for the +consummate skill with which it keeps the music matched with the mood, and +finally because it attains, at least twice, to the 'great thrill.' +Nor can one preferring it offend Mr. Bridges, who confesses that he "could +not name any English poem of the same length which contains so much beauty +as this ode."</p> + +<p>For the second place, one feels inclined at first to bracket 'Psyche' with +the 'Grecian Urn.' Each develops a beautiful idea. In 'Psyche' the poet +addresses the loveliest but latest-born vision 'of all Olympus's faded +hierarchy,' and promises her that, though born:</p> + +<blockquote><blockquote> +<p class = "noindent"><span class = "ind3"> "Too late for antique vows,</span><br> + Too, too late for the fond believing lyre,"<br></p> +</blockquote></blockquote> + +<p>She shall yet have a priest, the poet, and a temple built in some +untrodden region of his mind—</p> + +<blockquote><blockquote> +<p class = "noindent"> "And in the midst of this wide quietness<br> + A rosy sanctuary will I dress<br> + With the wreath'd trellis of a working brain,<br> +<span class = "ind3"> With buds, and bells, and stars without a name,</span><br> + With all the gardener Fancy e'er could feign,<br> +<span class = "ind3"> Who breeding flowers will never breed the same:</span><br> + And there shall be for thee all soft delight<br> +<span class = "ind3"> That shadowy thought can win,</span><br> + A bright torch, and a casement ope at night,<br> +<span class = "ind3"> To let the warm Love in!"</span><br><br></p> +</blockquote></blockquote> + +<p>The thought of the 'Grecian Urn' is (to quote Mr. Bridges) "the supremacy +of ideal art over Nature, because of its unchanging expression of +perfection." And this also is true and beautiful. Idea for idea, there +is little to choose between the two odes. Each has the 'great thrill,' or +something very like it. The diction of 'Psyche' is more splendid; the +mood of the 'Grecian Urn' happier and (I think) rarer. But 'Psyche' +asserts its superiority in the orderly development of its idea, which +rises steadily to its climax in the magnificent lines quoted above, and on +that note triumphantly closes: whereas the 'Grecian Urn' marches +uncertainly, recurs to its main idea without advancing it, reaches +something like its climax in the middle stanza, and tripping over a pun +(as Mr. Bridges does not hesitate to call 'O Attic shape! fair attitude!') +at the entrance of the last stanza, barely recovers itself in time to make +a forcible close.</p> + +<p>(1) 'Nightingale,' (2) 'Psyche,' (3) 'Grecian Urn.' Shall the next place +go to 'Melancholy?' The idea of this ode (I contrasted it just now with +the idea of 'Autumn') is particularly fine; and when we supply the first +stanza which Keats discarded we see it to be well developed. +The discarded stanza lies open to the charge of staginess. One may answer +that Keats meant it to be stagey: that he deliberately surrounded the +quest of the false Melancholy with those paste-board 'properties'—the +bark of dead men's bones, the rudder of a dragon's tail 'long severed, yet +still hard with agony', the cordage woven of large uprootings from the +skull of bald Medusa'—in order to make the genuine Melancholy more +effective by contrast.[1] Yet, as Mr. Bridges points out, the ode does +not hit so hard as one would expect: and it has seemed to me that the +composition of Dürer's great drawing may have something to do with this. +Dürer <i>did</i> surround his Melancholia with 'properties,' and he <i>did</i> +evoke a figure which all must admit to be not only tremendously impressive +but entirely genuine, whatever Keats may say; a figure so haunting, too, +that it obtrudes its face between us and Keats's page and scares away his +delicate figure of:</p> + +<blockquote><blockquote> +<p class = "noindent"><span class = "ind6"> "Joy, whose hand is ever at his lips</span><br> + Bidding adieu…"—<br><br></p> +</blockquote></blockquote> + +<p>Reducing him to the pettiness of a Chelsea-china shepherd. Mr. Bridges, +too, calls attention to a false note in the second stanza:—</p> + +<blockquote><blockquote> +<p class = "noindent"> "Or if thy mistress some rich anger shows,<br> + Emprison her soft hand, and let her rave,<br> + And feed, feed deep upon her peerless eyes."<br><br></p> +</blockquote></blockquote> + +<p>So prone was Keats to sound this particular false note that Mr. Bridges +had to devote some three pages of his essay to an examination of the +poet's want of taste in his speech about women and his lack of true +insight into human passion. The worst trick this disability ever played +upon Keats was to blind him to his magnificent opportunity in 'Lamia'—an +opportunity of which the missing is felt as positively cruel: but it +betrayed him also into occasional lapses and ineptitudes which almost +rival Leigh Hunt's—</p> + +<blockquote><blockquote> +<p class = "noindent"> "The two divinest things the world has got—<br> + A lovely woman in a rural spot."<br><br></p> +</blockquote></blockquote> + +<p>This blemish may, perhaps, condemn it to a place below 'Autumn'; of which +(I hope) reason has been shown why it cannot rank higher than (4). +And (6) <i>longo intervallo</i> comes 'Indolence,' which may be fearlessly +called an altogether inferior performance.</p> + +<p>The 'May Ode' stands by itself, an exquisite fragment. But the two odes +from <i>Endymion</i> may be set well above 'Indolence,' and that to 'Sorrow,' +in my opinion, above 'Autumn,' and only a little way behind the leaders.</p> + +<p>But the fall of the year is marked for us by a ceremony more poignant, +more sorrowfully seasonable than any hymned by Hood or by Keats. Let us +celebrate—<br><br></p> + +<h4>LAYING UP THE BOAT.</h4> + +<p>There arrives a day towards the end of October—or with luck we may tide +over into November—when the wind in the mainsail suddenly takes a winter +force, and we begin to talk of laying up the boat. Hitherto we have kept +a silent compact and ignored all change in the season. We have watched +the blue afternoons shortening, fading through lilac into grey, and let +pass their scarcely perceptible warnings. One afternoon a few kittiwakes +appeared. A week later the swallows fell to stringing themselves like +beads along the coastguard's telephone-wire on the hill. They vanished, +and we pretended not to miss them. When our hands grew chill with +steering we rubbed them by stealth or stuck them nonchalantly in our +pockets. But this vicious unmistakable winter gust breaks the spell. +We take one look around the harbour, at the desolate buoys awash and +tossing; we cast another seaward at the thick weather through which, in a +week at latest, will come looming the earliest of the Baltic merchantmen, +our November visitors—bluff vessels with red-painted channels, green +deckhouses, white top-strakes, wooden davits overhanging astern, and the +Danish flag fluttering aloft in the haze. Then we find speech; and with +us, as with the swallows, the move into winter quarters is not long +delayed when once it comes into discussion. We have dissembled too long; +and know, as we go through the form of debating it, that our date must be +the next spring-tides.</p> + +<p>This ritual of laying up the boat is our way of bidding farewell to +summer; and we go through it, when the day comes, in ceremonial silence. +<i>Favete linguis!</i> The hour helps us, for the spring-tides at this season +reach their height a little after night-fall, and it is on an already +slackening flood that we cast off our moorings and head up the river with +our backs to the waning sunset. Since we tow a dinghy astern and are +ourselves towed by the silent yachtsman, you may call it a procession. +She has been stripped, during the last two days, of sails, rigging, and +all spars but the mainmast. Now we bring her alongside the town quay and +beneath the shears—the abhorrèd shears—which lift this too out of its +step, dislocated with a creak as poignant as the cry of Polydorus. +We lower it, lay it along the deck, and resume our way; past quay doors +and windows where already the townsfolk are beginning to light their +lamps; and so by the jetties where foreign crews rest with elbows on +bulwarks and stare down upon us idly through the dusk. She is after all +but a little cutter of six tons, and we might well apologise, like the +Athenian, for so diminutive a corpse. But she is our own; and they never +saw her with jackyarder spread, or spinnaker or jib-topsail delicate as +samite—those heavenly wings!—nor felt her gallant spirit straining to +beat her own record before a tense northerly breeze. Yet even to them her +form, in pure white with gilt fillet, might tell of no common obsequies.</p> + +<p>For in every good ship the miracle of Galatea is renewed; and the +shipwright who sent this keel down the ways to her element surely beheld +the birth of a goddess. He still speaks of her with pride, but the +conditions of his work keep him a modest man; for he goes about it under +the concentred gaze of half a dozen old mariners hauled ashore, who haunt +his yard uninvited, slow of speech but deadly critical. Nor has the +language a word for their appalling candour. Often, admiring how +cheerfully he tolerates them, I have wondered what it would feel like to +compose a novel under the eyes of half a dozen reviewers. But to him, as +to his critics, the ship was a framework only until the terrible moment +when with baptism she took life. Did he in the rapture, the brief ecstasy +of creation, realise that she had passed from him? Ere the local +artillery band had finished 'Rule Britannia,' and while his friends were +still shaking his hands and drinking to him, did he know his loss in his +triumph? His fate is to improve the world, not to possess; to chase +perfection, knowing that under the final mastering touch it must pass from +his hand; to lose his works and anchor himself upon the workmanship, the +immaterial function. For of art this is the cross and crown in one; and +he, modest man, was born to the sad eminence.</p> + +<p>She is ours now by purchase, but ours, too, by something better. Like a +slave's her beautiful untaught body came to us; but it was we who gave +wings to her, and with wings a soul, and a law to its grace, and +discipline to its vital impulses. She is ours, too, by our gratitude, +since the delicate machine:</p> + +<blockquote><blockquote> +<p class = "noindent"> "Has like a woman given up its joy;"<br></p> +</blockquote></blockquote> + +<p>And by memories of her helpfulness in such modest perils as we tempt, of +her sweet companionship through long days empty of annoyance—land left +behind with its striving crowds, its short views, its idols of the +market-place, its sordid worries; the breast flung wide to the horizon, +swept by wholesome salt airs, void perhaps, but so beatifically clean! +Then it was that we learned her worth, drinking in the knowledge without +effort, lulled hour after hour by her whisperings which asked for no +answer, by the pulse of her tiller soft against the palm. Patter of +reef-points, creak of cordage, hum of wind, hiss of brine—I think at +times that she has found a more human language. Who that has ever steered +for hours together cannot report of a mysterious voice 'breaking the +silence of the seas,' as though a friend were standing and speaking +astern? or has not turned his head to the confident inexplicable call? +The fishermen fable of drowned sailors 'hailing their names.' But the +voice is of a single speaker; it bears no likeness to the hollow tones of +the dead; it calls no name; it utters no particular word. It merely +speaks. Sometimes, ashamed at being tricked by an illusion so absurd, +I steal a glance at the yachtsman forward. He is smoking, placidly +staring at the clouds. Patently he was not the speaker, and patently he +has heard nothing. Was it Cynthia, my dearer shipmate? She, too, knows +the voice; even answered it one day, supposing it mine, and in her +confusion I surprised our common secret. But we never hear it together. +She is seated now on the lee side of the cockpit, her hands folded on the +coaming, her chin rested on them, and her eyes gazing out beneath the sail +and across the sea from which they surely have drawn their wine-coloured +glooms. She has not stirred for many minutes. No, it was not Cynthia. +Then either it must be the wild, obedient spirit who carries us, straining +at the impassable bar of speech, to break through and be at one with her +master, or else—Can it have been Ariel, perched aloft in the shrouds, +with mischievous harp?</p> + + +<blockquote><blockquote> +<p class = "noindent"> "That was the chirp of Ariel<br> + You heard, as overhead it flew,<br> + The farther going more to dwell<br> + And wing our green to wed our blue;<br> + But whether note of joy or knell<br> + Not his own Father-singer knew;<br> + Nor yet can any mortal tell,<br> + Save only how it shivers through;<br> + The breast of us a sounded shell,<br> + The blood of us a lighted dew."<br></p> +</blockquote></blockquote> + +<p>Perhaps; but for my part I believe it was the ship; and if you deride my +belief, I shall guess you one of those who need a figure-head to remind +them of a vessel's sex. There are minds which find a certain romance in +figure-heads. To me they seem a frigid, unintelligent device, not to say +idolatrous. I have known a crew to set so much store by one that they +kept a tinsel locket and pair of ear-rings in the forecastle and duly +adorned their darling when in port. But this is materialism. The true +personality of a ship resides in no prefiguring lump of wood with a +sightless smile to which all seas come alike and all weathers. Lay your +open palm on the mast, rather, and feel life pulsing beneath it, trembling +through and along every nerve of her. Are you converted? That life is +yours to control. Take the tiller, then, and for an hour be a god! +For indeed you shall be a god, and of the very earliest. The centuries +shall run out with the chain as you slip moorings—run out and drop from +you, plumb, and leave you free, winged! Or if you cannot forget in a +moment the times to which you were born, each wave shall turn back a page +as it rolls past to break on the shore towards which you revert no glance. +Even the romance of it shall fade with the murmur of that coast.</p> + +<blockquote><blockquote> +<p class = "noindent"> "Sails of silk and ropes of sendal,<br> +<span class = "ind3"> Such as gleam in ancient lore,</span><br> + And the singing of the sailor,<br> +<span class = "ind3"> And the answer from the shore—"</span><br><br></p> +</blockquote></blockquote> + +<p>These shall pass and leave you younger than romance—a child open-eyed and +curious, pleased to meet a sea-parrot or a rolling porpoise, or to watch +the gannets diving—</p> + +<blockquote><blockquote> +<p class = "noindent"><span class = "ind6"> "As Noah saw them dive</span><br> + O'er sunken Ararat."<br><br></p> +</blockquote></blockquote> + +<p>Yes, and sunset shall bring you, a god, to the gates of a kingdom I must +pause to describe for you, though when you reach it you will forget my +description and imagine yourself its first discoverer. But that is a part +of its charm.</p> + +<p>Walter Pater, reading the <i>Odyssey</i>, was brought up (as we say) 'with a +round turn' by a passage wherein Homer describes briefly and with accuracy +how some mariners came to harbour, took down sail, and stepped ashore. +It filled him with wonder that so simple an incident—nor to say ordinary +—could be made so poetical; and, having pondered it, he divided the +credit between the poet and his fortunate age—a time (said he) in which +one could hardly have spoken at all without ideal effect, or the sailors +pulled down their boat without making a picture 'in the great style' +against a sky charged with marvels.</p> + +<p>You will discover, when you reach the river-mouth of which I am telling, +and are swept over the rolling bar into quiet water—you will discover +(and with ease, being a god) that Mr. Pater was entirely mistaken, and the +credit belongs neither to Homer nor to his fortunate age. For here are +woods with woodlanders, and fields with ploughmen, and beaches with +fishermen hauling nets; and all these men, as they go about their work, +contrive to make pictures 'in the great style' against a sky charged with +marvels, obviously without any assistance from Homer, and quite as if +nothing had happened for, say, the last three thousand years. That the +immemorial craft of seafaring has no specially 'heroic age'—or that, if +it have, that age is yours—you will discover by watching your own +yachtsman as he moves about lowering foresail and preparing to drop +anchor.</p> + +<p>It is a river of gradual golden sunsets, such as Wilson painted—a +broad-bosomed flood between deep and tranquil woods, the main banks +holding here and there a village as in an arm maternally crook'd, but +opening into creeks where the oaks dip their branches in the high tides, +where the stars are glassed all night long without a ripple, and where you +may spend whole days with no company but herons and sandpipers. Even by +the main river each separate figure—the fisherman on the shore, the +ploughman on the upland, the ferryman crossing between them—moves slowly +upon a large landscape, while, permeating all, 'the essential silence +cheers and blesses.' After a week at anchor in the heart of this silence +Cynthia and I compared notes, and set down the total population at fifty +souls; and even so she would have it that I had included the owls. +Lo! the next morning an unaccustomed rocking awoke us in our berths, and, +raising the flap of our dew-drenched awning, we 'descried at sunrise an +emerging prow' of a peculiarly hideous excursion steamboat. She blew no +whistle, and we were preparing to laugh at her grotesque temerity when we +became aware of a score of boats putting out towards her from the shadowy +banks. Like spectres they approached, reached her, and discharged their +complements, until at last a hundred and fifty passengers crowded her +deck. In silence—or in such silence as a paddle-boat can achieve—she +backed, turned, and bore them away: on what festal errand we never +discovered. We never saw them return. For aught I know they may never +have returned. They raised no cheer; no band accompanied them; they +passed without even the faint hum of conversation. In five minutes at +most the apparition had vanished around the river-bend seawards and out of +sight. We stared at the gently heaving water, turned, and caught sight of +Euergetes, his head and red cap above the forecastle hatch. (I call our +yachtsman Euergetes because it is so unlike his real name that neither he +nor his family will recognise it.) "Why, Euergetes," exclaimed Cynthia, +"wherever did they all come from?" "I'm sure I can't tell you, ma'am," he +answered, "unless 'twas from the woods,"—giving us to picture these ardent +holiday-makers roosting all night in the trees while we slumbered. +But the odd thing was that the labourers manned the fields that day, the +fishermen the beach that evening, in un-diminished numbers. We landed, +and could detect no depletion in the village. We landed on subsequent +days, and discovered no increase. And the inference, though easy, was +startling.</p> + +<p>I suppose that 'in the great style' could hardly be predicated of our +housekeeping on these excursions; and yet it achieves, in our enthusiastic +opinion, a primitive elegance not often recaptured by mortals since the +passing of the Golden Age. We cook for ourselves, but bring a fine spirit +of emulation both to <i>cuisine</i> and service. We dine frugally, but the +claret is sound. From the moment when Euergetes awakes us by washing down +the deck, and the sound of water rushing through the scuppers calls me +forth to discuss the weather with him, method rules the early hours, that +we may be free to use the later as we list. First the cockpit beneath the +awning must be prepared as a dressing-room for Cynthia; next Euergetes +summoned on deck to valet me with the simple bucket. And when I am +dressed and tingling from the <i>douche</i>, and sit me down on the cabin top, +barefooted and whistling, to clean the boots, and Euergetes has been sent +ashore for milk and eggs, bread and clotted cream, there follows a +peaceful half-hour until Cynthia flings back a corner of the awning and, +emerging, confirms the dawn. Then begins the business, orderly and +thorough, of redding up the cabin, stowing the beds, washing out the lower +deck, folding away the awning, and transforming the cockpit into a +breakfast-room, with table neatly set forth. Meanwhile Euergetes has +returned, and from the forecastle comes the sputter of red mullet cooking. +Cynthia clatters the cups and saucers, while in the well by the cabin door +I perform some acquired tricks with the new-laid eggs. There is plenty to +be done on board a small boat, but it is all simple enough. Only, you +must not let it overtake you. Woe to you if it fall into arrears!</p> + +<p>By ten o'clock or thereabouts we have breakfasted, my pipe is lit, and a +free day lies before us—</p> + +<blockquote><blockquote> +<p class = "noindent"> "All the wood to ransack,<br> +<span class = "ind3"> All the wave explore."</span><br></p> +</blockquote></blockquote> + +<p>We take the dinghy and quest after adventures. The nearest railway lies +six miles off, and is likely to deposit no one in whom we have the least +concern. The woods are deep, we carry our lunch-basket and may roam +independent of taverns. If the wind invite, we can hoist our small sail; +if not, we can recline and drift and stare at the heavens, or land and +bathe, or search in vain for curlews' or kingfishers' nests, or in more +energetic moods seek out a fisherman and hire him to shoot his seine. +Seventy red mullet have I seen fetched at one haul out of those delectable +waters, remote and enchanted as the lake whence the fisherman at the +genie's orders drew fish for the young king of the Black Isles. But such +days as these require no filling, and why should I teach you how to fill +them?</p> + +<p>Best hour of all perhaps is that before bed-time, when the awning has been +spread once more, and after long hours in the open our world narrows to +the circle of the reading-lamp in the cockpit. Our cabin is prepared. +Through the open door we see its red curtain warm in the light of the +swinging lamp, the beds laid, the white sheets turned back. Still we +grudge these moments to sleep. Outside we hear the tide streaming +seawards, light airs play beneath the awning, above it rides the host of +heaven. And here, gathered into a few square feet, we have home—larder, +cellar, library, tables, and cupboards; life's small appliances with the +human comradeship they serve, chosen for their service after severely +practical discussion, yet ultimately by the heart's true nesting-instinct. +We are isolated, bound even to this strange river-bed by a few fathoms of +chain only. To-morrow we can lift anchor and spread wing; but we carry +home with us.</p> + +<blockquote><blockquote> +<p class = "noindent"> "I will make you brooches and toys for your delight<br> + Of bird-song at morning and star-shine at night;<br> + I will make a palace fit for you and me<br> + Of green days in forests and blue days at sea.<br><br> + + I will make my kitchen and you shall keep your room<br> + Where white flows the river and bright blows the broom;<br> + And you shall wash your linen and keep your body white<br> + In rainfall at morning and dewfall at night."<br><br></p> +</blockquote></blockquote> + +<p>You see now what memories we lay up with the boat. Will you think it +ridiculous that after such royal days of summer, her inconspicuous +obsequies have before now put me in mind of Turner's '<i>Fighting +Téméraire</i>'? I declare, at any rate, that the fault lies not with me, but +with our country's painters and poets for providing no work of art nearer +to my mood. We English have a great seafaring and a great poetical past. +Yet the magic of the sea and shipping has rarely touched our poetry, and +for its finest expression we must still turn to an art in which as a race +we are less expert, and stand before that picture of Turner's in the +National Gallery. The late Mr. Froude believed in a good time coming when +the sea-captains of Elizabeth are to find their bard and sit enshrined in +'great English national epic as grand as the <i>Odyssey</i>' It may be, but as +yet our poets have achieved but a few sea-fights, marine adventures, and +occasional pieces, which wear a spirited but accidental look, and suggest +the excursionist. On me, at any rate, no poem in our language—not even +<i>The Ancient Mariner</i>—binds as that picture binds, the—</p> + +<blockquote><blockquote> +<p class = "noindent"><span class = "ind9">"Mystic spell,</span><br> + Which none but sailors know or feel,<br> +<span class = "ind3">And none but they can tell—"</span><br><br></p> +</blockquote></blockquote> + +<p>If indeed they <i>can</i> tell. In it Turner seized and rolled together in one +triumphant moment the emotional effect of noble shipping and a sentiment +as ancient and profound as the sea itself—human regret for transitory +human glory. The great warship, glimmering in her Mediterranean +fighting-paint, moving like a queen to execution; the pert and ignoble +tug, itself an emblem of the new order, eager, pushing, ugly, and +impatient of the slow loveliness it supersedes; the sunset hour, closing +man's labour; the fading river-reach—you may call these things obvious, +but all art's greatest effects are obvious when once genius has discovered +them. I should know well enough by this time what is coming when I draw +near that picture, and yet my heart never fails to leap with the old wild +wonder. There are usually one or two men standing before it—I observe +that it affects women less—and I glance at them furtively to see how +<i>they</i> take it. If ever I surprise one with tears in his eyes, I believe +we shall shake hands. And why not? For the moment we are not strangers, +but men subdued by the wonder and sadness of our common destiny: "we feel +that we are greater than we know." We are two Englishmen, in one moment +realising the glories of our blood and state. We are alone together, +gazing upon a new Pacific, 'silent, upon a peak in Darien.'</p> + +<p>For—and here lies his subtlety—in the very flush of amazement the +painter flatters you by whispering that for <i>you</i> has his full meaning +been reserved. The <i>Téméraire</i> goes to her doom unattended, twilit, +obscure, with no pause in the dingy bustle of the river. You alone have +eyes for the passing of greatness, and a heart to feel it.</p> + +<blockquote><blockquote> +<p class = "noindent"> "There's a far bell ringing,"<br><br></p> +</blockquote></blockquote> + +<p>But you alone hear it tolling to evensong, to the close of day, the end of +deeds.</p> + +<p>So, as we near the beach where she is to lie, a sense of proud +exclusiveness mingles with our high regret. Astern the jettymen and +stevedores are wrangling over their latest job; trains are shunting, +cranes working, trucks discharging their cargoes amid clouds of dust. +We and we only assist at the passing of a goddess. Euergetes rests on his +oars, the tow-rope slackens, she glides into the deep shadow of the shore, +and with a soft grating noise—ah, the eloquence of it!—takes ground. +Silently we carry her chain out and noose it about a monster elm; silently +we slip the legs under her channels, lift and make fast her stern +moorings, lash the tiller for the last time, tie the coverings over +cabintop and well; anxiously, with closed lips, praetermitting no due +rite. An hour, perhaps, passes, and November darkness has settled on the +river ere we push off our boat, in a last farewell committing her—our +treasure 'locked up, not lost'—to a winter over which Jove shall reign +genially.</p> + +<blockquote><blockquote> +<p class = "noindent"> "Et fratres Helenae, lucida sidera."</p> +</blockquote></blockquote> + +<p>As we thread our dim way homeward among the riding-lights flickering on +the black water, the last pale vision of her alone and lightless follows +and reminds me of the dull winter ahead, the short days, the long nights. +She is haunting me yet as I land on the wet slip strewn with dead leaves +to the tide's edge. She follows me up the hill, and even to my library +door. I throw it open, and lo! a bright fire burning, and, smiling over +against the blaze of it, cheerful, companionable, my books have been +awaiting me.</p> + +<p>[1] The discarded opening stanza ran:—</p> + +<blockquote><blockquote> +<p class = "noindent">"Though you should build a bark of dead men's bones,<br> +<span class = "ind3">And rear a phantom gibbet for a mast,</span><br> + Stitch shrouds together for a sail, with groans<br> +<span class = "ind3">To fill it out blood-stainèd and aghast;</span><br> + Although your rudder be a dragon's tail<br> +<span class = "ind3">Long-sever'd, yet still hard with agony,</span><br> +<span class = "ind6">Your cordage large uprootings from the skull</span><br> + Of bald Medusa, certes you would fail<br> +<span class = "ind3">To find the Melancholy—whether she</span><br> +<span class = "ind6">Dreameth in any isle of Lethe dull."</span><br><br></p> +</blockquote></blockquote> + +<br><br> +<a name="2HCH0011"><!-- H2 anchor --></a> +<br><br> +<h3>NOVEMBER.</h3> + + +<p>Will the reader forgive, this month, a somewhat more serious gossip?</p> + +<p>In my childhood I used to spend long holidays with my grandparents in +Devonshire, and afterwards lived with them for a while when the shades of +the prison-house began to close and I attended my first 'real' school as a +day-boy. I liked those earlier visits best, for they were holidays, and I +had great times in the hayfields and apple orchards, and rode a horse, and +used in winter-time to go shooting with my grandfather and carry the +powder-flask and shot-flask for his gun—an old muzzle-loader. Though +stern in his manner, he was (as I grew to learn) extraordinarily, even +extravagantly, kind; and my grandmother lived for me, her eldest +grandchild. Years afterwards I gathered that in the circle of her +acquaintance she passed for a satirical, slightly imperious, lady: and I +do seem to remember that she suffered fools with a private reserve of +mirth. But she loved her own with a thoroughness which extended—good +housewife that she was—down to the last small office.</p> + +<p>In short, here were two of the best and most affectionate grandparents in +the world, who did what they knew to make a child happy all the week. But +in religion they were strict evangelicals, and on Sunday they took me to +public worship and acquainted me with Hell. From my eighth to my twelfth +year I lived on pretty close terms with Hell, and would wake up in the +night and lie awake with the horror of it upon me. Oddly enough, I had no +very vivid fear for myself—or if vivid it was but occasional and rare. +Little pietistic humbug that I was, I fancied myself among the elect: but +I had a desperate assurance that both my parents were damned, and I loved +them too well to find the conviction bearable. To this day I wonder what +kept me from tackling my father on the state of his soul. The result +would have been extremely salutary for me: for he had an easy sense of +humour, a depth of conviction of his own which he united with limitless +tolerance, and a very warm affection for his mother-in-law. Let it +suffice that I did not: but for two or three years at least my childhood +was tormented with visions of Hell derived from the pulpit and mixed up +with two terrible visions derived from my reading—the ghost of an evil +old woman in red-heeled slippers from Sir Walter Scott's story, <i>The +Tapestried Room</i>, and a jumble of devils from a chapter of Samuel Warren's +<i>Diary of a Late Physician</i>. I had happened on these horrors among the +dull contents of my grandfather's book-case.</p> + +<p>For three or four years these companions—the vision of Hell particularly +and my parents in it—murdered my childish sleep. Then, for no reason +that I can give any account of, it all faded, and boy or man I have never +been troubled at all by Hell or the fear of it.</p> + +<p>The strangest part of the whole affair is that no priest, from first to +last, has ever spoken to me in private of any life but this present one, +or indeed about religion at all. I suppose there must be some instinct in +the sacerdotal mind which warns it off certain cases as hopeless from the +first… and yet I have always been eager to discuss serious things +with the serious.</p> + +<p>There has been no great loss, though—apart from the missing of +sociableness—if one may judge the arguments that satisfy my clerical +friends from the analogies they use in the pulpit. The subject of a +future life is one, to be sure, which can hardly be discussed without +resort to analogy. But there are good and bad analogies, and of all bad +ones that which grates worst upon the nerves of a man who will have clear +thinking (to whatever it lead him) is the common one of the seed and the +flower.</p> + +<blockquote><blockquote> +<p class = "noindent"> "The flowers that we behold each year<br> + In chequer'd meads their heads to rear,<br> +<span class = "ind3"> New rising from the tomb;</span><br> + The eglantines and honey daisies,<br> + And all those pretty smiling faces<br> +<span class = "ind3"> That still in age grow young—</span><br> +<span class = "ind6"> Even those do cry</span><br> +<span class = "ind6"> That though men die,</span><br> + Yet life from death may come,"<br></p> +</blockquote></blockquote> + +<p>Wrote John Hagthorpe in verses which generations of British schoolboys +have turned into Latin alcaics; and how often have we not 'sat under' this +argument in church at Easter or when the preacher was improving a Harvest +Festival? Examine it, and you see at once that the argument is not <i>in +pari materiâ</i>; that all the true correspondence between man and the +flower-seed begins and ends in this world. As the seed becomes a plant, +blossoms and leaves the seeds of other flowers, so of seed man is +begotten, flourishes and dies, leaving his seed behind him—all in this +world. The 'seed' argument makes an illicit jump from one world to +another after all its analogies have been met and satisfied on this side +of the grave. If flowers went to heaven and blossomed there (which is +possible indeed, but is not contended) it might be cogent. As things are, +one might as validly reason from the man to prove that flowers go to +heaven, as from the flower to prove that man goes thither. St. Paul (as +I do not forget) uses the similitude of the seed: but his argument is a +totally different one. St. Paul bids us not be troubled in what form the +dead shall be raised; for as we sow "not the body that shall be, but bare +grain, it may chance of wheat or of some other grain," so God will raise +the dead in what form it pleases Him: in other words, he tells us that +since bare grain may turn into such wonderful and wonderfully different +things as wheat, barley, oats, rye, in this world, we need not marvel that +bare human bodies planted here should be raised in wonderful form +hereafter. Objections may be urged against this illustration: I am only +concerned to point out that it illustrates an argument entirely different +from the common pulpit one, which (I suspect) we should have to endure far +less frequently were it our custom to burn our dead, and did not interment +dig a trap for facile rhetoric.</p> + +<p>Further, St. Paul's particular warning, if it do not consciously contain, +at least suggests, a general warning against interpreting the future life +in terms of this one, whereas its delights and pains can have little or +nothing in common with ours. We try to imagine them by expanding or +exaggerating and perpetuating ours—or some of them; but the attempt is +demonstrably foolish, and leads straight to its own defeat. It comes of +man's incapacity to form a conception of Eternity, or at any rate to grasp +and hold it long enough to reason about it; by reason of which incapacity +he falls back upon the easier, misleading conception of 'Everlasting +Life.' In Eternity time is not: a man dies into it to-day and awakes +(say) yesterday, for in Eternity yesterday and to-day and to-morrow are +one, and ten thousand years is as one day. This vacuum of time you may +call 'Everlasting Life,' but it clearly differs from what men ordinarily +and almost inevitably understand by 'Everlasting Life,' which to them is +an endless prolongation of time. Therefore, when they imagine heaven as +consisting of an endless prolongation and exaggeration or rarefication of +such pleasures as we know, they invite the retort, "And pray what would +become of any one of our known pleasures, or even of our conceivable +pleasures, if it were made everlasting?" As Jowett asked, with his usual +dry sagacity, in his Introduction to the <i>Phædo</i>—</p> + +<blockquote><blockquote> +<p class = "noindent"> "What is the pain that does not become deadened after a thousand + years? or what is the nature of that pleasure or happiness which + never wearies by monotony? Earthly pleasures and pains are short in + proportion as they are keen, of any others which are both intense and + lasting we have no experience and can form no idea.… To beings + constituted as we are the monotony of singing psalms would be as + great an affliction as the pains of hell, and might even be + pleasantly interrupted by them."</p> +</blockquote></blockquote> + +<p>This is trenchant enough, and yet we perceive that the critic is setting +up his rest upon the very fallacy he attacks—the fallacy of using +'Eternity' and 'Everlasting Life' as convertible terms. +He neatly enough reduces to absurdity the prolongation, through endless +time, of pleasures which delight us because they are transitory: he does +not see, or for the moment forgets, that Eternity is not a prolongation of +time at all, but an absolute negation of it.</p> + +<p>There seems to be no end to the confusion of men's thought on this +subject. Take, for example, this extract from our late Queen's private +journal (1883):—</p> + +<blockquote><blockquote> +<p class = "noindent"> "After luncheon saw the great poet Tennyson in dearest Albert's room + for nearly an hour; and most interesting it was. He is grown very + old, his eyesight much impaired. But he was very kind. Asked him to + sit down. He talked of many friends he had lost, and what it would + be if he did not feel and know that there was another world where + there would be no partings: and then he spoke with horror of the + unbelievers and philosophers who would make you believe that there + was no other world, no immortality, who tried to explain all away in + a miserable manner. We agreed that, were such a thing possible, God, + who is Love, would be far more cruel than any human being."</p> +</blockquote></blockquote> + +<p>It was, no doubt, a touching and memorable interview—these two, aged and +great, meeting at a point of life when grandeur and genius alike feel +themselves to be lonely, daily more lonely, and exchanging beliefs upon +that unseen world where neither grandeur nor genius can plead more than +that they have used their gifts for good. And yet was not Tennyson +yielding to the old temptation to interpret the future life in terms of +this one? Speculation will not carry us far upon this road; yet, so far +as we can, let us carry clear thinking with us. Cruelty implies the +infliction of pain: and there can be no pain without feeling. What +cruelty, then, can be inflicted on the dead, if they have done with +feeling? Or what on the living, if they live in a happy delusion and pass +into nothingness without discovering the cheat? Let us hold most firmly +that there has been no cheat; but let us also be reasonable and admit +that, if cheat there be, it cannot also be cruel, since everything that +would make it a cheat would also blot out completely all chance of +discovery, and therefore all pain of discovering.</p> + +<br><br><br><br> +<p>This is a question on which, beyond pleading that what little we say ought +to be (but seldom is) the result of clear thinking, I propose to say +little, not only because here is not the place for metaphysics, but +because—to quote Jowett again—"considering the 'feebleness of the human +faculties and the uncertainty of the subject,' we are inclined to believe +that the fewer our words the better. At the approach of death there is +not much said: good men are too honest to go out of the world professing +more than they know. There is perhaps no important subject about which, +at any time, even religious people speak so little to one another."</p> + +<p>I would add that, in my opinion, many men fall into this reticence because +as they grow older the question seems to settle itself without argument, +and they cease by degrees to worry themselves about it. It dies in +sensible men almost insensibly with the death of egoism. At twenty we are +all furious egoists; at forty or thereabouts—and especially if we have +children, as at forty every man ought—our centre of gravity has +completely shifted. We care a great deal about what happens to the next +generation, we care something about our work, but about ourselves and what +becomes of us in the end I really think we care very little. By this +time, if we have taken account of ourselves, ourselves are by no means so +splendidly interesting as they used to be, but subjects rather of humorous +and charitable comprehension.</p> + +<p>Of all the opening passages in Plato—master of beautiful openings—I like +best that of the <i>Laws</i>. The scene is Crete; the season, midsummer; and +on the long dusty road between Cnosus and the cave and temple of Zeus the +three persons of the dialogue—strangers to one another, but bound on a +common pilgrimage—join company and fall into converse together. One is +an Athenian, one a Cretan, the third a Lacedæmonian, and all are elderly. +Characteristically, the invitation to talk comes from the Athenian.</p> + +<blockquote><blockquote> +<p class = "noindent"> "It will pass the time pleasantly," he suggests; "for I am told that + the distance from Cnosus to the cave and temple of Zeus is + considerable, and doubtless there are shady places under the lofty + trees which will protect us from the scorching sun. Being no longer + young, we may often stop to rest beneath them, and get over the whole + journey without difficulty, beguiling the time by conversation."<br><br> + + "Yes, Stranger," answers Cleinias the Cretan, "and if we proceed + onward we shall come to groves of cypresses, which are of rare height + and beauty, and there are green meadows in which we may repose and + converse."<br><br> + + "Very good."<br><br> + + "Very good indeed; and still better when we see them. Let us move on + cheerily."<br><br> +</blockquote></blockquote> + +<p>So, now walking, anon pausing in the shade to rest, the three strangers +beguile their journey, which (as the Athenian was made, by one of Plato's +cunning touches, to foresee) is a long one; and the dialogue, moving with +their deliberate progress, extends to a length which no doubt in the +course of some 2,300 years has frightened away many thousands of general +readers. Yet its slow amplitude, when you come to think of it, is +appropriate; for these elderly men are in no hurry, although they have +plenty to talk about, especially on the subjects of youth and religion. +"They have," says Jowett, "the feelings of old age about youth, about the +state, about human things in general. Nothing in life seems to be of much +importance to them: they are spectators rather than actors, and men in +general appear to the Athenian speaker to be the playthings of the gods +and of circumstances. Still they have a fatherly care of the young, and +are deeply impressed by sentiments of religion.…"</p> + +<blockquote><blockquote> +<p class = "noindent"> "Human affairs," says the Athenian, "are hardly worth considering in + earnest, and yet we must be in earnest about them—a sad necessity + constrains us.… And so I say that about serious matters a man + should be serious, and about a matter which is not serious he should + not be serious; and that God is the natural and worthy object of our + most serious and blessed endeavours. For man, as I said before, is + made to be the plaything of God, and this, truly considered, is the + best of him; wherefore also every man and woman should walk seriously + and pass life in the noblest of pastimes, and be of another mind from + what they are at present."</p> +</blockquote></blockquote> + +<p>But on the subject of youth, too, our Athenian is anxiously, albeit +calmly, serious: and especially on the right education of youth, +"for," says he, "many a victory has been and will be suicidal to the +victors; but education is never suicidal." By education he explains +himself to mean—</p> + +<blockquote><blockquote> +<p class = "noindent"> "That education in virtue from youth upwards which makes a man eagerly + pursue the ideal perfection of citizenship, and teaches him how + rightly to rule and how to obey. This is the only education which, + upon our view, deserves the name; and that other sort of training + which aims at the acquisition of wealth or bodily strength, or mere + cleverness apart from intelligence and justice is mean and illiberal, + and is not worthy to be called education at all."</p> +</blockquote></blockquote> + +<p>Plato wrote this dialogue when over seventy, an age which for many years +(if I live) I shall be able to contemplate as respectable. Yet, though +speaking at a guess, I say pretty confidently that the talk of these three +imaginary interlocutors of his upon youth, and the feeling that colours +it, convey more of the truth about old age than does Cicero's admired +treatise on that subject or any of its descendants. For these treatises +start with the false postulate that age is concerned about itself, whereas +it is the mark of age to be indifferent about itself, and this mark of +indifference deepens with the years. Nor did Cicero once in his <i>De +Senectute</i> get hold of so fine or so true a thought as Plato's Athenian +lets fall almost casually—that a man should honour an aged parent as he +would the image of a God treasured up and dwelling in his house.</p> + +<p>The outlook of Plato's three elderly men, in fact, differs little, if at +all, from Mr Meredith's as you may see for yourself by turning back to the +September chapter and reading the part from "Not long ago an interviewer +called on Mr. Meredith," through to the excerpt from 'Lucifer in +Starlight'. Speaking as a parent, I say that this outlook is—I won't say +the right one, though this too I believe—the outlook a man <i>naturally</i> +takes as he grows older: naturally, because it is natural for a man to +have children, and he who has none may find alleviations, but must miss +the course of nature. As I write there comes back to me the cry of my old +schoolmaster, T. E. Brown, protesting from the grave—</p> + +<blockquote><blockquote> +<p class = "noindent"> "But when I think if we must part<br> +<span class = "ind3"> And all this personal dream be fled—</span><br> + O, then my heart! O, then my useless heart!<br> +<span class = "ind3"> Would God that thou wert dead—</span><br> + A clod insensible to joys or ills—<br> + A stone remote in some bleak gully of the hills!"<br></p> +</blockquote></blockquote> + +<p>I hear the note of anguish: but the appeal itself passes me by. 'All this +personal dream' must flee: it is better that it should flee; nay, much of +our present bliss rests upon its transitoriness. But we can continue in +the children.</p> + +<p>I think that perhaps the worst of having no children of their own is that +it makes, or tends to make, men and women indifferent to children in +general. I know, to be sure, that thousands of childless men and women +reach out (as it were) wistfully, almost passionately towards the young. +Still, I know numbers who care nothing for children, regard them as +nuisances, and yet regard themselves as patriots—though of a state which +presumably is to disappear in a few years, and with their acquiescence. I +own that a patriotism which sets up no hope upon its country's continuous +renewal and improvement, or even upon its survival beyond the next few +years, seems to me as melancholy as it is sterile.</p> + +<p>Some of these good folk, for example, play the piano more sedulously than +that instrument, in my opinion, deserves; yet are mightily indignant, in +talk with me, at what they call the wickedness of teaching multitudes of +poor children to play upon pianos provided by the rates. As a historical +fact, very few poor children play or have ever played on pianos provided +by the rates. But I prefer, passing this correction over, to point out to +my indignant friends that the upper and middle classes in England are +ceasing to breed, and that therefore, unless the Anglo-Saxon race is to +lose one of its most cherished accomplishments—unless we are content to +live and see our national music ultimately confined to the jews' harp and +penny whistle—we must endow the children of the poor with pianos—or +perhaps as 'labour certificates' abbreviate the years at our disposal for +instruction, with pianolas, and so realise the American sculptor's grand +allegorical conception of 'Freedom presenting a Pianola to Fisheries and +the Fine Arts.'</p> + + +<br><br><br><br> +<p>To drop irony—and indeed I would expel it, if I could, once and for all +from these pages—I like recreation as much as most men, and have grown to +find it in the dull but deeply absorbing business of sitting on Education +Committees. Some fifteen years ago, in the first story in my first book +of short stories, I confessed to being haunted by a dreadful sound: 'the +footfall of a multitude more terrible than an army with banners, the +ceaseless pelting feet of children—of Whittingtons turning and turning +again.' Well, I still hear that footfall: but it has become less terrible +to me, though not one whit less insistent: and it began to grow less +terrible from the hour I picked up and read a certain little book, <i>The +Invisible Playmate</i>, to the author of which (Mr. William Canton) I desire +here to tender my thanks. In a little chapter of that little book Mr. +Canton tells of an imaginary poem written by an imaginary Arm. +(Arminius?), Altegans, an elderly German cobbler of 'the village of +Wieheisstes, in the pleasant crag-and-fir region of Schlaraffenland.' Its +name is the 'Erster Schulgang,' and I will own, and gratefully, that few +real poems by real 'classics' have so sung themselves into my ears, or so +shamed the dulness out of drudgery, as have the passages which I here set +down for the mere pleasure of transcribing them:—</p> + +<blockquote><blockquote> +<p class = "noindent"> "The poem opens with a wonderful vision of children; delightful as it + is unexpected; as romantic in presentment as it is commonplace in + fact. All over the world—and all under it, too, when their time + comes—the children are trooping to school. The great globe swings + round out of the dark into the sun; there is always morning + somewhere; and for ever in this shifting region of the morning-light + the good Altegans sees the little ones afoot—shining companies and + groups, couples, and bright solitary figures; for they all seem to + have a soft heavenly light about them!<br><br> + + "He sees them in country lanes and rustic villages; on lonely + moorlands, where narrow, brown foot-tracks thread the expanse of + green waste, and occasionally a hawk hovers overhead, or the mountain + ash hangs its scarlet berries above the huge fallen stones set up by + the Druids in the old days; he sees them on the hill-sides, in the + woods, on the stepping-stones that cross the brook in the glen, along + the sea-cliffs and on the wet ribbed sands; trespassing on the + railway lines, making short cuts through the corn, sitting in + ferry-boats: he sees them in the crowded streets of smoky cities, in + small rocky islands, in places far inland where the sea is known only + as a strange tradition.<br><br> + + "The morning-side of the planet is alive with them; one hears their + pattering footsteps everywhere. And as the vast continents sweep + 'eastering out of the high shadow which reaches beyond the moon,' and + as new nations with <i>their</i> cities and villages, their fields, woods, + mountains, and sea-shores, rise up into the morning-side, lo! Fresh + troops, and still fresh troops, and yet again fresh troops of 'these + small school-going children of the dawn.'…<br><br> + + "What are weather and season to this incessant panorama of childhood? + The pigmy people trudge through the snow on moor and hill-side; wade + down flooded roads; are not to be daunted by wind or rain, frost or + the white smother of 'millers and bakers at fisticuffs.' Most + beautiful of all, he sees them travelling schoolward by that late + moonlight which now and again in the winter months precedes the tardy + dawn."<br><br> +</blockquote></blockquote> + +<p>My birthday falls in November month. Here, behind this Cornish window, we +are careful in our keeping of birthdays; we observe them solemnly, +stringent in our cheerful ritual;—and this has been my birthday sermon!</p> + +<br><br> +<a name="2HCH0012"><!-- H2 anchor --></a> +<br><br> +<h3>DECEMBER.</h3> + +<p>Hard by the edge of the sand-hills, and close beside the high road on the +last rise before it dips to the coast, stands a turfed embankment +surrounded by a shallow fosse. This is none of our ancient camps +('castles' we call them in Cornwall), as you perceive upon stepping within +the enclosure, which rises in a complete circle save for two entrances cut +through the bank and facing one another. You are standing in a perfectly +level area a hundred and thirty feet in diameter; the surrounding rampart +rises to a height of eight or nine feet, narrowing towards the top, where +it is seven feet wide; and around its inner side you may trace seven or +eight rows of seats cut in the turf, but now almost obliterated by the +grass.</p> + +<p>This Round (as we call it) was once an open-air theatre or planguary +(<i>plain-an-guaré</i>, place of the play). It has possibly a still older +history, and may have been used by the old Cornish for their councils and +rustic sports; but we know that it was used as a theatre, perhaps as early +as the fourteenth century, certainly as late as the late sixteenth: and, +what is more, we have preserved for us some of the plays performed in it.</p> + +<p>They are sacred or miracle plays, of course. If you draw a line from +entrance to entrance, then at right angles to it there runs from the +circumference towards the centre of the area a straight shallow trench, +terminating in a spoon-shaped pit. The trench is now a mere depression +not more than a foot deep, the pit three feet: but doubtless time has +levelled them up, and there is every reason to suppose that the pit served +to represent Hell (or, in the drama of The Resurrection, the Grave), and +the trench allowed the performers, after being thrust down into perdition, +to regain the green-room unobserved—either actually unobserved, the +trench being covered, or by a polite fiction, the audience pretending not +to see. My private belief is that, the stage being erected above and +along the trench, they were actually hidden while they made their exit. +Where the trench meets the rampart a semi-circular hollow, about ten feet +in diameter, makes a breach in the rows of seats. Here, no doubt, stood +the green-room.</p> + +<p>The first notice of the performance of these plays occurs in Carew's +<i>Survey of Cornwall</i>, published in 1602:—</p> + +<blockquote><blockquote> +<p class = "noindent"> "Pastimes to delight the mind, the Cornishmen have guary miracles and + three-men's songs: and for exercise of the body hunting, hawking, + shooting, wrestling, hurling, and such other games.<br><br> + + "The guary miracle, in English a miracle play, is a kind of Interlude + compiled in Cornish out of some scripture history with that grossness + which accompanied the Romans' <i>vetus comedia</i>. For representing it + they raise an earthen amphitheatre in some open field, having the + diameter of this inclosed plain some forty or fifty foot. + The country people flock from all sides, many miles off, to hear and + see it; for they have therein devils and devices to delight as well + the eye as the ear; the players con not their parts without book, but + are prompted by one called the Ordinary, who followeth at their back + with the book in his hand and telleth them softly what they must + pronounce aloud."</p> +</blockquote></blockquote> + +<p>Our Round, you observe, greatly exceeds the dimensions given by Carew. +But there were several in the west: one for instance, traceable fifty +years ago, at the northern end of the town of Redruth, which still keeps +the name of Planguary; and another magnificent one, of stone, near the +church-town of St. Just by the Land's End. Carew may have seen only the +smaller specimens.</p> + +<p>As for the plays—well, they are by no means masterpieces of literature, +yet they reveal here and there perceptions of beauty such as go with +sincerity even though it be artless. Beautiful for instance is the idea, +if primitive the writing, of a scene in one, <i>Origo Mundi</i>, where Adam, +bowed with years, sends his son Seth to the gate of Paradise to beg +his release from the weariness of living (I quote from Norris's +translation):—</p> + +<blockquote><blockquote> +<p class = "noindent"> "O dear God, I am weary,<br> + Gladly would I see once<br> +<span class = "ind3"> The time to depart.</span><br> + Strong are the roots of the briars,<br> + That my arms are broken<br> +<span class = "ind3"> Tearing up many of them.</span><br><br> + + "Seth my son I will send<br> + To the gate of Paradise forthwith,<br> +<span class = "ind3"> To the Cherub, the guardian.</span><br> + Ask him if there will be for me<br> + Oil of mercy at the last<br> +<span class = "ind3"> From the Father, the God of Grace."</span><br></p> +</blockquote></blockquote> + +<p>Seth answers that he does not know the road to Paradise. "Follow," says +Adam—</p> + +<blockquote><blockquote> +<p class = "noindent"> "Follow the prints of my feet, burnt;<br> + No grass or flower in the world grows<br> + In that same road where I went—<br> +<span class = "ind3"> I and thy Mother surely also—</span><br> +<span class = "ind3"> Thou wilt see the tokens."</span><br><br></p> +</blockquote></blockquote> + +<p>Fine too is the story, in the <i>Passio Domini Nostri</i>, of the blind soldier +Longius, who is led forward and given a lance, to pierce Christ's body on +the Cross. He thrusts and the holy blood heals him of his blindness. +Local colour is sparingly imported. One of the executioners, as he bores +the Cross, says boastfully:—</p> + +<blockquote><blockquote> +<p class = "noindent"> "I will bore a hole for the one hand,<br> + There is not a fellow west of Hayle<br> +<span class = "ind3"> Who can bore better."</span><br><br></p> +</blockquote></blockquote> + +<p>—And in the <i>Resurrectio</i> Pilate rewards the gaoler for his trustiness +with the Cornish manors of 'Fekenal, Carvenow and Merthyn,' and promises +the soldiers by the Sepulchre 'the plain of Dansotha and Barrow Heath.' +A simplicity scarcely less refreshing is exhibited in <i>The Life of St. +Meriasec</i> (a play recently recovered) by a scholar whom a pompous +pedagogue is showing off. He says:—</p> + +<blockquote><blockquote> +<p class = "noindent"> "God help A, B, and C!<br> + The end of the song is D:<br> + No more is known to me,"<br></p> +</blockquote></blockquote> + +<p>But promises to learn more after dinner.</p> + +<br><br><br><br> +<p>Enthusiasts beg us to make the experiment of 'reviving' these old plays in +their old surroundings. But here I pause, while admitting the temptation. +One would like to give life again, if only for a day, to the picture which +Mr. Norris conjures up:—</p> + +<blockquote><blockquote> +<p class = "noindent"> "The bare granite plain of St. Just, in view of Cape Cornwall + and of the transparent sea which beats against that magnificent + headland.… The mighty gathering of people from many miles around + hardly showing like a crowd in that extended region, where nothing + ever grows to limit the view on any side, with their booths and + tents, absolutely necessary where so many people had to remain three + days on the spot, would give a character to the assembly probably + more like what we hear of the so-called religious revivals in America + than of anything witnessed in more sober Europe."</p> +</blockquote></blockquote> + +<p>But alas! I foresee the terrible unreality which would infect the whole +business. Very pretty, no doubt, and suggestive would be the picture of +the audience arrayed around the turf benches—</p> + +<blockquote><blockquote> +<p class = "noindent"> "In gradibus sedit populus de cespite factis—"</p> +</blockquote></blockquote> + +<p>But one does not want an audience to be acting; and this audience would be +making-believe even more heroically than the actors—that is, if it took +the trouble to be in earnest at all. For the success of the experiment +would depend on our reconstructing the whole scene—the ring of entranced +spectators as well as the primitive show; and the country-people would +probably, and not entirely without reason, regard the business as +'a stupid old May game.' The only spectators properly impressed would be +a handful of visitors and solemn antiquarians. I can see those visitors. +If it has ever been your lot to witness the performance of a 'literary' +play in London and cast an eye over the audience it attracts, you too will +know them and their stigmata—their ineffable attire, their strange +hirsuteness, their air of combining instruction with amusement, their soft +felt hats indented along the crown. No! We may, perhaps, produce new +religious dramas in these ancient Rounds: decidedly we cannot revive the +old ones.</p> + +<br><br><br><br> +<p>While I ponder these things, standing in the deserted Round, there comes +to me—across the sky where the plovers wheel and flash in the wintry +sunshine—the sound of men's voices carolling at an unseen farm. They are +singing <i>The First Nowell</i>; but the fourth Nowell—the fourth of the +refrain—is the <i>clou</i> of that most common, most excellent carol, and +gloriously the tenors and basses rise to it. No, we cannot revive the old +Miracle Plays: but here in the Christmas Carols we have something as +artlessly beautiful which we can still preserve, for with them we have not +to revive, but merely to preserve, the conditions.</p> + +<br><br><br><br> +<p>In a preface to a little book of carols chosen (and with good judgment) +some years ago by the Rev. H. R. Bramley, of Magdalen College, Oxford, and +well edited in the matter of music by Sir John Stainer, I read that—</p> + +<blockquote><blockquote> +<p class = "noindent"> "The time-honoured and delightful custom of thus celebrating the + Birthday of the Holy Child seems, with some change of form, to be + steadily and rapidly gaining ground. Instead of the itinerant + ballad-singer, or the little bands of wandering children, the + practice of singing carols in Divine Service, or by a full choir at + some fixed meeting, is becoming prevalent."<br></p> +</blockquote></blockquote> + +<p>Since Mr. Bramley wrote these words the practice has grown more prevalent, +and the shepherds of Bethlehem are in process of becoming thoroughly +sophisticated and self-conscious. For that is what it means. You may +(as harassed bishops will admit) do a number of irrelevant things in +church, but you cannot sing the best carols there. You cannot toll in +your congregation, seat your organist at the organ, array your full choir +in surplices, and tune up to sing, for example—</p> + +<blockquote><blockquote> +<p class = "noindent"> "Rise up, rise up, brother Dives,<br> +<span class = "ind3"> And come along with me;</span><br> + There's a place in Hell prepared for you<br> +<span class = "ind3"> To sit on the serpent's knee."</span><br><br></p> +</blockquote></blockquote> + +<p>Or this—</p> + +<blockquote><blockquote> +<p class = "noindent"> "In a manger laid and wrapped I was—<br> +<span class = "ind3"> So very poor, this was my chance—</span><br> + Between an ox and a silly poor ass,<br> +<span class = "ind3"> To call my true love to the dance."</span><br><br></p> +</blockquote></blockquote> + +<p>Or this—</p> + +<blockquote><blockquote> +<p class = "noindent"> "Joseph did whistle and Mary did sing,<br> + And all the bells on earth did ring<br> +<span class = "ind3"> On Christmas Day in the morning."</span><br><br></p> +</blockquote></blockquote> + +<p>These are verses from carols, and from excellent carols: but I protest +that with 'choirs and places where they sing' they will be found +incongruous. Indeed, Mr. Bramley admits it. Of his collection "some," he +says, "from their legendary, festive or otherwise less serious character, +are unfit for use within the church."</p> + +<p>Now since, as we know, these old carols were written to be sung in the +open air, or in the halls and kitchens of private houses, I prefer to put +Mr. Bramley's proposition conversely, and say that the church is an +unsuitable place for carol singing. If the clergy persist in so confining +it, they will no doubt in process of time evolve a number of new +compositions which differ from ordinary hymns sufficiently to be called +carols, but from which the peculiar charm of the carol has evaporated. +This charm (let me add) by no means consists in mere primitiveness or mere +archaism. Genuine carols (if we could only get rid of affectation and be +honest authors in our own century without straining to age ourselves back +into the fifteenth) might be written to-day as appropriately as ever. +'Joseph did whistle,' &c., was no less unsuited at the date of its +composition to performance by a full choir in a chancel than it is to-day. +But whatever the precise nature of the charm may be, you can prove by a +very simple experiment that such a performance tends to impair it. +Assemble a number of carollers about your doorstep or within your hall, +and listen to their rendering of 'The first good joy,' or 'The angel +Gabriel;' then take them off to church and let them sing these same +ditties to an organ accompaniment. You will find that, strive against it +as they may, the tune drags slower and slower; the poem has become a +spiritless jingle, at once dismal and trivial. Take the poor thing out +into the fresh air again and revive it with a fife and drum; stay it with +flagons and comfort it with apples, for it is sick of improper feeding.</p> + +<p>No, no: such a carol as 'God rest you, merry gentlemen,' has a note which +neither is suited by, nor can be suited to, what people call 'the sacred +edifice': while 'Joseph was an old man,' 'I saw three ships' and 'The +first good joy' are plainly impossible. Associate them with organ and +surpliced choir, and you are mixing up things that differ. Omit them, at +the same time banning the house-to-house caroller, and you tyrannically +limit men's devotional impulses. I am told that the clergy frown upon +house-to-house carolling, because they believe it encourages drunkenness. +Why then, let them take the business in hand and see that too much drink +is neither taken nor offered. This ought not to be very difficult. +But, as with the old plays, so with carol-singing, it is easier and more +consonant with the Puritan temper to abolish a practice than to elevate it +and clear away abuses: and the half-instructed mind is taught with fatal +facility to condemn use and abuse in a lump, to believe carol-singing a +wile of the Evil One because Bill once went around carol-singing and came +home drunk.</p> + +<p>In parishes where a more tolerant spirit prevails I am glad to note that +the old custom, and even a taste for the finer ditties, seem to be +reviving. Certainly the carollers visit us in greater numbers and sing +with more evidence of careful practice than they did eight or ten years +ago: and friends in various parts of England have a like story to tell. +In this corner the rigour of winter does not usually begin before January, +and it is no unusual thing to be able to sit out of doors in sunshine for +an hour or so in the afternoon of Christmas Day. The vessels in sight fly +their flags and carry bunches of holly at their topmast-heads: and I +confess the day is made cheerfuller for us if they are answered by the +voices of carollers on the waterside, or if, walking inland, I hear the +note of the clarionet in some 'town-place' or meet a singing-party +tramping between farm and farm.</p> +<br><br><br><br> +<p>That the fresh bloom of the carol was evanescent and all too easily +destroyed I always knew; but never realised its extreme fugacity until, +some five years ago, it fell to me to prepare an anthology, which, under +the title of <i>The Oxford Book of English Verse</i>, has since achieved some +popularity. I believed that previous English anthologists had unjustly, +even unaccountably, neglected our English carols, and promised myself to +redress the balance. I hunted through many collections, and brought +together a score or so of pieces which, considered merely as carols, were +gems of the first water. But no sooner did I set them among our finer +lyrics than, to my dismay, their colours vanished; the juxtaposition +became an opposition which killed them, and all but half a dozen had to be +withdrawn. There are few gems more beautiful than the amethyst: but an +amethyst will not live in the company of rubies. A few held their own— +the exquisite 'I sing of a Maiden' for instance—</p> + +<blockquote><blockquote> +<p class = "noindent"> "I sing of a Maiden<br> +<span class = "ind3"> That is makeles;[1]</span><br> + King of all kings<br> +<span class = "ind3"> To her son she ches.[2]</span><br><br> + + "He came al so still<br> +<span class = "ind3"> There his mother was,</span><br> + As dew in April<br> + That falleth on the grass.<br><br> + + "He came al so still<br> +<span class = "ind3"> To his mother's bour,</span><br> + As dew in April<br> +<span class = "ind3"> That falleth on the flour.</span><br><br> + + "He came al so still<br> +<span class = "ind3"> There his mother lay</span><br> + As dew in April<br> +<span class = "ind3"> That falleth on the spray.</span><br><br> + + "Mother and maiden<br> +<span class = "ind3"> Was never none but she;</span><br> + Well may such a lady<br> +<span class = "ind3"> Goddes mother be."</span><br><br> + + [1] Without a mate.<br> + [2] Chose.<br><br></p> +</blockquote></blockquote> + +<p>Or 'Lestenyt, lordings,' or 'Of one that is so fair and bright;' and my +favourite, 'The Seven Virgins,' set among the ballads lost none of its +lovely candour. But on the whole, and sorely against my will, it had to +be allowed that our most typical carols will not bear an ordeal through +which many of the rudest ballads pass safely enough. So it will be found, +I suspect, with the carols of other nations. I take a typical English +one, exhumed not long ago by Professor Flügel from a sixteenth century MS. +at Balliol College, Oxford, and pounced upon as a gem by two such +excellent judges of poetry as Mr. Alfred W. Pollard and Mr. F. Sidgwick:—</p> + +<blockquote><blockquote> +<p class = "noindent"> "<i>Can I not sing but Hoy!<br> + The jolly shepherd made so much joy!</i><br> + The shepherd upon a hill he sat,<br> + He had on him his tabard[1] and his hat,<br> + His tar-box, his pipe and his flagat;[2]<br> + And his name was callèd jolly, jolly Wat,<br> +<span class = "ind3"> For he was a good herd's-boy,</span><br> +<span class = "ind6"> Ut hoy!</span><br> +<span class = "ind3"> For in his pipe he made so much joy.</span><br><br> + + "The shepherd upon a hill was laid<br> + His dog to his girdle was tayd,<br> + He had not slept but a little braid<br> + But <i>Gloria in excelsis</i> was to him said<br> +<span class = "ind6"> Ut hoy!</span><br> +<span class = "ind3"> For in his pipe he made so much joy.</span><br><br> + + "The shepherd on a hill he stood,<br> + Round about him his sheep they yode,[3]<br> + He put his hand under his hood,<br> + He saw a star as red as blood.<br> +<span class = "ind6"> Ut hoy!</span><br> +<span class = "ind3"> For in his pipe he made so much joy."</span><br><br> +</blockquote></blockquote> + +<p>The shepherd of course follows the star, and it guides him to the inn and +the Holy Family, whom he worships:—</p> + +<blockquote><blockquote> +<p class = "noindent"> "'Now farewell, mine own herdsman Wat!'<br> + 'Yea, 'fore God, Lady, even so I hat:[4]<br> + Lull well Jesu in thy lap,<br> + And farewell Joseph, with thy round cap!'<br> +<span class = "ind6"> Ut hoy!</span><br> +<span class = "ind3"> For in his pipe he made so much joy."</span><br><br> + + [1] Short coat.<br> + [2] Flagon.<br> + [3] Went.<br> + [4] Am hight, called.<br><br></p> +</blockquote></blockquote> + +<p>Set beside this the following Burgundian carol (of which, by the way, you +will find a charming translation in Lady Lindsay's <i>A Christmas Posy</i>):—</p> + +<blockquote><blockquote> +<p class = "noindent"> "Giullô, pran ton tamborin;<br> + Toi, pran tai fleùte, Robin.<br> + Au son de cés instruman—<br> + Turelurelu, patapatapan—<br> + Au son de cés instruman<br> + Je diron Noel gaiman.<br><br> + + "C'étó lai môde autrefoi<br> + De loüé le Roi dé Roi;<br> + Au son de cés instruman—<br> + Turelurelu, patapatapan—<br> + Au son de cés instruman<br> + Ai nos an fau faire autan.<br><br> + + "Ce jor le Diale at ai cu,<br> + Randons an graice ai Jésu;<br> + Au son de cés instruman—<br> + Turelurelu, patapatapar—<br> + Au son de cés instruman<br> + Fezon lai nique ai Satan.<br><br> + + "L'homme et Dei son pu d'aicor<br> + Que lai fleùte et le tambor.<br> + Au son de cés instruman—<br> + Turelurelu, patapatapan—<br> + Au son de cés instruman<br> + Chanton, danson, santons-an!"<br><br> +</blockquote></blockquote> + +<p>To set either of these delightful ditties alongside of the richly-jewelled +lyrics of Keats or of Swinburne, of Victor Hugo or of Gautier would be to +sin against congruity, even as to sing them in church would be to sin +against congruity.</p> + +<br><br><br><br> +<p>There was one carol, however, which I was fain to set alongside of 'The +Seven Virgins,' and omitted only through a scruple in tampering with two +or three stanzas, necessary to the sense, but in all discoverable versions +so barbarously uncouth as to be quite inadmissible. And yet 'The Holy +Well' is one of the loveliest carols in the language, and I cannot give up +hope of including it some day: for the peccant verses as they stand are +quite evidently corrupt, and if their originals could be found I have no +doubt that the result would be flawless beauty. Can any of my readers +help to restore them?</p> + +<p>'The Holy Well,' according to Mr. Bramley, is traditional in Derbyshire. +'Joshua Sylvester,' in <i>A Garland of Christmas Carols</i>, published in 1861, +took his version from an eighteenth-century broadsheet printed at +Gravesend, and in broadsheet form it seems to have been fairly common. +I choose the version given by Mr. A. H. Bullen in his <i>Carols and Poems</i>, +published by Nimmo in 1886:—</p> + +<blockquote><blockquote> +<p class = "noindent"> "As it fell out one May morning,<br> +<span class = "ind3"> And upon one bright holiday,</span><br> + Sweet Jesus asked of His dear mother<br> +<span class = "ind3"> If He might go to play.</span><br><br> + + "To play, to play, sweet Jesus shall go,<br> +<span class = "ind3"> And to play pray get you gone;</span><br> + And let me hear of no complaint<br> +<span class = "ind3"> At night when you come home.</span><br><br> + + "Sweet Jesus went down to yonder town,<br> +<span class = "ind3"> As far as the Holy Well,</span><br> + And there did see as fine children,<br> +<span class = "ind3"> As any tongue can tell.</span><br><br> + + "He said, God bless you every one,<br> +<span class = "ind3"> And your bodies Christ save and see:</span><br> + Little children shall I play with you,<br> +<span class = "ind3"> And you shall play with Me?"</span><br><br> +</blockquote></blockquote> + +<p>So far we have plain sailing; but now, with the children's answer, comes +the trouble:—</p> + +<blockquote><blockquote> +<p class = "noindent"> "But they made answer to Him, No:<br> +<span class = "ind3"> They were lords' and ladies sons;</span><br> + And He, the meanest of them all,<br> +<span class = "ind3"> Was but a maiden's child, born in an ox's stall.</span><br><br> + + "Sweet Jesus turn'd Him around,<br> +<span class = "ind3"> And He neither laughed nor smiled,</span><br> + But the tears came trickling from His eyes<br> +<span class = "ind3"> Like water from the skies."</span><br><br> +</blockquote></blockquote> + +<p>A glance, as I contend, shows these lines to be corrupt: they were not +written, that is to say, in the above form, which violates metre and +rhyme-arrangement, and is both uncouth and redundant. The carol now picks +up its pace again and proceeds—</p> + +<blockquote><blockquote> +<p class = "noindent"> "Sweet Jesus turned Him round about,<br> +<span class = "ind3"> To His mother's dear home went He,<br></span> + And said, I have been in yonder town<br> +<span class = "ind3"> As far as you can see."</span><br></p> +</blockquote></blockquote> + +<p>Some versions give 'As after you can see.' Jesus repeats the story +precisely as it has been told, with His request to the children and their +rude answer. Whereupon Mary says:—</p> + +<blockquote><blockquote> +<p class = "noindent"> "Though You are but a maiden's child,<br> +<span class = "ind3"> Born in an ox's stall,</span><br> + Though art the Christ, the King of Heaven,<br> +<span class = "ind3"> And the Saviour of them all.</span><br><br> + + "Sweet Jesus, go down to yonder town<br> +<span class = "ind3"> As far as the Holy Well,</span><br> + And take away those sinful souls<br> +<span class = "ind3"> And dip them deep in Hell.</span><br><br> + + "Nay, nay, sweet Jesus said,<br> +<span class = "ind3"> Nay, nay, that may not be;</span><br> + There are too many sinful souls<br> +<span class = "ind3"> Crying out for the help of Me."</span><br><br></p> +</blockquote></blockquote> + +<p>On this exquisite close the carol might well end, as Mr. Bullen with his +usual fine judgment makes it end. But the old copies give an additional +stanza, and a very silly one:—</p> + +<blockquote><blockquote> +<p class = "noindent"> "O then spoke the angel Gabriel,<br> +<span class = "ind3"> Upon one good St. Stephen,</span><br> + Although you're but a maiden's child,<br> +<span class = "ind3"> You are the King of Heaven."</span><br><br></p> +</blockquote></blockquote> + +<p>'One good St. Stephen' is obviously an ignorant misprint for 'one good set +steven,' <i>i.e.</i> 'appointed time,' and so it appears in Mr. Bramley's book, +and in Mr. W. H. Husk's <i>Songs of the Nativity</i>. But the stanza is +foolish, and may be dismissed. To amend the text of the children's answer +is less legitimate. Yet one feels sorely tempted; and I cannot help +suggesting that the original ran something like this:—</p> + +<blockquote><blockquote> +<p class = "noindent"> "But they made answer to Him, No:<br> +<span class = "ind3"> They were lords and ladies all;</span><br> + And He was but a maiden's child,<br> +<span class = "ind3"> Born in an ox's stall.</span><br><br> + + "Sweet Jesus turned Him round about,<br> +<span class = "ind3"> And He neither laughed nor smiled,</span><br> + But the tears came trickling from His eyes<br> +<span class = "ind3"> To be but a maiden's child.…"</span><br><br></p> +</blockquote></blockquote> + +<p>I plead for this suggestion: (1) that it adds nothing to the text and +changes but one word; (2) that it removes nothing but the weak and +unrhyming 'Like water from the skies'; and (3) that it leads directly to +Mary's answer:—</p> + +<blockquote><blockquote> +<p class = "noindent"> "Though you are but a maiden's child,<br> +<span class = "ind3"> Born in an ox's stall," &c.</span><br><br></p> +</blockquote></blockquote> + +<p>But it were better to hunt out the original than to accept any emendation; +and I hope you will agree that the original of this little poem, so +childlike and delicately true, is worth hunting for. "The carol," says +Mr. Husk, "has a widely-spread popularity. On a broadside copy printed at +Gravesend,"—presumably the one from which 'Joshua Sylvester' took his +version—"there is placed immediately under the title a woodcut purporting +to be a representation of the site of the Holy Well, Palestine; but the +admiration excited thereby for the excellent good taste of the printer is +too soon alas! dispelled, for between the second and third stanzas we see +another woodcut representing a feather-clad-and-crowned negro seated on a +barrel, smoking—a veritable ornament of a tobacconists' paper."</p> + +<br><br><br><br> +<p>One of the finest carols written of late years is Miss Louise Imogen +Guiney's <i>Tryste Noel</i>. It is deliberately archaic, and (for reasons +hinted at above) I take deliberate archaism to be about the worst fault a +modern carol-writer can commit. Also it lacks the fine simplicity of +Christina Rossetti's <i>In the bleak midwinter</i>. I ought to dislike it, +too, for its sophisticated close. Yet its curious rhythm and curious +words haunt me in spite of all prejudice:—</p> + +<blockquote><blockquote> +<p class = "noindent"> "The Ox he openeth wide the Doore<br> + And from the Snowe he calls her inne;<br> + And he hath seen her smile therefore,<br> +<span class = "ind3"> Our Ladye without sinne.</span><br> +<span class = "ind6"> Now soone from Sleepe</span><br> +<span class = "ind6"> A Starre shall leap,</span><br> + And soone arrive both King and Hinde:<br> +<span class = "ind7"> <i>Amen, Amen</i>;</span><br> + But O the Place cou'd I but finde!<br><br> + + "The Ox hath husht his Voyce and bent<br> + Trewe eye of Pity ore the Mow;<br> + And on his lovelie Neck, forspent,<br> +<span class = "ind3"> The Blessèd lays her Browe.</span><br> +<span class = "ind6"> Around her feet</span><br> +<span class = "ind6"> Full Warme and Sweete</span><br> + His bowerie Breath doth meeklie dwell;<br> +<span class = "ind7"> <i>Amen, Amen</i>;</span><br> + But sore am I with vaine Travel!<br><br> + + "The Ox is Host in Juda's stall,<br> + And Host of more than onely one,<br> + For close she gathereth withal<br> +<span class = "ind3"> Our Lorde, her little Sonne.</span><br> +<span class = "ind6"> Glad Hinde and King</span><br> +<span class = "ind6"> Their Gyfte may bring,</span><br> + But wou'd to-night my Teares were there;<br> +<span class = "ind7"> <i>Amen, Amen</i>;</span><br> + Between her Bosom and His hayre!"<br><br></p> +</blockquote></blockquote> + +<br><br><br><br> +<p>The days are short. I return from this Christmas ramble and find it high +time to light the lamp and pull the curtains over my Cornish Window.</p> + +<blockquote><blockquote> +<p class = "noindent"> "The days are sad—it is the Holy tide:<br> +<span class = "ind3"> The Winter morn is short, the Night is long;</span><br> + So let the lifeless Hours be glorified<br> +<span class = "ind3"> With deathless thoughts and echo'd in sweet song:</span><br> + And through the sunset of this purple cup<br> +<span class = "ind3"> They will resume the roses of their prime,</span><br> + And the old Dead will hear us and wake up,<br> +<span class = "ind3"> Pass with dim smiles and make our hearts sublime!"</span><br><br></p> +</blockquote></blockquote> + +<p>Friends dead and friends afar—I remember you at this season, here with +the log on the hearth, the holly around the picture frames and the wine at +my elbow. One glass in especial to you, my old friend in the far north!—</p> + +<h4>CHRISTMAS EVE</h4> + +<blockquote><blockquote> +<p class = "noindent"> "Friend, old friend in the manse by the fireside sitting,<br> +<span class = "ind3"> Hour by hour while the grey ash drips from the log.</span><br> + You with a book on your knee, your wife with her knitting,<br> +<span class = "ind3"> Silent both, and between you, silent, the dog—</span><br><br> + + "Silent here in the south sit I, and, leaning,<br> +<span class = "ind3"> One sits watching the fire, with chin upon hand,</span><br> + Gazes deep in its heart—but ah! its meaning<br> +<span class = "ind3"> Rather I read in the shadows and understand.</span><br><br> + + "Dear, kind, she is; and daily dearer, kinder,<br> +<span class = "ind3"> Love shuts the door on the lamp and our two selves:</span><br> + Not my stirring awakened the flame that behind her<br> +<span class = "ind3"> Lit up a name in the leathern dusk of the shelves.</span><br><br> + + "Veterans are my books, with tarnished gilding:<br> +<span class = "ind3"> Yet there is one gives back to the winter grate</span><br> + Gold of a sunset flooding a college building,<br> +<span class = "ind3"> Gold of an hour I waited—as now I wait—</span><br><br> + + "For a light step on the stair, a girl's low laughter,<br> +<span class = "ind3"> Rustle of silks, shy knuckles tapping the oak,</span><br> + Dinner and mirth upsetting my rooms, and, after,<br> +<span class = "ind3"> Music, waltz upon waltz, till the June day broke.</span><br><br> + + "Where is her laughter now? Old tarnished covers—<br> +<span class = "ind3"> You that reflect her with fresh young face unchanged—</span><br> + Tell that we met, that we parted, not as lovers:<br> +<span class = "ind3"> Time, chance, brought us together, and these estranged.</span><br><br> + + "Loyal we were to the mood of the moment granted,<br> +<span class = "ind3"> Bruised not its bloom, but danced on the wave of its joy;</span><br> + Passion, wisdom, fell back like a wall enchanted<br> +<span class = "ind3"> Ringing a floor for us both—Heaven for the boy!</span><br><br> + + "Where is she now? Regretted not, though departed,<br> +<span class = "ind3"> Blessings attend and follow her all her days!</span><br> + —Look to your hound: he dreams of the hares he started,<br> +<span class = "ind3"> Whines, and awakes, and stretches his limbs to the blaze.</span><br><br> + + "Far old friend in the manse, by the grey ash peeling<br> +<span class = "ind3"> Flake by flake from the heat in the Yule log's core,</span><br> + Look past the woman you love—On wall and ceiling<br> +<span class = "ind3"> Climbs not a trellis of roses—and ghosts—o' yore?</span><br><br> + + "Thoughts, thoughts! Whistle them back like hounds returning—<br> +<span class = "ind3"> Mark how her needles pause at a sound upstairs.</span><br> + Time for bed, and to leave the log's heart burning!<br> +<span class = "ind3"> Give ye good-night, but first thank God in your prayers!"</span><br><br></p> +</blockquote></blockquote> + + +<br><br><br><br> + + + + + +<h2>THE END.</h2> + + + + + + + + + +<pre> + + + + + +End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of From a Cornish Window, by +Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch + +*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK FROM A CORNISH WINDOW *** + +***** This file should be named 24946-h.htm or 24946-h.zip ***** +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: + http://www.gutenberg.org/2/4/9/4/24946/ + +Produced by Lionel Sear + +Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions +will be renamed. + +Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no +one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation +(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without +permission and without paying copyright royalties. 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You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + + +Title: From a Cornish Window + A New Edition + +Author: Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch + +Release Date: March 29, 2008 [EBook #24946] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ASCII + +*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK FROM A CORNISH WINDOW *** + + + + +Produced by Lionel Sear + + + + +FROM A CORNISH WINDOW. + +By + +ARTHUR THOMAS QUILLER-COUCH. + + +DEDICATION. + + +MY DEAR WILLIAM ARCHER, + +Severe and ruthlessly honest man that you are, you will find that the +levities and the gravities of this book do not accord, and will say so. + +I plead only that they were written at intervals, and in part for +recreation, during years in which their author has striven to maintain a +cheerful mind while a popular philosophy which he believed to be cheap +took possession of men and translated itself into politics which he knew +to be nasty. I may summarise it, in its own jargon, as the philosophy of +the Superman, and succinctly describe it as an attempt to stretch a part +of the Darwinian hypothesis and make it cover the whole of man's life and +conduct. I need not remind you how fatally its doctrine has flattered, in +our time and in our country, the worst instincts of the half-educated: +but let us remove it from all spheres in which we are interested and +contemplate it as expounded by an American Insurance 'Lobbyist,' a few days +ago, before the Armstrong Committee:-- + + "The Insurance world to-day is the greatest financial proposition in + the United States; and, _as great affairs always do, it commands a + higher law._" + +I have read precisely the same doctrine in a University Sermon preached by +an Archbishop; but there its point was confused by pietistic rhetoric: +the point being that in life, which is a struggle, success has in itself +something divine, by virtue of which it can be to itself a law of right +and wrong; and (inferentially) that a man is relieved of the noble +obligation to command himself so soon and in so far as he is rich enough +or strong enough to command other people. + +But why (you will ask) do I drag this doctrine into a dedication? +Because, my dear Archer, I have fought against it for close upon seventeen +years; because seventeen years is no small slice of a man's life--rather, +so long a time that it has taught me to prize my bruises and prefer that, +if anybody hereafter care to know me, he shall know me as one whose spirit +took its cheer in intervals of a fight against detestable things; that-- +let him rank me in talent never so low beside my contemporaries who +preached this doctrine--he shall at least have no excuse but to acquit me +of being one with them in mind or purpose; and lastly, because in these +times few things have brought me such comfort (stern comfort!) as I have +derived from your criticism, so hospitable to ideas, so inflexible in +judging right from wrong. As I have lived lonelier it has been better for +me, and a solace beyond your guessing, to have been reminded that +criticism still lives amongst us and has a Roman spirit. + +A. T. QUILLER-COUCH + +The Haven, +FOWEY, +April 3rd, 1906. + + + +PREFACE. + +My old friend and publisher, Mr. Arrowsmith, maintains that the time has +come for a cheap edition of this book. Should the public endorse that +opinion, he will probably go about pretending that his head is as good as +his heart. + +_From a Cornish Window_ first appeared between cloth covers some six or +seven years ago. I see that its Dedication bears the date, April 3rd, +1906. But parts of it were written years before in the old _Pall Mall +Magazine_, under the editorship of Lord Frederic Hamilton (who invented +its title for me), and a few fragments date back almost to undergraduate +days. The book, in short, is desultory to the last degree, and discourses +in varying moods on a variety of topics. Yet, turning the pages again, +I find them curiously and somewhat alarmingly consistent--consistent not +only in themselves, but with their surviving author as he sits here +to-day, using the same pen-holder which he bought for twopence in 1886, +and gazing out of the same window, soon to be exchanged for another with a +view more academic: and 'alarmingly consistent' because (as Emerson has +very justly observed) a foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little +minds. To persevere in one fixed outlook upon life may be evidence of +arrested capacity to grow, while on the other hand mere flightiness +is a sure sign that the mind has not even arrived at man's estate. +The best plan seems to be to care not a farthing for consistency or +inconsistency, but to keep the eye turned outwards, and to keep it fresh +by taking on new interests (however trivial), and reading new books, but +still comparing them with the old. I think we ought to be especially +careful to read new poetry as we get on in life, if only as a discipline-- +as men with increasing waists practise calisthenics--because poetry is +always trying to reach beyond the phenomena of life, and because these are +all the while, if imperceptibly, narrowing us within the round of daily +habit. As the author of _Ionica_ put it (I quote from memory)-- + + Our feelings lose poetic flow + Soon after thirty years or so: + Professionising modern men + Thenceforth admire what pleased them then. + +But on the whole I do not regret this consistency, believing that the +years 1896-1906 laid an almost holy constraint on the few who believed +neither in Sham-Imperialism nor in the Superman, to stand together, +to be stubborn, to refuse as doggedly as possible to bow the knee to these +idols, to miss no opportunity of drawing attention to their feet of clay. + +I seem to perceive that the day of the Superman is drawing to its close. +He is a recurring nuisance, like the influenza, and no doubt will afflict +mankind again in due season. But our generation has enjoyed a peculiarly +poisonous variety of him. In his Renaissance guise, whether projected +upon actual history, as in the person of Richard III, or strutting +sublimated through Marlowe's blank verse, he spared at any rate to +sentimentalise his brutality. Our forefathers summed him up in the +byword that an Italianate Englishman was a devil incarnate; but he _had_ +the grace of being Italianate. It is from the Germanised avatar--the +Bismarck of the 'Ems telegram,' with his sentimentalising historians and +philosophers--that Europe would seem to be recovering to-day. Well, I +believe that the Christian virtues, the lovable and honourable code of +ancient gentlemen, may always be trusted to win in the long run, and +extrude the impostor. But while his vogue lasts, it may be of service to +keep reminding men that to falsify another man's dispatch is essentially a +stupider action than to tilt at windmills: and that is the main moral of +my book. + +Arthur Quiller-Couch. + +December 2nd, 1912. + + + +JANUARY. + + +Should any reader be puzzled by the title of this discursive volume, the +following verses may provide him with an explanation. They were written +some time ago for a lady who had requested, required, requisitioned +(I forget the precise shade of the imperative) something for her album. +"We are in the last ages of the world," wrote Charles Lamb to Barry +Cornwall, "when St. Paul prophesied that women should be 'headstrong, +lovers of their own will, having albums.--'" + + + BEATUS POSSIDENS. + + + I can't afford a mile of sward, + Parterres and peacocks gay; + For velvet lawns and marble fauns + Mere authors cannot pay. + + And so I went and pitched my tent + Above a harbour fair, + Where vessels picturesquely rigg'd + Obligingly repair. + + The harbour is not mine at all: + I make it so--what odds? + And gulls unwitting on my wall + Serve me for garden-gods. + + By ships that ride below kaleid- + oscopically changed, + Unto my mind each day I find + My garden rearranged. + + These, madam, are my daffodils, + My pinks, my hollyhocks, + My herds upon a hundred hills, + My phloxes and my flocks. + + And when some day you deign to pay + The call that's overdue, + I'll wave a landlord's easy hand + And say, "Admire _my_ view!" + +Now I do not deny that a part of the content expressed in these lines may +come of resignation. In some moods, were I to indulge them, it were +pleasant to fancy myself owner of a vast estate, champaign and woodland; +able to ride from sea to sea without stepping off my own acres, with +villeins and bondmen, privileges of sak and soke, infangthef, +outfangthef, rents, tolls, dues, royalties, and a private gallows for +autograph-hunters. These things, however, did not come to me by +inheritance, and for a number of sufficient reasons I have not amassed +them. As for those other ambitions which fill the dreams of every healthy +boy, a number of them had become of faint importance even before a +breakdown of health seemed definitely to forbid their attainment. +Here at home, far from London, with restored strength, I find myself less +concerned with them than are my friends and neighbours, yet more keenly +interested than ever in life and letters, art and politics--all that men +and women are saying and doing. Only the centre of gravity has shifted, +so to speak. + +I dare say, then, that resignation may have some share in this content; +but if so 'tis an unconscious and happy one. A man who has been writing +novels for a good part of his life should at least be able to sympathise +with various kinds of men; and, for an example or two, I can understand-- + + 1. Why Alexander cried (if he ever did) because he had no second + world to conquer. + + 2. Why Shakespeare, as an Englishman, wanted a coat of arms and + a respectable estate in his own native country town. + + 3. What and how deep are the feelings beneath that _cri du + coeur_ of Mr. Wilfrid Blunt's 'Old Squire:'-- + + + "I like the hunting of the hare + Better than that of the fox; + I like the joyous morning air, + And the crowing of the cocks. + + "I covet not a wider range + Than these dear manors give; + I take my pleasures without change, + And as I lived I live. + + "Nor has the world a better thing, + Though one should search it round, + Than thus to live one's own sole king + Upon one's own sole ground. + + "I like the hunting of the hare; + It brings me day by day + The memory of old days as fair, + With dead men past away. + + "To these as homeward still I ply, + And pass the churchyard gate, + Where all are laid as I must lie, + I stop and raise my hat. + + "I like the hunting of the hare: + New sports I hold in scorn. + I like to be as my fathers were + In the days ere I was born." + + 4. What--to start another hare--were Goldsmith's feelings when he + wrote-- + + "And as a hare whom hounds and horns pursue + Pants to the place from whence at first she flew, + I still had hopes, my long vexations past, + Here to return--and die at home at last." + + 5. With what heart Don Quixote rode forth to tilt at sheep and + windmills, and again with what heart in that saddest of all + last chapters he bade his friends look not for this year's + birds in last year's nests. + + 6. Why the young man went away sadly, because he had great + possessions and could not see his way to bestowing them all + on the poor; why, on the contrary, St. Paulinus of Nola and + St. Francis of Assisi joyfully renounced their wealth; what + Prudhon meant by saying that 'property is theft'; and what a + poor Welsh clergyman of the seventeenth century by + proclaiming in verse and prose that he was heir of all the + world, and properties, hedges, boundaries, landmarks meant + nothing to him, since all was his that his soul enjoyed; yes, + and even what inspired him to pen this golden sentence-- + + "_You will never enjoy the world aright till the sea itself + floweth in your veins, till you are clothed with the heavens + and crowned with the stars._" + + +My window, then, looks out from a small library upon a small harbour +frequented by ships of all nations--British, Danish, Swedish, Norwegian, +Russian, French, German, Italian, with now and then an American or a +Greek--and upon a shore which I love because it is my native country. Of +all views I reckon that of a harbour the most fascinating and the most +easeful, for it combines perpetual change with perpetual repose. It +amuses like a panorama and soothes like an opiate, and when you have +realised this you will understand why so many thousands of men around this +island appear to spend all their time in watching tidal water. Lest you +should suspect me of taking a merely dilettante interest in the view, I +must add that I am a Harbour Commissioner. + +As for the house, it is a plain one; indeed, very like the house a child +draws on a slate, and therefore pleasing even externally to me, who prefer +the classical to any Gothic style of architecture. Why so many strangers +mistake it with its modest dimensions for a hotel, I cannot tell you. +I found one in the pantry the other day searching for a brandy-and-soda; +another rang the dining-room bell and dumbfoundered the maid by asking +what we had for lunch; and a third (a lady) cried when I broke to her that +I had no sitting-room to let. We make it a rule to send out a chair +whenever some unknown invader walks into the garden and prepares to make a +water-colour sketch of the view. + +There are some, too, whose behaviour cannot be reconciled with the +hallucination of a hotel, and they must take the house for a public +institution of some kind, though of what kind I cannot guess. +There was an extremely bashful youth, for instance, who roamed the garden +for a while on the day after the late Duke of Cambridge's funeral, and, +suddenly dashing in by the back door, wanted to know why our flag was not +at half-mast. There was also a lady who called on the excuse that she had +made a life-study of the Brontes, and after opining (in a guarded manner) +that they came, originally, from somewhere in Yorkshire, desired to be +informed how many servants we kept. I have sometimes thought of +rechristening our house The Hotel of the Four Seasons, and thereby +releasing its true name (The Haven) to a friend who covets it for his own. + +On the whole, however, these visitors disturb the house and the view from +my window very little. The upper halves of them, as they pass up and down +the road, appear above my garden wall much as the shadows that passed in +Plato's cave. They come, enjoy their holiday, and go, leaving the window +intent upon the harbour, its own folk and its own business. + + +And now for the book, which is really not a book at all, but a chapter of +one. + +Last autumn I returned from a holiday to find that the publishing season +had begun. This was announced by a stack of new books, review copies and +presentation copies, awaiting me on my window-seat. I regarded it sourly. +A holiday is the most unsettling thing in the world. At the end of it I +regain the well-worn chair with a sigh of pleasure and reach for the +familiar tobacco-jar, wondering how I could have been fool enough to leave +them; yet somehow this lively sense of repurchased habit does not go far +enough and compel me to work. Being at home is a game, and so good a game +that I play at it merely, rearranging my shelves and, under pretence of +dealing with arrears of correspondence, skimming the literary papers and +book-catalogues found amid the pile of letters. + +It happened that the first postal-wrapper to be broken enclosed a copy of +_The Academy_, and _The Academy_ opened with this sentence: "Since our +last issue we have received one hundred and nineteen new books and +reprints." I looked across to the pile on my window-seat and felt it to +be insignificant, though it interfered with my view of the English +Channel. One hundred and nineteen books in a single week! Yet who was I +to exclaim at their number?--I, who (it appeared) had contributed one of +them? With that I remembered something which had happened just before my +holiday, and began to reflect on it, for the first time seriously. + +A publisher had asked me for a complete list of my published works, to +print it on the fly-leaf of another of them. I sat down with the best +intention and compiled it for him, and, in honest oblivion, omitted a +couple--of books, mind you--not of pamphlets, reviews, stray articles, +short stories, or any such trifles, but of books solemnly written for this +and future ages, solemnly printed, bound, and put into circulation at the +shops and libraries. (Here, for the due impressiveness of the tale, it +becomes necessary to tell you that their author is an indolent and painful +writer, slow at the best of times.) + +Well, the discovery that I had forgotten two of my own books at first +amused and then set me thinking. "Here you are," said I to myself, +"a writer of sorts; and it's no use to pretend that you don't wish to be +remembered for a while after you are dead and done with." + +"Quite right," the other part of me assented cheerfully. + +"Well, then," urged the inquisitor, "this is a bad look-out. If you had +been born a Dumas--I am speaking of fecundity, if you please, and of +nothing else--if you had been born a Dumas, and could rattle off a romance +in a fortnight, you might be excused for not keeping tally of your +productions. Pitiful, dilatory worker that you are, if _you_ cannot +remember them, how can you expect the world (good Heavens!) to take the +trouble?" + +"I suppose it won't," responded the other part of me, somewhat dashed; +then, picking up its spirits again, "But, anyhow, I shall know where to +lay the blame." + +"On yourself?" + +"Most assuredly not." + +"Where, then?" + +"Why, on the publishers." + +"Ah, of course!" (This with fine irony.) + +"Yes, on the publishers. Most authors do this during life, and now I +begin to see that all authors do it sooner or later. For my part, I shall +defer it to the future state." + +"Why?" + +"Obviously because there will be no publishers thereabouts to contradict +me." + +"And of what will you accuse them?" + +"That they never issued my work in the form it deserved." + +"I see. Poor fellow! You have the 'Edinburgh' Stevenson or something of +that sort on your mind, and are filled with nasty envy." + +Upon this the other part of me fairly lost its temper. + +"The 'Edinburgh' Stevenson! The 'Edinburgh' Ste--, and you have known me +all these years! The 'Edinburgh' Stevenson is a mighty handsome edition +of a mighty fine writer, but I have no more desire to promenade the ages +in that costume than to jump the moon. No, I am not going to break any +more of the furniture. I am handing you this chair that you may seat +yourself and listen . . . Now! The book which I shall accuse my +publishers of not having produced will be in one volume--" + +"Come, come. Modesty is all very well, but don't overdo it." + +"--folio." + +"Oh!" + +"--Of three thousand odd pages, printed (blunt type) in double columns, +and here and there in triple." + +"O--oh!" + +"--with marginalia by other hands, and footnotes running sometimes to +twenty thousand words, and, including above six thousand quotations from +the best poets--every one, in short, which has given me pleasure of a +certain quality, whether gentle or acute, at one time or another in my +life." + +"!!!" + +"--The whole profusely, not to say extravagantly, adorned with woodcuts in +the text, not to mention fifty or sixty full-page illustrations in +copper." + +"By eminent artists?" + +"Some of them by eminent artists, for the reason only that I number such +among my friends; the rest by amateurs and members of my household who +would help, out of mere affection, in raising this monument." + +"They would do it execrably." + +"I dare say; but that would not matter in the least. The book should be +bound in leather and provided with serviceable clasps, as well as with a +couple of inner pockets for maps and charts. The maps should contain +plenty of sea, with monsters rising from it--leviathans and sea-serpents-- +as they do in Speed's map of Cornwall which hangs in the hall." + +"Your book will need a window-seat to hold it." + +"Ah, now you talk intelligently! It was designed for a window-seat, and +its fortunate possessor will take care to provide one. Have you any +further objections?" + +"Only this: that a book of such a size written by one man (I make the +objection as little personal as I can) must perforce contain many dull +pages." + +"Hundreds of them; whole reams of dull pages." + +"They will be skipped." + +"They will be inserted with that object." + +"Oh!" + +"It is one of the conditions of becoming a classic." + +"Who will read you?" + +"Look here. Do you remember the story of that old fellow--a Dutchman, I +think--who took a fancy to be buried in the church porch of his native +town, that he might hear the feet of the townsfolk, generation after +generation, passing over his head to divine service?" + +"Well?" + +"Well. I shall stand on my shelf, bound in good leather, between (say) +_Bayle's Dictionary_ and _Sibrandus Schnafnaburgensis, his Delectable +Treatise_; and if some day, when the master of the house has been coaxed +by his womenfolk to take a holiday, and they descend upon the books, which +he (the humbug) never reads, belabour and bang the dust out of them and +flap them with dusters, and all with that vindictiveness which is the good +housewife's right attitude towards literature--" + +"Had you not better draw breath?" + +"Thank you. I will: for the end of the protasis lies yet some way off. +If, I say, some child of the family, having chosen me out of the heap as a +capital fellow for a booby-trap, shall open me by hazard and, attracted by +the pictures, lug me off to the window-seat, why then God bless the child! +I shall come to my own. He will not understand much at the time, but he +will remember me with affection, and in due course he will give me to his +daughter among her wedding presents (much to her annoyance, but the +bridegroom will soothe her). This will happen through several generations +until I find myself an heirloom. . . ." + +"You begin to assume that by this time you will be valuable. +Also permit me to remark that you have slipped into the present +indicative." + +"As for the present indicative, I think you began it." + +"No." + +"Yes. But it doesn't matter. I begin precisely at the right moment to +assume a value which will be attached to me, not for my own sake, but on +account of dear grandpapa's book-plate and autograph on the fly-leaf. (He +was the humbug who never read me--a literary person; he acquired me as a +'review copy,' and only forbore to dispose of me because at the current +railway rates I should not have fetched the cost of carriage.)" + +"Why talk of hindrances to publishing such a book, when you know full well +it will never be written?" + +"I thought you would be driven to some such stupid knock-down argument. +Whether or not the book will ever be finished is a question that lies on +the knees of the gods. I am writing at it every day. And just such a +book was written once and even published; as I discovered the other day in +an essay by Mr. Austin Dobson. The author, I grant you, was a Dutchman +(Mr. Dobson calls him 'Vader Cats,') and the book contains everything from +a long didactic poem on Marriage (I also have written a long didactic poem +on Marriage) to a page on Children's Games. (My book shall have a chapter +on Children's Games, with their proper tunes.) As for poetry--poetry, +says Mr. Dobson, with our Dutch poet is not by any means a trickling rill +from Helicon: 'it is an inundation _a la mode du pays_, a flood in a flat +land, covering everything far and near with its sluggish waters.' +As for the illustrations, listen to this for the kind of thing I demand:-- + + "Perhaps the most interesting of these is to be found in the + large head-piece to the above-mentioned Children's Games, the + background of which exhibits the great square of Middleburgh, + with its old Gothic houses and central clump of trees. + This is, moreover, as delightful a picture as any in the + gallery. Down the middle of the foreground, which is filled by + a crowd of figures, advances a regiment of little Dutchmen, + marching to drum and fife, and led by a fire-eating captain of + fifteen. Around this central group are dispersed knots of + children playing leap-frog, flying kites, blowing bubbles, + whipping tops, walking on stilts, skipping, and the like. + In one corner the children are busy with blind man's buff; + in the other the girls, with their stiff head-dresses and + vandyked aprons, are occupied with their dolls. Under the pump + some seventeenth-century equivalent for chuck-farthing seems to + be going on vigorously; and, not to be behind-hand in the fun, + two little fellows in the distance are standing upon their + heads. The whole composition is full of life and movement, + and--so conservative is childhood--might, but for the costume + and scene, represent a playground of to-day." + +"Such are the pictures which shall emerge, like islands, among my dull +pages. And there shall be other pages, to be found for the looking. . . . +I must make another call upon your memory, my friend, and refer it to a +story of Hans Andersen's which fascinated the pair of us in childhood, +when we were not really a pair but inseparables, and before you had grown +wise; the story of the Student and the Goblin who lodged at the +Butterman's. The Student, at the expense of his dinner, had rescued a +book from the butter-tub and taken it off to his garret, and that night +the Goblin, overcome by curiosity, peeped through the keyhole, and lo! the +garret was full of light. Forth and up from the book shot a beam of +light, which grew into the trunk of a mighty tree, and threw out branches +over the bowed head of the student; and every leaf was fresh, and every +flower a face, and every fruit a star, and music sang in the branches. +Well, there shall be even such pages in my book." + +"Excuse me," said I, "but, knowing your indolence, I begin to tire of the +future indicative, which (allow me to repeat) you first employed in this +discussion." + +"I did not," said the other part of me stoutly. "And if I did, 'tis a +trick of the trade. You of all people ought to know that I write +romances." + +I do not at all demur to having the value of my books enhanced by +the contributions of others--by dear grandpapa's autograph on the +fly-leaf, for example. But it annoys me to be blamed for other folks' +opinions. + +The other day a visitor called and discoursed with me during the greater +part of a wet afternoon. He had come for an interview--'dreadful trade,' +as Edgar said of samphire-gathering--and I wondered, as he took his +departure, what on earth he would find to write about: for I love to smoke +and listen to other men's opinions, and can boast with Montaigne that +during these invasive times my door has stood open to all comers. He was +a good fellow, too; having brains and using them: and I made him an +admirable listener. + +It amused me, some while after, to read the interview and learn that _I_ +had done the talking and uttered a number of trenchant sayings upon female +novelists. But the amusement changed to dismay when the ladies began to +retort. For No. 1 started with an airy restatement of what I had never +said, and No. 2 (who had missed to read the interview) misinterpreted No. +1.'s paraphrase; and by these and other processes within a week my +digestive silence had passed through a dozen removes, and was incurring +the just execration of a whole sex. I began to see that my old college +motto--_Quod taciturn velis nemini dixeris_--which had always seemed to me +to err, if at all, on the side of excess, fell short of adequacy to these +strenuous times. + +I have not kept the letters; but a friend of mine, Mr. Algernon Dexter, +has summarised a very similar experience and cast it into chapters, which +he allows me to print here. He heads them-- + + HUNTING THE DRAG. + + + +CHAPTER I. + + +_Scene: The chastely-furnished writing-room of Mr. Algernon Dexter, a +well-known male novelist. Bust of Pallas over practicable door L.U.E. +Books adorn the walls, interspersed with portraits of female relatives. +Mr. Dexter discovered with Interviewer. Mr. D., poker in hand, is bending +over the fire, above which runs the legend, carved in Roman letters across +the mantelpiece, 'Ne fodias ignem gladio._' + +INTERVIEWER (_pulling out his watch_): "Dear me! Only five minutes to +catch my train! And I had several other questions to ask. +I suppose, now, it's too late to discuss the Higher Education of Women?" + +Mr. D. (_smiling_): "Well, I think there's hardly time. It will take you +a good four minutes to get to the station." + +INTERVIEWER: "And I must get my typewriter out of the cloakroom. +Good-day, then, Mr. Dexter!" (_They shake hands and part with mutual +esteem._) + + + +CHAPTER II. + + +_Extract from 'The Daily Post_.' + +"MONDAY TALKS WITH OUR NOVELISTS.--No. MCVI. Mr. ALGERNON DEXTER. + +"'And now, Mr. Dexter,' said I, 'what is your opinion of the Higher +Education of Women?' + +"The novelist stroked his bronze beard. 'That's a large order, eh? +Isn't it rather late in the day to discuss Women's Education?' +And with a humorous gesture of despair he dropped the poker." + + + +CHAPTER III. + + +_Tuesday's Letter_. + +Sir,--In your issue of to-day I read with interest an account of an +interview with Mr. Dexter, the popular novelist, and I observe that +gentleman thinks it 'rather late in the day' to discuss the Higher +Education of Women. One can only be amused at this flippant dismissal of +a subject dear to the hearts of many of us; a movement consecrated by the +life-energies--I had almost said the life-blood--of a Gladstone, a +Sidgwick, a Fitch, and a Platt-Culpepper. Does Mr. Dexter really imagine +that he can look down on such names as these? Or are we to conclude that +the recent successes of 'educated' women in fiction have got on his +nerves? To suggest professional jealousy would be going too far, no +doubt. + + Yours faithfully. + 'HIGH SCHOOL' + + +CHAPTER IV. + + +_Wednesday's Letters_. + +(1) Sir,--I, too, was disgusted with Mr. Algernon Dexter's cheap sneer at +women's education. He has, it seems, 'no opinion' on it. Allow me to +point out that, whatever his opinion may be, Women's Education has come to +stay. The time is past when Women could be relegated to the kitchen or +the nursery, and told, in the words of the poet Byron, that these +constituted her 'whole existence.' Not so; and if Mr. Dexter is inclined +to doubt it let him read the works of George Elliot (Mrs. J. W. Cross) or +Marion Crawford. They will open his eyes to the task he has undertaken. + + I am, Sir, yours, etc, + "AUDI ALTERAM PARTEM." + + +(2) SIR,--Mr. Algernon Dexter thinks women's education 'a large order'-- +not a very elegant expression, let me say, _en passant_, for one who +aspires to be known as a 'stylist.' Still a large order it is, and one +that as an imperial race we shall be forced to envisage. If our children +are to be started in life as fit citizens of this empire, with a grasp on +its manifold and far reaching complexities of interest, and unless the +Germans are to beat us, we must provide them with educated mothers. 'The +child is father of the man,' but the mother has, _me judice_, no less +influence on his subsequent career. And this is not to be done by putting +back the hands of the clock, or setting them to make pies and samplers, +but by raising them to mutually co-operate and further what has been aptly +termed 'The White Man's Burden.' Such, at any rate, though I may not live +to see it, is the conviction of: + + "A MUS. DOC. OF FORTY YEARS' STANDING." + + +(3) SIR,--'High School' has done a public service. A popular novelist may +be licensed to draw on his imagination; but hitting below the belt is +another thing, whoever wears it. Mr Dexter's disdainful treatment of that +eminent educationalist Mr. Platt-Culpepper--who is in his grave and +therefore unable to reply (so like a man!)--can be called nothing less. +I hope it will receive the silent contempt it deserves. + + Yours indignantly, + "MERE WOMAN." + + + +CHAPTER V. + +_Thursday's letters_. + + +(1) SIR,--Your correspondents, with whose indignation I am in sympathy, +have to me most unaccountably overlooked the real gravamen of Mr. Dexter's +offence. Unlike them, I have read several of that gentleman's brochures, +and can assure you that he once posed as the unbounded license for women +in Higher Education, if not in other directions. This _volte face_ +(I happen to know) will come as a severe disappointment to many; for we +had quite counted him one of us. + + "We that had loved him so, followed him, honoured him, + Lived in his mild and magnificent eye," + +Shall have, it seems, to 'record one lost soul more, one more devil's +triumph,' etc. I subscribe myself, sir, more in sorrow than in anger. + + PERCY FLADD, + _President, H.W.E.L._ + (_Hoxton Women's Emancipation League_). + + +(2) Sir,--Why all this beating about the bush? The matter in dispute +between Mr. Dexter and his critics was summed up long ago by Scotia's +premier poet (I refer to Robert Burns) in the lines-- + + "To make a happy fireside clime + To weans and wife, + That's the true pathos and sublime + Of human life," + +And _vice versa_. Your correspondents are too hasty in condemning Mr. +Dexter. He may have expressed himself awkwardly; but, as I understood +him, he never asserted that education necessarily unsexed a woman, if kept +within limits. 'A man's a man for a' that'; then why not a woman? +At least, so says: + + "AULD REEKIE." + + +(3) Sir,--Let Mr. Dexter stick to his guns. He is not the first who has +found the New Woman an unmitigated nuisance, and I respect him for saying +so in no measured terms. Let women, if they want husbands, cease to write +oratorios and other things in which man is, by his very constitution, +_facile princeps_, and let her cultivate that desideratum in which she +excels--a cosy home and a bright smile to greet him on the doorstep when +he returns from a tiring day in the City. Until that is done I, for one, +shall remain: + + "UNMARRIED." + +P.S.--Could a woman have composed Shakespeare? + + +(4) Sir,--I had no intention of mixing in this correspondence, and +publicity is naturally distasteful to me. Nor do I hold any brief for the +Higher Education of Women; but when I see writer after writer--apparently +of my own sex--taking refuge in what has been called the 'base shelter of +anonymity,' I feel constrained to sign myself: + + Yours faithfully, + (Mrs.) RACHEL RAMSBOTHAM. + + + +CHAPTER VI. + +_Friday's Letters_. + + +(1) Sir,--After reading 'Unmarried's' letter, one can hardly wonder that +he is so. He asks if any woman could have written Shakespeare, and +insinuates that she would be better occupied in meeting him ('Unmarried') +on the doorstep 'with a bright smile.' As to that, there may be two +opinions. Everyone to his taste, but for my part, if his insufferable +male conceit will allow him to believe it--I would rather have written +Shakespeare a hundred times over, and I am not alone in this view. Such +men as Mr. Dexter and 'Unmarried' are the cause why half of us women +prefer to remain single; the former may deny it, poker in hand, but murder +will out. In conclusion, let me add that I have never written an oratorio +in my life, though I sometimes attend them. + + Yours, etc., + "MERE WOMAN." + + +(2) Sir,--Allow me to impale Mr. Dexter on the horns of a dilemma. +Either it is too late in the day to discuss woman's education, or it is +not. If the latter, why did he say it is? And if the former, why did he +begin discussing it? That is how it strikes. + + "B.A. (Lond.)." + + +(3) Sir,--_Re_ this woman's education discussion: I write to inquire if +there is any law of the land which can hinder a woman from composing +Shakespeare if she wants to? + + Yours truly, + "INTERESTED." + + +(4) Sir,--Allusion has been made in this correspondence (I think by Mr. +Dexter) to the grave of that eminent educationist, the late +Platt-Culpepper, which is situate in the Highgate Cemetery. My interest +being awakened, I made a pilgrimage to it the other day, and was shocked +by its neglected condition. The coping has been badly cemented, and a +crack extends from the upper right-hand corner to the base of the plinth, +right across the inscription. Doubtless a few shillings would repair the +damage; but may I suggest, Sir, that some worthier memorial is due to this +pioneer of woman's higher activities? I have thought of a plain obelisk on +Shakespeare's Cliff, a locality of which he was ever fond; or a small and +inconspicuous lighthouse might, without complicating the navigation of +this part of the Channel, serve to remind Englishmen of one who diffused +so much light during his all too brief career. Choice, however, would +depend on the funds available, and might be left to an influential +committee. Meanwhile, could you not open a subscription list for the +purpose? I enclose stamps for 2 shillings, with my card, and prefer to +remain, for the present. + + "HAUD IMMEMOR." + + + +CHAPTER VII. + +_Saturday's Letters_ + + + +(1) Sir,--H. Immemor's suggestion clears the air, and should persuade +Mr. Dexter and his reactionary friends to think twice before again +inaugurating a crusade which can only recoil upon their own heads. +I enclose 5 shillings, if only as a protest against this un-English +'hitting below the belt,' and am: + + Yours, etc., + "PRACTICAL." + + +(2) Sir,--It is only occasionally that I get a glimpse of your invaluable +paper, and (perhaps, fortunately) missed the issues containing Mr. +Dexter's diatribes anent woman. But what astounds me is their cynical +audacity. Your correspondents, though not in accord as to the name of the +victim (can it be more than one?) agree that, after encouraging her to +unbridled license, Mr. Dexter turned round and attacked her with a poker-- +whether above or below the belt is surely immaterial. 'Tis true, +'tis pity, and pity 'tis 'tis true; but not once or twice, I fear me, in +'our fair island-story' has a similar thing occurred. The unique (I hope) +feature in this case is the man Dexter's open boast that the incident is +closed, and it is now 'too late in the day' to reopen it. 'Too late,' +indeed! There is an American poem describing how a young woman was raking +hay, and an elderly judge came by, and wasn't in a position to marry her, +though he wanted to; and the whole winds up by saying that 'too late' are +the saddest words in the language--especially, I would add, in this +connection. But, alas! that men's memories should be so short! Is the +reflection of: + + "A MOTHER OF SEVEN." + + +[This correspondence is now closed, unless Mr. Dexter should wish to reply +to his numerous critics. We do not propose to open a subscription list, +at any rate for the present.--Ed. _Daily Post._] + + + +FEBRUARY. + + +"O That I were lying under the olives!"--if I may echo the burthen of +a beautiful little poem by Mrs. Margaret L. Woods. I have not yet +consulted Zadkiel: but if I may argue from past experience of +February--'fill-dyke'--in a week or so my window here will be +alternately crusted with Channel spray and washed clean by lashing +south-westerly showers; and a wave will arch itself over my garden wall +and spoil a promising bed of violets; and I shall grow weary of +oilskins, and weary of hauling the long-line with icily-cold hands +and finding no fish. February--_Pisces?_ The fish, before February +comes, have left the coast for the warmer deeps, and the zodiac is +all wrong. Down here in the Duchy many believe in Mr. Zadkiel and +Old Moore. I suppose the dreamy Celt pays a natural homage to a +fellow-mortal who knows how to make up his mind for twelve months +ahead. All the woman in his nature surrenders to this businesslike +decisiveness. "O man!"--the exhortation is Mr. George Meredith's, or +would be if I could remember it precisely--"O man, amorously +inclining, before all things _be positive!_" I have sometimes, +while turning the pages of Mrs. Beeton's admirable cookery book, +caught myself envying Mr. Beeton. I wonder if her sisters envy +Mrs. Zadkiel. She, dear lady, no doubt feels that, if it be not in +mortals to command the weather her husband prophesies for August, yet +he does better--he deserves it. And, after all, a prophecy in some +measure depends for its success on the mind which receives it. +Back in the forties--I quote from a small privately-printed volume by +Sir Richard Tangye--when the potato blight first appeared in England, +an old farmer in the Duchy found this warning in his favourite +almanack, at the head of the page for August:-- + + "And potentates shall tremble and quail." + +Now, 'to quail' in Cornwall still carries its old meaning, +'to shrink,' 'to wither.' The farmer dug his potatoes with all +speed, and next year the almanack was richer by a score of +subscribers. + +Zadkiel or no Zadkiel, I will suspire, and risk it, "O that I were +lying under the olives!" "O to be out of England now that February's +here!"--for indeed this is the time to take the South express and be +quit of fogs, and loaf and invite your soul upon the Mediterranean +shore before the carnivals and regattas sweep it like a mistral. +Nor need you be an invalid to taste those joys on which Stevenson +dilates in that famous little essay in "_Virginibus Puerisque_" +(or, as the young American lady preferred to call it, "Virginis +Pueribusque."):-- + + "Or perhaps he may see a group of washer-women relieved, on a + spit of shingle, against the blue sea, or a meeting of + flower-gatherers in the tempered daylight of an olive-garden; + and something significant or monumental in the grouping, + something in the harmony of faint colour that is always + characteristic of the dress of these Southern women, will come + home to him unexpectedly, and awake in him that satisfaction + with which we tell ourselves that we are richer by one more + beautiful experience. . . . And then, there is no end to the + infinite variety of the olive-yards themselves. Even the colour + is indeterminate, and continually shifting: now you would say it + was green, now grey, now blue; now tree stands above tree, like + 'cloud on cloud,' massed in filmy indistinctness; and now, at + the wind's will, the whole sea of foliage is shaken and broken + up with little momentary silverings and shadows." + +English poets, too, have been at their best on the Riviera: from +Cette, where Matthew Arnold painted one of the most brilliant little +landscapes in our literature, along to Genoa, where Tennyson visited +and: + + "Loved that hall, tho' white and cold, + Those niched shapes of noble mould, + A princely people's awful princes, + The grave, severe Genovese of old." + +[I suppose, by the way, that every one who has taken the trouble to +compare the stanza of 'The Daisy' with that of the invitation 'To the +Rev. F. D. Maurice,' which immediately follows, will have noted the +pretty rhythmical difference made by the introduction of the double +dactyl in the closing line of the latter; the difference between: + + "Of olive, aloe, and maize, and vine," + +And: + + "Making the little one leap for joy."] + +But let Mrs. Woods resume the strain:-- + + "O that I were listening under the olives! + So should I hear behind in the woodland + The peasants talking. Either a woman, + A wrinkled granddame, stands in the sunshine, + Stirs the brown soil in an acre of violets-- + Large odorous violets--and answers slowly + A child's swift babble; or else at noon + The labourers come. They rest in the shadow, + Eating their dinner of herbs, and are merry. + Soft speech Provencal under the olives! + Like a queen's raiment from days long perished, + Breathing aromas of old unremembered + Perfumes, and shining in dust-covered palaces + With sudden hints of forgotten splendour-- + So on the lips of the peasant his language, + His only now, the tongue of the peasant." + +Say what you will, there is a dignity about these Latin races, even +in their trivial everyday movements. They suggest to me, as those +lines of Homer suggested to Mr. Pater's Marius, thoughts which almost +seem to be memories of a time when all the world was poetic:-- + + "Oi d'ote de limenos polubentheos entos ikonto + Istia men steilanto, thesand d'en nei melaine . . . + Ek de kai antoi Bainon epi regmini thalasses." + +"And how poetic," says Pater, "the simple incident seemed, told just +thus! Homer was always telling things after this manner. +And one might think there had been no effort in it: that here was but +the almost mechanical transcript of a time naturally, intrinsically +poetic, a time in which one could hardly have spoken at all without +ideal effect, or the sailors pulled down their boat without making a +picture in 'the great style' against a sky charged with marvels." + +One evening in last February a company of Provencal singers, pipers, +and tambour players came to an hotel in Cannes, and entertained us. +They were followed next evening by a troupe of German-Swiss jodelers; +and oh, the difference to me--and, for that matter, to all of us! +It was just the difference between passion and silly sentiment--silly +and rather vulgar sentiment. The merry Swiss boys whooped, and +smacked their legs, and twirled their merry Swiss girls about, until +vengeance overtook them--a vengeance so complete, so surprising, that +I can hardly now believe what my own eyes saw and my own ears heard. +One of the merry Swiss girls sang a love-ditty with a jodeling +refrain, which was supposed to be echoed back by her lover afar in +the mountains. To produce this pleasing illusion, one of the merry +Swiss boys ascended the staircase, and hid himself deep in the +corridors of the hotel. All went well up to the last verse. +Promptly and truly the swain echoed his sweetheart's call; softly it +floated down to us--down from the imaginary pasture and across the +imaginary valley. But as the maiden challenged for the last time, as +her voice lingered on the last note of the last verse . . . +There hung a Swiss cuckoo-clock in the porter's office, and at that +very instant the mechanical bird lifted its voice, and nine times +answered 'Cuckoo' _on the exact note!_ "Cuckoo, Cuckoo, O word of +fear!" I have known coincidences, but never one so triumphantly +complete. The jaw of the Swiss maiden dropped an inch; and, as well +as I remember, silence held the company for five seconds before we +recovered ourselves and burst into inextinguishable laughter. + + +The one complaint I have to make of the Mediterranean is that it does +not in the least resemble a real sea; and I daresay that nobody who +has lived by a real sea will ever be thoroughly content with it. +Beautiful--oh, beautiful, of course, whether one looks across from +Costebelle to the lighthouse on Porquerolles and the warships in +Hyeres Bay; or climbs by the Calvary to the lighthouse of la Garoupe, +and sees on the one side Antibes, on the other the Isles de Lerins; +or scans the entrance of Toulon Harbour; or counts the tiers of +shipping alongside the quays at Genoa! But somehow the Mediterranean +has neither flavour nor sparkle, nor even any proper smell. +The sea by Biarritz is champagne to it. But hear how Hugo draws the +contrast in time of storm:-- + + "Ce n'etaient pas les larges lames de l'Ocean qui vont devant elles + et qui se deroulent royalement dans l'immensite; c'etaient des + houles courtes, brusques, furieuses. L'Ocean est a son aise, + il tourne autour du monde; la Mediterranee est dans un vase et + le vent la secoue, c'est ce qui lui donne cette vague haletante, + breve et trapue. Le flot se ramasse et lutte. Il a autant de + colere que la flot de l'Ocean et moins d'espace." + +Also, barring the sardine and anchovy, I must confess that the fish +of the Mediterranean are what, in the Duchy, we should call +'poor trade.' I don't wish to disparage the Bouillabaisse, which is +a dish for heroes, and deserves all the heroic praises sung of it:-- + + "This Bouillabaisse a noble dish is-- + A sort of soup, or broth, or brew, + Or hotchpotch of all sorts of fishes, + That Greenwich never could outdo; + Green herbs, red peppers, mussels, saffron, + Soles, onions, garlic, roach and dace: + All these you eat at Terre's tavern, + In that one dish of Bouillabaisse." + +To be precise, you take a langouste, three rascas (an edible but +second-rate fish), a slice of conger, a fine 'chapon,' or red rascas, +and one or two 'poissons blancs' (our grey mullet, I take it, would +be an equivalent). You take a cooking-pot and put your langouste in +it, together with four spoonfuls of olive-oil, an onion and a couple +of tomatoes, and boil away until he turns red. You then take off the +pot and add your fish, green herbs, four cloves of garlic, and a +pinch of saffron, with salt and red pepper. Pour in water to cover +the surface of the fish, and cook for twenty minutes over a fast +fire. Then take a soup-plate, lay some slices of bread in it, and +pour the bouillon over the bread. Serve the fish separately. +Possibly you incline to add, in the immortal words of the late Mr. +Lear, "Serve up in a clean dish, and throw the whole out of window as +fast as possible." You would make a great mistake. The marvel to me +is that no missionary has acclimatised this wonderful dish upon our +coasts, where we have far better fish for compounding it--red mullet, +for instance, in place of the rascas; and whiting, or even pollack or +grey mullet, in place of the 'poissons blancs.' For the langouste, a +baby lobster might serve; and the saffron flavour would be no severe +trial to us in the Duchy, who are brought up (so to say) upon saffron +cake. As for Thackeray's 'dace,' I disbelieve in it. No one would +add a dace (which for table purposes has been likened to an old +stocking full of mud and pins: or was that a tench?) except to make a +rhyme. Even Walton, who gives instructions for cooking a chavender +or chub, is discreetly silent on the cooking of a dace, though he +tells us how to catch him. "Serve up in a clean dish," he might have +added, "and throw him out of window as fast as possible." + + +"O that I were lying under the olives!" And O that to olive orchards +(not contiguous) I could convey the newspaper men who are almost +invariably responsible when a shadow of distrust or suspicion falls +between us Englishmen and the race which owns and tills these +orchards. "The printing-press," says Mr. Barrie, "is either the +greatest blessing or the greatest curse of modern times, one +sometimes forgets which." I verily believe that if English newspaper +editors would nobly resolve to hold their peace on French politics, +say for two years, France and England would 'make friends' as easily +as Frenchmen and Englishmen 'make friends' to-day.[1] One hears talk +of the behaviour of the English abroad. But I am convinced that at +least one-half of their bad manners may be referred to their +education upon this newspaper nonsense, or to the certainty that no +complaint they may make upon foreign shortcomings is too silly or too +ill-bred to be printed in an English newspaper. Here is an example. +I suppress the name of the writer--a lady--in the devout hope that +she has repented before this. The letter is headed-- + + "THE AMENITIES OF RAILWAY TRAVELLING IN FRANCE. + + "Sir,--As your newspaper is read in France, may I in your columns + call attention to what I witnessed yesterday? I left Dinard by + the 3.33 p.m. train _en route_ for Guingamp, having to change + carriages at Lamballe. An instant before the train moved off + from the station, a dying man belonging to the poorest class was + thrust into our second class carriage and the door slammed to. + The poor creature, apparently dying of some wasting disease, + was absolutely on the point of death, and his ghastly appearance + naturally alarmed a little girl in the carriage. + At the next station I got down with my companion and changed + into a first-class compartment, paying the difference. + On remonstrating with the guard (_sic_), he admitted that a + railway carriage ought not to be turned into an hospital, + but added, 'We have no rules to prevent it.' + + "I ask, sir, is it decent or human, especially at such a time, + to thrust dying persons in the last stage of poverty into a + second-class carriage full of ladies and children?" + +There's a pretty charity for you! 'A dying man belonging to the +_poorest class_.'--'_Our_ second-class carriage'--here's richness! +as Mr. Squeers observed. Here's sweetness and light! But England +has no monopoly of such manners. There was a poor little Cingalese +girl in the train by which I travelled homeward last February from +Genoa and through the Mont Cenis. And there were also three +Englishmen and a Frenchman--the last apparently (as Browning put it) +a person of importance in his day, for he had a bit of red ribbon in +his buttonhole and a valet at his heels. At one of the small +stations near the tunnel our train halted for several minutes; +and while the little Cingalese leaned out and gazed at the unfamiliar +snows--a pathetic figure, if ever there was one--the three Englishmen +and the Frenchman gathered under the carriage door and stared up at +her just as if she were a show. There was no nonsense about the +performance--no false delicacy: it was good, steady, eye-to-eye +staring. After three minutes of it, the Frenchman asked +deliberately, "Where do you come from?" in a careless, level tone, +which did not even convey that he was interested in knowing. +And because the child didn't understand, the three Englishmen +laughed. Altogether it was an unpleasing but instructive little +episode. + + +No: nastiness has no particular nationality: and you will find a +great deal of it, of all nationalities, on the frontier between +France and Italy. I do not see that Monte Carlo provides much cause +for indignation, beyond the _tir aux pigeons_, which is quite +abominable. I have timed it for twenty-five minutes, and it averaged +two birds a minute--fifty birds. Of these one escaped, one fluttered +on to the roof of the railway station and died there slowly, under my +eyes. The rest were killed within the enclosure, some by the first +barrel, some by the second, or if they still lingered, were retrieved +and mouthed by a well-trained butcher dog, of no recognisable breed. +Sometimes, after receiving its wound, a bird would walk about for a +second or two, apparently unhurt; then suddenly stagger and topple +over. Sometimes, as the trap opened, a bird would stand dazed. +Then a ball was trundled at it to compel it to rise. Grey breast +feathers strewed the whole inclosure, in places quite thickly, like a +carpet. As for the crowd at the tables inside the Casino, it was +largely Semitic. On the road between Monte Carlo and Monaco, as +Browning says-- + + "It was noses, noses all the way." + +Also it smelt distressingly: but that perhaps was its misfortune +rather than its fault. It did not seem very happy; nor was it +composed of people who looked as if they might have attained to +distinction, or even to ordinary usefulness, by following any other +pursuit. On the whole, one felt that it might as well be gathered +here as anywhere else. + +"O that I were lying under the olives!" But since my own garden must +content me this year, let me conclude with a decent letter of thanks +to the friend who sent me, from Devonshire, a box of violet roots +that await the spring in a corner which even the waves of the equinox +cannot reach:-- + + TO A FRIEND WHO SENT ME A BOX OF VIOLETS. + + Nay, more than violets + These thoughts of thine, friend! + Rather thy reedy brook + --Taw's tributary-- + At midnight murmuring, + Descried them, the delicate, + The dark-eyed goddesses. + There by his cressy beds + Dissolved and dreaming + Dreams that distilled in a dewdrop + All the purple of night, + All the shine of a planet. + + Whereat he whispered; + And they arising + --Of day's forget-me-nots + The duskier sisters-- + Descended, relinquished + The orchard, the trout-pool, + The Druid circles, + Sheepfolds of Dartmoor, + Granite and sandstone, + Torridge and Tamar; + By Roughtor, by Dozmare, + Down the vale of the Fowey + Moving in silence. + Brushing the nightshade + By bridges Cyclopean, + By Glynn, Lanhydrock, + + Restormel, Lostwithiel, + Dark woodland, dim water, + dreaming town-- + Down the vale of the Fowey, + Each in her exile + Musing the message-- + Message illumined by love + As a starlit sorrow-- + Passed, as the shadow of Ruth + From the land of the Moabite. + So they came-- + Valley-born, valley-nurtured-- + Came to the tideway, + The jetties, the anchorage, + The salt wind piping, + Snoring in equinox, + By ships at anchor, + By quays tormented, + Storm-bitten streets; + Came to the Haven + Crying, "Ah, shelter us, + The strayed ambassadors! + Lost legation of love + On a comfortless coast!" + + Nay, but a little sleep, + A little folding + Of petals to the lull + Of quiet rainfalls,-- + Here in my garden, + In angle sheltered + From north and east wind-- + Softly shall recreate + The courage of charity, + Henceforth not to me only + Breathing the message. + + Clean-breath'd Sirens! + Henceforth the mariner, + Here on the tideway + Dragging, foul of keel, + Long-strayed but fortunate, + Out of the fogs, + the vast Atlantic solitudes, + Shall, by the hawser-pin + Waiting the signal-- + "Leave-go-anchor!" + Scent the familiar + Fragrance of home; + So in a long breath + Bless us unknowingly: + Bless them, the violets, + Bless me, the gardener, + Bless thee, the giver. + + +My business (I remind myself) behind the window is not to scribble +verses: my business, or a part of it, is to criticise poetry, which +involves reading poetry. But why should anyone read poetry in these +days? + +Well, one answer is that nobody does. + +I look around my shelves and, brushing this answer aside as flippant, +change the form of my question. Why do we read poetry? What do we +find that it does for us? We take to it (I presume) some natural +need, and it answers that need. But what is the need? And how does +poetry answer it? + +Clearly it is not a need of knowledge, or of what we usually +understand by knowledge. We do not go to a poem as we go to a work +on Chemistry or Physics, to add to our knowledge of the world about +us. For example, Keats' glorious lines to the Nightingale-- + + "Thou wast not born for death, immortal bird . . ." + +Are unchallengeable poetry; but they add nothing to our stock of +information. Indeed, as Mr. Bridges pointed out the other day, the +information they contain is mostly inaccurate or fanciful. Man is, +as a matter of fact, quite as immortal as a nightingale in every +sense but that of sameness. And as for: + + "Magic casements opening on the foam + Of perilous seas, in faery lands forlorn," + +Science tells us that no such things exist in this or any other +ascertained world. So, when Tennyson tells us that birds in the high +Hall garden were crying, "Maud, Maud, Maud," or that: + + "There has fallen a splendid tear + From the passion-flower at the gate: + She is coming, my dove, my dear; + She is coming, my life, my fate; + The red rose cries, 'She is near, she is near'; + And the white rose weeps, 'She is late' . . ." + +The poetry is unchallengeable, but the information by scientific +standards of truth is demonstrably false, and even absurd. +On the other hand (see Coleridge's _Biographia Literaria_, c. xiv.), +the famous lines-- + + "Thirty days hath September, + April, June, and November, . . ." + +Though packed with trustworthy information, are quite as demonstrably +unpoetical. The famous senior wrangler who returned a borrowed +volume of _Paradise Lost_ with the remark that he did not see what it +proved, was right--so far as he went. And conversely (as he would +have said) no sensible man would think to improve Newton's +_Principia_ and Darwin's _Origin of Species_ by casting them into +blank verse; or Euclid's _Elements_ by writing them out in ballad +metre-- + + The king sits in Dunfermline town, + Drinking the blude-red wine; + 'O wha will rear me an equilateral triangle + Upon a given straight line?' + +We may be sure that Poetry does not aim to do what Science, with +other methods, can do much better. What craving, then, does it +answer? And if the craving be for knowledge of a kind, then of what +kind? + +The question is serious. We agree--at least I assume this--that men +have souls as well as intellects; that above and beyond the life we +know and can describe and reduce to laws and formulas there exists a +spiritual life of which our intellect is unable to render account. +We have (it is believed) affinity with this spiritual world, and we +hold it by virtue of something spiritual within us, which we call the +soul. You may disbelieve in this spiritual region and remain, I dare +say, an estimable citizen; but I cannot see what business you have +with Poetry, or what satisfaction you draw from it. Nay, Poetry +demands that you believe something further; which is, that in this +spiritual region resides and is laid up that eternal scheme of +things, that universal _order_, of which the phenomena of this world +are but fragments, if indeed they are not mere shadows. + +A hard matter to believe, no doubt! We see this world so clearly; +the spiritual world so dimly, so rarely, if at all! We may fortify +ourselves with the reminder (to be found in Blanco White's famous +sonnet) that the first man who lived on earth had to wait for the +darkness before he saw the stars and guessed that the Universe +extended beyond this earth-- + + "Who could have thought such darkness lay conceal'd + Within thy beams, O Sun! or who could find, + Whilst fly and leaf and insect stood reveal'd, + That to such countless orbs thou mad'st us blind?" + +He may, or may not, believe that the same duty governs his +infinitesimal activity and the motions of the heavenly bodies-- + + "Awake, my soul, and _with the sun_ + Thy daily stage of duty run . . ." + +--That his duty is one with that of which Wordsworth sang-- + + "Thou dost preserve the stars from wrong; + And the most ancient heavens, through thee, are + fresh and strong." + +But in a higher order of some sort, and his duty of conforming with +it, he does not seem able to avoid believing. + +This, then, is the need which Poetry answers. It offers to bring men +knowledge of this universal order, and to help them in rectifying and +adjusting their lives to it. It is for gleams of this spiritual +country that the poets watch-- + + "The gleam, + The light that never was on sea or land. . . ." + +"I am Merlin," sang Tennyson, its life-long watcher, in his old age-- + + "I am Merlin, + And I am dying; + I am Merlin, + Who follow the gleam." + +They do not claim to see it always. It appears to them at rare and +happy intervals, as the Vision of the Grail to the Knights of the +Round Table. "Poetry," said Shelley, "is the record of the best and +happiest moments of the happiest and best minds." + + +If this be the need, how have our poets been answering it of late +years? How, for instance, did they answer it during the South +African War, when (according to our newspapers) there was plenty of +patriotic emotion available to inspire the great organ of national +song? Well, let us kick up what dust we will over 'Imperial ideals,' +we must admit, at least, that these ideals are not yet 'accepted of +song': they have not inspired poetry in any way adequate to the +nobility claimed for them. Mr. Swinburne and Mr. Henley saluted the +Boer War in verse of much truculence, but no quality; and when Mr. +Swinburne and Mr. Henley lacked quality one began to inquire into +causes. Mr. Kipling's Absent-minded Beggars, Muddied Oafs, Goths and +Huns, invited one to consider why he should so often be first-rate +when neglecting or giving the lie to his pet political doctrines, and +invariably below form when enforcing them. For the rest, the Warden +of Glenalmond bubbled and squeaked, and Mr. Alfred Austin, like the +man at the piano, kept on doing his best. It all came to nothing: as +poetry it never began to be more than null. Mr. Hardy wrote a few +mournfully memorable lines on the seamy side of war. Mr. Owen Seaman +(who may pass for our contemporary Aristophanes) was smart and witty +at the expense of those whose philosophy goes a little deeper than +surface-polish. One man alone--Mr. Henry Newbolt--struck a note +which even his opponents had to respect. The rest exhibited plenty +of the turbulence of passion, but none of the gravity of thoughtful +emotion. I don't doubt they were, one and all, honest in their way. +But as poetry their utterances were negligible. As writers of real +poetry the Anti-Jingoes, and especially the Celts, held and still +hold the field. + +I will not adduce poets of admitted eminence--Mr. Watson, for +instance, or Mr. Yeats--to prove my case. I am content to go to a +young poet who has his spurs to win, and will ask you to consider +this little poem, and especially its final stanza. He calls it-- + + + A CHARGE + + If thou hast squander'd years to grave a gem + Commissioned by thy absent Lord, and while + 'Tis incomplete, + Others would bribe thy needy skill to them-- + Dismiss them to the street! + + Should'st thou at last discover Beauty's grove, + At last be panting on the fragrant verge, + But in the track, + Drunk with divine possession, thou meet Love-- + Turn, at her bidding, back. + + When round thy ship in tempest Hell appears, + And every spectre mutters up more dire + To snatch control + And loose to madness thy deep-kennell'd Fears,-- + Then to the helm, O Soul! + + Last, if upon the cold, green-mantling sea + Thou cling, alone with Truth, to the last spar, + Both castaway, + And one must perish--let it not be he + Whom thou art sworn to obey. + +The author of these lines is a Mr. Herbert Trench, who (as I say) has +his spurs to win. Yet I defy you to read them without recognising a +note of high seriousness which is common to our great poets and +utterly foreign to our modern bards of empire. The man, you will +perceive, dares to talk quite boldly about the human soul. Now you +will search long in our Jingo bards for any recognition of the human +soul: the very word is unpopular. And as men of eminence write, so +lesser wits imitate. A while ago I picked up a popular magazine, and +happened on these verses--fluently written and, beyond a doubt, +honestly meant. They are in praise of King Henry VIII.:-- + + King Harry played at tennis, and he threw the dice a-main, + And did all things that seemed to him for his own + and England's gain; + He would not be talked to lightly, he would not be + checked or chid; + And he got what things he dreamed to get, and did-- + what things he did. + + When Harry played at tennis it was well for this our Isle-- + He cocked his nose at Interdicts; he 'stablished us the while-- + He was lustful; he was vengeful; he was hot and hard and proud; + But he set his England fairly in the sight of all the crowd. + + + So Harry played at tennis, and we perfected the game + Which astonished swaggering Spaniards when the fat Armada came. + And possession did he give us of our souls in sturdiness; + And he gave us peace from priesthood: and he gave us English + Bess! + + When Harry played at tennis we began to know this thing-- + That a mighty people prospers in a mighty-minded king. + We boasted not our righteousness--we took on us our sin, + For Bluff Hal was just an Englishman who played the game to win. + +You will perceive that in the third stanza the word 'soul' occurs: +and I invite you to compare this author's idea of a soul with Mr. +Trench's. This author will have nothing to do with the old advice +about doing justice, loving mercy, and walking humbly before God. +The old notion that to conquer self is a higher feat than to take a +city he dismisses out of hand. "Be lustful be vengeful," says he, +"but play the game to win, and you have my applause. Get what you +want, set England fairly in sight of the crowd, and you are a +mighty-minded man." Now the first and last comment upon such a +doctrine must be that, if a God exist, it is false. It sets up a +part to override the whole: it flaunts a local success against the +austere majesty of Divine law. In brief, it foolishly derides the +universal, saying that it chooses to consider the particular as more +important. But it is not. Poetry's concern is with the universal: +and what makes the Celts (however much you may dislike them) the most +considerable force in English poetry at this moment is that they +occupy themselves with that universal truth, which, before any +technical accomplishment, is the guarantee of good poetry. + +Now, when you tell yourself that the days of 'English Bess' were +jolly fine empire-making days, and produced great poets (Shakespeare, +for example) worthy of them; and when you go on to reflect that these +also are jolly fine empire-making days, but that somehow Mr. Austin +is your laureate, and that the only poetry which counts is being +written by men out of harmony with your present empire-making mood, +the easiest plan (if you happen to think the difference worth +considering) will be to call the Muse a traitress, and declare that +every poem better than Mr. Austin's is a vote given to--whatever +nation your Yellow Press happens to be insulting at this moment. +But, if you care to look a little deeper, you may find that some +difference in your methods of empire-making is partly accountable for +the change. A true poet must cling to universal truth; and by +insulting it (as, for example, by importing into present-day politics +the spirit which would excuse the iniquities of Henry VIII. on the +ground that 'he gave us English Bess'!) you are driving the true poet +out of your midst. Read over the verses above quoted, and then +repeat to yourself, slowly, these lines:-- + + "Last, if upon the cold, green-mantling sea + Thou cling, alone with Truth, to the last spar, + Both castaway, + And one must perish--let it not be he + Whom thou art sworn to obey." + +I ask no more. If a man cannot see the difference at once, I almost +despair of making him perceive why poetry refuses just now even more +obstinately than trade (if that be possible) to 'follow the flag.' +It will not follow, because you are waving the flag over +self-deception. You may be as blithe as Plato in casting out the +poets from your commonwealth--though for other reasons than his. +You may be as blithe as Dogberry in determining, of reading and +writing, that they may appear when there is no need of such vanity. +But you are certainly driving them forth to say, in place of +"O beloved city of Cecrops!" "O beloved city of God!" There was a +time, not many years ago, when an honest poet could have used both +cries together and deemed that he meant the same thing by the two. +But the two cries to-day have an utterly different meaning--and by +your compulsion or by the compulsion of such politics as you have +come to tolerate. + +And therefore the young poet whom I have quoted has joined the band +of those poets whom we are forcing out of the city, to leave our +ideals to the fate which, since the world began, has overtaken all +ideals which could not get themselves 'accepted by song.' Even as we +drum these poets out we know that they are the only ones worth +reckoning with, and that man cannot support himself upon assurances +that he is the strongest fellow in the world, and the richest, and +owns the biggest house, and pays the biggest rates, and wins whatever +game he plays at, and stands so high in his clothes that while the +Southern Cross rises over his hat-brim it is already broad day on the +seat of his breeches. For that is what it all comes to: and the +sentence upon the man who neglects the warning of these poets, while +he heaps up great possessions, is still, "Thou fool, this night thy +soul shall be required of thee." And where is the national soul you +would choose, at that hasty summons, to present for inspection, +having to stand your trial upon it? Try Park Lane, or run and knock +up the Laureate, and then come and report your success! + + +Weeks ago I was greatly reproached by a correspondent for misusing +the word 'Celtic,' and informed that to call Mr. Yeats or Mr. Trench +a Celt is a grave abuse of ethnical terms; that a notable percentage +of the names connected with the 'Celtic Revival'--Hyde, Sigerson, +Atkinson, Stokes--are not Celtic at all but Teutonic; that, in short, +I have been following the multitude to speak loosely. Well, I +confess it, and I will confess further that the lax use of the word +'Celt' ill beseems one who has been irritated often enough by the +attempts of well-meaning but muddle-headed people who get hold of +this or that poet and straightly assign this or that quality of his +verse to a certain set of corpuscles in his mixed blood. Although I +believe that my correspondent is too hasty in labelling men's descent +from their names--for the mother has usually some share in producing +a child; although I believe that Mr. Yeats, for instance, inherits +Cornish blood on one side, even if Irish be denied him on the other; +yet the rebuke contains some justice. + +Still, I must maintain that these well-meaning theorists err only in +applying a broad distinction with overmuch nicety. There is, after +all, a certain quality in a poem of Blake's, or a prose passage of +Charlotte Bronte's, which a critic is not only unable to ignore, but +which--if he has any 'comparative' sense--he finds himself accounting +for by saying, "This man, or this woman, must be a Celt or have some +admixture of Celtic blood." I say quite confidently that quality +cannot be ignored. You open (let us say) a volume of Blake, and your +eye falls on these two lines-- + + "When the stars threw down their spears + And watered heaven with their tears," + +And at once you are aware of an imagination different in kind from +the imagination you would recognise as English. Let us, if you +please, rule out all debate of superiority; let us take Shakespeare +for comparison, and Shakespeare at his best:-- + + "These our actors, + As I foretold you, were all spirits, and + Are melted into air, into thin air; + And, like the baseless fabric of this vision, + The cloud-capp'd towers, the gorgeous palaces, + The solemn temples, the great globe itself, + Yea, all which it inherit, shall dissolve + And, like this insubstantial pageant faded, + Leave not a rack behind. We are such stuff + As dreams are made of, and our little life + Is rounded with a sleep." + +Finer poetry than this I can hardly find in English to quote for you. +But fine as it is, will you not observe the matter-of-factness +(call it healthy, if you will, and I shall not gainsay you) beneath +Shakespeare's noble language? It says divinely what it has to say; +and what it has to say is full of solemn thought. But, for better or +worse (or, rather, without question of better or worse), Blake's +imagination is moving on a different plane. We may think it an +uncomfortably superhuman plane; but let us note the difference, and +note further that this plane was habitual with Blake. Now because of +his immense powers we are accustomed to think of Shakespeare as +almost superhuman: we pay that tribute to his genius, his strength, +and the enormous impression they produce on us. But a single couplet +of Blake's will carry more of this uncanny superhuman imagination +than the whole five acts of _Hamlet_. So great is Shakespeare, that +he tempts us to think him capable of any flight of wing; but set down +a line or two of Blake's-- + + "A robin redbreast in a cage + Puts all heaven in a rage . . . + A skylark wounded on the wing + Doth make a cherub cease to sing." + +--And, simple as the thought is, at once you feel it to lie outside +the range of Shakespeare's philosophy. Shakespeare's men are fine, +brave, companionable fellows, full of passionate love, jealousy, +ambition; of humour, gravity, strength of mind; of laughter and rage, +of the joy and stress of living. But self-sacrifice scarcely enters +into their notion of the scheme of things, and they are by no means +men to go to death for an idea. We remember what figure Shakespeare +made of Sir John Oldcastle, and I wish we could forget what figure he +made of Joan of Arc. Within the bounds of his philosophy--the +philosophy, gloriously stated, of ordinary brave, full-blooded men-- +he is a great encourager of virtue; and so such lines as-- + + "The expense of spirit in a waste of shame + Is lust in action . . ." + +Are thoroughly Shakespearean, while such lines as-- + + "A robin redbreast in a cage + Puts all heaven in a rage . . ." + +Are as little Shakespearean in thought as in phrasing. He can tell +us that: + + "We are such stuff + As dreams are made of, and our little life + Is rounded with a sleep." + +He can muse on that sleep to come:-- + + "To die, to sleep; + To sleep; perchance to dream; aye, there's the rub; + For in that sleep of death what dreams may come + When we have shuffled off this mortal coil, + Must give us pause." + +But that even in this life we may be more truly ourselves when +dreaming than when waking--that what we dream may perchance turn out +to be more real and more important than what we do--such a thought +overpasses his imaginative range; or, since to dogmatise on his +imaginative range is highly dangerous, let us be content with saying +that it lies outside his temperament, and that he would have hit on +such a thought only to dismiss it with contempt. So when we open a +book of poems and come upon a monarch crying out that: + + "A wild and foolish labourer is a king, + To do and do and do and never dream," + +We know that we are hearkening to a note which is not Shakespearean +at all, not practical, not English. And we want a name for that +note. + +I have followed the multitude to call it Celtic because in practice +when we come upon this note we are pretty safe to discover that the +poet who utters it has Celtic blood in him (Blake's poetry, for +instance, told me that he must be an Irishman before ever I reflected +that his name was Irish, or thought of looking up his descent). +Since, however the blood of most men in these islands is by this time +mixed with many strains: since also, though the note be not native +with him, nothing forbids even a pure-blooded Anglo-Saxon from +learning it and assimilating it: lastly, since there is obvious +inconvenience in using the same word for an ethnical delimitation and +a psychological, when their boundaries do not exactly correspond--and +if some Anglo-Saxons have the 'Celtic' note it is certain that many +thousands of Celts have not; why then I shall be glad enough to use a +better and a handier and a more exact, if only some clever person +will provide it. + +Meanwhile, let it be understood that in speaking of a 'Celtic' note I +accuse no fellow-creature of being an Irishman, Scotsman, Welshman, +Manxman, Cornishman, or Breton. The poet will as a rule turn out to +be one or other of these, or at least to have a traceable strain of +Celtic blood in him. But to the note only is the term applied, +Now this note may be recognised by many tokens; but the first and +chiefest is its insistence upon man's brotherhood with bird and +beast, star and flower, everything, in short, which we loosely call +'nature,' his brotherhood even with spirits and angels, as one of an +infinite number of microcosms reflecting a common image of God. +And poetry which holds by this creed will hardly be subservient to +societies and governments and legalised doctrines and conventions; +it will hold to them by a long and loose chain, if at all. +It flies high enough, at any rate, to take a bird's-eye view of all +manner of things which in the temple, the palace, or the +market-place, have come to be taken as axiomatic. It eyes them with +an extraordinary 'dissoluteness'--if you will give that word its +literal meaning. It sees that some accepted virtues carry no +reflection of heaven; it sees that heaven, on the other hand--so +infinite is its care--may shake with anger from bound to bound at the +sight of a caged bird. It sees that the souls of living things, even +of the least conspicuous, reach up by chains and are anchored in +heaven, while 'great' events slide by on the surface of this skimming +planet with empires and their ordinances. + + + "And so the Emperor went in the procession under the splendid + canopy. And all the people in the streets and at the windows + said, 'Bless us! what matchless new clothes our Emperor has!' + But he hasn't anything on!' cried a little child. 'Dear me, + just listen to what the little innocent says,' observed his + father, and the people whispered to each other what the child + had said. 'He hasn't anything on!' they began to shout at last. + This made the Emperor's flesh creep, because he thought that + they were right; but he said to himself, 'I must keep it up + through the procession, anyhow.' And he walked on still more + majestically, and the Chamberlains walked behind and carried the + train, though there was none to carry." + +This parable of the Emperor without clothes can be matched, for +simplicity and searching directness, against any parable outside of +the Gospels, and it agrees with the Divine parables in exalting the +wisdom of a child. I will not dare to discuss that wisdom here. +I observe that when the poets preach it we tender them our applause. +We applaud Vaughan's lines:-- + + "Happy those early days, when I + Shin'd in my angel-infancy . . . + When yet I had not walk'd above + A mile or two from my first love, + And looking back--at that short space-- + Could see a glimpse of His bright face; + When on some gilded cloud or flow'r + My gazing soul would dwell an hour, + And in those weaker glories spy + Some shadows of eternity. . . ." + +We applaud Wordsworth's glorious ode-- + + "Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting: + The Soul that rises with us, our life's Star, + Hath had elsewhere its setting, + And cometh from afar: + Not in entire forgetfulness, + And not in utter nakedness, + But trailing clouds of glory do we come + From God, who is our home: + Heaven lies about us in our infancy! . . ." + +We applaud even old John Earle's prose when he tells us of a Child +that-- + + "The elder he grows, he is a stair lower from God; and, like his + first father, much worse in his breeches. He is the Christian's + example, and the old man's relapse; the one imitates his + pureness, the other falls into his simplicity. . . . His father + hath writ him as his own little story, wherein he reads those + days of his life that he cannot remember, and sighs to see what + innocence he hath outlived. . . . Could he put off his body with + his little coat, he had got eternity without a burden, and + exchanged but one heaven for another." + +But while we applaud this pretty confident attribution of divine +wisdom to children, we are much too cautious to translate it into +practice. "It is far too shadowy a notion," says Wordsworth +prudently, "to be recommended to faith as more than an element in our +instincts of immortality;" and he might have added that, while the +Child may be Father of the Man, the Man reserves the privilege of +spanking. Even so I observe that, while able to agree cordially with +Christ on the necessity of becoming as little children as a condition +of entering the Kingdom of Heaven, we are not so injudicious as to +act upon any such belief; nay, we find ourselves obliged to revise +and re-interpret the wisdom of the Gospels when we find it too +impracticably childish. When Christ, for instance, forbids oaths of +all kinds, we feel sure He cannot be serious, or we should have to +upset a settled practice of the courts. And as for resisting no evil +and forgiving our enemies, why, good Heavens! what would become of +our splendid armaments! The suggestion, put so down rightly, is +quite too wild. In short, as a distinguished Bishop put it, society +could not exist for forty-eight hours on the lines laid down in the +Sermon on the Mount. (I forget the Bishop's exact words, but they +amounted to a complete and thoroughly common-sense repudiation of +Gospel Christianity.) + +No; it is obvious that, in so far as the Divine teaching touches +on conduct, we must as practical men correct it, and with a +special look-out for its indulgent misunderstanding of children. +Children, as a matter of experience, have no sense of the rights of +property. They steal apples. + +And yet--there must be something in this downright wisdom of +childishness since Christ went (as we must believe) out of His way to +lay such stress on it; and since our own hearts respond so readily +when Vaughan or Wordsworth claim divinity for it. We cannot of +course go the length of believing that the great, wise, and eminent +men of our day are engaged one and all in the pursuit of shadows. +'Shadows we are and shadows we pursue' sounded an exquisitely solemn +note in an election speech; but after all, we must take the world as +we find it, and the world as we find it has its own recognised +rewards. No success attended the poet who wrote that-- + + "Those little new-invented things-- + Cups, saddles, crowns, are childish joys, + So ribbands are and rings, + Which all our happiness destroys. + Nor God + In His abode, + Nor saints, nor little boys, + Nor Angels made them; only foolish men, + Grown mad with custom, on those toys + Which more increase their wants to date. . . ." + +He found no publisher, and they have been rescued by accident after +two hundred years of oblivion. (It appears, nevertheless, that he +was a happy man.) + +And yet--I repeat--since we respond to it so readily, whether in +welcome or in irritation, there must be something in this claim set +up for childish simplicity; and I cannot help thinking it fortunate +and salutary for us that the Celtic poets have taken to sounding its +note so boldly. Whatever else they do, on the conventional ideals of +this generation they speak out with an uncompromising and highly +disconcerting directness. As I said just now, they are held, if at +all, by a long and loose chain to the graven images to which we stand +bound arm-to-arm and foot-to-foot. They fly far enough aloof to take +a bird's-eye view. What they see they declare with a boldness which +is the more impressive for being unconscious. And they declare that +they see us tied to stupid material gods, and wholly blind to ideas. + +P.S.--I made bold enough to say in the course of these remarks that +Euclid's _Elements_ could hardly be improved by writing them out in +ballad metre. A friend, to whom I happened to repeat this assertion, +cast doubt on it and challenged me to prove it. I do so with +pleasure in the following-- + +[In the original text, there is shown a geometrical diagram which +consists of two equally sized circles superimposed so that they each +intersect the other's centre which points are marked A and B. The +outermost points on the two circles in line with AB are marked D and +E. The upper point where the two circles intersect is marked C and +an equilateral triangle is shown by joining points A, B and C.] + + + NEW BALLAD OF SIR PATRICK SPENS. + + The King sits in Dunfermline toun + Drinking the blude-red wine: + "O wha will rear me an equilateral triangle + Upon a given straight line?" + + O up and spake an eldern knight, + Sat at the King's right knee-- + "Of a' the clerks by Granta side + Sir Patrick bears the gree. + + "'Tis he was taught by the Tod-huntere + Tho' not at the tod-hunting; + Yet gif that he be given a line, + He'll do as brave a thing." + + Our King has written a braid letter + To Cambrigge or thereby, + And there it found Sir Patrick Spens + Evaluating PI. + + He hadna warked his quotient + A point but barely three, + There stepped to him a little foot-page + And louted on his knee. + + The first word that Sir Patrick read, + "_Plus_ x," was a' he said: + The neist word that Sir Patrick read, + 'Twas "_plus_ expenses paid." + + The last word that Sir Patrick read, + The tear blinded his e'e: + "The pound I most admire is not + In Scottish currencie." + + Stately stepped he east the wa', + And stately stepped he north: + He fetched a compass frae his ha' + And stood beside the Forth, + + Then gurly grew the waves o' Forth, + And gurlier by-and-by-- + "O never yet was sic a storm, + Yet it isna sic as I!" + + + Syne he has crost the Firth o' Forth + Until Dunfermline toun; + And tho' he came with a kittle wame + Fu' low he louted doun. + + "A line, a line, a gude straight line, + O King, purvey me quick! + And see it be of thilka kind + That's neither braid nor thick." + + "Nor thick nor braid?" King Jamie said, + "I'll eat my gude hat-band + If arra line as ye define + Be found in our Scotland." + + "Tho' there be nane in a' thy rule, + It sail be ruled by me;" + And lichtly with his little pencil + He's ruled the line A B. + + Stately stepped he east the wa', + And stately stepped he west; + "Ye touch the button," Sir Patrick said, + "And I sall do the rest." + + And he has set his compass foot + Untill the centre A, + From A to B he's stretched it oot-- + "Ye Scottish carles, give way!" + + Syne he has moved his compass foot + Untill the centre B, + From B to A he's stretched it oot, + And drawn it viz-a-vee. + + The tane circle was BCD, + And A C E the tither: + "I rede ye well," Sir Patrick said, + "They interseck ilk ither. + + "See here, and where they interseck-- + To wit with yon point C-- + Ye'll just obsairve that I conneck + The twa points A and B. + + "And there ye have a little triangle + As bonny as e'er was seen; + The whilk is not isosceles, + Nor yet it is scalene." + + "The proof! the proof!" King Jamie cried: + "The how and eke the why!" + Sir Patrick laughed within his beard-- + "'Tis _ex hypothesi_-- + + "When I ligg'd in my mither's wame, + I learn'd it frae my mither, + That things was equal to the same, + Was equal ane to t'ither. + + "Sith in the circle first I drew + The lines B A, B C, + Be radii true, I wit to you + The baith maun equal be. + + "Likewise and in the second circle, + Whilk I drew widdershins, + It is nae skaith the radii baith, + A B, AC, be twins. + + "And sith of three a pair agree + That ilk suld equal ane, + By certes they maun equal be + Ilk unto ilk by-lane." + + "Now by my faith!" King Jamie saith, + "What _plane_ geometrie! + If only Potts had written in Scots, + How loocid Potts wad be!" + + "Now wow's my life!" said Jamie the King, + And the Scots lords said the same, + For but it was that envious knicht, + Sir Hughie o' the Graeme. + + "Flim-flam, flim-flam!" and "Ho indeed?" + Quod Hughie o' the Graeme; + "'Tis I could better upon my heid + This prabblin prablem-game." + + Sir Patrick Spens Was nothing laith + When as he heard "flim-flam," + But syne he's ta'en a silken claith + And wiped his diagram. + + "Gif my small feat may better'd be, + Sir Hew, by thy big head, + What I hae done with an A B C + Do thou with X Y Z." + + Then sairly sairly swore Sir Hew, + And loudly laucht the King; + But Sir Patrick tuk the pipes and blew, + And _played_ that eldritch thing! + + He's play'd it reel, he's play'd it jig, + And the baith alternative; + And he's danced Sir Hew to the Asses' Brigg, + That's Proposetion Five. + + And there they've met, and there they've fet, + Forenenst the Asses' Brigg, + And waefu', waefu' was the fate + That gar'd them there to ligg. + + For there Sir Patrick's slain Sir Hew, + And Sir Hew Sir Patrick Spens-- + Now was not that a fine to-do + For Euclid's Elemen's? + + But let us sing Long live the King! + And his foes the Deil attend 'em: + For he has gotten his little triangle, + _Quod erat faciendum!_ + + +[1] This was written some time before the _entente cordiale_. + + + +MARCH. + + +How quietly its best things steal upon the world! And in a world where a +single line of Sappho's survives as a something more important than the +entire political history of Lesbos, how little will the daily newspaper +help us to take long views! + +Whether England could better afford to lose Shakespeare or her Indian +Empire is no fair question to put to an Englishman. But every Englishman +knows in his heart which of these two glories of his birth and state will +survive the other, and by which of them his country will earn in the end +the greater honour. Though in our daily life we--perhaps wisely--make a +practice of forgetting it, our literature is going to be our most +perdurable claim on man's remembrance, for it is occupied with ideas which +outlast all phenomena. + +The other day Mr. Bertram Dobell, the famous bookseller of Charing Cross +Road, rediscovered (we might almost say that he discovered) a poet. +Mr. Dobell has in the course of his life laid the Republic of Letters +under many obligations. To begin with, he loves his trade and honours the +wares in which he deals, and so continues the good tradition that should +knit writers, printers, vendors and purchasers of books together as +partakers of an excellent mystery. He studies--and on occasion will fight +for--the whims as well as the convenience of his customers. It was he who +took arms against the Westminster City Council in defence of the +out-of-door-stall, the 'classic sixpenny box,' and at least brought off a +drawn battle. He is at pains to make his secondhand catalogues better +reading than half the new books printed, and they cost us nothing. +He has done, also, his pious share of service to good literature. +He has edited James Thomson, him of _The City of Dreadful Night_. +He has helped us to learn more than we knew of Charles Lamb. He has even +written poems of his own and printed them under the title of _Rosemary and +Pansies_, in a volume marked 'Not for sale'--a warning which I, as one of +the fortunate endowed, intend strictly to observe. On top of this he has +discovered, or rediscovered, Thomas Traherne. + +Now before we contemplate the magnitude of the discovery let us rehearse +the few facts known of the inconspicuous life of Thomas Traherne. +He was born about the year 1636, the son of a Hereford shoemaker, and came +in all probability (like Herbert and Vaughan) of Welsh stock. In 1652 he +entered Brasenose College, Oxford, as a commoner. On leaving the +University he took orders; was admitted Rector of Credenhill, in +Herefordshire, in 1657; took the degree of Bachelor of Divinity in 1669; +became the private chaplain of Sir Orlando Bridgman, at Teddington; and +died there a few months after his patron, in 1674, aged but thirty-eight. +He wrote a polemical tract on _Roman Forgeries_, which had some success; a +treatise on _Christian Ethicks_, which, being full of gentle wisdom, was +utterly neglected; an exquisite work, _Centuries of Meditations_, never +published; and certain poems, which also he left in manuscript. And there +the record ends. + +Next let us tell by how strange a chance this forgotten author came to his +own. In 1896 or 1897 Mr. William T. Brooke picked up two volumes of MS. +on a street bookstall, and bought them for a few pence. Mr. Brooke +happened to be a man learned in sacred poetry and hymnology, and he no +sooner began to examine his purchase than he knew that he had happened on +a treasure. At the same time he could hardly believe that writings so +admirable were the work of an unknown author. In choice of subject, in +sentiment, in style, they bore a strong likeness to the poems of Henry +Vaughan the Silurist, and he concluded that they must be assigned to +Vaughan. He communicated his discovery to the late Dr. Grosart, who +became so deeply interested in it that he purchased the manuscripts and +set about preparing an edition of Vaughan, in which the newly-found +treasures were to be included. Dr. Grosart, one may say in passing, was +by no means a safe judge of characteristics in poetry. With all his +learning and enthusiasm you could not trust him, having read a poem with +which he was unacquainted or which perchance he had forgotten, to assign +it to its true or even its probable author. But when you hear that so +learned a man as Dr. Grosart considered these writings worthy of Vaughan, +you may be the less apt to think me extravagant in holding that man to +have been Vaughan's peer who wrote the following lines:-- + + "How like an Angel came I down! + How bright are all things here! + When first among His works I did appear + how their Glory me did crown! + The world resembled His Eternity, + In which my soul did walk; + And everything that I did see + Did with me talk. + + "The streets were paved with golden stones, + The boys and girls were mine, + O how did all their lovely faces shine! + The sons of men were holy ones; + In joy and beauty they appeared to me: + And everything which here I found, + While like an angel I did see, + Adorned the ground." + + +'Proprieties.'-- + +That is to say, 'properties,' 'estates.'-- + + "Proprieties themselves were mine, + And hedges ornaments, + Walls, boxes, coffers, and their rich contents + Did not divide my joys, but all combine. + Clothes, ribbons, jewels, laces, I esteemed + My joys by others worn; + For me they all to wear them seemed + When I was born." + +Dr. Grosart then set about preparing a new and elaborate edition of +Vaughan, which, only just before his death, he was endeavouring to find +means to publish. After his death the two manuscripts passed by purchase +to Mr. Charles Higham, the well-known bookseller of Farringdon Street, who +in turn sold them to Mr. Dobell. Later, when a part of Dr. Grosart's +library was sold at Sotheby's, Mr. Dobell bought--and this is perhaps the +strangest part of the story--a third manuscript volume, which Dr. Grosart +had possessed all the time without an inkling that it bore upon Mr. +Brooke's discovery, "though nothing is needed but to compare it with the +other volumes in order to see that all these are in the same handwriting." + +Mr. Dobell examined the writings, compared them with Vaughan's, and began +to have his doubts. Soon he felt convinced that Vaughan was not their +author. Yet, if not Vaughan, who could the author be? + +Again Mr. Brooke proved helpful. To a volume of Giles Fletcher's, +_Christ's Victory and Triumph_, which he had edited, Mr. Brooke had +appended a number of seventeenth-century poems not previously collected; +and to one of these, entitled 'The Ways of Wisdom,' he drew Mr. Dobell's +attention as he had previously drawn Mr. Grosart's. To Mr. Dobell the +resemblance between it and the manuscript poems was at once evident. +Mr. Brooke had found the poem in a little book in the British Museum +entitled, _A Serious and Patheticall Contemplation of the Mercies of God, +in several most Devout and Sublime Thanksgivings for the same_ +(a publisher's title it is likely): and this book contained other pieces +in verse. These having been copied out by Mr. Dobell's request, he +examined them and felt no doubt at all that the author of the manuscript +poem and of the _Devout and Sublime Thanksgivings_ must be one and the +same person. But, again, who could he be? + +A sentence in an address 'To the Reader' prefixed to the _Devout and +Sublime Thanksgivings_ provided the clue. The editor of this work +(a posthumous publication), after eulogising the unnamed author's many +virtues wound up with a casual clue to his identity:-- + + "But being removed out of the Country to the service of the late Lord + Keeper Bridgman as his Chaplain, he died young and got early to those + blissful mansions to which he at all times aspir'd." + +But for this sentence, dropped at haphazard, the secret might never have +been resolved. As it was, the clue--that the author of _Devout and +Sublime Thanksgivings_ was private chaplain to Sir Orlando Bridgman--had +only to be followed up; and it led to the name of Thomas Traherne. +This information was obtained from Wood's _Athenae Oxonienses_, which +mentioned Traherne as the author of two books, _Roman Forgeries_ and +_Christian Ethicks_. + +The next step was to get hold of these two works and examine them, +if perchance some evidence might be found that Traherne was also the +author of the manuscripts, which as yet remained a guess, standing on Mr. +Dobell's conviction that the verses in the manuscripts and those in +_Devout and Sublime Thanksgivings_ must be by the same hand. + +By great good fortune that evidence was found in _Christian Ethicks_, in a +poem which, with some variations, occurred too in the manuscript +_Centuries of Meditations_. Here then at last was proof positive, or as +positive as needs be. + + +The most of us writers hope and stake for a diuturnity of fame; and some +of us get it. _Sed ubi sunt vestimenta eorum qui post vota nuncupata +perierunt?_ "That bay leaves were found green in the tomb of St. Humbert +after a hundred and fifty years was looked upon as miraculous," writes Sir +Thomas Browne. But Traherne's laurel has lain green in the dust for close +on two hundred and thirty years, and his fame so cunningly buried that +only by half a dozen accidents leading up to a chance sentence in a dark +preface to a forgotten book has it come to light. + +I wonder if his gentle shade takes any satisfaction in the discovery? +His was by choice a _vita fallens_. Early in life he made, as we learn +from a passage in _Centuries of Meditations_, his election between worldly +prosperity and the life of the Spirit, between the chase of fleeting +phenomena and rest upon the soul's centre:-- + + "When I came into the country and, being seated among silent trees and + woods and hills, had all my time in my own hands, I resolved to spend + it all, whatever it cost me, in the search of Happiness, and to + satiate the burning thirst which Nature had enkindled in me from my + youth; in which I was so resolute that I chose rather to live upon + ten pounds a year, and to go in leather clothes, and to feed upon + bread and water, so that I might have all my time clearly to myself, + than to keep many thousands per annum in an estate of life where my + time would be devoured in care and labour. And God was so pleased to + accept of that desire that from that time to this I have had all + things plentifully provided for me without any care at all, my very + study of Felicity making me more to prosper than all the care in the + whole world. So that through His blessing I live a free and kingly + life, as if the world were turned again into Eden, or, much more, as + it is at this day." + +Yet Traherne is no quietist: a fervent, passionate lover, rather, of +simple and holy things. He sees with the eyes of a child: the whole world +shines for him 'apparell'd in celestial light,' and that light, he is well +aware, shines out on it, through the eyes which observe it, from the +divine soul of man. The verses which I quoted above strike a note to +which he recurs again and again. Listen to the exquisite prose in which +he recounts the 'pure and virgin apprehension' of his childhood:-- + + "The corn was orient and immortal wheat which never should be reaped + nor was ever sown. I thought it had stood from everlasting to + everlasting. The dust and stones of the street were as precious as + gold; the gates were at first the end of the world. The green trees + when I saw them first through one of the gates transported and + ravished me; their sweetness and unusual beauty made my heart to leap + and almost mad with ecstasy, they were such strange and wonderful + things. The Men! O what venerable and reverend creatures did the + aged seem! Immortal Cherubim! And young men glittering and + sparkling angels, and maids strange seraphic pieces of life and + beauty! Boys and girls tumbling in the street were moving jewels; + I knew not that they were born, or should die. . . . The streets were + mine, the temple was mine, the people were mine, their clothes and + gold and silver were mine, as much as their sparkling eyes, fair + skins, and ruddy faces. The skies were mine, and so were the sun and + moon and stars, and all the world was mine; and I the only spectator + and enjoyer of it. . . ." + +All these things he enjoyed, his life through, uncursed by the itch for +'proprietorship': he was like the Magnanimous Man in his own _Christian +Ethicks_--'one that scorns the smutty way of enjoying things like a slave, +because he delights in the celestial way and the Image of God.' In this +creed of his all things are made for man, if only man will inherit them +wisely: even God, in conferring benefits on man, is moved and rewarded by +the felicity of witnessing man's grateful delight in them:-- + + "For God enjoyed is all His end, + Himself He then doth comprehend + When He is blessed, magnified, + Extoll'd, exalted, prais'd, and glorified." + +Yes, and 'undeified almost, if once denied.' A startling creed, this; but +what a bold and great-hearted one! To Traherne the Soul is a sea which not +only receives the rivers of God's bliss but 'all it doth receive returns +again.' It is the Beloved of the old song, 'Quia Amore Langueo;' whom God +pursues, as a lover. It is the crown of all things. So in one of his +loveliest poems he shows it standing on the threshold to hear news of a +great guest, never dreaming that itself is that great guest all the +while-- + + ON NEWS + + I. + + News from a foreign country came, + As if my treasure and my wealth lay there: + So much it did my heart enflame, + 'Twas wont to call my soul into mine ear, + Which thither went to meet + The approaching sweet, + And on the threshold stood + To entertain the unknown Good. + It hover'd there + As if 'twould leave mine ear, + And was so eager to embrace + The joyful tidings as they came, + 'Twould almost leave its dwelling-place + To entertain that same. + + II. + + As if the tidings were the things, + My very joys themselves, my foreign treasure, + Or else did bear them on their wings-- + With so much joy they came, with so much pleasure-- + My Soul stood at that gate + To recreate + Itself with bliss, and to + Be pleased with speed. A fuller view + It fain would take, + Yet journeys back again would make + Unto my heart: as if 'twould fain + Go out to meet, yet stay within + To fit a place to entertain + And bring the tidings in. + + III. + + What sacred instinct did inspire + My Soul in childhood with a hope so strong? + What secret force moved my desire + To expect my joy, beyond the seas, so young? + Felicity I knew + Was out of view; + And being here alone, + I saw that happiness was gone + From me! For this + I thirsted absent bliss, + And thought that sure beyond the seas, + Or else in something near at hand + I knew not yet (since nought did please + I knew), my bliss did stand, + + IV. + + But little did the infant dream + That all the treasures of the world were by: + And that himself was so the cream + And crown of all which round about did lie. + Yet thus it was: The Gem, + The Diadem, + The Ring enclosing all + That stood upon this earthly ball; + The Heavenly Eye, + Much wider than the sky, + Wherein they all included were, + The glorious Soul that was the King + Made to possess them, did appear + A small and little thing. + +I must quote from another poem, if only for the pleasure of writing down +the lines:-- + + THE SALUTATION. + + These little limbs, + These eyes and hands which here I find, + These rosy cheeks wherewith my life begins-- + Where have ye been? Behind + What curtain were ye from me hid so long? + Where was, in what abyss, my speaking tongue? + When silent I + So many thousand, thousand years + Beneath the dust did in a chaos lie, + How could I smiles or tears + Or lips or hands or eyes or ears perceive? + Welcome ye treasures which I now receive! + + +These poems waited for two hundred and thirty years to be discovered on a +street bookstall! There are lines in them and whole passages in the +unpublished _Centuries of Meditations_ which almost set one wondering with +Sir Thomas Browne "whether the best of men be known, or whether there be +not more remarkable persons forgot than any that stand remembered in the +known account of Time?" + + +I am tempted, but will not be drawn to discuss how Traherne stands related +to Vaughan on the one hand and Cowley on the other. I note the discovery +here, and content myself with wondering if the reader share any of my +pleasure in it and enjoyment of the process which brought it to pass. +For me, I was born and bred a bookman. In my father's house the talk +might run on divinity, politics, the theatre; but literature was the great +thing. Other callings might do well enough, but writers were a class +apart, and to be a great writer was the choicest of ambitions. I grew up +in this habit of mind, and have not entirely outgrown it yet; have not so +far outgrown it but that literary discussions, problems, discoveries +engage me though they lie remote from literature's service to man +(who has but a short while to live, and labour and vanity if he outlast +it). I could join in a hunt after Bunyan's grandmothers, and have +actually spent working days in trying to discover the historical facts of +which _Robinson Crusoe_ may be an allegory. One half of my quarrel with +those who try to prove that Bacon wrote Shakespeare rests on resentment of +the time they force me to waste; and a new searcher for the secret of the +Sonnets has only to whistle and I come to him--though, to be sure, that +gentleman almost cured me who identified the Dark Lady with Ann Hathaway, +resting his case upon-- + + SONNET CCXVIII. + + Whoever hath my wit, thou hast thy Will: + And where is Will alive but _hath a way?_ + So in device thy wit is starved still + And as devised by Will. That is to say, + My second-best best bed, yea, and the gear withal + Thou hast; but all that capital messuage + Known as New Place goes to Susanna Hall. + Haply the disproportion may engage + The harmless ail-too-wise which otherwise + Might knot themselves disknitting of a clue + That Bacon wrote me. Lastly, I devise + My wit, to whom? To wit, to-whit, to-whoo! + And here revoke all previous testaments: + Witness, J. Shaw and Robert Whattcoat, Gents. + +After this confession you will pardon any small complacency that may +happen to betray itself in the ensuing narrative. + +Mr. Dobell followed up his discovery of Traherne by announcing another +_trouvaille_, and one which excited me not a little:-- + + "Looking recently over a parcel of pamphlets which I had purchased, + I came upon some loose leaves which were headed _A Prospect of + Society_. The title struck me as familiar, and I had only to + read a few lines to recognise them as belonging to [Goldsmith's] + _The Traveller_. But the opening lines of my fragment are not the + opening lines of the poem as it was published; in fact, the first two + lines of _A Prospect of Society_ are lines 353-4 in the first edition + of _The Traveller_. . . . A further examination of the fragment which + I had discovered showed that it is not what is usually understood as + a 'proof' of _The Traveller_, but rather the material, as yet + formless and unarranged, out of which it was to be finally evolved." + +Now--line for corresponding line--the text discovered by Mr. Dobell often +differs, and sometimes considerably, from that of the first edition of +_The Traveller_, and these variations are highly interesting, and make Mr. +Dobell's 'find' a valuable one. But on studying the newly discovered +version I very soon found myself differing from Mr. Dobell's opinion that +we had here the formless, unarranged material out of which Goldsmith built +an exquisitely articulated poem.[1] And, doubting this, I had to doubt +what Mr. Dobell deduced from it--that "it was in the manner in which a +poem, remarkable for excellence of form and unity of design, was created +out of a number of verses which were at first crudely conceived and +loosely connected that Goldsmith's genius was most triumphantly +displayed." For scarcely had I lit a pipe and fallen to work on +_A Prospect of Society_ before it became evident to me (1) that the lines +were not "unarranged," but disarranged; and (2) that whatever the reason +of this disarray, Goldsmith's brain was not responsible; that the disorder +was too insane to be accepted either as an order in which he could have +written the poem, or as one in which he could have wittingly allowed it to +circulate among his friends, unless he desired them to believe him mad. +Take, for instance, this collocation:-- + + "Heavens! how unlike their Belgic sires of old! + Rough, poor, content, ungovernably bold; + Where shading elms beside the margin grew, + And freshen'd from the waves the zephyr blew." + +Or this:-- + + "To kinder skies, where gentler manners reign, + We turn, where France displays her bright domain. + Thou sprightly land of mirth and social ease, + Pleas'd with thyself, whom all the world can please, + How often have I led thy sportive choir + With tuneless pipe, along the sliding Loire? + No vernal bloom their torpid rocks display, + But Winter lingering chills the lap of May; + No zephyr fondly sooths the mountain's breast, + But meteors glare and frowning storms invest." + +Short of lunacy, no intellectual process would account for that sort of +thing, whereas a poem more pellucidly logical than _The Traveller_ does +not exist in English. So, having lit another pipe, I took a pencil and +began some simple counting, with this result:-- + + The first 42 lines of _The Prospect_ correspond with lines 353-400 of + _The Traveller_. + The next 42 with lines 311-352. + The next 34 with lines 277-310. + The next 36 with lines 241-276. + The next 36 with lines 205-240. + The next 36 with lines 169-204. + The next 38 with lines 131-168. + The next 28 with lines 103-130. + And the remaining fragment of 18 lines with lines 73-92. + +In other words, _The Prospect_ is merely an early draft of _The Traveller_ +printed backwards in fairly regular sections. + +But how can this have happened? The explanation is at once simple and +ridiculous. As Goldsmith finished writing out each page of his poem for +press, he laid it aside on top of the pages preceding; and, when all was +done, he forgot to sort back his pages in reverse order. That is all. +Given a good stolid compositor with no thought beyond doing his duty with +the manuscript as it reached him, you have what Mr. Dobell has recovered-- +an immortal poem printed wrong-end-foremost page by page. I call the +result delightful, and (when you come to think of it) the blunder just so +natural to Goldsmith as to be almost postulable. + +Upon this simple explanation we have to abandon the hypothesis that +Goldsmith patiently built a fine poem out of a congeries of fine passages +pitchforked together at haphazard--a splendid rubbish heap; and Mr. +Dobell's find is seen to be an imperfect set of duplicate proofs--fellow, +no doubt, to that set which Goldsmith, mildly objurgating his own or the +printer's carelessness, sliced up with the scissors and rearranged before +submitting it to Johnson's friendly revision. + + +The pleasantest part of the story (for me) has yet to come. We all know +how easy it is to turn obstinate and defend a pet theory with acrimony. +Mr. Dobell did nothing of the sort. Although his enthusiasm had committed +him to no little expense in publishing _The Prospect_, with a preface +elaborating his theory, he did a thing which was worth a hundred +discoveries. He sat down, convinced himself that my explanation was the +right one, and promptly committed himself to further expense in bringing +out a new edition with the friendliest acknowledgment. So do men behave +who are at once generous of temper and anxious for the truth. + +He himself had been close upon the explanation. In his preface he had +actually guessed that the "author's manuscript, written on loose leaves, +had fallen into confusion and was then printed without any attempt at +rearrangement." In fact, he had hit upon the right solution, and only +failed to follow up the clue. + +His find, too, remains a valuable one; for so far as it goes we can +collate it with the first edition of _The Traveller_, and exactly discover +the emendations made by Johnson, or by Goldsmith after discussion with +Johnson. Boswell tells us that the Doctor "in the year 1783, at my +request, marked with a pencil the lines which he had furnished, which are +only line 420, 'To stop too faithful, and too faint to go,' and the +concluding ten lines, except the last couplet but one. . . . He added, +'These are all of which I can be sure.'" We cannot test his claim to the +concluding lines, for the correspondent passage is missing from Mr. +Dobell's fragment; but Johnson's word would be good enough without the +internal evidence of the verses to back it. "To stop too faithful, and +too faint to go," is his improvement, and an undeniable one, upon +Goldsmith's "And faintly fainter, fainter seems to go." I have not been +at pains to examine all the revised lines, but they are numerous, and +generally (to my thinking) betray Johnson's hand. Also they are almost +consistently improvements. There is one alteration, however,-- +unmistakably due to Johnson,--which some of us will join with Mr. Dobell +in regretting. Johnson, as a fine, full-blooded Jingo, naturally showed +some restiveness at the lines-- + + "Yes, my lov'd brother, cursed be that hour + When first ambition toil'd for foreign power," + +And induced Goldsmith to substitute-- + + "Yes, brother, curse with me that baleful hour + When first ambition struck at regal power," + +Which may or may not be more creditable in sentiment, but is certainly +quite irrelevant in its context, which happens to be a denunciation of the +greed for gold and foreign conquest. It is, in that context, all but +meaningless, and must have irritated and puzzled many readers of a poem +otherwise clearly and continuously argued. In future editions of _The +Traveller_, Goldsmith's original couplet should be restored; and I urge +this (let the Tory reader be assured) not from any ill-will towards our +old friend the Divine Right of Kings, but solely in the sacred name of +Logic. + + +Such be the bookman's trivial adventures and discoveries. They would be +worse than trivial indeed if they led him to forget or ignore that by +which Goldsmith earned his immortality, or to regard Traherne merely as a +freak in the history of literary reputations, and not primarily as the +writer of such words as these-- + + "A little touch of something like pride is seated in the true sense of + a man's own greatness, without which his humility and modesty would + be contemptible virtues." + + "It is a vain and insipid thing to suffer without loving God or man. + Love is a transcendent excellence in every duty, and must of + necessity enter into the nature of every grace and virtue. + That which maketh the solid benefit of patience unknown, its taste so + bitter and comfortless to men, is its _death_ in the separation and + absence of its soul. We suffer but love not." + + "All things do first receive that give: + Only 'tis God above + That from and in Himself doth live; + Whose all-sufficient love + Without original can flow, + And all the joys and glories show + Which mortal man can take delight to know. + He is the primitive, eternal Spring, + The endless Ocean of each glorious thing. + The soul a vessel is, + A spacious bosom, to contain + All the fair treasures of His bliss, + Which run like rivers from, into, the main, + And all it doth receive, return again." + + "You never enjoy the world aright till the sea itself floweth in your + veins, till you are clothed with the heavens and crowned with the + stars." + +[1] Early editions of Goldsmith's poem bore the title, _The Traveller; or, +A Prospect of Society_. Later editions dropped the sub-title. + + + +APRIL. + + + "Thus, then, live I + Till 'mid all the gloom + By Heaven! the bold sun + Is with me in the room + Shining, shining! + + "Then the clouds part, + Swallows soaring between; + The spring is alive + And the meadows are green! + + "I jump up like mad, + Break the old pipe in twain, + And away to the meadows, + The meadows again!" + +The poem of FitzGerald's from which these verses come was known, +I believe, to very few until Mr. E. V. Lucas exhumed it from _Half-hours +with the Worst Authors_, and reprinted it in that delightful little book +_The Open Road_. I have a notion that even FitzGerald's most learned +executor was but dimly aware of its existence. For my part, at this time +of the day, I prefer it to his Omar Khayyam--perversely, no doubt. +In the year 1885 or thereabouts Omar, known only to a few, was a wonder +and a treasure to last one's lifetime; but I confess that since a club +took him up and feasted his memory with field-marshals and other +irrelevant persons in the chair, and since his fame has become vulgarised +not only in Thames-side hotels, but over the length and breadth of the +North American continent, one at least of his admirers has suffered a not +unnatural revulsion, until now he can scarcely endure to read the immortal +quatrains. Immortal they are, no doubt, and deserve to be by reason of +their style--"fame's great antiseptic." But their philosophy is thin +after all, and will not bear discussion. As exercise for a grown man's +thought, I will back a lyric of Blake's or Wordsworth's, or a page of +Ibsen's _Peer Gynt_ against the whole of it, any day. + +This, however, is parenthetical. I caught hold of FitzGerald's verses to +express that jollity which should be every man's who looks up from much +reading or writing and knows that Spring has come. + + + "_Solvitur acris hiems grata vice veris et favoni + Trahuntque siccas machinae carinas_ . . ." + +In other words, I look out of the window and decide that the day has +arrived for launching the boat-- + + "This is that happy morn, + That day, long wished day!" + +And, to my mind, the birthday of the year. Potentates and capitalists who +send down orders to Cowes or Southampton that their yachts are to be put +in commission, and anon arrive to find everything ready (if they care to +examine), from the steam capstan to the cook's apron, have little notion +of the amusement to be found in fitting out a small boat, say of five or +six tons. I sometimes doubt if it be not the very flower, or at least the +bloom, of the whole pastime. The serious face with which we set about it; +the solemn procession up the river to the creek where she rests, the high +tide all but lifting her; the silence in which we loose the moorings and +haul off; the first thrill of buoyant water underfoot; the business of +stepping the mast; quiet days of sitting or pottering about on deck in the +sunny harbour; vessels passing up and down, their crews eyeing us +critically as the rigging grows and the odds and ends--block, tackle and +purchase--fall into their ordered places; and through it all the +expectation running of the summer to come, and 'blue days at sea' and +unfamiliar anchorages--unfamiliar, but where the boat is, home will be-- + + "Such bliss + Beggars enjoy, when princes oft do miss." + +Homer, who knew what amused men, constantly lays stress on this business +of fitting out:-- + + "Then at length she (Athene) let drag the swift ship to the sea, and + stored within it all such tackling as decked ships carry. And she + moored it at the far end of the harbour. . . . So they raised the + mast of pine tree, and set it in the hole of the cross plank, and + made it fast with forestays, and hauled up the white sails with + twisted ropes of oxhide." + +And again: + + "First of all they drew the ship down to the deep water, and fixed the + oars in leathern loops all orderly, and spread forth the white sails. + And squires, haughty of heart, bare for them their arms,"--but you'll + observe that it was the masters who did the launching, etc., like + wise men who knew exactly wherein the fun of the business consisted. + "And they moored her high out in the shore water, and themselves + disembarked. There they supped and waited for evening to come on." + +You suggest, perhaps, that our seafaring is but play: and you are right. +But in our play we catch a cupful of the romance of the real thing. +Also we have the real thing at our doors to keep us humble. Day by day +beneath this window the statelier shipping goes by; and our twopenny +adventurings and discoveries do truly (I believe) keep the greater wonder +and interest awake in us from day to day--the wonder and interest so +memorably expressed in Mr. Bridges's poem, _A Passer By_:-- + + "Whither, O splendid ship, thy white sails crowding, + Leaning across the bosom of the urgent West, + That fearest nor sea rising, nor sky clouding, + Whither away, fair rover, and what thy quest? + Ah! soon when Winter has all our vales opprest, + When skies are cold and misty, and hail is hurling, + Wilt thou glide on the blue Pacific, or rest + In a summer haven asleep, thy white sails furling? + + "I there before thee, in the country so well thou knowest, + Already arrived am inhaling the odorous air: + I watch thee enter unerringly where thou goest, + And anchor queen of the strange shipping there, + Thy sails for awnings spread, thy masts bare.". . . . + + + + "And yet, O splendid ship, unhailed and nameless, + I know not if, aiming a fancy, I rightly divine + That thou hast a purpose joyful, a courage blameless, + Thy port assured in a happier land than mine. + But for all I have given thee, beauty enough is thine. + As thou, aslant with trim tackle and shrouding, + From the proud nostril curve of a prow's line + In the offing scatterest foam, thy white sails crowding." + +Though in all human probability I shall never be the first to burst into a +silent sea, I can declare quite seriously that I never steer into an +unfamiliar creek or haven but, as its recesses open, I can understand +something of the awe of the boat's crew in Andrew Marvell's "Bermudas;" +yes, and something of the exultation of the great Columbus himself! + + + +In a later paper I may have to tell of these voyages and traffickings. +For the while I leave the reader to guess how and in what corner of the +coast I happened on the following pendant to Mr. Dobell's _trouvaille_. + +It may not challenge comparison with Mr. Flinders Petrie's work in Egypt +or with Mr. Hogarth's Cretan explorations; but I say confidently that, +since Mr. Pickwick unearthed the famous inscribed stone, no more fortunate +or astonishing discovery has rewarded literary research upon our English +soil than the two letters which with no small pride I give to the world +this month. + +Curiously enough, they concern Mr. Pickwick. + +But, perhaps, by way of preface I shall remind the reader that the final +number of _Pickwick_ was issued in November, 1837. The first French +version--which Mr. Percy Fitzgerald justly calls 'a rude adaptation rather +than a translation'--appeared in 1838, and was entitled _Le Club de +Pickwickistes, Roman Comique, traduit librement de l'Anglais par Mdme. +Eugenie Giboyet_. With equal justice Mr. Fitzgerald complains +(_The History of Pickwick_, p. 276) that "the most fantastic tricks are +played with the text, most of the dialogue being left out and the whole +compressed into two small volumes." Yet, in fact, Mme. Giboyet (as will +appear) was more sinned against than sinning. Clearly she undertook to +translate the immortal novel in collaboration with a M. Alexandre D--', +and was driven by the author's disapproval to suppress M. D--'s share of +the work. The dates are sufficient evidence that this was done (as it no +doubt had to be done) in haste. I regret that my researches have yielded +no further information respecting this M. Alexandre D--'. The threat in +the second letter may or may not have been carried out. I am inclined to +hope that it was, feeling sure that the result, if ever discovered, will +prove in the highest degree entertaining. With this I may leave the +letters to speak for themselves. + +(1) + + "45 Doughty Street," + "September 25th, 1837." + + "MY DEAR MADAM,--It is true that when granting the required permission + to translate _Pickwick_ into French, I allowed also the license you + claimed for yourself and your _collaborateur_--of adapting rather + than translating, and of presenting my hero under such small disguise + as might commend him better to a Gallic audience. But I am bound to + say that--to judge only from the first half of your version, which is + all that has reached me--you have construed this permission more + freely than I desired. In fact, the parent can hardly recognise his + own child. + + "Against your share in the work, Madame, I have little to urge, though + the damages you represent Mrs. Bardell as claiming--300,000 francs, + or 12,000 pounds of our money--strikes me as excessive. It is rather + (I take as my guide the difference in the handwriting) to your + _collaborateur_ that I address, through you, my remonstrances. + + "I have no radical objection to his making Messrs. Snodgrass, Winkle, + and Tupman members of His Majesty King Louis XIII.'s corps of + Musketeers, if he is sincerely of opinion that French taste will + applaud the departure. I even commend his slight idealisation of + Snodgrass (which, by the way, is not the name of an English + mountain), and the amorousness of Tupman (Aramis) gains--I candidly + admit--from the touch of religiosity which he gives to the character; + though I do not, as he surmises, in the course of my story, promote + Tupman to a bishopric. The development--preferable as on some points + the episcopal garb may be considered to the green velvet jacket with + a two-inch tail worn by him at Madame Chasselion's _fete champetre_-- + would jar upon our Anglican prejudices. As for Winkle (Porthos), the + translation nicely hits off his love of manly exercises, while + resting his pretensions on a more solid basis of fact than appears in + the original. In the incident of the baldric, however, the imposture + underlying Mr. W.'s green shooting-coat is conveyed with sufficient + neatness. + + "M. D--' has been well advised again in breaking up the character of + Sam Weller and making him, like Cerberus, three gentlemen at once. + Buckingham (Jingle) and Fenton (a capital rendering of the Fat Boy) + both please me; and in expanding the episode of the sausage and the + trouser-buttons M. D--' has shown delicacy and judgment by altering + the latter into diamond studs. + + "Alas! madam, I wish the same could be said for his treatment of my + female puppets, which not only shocks but bewilders me. In her + earlier appearances Mrs. Bardell (Milady) is a fairly consistent + character; and why M. D--' should hazard that consistency by + identifying her with the middle-aged lady at the great White Horse, + Ipswich, passes my comprehension. I say, madam, that it bewilders + me; but for M. D--'s subsequent development of the occurrences at + that hostelry I entertain feelings of which mere astonishment is, + perhaps, the mildest. I can hardly bring myself to discuss this with + a lady; but you will allow me to protest in the very strongest terms + that Mr. Pickwick made that unfortunate mistake about the sleeping + apartment in the completest innocence, that in ejaculating 'ha-hum' + he merely uttered a note of warning, and that 'ha-hum' is _not_ + (as M. D--' suspects) an English word from which certain syllables + have been discreetly removed; that in thrusting his head through the + bed-curtains he was, as I am careful to say, 'not actuated by any + definite object'; and that, as a gentleman should, he withdrew at the + earliest possible moment. His intercepted duel with Mr. Peter Magnus + (De Wardes) rests, as I fondly imagined I had made clear, upon a + complete misunderstanding. The whole business of the _fleur-de-lys_ + on Mrs. Bardell's shoulder is a sheer interpolation and should be + expunged, not only on grounds of morality, but because when you reach + the actual trial, 'Bardell _v_. Pickwick,' you will find this + discovery of the defendant's impossible either to ignore or to + reconcile with the jury's verdict. Against the intervention of + Richelieu (Mr. Nupkins) I have nothing to urge. M. D--' opines that I + shall in the end deal out poetical justice to Mrs. Bardell as Milady. + He is right. I have, indeed, gone so far as to imprison her; + but I own that her execution (as suggested by him) at the hands of + the Queer Client, with Pickwick and his friends (or, alternatively, + Mrs. Cluppins, Mr. Perker, and Bob Sawyer) as silent spectators, + seems to me almost as inconsistent with the spirit of the tale as his + other proposal to kidnap Mr. Justice Stareleigh in the boot of Mr. + Weller's coach, and substitute for his lordship the Chancery prisoner + in an iron mask. I trust, madam, that these few suggestions will, + without setting any appreciable constraint on your fancy, enable you + to catch something more of the spirit of my poor narrative than I + have been able to detect in some of the chapters submitted; and I am, + with every assurance of esteem, + Your obliged servant, + Boz." + + "P.S.--The difference between Anjou wine and the milk punch about + which you inquire does not seem to me to necessitate any serious + alteration of the chapter in question. M. D--'s expressed intention + of making Master Bardell in later life the executioner of King + Charles I. of England must stand over for some future occasion. + The present work will hardly yield him the required opportunity for + dragging in King Charles' head." + + +(2) + + "MADAME,--Puisque M. Boz se mefie des propositions lui faites sans but + quelconque que de concilier les gens d'esprit, j'ai l'honneur de vous + annnoncer nettement que je me retire d'une besogne aussi rude que + malentendue. Il dit que j'ai concu son _Pickwick_ tout autrement que + lui. Soit! Je l'ecrirai, ce _Pickwick_, selon mon propre gout. + Que M. Boz redoute mes _Trois Pickwickistes!_ Agreez, Madame, etc., + etc., + Alexandre (le Grand)." + + + +I am told that literary aspirants in these days do not read books, or read +them only for purposes of review-writing. Yet these pages may happen to +fall in the way of some literary aspirant faint on a false scent, yet +pursuing; and to him, before telling of another discovery, I will address +one earnest word of caution. Let him receive it as from an elder brother +who wishes him well. + +My caution is--Avoid irony as you would the plague. + +Years ago I was used to receive this warning (on an average) once a week +from my old and dear friend Sir Wemyss Reid; and once a week I would set +myself, assailing his good nature, to cajole him into printing some piece +of youthful extravagance which he well knew--and I knew--and he knew that +I knew--would infuriate a hundred staid readers of _The Speaker_ and +oblige him to placate in private a dozen puzzled and indignant +correspondents. For those were days before the beards had stiffened on +the chins of some of us who assembled to reform politics, art, literature, +and the world in general from a somewhat frowsy upstairs coffee-room in +C--' Street: days of old-- + + "When fellowship seem'd not so far to seek + And all the world and we seem'd much less cold + And at the rainbow's foot lay surely gold. . . ." + +Well, these cajoleries were not often successful, yet often enough to keep +the sporting instinct alive and active, and a great deal oftener than +F--'s equally disreputable endeavours: it being a tradition with the staff +that F--' had sworn by all his gods to get in an article which would force +the printer to flee the country. I need scarcely say that the tradition +was groundless, but we worked it shamelessly. + +In this way on January 9th, 1897 (a year in which the Westminster Aquarium +was yet standing), and shortly after the issue of the New Year's Honours' +List, the following article appeared in _The Speaker_. The reader will +find it quite harmless until he comes to the sequel. It was entitled-- + + NOOKS OF OLD LONDON. + + I.--THE WESTMINSTER SCUTORIUM. + + Let me begin by assuring the reader that the Westminster Scutorium + has absolutely no connection with the famous Aquarium across the + road. I suppose that every Londoner has heard, at least, of the + Aquarium, but I doubt if one in a hundred has heard of the little + Scutorium which stands removed from it by a stone's throw, or less; + and I am certain that not one in a thousand has ever stooped his head + to enter by its shy, squat, fifteenth-century doorway. It is a fact + that the very policeman at the entrance to Dean's Yard did not know + its name, and the curator assures me that the Post Office has made + frequent mistakes in delivering his letters. So my warning is not + quite impertinent. + + But a reader of antiquarian tastes, who cares as little as I do for + hypnotisers and fasting men, and does not mind a trifle of dust, so + it be venerable, will not regret an hour spent in looking over the + Scutorium, or a chat with Mr. Melville Robertson, its curator, or + Clerk of the Ribands (_Stemmata_)--to give him his official title. + Mr. Robertson ranks, indeed, with the four pursuivants of Heralds' + College, from which the Scutorium was originally an offshoot. + He takes an innocent delight in displaying his treasures and + admitting you to the stores of his unique information; and I am sure + would welcome more visitors. + + Students of Constitutional History will remember that strange custom, + half Roman, half Medieval, in accordance with which a baron or + knight, on creation or accession to his title and dignities, + deposited in the king's keeping a waxen effigy, or mask, of himself + together with a copy of his coat of arms. And it has been argued-- + plausibly enough when we consider the ancestral masks of the old + Roman families, the respect paid to them by the household, and the + important part they played on festival days, at funerals, &c.--that + this offering was a formal recognition of the _patria potestas_ of + the monarch as father of his people. Few are aware, however, that + the custom has never been discontinued, and that the cupboards of + Westminster contain a waxen memorial of almost every man whom the + king has delighted to honour, from the Conquest down to the very + latest knight gazetted. The labour of modelling and painting these + effigies was discontinued as long ago as 1586; and the masks are no + longer likenesses, but oval plates of copper, each bearing its name + on a label. Mr. Robertson informed me that Charles I. made a brief + attempt to revive the old practice. All the Stuarts, indeed, set + store on the Scutorium and its functions; and I read in an historical + pamphlet, by Mr. J. Saxby Hine, the late curator, that large + apartments were allocated to the office in Inigo Jones's first + designs for Whitehall. But its rosy prospects faded with the + accession of William of Orange. Two years later the custody of the + shields (from which it obtained its name) was relegated to the + Heralds' College; and the Scutorium has now to be content with the + care of its masks and the performance of some not unimportant duties + presently to be recounted. + + A reference from the Heralds' College sent me in quest of Mr. + Melville Robertson. But even in Dean's Yard I found it no easy + matter to run him to earth. The policeman (as I have said) could + give me no help. At length, well within the fourth doorway on the + east side, after passing the railings, I spied a modest brass plate + with the inscription _Clerk of the Ribands. Hours 11 to 3_. + The outside of the building has a quite modern look, but the + architect has spared the portal, and the three steps which lead down + to the flagged entrance hall seem to mark a century apiece. + I call it an entrance hall, but it is rather a small adytum, spanned + by a pointed arch carrying the legend _Stemmata Quid Faciunt_. + The modern exterior is, in fact, but a shell. All within dates from + Henry VI.; and Mr. Robertson (but this is only a theory) would + explain the sunken level of the ground-floor rooms by the action of + earthworms, which have gradually lifted the surface of Dean's Yard + outside. He contends the original level to be that of his office, + which lies on the right of the adytum. A door on the left admits to + two rooms occupied by the _nomenclator_, Mr. Pender, and two + assistant clerks, who comprise the staff. Straight in front, a + staircase leads to the upper-apartments. + + Mr. Robertson was writing when the clerk ushered me in, but at once + professed himself at my service. He is a gentleman of sixty, or + thereabouts, with white hair, a complexion of a country squire, and + very genial manners. For some minutes we discussed the difficulty + which had brought me to him (a small point in county history), and + then he anticipated my request for permission to inspect his masks. + + "Would you like to see them? They are really very curious, and I + often wonder that the public should evince so small an interest." + + "You get very few visitors?" + + "Seldom more than two a day; a few more when the Honours' Lists + appear. I thought at first that your visit might be in connection + with the new List, but reflected that it was too early. In a day or + two we shall be comparatively busy." + + "The Scutorium is concerned then with the Honours' Lists?" + + "A little," replied Mr. Robertson, smiling. "That is to say, we make + them." Then, observing my evident perplexity, he laughed. + "Well, perhaps that is too strong an expression. I should have said, + rather, that we fill up the blanks." + + "I had always understood that the Prime Minister drew up the Lists + before submitting them to Her Majesty." + + "So he does--with our help. Oh, there is no secrecy about it!" said + Mr. Robertson, in a tone almost rallying. "The public is free of all + information, only it will not inquire. A little curiosity on its + part would even save much unfortunate misunderstanding." + + "In what way?" + + "Well, the public reads of rewards (with which, by the way, I have + nothing to do) conferred on really eminent men--Lord Roberts, for + instance, or Sir Henry Irving, or Sir Joseph Lister. It then goes + down the List and, finding a number of names of which it has never + heard, complains that Her Majesty's favour has been bestowed on + nonentities; whereas this is really the merit of the List, that they + _are_ nonentities." + + "I don't understand." + + "Well, then, _they don't exist_." + + "But surely--" + + "My dear sir," said Mr. Robertson, still smiling, and handing me his + copy of _The Times_, "cast your eye down that column; take the names + of the new knights--'Blain, Clarke, Edridge, Farrant, Laing, Laird, + Wardle'--what strikes you as remarkable about them?" + + "Why, that I have never heard of any of them." + + "Naturally, for there are no such people. I made them up; and a good + average lot they are, though perhaps the preponderance of + monosyllables is a little too obvious." + + "But see here. I read that 'Mr. Thomas Wardle is a silk merchant of + Staffordshire.'" + + "But I assure you that I took him out of _Pickwick_." + + "Yes, but here is 'William Laird,' for instance. I hear that already + two actual William Lairds--one of Birkenhead, the other of Glasgow-- + are convinced that the honour belongs to them." + + "No doubt they will be round in a day or two. The Heralds' College + will refer them to me--not simultaneously, if I may trust Sir Albert + Woods's tact--and I shall tell them that it belongs to neither, but + to another William Laird altogether. But, if you doubt, take the + Indian promotions. Lord Salisbury sometimes adds a name or two after + I send in the List, and--well, you know his lordship is not fond of + the dark races and has a somewhat caustic humour. Look at the new + C.I.E.'s: 'Rai Bahadur Pandit Bhag Rum.' Does it occur to you that a + person of that name really exists? 'Khan Bahadur Naoraji + ('Naoraji,' mark you) Pestonji Vakil'--it's the language of + extravaganza! The Marquis goes too far: it spoils all + verisimilitude." + + Mr. Robertson grew quite ruffled. + + "Then you pride yourself on verisimilitude?" I suggested. + + "As I think you may guess; and we spare no pains to attain it, whether + in the names or In the descriptions supplied to the newspapers. + 'William Arbuthnot Blain, Esq.'--you have heard of Balzac's scouring + Paris for a name for one of his characters. I assure you I scoured + England for William Arbuthnot Blain--'identified with the movement + for improving the dwellings of the labouring classes'--or is that + Richard Farrant, Esq.? In any case, what more likely, on the face of + it? 'Frederick Wills, Esq., of the well-known tobacco firm of + Bristol'--the public swallows that readily: and yet it never buys a + packet of their Westward Ho! Mixture (which I smoke myself) without + reading that the Wills's of Bristol are W. D. and H. O.--no Frederick + at all." + + "But," I urged, "the purpose of this--" + + "I should have thought it obvious; but let me give you the history of + it. The practice began with William III. He was justly scornful of + the lax distribution of honours which had marked all the Stuart + reigns. You will hardly believe it, but before 1688 knighthoods, and + even peerages, went as often as not to men who qualified by an + opportune loan to the Exchequer, or even by presiding at a public + feast. (I say nothing of baronetcies, for their history is + notorious.) At first William was for making a clean sweep of the + Honours' List, or limiting it to two or three well-approved + recipients. But it was argued that this seeming niggardliness might + injure His Majesty's popularity, never quite secure. The Scutorium + found a way out of the dilemma. Sir Crofton Byng, the then Clerk of + the Ribands, proposed the scheme, which has worked ever since. + I may tell you that the undue _largesse_ of honours finds in the very + highest quarters as little favour as ever it did. Of course, there + are some whose services to science, literature, and art cannot be + ignored--the late Lord Leighton, for instance, or Sir George Newnes, + or Sir Joseph Lister again; and these are honoured, while the public + acclaims. But the rest are represented only in my collection of + masks--and an interesting one it is. Let me lead the way." + + But I have left myself no space for describing the treasures of the + Scutorium. The two upper stories are undoubtedly the least + interesting, since they contain the modern, unpainted masks. + Each mask has its place, its label, and on the shelf below it, + protected by a slip of glass, a description of the imaginary + recipient of the royal favour. One has only to look along the + crowded shelves to be convinced that Mr. Melville Robertson's office + is no sinecure. The first floor is devoted to a small working + library and a museum (the latter undergoing rearrangement at the time + of my visit). But the cellars!--or (as I should say) the crypt! + In Beaumont's words-- + + "Here's a world of pomp and state + Buried in dust, once dead by fate!" + + Here in their native colours, by the light of Mr. Robertson's duplex + lantern, stare the faces of the illustrious dead, from Rinaldus + FitzTurold, knighted on Senlac field, to stout old Crosby Martin, + sea-rover, who received the accolade (we'll hope he deserved it) from + the Virgin Queen in 1586. A few even are adorned with side-locks, + which Mr. Pender, the _nomenclator_, keeps scrupulously dusted. + In almost every case the wax has withstood the tooth of time far + better than one could have expected. Mr. Robertson believes that the + pigments chosen must have had some preservative virtue. If so, the + secret has been lost. But Mr. Pender has touched over some of the + worst decayed with a mixture of copal and pure alcohol, by which he + hopes at least to arrest the mischief; and certainly the masks in the + Scutorium compare very favourably with the waxen effigies of our + royalties preserved in the Abbey, close by. Mr. Robertson has a + theory that these, too, should by rights belong to his museum: but + that is another story, and a long one. Suffice it to say that I took + my leave with the feelings of one who has spent a profitable + afternoon: and for further information concerning this most + interesting nook of old London I can only refer the reader to the + pamphlet already alluded to, _The Westminster Scutorium: Its History + and Present Uses_. By J. Saxby Hine, C.B., F.S.A. Theobald & Son, + Skewers Alley, Chancery Lane, E.C. + + + +This article appeared to my beloved editor innocent enough to pass, and to +me (as doubtless to the reader) harmless enough in all conscience. +Now listen to the sequel. + +Long afterwards an acquaintance of mine--a barrister with antiquarian +tastes--was dining with me in my Cornish home, and the talk after dinner +fell upon the weekly papers and reviews. On _The Speaker_ he touched with +a reticence which I set down at first to dislike for his politics. +By and by, however, he let slip the word "untrustworthy." + +"Holding your view of its opinions," I suggested, "you might fairly say +'misleading.' 'Untrustworthy' is surely too strong a word." + +"I am not talking," said he, "of its opinions, but of its mis-statements +of fact. Some time ago it printed an article on a place which it called +'The Westminster Scutorium,' and described in detail. I happened to pick +the paper up at my club and read the article. It contained a heap of +historical information on the forms and ceremonies which accompany the +granting of titles, and was apparently the work of a specialist. +Being interested (as you know) in these matters, and having an hour to +spare, I took a hansom down to Westminster. At the entrance of Dean's +Yard I found a policeman, and inquired the way to the Scutorium. He eyed +me for a moment, then he said, 'Well, I thought I'd seen the last of 'em. +You're the first to-day, so far; and yesterday there was only five. +But Monday--_and_ Tuesday--_and_ Wednesday! There must have been thirty +came as late as Wednesday; though by that time I'd found out what was the +matter. All Monday they kept me hunting round and round the yard, +following like a pack. Very respectable-looking old gentlemen, too, the +whole of 'em, else I should have guessed they were pulling my leg. +Most of 'em had copies of a paper, _The Speaker_, and read out bits from +it, and insisted on my searching in this direction and that . . . and me +being new to this beat, and seeing it all in print! We called in the +postman to help. By and by they began to compare notes, and found they'd +been kidded, and some of 'em used language. . . . I really think, sir, you +must be the last of 'em.'" + + + +MAY. + + +I was travelling some weeks ago by a railway line alongside of which ran a +quickset hedge. It climbed to the summit of cuttings, plunged to the base +of embankments, looped itself around stations, flickered on the skyline +above us, raced us along the levels, dipped into pools, shot up again on +their farther banks, chivvied us into tunnels, ran round and waited for us +as we emerged. Its importunity drove me to the other side of the +carriage, only to find another quickset hedge behaving similarly. +Now I can understand that a railway company has excellent reasons for +planting quickset hedges alongside its permanent way. But their +unspeakable monotony set me thinking. Why do we neglect the real parks of +England?--parks enormous in extent, and yet uncultivated, save here and +there and in the most timid fashion. And how better could our +millionaires use their wealth (since they are always confiding to us their +difficulties in getting rid of it) than by seeking out these gardens and +endowing them, and so, without pauperising anyone, build for themselves +monuments not only delightful, but perpetual?--for, as Victor Hugo said, +the flowers last always. So, you may say, do books. I doubt it; and +experts, who have discussed with me the modern products of the paper +trade, share my gloomy views. Anyhow, the free public library has been +sufficiently exploited, if not worked out. So, you may say again, have +free public gardens and parks been worked out. I think not. Admit that a +fair percentage of the public avails itself of these libraries and parks; +still the mass does not, and they were intended for the mass. +Their attractiveness does not spread and go on spreading. The stream of +public appreciation which pours through them is not fathomless; beyond a +certain point it does not deepen, or deepens with heart-breaking slowness; +and candid librarians and curators can sound its shallows accurately +enough. What we want is not a garden into which folk will find their way +if they have nothing better to do and can spare the time with an effort. +Or, to be accurate, we do want such gardens for deliberate enjoyment; but +what we want more is to catch our busy man and build a garden about him in +the brief leisure which, without seeking it, he is forced to take. + +Where are these gardens? Why, beside and along our railway lines. +These are the great public parks of England; and through them travels +daily a vast population held in enforced idleness, seeking distraction in +its morning paper. Have you ever observed how a whole carriageful of +travellers on the Great Western line will drop their papers to gaze out on +Messrs. Sutton's trial-beds just outside Reading? A garish appeal, no +doubt: a few raying spokes of colour, and the vision has gone. And I +forestall the question, "Is that the sort of thing you wish to see +extended?--a bed of yellow tulips, for instance, or of scarlet lobelias, +or of bright-blue larkspurs, all the way from London to Liverpool?" +I suggest nothing of the sort. Our railway lines in England, when they +follow the valleys--as railway lines must in hilly districts--are +extraordinarily beautiful. The eye, for example, could desire nothing +better, in swift flight, than the views along the Wye Valley or in the +Derbyshire Peak country, and even the rich levels of Somerset have a +beauty of their own (above all in May and June, when yellow with sheets of +buttercups) which artificial planting would spoil. But--cant about Nature +apart--every line has its dreary cuttings and embankments, all of which +might be made beautiful at no great cost. I need not labour this: here +and there by a casual bunch of rhododendrons or of gorse, or by a sheet of +primroses or wild hyacinths in springtime, the thing is proved, and has +been proved again and again to me by the comments of fellow-passengers. + +Now I am honestly enamoured of this dream of mine, and must pause to dwell +on some of its beauties. In the first place, we could start to realise it +in the most modest fashion and test the appreciation of the public as we +go along. Our flowers would be mainly wild flowers, and our trees, for +the most part, native British plants, costing, say, from thirty shillings +to three pounds the hundred. A few roods would do to begin with, if the +spot were well chosen; indeed, it would be wiser in every way to begin +modestly, for though England possesses several great artists in landscape +gardening, their art has never to my knowledge been seriously applied to +railway gardening, and the speed of the spectators introduces a new and +highly-amusing condition, and one so singular and so important as to make +this almost a separate art. At any rate, our gardeners would have to +learn as they go, and if any man can be called enviable it is an artist +learning to express art's eternal principles in a new medium, under new +conditions. + +Even if we miss our millionaire, we need not despond over ways and means. +The beauty-spots of Great Britain are engaged just now in a fierce rivalry +of advertisement. Why should not this rivalry be pressed into the service +of beautifying the railway lines along which the tourist must travel to +reach them? Why should we neglect the porches (so to speak) of our +temples? Would not the tourist arrive in a better temper if met on his +way with silent evidence of our desire to please? And, again, is the +advertising tradesman quite wise in offending so many eyes with his +succession of ugly hoardings standing impertinently in green fields? +Can it be that the sight of them sets up that disorder of the liver which +he promises to cure? And if not, might he not call attention to his wares +at least as effectively, if more summarily, by making them the excuse for +a vision of delight which passengers would drop their newspapers to gaze +upon? Lastly, the railway companies themselves have discovered the +commercial value of scenery. Years ago, and long before their discovery +(and as if by a kind of instinct they were blundering towards it) they +began to offer prizes for the best-kept station gardens--with what happy +result all who have travelled in South Wales will remember. They should +find it easy to learn that the 'development' of watering-places and +holiday resorts may be profitably followed up by spending care upon their +approaches. + +But I come back to my imaginary millionaire--the benevolent man who only +wants to be instructed how to spend his money--the 'magnificent man' of +Aristotle's _Ethics_, nonplussed for the moment, and in despair of +discovering an original way of scattering largesse for the public good. +For, while anxious to further my scheme by conciliating the commercial +instinct, I must insist that its true beauty resides in the conception of +our railways as vast public parks only hindered by our sad lack of +inventiveness from ministering to the daily delight of scores of thousands +and the occasional delight of almost everyone. The millionaire I want is +one who can rise to this conception of it, and say with Blake-- + + "I will not cease from mental fight," + +(Nor from pecuniary contribution, for that matter) + + "Nor shall my sword sleep in my hand + Till we have built Jerusalem + In England's green and pleasant land." + +For these millionaires are bediamonded all over with good intentions. +The mischief with them is their lack of inventiveness. Most of my readers +will agree that there is no easier game of solitaire than to suppose +yourself suddenly endowed with a million of money, and to invent modes of +dispensing it for the good of your kind. As a past master of that game I +offer the above suggestion gratis to those poor brothers of mine who have +more money than they know how to use. + + +The railway--not that of the quickset hedges, but the Great Western, on to +which I changed after a tramp across Dartmoor--took me to pay a pious +visit to my old school: a visit which I never pay without thinking-- +especially in the chapel where we used to sing 'Lord, dismiss us with Thy +blessing' on the evening before holidays--of a passage in Izaak Walton's +_Life of Sir Henry Wotton_:-- + + "He yearly went also to Oxford. But the summer before his death he + changed that for a journey to Winchester College, to which school he + was first removed from Bocton. And as he returned from Winchester + towards Eton College, said to a friend, his companion in that + journey, 'How useful was that advice of a holy monk who persuaded his + friend to perform his customary devotions in a constant place, + because in that place we usually meet with those very thoughts which + possessed us at our last being there! And I find it thus far + experimentally true that at my now being in that school, and seeing + the very place where I sat when I was a boy, occasioned me to + remember those very thoughts of my youth which then possessed me: + sweet thoughts indeed, that promised my growing years numerous + pleasures without mixtures of cares: and those to be enjoyed when + time--which I therefore thought slow-paced--had changed my youth into + manhood. But age and experience have taught me that those were but + empty hopes: for I have always found it true, as my Saviour did + foretell, 'Sufficient for the day is the evil thereof.' + Nevertheless, I saw there a succession of boys using the same + recreations and, questionless, possessed with the same thoughts that + then possessed me. Thus one generation succeeds another, both in + their lives, recreations, hopes, fears, and death.'" + +But my visit on this occasion was filled with thought less of myself than +of a poet I had known in that chapel, those cloisters, that green close; +not intimately enough to call him friend, yet so intimately that his +lately-departed shade still haunted the place for me--a small boy whom he +had once, for a day or two, treated with splendid kindness and thereafter +(I dare say) had forgotten. + + "T. E. B." + +Thomas Edward Brown was born on May 5th, 1830, at Douglas, in the Isle of +Man, where his father held the living of St. Matthew's. Sixty-five years +later he wrote his last verses to aid a fund raised for a new St. +Matthew's Church, and characteristically had to excuse himself in a letter +penetrated with affection for the old plain edifice and its memories. + + "I was baptised there; almost all whom I loved and revered were + associated with its history . . . 'The only church in Douglas where + the poor go'--I dare say that is literally true. But I believe it + will continue to be so. . . . I postulate the continuity. . . ." + +I quote these words (and so leave them for a while) with a purpose, aware +how trivial they may seem to the reader. But to those who had the +privilege of knowing Brown that cannot be trivial which they feel to be +characteristic and in some degree explicative of the man; and with this +'I postulate the continuity' we touch accurately and simply for once a +note which sang in many chords of the most vocal, not to say orchestral, +nature it has ever been my lot to meet. + +Let me record, and have done with, the few necessary incidents of what was +by choice a _vita fallens_ and "curiously devoid of incident." The boy +was but two years old when the family removed to Kirk Braddan Vicarage, +near Douglas; the sixth of ten children of a witty and sensible Scots +mother and a father whose nobly humble idiosyncrasies continued in his son +and are worthy to live longer in his description of them:-- + + "To think of a _Pazon_ respecting men's vices even; not as vices, God + forbid! but as parts of _them_, very likely all but inseparable from + them; at any rate, _theirs!_ Pitying with an eternal pity, but not + exposing, not rebuking. My father would have considered he was + 'taking a liberty' if he had confronted the sinner with his sin. + Doubtless he carried this too far. But don't suppose for a moment + that the 'weak brethren' thought he was conniving at their weakness. + Not they: they saw the delicacy of his conduct. You don't think, do + you, that these poor souls are incapable of appreciating delicacy? + God only knows how far down into their depths of misery the sweetness + of that delicacy descends. . . . He loved sincerity, truth and + modesty. It seemed as if he felt that, with these virtues, the + others could not fail to be present." + +Add to this that the Vicar of Kirk Braddan, though of no University, was a +scholar in grain; was, for example, so fastidious about composition that +he would make his son read some fragment of an English classic to him +before answering an invitation! "To my father style was like the instinct +of personal cleanliness." Again we touch notes which echoed through the +life of his son--who worshipped continuity. + +From a course of tuition divided between his father and the parish +schoolmaster, Brown went, at fifteen or over, to King William's College, +and became its show scholar; thence, by the efforts of well-meaning +friends (but at the cost of much subsequent pain), to Christ Church, +Oxford, as a servitor. He won his double first; but he has left on record +an account of a servitor's position at Christ Church in the early fifties, +and to Brown the spiritual humiliation can have been little less than one +long dragging anguish. He had, of course, his intervals of high spirits; +but (says Mr. Irwin, his friend and biographer) "there is no doubt he did +not exaggerate what the position was to him. I have heard him refer to it +over and over again with a dispassionate bitterness there was no +mistaking." Dean Gaisford absolutely refused to nominate him, after his +two first classes, to a fellowship, though all the resident dons wished +it. "A servitor never has been elected student--_ergo_, he never shall +be." Brown admired Gaisford, and always spoke kindly of him "in all his +dealings with me." Yet the night after he won his double first was "one +of the most intensely miserable I was ever called to endure." Relief, and +of the right kind, came with his election as Fellow of Oriel in April, +1854. In those days an Oriel Fellowship still kept and conveyed its +peculiar distinction, and the brilliant young scholar had at length the +ball at his feet. + + "This is none of your empty honours," he wrote to his mother; "it + gives me an income of about 300 pounds per annum as long as I choose + to reside at Oxford, and about 220 pounds in cash if I reside + elsewhere. In addition to this it puts me in a highly commanding + position for pupils, so that on the whole I have every reason to + expect that (except perhaps the first year) I shall make between 500 + and 600 pounds altogether per annum. So you see, my dear mother, + that your prayers have not been unanswered, and that God will bless + the generation of those who humbly strive to serve Him. . . I have + not omitted to remark that the election took place on April 21st, the + anniversary of your birth and marriage." + +How did he use his opportunity? "He never took kindly to the life of an +Oxford fellow," thought the late Dr. Fowler (an old schoolfellow of +Brown's, afterwards President of Corpus and Vice-Chancellor of the +University). Mr. Irwin quotes another old friend, Archdeacon Moore, to +much the same effect. Their explanations lack something of definiteness. +After a few terms of private pupils Brown returned to the Island, and +there accepted the office of Vice-principal of his old school. We can +only be sure that his reasons were honourable, and sufficed for him; we +may include among them, if we choose, that _nostalgia_ which haunted him +all his days, until fate finally granted his wish and sent him back to his +beloved Argos "for good." + +In the following year (1857) he married his cousin, Miss Stowell, daughter +of Dr. Stowell, of Ramsay; and soon after left King William's College to +become 'by some strange mischance' Head Master of the Crypt School, +Gloucester. Of this "Gloucester episode," as he called it, nothing needs +to be recorded except that he hated the whole business and, incidentally, +that one of his pupils was Mr. W. E. Henley--destined to gather into his +_National Observer_, many years later, many blooms of Brown's last and not +least memorable efflorescence in poesy. + +From Gloucester he was summoned, on a fortunate day, by Mr. Percival +(now Bishop of Hereford), who had recently been appointed to Clifton +College, then a struggling new foundation, soon to be lifted by him into +the ranks of the great Public Schools. Mr. Percival wanted a man to take +the Modern Side; and, as fate orders these things, consulted the friend +reserved by fate to be his own successor at Clifton--Mr. Wilson (now Canon +of Worcester). Mr. Wilson was an old King William's boy; knew Brown, and +named him. + + "Mr. Wilson having told me about him," writes the bishop, "I made an + appointment to see him in Oxford, and there, as chance would have it, + I met him standing at the corner of St. Mary's Entry, in a somewhat + Johnsonian attitude, four-square, his hands deep in his pockets to + keep himself still, and looking decidedly _volcanic_. We very soon + came to terms, and I left him there under promise to come to Clifton + as my colleague at the beginning of the following Term; and, needless + to say, St. Mary's Entry has had an additional interest to me ever + since. Sometimes I have wondered, and it would be worth a good deal + to know, what thoughts were crossing through that richly-furnished, + teeming brain as he stood there by St. Mary's Church, with Oriel + College in front of him, thoughts of his own struggles and triumphs, + and of all the great souls that had passed to and fro over the + pavement around him; and all set in the lurid background of the + undergraduate life to which he had been condemned as a servitor at + Christ Church." + +Was he happy in his many years' work at Clifton? On the whole, and with +some reservation, we may say 'yes'--'yes,' although in the end he escaped +from it gladly and enjoyed his escape. One side of him, no doubt, loathed +formality and routine; he was, as he often proclaimed himself, a +nature-loving, somewhat intractable Celt; and if one may hint at a fault +in him, it was that now and then he soon _tired_. A man so spendthrift of +emotion is bound at times to knock on the bottom of his emotional coffers; +and no doubt he was true _to a mood_ when he wrote-- + + "I'm here at Clifton, grinding at the mill + My feet for thrice nine barren years have trod, + But there are rocks and waves at Scarlett still, + And gorse runs riot in Glen Chass--thank God! + + "Alert, I seek exactitude of rule, + I step and square my shoulders with the squad, + But there are blaeberries on old Barrule, + And Langness has its heather still--thank God!" + +--With the rest of the rebellious stanzas. We may go farther and allow +that he played with the mood until he sometimes forgot on which side lay +seriousness and on which side humour. Still it _was_ a mood; and it was +Brown, after all, who wrote 'Planting':-- + + "Who would be planted chooseth not the soil + Or here or there, + Or loam or peat, + Wherein he best may grow + And bring forth guerdon of the planter's toil-- + The lily is most fair, + But says not' I will only blow + Upon a southern land'; the cedar makes no coil + What rock shall owe + The springs that wash his feet; + The crocus cannot arbitrate the foil + That for his purple radiance is most meet-- + Lord, even so + I ask one prayer, + The which if it be granted, + It skills not where + Thou plantest me, only I would be planted." + + "You don't care for school-work," he writes to an Old Cliftonian. + . . . "I demur to your statement that when you take up + schoolmastering your leisure for this kind of thing will be + practically gone. Not at all. If you have the root of the matter in + you the school-work will insist upon this kind of thing as a relief. + My plan always was to recognise two lives as necessary--the one the + outer Kapelistic life of drudgery, the other the inner and cherished + life of the spirit. It is true that the one has a tendency to kill + the other, but it must not, and you must see that it does not. . . . + The pedagogic is needful for bread and butter, also for a certain + form of joy; of the inner life you know what I think." + +These are wise words, and I believe they represent Brown more truly than +utterances which only seem more genuine because less deliberate. He was +as a house master excellent, with an excellence not achievable by men +whose hearts are removed from their work: he awoke and enjoyed fervent +friendships and the enthusiastic admiration of many youngsters; he must +have known of these enthusiasms, and was not the man to condemn them; he +had the abiding assurance of assisting in a kind of success which he +certainly respected. He longed for the day of emancipation, to return to +his Island; he was impatient; but I must decline to believe he was +unhappy. + +Indeed, his presence sufficiently denied it. How shall I describe him? +A sturdy, thick-set figure, inclining to rotundity, yet athletic; a face +extraordinarily mobile; bushy, grey eyebrows; eyes at once deeply and +radiantly human, yet holding the primitive faun in their coverts; a broad +mouth made for broad, natural laughter, hearty without lewdness. "There +are nice Rabelaisians, and there are nasty; but the latter are not +Rabelaisians. I have an idea," he claimed, "that my judgment within this +area is infallible." And it was. All honest laughter he welcomed as a +Godlike function. + + "God sits upon His hill, + And sees the shadows fly; + And if He laughs at fools, why should He not?" + +And for that matter, why should not we? Though at this point his fine +manners intervened, correcting, counselling moderation. "I am certain God +made fools for us to enjoy, but there must be _an economy of joy_ in the +presence of a fool; you must not betray your enjoyment." Imagine all this +overlaid with a certain portliness of bearing, suggestive of the +high-and-dry Oxford scholar. Add something of the parsonic (he was +ordained deacon before leaving Oxford, but did not proceed to priest's +orders till near the end of his time at Clifton); add a simple natural +piety which purged the parsonic of all "churchiness." + + "This silence and solitude are to me absolute food," he writes from + the Clifton College Library on the morning of Christmas Day, 1875, + "especially after all the row and worry at the end of Term. . . . + Where are the men and women? Well, now look here, you'll not mention + it again. They're all in church. See how good God is! See how He + has placed these leitourgic traps in which people, especially + disagreeable people, get caught--and lo! the universe for me!!! me-- + me. . . ." + +I have mentioned his fine manners, and with a certain right, since it once +fell to me--a blundering innocent in the hands of fate--to put them to +severest proof. A candidate for a scholarship at Clifton--awkward, and +abominably conscious of it, and sensitive--I had been billeted on Brown's +hospitality without his knowledge. The mistake (I cannot tell who was +responsible) could not be covered out of sight; it was past all aid of +kindly dissimulation by the time Brown returned to the house to find the +unwelcome guest bathing in shame upon his doorstep. Can I say more than +that he took me into the family circle--by no means an expansive one, or +accustomed, as some are, to open gleefully to intruders--and for the +inside of a week treated me with a consideration so quiet and pleasant, so +easy yet attentive, that his dearest friend or most distinguished visitor +could not have demanded more? A boy notes these things, and remembers. + . . . "If I lose my manners," Mr. Irwin quotes him as saying once over +some trivial forgetfulness, "what is to become of me?" He was shy, too, +like the most of his countrymen--"jus' the shy "--but with a proud reserve +as far removed as possible from sham humility--being all too sensible and +far too little of a fool to blink his own eminence of mind, though willing +on all right occasions to forget it. "Once," records Mr. Irwin, "when I +remarked on the omission of his name in an article on 'Minor Poets' in one +of the magazines, he said, with a smile, 'Perhaps I am among the major!'" +That smile had just sufficient irony--no more. + +To this we may add a passion for music and a passion for external nature-- +external to the most of us, but so closely knit with his own that to be +present at his ecstasies was like assisting a high priest of elemental +mysteries reserved for him and beyond his power to impart. And yet we are +beating about the bush and missing the essential man, for he was +imprehensible--"Volcanic," the Bishop of Hereford calls him, and must go +to the Bay of Naples to fetch home a simile: + + "We can find plenty of beauty in the familiar northern scenes; but we + miss the pent-up forces, the volcanic outbursts, the tropic glow, and + all the surprising manifold and tender and sweet-scented outpourings + of soil and sunshine, so spontaneous, so inexhaustibly rich, and with + the heat of a great fire burning and palpitating underneath all the + time." + +Natures more masterfully commanding I have known: never one more +remarkable. In the mere possession of him, rather than in his direct +influence, all Cliftonians felt themselves rich. We were at least as +proud of him as Etonians of the author of "Ionica." But no comparisons +will serve. Falstaffian--with a bent of homely piety; Johnsonian--with a +fiery Celtic heat and a passionate adoration of nature: all such epithets +fail as soon as they are uttered. The man was at once absolute and +Protean: entirely sincere, and yet a different being to each separate +friend. "There was no getting to the end of Brown." + +I have said that we--those of us, at any rate, who were not of Brown's +House--were conscious of a rich and honourable possession in him, rather +than of an active influence. Yet that influence must not be underrated. +Clifton, as I first knew it, was already a great school, although less +than twenty years old. But, to a new-comer, even more impressive than its +success among schools, or its aspirations, was a firmness of tradition +which (I dare to say) would have been remarkable in a foundation of five +times its age. It had already its type of boy; and having discovered it +and how to produce it, fell something short of tolerance towards other +types. For the very reason which allows me with decency to call the type +an admirable one, I may be excused for adding that the tradition demanded +some patience of those who could not easily manage to conform with it. +But there the tradition stood, permanently rooted in a school not twenty +years old. Is it fanciful to hold that Brown's passion for 'continuity' +had much to do with planting and confirming it? Mr. Irwin quotes for us a +passage from one of his sermons to the school: "Suffer no chasm to +interrupt this glorious tradition. . . . Continuous life . . . that is +what we want--to feel the pulses of hearts that are now dust." Did this +passage occur, I wonder, in the sermon of which I rather remember a +fierce, hopeless, human protest against 'change and decay'?--the voice +ringing down on each plea, "What do the change-and-decay people say to +_that?_" + +"I postulate the continuity." Vain postulate it often seems, yet of all +life Brown demanded it. Hear him as he speaks of his wife's death in a +letter to a friend:-- + + "My dear fellow-sufferer, what is it after all? Why this sinking of + the heart, this fainting, sorrowing of the spirit? There is no + separation: life is continuous. All that was stable and good, good + and therefore stable, in our union with the loved one, is + unquestionably permanent, will endure for ever. It cannot be + otherwise. . . . When love has done its full work, has wrought soul + into soul so that every fibre has become part of the common life-- + _quis separabit?_ Can you conceive yourself as existing at all + without _her?_ No, you can't; well, then, it follows that you don't, + and never will." + +I believe it to have been this passion for continuity that bound and kept +him so absolute a Manxman, drawing his heart so persistently back to the +Island that there were times (one may almost fancy) when the prospect of +living his life out to the end elsewhere seemed to him a treachery to his +parents' dust. I believe this same passion drew him--master as he was of +varied and vocal English--to clothe the bulk of his poetry in the Manx +dialect, and thereby to miss his mark with the public, which inevitably +mistook him for a rustic singer, a man of the people, imperfectly +educated. + + "I would not be forgotten in this land."-- + +This line of another true poet of curiously similar temperament[1] +has haunted me through the reading of Brown's published letters. +But Brown's was no merely selfish craving for continuity--to be +remembered. By a fallacy of thought, perhaps, but by a very noble one, he +transferred the ambition to those for whom he laboured. His own terror +that Time might obliterate the moment: + + "And all this personal dream be fled," + +Became for his countrymen a very spring of helpfulness. _Antiquam +exquirite matrem_--he would do that which they, in poverty and the stress +of earning daily bread, were careless to do--would explore for them the +ancient springs of faith and custom. + + "Dear countrymen, whate'er is left to us + Of ancient heritage-- + Of manners, speech, of humours, polity, + The limited horizon of our stage-- + Old love, hope, fear, + All this I fain would fix upon the page; + That so the coming age, + Lost in the empire's mass, + Yet haply longing for their fathers, here + May see, as in a glass, + What they held dear-- + May say, ''Twas thus and thus + They lived'; and as the time-flood onward rolls + Secure an anchor for their Keltic souls." + +This was his task, and the public of course set him down for a rustic. +"What ought I to do?" he demands. "Shall I put on my next title-page, +'Late Fellow of Oriel, etc.'? or am I always to abide under this ironic +cloak of rusticity?" To be sure, on consideration (if the public ever +found time to consider), the language and feeling of the poems were +penetrated with scholarship. He entered his countrymen's hearts; but he +also could, and did, stand outside and observe them with affectionate, +comprehending humour. Scholarship saved him, too--not always, but as a +rule--from that emotional excess to which he knew himself most dangerously +prone. He assigns it confidently to his Manx blood; but his mother was +Scottish by descent, and from my experience of what the Lowland Scot can +do in the way of pathos when he lets himself go, I take leave to doubt +that the Manxman was wholly to blame. There can, however, be no doubt +that the author of "The Doctor," of "Catherine Kinrade," of "Mater +Dolorosa," described himself accurately as a "born sobber," or that an +acquired self-restraint saved him from a form of intemperance by which of +late our literature has been somewhat too copiously afflicted. + +To scholarship, too, imposed upon and penetrating a taste naturally +catholic, we owe the rare flavour of the many literary judgments scattered +about his letters. They have a taste of native earth, beautifully +rarefied: to change the metaphor, they illuminate the page with a kind of +lambent common sense. For a few examples:-- + + "I have also read a causerie on Virgil and one on Theocritus. So many + French _litterateurs_ give me the idea that they don't go nearer the + Greek authors than the Latin translations. . . . Sainte Beuve + [_Nouveaux Lundis_, vii. 1--52, on 'The Greek Anthology'] is an + enthusiastic champion for our side, but, oddly enough, he never + strikes me as knowing much about the matter!" + + "Your Latin verses [translating Cowley] I greatly enjoy. The dear old + Abraham goes straight off into your beautiful lines. Of course he + has not a scrap of modern _impedimenta_. You go through the customs + at the frontier with a whistle and a smile. You have _nothing to + declare_. The blessed old man by your side is himself a Roman to + begin with, and you pass together as cheerfully as possible. . . ." + + "I have also been reading Karl Elze's _Essays on Shakespeare_. + He is not bad, but don't you resent the imperturbable confidence of + men who, after attributing a play of Shakespeare's to two authors, + proceed to suggest a third, urged thereto by some fatuous and + self-sought exigency?" + + "Did you ever try to write a Burns song? I mean the equivalent in + ordinary English of his Scotch. Can it be done? A Yorkshireman-- + could he do it? A Lancashire man (Waugh)? I hardly think so. + The Ayrshire dialect has a _Schwung_ and a confidence that no-English + county can pretend to. Our dialects are apologetic things, + half-ashamed, half-insolent. Burns has no doubts, and for his + audience unhesitatingly demands the universe. . . ." + + "There is an ethos in Fitzgerald's letters which is so exquisitely + idyllic as to be almost heavenly. He takes you with him, exactly + accommodating his pace to yours, walks through meadows so tranquil, + and yet abounding in the most delicate surprises. And these + surprises seem so familiar, just as if they had originated with + yourself. What delicious blending! What a perfect interweft of + thought and diction! What a _sweet_ companion!" + +Lastly, let me quote a passage in which his thoughts return to Clifton, +where it had been suggested that Greek should be omitted from the ordinary +form-routine and taught in "sets," or separate classes:-- + + "This is disturbing about Greek, 'set' Greek. Yes, you would fill + your school to overflowing, of course you would, so long as other + places did not abandon the old lines. But it would be detestable + treachery to the cause of education, of humanity. To me the + _learning_ of any blessed thing is a matter of little moment. + Greek is not learned by nineteen-twentieths of our Public School + boys. But it is a baptism into a cult, a faith, not more irrational + than other faiths or cults; the baptism of a regeneration which + releases us from I know not what original sin. And if a man does not + see that, he is a fool, such a fool that I shouldn't wonder if he + gravely asked me to explain what I meant by original sin in such a + connection. . . ." + +So his thoughts reverted to the school he had left in 1892. In October, +1897, he returned to it on a visit. He was the guest of one of the house +masters, Mr. Tait, and on Friday evening, October 29th, gave an address to +the boys of the house. He had spoken for some minutes with brightness and +vigour, when his voice grew thick and he was seen to stagger. He died in +less than two hours. + +His letters have been collected and piously given to the world by Mr. +Irwin, one of his closest friends. By far the greatest number of them +belong to those last five years in the Island--the happiest, perhaps, of +his life, certainly the happiest temperamentally. "Never the time and the +place . . ." but at least Brown was more fortunate than most men. +He realised his dream, and it did not disappoint him. He could not carry +off his friends to share it (and it belongs to criticism of these volumes +to say that he was exceptionally happy in his friends), but he could +return and visit them or stay at home and write to them concerning the +realisation, and be sure they understood. Therefore, although we desire +more letters of the Clifton period--although twenty years are omitted, +left blank to us--those that survive confirm a fame which, although never +wide, was always unquestioned within its range. There could be no +possibility of doubt concerning Brown. He was absolute. He lived a +fierce, shy, spiritual life; a wise man, keeping the child in his heart: +he loved much and desired permanence in the love of his kind. +"Diuturnity," says his great seventeenth-century namesake, "is a dream and +folly of expectation. There is nothing strictly immortal but +immortality." And yet, _prosit amasse!_ + +The railway took me on to Oxford-- + + "Like faithful hound returning + For old sake's sake to each loved track + With heart and memory burning." + +"I well remember," writes Mrs. Green of her husband, the late John Richard +Green, "the passionate enthusiasm with which he watched from the train for +the first sight of the Oxford towers against the sky:" and although our +enthusiasm nowadays has to feed on a far tamer view than that which +saluted our forefathers when the stage-coach topped the rise of Shotover +and its passengers beheld the city spread at their feet, yet what faithful +son of Oxford can see her towers rise above the water-meadows and re-greet +them without a thrill? + +In the year 1688, and in a book entitled _The Guardian's Instruction_, +a Mr. Stephen Penton gave the world a pleasing and lifelike little +narrative--superior, in my opinion, to anything in _Verdant Green_-- +telling us how a reluctant father was persuaded to send his son to Oxford; +what doubts, misgivings, hesitations he had, and how they were overcome. +I take the story to be fictitious. It is written in the first person, +professedly by the hesitating parent: but the parent can hardly have been +Penton, for the story will not square with what we know of his life. +The actual Penton was born, it seems, in 1640, and educated at Winchester +and New College; proceeded to his fellowship, resided from 1659 to 1670, +and was Principal of St. Edmund's Hall from 1675 to 1683. He appears to +have been chaplain to the Earl of Aylesbury, and, according to Antony a +Wood, possessed a "rambling head." He died in 1706. + +The writer in _The Guardian's Instruction_ is portrayed for us--or is +allowed to portray himself--rather as an honest country squire, who had +himself spent a year or so of his youth at the University, but had +withdrawn when Oxford was invaded by the Court and the trouble between +King Charles and Parliament came to a head: and "God's grace, the Good +example of my parents, and a natural love of virtue secured me so far as +to leave Oxford, though not much more learned, yet not much worse than I +came thither." A chill testimonial! In short, the old squire (as I will +take leave to call him) nursed a somewhat crotchety detestation of the +place, insomuch "that when I came to have children, I did almost _swear_ +them in their childhood never to be friends with Oxford." + +He tried his eldest son with a course of foreign travel as a substitute +for University training; but this turned out a failure, and he had the +good sense to acknowledge his mistake. So for his second boy he cast +about to find a profession; "but what course to take I was at a loss: +Cambridge was so far off, I could not have an eye upon him; Oxford I was +angry with." + +In this fix he consulted with a neighbour, "an old grave learned divine," +and rigid Churchman, who confessed that many of the charges against Oxford +were well grounded, but averred that the place was mending. The truth +was, the University had been loyal to the monarchy all through the +Commonwealth times; and when Oliver Cromwell was dead, and Richard +dismounted, its members perceived, through the maze of changes and +intrigues, that in a little time the heart of the nation would revert to +the government which twenty years before it had hated. And their +impatient hopes of this "made the scholars talk aloud, drink healths, and +curse Meroz in the very streets; insomuch that when the King came in, they +were not only like them that dream, but like them who are out of their +wits, mad, stark, staring mad." This unholy 'rag' (to modernise the old +gentleman's language) continued for a twelvemonth: that is to say, until +the Vice-Chancellor--holding that the demonstration, like Miss Mary +Bennet's pianoforte playing in _Pride and Prejudice_, had delighted the +company long enough--put his foot down. And from that time the University +became sober, modest, and studious as perhaps any in Europe. The old +gentleman wound up with some practical advice, and a promise to furnish +the squire with a letter of recommendation to one of the best tutors in +Oxford. + +Thus armed, the squire (though still with misgivings) was not long in +getting on horseback with his wife, his daughters, and his young hopeful, +and riding off to Oxford, where at first it seemed that his worst +suspicions would be confirmed; "for at ten o'clock in the inn, there arose +such a roaring and singing that my hair stood on end, and my former +prejudices were so heightened that I resolved to lose the journey and +carry back my son again, presuming that no noise in Oxford could be made +but _scholars_ must do it,"--a hoary misconception still cherished, or +until recently, by the Metropolitan Police and the Oxford City Bench. +In this instance a proctor intervened, and quelled the disturbance by +sending 'two young pert townsmen' to prison; "and quickly came to my +chamber, and perceiving my boy designed for a gown, told me that it was +for the preservation of such fine youths as he that the proctors made so +bold with gentlemen's lodgings." The squire had some talk with this +dignitary, who was a man of presence and suitable address, and of +sufficient independence to deny--not for the first time in history--that +dons were overpaid. + +Next morning the whole family trooped off to call upon the tutor whom +their old neighbour had recommended. Oddly enough, the tutor seemed by no +means overwhelmed by the honour. "I thought to have found him mightily +pleased with the opinion we had of his conduct, and the credit of having a +gentleman's son under his charge, and the father with cap in hand. +Instead of all this he talked at a rate as if the gentry were _obliged_ to +tutors more than tutors to them." The tutor, in short, was decidedly tart +in his admonitions to this honest family--he did not forget, either, to +assure them that (_generally_) a college tutor was worse paid than a +dancing-master. Here is a specimen of his advice--sound and practical +enough in its way:-- + + "I understand by one of your daughters that you have brought him up a + _fine padd_ to keep here for his health's sake. Now I will tell you + the use of an horse in Oxford, and then do as you think fit. + The horse must be kept at an _ale-house_ or an _inn_, and he must + have leave to go once _every day_ to see him eat oats, because the + master's eye makes him fat; and it will not be genteel to go often + to an house and spend nothing; and then there may be some danger of + the horse growing _resty_ if he be not used often, so you must give + him leave to go to _Abingdon_ once every week, to look out of the + tavern window and see the maids sell turnips; and in one month or + two come home with a surfeit of poisoned wine, and save _any + farther trouble_ by dying, and then you will be troubled to send + for your horse _again_. . . ." + +The humour of college tutors has not greatly altered in two hundred years. +I have known one or two capable of the sardonic touch in those concluding +words. But conceive its effect upon the squire's lady and daughters! +No: you need not trouble to do so, for the squire describes it: "When the +tutor was gone out of the room, I asked how they liked the person and his +converse. My boy clung about his mother and cry'd to go home again, and +she had no more wit than to be of the same mind; she thought him too +weakly to undergo so much hardship as she foresaw was to be expected. +My daughter, who (instead of catechism and _Lady's Calling_) had been used +to read nothing but speeches in romances, and hearing nothing of _Love_ +and _Honour_ in all the talk, fell into downright _scolding_ at him; +call'd him the _merest_ scholar; and if this were your _Oxford_ breeding, +they had rather he should go to _Constantinople_ to learn manners! +But I, who was older and understood the language, call'd them all great +fools. . . ." + +On the tutor's return they begged to have his company at dinner, at their +inn: but he declined, kept the young man to dine with him, and next day +invited the family to luncheon. They accepted, fully expecting (after the +austerity of his discourse) to be starved: "and the girles drank +chocolette at no rate in the morning, for fear of the _worst_." But they +were by no means starved. "It was very pleasant," the squire confesses, +"to see, when we came, the _constrain'd_ artifice of an unaccustomed +complement." There were silver tankards 'heaped upon one another,' +'napkins some twenty years younger than the rest,' and glasses 'fit for a +_Dutchman_ at an _East-India Return_.' The dinner was full enough for +ten. "I was asham'd, but would not disoblige him, considering with myself +that I should put this man to such a charge of forty shillings at least, +to entertain me; when for all his honest care and pains he is to have but +forty or fifty shillings a quarter; so that for one whole quarter he must +doe the drudgery to my son for nothing." After dinner, our good squire +strolled off to a public bowling-green, "that being the onely recreation I +can affect." And "coming in, I saw half a score of the finest youths the +sun, I think, ever shined upon. They walked to and fro, with their hands +in their pockets, to see a match played by some scholars and some +gentlemen fam'd for their skill. I gaped also and stared as a man in his +way would doe; but a country ruff gentleman, being like to _lose_, did +swear, at such a rate that my heart did grieve that those fine young men +should _hear_ it, and know there was such a thing as swearing in the +kingdom. Coming to my lodging, I charged my son never to go to such +publick places unless he resolved to quarrel with me." + +And so, having settled the lad and fitted him up with good advice, +the father, mother, and sisters returned home. But the squire, being +summoned to Oxford shortly after to "sit in _parliament_" (presumably in +the last Parliament held at Oxford, in March, 1681), took that opportunity +to walk the streets and study the demeanour of the "scholars." And this +experiment would seem to have finally satisfied him. "I walk'd the +streets as late as most people, and never in ten days ever saw any scholar +rude or disordered: so that as I grow old, and more engaged to speak the +_truth_, I do repent of the _ill-opinion_ I have had of that place, +and hope to be farther obliged by a very good _account_ of my son." + +Old Stephen Penton may have had a rambling head; but unless I have thumbed +the bloom off his narrative in my attempt to summarise it, the reader will +allow that he knew how to write. He gives us the whole scene in the +fewest possible touches: he wastes no words in describing the personages +in his small comedy--comic idyll I had rather call it, for after a fashion +it reminds me of the immortal chatter between Gorgo and Praxinoe in the +fifteenth idyll of Theocritus. There the picture is: the honest +opinionated country squire; the acidulous tutor; the coltish son; the +fond, foolish, fussing mother; the prinking young ladies with their curls +and romantic notions; the colours of all as fresh as if laid on yesterday, +the humour quite untarnished after two hundred years. And I wonder the +more at the vivacity of this little sketch because, as many writers have +pointed out, no one has yet built upon University life a novel of anything +like first-class merit, and the conclusion has been drawn that the +elements of profound human interest are wanting in that life. "Is this +so?" asks the editor of Stephen Penton's reminiscences in a volume +published by the Oxford Historical Society-- + + "In spite of the character given to Oxford of being a city of short + memories and abruptly-ended friendships, in spite of the inchoative + qualities of youths of eighteen or twenty, especially in respect to + the 'ruling passion' so dear to novelists, yet surely in the three or + four years spent at Oxford by an incredible company of young students + 'fresh from public schools, and not yet tossed about and hardened in + the storms of life'--some of them Penton's 'finest youths,' some + obviously otherwise--there must be, one would think, abundance of + romantic incident awaiting its Thackeray or Meredith. For how many + have these years been the turning point of a life! . . ." + +There at any rate is the fact: _the_ novel of University life has not been +written yet, and perhaps never will be. I am not at all sure that _The +Adventures of Mr. Verdant Green_ do not mark the nearest approach to it-- +save the mark! And I am not at all sure that _The Adventures of Mr. +Verdant Green_ can be called a novel at all, while I am quite certain it +cannot be called a novel of first-class merit. _Tom Brown at Oxford_ +still counts its admirers, and has, I hear, attained the dignity of +translation into French; but Tom Brown, though robust enough, never seemed +to get over his transplantation from Rugby--possibly because his author's +heart remained at Rugby. 'Loss and Gain' is not a book for the many; and +the many never did justice to Mr. Hermann Merivale's 'Faucit of Balliol' +or Mr. St. John Tyrwhitt's 'Hugh Heron of Christ Church.' Neither of +these two novels obtained the hearing it deserved--and 'Faucit of Balliol' +was a really remarkable book: but neither of them aimed at giving a full +picture of Oxford life. And the interest of Miss Broughton's 'Belinda' +and Mr. Hardy's 'Jude the Obscure' lies outside the proctor's rounds. +Yes (and humiliating as the confession may be), with all its crudities and +absurdities, _Verdant Green_ does mark the nearest approach yet made to a +representative Oxford novel. + +How comes this? Well, to begin with, _Verdant Green_, with all his +faults, did contrive to be exceedingly youthful and high-spirited. And in +the second place, with all its faults, it did convey some sense of what I +may call the 'glamour' of Oxford. Now the University, on its part, being +fed with a constant supply of young men between the ages of eighteen and +twenty, does contrive, with all its faults, to keep up a fair show of +youth and high spirits; and even their worst enemies will admit that +Oxford and Cambridge wear, in the eyes of their sons at any rate, a +certain glamour. You may argue that glamour is glamour, an illusion which +will wear off in time; an illusion, at all events, and to be treated as +such by the wise author intent on getting at truth. To this I answer +that, while it lasts, this glamour is just as much a fact as _The Times_ +newspaper, or St. Paul's Cathedral, just as real a feature of Oxford as +Balliol College, or the river, or the Vice-Chancellor's poker: and until +you recognise it for a fact and a feature of the place, and allow for it, +you have not the faintest prospect of realising Oxford. Each succeeding +generation finds that glamour, or brings it; and each generation, as it +passes, deems that its successor has either found or brought less of it. +But the glamour is there all the while. In turning over a book the other +day, written in 1870 by the Rev. Robert Stephen Hawker, I come on this +passage:-- + + "When I recall my own undergraduate life of thirty years and upwards + agone, I feel, notwithstanding modern vaunt, the _laudator temporis + acti_ earnest within me yet, and strong. Nowadays, as it seems to + me, there is but little originality of character in the still famous + University; a dread of eccentric reputation appears to pervade + College and Hall: every 'Oxford man,' to adopt the well-known name, + is subdued into sameness within and without, controlled as it were + into copyism and mediocrity by the smoothing-iron of the nineteenth + century. Whereas _in_ my time and before it there were distinguished + names, famous in every mouth for original achievements and 'deeds of + daring-do.' There were giants in those days--men of varied renown-- + and they arose and won for themselves in strange fields of fame, + record and place. Each became in his day a hero of the Iliad or + Odyssey of Oxford life--a kind of Homeric man." + +To which I am constrained to reply, "Mere stuff and nonsense!" +Mr. Hawker--and more credit to him--carried away Homeric memories of his +own seniors and contemporaries. But was it in nature that Mr. Hawker +should discover Homeric proportions in the feats of men thirty years his +juniors? How many of us, I ask, are under any flattering illusion about +the performances of our juniors? We cling to the old fond falsehood that +there were giants in _our_ days. We honestly believed they were giants; it +would hurt us to abandon that belief. It does not hurt us in the least to +close the magnifying-glass upon the feats of those who follow us. +But this generation, too, will have its magnifying-glass. "There were +giants in our days?" To be sure there were; and there are giants, too, in +these, but others, not we, have the eyes to see them. + +Say that the scales have fallen from our eyes. Very well, we must e'en +put them on again if we would write a novel of University life. And, be +pleased to note, it does not follow, because we see the place differently +now, that we see it more truly. Also, it does not follow, because Oxford +during the last twenty years has, to the eye of the visitor, altered very +considerably, that the characteristics of Oxford have altered to anything +like the same extent. Undoubtedly they have been modified by the +relaxation and suspension of the laws forbidding Fellows to marry. +Undoubtedly the brisk growth of red-brick houses along the north of the +city, the domestic hearths, afternoon teas and perambulators, and all +things covered by the opprobrious name of "Parks-system," have done +something to efface the difference between Oxford and other towns. +But on the whole I think they have done surprisingly little. + + + +Speaking as a writer of novels, then, I should say that to write a good +novel entirely concerned with Oxford lies close upon impossibility, and +will prophesy that, if ever it comes to be achieved, it will be a story of +friendship. But her glamour is for him to catch who can, whether in prose +or rhyme. + + ALMA MATER. + + Know you her secret none can utter? + Hers of the Book, the tripled Crown? + Still on the spire the pigeons flutter; + Still by the gateway flits the gown; + Still on the street, from corbel and gutter, + Faces of stone look down. + + Faces of stone, and other faces-- + Some from library windows wan + Forth on her gardens, her green spaces + Peer and turn to their books anon. + Hence, my Muse, from the green oases + Gather the tent, begone! + + Nay, should she by the pavement linger + Under the rooms where once she played, + Who from the feast would rise and fling her + One poor _sou_ for her serenade? + One poor laugh from the antic finger + Thrumming a lute string frayed? + + Once, my dear--but the world was young then-- + Magdalen elms and Trinity limes-- + Lissom the blades and the backs that swung then. + Eight good men in the 'good old times-- + Careless we, and the chorus flung then + Under St. Mary's chimes! + + Reins lay loose and the ways led random-- + Christ Church meadow and Iffley track-- + 'Idleness horrid and dogcart' (tandem)-- + Aylesbury grind and Bicester pack-- + Pleasant our lines, and faith! we scanned 'em: + Having that artless knack. + + Come, old limmer, the times grow colder: + Leaves of the creeper redden and fall. + Was it a hand then clapped my shoulder? + --Only the wind by the chapel wall. + Dead leaves drift on the lute; so . . . fold her + Under the faded shawl. + + Never we wince, though none deplore us, + We, who go reaping that we sowed; + Cities at cock-crow wake before us-- + Hey, for the lilt of the London road! + One look back, and a rousing chorus! + Never a palinode! + + Still on her spire the pigeons hover; + Still by her gateway haunts the gown; + Ah, but her secret? You, young lover, + Drumming her old ones forth from town, + Know you the secret none discover? + Tell it--when _you_ go down. + + Yet if at length you seek her, prove her, + Lean to her whispers never so nigh; + Yet if at last not less her lover + You in your hansom leave the High; + Down from her towers a ray shall hover-- + Touch you, a passer-by! + +[1] "The Quest of the Sangraal," R. S. Hawker. + + + +JUNE. + + + + +The following verses made their appearance some years ago in the pages of +the _Pall Mall Magazine_. Since then (I am assured) they have put a +girdle round the world, and threaten, if not to keep pace with the banjo +hymned by Mr. Kipling, at least to become the most widely-diffused of +their author's works. I take it to be of a piece with his usual +perversity that until now they have never been republished except for +private amusement. + +They belong to a mood, a moment, and I cannot be at pains to rewrite a +single stanza, even though an allusion to 'Oom Paul' cries out to be +altered or suppressed. But, after all, the allusion is not likely to +trouble President Kruger's massive shade as it slouches across the Elysian +fields; and after all, though he became our enemy, he remained a +sportsman. So I hope we may glance at his name in jest without a +suspicion of mocking at the tragedy of his fate. + + THE FAMOUS BALLAD OF THE JUBILEE CUP. + + You may lift me up in your arms, lad, and turn my face to the sun, + For a last look back at the dear old track where the Jubilee Cup was + won; + And draw your chair to my side, lad--no, thank ye, I feel no pain-- + For I'm going out with the tide, lad, but I'll tell you the tale + again. + + I'm seventy-nine, or nearly, and my head it has long turned grey, + But it all comes back as clearly as though it was yesterday-- + The dust, and the bookies shouting around the clerk of the scales, + And the clerk of the course, and the nobs in force, and + Is 'Ighness, the Prince of Wales. + + 'Twas a nine-hole thresh to wind'ard, but none of us cared for that, + With a straight run home to the service tee, and a finish along the + flat. + "Stiff?" Ah, well you may say it! Spot-barred, and at + five-stone-ten! + But at two and a bisque I'd ha' run the risk; for I was a greenhorn + then. + + So we stripped to the B. Race signal, the old red swallow-tail-- + There was young Ben Bolt, and the Portland colt, and Aston Villa, and + Yale; + And W. G., and Steinitz, Leander, and The Saint, + And the German Emperor's Meteor, a-looking as fresh as paint; + + John Roberts (scratch), and Safety Match, The Lascar, and Lorna + Doone, + Oom Paul (a bye), and Romany Rye, and me upon Wooden Spoon; + And some of us cut for partners, and some of us strung to baulk, + And some of us tossed for stations--But there, what use to talk? + + Three-quarter-back on the Kingsclere crack was station enough for me, + With a fresh jackyarder blowing and the Vicarage goal a-lee! + And I leaned and patted her centre-bit, and eased the quid in her + cheek, + With a 'Soh, my lass!' and a 'Woa, you brute!'--for she could do all + but speak. + + She was geared a thought too high, perhaps; she was trained a trifle + fine; + But she had the grand reach forward! _I_ never saw such a line! + Smooth-bored, clean-run, from her fiddle head with its dainty ear + half-cock, + Hard-bit, _pur sang_, from her overhang to the heel of her off hind + sock. + + Sir Robert he walked beside me as I worked her down to the mark; + "There's money on this, my lad," said he, "and most of 'em's running + dark; + But ease the sheet if you're bunkered, and pack the scrimmages tight, + And use your slide at the distance, and we'll drink to your health + to-night!" + + But I bent and tightened my stretcher. Said I to myself, said I,-- + "John Jones, this here is the Jubilee Cup, and you have to do or die." + And the words weren't hardly spoken when the umpire shouted "Play!" + And we all kicked off from the Gasworks end with a "Yoicks!" and a + "Gone away!" + + And at first I thought of nothing, as the clay flew by in lumps, + But stuck to the old Ruy Lopez, and wondered who'd call for trumps, + And luffed her close to the cushion, and watched each one as it + broke, + And in triple file up the Rowley mile we went like a trail of smoke. + + The Lascar made the running: but he didn't amount to much, + For old Oom Paul was quick on the ball, and headed it back to touch; + And the whole first flight led off with the right, as The Saint took + up the pace, + And drove it clean to the putting green and trumped it there with an + ace. + + John Roberts had given a miss in baulk, but Villa cleared with a + punt; + And keeping her service hard and low, The Meteor forged to the front, + With Romany Rye to windward at dormy and two to play, + And Yale close up--but a Jubilee Cup isn't run for every day. + + We laid our course for the Warner--I tell you the pace was hot! + And again off Tattenham Corner a blanket covered the lot. + Check side! Check side! Now steer her wide! And barely an inch of + room, + With The Lascar's tail over our lee rail, and brushing Leander's + boom! + + We were running as strong as ever--eight knots--but it couldn't last; + For the spray and the bails were flying, the whole field tailing + fast; + And the Portland colt had shot his bolt, and Yale was bumped at the + Doves, + And The Lascar resigned to Steinitz, stale-mated in fifteen moves. + + It was bellows to mend with Roberts--starred three for a penalty + kick: + But he chalked his cue and gave 'em the butt, and Oom Paul scored the + trick-- + "Off-side--no-ball--and at fourteen all! Mark cock! and two for his + nob!"-- + When W. G. ran clean through his lee, and yorked him twice with a + lob. + + He yorked him twice on a crumbling pitch, and wiped his eye with a + brace, + But his guy-rope split with the strain of it, and he dropped back out + of the race; + And I drew a bead on The Meteor's lead, and challenging none too + soon, + Bent over and patted her garboard strake, and called upon Wooden + Spoon. + + She was all of a shiver forward, the spoondrift thick on her flanks, + But I'd brought her an easy gambit, and nursed her over the banks; + She answered her helm--the darling!--and woke up now with a rush, + While The Meteor's jock he sat like a rock--he knew we rode for his + brush! + + There was no one else left in it. The Saint was using his whip, + And Safety Match, with a lofting catch, was pocketed deep at slip; + And young Ben Bolt with his niblick took miss at Leander's lunge, + But topped the net with the ricochet, and Steinitz threw up the + sponge. + + But none of the lot could stop the rot--nay, don't ask _me_ to + stop!-- + The Villa had called for lemons, Oom Paul had taken his drop, + And both were kicking the referee. Poor fellow! He done his best; + But, being in doubt, he'd ruled them out--which he always did when + pressed. + + So, inch by inch, I tightened the winch, and chucked the sandbags + out-- + I heard the nursery cannons pop, I heard the bookies shout: + "The Meteor wins!" "No, Wooden Spoon!" "Check!" "Vantage!" + "Leg before!" + "Last lap!" "Pass Nap!" At his saddle-flap I put up the helm and + wore. + + You may overlap at the saddle-flap, and yet be loo'd on the tape: + And it all depends upon changing ends, how a seven-year-old will + shape; + It was tack and tack to the Lepe and back--a fair ding-dong to the + Ridge, + And he led by his forward canvas yet as we shot neath Hammersmith + Bridge. + + He led by his forward canvas--he led from his strongest suit-- + But along we went on a roaring scent, and at Fawley I gained a foot. + He fisted off with his jigger, and gave me his wash--too late! + Deuce--vantage--check! By neck and neck, we rounded into the + straight. + + I could hear the 'Conquering 'Ero' a-crashing on Godfrey's band, + And my hopes fell sudden to zero, just there with the race in hand-- + In sight of the Turf's Blue Ribbon, in sight of the umpire's tape, + As I felt the tack of her spinnaker crack, as I heard the steam + escape! + + Had I lost at that awful juncture my presence of mind? . . . but no! + I leaned and felt for the puncture, and plugged it there with my toe + . . . + Hand over hand by the Members' Stand I lifted and eased her up, + Shot--clean and fair--to the crossbar there, and landed the Jubilee + Cup! + + "The odd by a head, and leg before," so the Judge he gave the word: + And the Umpire shouted "Over!" but I neither spoke nor stirred. + They crowded round: for there on the ground I lay in a dead-cold + swoon, + Pitched neck and crop on the turf atop of my beautiful Wooden Spoon. + + Her dewlap tire was punctured, her bearings all red-hot; + She'd a lolling tongue, and her bowsprit sprung, and her running gear + in a knot; + And amid the sobs of her backers, Sir Robert loosened her girth + And led her away to the knacker's. She had raced her last on earth! + + But I mind me well of the tear that fell from the eye of our noble + Prince, + And the things he said as he tucked me in bed--and I've lain there + ever since; + Tho' it all gets mixed up queerly that happened before my spill, + --But I draw my thousand yearly: it'll pay for the doctor's bill. + + I'm going out with the tide, lad.--You'll dig me a humble grave, + And whiles you will bring your bride, lad, and your sons + (if sons you have), + And there, when the dews are weeping, and the echoes murmur "Peace!" + And the salt, salt tide comes creeping and covers the popping-crease, + + In the hour when the ducks deposit their eggs with a boasted force, + They'll look and whisper "How was it?" and you'll take them over the + course, + And your voice will break as you try to speak of the glorious first + of June, + When the Jubilee Cup, with John Jones up, was won upon Wooden Spoon. + + + +"To me," said a well-known authority upon education, "these athletics are +the devil." To me no form of athletics is the devil but that of paying +other people to be athletic for you; and this, unhappily--and partly, I +believe, through our neglect to provide our elementary schools with decent +playgrounds--is the form affected nowadays by large and increasing crowds +of Englishmen. The youth of our urban populations would seem to be +absorbed in this vicarious sport. It throngs the reading-rooms of free +public libraries and working men's institutes in numbers which delight the +reformer until he discovers that all this avidity is for racing tips and +cricket or football "items." I am not, as a rule, a croaker; but I do not +think the young Briton concerns himself as he did in the fifties, sixties, +and seventies of the last century with poetry, history, politics, or +indeed anything that asks for serious thought. I believe all this +professional sport likely to be as demoralising for us as a nation as were +the gladiatorial shows for Rome; and I cannot help attributing to it some +measure of that combativeness at second-hand--that itch to fight anyone +and everyone by proxy--which, abetted by a cheap press, has for twenty +years been our curse. + +Curse or no curse, it is spreading; and something of its progress may be +marked in the two following dialogues, the first of which was written in +1897. Many of the names in it have already passed some way toward +oblivion; but the moral, if I mistake not, survives them, and the warning +has become more urgent than ever. + + + + THE FIRST DIALOGUE ON CRICKET. + + 1897. + +Some time in the summer of 1897--I think towards the end of August--I was +whiling away the close of an afternoon in the agreeable twilight of +Mr. D--'s bookshop in the Strand, when I heard my name uttered by some one +who had just entered; and, turning about, saw my friend Verinder, in +company with Grayson and a strapping youth of twenty or thereabouts, a +stranger to me. Verinder and Grayson share chambers in the Temple, on the +strength (it is understood) of a common passion for cricket. Longer ago +than we care to remember--but Cambridge bowlers remember--Grayson was +captain of the Oxford eleven. His contemporary, Verinder, never won his +way into the team: he was a comparatively poor man and obliged to read, +and reading spoiled his cricket. Therefore he had to content himself with +knocking up centuries in college matches, and an annual performance among +the Seniors. It was rumoured that Grayson--always a just youth, too-- +would have given him his blue, had not Verinder's conscientiousness been +more than Roman. My own belief is that the distinction was never offered, +and that Verinder liked his friend all the better for it. At the same +time the disappointment of what at that time of life was a serious +ambition may account for a trace of acidity which began, before he left +college, to flavour his comments on human affairs, and has since become +habitual to him. + +Verinder explained that he and his companions were on their way home from +Lord's, where they had been 'assisting'--he laid an ironical stress on the +word--in an encounter between Kent and Middlesex. "And, as we were +passing, I dragged these fellows in, just to see if old D--' had +anything." Verinder is a book-collector. "By the way, do you know Sammy +Dawkins? You may call him the Boy when you make his better acquaintance +and can forgive him for having chosen to go to Cambridge. Thebes did his +green, unknowing youth engage, and--as the _Oxford Magazine_ gloomily +prophesied--he bowls out Athens in his later age." The Boy laughed +cheerfully and blushed. I felt a natural awe in holding out an +exceedingly dusty hand to an athlete whose fame had already shaken the +Antipodes. But it is the way of young giants to be amiable; and indeed +this one saluted me with a respect which he afterwards accounted for +ingenuously enough--"He always felt like that towards a man who had +written a book: it seemed to him a tremendous thing to have done, don't +you know?" + +I thought to myself that half an hour in Mr. D--'s shop (which contains +new books as well as old) would correct his sense of the impressiveness of +the feat. Indeed, I read a dawning trouble in the glance he cast around +the shelves. "It takes a fellow's breath away," he confessed. "Such a +heap of them! But then I've never been to the British Museum." + +"Then," said I, "you must be employing researchers for the book you are +writing." + +"What?" he protested. "_Me_ writing a book? Not likely!" + +"An article for some magazine, then?" + +"Not a line." + +"Well, at least you have been standing for your photograph, to illustrate +some book on Cricket that another fellow is writing." + +He laughed. + +"You have me there. Yes, I've been photographed in the act of bowling-- +'Before' and 'After': quite like Somebody's Hair Restorer." + +"Well," said I, "and I wish you had contributed to the letterpress, too. +For the wonder to me is, not that you cricketers write books (for all the +world wants to read them), but that you do it so prodigiously well." + +"Oh," said he, "you mean Ranji! But he's a terror." + +"I was thinking of him, of course; but of others as well. Here, for +instance, is a book I have just bought, or rather an instalment of one: +_The Encyclopaedia of Sport_, edited by the Earl of Suffolk and Berkshire, +Mr. Hedley Peek, and Mr. Aflalo, published by Messrs. Lawrence and Bullen: +Part IV., CHA to CRO. I turn to the article on Cricket, and am referred +'for all questions connected with fast bowling, and for many questions +associated with medium and slow' to 'the following paper by Tom +Richardson.'" + +"Tom Richardson ought to know," put in Grayson. + +"Good Heavens!" said I, "I am not disputing that! But I remember Ruskin's +insisting--I think in _Sesame and Lilies_--that no true artist ever talks +much of his art. The greatest are silent. 'The moment,' says Ruskin, +'a man can really do his work he becomes speechless about it. All words +become idle to him--all theories.' And he goes on to ask, in his +vivacious way, 'Does a bird theorise about building its nest?' +Well, as to that one cannot be sure. But I take it we may call Richardson +a true artist?" + +"Certainly we may." + +"And allow that he can really do his work?" + +"Rather!" + +"Then it seems to me that Ruskin's rule may apply to other arts, but not +to Cricket. For here is Richardson not only talking about fast bowling, +but expressing himself with signal ease and precision. Listen to this, +for instance:-- + + "'A ball is said to _break_ when, on touching the ground, it deviates + sharply from its original line of flight.' + +"And again:--" + + "'A ball is said to have 'spin' on it when it gains an acceleration of + pace, not necessarily a variation of direction, on touching the + ground.' + +"It would be hard, I think, to improve upon these definitions. But let me +satisfy you that I was not exaggerating when I spoke of the dignity of +Mr. Richardson's English style:-- + + "'The bowler, whether born or made, should cultivate and acquire a + high action and a good swing of arm and body, as such a delivery will + make the ball rise quickly and perpendicularly from the pitch; but + the action must at all costs be easy and free, qualities which + neither imitation nor education must allow to disappear.' + +"We often hear complaints--and reasonable ones for the most part--that the +wage given to first-class professional cricketers is no longer adequate. +But one of the pet arguments for increasing it is that their employment +begins and ends with the summer. Now, I certainly think that, while +bowlers write in this fashion, they can have little or nothing to dread +from the winter months." + +"I declare," said Grayson, "I believe you are jealous!" + +"Well, and why not? For, mark you, Mr. Richardson's is no singular case, +of which we might say--to comfort ourselves--that the Goddess of Cricket, +whom he serves so mightily, has touched his lips and inspired him for a +moment. Turn over these pages. We poor novelists, critics, men of +letters, have no such paper, such type, as are lavished on the experts who +write here upon their various branches of sport. _Our_ efforts are not +illustrated by the Swan Engraving Company. And the rub for us is that +these gentlemen deserve it all! I am not going to admit--to you, at any +rate--that their subjects are of higher interest than ours, or of more +importance to the world. But I confess that, as a rule, they make theirs +more interesting. When Mr. C. B. Fry discourses about Long Jumping, or +Mr. W. Ellis about Coursing, or Mr. F. C. J. Ford upon Australian Cricket, +there are very few novelists to whom I had rather be listening. It cannot +be mere chance that makes them all so eloquent; nor is it that they have +all risen together to the height of a single great occasion; for though +each must have felt it a great occasion when he was invited to assist in +this sumptuous work, I remarked a similar eloquence in those who +contributed, the other day, to Messrs. Longmans' 'Badminton Library.' +When sportsmen take to writing admirable English, and peers of the realm +to editing it, I hardly see where we poor men of letters can expect to +come in." + +"The only cure that I can see," said Verinder, "is for Her Majesty to turn +you into peers of the realm. Some of you suggest this from time to time, +and hitherto it has puzzled me to discover why. But if it would qualify +you to edit the writings of sportsmen--" + +"And why not? These books sell: and if aristocracy have its roots in +Commerce, shall not the sale of books count as high as the sale of beer? +The principle has been granted. Already the purveyors of cheap and +wholesome literature are invited to kneel before the Queen, and receive +the _accolade_." + +"She must want to cut Tit-bits out of them," put in the Boy. + +"Of course we must look at the proportion of profit. Hitherto the profits +of beer and literature have not been comparable; but this wonderful boom +in books of sport may redress the balance. Every one buys them. When you +entered I was glancing through a volume of new verse, but without the +smallest intention of buying it. My purchases, you see, are all sporting +works, including, of course, Prince Ranjitsinhji's _Jubilee Book of +Cricket_." + +"Just so," snapped Verinder. "You buy books about sport: we spend an +afternoon in looking on at sport. And so, in one way or another, we +assist at the damnation of the sporting spirit in England." + +When Verinder begins in this style an oration is never far distant. +I walked back with the three to the Temple. On our way he hissed and +sputtered like a kettle, and we had scarcely reached his chamber before he +boiled over in real earnest. + +"We ought never to have been there! It's well enough for the Boy: he has +been playing steadily all the summer, first for Cambridge and afterwards +for his county. Now he has three days off and is taking his holiday. +But Grayson and I--What the deuce have we to do in that galley? +Far better we joined a club down at Dulwich or Tooting and put in a little +honest play, of a week-end, on our own account. We should be crocks, of +course: our cricketing is done. But we should be honest crocks. +At least it is better to take a back row in the performance, and find out +our own weakness, than pay for a good seat at Lord's or the Oval, and be +Connoisseurs of what Abel and Hearne and Brockwell can and cannot do. +If a man wants to sing the praises of cricket as a national game, let him +go down to one of the Public Schools and watch its close or cricket-ground +on a half-holiday: fifteen acres of turf, and a dozen games going on +together, from Big Side down to the lowest form match: from three to four +hundred boys in white flannels--all keen as mustard, and each occupied +with his own game, and playing it to the best of his powers. +_Playing it_--mark you: not looking on. That's the point: and that's what +Wellington meant by saying--if he ever said it--that Waterloo was won upon +the playing-fields at Eton. In my old school if a boy shirked the game he +had a poor time. Say that he shirked it for an afternoon's lawn-tennis: +it was lucky for him if he didn't find his racquet, next day, nailed up on +the pavilion door like a stoat on a gamekeeper's tree. That was the +sporting spirit, sir, if the sporting spirit means something that is to +save England: and we shall not win another Waterloo by enclosing +twenty-two gladiators in a ring of twenty-two thousand loafers, whose only +exercise is to cheer when somebody makes a stroke, howl when some other +body drops a catch, and argue that a batsman was not out when the umpire +has given him 'leg-before.' Even at football matches the crowd has _some_ +chance of taking physical exercise on its own account--by manhandling the +referee when the game is over. Sport? The average subscriber to Lord's +is just as much of a sportsman as the Spaniard who watches a bull-fight, +and just a trifle more of a sportsman than the bar-loafer who backs a +horse he has never clapped eyes on. You may call it Cricket if you like: +I call it assisting at a Gladiatorial Show. True cricket is left to the +village greens." + +"Steady, old man!" protested the Boy. + +"I repeat it. For the spirit of the game you might have gone, a few years +ago, to the Public Schools; but even they are infected now with the +gladiatorial ideal. As it is you must go to the village green; for the +spirit, you understand--not the letter--" + +"I believe you!" chuckled young Dawkins. "Last season I put in an off day +with the villagers at home. We played the nearest market town, and I put +myself on to bowl slows. Second wicket down, in came the fattest man I +ever saw. He was a nurseryman and seedsman in private life, and he fairly +hid the wicket-keep. In the first over a ball of mine got up a bit and +took him in the ab-do-men. 'How's that?' I asked. 'Well,' said the +umpire, 'I wasn't azackly looking, so I leave it to you. If it hit en in +the paunch, it's 'not out' and the fella must have suffered. But if it +took en in the rear, I reckon it didn't hurt much, and it's 'leg-before.'' +I suppose that is what you would call the 'spirit' of cricket. But, I +say, if you have such a down on Lord's and what you call the gladiatorial +business, why on earth do you go?" + +"Isn't that the very question I've been asking myself?" replied Verinder +testily. + +"Perhaps we have an explanation here," I suggested; for during Verinder's +harangue I had settled myself in the window-seat, and was turning over the +pages of Prince Ranjitsinhji's book. + + "'It is a grand thing for people who have to work most of their time + to have an interest in something or other outside their particular + groove. Cricket is a first-rate interest. The game has developed to + such a pitch that it is worth taking interest in. Go to Lord's and + analyse the crowd. There are all sorts and conditions of men there + round the ropes--bricklayers, bank-clerks, soldiers, postmen, and + stockbrokers. And in the pavilion are Q.C.'s, artists, archdeacons, + and leader-writers. . . .'" + +"Oh, come!" Grayson puts in. "Isn't that rather hard on the stockbroker?" + +"It is what the book says. + + "'Bad men, good men, workers and idlers, all are there, and all at one + in their keenness over the game. . . . Anything that puts very many + different kinds of people on a common ground must promote sympathy + and kindly feelings. The workman does not come away from seeing + Middlesex beating Lancashire, or vice versa, with evil in his heart + against the upper ten; nor the Mayfair _homme de plaisir_ with a + feeling of contempt for the street-bred masses. Both alike are + thinking how well Mold bowled, and how cleanly Stoddart despatched + Briggs's high-tossed slow ball over the awning. Even that cynical + _nil admirari_ lawyer--'" + +I pointed a finger at Verinder. + + "'Even that cynical _nil admirari_ lawyer caught himself cheering + loudly when Sir Timothy planted Hallam's would-be yorker into the + press-box. True, he caught himself being enthusiastic, and broke off + at once--'" + +"When I found it hadn't killed a reporter," Verinder explained. "But I +hope Ranjitsinhji has some better arguments than these if he wants to +defend gladiatorial cricket. At least he allows that a change has come +over the game of late years, and that this change has to be defended?" + +"Yes, he admits the change, and explains how it came about. In the +beginning we had local club cricket pure and simple--the game of your +Village Green, in fact. Out of this grew representative local cricket-- +that is, district or county cricket which flourished along with local club +cricket. Out of county cricket, which in those days was only local +cricket glorified, sprang exhibition or spectacular or gladiatorial +cricket, which lived side by side with, but distinct from, the other. +Finally, exhibition and county cricket merged and became one. And that is +where we are now." + +"Does he explain how exhibition and county cricket came, as he puts it, to +be merged into one?" + +"Yes. The introduction of spectacular cricket (he says) changed the basis +of county cricket considerably. For many years the exhibition elevens and +the counties played side by side; but gradually the former died out, and +the new elements they had introduced into the game were absorbed into +county cricket. The process was gradual, but in the end complete. +The old county clubs and the new ones that from time to time sprang up +added the exhibition side of cricket to the old local basis. The county +clubs were no longer merely glorified local clubs, but in addition +business concerns. They provided popular amusement and good cricket; in +fact, they became what they are now--local in name, and partly local in +reality, but also run upon exhibition or spectacular lines." + +"A truly British compromise! Good business at the bottom of it, and a +touch of local sentiment by way of varnish. For of course the final +excuse for calling an eleven after Loamshire (let us say), and for any +pride a Loamshire man may take in its doings, is that its members have +been bred and trained in Loamshire. But, because any such limitation +would sorely affect the gate-money, we import players from Australia or +Timbuctoo, stick a Loamshire cap with the county arms on the head of each, +and confidently expect our public to swallow the fiction and provide the +local enthusiasm undismayed." + +"My dear Verinder, if you propose to preach rank Chauvinism, I have done. +But I don't believe you are in earnest." + +"In a sense, I am not. My argument would exclude Ranjitsinhji himself +from all matches but a few unimportant ones. I vote for Greater Britain, +as you know: and in any case my best arguments would go down before the +sheer delight of watching him at the wicket. Let the territorial fiction +stand, by all means. Nay, let us value it as the one relic of genuine +county cricket. It is the other side of the business that I quarrel +with." + +"Be good enough to define the quarrel." + +"Why, then, I quarrel with the spectacular side of the New Cricket; which, +when you come to look into it, is the gate-money side. How does +Ranjitsinhji defend it?" + +"Let me see. 'Its justification is the pleasure it provides for large +numbers of the public.'" + +"Quite so: the bricklayer and the stockbroker by the ropes, and the +cynical lawyer in the pavilion! But I prefer to consider the interests of +the game." + +"'From a purely cricket point of view,' he goes on, 'not much can be said +against it.'" + +"Let us inquire into that. The New Cricket is a business concern: it +caters for the bricklayer, the stockbroker, and the whole crowd of +spectators. Its prosperity depends on the attraction it offers them. +To attract them it must provide first-class players, and the county that +cannot breed first-class players is forced to hire them. This is costly; +but again the cash comes out of the spectators' pockets, in subscriptions +and gate-money. Now are you going to tell me that those who pay the piper +will refrain from calling the tune? Most certainly they will not. +More and more frequently in newspaper reports of cricket-matches you find +discussions of what is 'due to the public.' If stumps, for some reason or +other, are drawn early, it is hinted that the spectators have a grievance; +a captain's orders are canvassed and challenged, and so is the choice of +his team; a dispute between a club and its servants becomes an affair of +the streets, and is taken up by the press, with threats and +counter-threats. In short, the interest of the game and the interest of +the crowd may not be identical; and whereas a captain used to consider +only the interest of the game, he is now obliged to consider both. +Does Ranjitsinhji point this out?" + +"He seems, at any rate, to admit it; for I find this on page 232, in his +chapter upon 'Captaincy':-- + + "'The duties of a captain vary somewhat according to the kind of match + in which his side is engaged, and to the kind of club which has + elected him. To begin with, first-class cricket, including + representative M.C.C., county and university matches, is quite + different from any other--partly because the results are universally + regarded as more important, partly _because certain obligations + towards the spectators have to be taken into consideration. + The last point applies equally to any match which people pay to come + to see_. . . . With regard to gate-money matches. The captains of + the two sides engaged are, during the match, responsible for + everything in connection with it. _They are under an obligation to + the public to see that the match is played in such a way as the + public has a reasonable right to expect_.'" + +"And pray," demanded Verinder, "what are these 'obligations towards the +spectators,' and 'reasonable rights' of the public?" + +"Well, I suppose the public can reasonably demand punctuality in starting +play; a moderate interval for luncheon and between innings; and that +stumps shall not be drawn, nor the match abandoned, before the time +arranged, unless circumstances make it absolutely necessary." + +"And who is to be judge of these circumstances." + +"The captain, I suppose." + +"In theory, yes; but he has to satisfy the crowd. It is the crowd's +'reasonable right' to be satisfied; and by virtue of it the crowd becomes +the final judge. It allows the captain to decide, but will barrack him if +displeased with his decision. Moreover, you have given me examples to +illustrate this 'reasonable right,' but you have not defined it. +Now I want to know precisely how far it extends, and where it ceases. +Does Ranjitsinhji provide this definition?" + +"No," said I; "I cannot find that he does." + +"To be sure he does not; and for the simple reason that these claims on +the side of the public are growing year by year. Already no one can say +how much they cover, and assuredly no one can say where they are likely to +stop. You observe that our author includes even University matches under +the head of exhibition cricket, in which obligations towards the +spectators have to be taken into account. You remember the scene at +Lord's in 1893 when Wells purposely bowled no-balls; and again in 1896 +when Shine bowled two no-balls to the boundary and then a ball which went +for four byes, the object in each case being to deprive Oxford of the +follow-on. This policy was hotly discussed; and luckily the discussion +spent itself on the question whether play could be at the same time within +the laws and clean contrary to the ethics of cricket. But there was also +a deal of talk about what was 'due to the public'; talk which would have +been altogether wide of the mark in the old days, when Oxford and +Cambridge met to play a mere friendly match and the result concerned them +alone." + +"And is this," I asked, "the sum of your indictment?" + +"Yes, I think that is all. And surely it is enough." + +"Then, as I make out, your chief objections to spectacular cricket are +two. You hold that it gives vast numbers of people a false idea that they +are joining in a sport when in truth they are doing no more than look on. +And you contend that as the whole institution resolves itself more and +more into a paid exhibition, the spectators will tend more and more to +direct the development of the game; whereas cricket in your opinion should +be uninfluenced by those who are outside the ropes?" + +"That is my case." + +"And I think, my dear Verinder, it is a strong one. But there is just one +little point which you do not appear to have considered. And I was coming +to it just now--or rather Prince Ranjitsinhji was coming to it--when you +interrupted us. 'From a purely cricket point of view,' he was saying, +'not much can be said against exhibition cricket.' And in the next +sentence he goes on: 'At any rate it promotes skill in the game and keeps +up the standard of excellence.'" + +"To be sure it does that." + +"And cricket is played by the best players to-day with more skill than it +was by the best players of twenty or forty years ago?" + +"Yes, I believe that; in spite of all we hear about the great Alfred Mynn +and other bygone heroes." + +"Come then," said I, "tell me, Is Cricket an art?" + +"Decidedly it is." + +"Then Cricket, like other arts, should aim at perfection?" + +"I suppose so." + +"And that will be the highest aim of Cricket--its own perfection? And its +true lovers should welcome whatever helps to make it perfect?" + +"I see what you are driving at," said he. "But Cricket is a social art, +and must be judged by the good it does to boys and men. You, I perceive, +make it an art-in-itself, and would treat it as the gardeners treat a fine +chrysanthemum, nipping off a hundred buds to feed and develop a single +perfect bloom." + +"True: we must consider it also as a social art. But, my dear fellow, are +you not exaggerating the destruction necessary to produce the perfect +bloom? You talk of the crowd at Lord's or the Oval as if all these +thousands were diverted from honest practice of the game to the ignoble +occupation of looking on; whereas two out of three of them, were this +spectacle not provided, would far more likely be attending a horse-race, +or betting in clubs and public-houses. The bricklayer, the stockbroker, +the archdeacon, by going to see Lockwood bowl, depopulate no village +green. You judge these persons by yourself, and tell yourself +reproachfully that but for this attraction _you_, John Verinder, would be +creditably perspiring at a practice-net in Tooting or Dulwich; whereas, +the truth is--" + +"Why are you hesitating?" + +"Because it is not a very pleasant thing to say. But the truth is, your +heart and your conscience in this matter of athletics are a little younger +than your body." + +"You mean that I am getting on for middle age." + +"I mean that, though you talk of it, you will never subscribe to that +suburban club. You will marry; you will be made a judge: you will attend +cricket matches, and watch from the pavilion while your son takes block +for his first score against the M.C.C. + + "And when with envy Time transported, + Shall think to rob us of our joys, + I, with my girls (if I ever have any), will sit on the top of a drag + (if I ever acquire one) and teach them at what to applaud, + While you go a-batting with your boys." + +Verinder pulled a wry face, and the Boy smacked him on the back and +exhorted him to "buck up." + +"And the round world will go on as before, and the sun will patrol Her +Majesty's dominions, and still where the Union Jack floats he will pass +the wickets pitched and white-flannelled Britons playing for all they are +worth, while men of subject races keep the score-sheet. And still when he +arrives at this island he will look down on green closes and approve what +we all allow to be one of the most absolutely gracious sights on earth-- +the ordered and moving regiments of schoolboys at cricket. Grayson, +reach round to that shelf against which your chair is tilted; take down +poor Lefroy's poems, and read us that sonnet of his, 'The Bowler.'" + +Grayson found the book and the place, and read:-- + + "Two minutes' rest till the next man goes in! + The tired arms lie with every sinew slack + On the mown grass. Unbent the supple back, + And elbows apt to make the leather spin + Up the slow bat and round the unwary shin,-- + In knavish hands a most unkindly knack; + But no guile shelters under the boy's black + Crisp hair, frank eyes, and honest English skin. + Two minutes only! Conscious of a name, + The new man plants his weapon with profound + Long-practised skill that no mere trick may scare. + Not loth, the rested lad resumes the game: + The flung ball takes one maddening, tortuous bound, + And the mid-stump three somersaults in air!" + +"Topping!" the Boy ejaculated. "Who wrote it?" + +"His name was Lefroy. He died young. He left Oxford a few years before +we went up. And I think," continued Verinder, musing, "that I, who detest +making acquaintances, would give at this moment a considerable sum to have +known him. Well," he continued, turning to me and puffing at his pipe, +"so you warn Grayson and me that we must prepare to relinquish these and +all the other delights sung by Lefroy and Norman Gale and that other +poet--anonymous, but you know the man--in his incomparable parody of +Whitman: 'the perfect feel of a fourer'-- + + "'The thousand melodious cracks, delicious cracks, the responsive + echoes of my comrades and the hundred thence resulting runs, + passionately yearned for, never, never again to be forgotten. + + "'Overhead meanwhile the splendid silent sun, blending all, fusing + all, bathing all in floods of soft ecstatic perspiration.' + +"--To all this we must say good-bye. And what do you offer us in +exchange?" + +"Merely the old consolation that life is short, art is long; that while +you grow old, cricket in other hands will be working out its perfection, +and your son, when you have one, will start with higher ideals than you +ever dreamed of." + +"And this perfection--will it ever be attained?" + +"I dare say never. For perhaps we may say after Plato, and without +irreverence, that the pattern of perfect cricket is laid up somewhere in +the skies, and out of man's reach. But between it and ordinary cricket we +may set up a copy of perfection, as close as man can make it, and, by +little and little, closer every year. This copy will be preserved, and +cared for, and advanced, by those professional cricketers against whom the +unthinking have so much to say; by these and by the few amateurs who, as +time goes on, will be found able to bear the strain. For the search after +perfection is no light one, and will admit of no half-hearted service. +I say nothing here of material rewards, beyond reminding you that your +professional cricketer is poorly paid in comparison with an inferior +singer of the music-halls, although he gives twice as much pleasure as +your _lion comique_, and of a more innocent kind. But he does more than +this. He feeds and guards the flame of art; and when his joints are stiff +and his vogue is past, he goes down as groundman and instructor to a +public school, and imparts to a young generation what knowledge he can of +the high mysteries whose servant he has been: quite like the philosopher +in the _Republic_--" + +"Steady on!" interposed Grayson. "How on earth will the Boy stand up to +Briggs' bowling if you put these notions in his head? He'll be +awe-struck, and begin to fidget with his right foot." + +"Oh, fire ahead!" said that cheerful youth. He had possessed himself of +Prince Ranjitsinhji's book and coiled himself comfortably into a wicker +chair.--"You're only rotting, I know. And you've passed over the most +important sentence in the whole book. Listen to this: 'There are very few +newspaper readers who do not turn to the cricket column first when the +morning journal comes; who do not buy a halfpenny evening paper to find +out how many runs W.G. or Bobby Abel has made.' That's the long and short +of the matter. Verinder, which do you read first in your morning paper-- +the Foreign Intelligence or the Cricket News?" + + + THE SECOND DIALOGUE. 1905. + +A few days ago--to be precise, on Saturday the 24th of this month--my +friend Verinder reminded me of the long-past conversation. We had met by +appointment at Paddington to travel down to Windsor for the second day of +the Eton and Winchester match, taking with us (or rather, being taken by) +a youngster whom we call The Infant. The Infant, who talks little save in +the bosom of his family, and even so preserves beneath his talk that fine +reticence of judgment which most adorns the age of fifteen, not +unfrequently surprises me by his experiments in the art of living. +On this occasion, while I was engaged in the booking-office and Verinder +in scanning the shelves of Messrs. Smith's bookstall, he had found our +train, chosen our compartment, and laid out twopence in four halfpenny +papers, which he spread on the cushions by way of reserving our seats. + +"But why four," I asked, "seeing there are but three of us?" + +"It will give us more room," he answered simply. + +He had hoped, I doubt not, by this devise to retain the whole compartment; +but the hope was soon and abruptly frustrated by a tall, well-dressed and +pompous man who came striding down the platform while we idled by the +door, and thrusting past us almost before we could give way, entered the +compartment, dropped into a corner seat, tossed his copy of _The Times_ on +to the seat opposite, took off his top-hat, examined it, replaced it when +satisfied of its shine, drew out a spare handkerchief, opened it, flicked +a few specks of dust from his patent-leather boots, looked up while +reaching across for _The Times_, recognised me with a nod and a "Good +morning!" and buried himself in his paper. + +I on my part, almost before glancing at his face, had recognised him by +his manner for a personage next to whom it has been my lot to sit at one +or two public banquets. I will call him Sir John Crang. He is a +K.C.M.G., a Colonial by birth and breeding, a Member of Parliament, and a +person of the sort we treat in these days with consideration. Since the +second year of Jubilee (in which he was knighted) he and his kind have +found themselves at ease in Sion, and of his kind he has been perhaps the +most fortunate. In his public speeches he alludes to himself humorously +as a hustler. He has married a wealthy lady, in every other respect too +good for him, entertains largely at dinners which should be private but +are reported in the press, and advocates conscription for the youth of +Great Britain. Upon conscription for his native colony, as upon any other +of its duties towards Imperial defence, if you question him, you will find +him sonorously evasive. + +The Infant, accustomed to surprise at the extent of my acquaintance, +gazed at him politely for a moment as we took our seats and the train +moved out of the station. I noted a veiled disapproval in his eye as he +picked up a newspaper, and at that moment Verinder, who had picked up +another, emitted a noise not unlike the snort of the engine as it gathered +speed. I glanced at him in some apprehension. Verinder's bearing toward +strangers is apt to be brutal, and by an instinct acquired as his +companion on old reading-parties I was prepared to be apologetic. + +His ill-humour, however, had nothing to do with Sir John Crang. He had +laid the newspaper across his knee, and was pointing to it with a scornful +forefinger. + +"Look here," he said. "Do you remember a talk we had some years ago--you +and I and Grayson? It started in D--'s shop one afternoon after a Kent +and Middlesex match. You ought to remember, for I picked up the _Pall +Mall Magazine_ a month later and found you had made copy out of it." + +"To be sure," said I. "We discussed cricket, and a number of reputations +then well known, about which the public troubles itself no longer. +Let us try their names upon The Infant here, and discover with how many of +them he is acquainted." + +"We discussed," said Verinder, "the vulgarisation of cricket. You made +me say some hard things about it, but be hanged to me if anything I +prophesied then came near to _this_! Listen-- + + "'I suppose I may say that, after some luck at starting, I played a + pretty good innings: but a total of 240 is poor enough for first + knock on such a wicket as Hove, and, as things stand, the omens are + against us. However, as I write this wire the clouds are gathering, + and there's no denying that a downfall during the night may help our + chances.'" + +"What on earth are you reading?" I asked. + +"Stay a moment. Here's another-- + + "'With Jones's wicket down, the opposition declared, somewhat to the + annoyance of the crowd: and indeed, with Robinson set and playing the + prettiest strokes all around the wicket, I must admit that they + voiced a natural disappointment. They had paid their money, and, + after the long period of stonewalling which preceded the tea + interval, a crowded hour of glorious life would have been + exhilarating, and perhaps was no more than their due. + Dickson, however, took his barracking good-humouredly. Towards the + end Jones had twice appealed against the light.'" + +"I suppose," said I, "that is how cricket strikes the Yellow Press. +Who are the reporters?" + +"The reporters are the captains of two county teams--two first-class +county teams; and they are writing of a match actually in progress at this +moment. Observe A.'s fine sense of loyalty to a captain's duty in his +published opinion that his side is in a bad way. Remark his chivalrous +hope for a sodden wicket to-morrow." + +"It is pretty dirty," I agreed. + +Verinder snorted. "I once tried to kill a man at mid-on for wearing a +pink shirt. But these fellows! They ought to wear yellow flannels." + +"What, by the way, is the tea interval?" I asked. + +"It is an interval," answered Verinder seriously, "in which the opposing +captains adjourn to the post office and send telegrams about themselves +and one another." + +"Excuse me," put in Sir John Crang, looking up from his _Times_ and +addressing me, "but I quite agree with what you and your friend are +saying. Interest in the Australian tour, for instance, I can understand; +it promotes good feeling, and anything that draws closer the bonds of +interest between ourselves and the colonies is an imperial asset." + +"Good Lord!" murmured Verinder. + +Sir John fortunately did not hear him. "But I agree with you," he +continued, "in condemning this popular craze for cricket _per se_, which +is after all but a game with a ball and some sticks. I will not go the +length of our imperial poet and dub its votaries 'flannelled fools.' +That was poetical license, eh? though pardonable under the circumstances. +But, as he has said elsewhere, 'How little they know of England who only +England know.'" (At this point I reached out a foot and trod hard on +Verinder's toe.) "And to the broader outlook--I speak as a pretty wide +traveller--this insular absorption in a mere game is bewildering." + +"Infant!" said Verinder suddenly, still under repression of my foot, +"What are you reading?" + +The Infant looked up sweetly, withdrawing himself from his paper, however, +by an effort. + +"There's a Johnny here who tells you how Bosanquet bowls with what he +calls his 'over-spin.' He has a whole column about it with figures, just +like Euclid; and the funny thing is, Bosanquet writes just after to say +that the Johnny knows nothing about it." + +"Abandoned child," commanded Verinder, "pass me the paper. You are within +measurable distance of studying cricket for its own sake, and will come to +a bad end." + +Within twenty seconds he and The Infant were intently studying the +diagrams, which Verinder demonstrated to be absurd, while Sir John, a +little huffed by his manner, favoured me with a vision of England as she +should be, with her ploughshares beaten into Morris Tubes. + +In the midst of this discourse Verinder looked up. + + +"Let us not despair of cricket," says he. "She has her victories, but as +yet no prizes to be presented with public speeches." + +"Curious fellow that friend of yours," said Sir John, as he took leave of +me on Windsor platform. "Yes, yes, I saw how you humoured him: but why +should he object to a man's playing cricket in a pink shirt?" + +He went on his way toward the Castle, while we turned our faces for Agar's +Plough and the best game in the world. + + + +JULY. + + +Our Parliamentary Candidate--or Prospective Candidate, as we cautiously +call him--has been visiting us, and invited me to sit on the platform and +give the speeches my moral support. I like our candidate, who is young, +ardent, good-natured, and keeps his temper when he is heckled; seems, +indeed, to enjoy being heckled, and conciliates his opponents by that +bright pugnacity which a true Briton loves better than anything else in +politics. I appreciate, too, the compliment he pays me. But I wish he +would not choose to put his ardour in competition with Sirius and the +dog-days; and I heartily wish he had not brought down Mr. Blank, M.P., +to address us in his support. + +Mr. Blank and I have political opinions which pass, for convenience, under +a common label. Yet there are few men in England whose attitude of mind +towards his alleged principles I more cordially loathe. Not to put too +fine a point upon it, I think him a hypocrite. But he has chosen the side +which is mine, and I cannot prevent his saying a hundred things which I +believe. + +We will suppose that Mr. Blank is a far honester fellow than I am able to +think him. Still, and at the best, he is a sort of composite photograph +of your average Member of Parliament--the type of man to whom Great +Britain commits the direction of her affairs and, by consequence, her +well-doing and her well-being and her honour. Liberal or Conservative, +are not the features pretty much the same? a solid man, well past fifty, +who has spent the prime of his life in business and withdrawn from it with +a good reputation and a credit balance equally satisfactory to himself and +his bankers. Or it may be that he has not actually retired but has turned +to politics to fill up those leisure hours which are the reward or +vexation (as he chooses to look at them) of a prosperous man of business; +for, as Bagehot pointed out, the life of a man of business who employs his +own capital, and employs it nearly always in the same way, is by no means +fully employed. "If such a man is very busy, it is a sign of something +wrong. Either he is working at detail, which subordinates would do +better, or he is engaged in too many speculations." In consequence our +commerce abounds with men of great business ability and experience who, +being short of occupation, are glad enough to fill up their time with work +in Parliament, as well as proud to write M.P. after their names. +For my part I can think of nothing better calculated to reassure anyone +whose dreams are haunted by apprehensions of wild-cat legislative schemes, +or the imminence of a Radical millennium, than five minutes' contemplation +of our champions of progress as they recline together, dignified and +whiskered and bland, upon the benches of St. Stephen's. + +But let us proceed with our portrait, which I vow is a most pleasing one. +Our typical legislator is of decent birth, or at least hopeful of +acquiring what he rightly protests to be but 'the guinea stamp' by +judiciously munificent contributions to his party's purse; honest and +scrupulous in dealing; neither so honest nor so scrupulous in thinking; +addicted to phrases and a trifle too impatient of their meaning, yet of +proved carefulness in drawing the line between phrase and practice; a +first-rate committeeman (and only those who have sat long in committee can +sound the depths of this praise); locally admired; with much _bonhomie_ +of manner, backed by a reputation for standing no nonsense; good-tempered, +honestly anxious to reconcile conflicting interests and do the best for +the unconflicting ones of himself and his country; but above all a man who +knows where to stop. I vow (I repeat) he makes a dignified and amiable +figure. One can easily understand why people like to be represented by +such a man. It gives a feeling of security--a somewhat illusory one, I +believe; and security is the first instinct of a state. One can +understand, why the exhortations, dehortations, precepts, and instructions +of parents, preachers, schoolmasters tend explicitly and implicitly to the +reproduction of this admired bloom. + +Yet one may whisper that it has--shall we say?--its failings; and its +failings are just those which are least to be commended to the emulation +of youth. It is, for instance, constitutionally timid. Violent action of +any kind will stampede it in a panic, and, like the Countess in _Evan +Harrington_, it "does not ruffle well." It betrays (I think) ill-breeding +in its disproportionate terror whenever an anarchist bomb explodes, and in +the ferocity of its terror it can be crueller than the assailant. +"My good people," it provokes one to say, "by all means stamp out these +dangers, but composedly, as becomes men conscious of their strength. +Even allowing for the unscrupulousness of your assailant, you have still +nine hundred and ninety-nine out of a thousand of the odds in your favour; +and so long as you answer the explosions of weak anarchy by cries +suggestive of the rage of the sheep, you merely raise the uncomfortable +suspicion that, after all, there must be something amiss with a +civilisation which counts you among its most expensive products." + +But in the untroubled hour of prosperity this weakness of breeding is +scarcely less apparent. Our admired bloom is admired rather for not doing +certain things than for doing others. His precepts are cautious and +mainly negative. He does not get drunk (in public at any rate), and he +expends much time and energy in preventing men from getting drunk. But +he does not lead or heartily incite to noble actions, although at times-- +when he has been badly frightened--he is ready to pay men handsomely to do +them. He wins and loses elections on questions of veto. He had rather +inculcate the passive than the active virtues. He prefers temperance and +restraint to energy and resolve. He thinks more of the organisation than +the practice of charity, esteems a penny saved as three halfpence gained, +had liefer detect an impostor than help a deserving man. He is apt to +label all generous emotions as hysterical, and in this he errs; for when a +man calls the generous emotions hysterical he usually means that he would +confuse them with hysterics if they happened to him. + +Now the passive virtues--continence, frugality, and the like--are +desirable, but shade off into mere want of pluck; while the active +virtues--courage, charity, clemency, cheerfulness, helpfulness--are ever +those upon which the elect and noble souls in history have laid the +greater stress. I frankly detest Blank, M.P., because I believe him to be +a venal person, a colourable (and no doubt self-deceiving) imitation of +the type. But, supposing him to be the real thing, I still think that, if +you want a model for your son, you will do better with Sir Philip Sidney. +If ever a man illustrated the beauty of the active virtues in his life and +in his death, that man was Sidney; but he also gave utterance in noble +speech to his belief in them. In the _Apologie for Poetrie_ you will find +none of your art-for-art's-sake chatter: Sidney boldly takes the line that +poetry helps men, and helps them not to well-being only, but to +well-doing, and again helps them to well-doing not merely by teaching +(as moral philosophy does) but by inciting. For an instance-- + + "Who readeth AEneas carrying old Anchises on his back that wisheth not + it were his fortune to perform so-excellent an act?" + +There speaks, anticipating Zutphen, the most perfect knight in our +history. Again-- + + "Truly I have known men that even with reading _Amadis de Gaule_ + (which, God knoweth, wanteth much of a perfect poesy) have found + their hearts moved to the exercise of courtesy, liberality, and + especially courage."-- + +All active virtues be it noted. "We are not damned for doing wrong," +writes Stevenson, "but for not doing right. Christ will never hear of +negative morality: _Thou shalt_ was ever His word, with which He +superseded _Thou shalt not_. To make our morality centre on forbidden +acts is to defile the imagination and to introduce into our judgments of +our fellow-men a secret element of gusto. . . . In order that a man may be +kind and honest it may be needful that he should become a total abstainer: +let him become so then, and the next day let him forget the circumstance. +Trying to be kind and honest will require all his thoughts." Yet how many +times a day will we say 'don't' to our children for once that we say 'do'? +But here I seem to be within reasonable distance of discussing original +sin, and so I return to Mr. Blank. + + +I do not like Mr. Blank; and I disliked his speech the other night so +heartily that it drove me to sit down when I reached home and put my +reflections into verse; into a form of verse, moreover, which (I was +scornfully aware) Mr. Blank would understand as little as the matter of +it. He would think them both impractical. Heaven help the creature! + + CHANT ROYAL OF HIGH VIRTUE. + + Who lives in suit of armour pent, + And hides himself behind a wall, + For him is not the great event, + The garland, nor the Capitol. + And is God's guerdon less than they? + Nay, moral man, I tell thee Nay: + Nor shall the flaming forts be won + By sneaking negatives alone, + By Lenten fast or Ramazan, + But by the challenge proudly thrown-- + _Virtue is that beseems a Man!_ + + God, in His Palace resident + Of Bliss, beheld our sinful ball, + And charged His own Son innocent + Us to redeem from Adam's fall. + --"Yet must it be that men Thee slay." + --"Yea, tho' it must must I obey," + Said Christ,--and came, His royal Son, + To die, and dying to atone + For harlot and for publican. + Read on that rood He died upon-- + _Virtue is that beseems a Man!_ + + And by that rood where He was bent + I saw the world's great captains all + Go riding to the tournament-- + Cyrus the Great and Hannibal, + Caesar of Rome and Attila, + Lord Charlemagne with his array, + Lord Alisaundre of Macedon-- + With flaming lance and habergeon + They passed, and to the rataplan + Of drums gave salutation-- + _Virtue is that beseems a Man!_ + + Had tall Achilles lounged in tent + For aye, and Xanthus neigh'd in stall, + The towers of Troy had ne'er been shent, + Nor stay'd the dance in Priam's hall. + Bend o'er thy book till thou be grey, + Read, mark, perpend, digest, survey-- + Instruct thee deep as Solomon-- + One only chapter thou shalt con, + One lesson learn, one sentence scan, + One title and one colophon-- + _Virtue is that beseems a Man!_ + + High Virtue's hest is eloquent + With spur and not with martingall: + Sufficeth not thou'rt continent: + BE COURTEOUS, BRAVE, AND LIBERAL. + God fashion'd thee of chosen clay + For service, nor did ever say + "Deny thee this," "Abstain from yon," + Save to inure thee, thew and bone, + To be confirmed of the clan + That made immortal Marathon-- + _Virtue is that beseems a Man!_ + + ENVOY. + + Young Knight, the lists are set to-day: + Hereafter shall be long to pray + In sepulture with hands of stone. + Ride, then! outride the bugle blown + And gaily dinging down the van + Charge with a cheer--Set on! Set on! + _Virtue is that beseems a Man!_ + + +A friend to whom I showed these verses remarked that Mr. Blank was indeed +a person who fed his soul upon negatives; but that I possibly did him some +injustice in charging so much of this to timidity, whereas the scent lay +rather in the gusto with which he judged his fellow-men. + +"And, by the way," said he, "is there not some gusto in the scorn with +which you are judging Mr. Blank at this moment?" "Do you remember," I +answered, "how that man, after voting for war the other day, went straight +off to a meeting of the Peace Society and put up a florid appeal to the +Prince of Peace for a time when wars should be no more? Let him be, +however: I do wrong to lose my temper with him. But on this matter of +national timidity I have something to say. . . ." + +I have been reading John Holland's two _Discourses of the Navy_, written +in 1638 and 1659, and published the other day by the Navy Records Society. +The object of Mr. Holland's discourses was to reform the Navy, purge it of +abuses, and strengthen it for the defence of this realm; and I have been +curious to compare his methods with those of our own Navy League, which +has been making such a noise for ten years or so. The first thing I +observe is the attitude of mind in which he approaches his subject:-- + + "If either the honour of a nation, commerce or trust with all nations, + peace at home, grounded upon our enemies' fear or love of us abroad, + and attended with plenty of all things necessary either for the + preservation of the public weal or thy private welfare, be things + worthy thy esteem (though it may be beyond thy shoal conceit) then + next to God and thy King give thy thanks for the same to the Navy. + As for honour, who knows not (that knows anything) that in all + records of late times of actions, chronicled to the everlasting fame + and renown of this nation, still the naval part is the thread that + runs through the whole wooft, the burden of the song, the scope of + the text? . . ." + +He proceeds to enumerate some particular commercial advantages due to our +mastery of the sea, and sums up in these words:-- + + "Suffice it thus far, nothing under God, who doth all, hath brought so + much, so great commerce to this Kingdom as the rightly noble + employments of our navy; a wheel, if truly turned, that sets to work + all Christendom by its motion; a mill, if well extended, that in a + sweet yet sovereign composure contracts the grist of all nations to + its own dominions, and requires only the tribute of its own people, + not for, but towards, its maintenance." + +The eloquence may be turgid, but the attitude is dignified. The man does +not scold; does not terrify. He lays his stress on the benefits of a +strong navy--on the renown it has won for England in the past. He assumes +his readers to be intelligent men, amenable to advice which will help them +to perpetuate this renown and secure these benefits in time to come. +His exordium over, he settles down to an exposition of the abuses which +are impairing our naval efficiency, and suggests reforms, some wisely +conceived, others not so wisely, with the business-like, confident air of +one who knows what he is talking about. + +Now I open the prospectus in which our Navy League started out to make +everyone's flesh creep, and come plump upon language of this sort:-- + + "It is the close, let us suppose, of our second month of war. + The fleet has been neglected, and has been overwhelmed, unready and + unprepared. We have been beaten twice at sea, and our enemies have + established no accidental superiority, but a permanent and + overwhelming one. The telegraph cables have been severed, one and + all; these islands are in darkness."-- + +For presumably the gas-mains, as well as the cables, have been 'severed' +(imposing word!)-- + + --"Under a heavy cloud of woe. Invasion is in the air, our armies + are mustering in the south. We are cut off from the world, and can + only fitfully perceive what is happening. Our liners have been + captured or sunk on the high seas; our ocean tramps are in our + enemies' hands; British trade is dead, killed by the wholesale + ravages of the hostile cruisers. Our ports are insulted or held up + to ransom, when news reaches us from India it is to the effect that + the enemy is before our troops, a native insurrection behind. + Malta has fallen, and our outlying positions are passing from our + hands. Food is contraband, and may not be imported. Amid the jeers + of Europe 'the nation of shopkeepers' is writhing in its death + agony." + +Pretty, is it not? But let us have just a little more. + + "COMMERCIAL COLLAPSE. + + "And what of the internal, of the social position? Consols have + fallen to nearly 30; our vast investments in India have been lost; + trade no longer exists. . . . The railways have no traffic to carry. + . . . Banks and companies are failing daily. . . The East End of + London is clamouring for bread and peace at any price. If we fall, + we fall for ever. . . . The working man has to choose whether he will + have lighter taxation for the moment, starvation and irretrievable + ruin for the future . . ." + +--And so on, till Z stands for Zero, or nothing at all. Or, as the late +Mr. Lear preferred to write:-- + + "Z said, 'Here is a box of Zinc, Get in, my little master! + We'll shut you up; we'll nail you down: we will, my little master! + We think we've all heard quite enough of this your sad disaster!'" + +To speak as seriously as may be, the language is no longer hortatory, like +Holland's, but minatory, even comminatory. It is (as its author would not +deny) the language of panic deliberately employed, a calculated attempt to +strengthen the _materiel_ of the navy at the cost of Englishmen's fears. +Now let me define my feeling towards the Navy League. As an ordinary +British citizen, I must heartily approve its aim of strengthening the navy +and keeping it efficient. As an ordinary reasonable man, I must admit +that its efforts, if rightly directed, may be of great national service. +But language such as I have quoted must (so far as it is not merely +contemptible) be merely demoralising, and anyone who works on the fears of +a nation--and especially of a nation which declines conscription and its +one undoubted advantage of teaching men what war means--does a harm which +is none the less wicked for being incalculable. These Navy Leaguers cry +incessantly for more _material_ strength. They tell us that in material +strength we should at least be equal to any two other countries. +A few months pass, and then, their appetite growing with the terror it +feeds upon, they insist that we must be equal to any three other +countries. Also "it does not appear," they sagely remark, "that Nelson +and his contemporaries left any record as to what the proportion of the +blockading should bear (_sic_) to one blockaded,"--a curious omission of +Nelson's, to be sure! He may perhaps have held that it depended on the +quality of the antagonists. + +To this a few ordinary stupid Britons like myself have always answered +that no amount of _materiel_ can ever replace _morale_; and that all such +panic-making is a mischievous attempt to lower the breed, and the more +mischievous because its mischief may for a while be imperceptible. +We can see our warships growing: we cannot see the stamina decaying; yet +it is our stamina on which we must rely finally in the fatal hour of +trial. We said this, and we were laughed at; insulted as unpatriotic--a +word of which one may say in kindness that it would not so readily leap to +the lips of professional patriots if they were able to understand what it +means and, by consequence, how much it hurts. + +Yes, and behold, along comes Admiral Togo, and at one stroke proves that +we were simply, absolutely and henceforward incontestably right! +What were our little three-power experts doing on the morrow of Togo's +victory? They are making irrelevant noises in the halfpenny press, +explaining how Admiral Togo did it with an inferior force, and in a +fashion that belies all their axioms. But I turn to _The Times_ and I +read:-- + + "The event shows that mere material equality is but as dust in the + balance when weighed in the day of battle against superiority of + moral equipment." + +--Which, when you come to think of it, is precisely what Bacon meant when +he wrote:-- + + "Walled Townes, stored Arcenalls and Armouries, Goodly Races of Horse, + Chariots of Warre, Elephants, Ordnance, Artillery and the like: all + this is but a Sheep in a Lion's skin except the Breed and disposition + of the People be stout and warlike. Nay, Number (it selfe) in Armies + importeth not much where the People is of weake Courage: For + (as _Virgil_ saith) _it never troubles a Wolfe how many the Sheepe + be_." + +Do our friends of the Navy League seriously believe that a principle as +old as humankind can be suddenly upset by the invention of a submarine or +of some novelty in guns? Even in their notions of what material strength +means I hold them to be mistaken. The last resource which a nation ought +to neglect is its financial credit. It was Walpole's long policy of peace +which made possible Pitt's conquests. But I hold with far stronger +conviction that he does wickedly who trades on a nation's cowardice to +raise money for its protection. An old text, my masters! It seems a long +while that some of us were preaching it in vain until Admiral Togo came +along and proved it. + + +I observe that a Member of Parliament for a West of England constituency +(a better fellow than Mr. Blank, too) has been using one of the arguments +with which these precious experts attacked me; that because I sometimes +write novels I cannot be supposed to think seriously on public affairs. +My only wonder is that those who hold this cloistral view of the province +of a man of letters consider him worthy to pay income-tax. + +I pass over some tempting reflections on the queer anomaly that this +prohibition should be addressed (as it so often is) by writers to writers, +by newspaper writers to men who write books, and (so far as a distinction +can be drawn) by men who write in a hurry to men who write deliberately. +I wish to look quietly into the belief on which it rests and to inquire +how that belief was come by. + +There certainly was a time when such a belief would have been laughed at +as scarcely reasonable enough to be worth discussing. And that time, +oddly enough, was almost conterminous with the greatest era of the +world's literature, the greatest era of political discovery, and the +greatest era of Empire-making. The men who made Athens and the men +who made Rome would have disputed (I fear somewhat contemptuously) the +axiom on which my friend the West Country member builds his case. +They held it for axiomatic that the artist and man of letters ought +not to work in cloistral isolation, removed from public affairs, and +indifferent to them; that on the contrary they are direct servants of +their State, and have a peculiar call to express themselves on matters of +public moment. To convince you that I am not advancing any pet theory of +my own let me present it in the words of a grave and judicious student, +Mr. W. J. Courthope, late Professor of Poetry at Oxford:-- + + "The idea of the State lay at the root of every Greek conception of + art and morals. For though, in the view of the philosopher, the + virtue of the good citizen was not always necessarily identical with + the virtue of the individual man, and though, in the city of Athens + at all events, a large amount of life was possible to the individual + apart from public interests, yet it is none the less true that the + life of the individual in every Greek city was in reality moulded by + the customary life, tradition and character, in one intranslatable + word, by the _ethos_ of the State. Out of this native soil grew + that recognised, though not necessarily public, system of education + (_politike paideia_ ), consisting of reading and writing, music + and gymnastic, which Plato and Aristotle themselves accepted as the + basis of the constitution of the State. But this preliminary + education was only the threshold to a subsequent system of political + training, of which, in Athens at least, every citizen had an + opportunity of availing himself by his right to participate in public + affairs; so that, in the view of Pericles, politics themselves were + an instrument of individual refinement. 'The magistrates,' said he, + in his great funeral oration, 'who discharge public trusts, fulfil + their domestic duties also; the private citizen, while engaged in + professional business, has competent knowledge of public affairs; for + we stand alone in regarding the man who keeps aloof from these latter + not as harmless, but as useless. Moreover, we always hear and + pronounce on public matters when discussed by our leaders, or perhaps + strike out for ourselves correct reasonings upon them; far from + accounting discussion an impediment to action, we complain only if we + are not told what is to be done before it becomes our duty to do it.' + + "The strenuous exertion of the faculties of the individual in the + service of the State, described in these eloquent words, reflects + itself in the highest productions of Greek art and literature, and is + the source of that 'political' spirit which every one can detect, + alike in the poems of Homer and the sculpture of the Parthenon, as + the inspiring cause of the noblest efforts of imitation. + It prevailed most strongly through the period between the battle of + Marathon and the battle of Chaeronea, and has left its monuments in + such plays as the _Persae_ and _Eumeuides_ of AEschylus, the + _Antigone_ of Sophocles, the _Clouds_ of Aristophanes, the History + of Thucydides and the Orations of Demosthenes, its last embodiment + being perhaps the famous oath of that orator on the souls of those + who risked their lives at Marathon."--_History of English Poetry_, + vol. i., c 2. + +In the most brilliant age of Greece, then, and of Greek art and letters, +the civic spirit was the inspiring spirit. But as the Greek cities sank +one by one before the Macedonian power and forfeited their liberties, this +civic spirit died for lack of nourishment and exercise, and literature was +driven to feed on itself--which is about the worst thing that can ever +happen to it, and one of the worst things that can happen to a nation. +The old political education gave place to an 'encyclopaedic' education. +The language fell into the hands of grammarians and teachers of rhetoric, +whose inventions may have a certain interest of their own, but--to quote +Mr. Courthope again--no longer reflect the feelings and energies of free +political life. Roman literature drives home the same, or a similar, +moral. "The greatness of Rome was as entirely civic in its origin as that +of any Greek city, and, like the Greek cities, Rome in the days of her +freedom, and while she was still fighting for the mastery, preserved a +system of political education, both in the hearth and the Senate, which +was suited to her character. Cato, the Censor, according to Plutarch, + 'wrote histories for his son, with his own hand, in large characters; so +that without leaving his father's house he might gain a knowledge of the +illustrious actions of the ancient Romans and the customs of his country': +and what is of importance to observe," adds Mr. Courthope, "is that, even +after the introduction of Greek culture, Cato's educational ideal was felt +to be the foundation of Roman greatness by the orators and poets who +adorned the golden age of Latin literature." The civic spirit was at once +the motive and vitalising force of Cicero's eloquence, and still acts as +its antiseptic. It breaks through the conventional forms of Virgil's +Eclogues and Georgics, and declares itself exultantly in such passages as +the famous eulogy-- + + "Sed neque Medorum silvae, ditissima terra, + Nec pulcher Ganges atque auro turbidus Hermus + Laudibus Italiae certent. . . ." + +It closes the last Georgic on a high political note. Avowedly it inspires +the _AEneid_. It permeates all that Horace wrote. These two poets never +tire of calling on their countrymen to venerate the Roman virtues, to hold +fast by the old Sabine simplicity and: + + "Pure religion breathing household laws." + +Again, when the mischief was done, and Rome had accepted the Alexandrine +model of education and literary culture, Juvenal reinvoked the old spirit +in his denunciation of the hundred and more trivialities which the new +spirit engendered. It was a belated, despairing echo. You cannot expect +quite the same shout from a man who leads a forlorn sortie, and a man who +defends a proud citadel while yet it is merely threatened. But, allowing +for changed circumstances, you will find that Juvenal's is just the old +civic spirit turned to fierceness by despair. And he strikes out +unerringly enough at the ministers of Rome's decline--at the poets who +chatter and the rhetoricians who declaim on merely 'literary' topics; the +rich who fritter away life on private luxuries and the pursuit of trivial +aims; the debased Greek with his "smattering of encyclopaedic knowledge," +but no devotion to the city in which he only hopes to make money. + +Now is this civic spirit in literature (however humble its practitioners) +one which England can easily afford to despise? So far as I know, it has +been reserved for an age of newspapers to declare explicitly that such a +spirit is merely mischievous; that a poet ought to be a man of the study, +isolated amid the stir of passing events, serenely indifferent to his +country's fortunes, or at least withholding his gift (allowed, with +magnificent but unconscious irony, to be 'divine') from that general +contribution to the public wisdom in which journalists make so brave a +show. He may, if he have the singular luck to be a Laureate, be allowed +to strike his lyre and sing of an _accouchement_; this being about the +only event on which politicians and journalists have not yet claimed the +monopoly of offering practical advice. But farther he may hardly go: and +all because a silly assertion has been repeated until second-rate minds +confuse it with an axiom. People of a certain class of mind seem capable +of believing anything they see in print, provided they see it often. +For these, the announcement that somebody's lung tonic possesses a +peculiar virtue has only to be repeated at intervals along a railway line, +and with each repetition the assurance becomes more convincing, until +towards the journey's end it wears the imperativeness almost of a revealed +truth. And yet no reasonable inducement to belief has been added by any +one of these repetitions. The whole thing is a psychological trick. +The moral impressiveness of the first placard beyond Westbourne Park +Station depends entirely on whether you are travelling from London to +Birmingham, or from Birmingham to London. A mind which yields itself to +this illusion could probably, with perseverance, be convinced that pale +pills are worth a guinea a box for pink people, were anyone interested in +enforcing such a harmless proposition: and I have no doubt that the Man in +the Street has long since accepted the reiterated axiom that a poet should +hold aloof from public affairs, having no more capacity than a child for +understanding their drift. + +Yet, as a matter of fact, the cry is just a cant party trick, used by each +party in its turn. Mr. Kipling writes "Cleared," Mr. Alfred Austin hymns +"Jameson's Ride," and forthwith the Liberals lift hands and voices in +horror. Mr. Watson denounces the Armenian massacres or the Boer War, and +the Unionists can hardly find words to express their pained surprise. +Mr. Swinburne inveighed against Irishmen, and delighted a party; inveighed +against the Czar, and divided a whole Front Bench between shocked +displeasure and half-humorous astonishment that a poet should have any +opinions about Russia, or, having some, should find anybody to take them +seriously. It is all cant, my friends--nothing but cant; and at its base +lies the old dispute between principle and casuistry. If politics and +statecraft rest ultimately on principles of right and wrong, then a poet +has as clear a right as any man to speak upon them: as clear a right now +as when Tennyson lifted his voice on behalf of the Fleet, or Wordsworth +penned his 'Two Voices' sonnet, or Milton denounced the massacres at +Piedmont. While this nation retains a conscience, its poets have a clear +right and a clear call to be the voice of that conscience. They may err, +of course; they may mistake the voice of party for the voice of +conscience: 'Jameson's Ride' and 'The Year of Shame'--one or both--may +misread that voice. Judge them as severely as you will by their rightness +or wrongness, and again judge them by their merits or defects as +literature. Only do not forbid the poet to speak and enforce the moral +conviction that is in him. + +If, on the other hand, politics be a mere affair of casuistry; or worse--a +mere game of opportunism in which he excels who hits on the cleverest +expedient for each several crisis as it occurs; then indeed you may bid +the poet hush the voice of principle, and listen only to the sufficiently +dissonant instruction of those specialists at the game who make play in +Parliament and the press. If politics be indeed that base thing connoted +by the term "_drift_ of public affairs," then the axiom rests on wisdom +after all. The poet cannot be expected to understand the "drift," and had +better leave it to these specialists in drifting. + +But if you search, you will find that poetry--rare gift as it is, and +understood by so few--has really been exerting an immense influence on +public opinion all the while that we have been deluged with assertions of +this unhappy axiom. Why, I dare to say that one-half of the sense of +Empire which now dominates political thought in Great Britain has been the +creation of her poets. The public, if it will but clear its mind of cant, +is grateful enough for such poetry as Mr. Kipling's 'Flag of England' and +Mr. Henley's 'England, my England'; and gratefully recognises that the +spirit of these songs has passed on to thousands of men, women, and +children, who have never read a line of Mr. Henley's or Mr. Kipling's +composition. + +As for the axiom, it is merely the complement of that 'Art for Art's sake' +chatter which died a dishonoured death but a short while ago, and which it +is still one of the joys of life to have outlived. You will remember how +loftily we were assured that Art had nothing to do with morality: that the +novelist, e.g. who composed tales of human conduct, had no concern with +ethics--that is to say with the principles of human conduct: that +"Art's only business was to satisfy Art," and so forth. Well, it is all +over now, and packed away in the rag-bag of out-worn paradoxes; and we are +left to enjoy the revived freshness of the simple truth that an artist +exists to serve his art, and his art to serve men and women. + + + +AUGUST. + + +As it was reported to me, the story went that one Sunday morning in August +a family stood in a window not far from this window of mine--the window of +an hotel coffee-room--and debated where to go for divine worship. +They were three: father, mother, and daughter, arrived the night before +from the Midlands, to spend their holiday. "The fisher-folk down here are +very religious," said the father, contemplating the anchored craft-- +yachts, trading-steamers, merchantmen of various rigs and nationalities-- +in which he supposed the native population to go a-fishing on week-days: +for he had been told in the Midlands that we were fisher-folk. +"Plymouth Brethren mostly, I suppose," said the wife: "we changed at +Plymouth." "Bristol." "Was it Bristol? Well, Plymouth was the last big +town we stopped at: I am sure of _that_. And this is on the same coast, +isn't it?" "What _are_ Plymouth Brethren?" the daughter asked. +"Oh, well, my dear, I expect they are very decent, earnest people. +It won't do us any harm to attend their service, if they have one. +What I say is, when you're away on holiday, do as the Romans do." +The father had been listening with an unprejudiced air, as who should say, +"I am here by the seaside for rest and enjoyment." He called to the +waiter, "What places of worship have you?" The waiter with professional +readiness hinted that he had some to suit all tastes, "Church of England, +Wesleyan, Congregational, Bible Christian--" "Plymouth Brethren?" +The waiter had never heard of them: they had not, at any rate, been asked +for within his recollection. He retired crestfallen. "That's the worst +of these waiters," the father explained: "they get 'em down for the season +from Lord knows where, Germany perhaps, and they can tell you nothing of +the place." "But this one is not a German, and he told me last night he'd +been here for years." "Well, the question is, Where we are to go? +Here, Ethel,"--as a second daughter entered, buttoning her gloves--"your +mother can't make up her mind what place of worship to try." +"Why, father, how can you _ask?_ We must go to the Church, of course--I +saw it from the 'bus--and hear the service in the fine old Cornish +language." + +Now, I suspect that the friend to whom I am indebted for this story +introduced a few grace-notes into his report. But it is a moral story in +many respects, and I give it for the sake of the one or two morals which +may be drawn from it. In the first place, absurd as these people appear, +their ignorance but differs by a shade or two from the knowledge of +certain very learned people of my acquaintance. That is to say, they know +about as much concerning the religion of this corner of England to-day as +the archaeologists, for all their industry, know concerning the religion of +Cornwall before it became subject to the See of Canterbury in the reign of +Athelstan, A.D. 925-40; and their hypotheses were constructed on much the +same lines. Nay, the resemblance in method and in the general muddle of +conclusions obtained would have been even more striking had these good +persons mixed up Plymouth Brethren (founded in 1830) with the Pilgrim +Fathers who sailed out of Plymouth in 1620, and are already undergoing the +process of mythopoeic conversion into Deucalions and Pyrrhas of the United +States of America. Add a slight confusion of their tenets with those of +Mormonism, or at least a disposition to lay stress on all discoverable +points of similarity between Puritans and Mormons, and really you have a +not unfair picture of the hopeless mess into which our researchers in the +ancient religions of Cornwall have honestly contrived to plunge themselves +and us. It was better in the happy old days when we all believed in the +Druids; when the Druids explained everything, and my excellent father +grafted mistletoe upon his apple-trees--in vain, because nothing will +persuade the mistletoe to grow down here. But nobody believes in the +Druids just now: and the old question of the Cassiterides has never been +solved to general satisfaction: and the Indian cowrie found in a barrow at +Land's End, the tiny shell which raised such a host of romantic +conjectures and inspired Mr. Canton to write his touching verses:-- + + "What year was it that blew + The Aryan's wicker-work canoe + Which brought the shell to English land? + What prehistoric man or woman's hand, + With what intent, consigned it to this grave-- + This barrow set in sound of the Ancient World's last wave?" + + "Beside it in the mound + A charmed bead of flint was found. + Some woman surely in this place + Covered with flowers a little baby-face, + And laid the cowrie on the cold dead breast; + And, weeping, turned for comfort to the landless West?" + + + "No man shall ever know. + It happened all so long ago + That this same childless woman may + Have stood upon the cliffs around the bay + And watched for tin-ships that no longer came, + Nor knew that Carthage had gone down in Roman flame." + +This cowrie--are we even certain that it was Indian?--that it differed so +unmistakably from the cowries discoverable by twos and threes at times on +a little beach off which I cast anchor half a dozen times every summer? +I speak as a man anxious to get at a little plain knowledge concerning the +land of his birth, and the researchers seem honestly unable to give me any +that does not tumble to pieces even in their own hands. For--and this +seems the one advance made--the researchers themselves are honest +nowadays. Their results may be disappointing, but at least they no longer +bemuse themselves and us with the fanciful and even mystical speculations +their predecessors indulged in. Take the case of our inscribed stones and +wayside crosses. Cornwall is peculiarly rich in these: of crosses alone +it possesses more than three hundred. But when we make inquiry into their +age we find ourselves in almost complete fog. The merit of the modern +inquirer (of Mr. Langdon, for instance) is that he acknowledges the fog, +and does not pretend to guide us out of it by haphazard hypotheses +propounded with pontifical gravity and assurance--which was the way of +that erratic genius, the Rev. R. S. Hawker:-- + + "Wheel-tracks in old Cornwall there were none, but there were strange + and narrow paths across the moorlands, which, the forefathers said, in + their simplicity, were first traced by Angels' feet. These, in truth, + were trodden and worn by religious men: by the Pilgrim as he paced his + way towards his chosen and votive bourne; or by the Palmer, whose + listless footsteps had neither a fixed Kebla nor future abode. + Dimly visible, by the darker hue of the crushed grass, these strait + and narrow roads led the traveller along from one Hermitage to another + Chapelry, or distant and inhabited cave; or the byeways turned aside + to reach some legendary spring, until at last, far, far away, the + winding track stood still upon the shore, where St. Michael of the + Mount rebuked the dragon from his throne of rock above the seething + sea. But what was the wanderer's guide along the bleak unpeopled + surface of the Cornish moor? The Wayside Cross! . . ." + +Very pretty, no doubt! but, unlike the Wayside Cross, this kind of writing +leads nowhere. We want Mr. Hawker's authority for what 'the forefathers +said, in their simplicity'; without that, what the forefathers said +resembles what the soldier said in being inadmissible as evidence. +We want Mr. Hawker's authority for saying that these paths '_in truth_, +were trodden, and worn by religious men.' Nay we want his authority for +saying that there were any paths at all! The hypotheses of symbolism are +even worse; for these may lead to anything. Mr. Langdon was seriously +told on one occasion that the four holes of a cross represented the four +evangelists. "This," says he plaintively, "it will be admitted, is going +a little too far, as nothing else but four holes could be the result of a +ring and cross combined." At Phillack, in the west of Cornwall, there is +_part_ of a coped stone having a rude cable mounting along the top of the +ridge. Two sapient young archaeologists counted the remaining notches of +this cable, and, finding they came to _thirty-two_, decided at once that +they represented our Lord's age! They were quite certain, having counted +them twice. In fact, there seems to be nothing that symbolism will not +prove. Do you meet with a pentacle? Its five points are the fingers of +Omnipotence. With a six-pointed star? Then Omnipotence has taken an +extra finger, to include the human nature of the Messiah: and so on. +It reminds one of the Dilly Song:-- + + "I will sing you Five, O!" + "What is your Five, O?" + "Five it is the Dilly Bird that's never seen but heard, O!" + "I will sing you Six, O! . . ." + +And six is 'The Cherubim Watchers,' or 'The Crucifix,' or 'The Cheerful +Waiters,' or 'The Ploughboys under the Bowl,' or whatever local fancy may +have hit on and made traditional. + +The modern researcher is honest and sticks to facts; but there are next to +no facts. And when he comes to a tentative conclusion, he must hedge it +about with so many 'ifs,' that practically he leaves us in total +indecision. Nothing, for instance, can exceed the patient industry +displayed in the late Mr. William Copeland Borlase's _Age of the Saints_ +--a monograph on Early Christianity in Cornwall: but, in a way, no more +hopeless book was ever penned. The author confessed it, indeed, on his +last page. "There seems to be little ground for hope that we shall be +ever able to gain a perfectly true insight into the history of the epoch +with which we have attempted to deal, or to unravel the meshes of so +tangled a web." He felt his task, as he put it, to be not unlike that of +gathering up the broken pieces of pottery from some ancient tomb, with the +hope of fitting them together so as to make one large and perfect vase, +but finding during the process that they belong to several vessels, not +one of which is capable of restoration as a whole, though some faint +notion of the pristine shape of each may be gained from the general +pattern and contour of its shards. All that can be gained from the +materials at hand is a reasonable probability that Cornwall, before it +bent its neck to the See of Canterbury, had been invaded by three distinct +streams of missionary effort--from Ireland, from Wales, and from Brittany. +But even in what order they came no man can say for certain. + +The young lady in my friend's story wished to hear the service of the +Church of England in 'the fine old Cornish language.' Alas! if Edward VI. +and his advisers had been as wise, the religious history of Cornwall, +during two centuries at least, had been a happier one. It was liberal to +give Englishmen a Liturgy in their own tongue; but it was neither liberal +nor conspicuously intelligent to impose the same upon the Cornishmen, who +neither knew nor cared about the English language. It may be easy to lay +too much stress upon this grievance; since Cornishmen of this period had a +knack of being 'agin the government, anyway,' and had contrived two +considerable rebellions less than sixty years before, one because they did +not see their way to subscribing 2,500 pounds towards fighting King James +IV. of Scotland for protecting Perkin Warbeck, and the other under +Perkin's own leadership. But it was at least a serious grievance; and the +trouble began in the first year of Edward VI.'s reign. The King began by +issuing several Injunctions about religion; and among them, this one: +That all images found in churches, for divine worship or otherwise, should +be pulled down and cast forth out of those churches; and that all +preachers should persuade the people from praying to saints, or for the +dead, and from the use of beads, ashes, processions, masses, dirges, and +praying to God publicly in an unknown tongue. A Mr. Body, one of the +commissioners appointed to carry out this Injunction, was pulling down +images in Helston church, near the Lizard, when a priest stabbed him with +a knife: "of which wound he instantly fell dead in that place. And though +the murderer was taken and sent up to London, tried, found guilty of +murder in Westminster Hall, and executed in Smithfield, yet the Cornish +people flocked together in a tumultuous and rebellious manner, by the +instigation of their priests in divers parts of the shire or county, and +committed many barbarities and outrages in the same." These disturbances +ended in Arundel's rebellion, the purpose of which was to demand the +restoration of the old Liturgy; and, in truth, the Seven Articles under +which they formulated this demand must have seemed very moderate indeed to +their conservative minds. The rebellion failed, of course, after a five +weeks' siege of Exeter; and was bloodily revenged, with something of the +savage humour displayed by Jeffreys in punishing a later Western +rebellion. This part of the business was committed to Sir Anthony +(_alias_ William) Kingston, Knight, a Gloucestershire man, as Provost +Marshal; and "it is memorable what sport he made, by virtue of his office, +upon men in misery." Here are one or two of his merry conceits, which +read strangely like the jests reported by Herodotus:-- + + (1) "One Boyer, Mayor of Bodmin in Cornwall, had been amongst the + rebels, not willingly, but enforced: to him the Provost sent word he + would come and dine with him: for whom the Mayor made great + provision. A little before dinner, the Provost took the Mayor aside, + and whispered him in the ear, that an execution must that day be done + in the town, and therefore required to have a pair of gallows set up + against dinner should be done. The Mayor failed not of the charge. + Presently after dinner the Provost, taking the Mayor by the hand, + intreated him to lead him where the gallows was, which, when he + beheld, he asked the Mayor if he thought them to be strong enough. + 'Yes' (said the Mayor),'doubtless they are.' 'Well, then'(said the + Provost), 'get you up speedily, for they are provided for you.' + 'I hope' (answered the Mayor), 'you mean not as you speak.' + 'In faith' (said the Provost), 'there is no remedy, for you have been + a busie rebel.' And so without respite or defence he was hanged to + death; a most uncourteous part for a guest to offer his host." + --Sir Rich. Baker, 1641. + + (2) "Near the same place dwelt a Miller, who had been a busie actor + in that rebellion; who, fearing the approach of the Marshal, told a + sturdy fellow, his servant, that he had occasion to go from home, and + therefore bid him, that if any man came to inquire after the miller, + he should not speak of him, but say that himself was the miller, and + had been so for three years before. So the Provost came and called + for the miller, when out comes the servant and saith he was the man. + The Provost demanded how long he had kept the mill? 'These three + years' (answered the servant). Then the Provost commanded his men to + lay hold on him and hang him on the next tree. At this the fellow + cried out that he was not the miller, but the miller's man. + 'Nay, sir' (said the Provost), 'I will take you at your word, and if + thou beest the miller, thou art a busie knave; if thou beest not, + thou art a false lying knave; and howsoever, thou canst never do thy + master better service than to hang for him'; and so, without more + ado, he was dispatched."--_Ibid_. + +The story of one Mayow, whom Kingston hanged at a tavern signpost in the +town of St. Columb, has a human touch. "Tradition saith that his crime +was not capital; and therefore his wife was advised by her friends to +hasten to the town after the Marshal and his men, who had him in custody, +and beg his life. Which accordingly she prepared to do; and to render +herself the more amiable petitioner before the Marshal's eyes, this dame +spent so much time in attiring herself and putting on her French hood, +then in fashion, that her husband was put to death before her arrival." + +Such was the revenge wreaked on a population which the English of the day +took so little pains to understand that (as I am informed) in an old +geography book of the days of Elizabeth, Cornwall is described as +'a foreign country on that side of England next to Spain.' + + +And now that the holiday season is upon us, and the visitor stalks our +narrow streets, perhaps he will not resent a word or two of counsel in +exchange for the unreserved criticism he lavishes upon us. We are +flattered by his frequent announcement that on the whole he finds us clean +and civil and fairly honest; and respond with the assurance that we are +always pleased to see him so long as he behaves himself. We, too, have +found him clean and fairly honest; and if we have anything left to desire, +it is only that he will realise, a little more constantly, the extent of +his knowledge of us, and the extent to which his position as a visitor +should qualify his bearing towards us. I address this hint particularly +to those who make copy out of their wanderings in our midst; and I believe +it has only to be suggested, and it will be at once recognised for true, +that the proper attitude for a visitor in a strange land is one of +modesty. He may be a person of quite considerable importance in his own +home, even if that home be London; but when he finds himself on strange +soil he may still have a deal to learn from the people who have lived on +that soil for generations, adapted themselves to its conditions and sown +it with memories in which he cannot have a share. + +In truth, many of our visitors would seem to suffer from a confusion of +thought. Possibly the Visitors' Books at hotels and places of public +resort may have fostered this. Our guest makes a stay of a few weeks in +some spot to which he has been attracted by its natural beauty: he idles +and watches the inhabitants as they go about their daily business; and at +the end he deems it not unbecoming to record his opinion that they are +intelligent, civil, honest, and sober--or the reverse. He mistakes. +It is _he_ who has been on probation during these weeks--_his_ +intelligence, _his_ civility, _his_ honesty, _his_ sobriety. For my +part, I look forward to a time when Visitors' Books shall record the +impressions which visitors leave behind them, rather than those which they +bear away. For an instance or two:-- + + (1) "The Rev. and Mrs. '--', of '--', arrived here in August, 1897, + and spent six weeks. We found them clean, and invariably sober and + polite. We hope they will come often." + + (2) "Mr. X and his friend Y, from Z, came over here, attired in + flannels and the well-known blazer of the Tooting Bec Cricket Club. + They shot gulls in the harbour, and made themselves a public + nuisance by constant repetition of a tag from a music-hall song, + with an indecent sub-intention. Their behaviour towards the young + women of this town was offensive. Seen in juxtaposition with the + natural beauties of this coast, they helped one to realise how small + a thing (under certain conditions) is man." + + (3) "Mr. and Mrs. So-and-so and family spent a fortnight here. + The lady complained that the town was dull, which we (who would have + the best reason to complain of such a defect) do not admit. + She announced her opinion in the street, at the top of her voice; and + expressed annoyance that there should be no band to play of an + evening. She should have brought one. Her husband carried about a + note-book and asked us questions about our private concerns. + He brought no letters of introduction, and we do not know his + business. The children behaved better." + + (4) "Mr. Blank arrived here on a bicycle, and charmed us with the + geniality of his address. We hope to see him again, as he left + without discharging a number of small debts." + +It is, I take it, because the Briton has grown accustomed to invading +other people's countries, that he expects, when travelling, to find a +polite consideration which he does not import. But the tourist pushes the +expectation altogether too far. When he arrives at a town which lays +itself out to attract visitors for the sake of the custom they bring, he +has a right to criticise, _if he feel quite sure he is a visitor of the +sort which the town desires_. This is important: for a town may seek to +attract visitors, and yet be exceedingly unwilling to attract some kinds +of visitors. But should he choose to plant himself upon a spot where the +inhabitants ask only to go about the ordinary occupations of life in +quietness, it is the height of impertinence to proclaim that the life of +the place does not satisfy his needs. Most intolerable of all is the +conduct of the uninvited stranger who settles for a year or two in some +quiet town--we suffer a deal from such persons along the south-western +littoral--and starts with the intention of "putting a little 'go' into +it," or, in another of his favourite phrases, of "putting the place to +rights." Men of this mind are not to be reasoned with; nor is it +necessary that they should be reasoned with. Only, when the inevitable +reaction is felt, and they begin to lose their temper, I would beg them +not to assume too hastily that the 'natives' have no sense of humour. +All localities have a sense of humour, but it works diversely with them. +A man may even go on for twenty years, despising his neighbours for the +lack of it. But when the discovery comes, he will be lucky if the +remembrance of it do not wake him up of nights, and keep him writhing in +his bed--that is, if we suppose _him_ to have a sense of humour too. + +An aeronaut who had lost his bearings, descending upon some farm labourers +in Suffolk, demanded anxiously where he was. "Why, don't you know? +You be up in a balloon, bo." A pedestrian in Cornwall stopped a labourer +returning from work, and asked the way to St.--'. "And where might +you come from?" the labourer demanded. "I don't see what affair that is +of yours. I asked you the way to St. '--'." "Well then, if you don't +tell us where you be come from, we bain't goin' to tell you the way to +St. '--'" It seems to me that both of these replies contain humour, and +the second a deal of practical wisdom. + +The foregoing remarks apply, with very little modification, to those +strangers who take up their residence in Cornwall and, having sojourned +among us for a while without ever penetrating to the confidence of the +people, pass judgment on matters of which, because they were above +learning, knowledge has been denied to them. A clergyman, dwelling in a +country parish where perhaps he finds himself the one man of education +(as he understands it), is prone enough to make the mistake; yet not more +fatally prone than your Gigadibs, the literary man, who sees his +unliterary (even illiterate) neighbours not as they are, but as a clever +novelist would present them to amuse an upper or middle class reader. +Stevenson (a greater man than Gigadibs) frankly confessed that he could +make nothing of us:-- + + "There were no emigrants direct from Europe--save one German family + and a knot of Cornish miners who kept grimly by themselves, one + reading the New Testament all day long through steel spectacles, the + rest discussing privately the secrets of their old-world mysterious + race. Lady Hester Stanhope believed she could make something great + of the Cornish: for my part, I can make nothing of them at all. + A division of races, older and more original than that of Babel, + keeps this close esoteric family apart from neighbouring Englishmen. + Not even a Red Indian seems more foreign in my eyes. This is one of + the lessons of travel--that some of the strangest races dwell next + door to you at home." + +This straightforward admission is worth (to my mind) any half-dozen of +novels written about us by 'foreigners' who, starting with the +Mudie-convention and a general sense that we are picturesque, write +commentaries upon what is a sealed book and deal out judgments which are +not only wrong, but wrong with a thoroughness only possible to entire +self-complacency. + + +And yet . . . It seems to a Cornishman so easy to get at Cornish hearts-- +so easy even for a stranger if he will approach them, as they will at once +respond, with that modesty which is the first secret of fine manners. +Some years ago I was privileged to edit a periodical--though short-lived +not wholly unsuccessful--the _Cornish Magazine_. At the end of each +number we printed a page of 'Cornish Diamonds,' as we called them--scraps +of humour picked up here and there in the Duchy by Cornish correspondents; +and in almost all of them the Cornishman was found gently laughing at +himself; in not one of them (so far as I remember) at the stranger. +Over and over again the jest depended on our small difficulties in making +our own distinctions of thought understood in English. Here are a few +examples:-- + +(1) "Please God," said Aunt Mary Bunny, "if I live till this evenin' + and all's well I'll send for the doctor." + +(2) "I don't name no names," said Uncle Billy "but Jack Tremenheere's + the man." + +(3) "I shan't go there nor nowhere else," said old Jane Caddy, + "I shall go 'long up Redruth." + +(4) "I thought 'twere she, an' she thought 'twere I," said Gracey + Temby, "but when we come close 'twadn't narry wan o' us." + +(5) A crowd stood on the cliff watching a stranded vessel and the + lifeboat going out to her. + "What vessel is it?" asked a late arrival. + "The _Dennis Lane_." + "How many be they aboord?" + "Aw, love and bless 'ee, there's three poor dear sawls and wan old + Irishman." + +(6) Complainant (cross-examining defendant's witness): "What colour + was the horse?" + "Black." + "Well, I'm not allowed to contradict you, and I wouldn' for worlds: + but I say he wasn't." + +(7) A covey of partridges rose out of shot, flew over the hedge, and was + lost to view. "Where do you think they've gone?" said the sportsman + to his keeper. "There's a man digging potatoes in the next field. + Ask if he saw them." + "Aw, that's old Sam Petherick: he hasna seed 'em, he's hard o' + hearin'." + +(8) _Schoolmaster_: "I'm sorry to tell you, Mr. Minards, that your son + Zebedee is little better than a fool." + _Parent_: "Naw, naw, schoolmaster; my Zebedee's no fule; only a bit + easy to teach." + +[I myself know a farmer who approached the head master of a Grammar School +and begged for a reduction in terms: "because," he pleaded, "I know my +son: he's that thick you can get very little into en, and I believe in +payment by results."] + +Here we pass from confusion of language into mere confusion of thought, +the classical instance of which is the Mevagissey man who, having been +asked the old question, "If a herring and a half cost three-halfpence, how +many can you buy for a shilling?'" and having given it up and been told +the answer, responded brightly, "Why, o' course! Darn me, if I wasn' +thinkin' of pilchards!" I met with a fair Devon rival to this story the +other day in the reported conversation of two farmers discussing the +electric light at Chagford (run by Chagford's lavish water-power). +"It do seem out of reason," said the one, "to make vire out o' watter." +"No," agreed the other, "it don't seem possible: but there,"--after a slow +pause--"'tis butiful water to Chaggyford!" + +It was pleasant, while the Magazine lasted, to record these and like +simplicities: and though the voyage was not long, one may recall without +regret its send-off, brave enough in its way:-- + + "'WISH 'EE WELL!' + + "The ensign's dipped; the captain takes the wheel. + 'So long!' the pilot waves, and 'Wish 'ee well!' + Go little craft, and with a home-made keel + 'Mid loftier ships, but with a heart as leal, + Learn of blue waters and the long sea swell! + + "Through the spring days we built and tackled thee, + Tested thy timbers, saw thy rigging sound, + Bent sail, and now put forth unto the sea + Where those leviathans, the critics, be, + And other monsters diversely profound. + + "Some bronzed Phoenician with his pigmy freight + Haply thy herald was, who drave of yore + Deep-laden from Bolerium by the Strait + Of Gades, and beside his city's gate + Chaffered in ingots cast of Cornish ore. + + "So be thou fortunate as thou art bold; + Fare, little craft, and make the world thy friend: + And, it may be--when all thy journey's told + With anchor dropped and tattered canvas rolled, + And some good won for Cornwall in the end-- + + "Thou wilt recall, as best, a lonely beach, + And a few exiles, to the barter come, + Who recognised the old West-country speech, + And touched thee, reverent, whispering each to each-- + 'She comes from far--from very far--from home.'" + + +I have a special reason for remembering _The Cornish Magazine_, because it +so happened that the first number (containing these hopeful verses) was +put into my hands with the morning's letters as I paced the garden below +this Cornish Window, careless of it or of anything but a doctor's verdict +of life or death in the house above. The verdict was for life. . . . + +Years ago as a child I used to devour in that wonderful book _Good Words +for the Young_, the _Lilliput Levee_ and _Lilliput Lyrics_ of the late +William Brighty Rands: and among Rands' lyrics was one upon "The Girl that +Garibaldi kissed." Of late years Rands has been coming to something like +his own. His verses have been republished, and that excellent artist Mr. +Charles Robinson has illustrated them. But I must tell Mr. Robinson that +his portrait of the Girl that Garibaldi kissed does not in the least +resemble her. I speak with knowledge--I the child who have lived to meet +and know the child whom Garibaldi kissed and blessed as the sailors were +weighing anchor to carry him out of this harbour and away from England. +Wild horses shall not drag from me the name of that young person; because +it happened--well, at an easily discoverable date--and she may not care +for me to proclaim her age (as certainly she does not look it). + + "He bowed to my own daughter, + And Polly is her name; + She wore a shirt of slaughter, + Of Garibaldi flame-- + + "Of course I mean of scarlet; + But the girl he kissed--who knows?-- + May be named Selina Charlotte, + And dressed in yellow clothes!" + +But she isn't; and she wasn't; for she wore a scarlet pelisse as they +handed her up the yacht's side, and the hero took her in his arms. + + "It would be a happy plan + For everything that's human, + If the pet of such a man + Should grow to such a woman! + + "If she does as much in her way + As he has done in his-- + Turns bad things topsy-turvy, + And sad things into bliss-- + + "O we shall not need a survey + To find that little miss, + Grown to a woman worthy + Of Garibaldi's kiss!" + +Doggrel? Yes, doggrel no doubt! Let us pass on. + + +In the early numbers of our _Cornish Magazine_ a host of contributors +(some of them highly distinguished) discussed the question, +'How to develop Cornwall as a holiday resort.' 'How to bedevil it' was, I +fear, our name in the editorial office for this correspondence. More and +more as the debate went on I found myself out of sympathy with it, and +more and more in sympathy with a lady who raised an indignant protest-- + + "Unless Cornishmen look to it, their country will be spoilt before + they know it. Already there are signs of it--pitiable signs; + Not many months ago I visited Tintagel, which is justly one of the + prides of the Duchy. The 'swinging seas' are breaking against the + great cliffs as they broke there centuries ago when Arthur and + Launcelot and the Knights of the Round Table peopled the place. + The castle is mostly crumbled away now, but some fraction of its old + strength still stands to face the Atlantic gales, and to show us how + walls were built in the grand old days. In the valley the grass is + green and the gorse is yellow, and overhead the skies are blue and + delightful: but facing Arthur's Castle--grinning down, as it were, + in derision--there is being erected a modern hotel--'built in + imitation of Arthur's Castle,' as one is told! . . . There is not yet + a rubbish shoot over the edge of the cliff, but I do not think I am + wrong in stating that the drainage is brought down into that cove + where long ago (the story runs) the naked baby Arthur came ashore on + the great wave!" + +In summing up the discussion I confess with shame that I temporised. +It was hard to see one's native country impoverished by the evil days in +which mining (and to a lesser degree, agriculture) had fallen; to see +her population diminishing and her able-bodied sons emigrating by the +thousand. It is all very pretty for a visitor to tell us that the charm +of Cornwall is its primaeval calm, that it seems to sleep an enchanted +sleep, and so on; but we who inhabit her wish (and not altogether from +mercenary motives) to see her something better than a museum of a dead +past. I temporised therefore with those who suggested that Cornwall might +yet enrich herself by turning her natural beauty to account: yet even so I +had the sense to add that-- + + "Jealous as I am for the beauty of our Duchy, and delighted when + strangers admire her, I am, if possible, more jealous for the + character of her sons, and more eager that strangers should respect + _them_. And I do see (and hope to be forgiven for seeing it) that a + people which lays itself out to exploit the stranger and the tourist + runs an appreciable risk of deterioration in manliness and + independence. It may seem a brutal thing to say, but as I had rather + be poor myself than subservient, so would I liefer see my countrymen + poor than subservient. It is not our own boast--we have it on the + fairly unanimous evidence of all who have visited us--that hitherto + Cornishmen have been able to combine independence with good manners. + For Heaven's sake, I say, let us keep that reputation, though at + great cost! But let us at the same time face the certainty that, + when we begin to take pay for entertaining strangers it will be a + hard reputation to keep. Were it within human capacity to decide + between a revival of our ancient industries, fishing and mining, and + the development of this new business, our decision would be prompt + enough. But it is not." + +I despaired too soon. Our industries seem in a fair way to revive, and +with that promise I recognise that even in despair my willingness to +temporise was foolish. For my punishment--though I helped not to erect +them,--hideous hotels thrust themselves insistently on my sight as I walk +our magnificent northern cliffs, and with the thought of that drain +leading down to Arthur's cove I am haunted by the vision of Merlin erect +above it, and by the memory of Hawker's canorous lines:-- + + "He ceased; and all around was dreamy night: + There stood Dundagel, throned; and the great sea + Lay, like a strong vassal at his master's gate, + And, like a drunken giant, sobbed in sleep!" + + + +SEPTEMBER. + + +IN THE BAG, _August 30th_. + +At the village shop you may procure milk, butter, eggs, peppermints, +trowsers, sun-bonnets, marbles, coloured handkerchiefs, and a number of +other necessaries, including the London papers. But if you wish to pick +and choose, you had better buy trowsers than the London papers; for this +is less likely to bring you into conflict with the lady who owns the shop +and asserts a prior claim on its conveniences. One of us (I will call him +X) went ashore and asked for a London 'daily.' "Here's _Lloyd's Weekly +News_ for you," said the lady; "but you can't have the daily, for I +haven't finished reading it myself." "Very well," said I, when this was +reported; "if I cannot read the news I want, I will turn to and write it." +So I descended to the shop, and asked for a bottle of ink; since, oddly +enough, there was none to be found on board. The lady produced a bottle +and a pen. "But I don't want the pen," I objected. "They go together," +said she: "Whatever use is a bottle of ink without a pen?" For the life +of me I could discover no answer to this. I paid my penny, and on +returning with my purchases to the boat, I propounded the following +questions:-- + + (1) _Quaere_. If, as the lady argued, a bottle of ink be + useless without a pen, by what process of reasoning did she omit + a sheet of paper from her pennyworth? + + (2) Suppose that I damage or wear out this pen before exhausting + the bottle of ink, can she reasonably insist on my taking a + second bottle as a condition of acquiring a second pen? + + (3) Suppose, on the other hand, that (as I compute) one pen will + outlast two and a half bottles of ink; that one bottle will + distil thirty thousand words; and that the late James Anthony + Froude (who lived close by) drew his supply of writing materials + from this shop: how many unused pens (at a guess) must that + distinguished man have accumulated in the process of composing + his _History of England?_ + +We sailed into Salcombe on Saturday evening, in a hired yacht of +twenty-eight tons, after beating around the Start and Prawl against a +sou'westerly wind and a strong spring tide. Now the tide off the Start +has to be studied. To begin with, it does not coincide in point of time +with the tide inshore. The flood, or east stream, for instance, only +starts to run there some three hours before it is high water at Salcombe; +but, having started, runs with a vengeance, or, to be more precise, at +something like three knots an hour during the high springs; and the +consequence is a very lively race. Moreover, the bottom all the way from +Start Point to Bolt Tail is extremely rough and irregular, which means +that some ten or twelve miles of vicious seas can be set going on very +short notice. Altogether you may spend a few hours here as uncomfortably +as anywhere up or down Channel, with the single exception of Portland +Race. If you turn aside for Salcombe, there is the bar to be considered; +and Salcombe bar is a danger to be treated with grave respect. The +_Channel Pilot_ will tell us why:-- + + "There is 8 ft. water at L.W. springs on the bar at the entrance, + but there are patches of 6 feet. Vessels drawing 20 ft. can + cross it (_when the sea is smooth_) at H.W. springs, and those + of 16 ft. at H.W. neaps. In S. gales there is a breaking, heavy + sea, and no vessel should then attempt the bar; in moderate S. + winds vessels may take it at high water." + +The bearing of these observations on the present narrative will appear +anon. For the present, entering Salcombe with plenty of water and a +moderate S.W. breeze, we had nothing to distract our attention from the +beauty of the spot. I suppose it to be the most imposing river-entrance +on the south coast; perhaps the most imposing on any of the coasts of +Britain. But being lazy and by habit a shirker of word-painting, I must +have recourse to the description given in Mr. Arthur Underhill's _Our +Silver Streak_, most useful and pleasant of handbooks for yachtsmen +cruising in the Channel:-- + + "As we approach Salcombe Head (part of Bolt Head), its + magnificent form becomes more apparent. It is said to be about + four hundred and thirty feet in height, but it looks very much + more. Its base is hollowed out into numerous caverns, into + which the sea dashes, while the profile of the head, often + rising some forty or fifty feet sheer from the water, slopes + back at an angle of about forty-five degrees in one long upward + sweep, broken in the most fantastic way into numerous pinnacles + and needles, which remind one forcibly of the _aiguilles_ of the + valley of Chamounix. I do not think that any headland in the + Channel is so impressive as this." + +As we passed it, its needles stood out darkly against a rare amber sky-- +such a glow as is only seen for a brief while before a sunset following +much rain; and it had been raining, off and on, for a week past. +I daresay that to the weatherwise this glow signified yet dirtier weather +in store; but we surrendered ourselves to the charm of the hour. +Unconscious of their doom the little victims played. We crossed the bar, +sailed past the beautiful house in which Froude spent so many years, +sailed past the little town, rounded a point, saw a long quiet stretch of +river before us, and cast anchor in deep water. The address at the head +of this paper is no sportive invention of mine. You may verify it by the +Ordnance Map. We were in the Bag. + +I awoke that night to the hum of wind in the rigging and the patter of +rain on deck. It blew and rained all the morning, and at noon took a +fresh breath and began to blow viciously. After luncheon we abandoned our +project of walking to Bolt Head, and chose such books from the cabin +library as might decently excuse an afternoon's siesta. A scamper of feet +fetched me out of my berth and up on deck. By this time a small gale was +blowing, and to our slight dismay the boat had dragged her anchors and +carried us up into sight of Kingsbridge. Luckily our foolish career was +arrested for the moment; and, still more luckily, within handy distance of +a buoy--laid there, I believe, for the use of vessels under quarantine. +We carried out a hawser to this buoy, and waited until the tide should +ease and allow us to warp down to it. Our next business was with the +peccant anchors. We had two down--the best anchor and kedge; and supposed +at first that the kedge must have parted. But a couple of minutes at the +capstan reassured us. It was the kedge which had been holding us, to the +extent of its small ability. And the Bag is an excellent anchorage after +all, but not if you happen to get your best anchor foul of its chain. We +hauled up, cleared, warped down to the buoy; and then, hoisting mizzen and +headsails, cast loose and worked back to our old quarters. + + +The afternoon's amusement, though exciting enough in its way, was not what +we had come to Salcombe to seek. And since the weather promised nothing +better, and already a heap of more or less urgent letters must be +gathering dust in the post office at Plymouth, we resolved to beat over +the bar at high water next morning (_this_ morning), and, as Mr. Lang puts +it, 'know the brine salt on our lips, and the large air again': for there +promised to be plenty of both between Bolt Head and the Mewstone. + + + +'Shun delays, they breed remorse,' and 'Time wears all his locks before' +(or, as the Fourth-form boy translated it in pentameter, +"_Tempus habet nullat posteriori comas_"). The fault was mine for wasting +an invaluable hour among the 'shy traffickers' of Salcombe. By the time +we worked down to the bar the tide had been ebbing for an hour and a half. +The wind still blew strong from the south-west, and the seas on the bar +were not pleasant to contemplate. Let alone the remoter risk of scraping +on one of the two shallow patches which diversify the west (and only +practicable) side of the entrance, it one of those big fellows happened to +stagger us at the critical moment of 'staying' it would pretty certainly +mean disaster. Also the yacht (as I began by saying) was a hired one, and +the captain tender about his responsibility. Rather ignominiously, +therefore, we turned tail; and just as we did so, a handsome sea, arched +and green, the tallest of the lot, applauded our prudence. All the same, +our professional pride was wounded. To stay at anchor is one thing: to +weigh and stand for the attempt and then run home again 'hard up,' as a +sailor would say, is quite another. There was a Greek mariner, the other +day, put on his trial with one or two comrades for murder and mutiny on +the high seas. They had disapproved of their captain's altering the helm, +and had pitched him incontinently overboard. On being asked what he had +to say in his defence, the prisoner merely cast up his hands and sobbed, +"Oh, cursed hour in which we put about!" We recalled this simple but +apposite story. + +Having seen to our anchor and helped to snug down the mainsail, I went +below in the very worst of tempers, to find the cabin floor littered with +the contents of a writing-case and a box of mixed biscuits, which had +broken loose in company. As I stooped to collect the _debris_, this +appeal (type-written) caught my eye:-- + + "Dear Sir,--Our paper is contemplating a Symposium of literary + and eminent men--" + +(Observe the distinction.) + + "--On the subject of 'What is your favourite Modern Lyric?' I need + not say how much interest would attach to the opinion of one + who," etc. + +I put my head up the companion and addressed a friend who was lacing tight +the cover of the mainsail viciously, with the help of his teeth. + +"Look here, X," I said. "What is your favourite Modern Lyric?" + +"That one," he answered (still with the lace between his teeth), "which +begins-- + + "'Curse the people, blast the people, + Damn the lower orders!'" + +X as a rule calls himself a Liberal-Conservative: but a certain acerbity +of temper may be forgiven in a man who has just assisted (against all his +instincts) in an act of poltroonery. He explained, too, that it was a +genuine, if loosely remembered, quotation from Ebenezer Elliott, the Corn +Law Rhymer. "Yet in circumstances of peril," he went on, "and in moments +of depression, you cannot think what sustenance I have derived from those +lines." + +"Then you had best send them up," said I, "to the _Daily Post_. +It is conducting a Symposium." + +"If two wrongs do not make a right," he answered tartly, "even less will +an assembly of deadly dry persons make something to drink." + + + +That evening, in the cabin, we held a symposium on our own account and in +the proper sense of the term, while the rain drummed on the deck and the +sky-lights. + +X said, "The greatest poem written on love during these fifty years--and +we agree to accept love as the highest theme of lyrical poetry--is George +Meredith's _Love in the Valley_. I say this and decline to argue about +it." + +"Nor am I disposed to argue about it," I answered, "for York Powell--peace +to his soul for a great man gone--held that same belief. In his rooms in +Christ Church, one night while _The Oxford Book of Verse_ was preparing +and I had come to him, as everyone came, for counsel. . . . I take it, +though, that we are not searching for the absolute best but for our own +prime favourite. You remember what Swinburne says somewhere of Hugo's +_Gastibelza_:-- + + "'Gastibelza, l'homme a la carabine, + Chantait ainsi: + Quelqu'un a-t-il connu Dona Sabine? + Quelqu'un d'ici? + Dansez, chantez, villageois! la nuit gagne + Le mont Falou-- + Le vent qui vient a travers la montagne + Me rendra fou!' + +"'The song of songs which is Hugo's,' he calls it; and goes on to ask how +often one has chanted or shouted or otherwise declaimed it to himself, on +horseback at full gallop or when swimming at his best as a boy in holiday +time; and how often the matchless music, ardour, pathos of it have not +reduced his own ambition to a sort of rapturous and adoring despair--yes, +and requickened his old delight in it with a new delight in the sense that +he will always have this to rejoice in, to adore, and to recognise as +something beyond the reach of man. Well, that is the sense in which our +poem should be our favourite poem. Now, for my part, there's a page or so +of Browning's _Saul_--" + +"What do you say to Meredith's _Phoebus with Admetus?_" interrupted X. + +I looked up at him quickly, almost shamefacedly. "Now, how on earth did +you guess--" + +X laid down his pipe, stared up at the sky-light, and quoted, almost under +his breath:-- + + "'Bulls that walk the pasture in kingly-flashing coats! + Laurel, ivy, vine, wreath'd for feasts not few!'" + + +Why is it possible to consider Mr. Meredith--whose total yield of verse +has been so scanty and the most of it so 'harsh and crabbed,' as not only +'dull fools' suppose--beside the great poets who have been his +contemporaries, and to feel no impropriety in the comparison? That was +the question X and I found ourselves discussing, ten minutes later. + +"Because," maintained X, "you feel at once that with Meredith you have +hold of a man. You know--as surely, for example, as while you are +listening to Handel--that the stuff is masculine, and great at that." + +"That is not all the secret," I maintained, "although it gets near to the +secret. Why is it possible to consider Coleridge alongside of Wordsworth +and Byron, yet feel no impropriety? Coleridge's yield of verse was +ridiculously scanty beside theirs, and a deal more sensuous than +Wordsworth's, at any rate, and yet more manly, in a sense, than Byron's, +which again was thoroughly manly within the range of emotion? Why? +Because Coleridge and Meredith both have a philosophy of life: and he who +has a philosophy of life may write little or much; may on the one hand +write _Christabel_ and leave it unfinished and decline upon opium; or may, +on the other hand, be a Browning or a Meredith, and 'keep up his end' (as +the saying is) nobly to the last, and vex us all the while with his +asperities; and yet in both cases be as certainly a masculine poet. +Poetry (as I have been contending all my life) has one right background +and one only: and that background is philosophy. You say, Coleridge and +Meredith are masculine. I ask, Why are they masculine? The answer is, +They have philosophy." + +"You are on the old tack again: the old 'to katholoy'!" + +"Yes, and am going to hold upon it until we fetch land, so you may e'en +fill another pipe and play the interlocutor. . . . You remember my once +asking why our Jingo poets write such rotten poetry (for that their stuff +is rotten we agreed). The reason is, they are engaged in mistaking the +part for the whole, and that part a non-essential one; they are setting up +the present potency of Great Britain as a triumphant and insolent +exception to laws which (if we believe in any gods better than anarchy and +chaos) extend at least over all human conduct and may even regulate 'the +most ancient heavens.' You may remember my expressed contempt for a +recent poem which lauded Henry VIII because--" + + "'He was lustful, he was vengeful, he was hot and hard and proud; + But he set his England fairly in the sight of all the crowd.' + +"--A worse error, to my mind, than Froude's, who merely idolised him for +chastising the clergy. Well, after our discussion, I asked myself this +question: 'Why do we not as a great Empire-making people, +ruling the world for its good, assassinate the men who oppose us?' +We do not; the idea revolts us. But why does it revolt us? + +"We send our armies to fight, with the certainty (if we think at all) that +we are sending a percentage to be killed. We recently sent out two +hundred thousand with the sure and certain knowledge that some thousands +must die; and these (we say) were men agonising for a righteous cause. +Why did it not afflict us to send them?--whereas it would have afflicted +us inexpressibly to send a man to end the difficulty by putting a bullet +or a knife into Mr. Kruger, who _ex hypothesi_ represented an unrighteous +cause, and who certainly was but one man. + +"Why? Because a law above any that regulates the expansion of Great +Britain says, 'That shalt do no murder.' And that law, that Universal, +takes the knife or the pistol quietly, firmly, out of your hand. You +send a battalion, with Tom Smith in it, to fight Mr. Kruger's troops; you +know that some of them must in all likelihood perish; but, thank your +stars, you do not know their names. Tom Smith, as it happens, is killed; +but had you known with absolute certainty that Tom Smith would be killed, +you could not have sent him. You must have withdrawn him, and substituted +some other fellow concerning whom your prophetic vision was less +uncomfortably definite. You can kill Tom Smith if he has happened to kill +Bob Jones: you are safe enough then, being able to excuse yourself--how? +By Divine law again (as you understand it). Divine law says that whoso +sheddeth man's blood, by man shall his blood be shed--that is to say, by +you: so you can run under cover and hang Tom Smith. But when Divine law +does not protect you, you are powerless. At the most you can send him off +to take his ten-to-one chance in a battalion, and when you read his name +in the returns, come mincing up to God and say: 'So poor old Tom's gone! +How the deuce was _I_ to know?' + +"I say nothing of the cowardice of this, though it smells to Heaven. I +merely point out that this law 'Thou shalt do no murder'--this Universal-- +must be a tremendous one, since even you, my fine swashbuckling, +Empire-making hero, are so much afraid of it that you cannot send even a +Reservist to death without throwing the responsibility on luck--_nos te, +nos facimus, Fortuna, deam_--and have not even the nerve, without its +sanction, to stick a knife into an old man whom you accuse as the wicked +cause of all this bloodshed. If you believed in your accusations, why +couldn't you do it? Because a universal law forbade you, and one you have +to believe in, truculent Jingo though you be. Why, consider this; your +poets are hymning King Edward the Seventh as the greatest man on earth, +and yet, if he might possess all Africa to-morrow at the expense of +signing the death-warrant of one innocent man who opposed that possession, +he could not write his name. His hand would fall numb. Such power above +kings has the Universal, though silly poets insult it who should be its +servants. + +"Now of all the differences between men and women there is none more +radical than this: that a man naturally loves law, whereas a woman +naturally hates it and never sees a law without casting about for some way +of dodging it. Laws, universals, general propositions--her instinct with +all of them is to get off by wheedling the judge. So, if you want a test +for a masculine poet, examine first whether or no he understands the +Universe as a thing of law and order." + +"Then, by your own test, Kipling--the Jingo Kipling--is a most masculine +poet, since he talks of little else." + +"I will answer you, although I believe you are not serious. At present +Mr. Kipling's mind, in search of a philosophy, plays with the +contemplation of a world reduced to law and order; the law and order being +such as universal British rule would impose. There might be many worse +worlds than a world so ruled, and in verse the prospect can be made to +look fair enough:--" + + "'Keep ye the Law--be swift in all obedience-- + Clear the land of evil, drive the road and bridge the ford. + Make ye sure to each his own + That he reap where he hath sown; + By the peace among Our peoples let men know we serve the Lord!' + +"Clean and wholesome teaching it seems, persuading civilised men that, as +they are strong, so the obligation rests on them to set the world in +order, carry tillage into its wildernesses, and clean up its bloodstained +corners. Yet as a political philosophy it lacks the first of all +essentials, and as Mr. Kipling develops it we begin to detect the flaw in +the system:-- + + "'The 'eathen in 'is blindness bows down to wood and stone; + 'E don't obey no orders unless they is his own; + 'E keeps 'is side-arms awful: 'e leaves 'em all about, + An' then comes up the regiment an' pokes the 'eathen out. + All along o' dirtiness, all along o' mess, + All along o' doin' things rather-more-or-less. + Etc.' + +"What is wrong with this? Why, simply that it leaves Justice altogether +out of account. The system has no room for it; even as it has no room for +clemency, mansuetude; forbearance towards the weak. My next-door +neighbour may keep his children in rags and his house in dirt, may be a +loose liver with a frantically foolish religious creed; but all this does +not justify me in taking possession of his house, and either poking him +out or making him a serf on his own hearthstone. If there be such a thing +as universal justice, then all men have their rights under it--even +verminous persons. We are obliged to put constraint upon them when their +habits afflict us beyond a certain point. And civilised nations are +obliged to put constraint upon uncivilised ones which shock their moral +sense beyond a certain point--as by cannibalism or human sacrifice. But +such interference should stand upon a nice sense of the offender's rights, +and in practice does so stand. The custom of polygamy, for instance (as +practised abroad), horribly offends quite a large majority of His +Majesty's lieges; yet Great Britain tolerates polygamy even in her own +subject races. Neither polygamy nor uncleanliness can be held any just +excuse for turning a nation out of its possessions. + +"And another reason for insisting upon the strictest reading of justice in +these dealings between nations is the temptation which the least laxity +offers to the stronger--a temptation which Press and Pulpit made no +pretence of resisting during the late war. 'We are better than they,' was +the cry; 'we are cleanlier, less ignorant; we have arts and a literature, +whereas they have none; we make for progress and enlightenment, while they +are absurdly conservative, if not retrogressive. Therefore the world will +be the better by our annexing their land, and substituting our government +for theirs. Therefore our cause, too, is the juster.' But therefore it +is nothing of the sort. A dirty man may be in the right, and a clean man +in the wrong; an ungodly man in the right, and a godly man in the wrong; +and the most specious and well-intentioned system which allows justice to +be confused with something else will allow it to be stretched, even by +well-meaning persons, to cover theft, lying and flat piracy. + +"Are you trying to prove," demanded X, "that Mr. Kipling is a feminine +poet?" + +"No, but I am about to bring you to the conclusion that in his worse mood +he is a sham-masculine one. The 'Recessional' proves that, man of genius +that he is, he rises to a conception of Universal Law. But too often he +is trying to dodge it with sham law. A woman would not appeal to law at +all: she would boldly take her stand on lawlessness. He, being an +undoubted but misguided man, has to find some other way out; so he takes a +twopenny-halfpenny code as the mood seizes him--be it the code of a +barrack or of a Johannesburg Jew--and hymns it lustily against the +universal code: and the pity and the sin of it is that now and then by +flashes--as in 'The Tale of Purun Bhagat'--he sees the truth. + +"You remember the figure of the Cave which Socrates invented and explained +to Glaucon in Plato's 'Republic'? He imagined men seated in a den which +has its mouth open to the light, but their faces are turned to the wall of +the den, and they sit with necks and legs chained so that they cannot +move. Behind them, and between them and the light, runs a raised way with +a low wall along it, 'like the screen over which marionette-players show +their puppets.' Along this wall pass men carrying all sorts of vessels +and statues and figures of animals. Some are talking, others silent; and +as the procession goes by the chained prisoners see only the shadows +passing across the rock in front of them, and, hearing the voices echoed +from it, suppose that the sound comes from the shadows. + +"To explain the fascination of Mr. Kipling's verse one might take this +famous picture and make one fearsome addition to it. There sits (one +might go on to say) among the prisoners a young man different from them in +voice and terribly different to look upon, because he has two pairs of +eyes, the one turned towards the light and realities, the other towards +the rock-face and the shadows. Using, now one, now the other of these two +pairs of eyes, he never knows with which at the moment he is gazing, +whether on the realities or on the shadows, but always supposes what he +sees at the moment to be the realities, and calls them 'Things as They +Are.' Further, his lips have been touched with the glory of the greater +vision, and he speaks enchantingly when he discourses of the shadows on +the rock, thereby deepening the delusion of the other prisoners whom his +genius has played the crimp to, enticing them into the den and hocussing +and chaining them there. For, seeing the shadows pass to the +interpretation of such a voice, they are satisfied that they indeed behold +Things as They Are, and that these are the only things worth knowing. + +"The tragedy of it lies in this, that Mr. Kipling in his greater moments +cannot help but see that he, with every inspired singer, is by right the +prophet of a law and order compared with which all the majestic law and +order of the British Empire are but rags and trumpery:--" + + "'I ha' harpit ye up to the throne o' God, + I ha' harpit your midmost soul in three; + I ha' harpit ye down to the Hinges o' Hell, + And--ye--would--make--a Knight o' me!'" + + +"Not long ago an interviewer called on Mr. Meredith, and brought away this +for his pains:-- + + "'I suppose I should regard myself as getting old--I am + seventy-four. But I do not feel to be growing old either in + heart or mind. I still look on life with a young man's eye. + I have always hoped I should not grow old as some do--with a + palsied intellect, living backwards, regarding other people as + anachronisms because they themselves have lived on into other + times, and left their sympathies behind them with their years.' + +"He never will. He will always preserve the strength of manhood in his +work because hope, the salt of manhood, is the savour of all his +philosophy. When I think of his work as a whole--his novels and poems +together--this confession of his appears to me, not indeed to summarise +it--for it is far too multifarious and complex--but to say the first and +the last word upon it. In poem and in novel he puts a solemnity of his +own into the warning, _ne tu pueri contempseris annos_. He has never +grown old, because his hopes are set on the young; and his dearest wish, +for those who can read beneath his printed word, is to leave the world not +worse, but so much the better as a man may, for the generations to come +after him. To him this is 'the cry of the conscience of life':--" + + "'Keep the young generations in hail, + And bequeath them no tumbled house.' + +"To him this is at once a duty and a 'sustainment supreme,' and perhaps +the bitterest words this master of Comedy has written are for the seniors +of the race who-- + + "'On their last plank, + Pass mumbling it as nature's final page,' + +"And cramp the young with their rules of 'wisdom,' lest, as he says +scornfully:-- + + "'Lest dreaded change, long dammed by dull decay, + Should bring the world a vessel steered by brain, + And ancients musical at close of day.' + +"'Earth loves her young,' begins his next sonnet:-- + + "'Her gabbling grey she eyes askant, nor treads + The ways they walk; by what they speak oppressed.' + +"But his conviction, if here for a moment it discharges gall, is usually +cheerful with the cheerfulness of health. Sometimes he consciously +expounds it; oftener he leaves you to seek and find it, but always (I +believe) you will find this happy hope in youth at the base of everything +he writes. + +"The next thing to be noted is that he does not hope in youth because it +is a period of license and waywardness, but because it is a period of +imagination-- + + "'Days, when the ball of our vision + Had eagles that flew unabashed to sun,' + +"And because it therefore has a better chance of grasping what is Universal +than has the prudential wisdom of age which contracts its eye to +particulars and keeps it alert for social pitfalls--the kind of wisdom +seen at its best (but its best never made a hero) in Bubb Doddington's +verses:-- + + "'Love thy country, wish it well, + _Not with too intense a care_; + 'Tis enough that, when it fell, + Thou its ruin didst not share.' + +"Admirable caution! Now contrast it for a moment with, let us say, the +silly quixotic figure of Horatius with the broken bridge behind him:-- + + "'Round turned he, as not deigning + Those craven ranks to see: + Nought spake he to Lars Porsena, + To Sextus nought spake he; + But he saw on Palatinus + The white porch of his home--' + +"I protest I have no heart to go on with the quotation: so unpopular is +its author, just now, and so certainly its boyish heroism calls back the +boyish tears to my eyes. Well, this boyish vision is what Mr. Meredith +chooses to trust rather than Bubb Doddington's, and he trusts it as being +the likelier to apprehend universal truths: he believes that Horatius with +an army in front and a broken bridge behind him was a nobler figure than +Bubb Doddington wishing his country well but not with too intense a care; +and not only nobler but--this is the point--more obedient to divine law, +more expressive of that which man was meant to be. If Mr. Meredith trusts +youth, it is as a time of imagination; and if he trusts imagination, it is +as a faculty for apprehending the Universal in life--that is to say, a +divine law behind its shows and simulacra. + +"In 'The Empty Purse' you will find him instructing youth towards this +law; but that there may be no doubt of his own belief in it, as an order +not only controlling men but overriding angels and demons, first consider +his famous sonnet, 'Lucifer in Starlight'--to my thinking one of the +finest in our language:-- + + "'On a starred night Prince Lucifer uprose. + Tired of his dark dominion swung the fiend + Above the rolling ball in cloud part screened, + Where sinners hugged their spectre of repose. + Poor prey to his hot fit of pride were those. + And now upon his western wing he leaned, + Now his huge bulk o'er Afric's sands careened, + Now the black planet shadowed Arctic snows. + Soaring through wider zones that pricked his scars + With memory of the old revolt from Awe, + He reached a middle height, and at the stars, + Which are the brain of Heaven, he looked, and sank. + Around the ancient track marched, rank on rank, + The army of unalterable law.'" + + +"Suppose my contention--that poetry should concern itself with +universals--to be admitted: suppose we all agreed that Poetry is an +expression of the universal element in human life, that (as Shelley puts +it) 'a poem is the very image of life expressed in its eternal truth.' +There remains a question quite as important: and that is, How to recognise +the Universal when we see it? We may talk of a Divine law, or a Divine +order--call it what we will--which regulates the lives of us poor men no +less than the motions of the stars, and binds the whole universe, high and +low, into one system: and we may have arrived at the blessed wish to +conform with this law rather than to strive and kick against the pricks +and waste our short time in petulant rebellion. So far, so good: but how +are we to know the law? How, with the best will in the world, are we to +distinguish order from disorder? What assurance have we, after striving +to bring ourselves into obedience, that we have succeeded? We may agree, +for example, with Wordsworth that Duty is a stern daughter of the Voice of +God, and that through Duty 'the most ancient heavens,' no less than we +ourselves, are kept fresh and strong. But can we always discern this +Universal, this Duty? What is the criterion? And what, when we have +chosen, is the sanction of our choice? + +"A number of honest people will promptly refer us to revealed religion. +'Take (they say) your revealed religion on faith, and there you have the +law and the prophets, and your universals set out for you, and your +principles of conduct laid down. What more do you want?' + +"To this I answer, 'We are human, and we need also the testimony of +Poetry; and the priceless value of poetry for us lies in this, that it +does _not_ echo the Gospel like a parrot. If it did, it would be servile, +superfluous. It is ministerial and useful because it approaches truth by +another path. It does not say ditto to Mr. Burke--it corroborates. And +it corroborates precisely because it does not say ditto, but employs a +natural process of its own which it employed before ever Christianity was +revealed. You may decide that religion is enough for you, and that you +have no need of poetry; but if you have any intelligent need of poetry it +will be because poetry, though it end in the same conclusions, reaches +them by another and separate path. + +"Now (as I understand him) Mr. Meredith connects man with the Universal, +and teaches him to arrive at it and recognise it by strongly reminding him +that he is a child of Earth. 'You are amenable,' he says in effect, 'to a +law which all the firmament obeys. But in all that firmament you are tied +to one planet, which we call Earth. If therefore you would apprehend the +law, study your mother, Earth, which also obeys it. Search out her +operations; honour your mother as legitimate children, and let your honour +be the highest you can pay--that of making yourself docile to her +teaching. So will you stand the best chance, the only likely chance, of +living in harmony with that Will which over-arches Earth and us all.' + +"In this doctrine Mr. Meredith believes passionately; so let there +be no mistake about the thoroughness with which he preaches it. +Even prayer, he tells us in one of his novels, is most useful when like a +fountain it falls back and draws refreshment from earth for a new spring +heavenward:-- + + "'And there vitality, there, there solely in song + Besides, where earth and her uses to men, their needs, + Their forceful cravings, the theme are: there is it strong, + The Master said: and the studious eye that reads, + (Yea, even as earth to the crown of Gods on the mount), + In links divine with the lyrical tongue is bound. + Pursue thy craft: it is music drawn of the fount + To spring perennial; well-spring is common ground.' + +"And it follows that to one who believes in the teaching of earth so +whole-heartedly earth is not a painted back-cloth for man to strut against +and attitudinise, but a birth-place from which he cannot escape, and in +relation with which he must be considered, and must consider himself, on +pain of becoming absurd. Even: + + "'His cry to heaven is a cry to her + He would evade.' + +"She is a stern mother, be it understood, no coddling one:-- + + "'He may entreat, aspire, + He may despair, and she has never heed, + She, drinking his warm sweat, will soothe his need, + Not his desire.' + +"When we neglect or misread her lessons, she punishes; at the best, she +offers no fat rewards to the senses, but-- + + "'The sense of large charity over the land; + Earth's wheaten of wisdom dispensed in the rough, + And a bell ringing thanks for a sustenance meal.' + +"('Lean fare,' as the poet observes; and unpalatable, for instance, to our +Members of Parliament, to whom our Mr. Balfour one evening paid the +highest compliment within their range of apprehension by assuming that +quite a large number of them could write cheques for 69,000 pounds without +inconvenience.) At the best, too, she offers, with the loss of things we +have desired, a serene fortitude to endure their loss:-- + + "'Love born of knowledge, love that gains + Vitality as Earth it mates, + The meaning of the Pleasures, Pains, + The Life, the Death, illuminates. + + "'For love we Earth, then serve we all; + Her mystic secret then is ours: + We fall, or view our treasures fall, + Unclouded--as beholds her flowers + + "'Earth, from a night of frosty wreck, + Enrobed in morning's mounted fire, + When lowly, with a broken neck, + The crocus lays her cheek to mire.' + +"But at least it is the true milk for man that she distils-- + + "'From her heaved breast of sacred common mould'; + +"The breast (to quote from another poem)-- + + "'Which is his well of strength, his home of rest, + And fair to scan.' + +"And so Mr. Meredith, having diagnosed our disease, which is Self-- +our 'distempered devil of Self,' gluttonous of its own enjoyments and +therefore necessarily a foe to law, which rests on temperance and +self-control--walks among men like his own wise physician, Melampus, with +eyes that search the book of Nature closely, as well for love of her as to +discover and extract her healing secrets. + + "'With love exceeding a simple love of the things + That glide in grasses and rubble of woody wreck; + Or change their perch on a beat of quivering wings + From branch to branch, only restful to pipe and peck; + Or, bristled, curl at a touch their snouts in a ball; + Or cast their web between bramble and thorny hook; + The good physician Melampus, loving them all, + Among them walked, as a scholar who reads a book. + + "'For him the woods were a home and gave him the key + Of knowledge, thirst for their treasures in herbs and + flowers. + The secrets held by the creatures nearer than we + To earth he sought, and the link of their life with + ours. . . .' + +"Here by another road we come to a teaching which is also the Gospels': +that to apprehend the highest truth one must have a mind of extreme +humility. 'Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth,' +'Neither shall they say, Lo here! or Lo there! for behold the kingdom of +God is within you,' 'And He took a little child and set him in the midst +of them,' &c. Poetry cannot make these sayings any truer than they are, +but it can illuminate for us the depths of their truth, and so (be it +humbly said) can help their acceptance by man. If they come down from +heaven, derived from arguments too high for his ken, poetry confirms them +by arguments taken from his own earth, instructing him the while to read +it as-- + + "'An Earth alive with meanings, wherein meet + Buried, and breathing, and to be,' + +"And teaching him, 'made lowly wise,' that the truth of the highest heavens +lies scattered about his feet. + + "'Melampus dwelt among men, physician and sage, + He served them, loving them, healing them; sick or maimed, + Or them that frenzied in some delirious rage + Outran the measure, his juice of the woods reclaimed. + He played on men, as his master Phoebus on strings + Melodious: as the God did he drive and check, + Through love exceeding a simple love of the things + That glide in grasses and rubble of woody wreck.' + +"I think, if we consider the essence of this teaching, we shall have no +difficulty now in understanding why Mr. Meredith's hopes harp so +persistently on the 'young generations,' why our duty to them is to him +'the cry of the conscience of life,' or why, as he studies Earth, he +maintains that-- + + "'Deepest at her springs, + Most filial, is an eye to love her young.'" + + +"But Meredith, if a true poet, is also and undeniably a hard one: and a +poet must not only preach but persuade. 'He dooth not only show the way,' +says Sidney, 'but giveth so sweet a prospect into the way as will intice +any man to enter into it.' + +"Here, my dear X, I lay hands on you and drag you in as the Conscientious +Objector. 'How?' you will ask. 'Is not the plain truth good enough for +men? And if poetry must win acceptance for her by beautiful adornments, +alluring images, captivating music, is there not something deceptive in +the business, even if it be not downright dishonest?' Well, I think you +have a right to be answered." + +"Thank you," said X. + +"And I don't think you are convincingly answered by Keats'-- + + "'Beauty is truth, truth beauty--that is all + Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know.' + +"With all respect to the poet, we don't know it; and if we did it would +come a long way short of all we need to know. The Conscientious Objector +will none the less maintain that truth and beauty have never been +recognised as identical, and that, in practice, to employ their names as +convertible terms would lead to no end of confusion. I like the man (you +will be glad to hear), because on an important subject he will be +satisfied with nothing less than clear thinking. My own suspicion is +that, when we have yielded him the inquiry which is his due into the +relations between truth and beauty, we shall discover that spiritual +truth--with which alone poetry concerns itself--is less a matter of +ascertained facts than of ascertained harmonies, and that these harmonies +are incapable of being expressed otherwise than in beautiful terms. +But pending our inquiry (which must be a long one) let us put to the +objector a practical question: 'What forbids a man, who has the truth to +tell, from putting it as persuasively as possible? Were not the truths of +the Gospel conveyed in parables? And is their truth diminished because +these parables are exquisite in form and in language? Will you only +commend persuasiveness in a sophist who engages to make the worst argument +appear the better, and condemn it in a teacher who employs it to enforce +truth?' The question, surely, is answered as soon as we have asked it. + +"And the further particular question, Is Mr. Meredith a persuasive poet? +will be answered as promptly by us. He can be--let us grant--a plaguily +forbidding one. His philosophy is not easy; yet it seems to me a deal +easier than many of his single verses. I hope humbly, for instance, one +of these days, to discover what is meant by such a verse as this:-- + + "'Thou animatest ancient tales, + To prove our world of linear seed; + Thy very virtue now assails + A tempter to mislead.' + +"Faint, yet pursuing, I hope; but I must admit that such writing does not +obviously allure, that it rather dejects the student by the difficulty of +finding a stool to sit down and be stoical on. 'Nay,' to parody Sidney, +'he dooth as if your journey should lye through a fayre Vineyard, at the +first give you a handful of nuts, forgetting the nut-crackers.' He is, in +short, half his time forbiddingly difficult, and at times to all +appearance so deliberately and yet so wantonly difficult, that you wonder +what on earth you came out to pursue and why you should be tearing your +flesh in these thickets. + +"And then you remember the swinging cadences of 'Love in the Valley' +--the loveliest love-song of its century. Who can forget it? + + "'Lovely are the curves of the white owl sweeping + Wavy in the dusk lit by one large star, + Lone on the fir-branch, his rattle-note unvaried, + Brooding o'er the gloom, spins the brown evejar. + Darker grows the valley, more and more forgetting; + So were it with me if forgetting could be willed. + Tell the grassy hollow that holds the bubbling well-spring, + Tell it to forget the source that keeps it filled.' + +"And you swear that no thickets can be so dense but you will wrestle +through them in the hope of hearing that voice again, or even an echo of +it. + +"'Melampus,' 'The Nuptials of Attila,' 'The Day of the Daughter of Hades,' +'The Empty Purse,' 'Jump-to-Glory Jane,' and the splendid 'Phoebus with +Admetus'--you come back to each again and again, compelled by the wizardry +of single lines and by a certain separate glamour which hangs about each +of them. Each of them is remembered by you as in its own way a superb +performance; lines here and there so haunt you with their beauty that you +must go back and read the whole poem over for the sake of them. Other +lines you boggle over, and yet cannot forget them; you hope to like them +better at the next reading; you re-read, and wish them away, yet find +them, liked or disliked, so embedded in your memory that you cannot do +without them. Take, for instance, the last stanza of 'Phoebus with +Admetus':-- + + "'You with shelly horns, rams! and promontory goats, + You whose browsing beards dip in coldest dew! + Bulls that walk the pasture in kingly-flashing coats! + Laurel, ivy, vine, wreathed for feasts not few! + You that build the shade-roof, and you that court the rays, + You that leap besprinkling the rock stream-rent; + He has been our fellow, the morning of our days; + Us he chose for house-mates, and this way went.' + +"The first thing that made this stanza unforgettable was the glorious +third line: almost as soon 'promontory goats' fastened itself on memory; +and almost as soon the last two lines were perceived to be excellent, and +the fourth also. These enforced you, for the pleasure of recalling them, +to recall the whole, and so of necessity to be hospitably minded toward +the fifth and sixth lines, which at first repelled as being too obscurely +and almost fantastically expressed. Having once passed it in, I find 'You +that leap besprinkling the rock stream-rent,' with its delicate labial +pause and its delicate consonantal chime, one of the most fascinating +lines in the stanza. And since, after being the hardest of all to admit, +it has become one of the best liked, I am forced in fairness to ask myself +if hundreds of lines of Mr. Meredith's which now seem crabbed or fantastic +may not justify themselves after many readings. + +"The greatest mistake, at all events, is to suppose him ignorant or +careless of the persuasiveness which lies in technical skill; though we +can hardly be surprised that he has not escaped a charge which was freely +brought against Browning, than whom, perhaps, no single poet was ever more +untiring in technical experiment. Every poem of Browning's is an +experiment--sometimes successful, sometimes not--in wedding sense with +metre; and so is every poem of Mr. Meredith's (he has even attempted +galliambics), though he cannot emulate Browning's range. But he, too, has +had his amazing successes--in the long, swooping lines of 'Love in the +Valley':-- + + "'Shy as the squirrel and wayward as the swallow, + Swift as the swallow along the river's light, + Circleting the surface to meet his mirrored winglets, + Fleeter she seems in her stay than in her flight.' + +"--In the 'Young Princess,' the stanzas of which are a din of +nightingales' voices; in 'The Woods of Westermain' and 'The Nuptials of +Attila,' where the ear awaits the burthen, as the sense awaits the horror, +of the song, and the poet holds back both, increasing the painful +expectancy; or in the hammered measure of 'Phoebus with Admetus'--a real +triumph. Of each of these metres you have to admit at once that it is +strange and arresting, and that you cannot conceive the poem written in +any other. And, as I have said, their very asperities tend, with +repetition, to pass into beauties. + +"But, in the end, he is remembered best for his philosophy, as the poet +who tells us to have courage and trust in nature, that thereby we may +attain whatever heaven may be. 'Neither shall they say, Lo, here! or Lo, +there! for behold the kingdom of heaven is within you'--yes, and hell, +too, Mr. Meredith wants us:-- + + "'In tragic life, God wot, + No villain need be! Passions spin the plot: + We are betrayed by what is false within.' + +"So, again, in 'The Woods of Westermain,' we are warned that the worst +betrayal for man lies in the cowardice of his own soul:-- + + "'But have care. + In yourself may lurk the trap.' + +"Are you at heart a poltroon or a palterer, cruel, dull, envious, full of +hate? Then Nature, the mother of the strong and generous, will have no +pity, but will turn and rend you with claws. 'Trust her with your whole +heart,' says Mr. Meredith, 'and go forward courageously until you follow:" + + "'Where never was track + On the path trod of all.' + +"The fight is an ennobling one, when all is said: rejoice in it, because +our children shall use the victory. + + "'Take stripes or chains; + Grip at thy standard reviled. + And what if our body be dashed from the steeps? + Our spoken in protest remains. + A younger generation reaps.'" + + +FROM A CORNISH WINDOW, _Thursday, Sept. 2nd_. + + + "Hoist up sail while gale doth last. . . ." + +I do not call this very sound advice: but we followed it, and that is the +reason why I am able to send off my monthly packet from the old address. +Also it came very near to being a reason why I had no letter to send. The +wind blew as obstinately as ever on the Tuesday morning; but this time we +arranged our start more carefully, and beat out over the bar in +comparatively smooth water. The seas outside were not at all smooth, but +a Newlyn-built boat does not make much account of mere seas, and soon +after midday we dropped anchor in Plymouth Cattewater, and went ashore for +our letters. + +We were sworn to reach home next day, and somehow we forgot to study the +barometer, which was doing its best to warn us. The weather was dirtier +than ever and the wind harder. But we had grown accustomed to this: and +persuaded ourselves that, once outside of the Rame, we could make a pretty +fetch of it for home and cover the distance at our best speed--which +indeed we did. But I confess that as we passed beyond the breakwater, and +met the Plymouth trawlers running back for shelter, I began to wonder +rather uneasily how the barometer might be behaving, and even dallied with +the resolution to go below and see. We were well dressed down, however-- +double-reefed mainsail, reefed mizzen, foresail and storm jib--and after +our beating at Salcombe none of us felt inclined to raise the question of +putting back. There was nothing to hurt, as yet: the boat was shaking off +the water like a duck, and making capital weather of it; we told each +other that once beyond the Rame, with the sea on our quarter, we should do +handsomely. And the gale--the newspapers called it a hurricane, but it +was merely a gale--waited patiently until we were committed to it. Half +an hour later we took in the mizzen, and, soon after, the foresail: and +even so, and close-hauled, were abreast of Looe Island just forty-seven +minutes after passing the Rame--nine miles. For a 28-ton cruiser this +will be allowed to be fair going. For my own part I could have wished it +faster: not from any desire to break 'records,' but because, should +anything happen to our gear, we were uncomfortably close to a lee-shore, +and the best behaved of boats could not stand up against the incessant +shoreward thrust of the big seas crossing us. Also, to make matters +worse, the shore itself now and then vanished in the 'dirt.' On the +whole, therefore, it was not too soon for us that we opened the harbour +and: + + + "Saw on Palatinus + The white porch of our home," + +Though these were three or four times hidden from us by the seas over +which we toppled through the harbour's mouth and into quiet water. +While the sails were stowing I climbed down the ladder and sat in front of +the barometer, and wondered how I should like this sort of thing if I had +to go through it often, for my living. + + + +OCTOBER. + + + "Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness. . . ." + +I have been planting a perennial border in the garden and consulting, +with serious damage to the temper, a number of the garden-books now in +fashion. When a man drives at practice--when he desires to know precisely +at what season, in what soil, and at what depth to plant his martagon +lilies, to decide between _Ayrshire Ruga_ and _Fellenberg_ for the pillar +that requires a red rose, to fix the right proportion of sand and +leaf-mould to suit his carnations--when 'his only plot' is to plant the +bergamot--he resents being fobbed off with prattle:-- + + "My squills make a brave show this morning, and the little petticoated + Narcissus Cyclamineus in the lower rock-garden (surely Narcissus + ought to have been a girl!) begins to 'take the winds of March with + beauty.' I am expecting visitors, and hope that mulching will + benefit the Yellow Pottebakkers, which I don't want to flower before + Billy comes home from school," etc. + +But the other day, in 'The Garden's Story,' by Mr. George H. Ellwanger, +I came upon a piece of literary criticism which gave me a pleasurable +pause in my search for quite other information. Mr. Ellwanger, a great +American gardener, has observed that our poets usually sing of autumn in a +minor key, which startles an American who, while accustomed to our +language, cannot suit this mournfulness with the still air and sunshine +and glowing colour of his own autumn. With us, as he notes, autumn is a +dank, sodden season, bleak or shivering. 'The sugar and scarlet maple, +the dogwood and sumac, are wanting to impart their warmth of colour; and +St. Martin's summer somehow fails to shed a cheerful influence' comparable +with that of the Indian summer over there. The Virginia creeper which +reddens our Oxford walls so magnificently in October is an importation of +no very long standing--old enough to be accepted as a feature of the +place, not yet old enough to be inseparably connected with it in song. +Yet-- + + "Of all odes to autumn, Keats's, I believe, is most universally + admired. This might almost answer to our own fall of the leaf, + and is far less sombre than many apostrophes to the season that occur + throughout English verse." + +From this Mr. Ellwanger proceeds to compare Keats's with the wonderful +'Ode to Autumn' which Hood wrote in 1823 (each ode, by the way, belongs to +its author's twenty-fourth year), less perfect, to be sure, and far less +obedient to form, but with lines so haunting and images so full of beauty +that they do not suffer in the comparison. Listen to the magnificent +opening:-- + + "I saw old Autumn in the misty morn + Stand shadowless like Silence, listening + To silence, for no lonely bird would sing + Into his hollow ear from woods forlorn, + Nor lonely hedge, nor solitary thorn. . . ." + +I had never (to my shame) thought of comparing the two odes until Mr. +Ellwanger invited me. He notes the felicitous use of the O-sounds +throughout Hood's ode, and points out, shrewdly as correctly, that the two +poets were contemplating two different stages of autumn. Keats, more +sensuous, dwells on the stage of mellow fruitfulness, and writes of late +October at the latest. Hood's poem lies close 'on the birth of trembling +winter': he sings more austerely of November's desolation:-- + + "Where is the pride of Summer--the green prime-- + The many, many leaves all twinkling?--Three + On the moss'd elm; three on the naked lime + Trembling,--and one upon the old oak tree! + Where is the Dryad's immortality? + Gone into mournful cypress and dark yew, + Or wearing the long gloomy Winter through + In the smooth holly's green eternity. + + "The squirrel gloats o'er his accomplished hoard, + The ants have brimm'd their garners with ripe grain, + And honey bees have stored + The sweets of summer in their luscious cells; + The swallows all have wing'd across the main; + But here the Autumn melancholy dwells, + And sighs her tearful spells + Amongst the sunless shadows of the plain. + Alone, alone + Upon a mossy stone + She sits and reckons up the dead and gone + With the last leaves for a love-rosary. . . ." + +The last image involves a change of sex in personified Autumn: an +awkwardness, I allow. But if the awkwardness of the change can be +excused, Hood's lines excuse it:-- + + "O go and sit with her and be o'er-shaded + Under the languid downfall of her hair; + She wears a coronal of flowers faded + Upon her forehead, and a face of care; + There is enough of wither'd everywhere + To make her bower,--and enough of gloom. . . ." + + +In spite of its ambiguity of sex and in spite of its irregular metre, +I find, with Mr. Ellwanger, more force of poetry in Hood's ode than in +Keats's; and this in spite of one's prejudice in favour of the greater +poet. It came on me with a small shock therefore to find that +Mr. Bridges, in his already famous Essay on Keats, ranks 'Autumn' as the +very best of all Keats's Odes. + +Now whether one agrees with him or not, there is no loose talk in Mr. +Bridges's criticism. He tells us precisely why he prefers this poem to +that other: and such definiteness in critical writing is not only useful +in itself but perhaps the severest test of a critic's quality. No task +can well be harder than to take a poem, a stanza, or a line, to decide +"Just here lies the strength, the charm; or just here the looseness, the +defect." In any but the strongest hands these methods ensure mere +niggling ingenuity, in which all appreciation of the broader purposes of +the author--of Aristotle's 'universal'--disappears, while the critic +reveals himself as an industrious pick-thank person concerned with matters +of slight and secondary importance. But if well conducted such criticism +has a particular value. As Mr. Bridges says:-- + + "If my criticism should seem sometimes harsh, that is, I believe, due + to its being given in plain terms, a manner which I prefer, because + by obliging the writer to say definitely what he means, it makes his + mistakes easier to point out, and in this way the true business of + criticism may be advanced; nor do I know that, in a work of this + sort, criticism has any better function than to discriminate between + the faults and merits of the best art: for it commonly happens, when + any great artist comes to be generally admired, that his faults, + being graced by his excellences, are confounded with them in the + popular judgment, and being easy of imitation, are the points of his + work which are most liable to be copied." + +Further, Mr. Bridges leaves us in no doubt that he considers the Odes to +be in many respects the most important division of Keats's poetry. +"Had Keats," he says, "left us only his Odes, his rank among the poets +would be not lower than it is, for they have stood apart in literature, at +least the six most famous of them." + +These famous six are: (1) 'Psyche,' (2) 'Melancholy,' (3) 'Nightingale,' +(4) 'Grecian Urn,' (5) 'Indolence,' (6) 'Autumn'; and Mr. Bridges is not +content until he has them arranged in a hierarchy. He draws up a list in +order of merit, and in it gives first place--'for its perfection'--to +'Autumn':-- + + "This is always reckoned among the faultless masterpieces of English + poetry; and unless it be objected as a slight blemish that the words + 'Think not of them' in the second line of the third stanza are + somewhat awkwardly addressed to a personification of Autumn, I do not + know that any sort of fault can be found in it." + +But though 'Autumn' (1) is best as a whole, the 'Nightingale' (2) +altogether beats it in splendour and intensity of mood; and, after +pointing out its defects, Mr. Bridges confesses, "I could not name any +English poem of the same length which contains so much beauty as this +ode." Still, it takes second place, and next comes 'Melancholy' (3). +"The perception in this ode is profound, and no doubt experienced;" but in +spite of its great beauty "it does not hit so hard as one would expect. +I do not know whether this is due to a false note towards the end of the +second stanza, or to a disagreement between the second and third stanzas." +Next in order come 'Psyche' (4) and, disputing place with it, the +'Grecian Urn' (5). 'Indolence' (6) closes the procession; and I dare say +few will dispute her title to the last place. + +But with these six odes we must rank (a) the fragment of the 'May Ode,' +immortal on account of the famous passage of inimitable beauty descriptive +of the Greek poets-- + + "'Leaving great verse unto a little clan.'"-- + +And (b) (c) the Odes to 'Pan' and to 'Sorrow' from 'Endymion.' Of the +latter Mr. Sidney Colvin has written:-- + + "His later and more famous lyrics, though they are free from the + faults and immaturities which disfigure this, yet do not, to my mind + at least, show a command over such various sources of imaginative and + musical effect, or touch so thrillingly so many chords of the spirit. + A mood of tender irony and wistful pathos like that of the best + Elizabethan love-songs; a sense as keen as Heine's of the immemorial + romance of India and the East; a power like that of Coleridge, and + perhaps caught from him, of evoking the remotest weird and beautiful + associations almost with a word; clear visions of Greek beauty and + wild wood-notes of Celtic imagination; all these elements come here + commingled, yet in a strain perfectly individual." + +With this Mr. Bridges entirely agrees; but adds:-- + + "It unfortunately halts in the opening, and the first and fourth + stanzas especially are unequal to the rest, as is again the third + from the end, 'Young Stranger,' which for its matter would with more + propriety have been cast into the previous section; and these + impoverish the effect, and contain expressions which might put some + readers off. If they would begin at the fifth stanza and omit the + third from the end, they would find little that is not admirable." + +Now, for my part, when in book or newspaper I come upon references to +Isaiah lxi. 1-3, or Shakespeare, K. Henry IV., Pt. ii., Act 4, Sc. 5, l. +163, or the like, I have to drop my reading at once and hunt them up. +So I hope that these references of Mr. Bridges will induce the reader to +take his Keats down from the shelf. And I hope further that, having his +Keats in hand, the reader will examine these odes again and make out an +order for himself, as I propose to do. + + +Mr. Bridges's order of merit was: (1) 'Autumn,' (2) the 'Nightingale,' +(3) 'Melancholy,' (4) 'Psyche,' (5) 'Grecian Urn,' (6) 'Indolence'; +leaving us to rank with these (a) the fragment of the 'May Ode,' and +(b) (c) the Odes to 'Pan' and to 'Sorrow' from 'Endymion.' + +Now of 'Autumn,' to which he gives the first place 'for its perfection,' +one may remark that Keats did not entitle it an Ode, and the omission may +be something more than casual. Certainly its three stanzas seem to me to +exhibit very little of that _progression_ of thought and feeling which I +take to be one of the qualities of an ode as distinguished from an +ordinary lyric. The line is notoriously hard to draw: but I suppose that +in theory the lyric deals summarily with its theme, whereas the ode treats +it in a sustained progressive manner. But sustained treatment is hardly +possible within the limits of three stanzas, and I can discover no +progression. The first two stanzas elaborate a picture of Autumn; the +third suggests a reflection-- + + "Where are the songs of Spring? Ay, where are they? + Think not of them, thou hast thy music too--" + +And promptly, with a few added strokes, all pictorial, the poet works that +reflection into decoration. A sonnet could not well be more summary. +In fact, the poem in structure of thought very closely resembles a sonnet; +its first two stanzas corresponding to the octave, and its last stanza to +the sestett. + +This will perhaps be thought very trivial criticism of a poem which most +people admit to be, as a piece of writing, all but absolutely flawless. +But allowing that it expresses perfectly what it sets out to express, +I yet doubt if it deserve the place assigned to it by Mr. Bridges. +Expression counts for a great deal: but ideas perhaps count for more. +And in the value of the ideas expressed I cannot see that 'Autumn' comes +near to rivalling the 'Nightingale' (for instance) or 'Melancholy.' +The thought that Autumn has its songs as well as Spring has neither the +rarity nor the subtlety nor the moral value of the thought that: + + "In the very temple of Delight + Veil'd Melancholy has her sovran shrine, + Though seen of none save him whose strenuous tongue + Can burst joy's grape against his palate fine; + His soul shall taste the sadness of her might, + And be among her cloudy trophies hung." + +To test it in another way:--It is perfect, no doubt: but it has not the +one thing that now and then in poetry rises (if I may use the paradox) +above perfection. It does not contain, as one or two of the Odes contain, +what I may call the Great Thrill. It nowhere compels that sudden +'silent, upon a peak in Darien' shiver, that awed surmise of the magic of +poetry which arrests one at the seventh stanza of the 'Nightingale' or +before the closing lines of 'Psyche.' Such verse as: + + "Perhaps the self-same song hath found a path + Through the sad heart of Ruth, when, sick for home, + She stood in tears amid the alien corn; + The same that oft-times hath + Charm'd magic casements, opening on the foam + Of perilous seas in faery lands forlorn--" + +Reaches beyond technical perfection to the very root of all tears and joy. +Such verse links poetry to Love itself-- + + "Half angel and half bird, + And all a wonder and a wild desire." + +The 'Ode on a Grecian Urn' does not perhaps quite reach this divine +thrill: but its second and third stanzas have a rapture that comes very +near to it (I will speak anon of the fourth stanza): and I should not +quarrel with one who preferred these two stanzas even to the close of +'Psyche.' + +Now it seems to me that the mere touching of this poetic height--the mere +feat of causing this most exquisite vibration in the human nerves--gives a +poem a quality and a rank apart; a quality and a rank not secured to +'Autumn' by all its excellence of expression. I grant, of course, that it +takes two to produce this thrill--the reader as well as the poet. +And if any man object to me that he, for his part, feels a thrill as +poignant when he reads stanza 2 of 'Autumn' as when he reads stanza 7 of +the 'Nightingale,' then I confess that I shall have some difficulty in +answering him. But I believe very few, if any, will assert this of +themselves. And perhaps we may get at the truth of men's feelings on this +point in another way. Suppose that of these four poems, 'Autumn,' +'Nightingale,' 'Psyche,' and 'Grecian Urn,' one were doomed to perish, and +fate allowed us to choose which one should be abandoned. Sorrowful as the +choice must be, I believe that lovers of poetry would find themselves +least loth to part with 'Autumn'; that the loss of either of the others +would be foreseen as a sharper wrench. + +For the others lie close to human emotion; are indeed interpenetrated with +emotion; whereas 'Autumn' makes but an objective appeal, chiefly to the +visual sense. It is, as I have said, a decorative picture; and even so it +hardly beats the pictures in stanza 4 of the 'Grecian Urn'-- + + "What little town by river or sea-shore, + Or mountain, built with peaceful citadel, + Is emptied of its folk, this pious morn?" + + +Though Keats, to be sure, comes perilously near to spoiling these lines by +the three answering ones-- + + "And, little town, thy streets for evermore + Will silent be; and not a soul to tell + Why thou art desolate, can e'er return." + +--Which, though beautiful in themselves, involve a confusion of thought; +since (in Mr. Colvin's words) "they speak of the arrest of life as though +it were an infliction in the sphere of reality, and not merely a necessary +condition in the sphere of art, having in that sphere its own +compensations." + +But it is time to be drawing up one's own order for the Odes. The first +place, then, let us give to the 'Nightingale,' for the intensity of its +emotion, for the sustained splendour and variety of its language, for the +consummate skill with which it keeps the music matched with the mood, and +finally because it attains, at least twice, to the 'great thrill.' +Nor can one preferring it offend Mr. Bridges, who confesses that he "could +not name any English poem of the same length which contains so much beauty +as this ode." + +For the second place, one feels inclined at first to bracket 'Psyche' with +the 'Grecian Urn.' Each develops a beautiful idea. In 'Psyche' the poet +addresses the loveliest but latest-born vision 'of all Olympus's faded +hierarchy,' and promises her that, though born: + + "Too late for antique vows, + Too, too late for the fond believing lyre," + +She shall yet have a priest, the poet, and a temple built in some +untrodden region of his mind-- + + "And in the midst of this wide quietness + A rosy sanctuary will I dress + With the wreath'd trellis of a working brain, + With buds, and bells, and stars without a name, + With all the gardener Fancy e'er could feign, + Who breeding flowers will never breed the same: + And there shall be for thee all soft delight + That shadowy thought can win, + A bright torch, and a casement ope at night, + To let the warm Love in!" + +The thought of the 'Grecian Urn' is (to quote Mr. Bridges) "the supremacy +of ideal art over Nature, because of its unchanging expression of +perfection." And this also is true and beautiful. Idea for idea, there +is little to choose between the two odes. Each has the 'great thrill,' or +something very like it. The diction of 'Psyche' is more splendid; the +mood of the 'Grecian Urn' happier and (I think) rarer. But 'Psyche' +asserts its superiority in the orderly development of its idea, which +rises steadily to its climax in the magnificent lines quoted above, and on +that note triumphantly closes: whereas the 'Grecian Urn' marches +uncertainly, recurs to its main idea without advancing it, reaches +something like its climax in the middle stanza, and tripping over a pun +(as Mr. Bridges does not hesitate to call 'O Attic shape! fair attitude!') +at the entrance of the last stanza, barely recovers itself in time to make +a forcible close. + +(1) 'Nightingale,' (2) 'Psyche,' (3) 'Grecian Urn.' Shall the next place +go to 'Melancholy?' The idea of this ode (I contrasted it just now with +the idea of 'Autumn') is particularly fine; and when we supply the first +stanza which Keats discarded we see it to be well developed. +The discarded stanza lies open to the charge of staginess. One may answer +that Keats meant it to be stagey: that he deliberately surrounded the +quest of the false Melancholy with those paste-board 'properties'--the +bark of dead men's bones, the rudder of a dragon's tail 'long severed, yet +still hard with agony', the cordage woven of large uprootings from the +skull of bald Medusa'--in order to make the genuine Melancholy more +effective by contrast.[1] Yet, as Mr. Bridges points out, the ode does +not hit so hard as one would expect: and it has seemed to me that the +composition of Durer's great drawing may have something to do with this. +Durer _did_ surround his Melancholia with 'properties,' and he _did_ +evoke a figure which all must admit to be not only tremendously impressive +but entirely genuine, whatever Keats may say; a figure so haunting, too, +that it obtrudes its face between us and Keats's page and scares away his +delicate figure of: + + "Joy, whose hand is ever at his lips + Bidding adieu . . ."-- + +Reducing him to the pettiness of a Chelsea-china shepherd. Mr. Bridges, +too, calls attention to a false note in the second stanza:-- + + "Or if thy mistress some rich anger shows, + Emprison her soft hand, and let her rave, + And feed, feed deep upon her peerless eyes." + +So prone was Keats to sound this particular false note that Mr. Bridges +had to devote some three pages of his essay to an examination of the +poet's want of taste in his speech about women and his lack of true +insight into human passion. The worst trick this disability ever played +upon Keats was to blind him to his magnificent opportunity in 'Lamia'--an +opportunity of which the missing is felt as positively cruel: but it +betrayed him also into occasional lapses and ineptitudes which almost +rival Leigh Hunt's-- + + "The two divinest things the world has got-- + A lovely woman in a rural spot." + +This blemish may, perhaps, condemn it to a place below 'Autumn'; of which +(I hope) reason has been shown why it cannot rank higher than (4). +And (6) _longo intervallo_ comes 'Indolence,' which may be fearlessly +called an altogether inferior performance. + +The 'May Ode' stands by itself, an exquisite fragment. But the two odes +from _Endymion_ may be set well above 'Indolence,' and that to 'Sorrow,' +in my opinion, above 'Autumn,' and only a little way behind the leaders. + + +But the fall of the year is marked for us by a ceremony more poignant, +more sorrowfully seasonable than any hymned by Hood or by Keats. Let us +celebrate-- + + +LAYING UP THE BOAT. + + +There arrives a day towards the end of October--or with luck we may tide +over into November--when the wind in the mainsail suddenly takes a winter +force, and we begin to talk of laying up the boat. Hitherto we have kept +a silent compact and ignored all change in the season. We have watched +the blue afternoons shortening, fading through lilac into grey, and let +pass their scarcely perceptible warnings. One afternoon a few kittiwakes +appeared. A week later the swallows fell to stringing themselves like +beads along the coastguard's telephone-wire on the hill. They vanished, +and we pretended not to miss them. When our hands grew chill with +steering we rubbed them by stealth or stuck them nonchalantly in our +pockets. But this vicious unmistakable winter gust breaks the spell. +We take one look around the harbour, at the desolate buoys awash and +tossing; we cast another seaward at the thick weather through which, in a +week at latest, will come looming the earliest of the Baltic merchantmen, +our November visitors--bluff vessels with red-painted channels, green +deckhouses, white top-strakes, wooden davits overhanging astern, and the +Danish flag fluttering aloft in the haze. Then we find speech; and with +us, as with the swallows, the move into winter quarters is not long +delayed when once it comes into discussion. We have dissembled too long; +and know, as we go through the form of debating it, that our date must be +the next spring-tides. + +This ritual of laying up the boat is our way of bidding farewell to +summer; and we go through it, when the day comes, in ceremonial silence. +_Favete linguis!_ The hour helps us, for the spring-tides at this season +reach their height a little after night-fall, and it is on an already +slackening flood that we cast off our moorings and head up the river with +our backs to the waning sunset. Since we tow a dinghy astern and are +ourselves towed by the silent yachtsman, you may call it a procession. +She has been stripped, during the last two days, of sails, rigging, and +all spars but the mainmast. Now we bring her alongside the town quay and +beneath the shears--the abhorred shears--which lift this too out of its +step, dislocated with a creak as poignant as the cry of Polydorus. +We lower it, lay it along the deck, and resume our way; past quay doors +and windows where already the townsfolk are beginning to light their +lamps; and so by the jetties where foreign crews rest with elbows on +bulwarks and stare down upon us idly through the dusk. She is after all +but a little cutter of six tons, and we might well apologise, like the +Athenian, for so diminutive a corpse. But she is our own; and they never +saw her with jackyarder spread, or spinnaker or jib-topsail delicate as +samite--those heavenly wings!--nor felt her gallant spirit straining to +beat her own record before a tense northerly breeze. Yet even to them her +form, in pure white with gilt fillet, might tell of no common obsequies. + +For in every good ship the miracle of Galatea is renewed; and the +shipwright who sent this keel down the ways to her element surely beheld +the birth of a goddess. He still speaks of her with pride, but the +conditions of his work keep him a modest man; for he goes about it under +the concentred gaze of half a dozen old mariners hauled ashore, who haunt +his yard uninvited, slow of speech but deadly critical. Nor has the +language a word for their appalling candour. Often, admiring how +cheerfully he tolerates them, I have wondered what it would feel like to +compose a novel under the eyes of half a dozen reviewers. But to him, as +to his critics, the ship was a framework only until the terrible moment +when with baptism she took life. Did he in the rapture, the brief ecstasy +of creation, realise that she had passed from him? Ere the local +artillery band had finished 'Rule Britannia,' and while his friends were +still shaking his hands and drinking to him, did he know his loss in his +triumph? His fate is to improve the world, not to possess; to chase +perfection, knowing that under the final mastering touch it must pass from +his hand; to lose his works and anchor himself upon the workmanship, the +immaterial function. For of art this is the cross and crown in one; and +he, modest man, was born to the sad eminence. + +She is ours now by purchase, but ours, too, by something better. Like a +slave's her beautiful untaught body came to us; but it was we who gave +wings to her, and with wings a soul, and a law to its grace, and +discipline to its vital impulses. She is ours, too, by our gratitude, +since the delicate machine: + + "Has like a woman given up its joy;" + +And by memories of her helpfulness in such modest perils as we tempt, of +her sweet companionship through long days empty of annoyance--land left +behind with its striving crowds, its short views, its idols of the +market-place, its sordid worries; the breast flung wide to the horizon, +swept by wholesome salt airs, void perhaps, but so beatifically clean! +Then it was that we learned her worth, drinking in the knowledge without +effort, lulled hour after hour by her whisperings which asked for no +answer, by the pulse of her tiller soft against the palm. Patter of +reef-points, creak of cordage, hum of wind, hiss of brine--I think at +times that she has found a more human language. Who that has ever steered +for hours together cannot report of a mysterious voice 'breaking the +silence of the seas,' as though a friend were standing and speaking +astern? or has not turned his head to the confident inexplicable call? +The fishermen fable of drowned sailors 'hailing their names.' But the +voice is of a single speaker; it bears no likeness to the hollow tones of +the dead; it calls no name; it utters no particular word. It merely +speaks. Sometimes, ashamed at being tricked by an illusion so absurd, +I steal a glance at the yachtsman forward. He is smoking, placidly +staring at the clouds. Patently he was not the speaker, and patently he +has heard nothing. Was it Cynthia, my dearer shipmate? She, too, knows +the voice; even answered it one day, supposing it mine, and in her +confusion I surprised our common secret. But we never hear it together. +She is seated now on the lee side of the cockpit, her hands folded on the +coaming, her chin rested on them, and her eyes gazing out beneath the sail +and across the sea from which they surely have drawn their wine-coloured +glooms. She has not stirred for many minutes. No, it was not Cynthia. +Then either it must be the wild, obedient spirit who carries us, straining +at the impassable bar of speech, to break through and be at one with her +master, or else--Can it have been Ariel, perched aloft in the shrouds, +with mischievous harp? + + "That was the chirp of Ariel + You heard, as overhead it flew, + The farther going more to dwell + And wing our green to wed our blue; + But whether note of joy or knell + Not his own Father-singer knew; + Nor yet can any mortal tell, + Save only how it shivers through; + The breast of us a sounded shell, + The blood of us a lighted dew." + + +Perhaps; but for my part I believe it was the ship; and if you deride my +belief, I shall guess you one of those who need a figure-head to remind +them of a vessel's sex. There are minds which find a certain romance in +figure-heads. To me they seem a frigid, unintelligent device, not to say +idolatrous. I have known a crew to set so much store by one that they +kept a tinsel locket and pair of ear-rings in the forecastle and duly +adorned their darling when in port. But this is materialism. The true +personality of a ship resides in no prefiguring lump of wood with a +sightless smile to which all seas come alike and all weathers. Lay your +open palm on the mast, rather, and feel life pulsing beneath it, trembling +through and along every nerve of her. Are you converted? That life is +yours to control. Take the tiller, then, and for an hour be a god! +For indeed you shall be a god, and of the very earliest. The centuries +shall run out with the chain as you slip moorings--run out and drop from +you, plumb, and leave you free, winged! Or if you cannot forget in a +moment the times to which you were born, each wave shall turn back a page +as it rolls past to break on the shore towards which you revert no glance. +Even the romance of it shall fade with the murmur of that coast. + + "Sails of silk and ropes of sendal, + Such as gleam in ancient lore, + And the singing of the sailor, + And the answer from the shore--" + +These shall pass and leave you younger than romance--a child open-eyed and +curious, pleased to meet a sea-parrot or a rolling porpoise, or to watch +the gannets diving-- + + "As Noah saw them dive + O'er sunken Ararat." + +Yes, and sunset shall bring you, a god, to the gates of a kingdom I must +pause to describe for you, though when you reach it you will forget my +description and imagine yourself its first discoverer. But that is a part +of its charm. + +Walter Pater, reading the _Odyssey_, was brought up (as we say) 'with a +round turn' by a passage wherein Homer describes briefly and with accuracy +how some mariners came to harbour, took down sail, and stepped ashore. +It filled him with wonder that so simple an incident--nor to say ordinary +--could be made so poetical; and, having pondered it, he divided the +credit between the poet and his fortunate age--a time (said he) in which +one could hardly have spoken at all without ideal effect, or the sailors +pulled down their boat without making a picture 'in the great style' +against a sky charged with marvels. + +You will discover, when you reach the river-mouth of which I am telling, +and are swept over the rolling bar into quiet water--you will discover +(and with ease, being a god) that Mr. Pater was entirely mistaken, and the +credit belongs neither to Homer nor to his fortunate age. For here are +woods with woodlanders, and fields with ploughmen, and beaches with +fishermen hauling nets; and all these men, as they go about their work, +contrive to make pictures 'in the great style' against a sky charged with +marvels, obviously without any assistance from Homer, and quite as if +nothing had happened for, say, the last three thousand years. That the +immemorial craft of seafaring has no specially 'heroic age'--or that, if +it have, that age is yours--you will discover by watching your own +yachtsman as he moves about lowering foresail and preparing to drop +anchor. + +It is a river of gradual golden sunsets, such as Wilson painted--a +broad-bosomed flood between deep and tranquil woods, the main banks +holding here and there a village as in an arm maternally crook'd, but +opening into creeks where the oaks dip their branches in the high tides, +where the stars are glassed all night long without a ripple, and where you +may spend whole days with no company but herons and sandpipers. Even by +the main river each separate figure--the fisherman on the shore, the +ploughman on the upland, the ferryman crossing between them--moves slowly +upon a large landscape, while, permeating all, 'the essential silence +cheers and blesses.' After a week at anchor in the heart of this silence +Cynthia and I compared notes, and set down the total population at fifty +souls; and even so she would have it that I had included the owls. +Lo! the next morning an unaccustomed rocking awoke us in our berths, and, +raising the flap of our dew-drenched awning, we 'descried at sunrise an +emerging prow' of a peculiarly hideous excursion steamboat. She blew no +whistle, and we were preparing to laugh at her grotesque temerity when we +became aware of a score of boats putting out towards her from the shadowy +banks. Like spectres they approached, reached her, and discharged their +complements, until at last a hundred and fifty passengers crowded her +deck. In silence--or in such silence as a paddle-boat can achieve--she +backed, turned, and bore them away: on what festal errand we never +discovered. We never saw them return. For aught I know they may never +have returned. They raised no cheer; no band accompanied them; they +passed without even the faint hum of conversation. In five minutes at +most the apparition had vanished around the river-bend seawards and out of +sight. We stared at the gently heaving water, turned, and caught sight of +Euergetes, his head and red cap above the forecastle hatch. (I call our +yachtsman Euergetes because it is so unlike his real name that neither he +nor his family will recognise it.) "Why, Euergetes," exclaimed Cynthia, +"wherever did they all come from?" "I'm sure I can't tell you, ma'am," he +answered, "unless 'twas from the woods,"--giving us to picture these ardent +holiday-makers roosting all night in the trees while we slumbered. +But the odd thing was that the labourers manned the fields that day, the +fishermen the beach that evening, in un-diminished numbers. We landed, +and could detect no depletion in the village. We landed on subsequent +days, and discovered no increase. And the inference, though easy, was +startling. + +I suppose that 'in the great style' could hardly be predicated of our +housekeeping on these excursions; and yet it achieves, in our enthusiastic +opinion, a primitive elegance not often recaptured by mortals since the +passing of the Golden Age. We cook for ourselves, but bring a fine spirit +of emulation both to _cuisine_ and service. We dine frugally, but the +claret is sound. From the moment when Euergetes awakes us by washing down +the deck, and the sound of water rushing through the scuppers calls me +forth to discuss the weather with him, method rules the early hours, that +we may be free to use the later as we list. First the cockpit beneath the +awning must be prepared as a dressing-room for Cynthia; next Euergetes +summoned on deck to valet me with the simple bucket. And when I am +dressed and tingling from the _douche_, and sit me down on the cabin top, +barefooted and whistling, to clean the boots, and Euergetes has been sent +ashore for milk and eggs, bread and clotted cream, there follows a +peaceful half-hour until Cynthia flings back a corner of the awning and, +emerging, confirms the dawn. Then begins the business, orderly and +thorough, of redding up the cabin, stowing the beds, washing out the lower +deck, folding away the awning, and transforming the cockpit into a +breakfast-room, with table neatly set forth. Meanwhile Euergetes has +returned, and from the forecastle comes the sputter of red mullet cooking. +Cynthia clatters the cups and saucers, while in the well by the cabin door +I perform some acquired tricks with the new-laid eggs. There is plenty to +be done on board a small boat, but it is all simple enough. Only, you +must not let it overtake you. Woe to you if it fall into arrears! + +By ten o'clock or thereabouts we have breakfasted, my pipe is lit, and a +free day lies before us-- + + "All the wood to ransack, + All the wave explore." + +We take the dinghy and quest after adventures. The nearest railway lies +six miles off, and is likely to deposit no one in whom we have the least +concern. The woods are deep, we carry our lunch-basket and may roam +independent of taverns. If the wind invite, we can hoist our small sail; +if not, we can recline and drift and stare at the heavens, or land and +bathe, or search in vain for curlews' or kingfishers' nests, or in more +energetic moods seek out a fisherman and hire him to shoot his seine. +Seventy red mullet have I seen fetched at one haul out of those delectable +waters, remote and enchanted as the lake whence the fisherman at the +genie's orders drew fish for the young king of the Black Isles. But such +days as these require no filling, and why should I teach you how to fill +them? + +Best hour of all perhaps is that before bed-time, when the awning has been +spread once more, and after long hours in the open our world narrows to +the circle of the reading-lamp in the cockpit. Our cabin is prepared. +Through the open door we see its red curtain warm in the light of the +swinging lamp, the beds laid, the white sheets turned back. Still we +grudge these moments to sleep. Outside we hear the tide streaming +seawards, light airs play beneath the awning, above it rides the host of +heaven. And here, gathered into a few square feet, we have home--larder, +cellar, library, tables, and cupboards; life's small appliances with the +human comradeship they serve, chosen for their service after severely +practical discussion, yet ultimately by the heart's true nesting-instinct. +We are isolated, bound even to this strange river-bed by a few fathoms of +chain only. To-morrow we can lift anchor and spread wing; but we carry +home with us. + + "I will make you brooches and toys for your delight + Of bird-song at morning and star-shine at night; + I will make a palace fit for you and me + Of green days in forests and blue days at sea." + + "I will make my kitchen and you shall keep your room + Where white flows the river and bright blows the broom; + And you shall wash your linen and keep your body white + In rainfall at morning and dewfall at night." + +You see now what memories we lay up with the boat. Will you think it +ridiculous that after such royal days of summer, her inconspicuous +obsequies have before now put me in mind of Turner's '_Fighting +Temeraire_'? I declare, at any rate, that the fault lies not with me, but +with our country's painters and poets for providing no work of art nearer +to my mood. We English have a great seafaring and a great poetical past. +Yet the magic of the sea and shipping has rarely touched our poetry, and +for its finest expression we must still turn to an art in which as a race +we are less expert, and stand before that picture of Turner's in the +National Gallery. The late Mr. Froude believed in a good time coming when +the sea-captains of Elizabeth are to find their bard and sit enshrined in +'great English national epic as grand as the _Odyssey_' It may be, but as +yet our poets have achieved but a few sea-fights, marine adventures, and +occasional pieces, which wear a spirited but accidental look, and suggest +the excursionist. On me, at any rate, no poem in our language--not even +_The Ancient Mariner_--binds as that picture binds, the-- + + "Mystic spell, + Which none but sailors know or feel, + And none but they can tell--" + +If indeed they _can_ tell. In it Turner seized and rolled together in one +triumphant moment the emotional effect of noble shipping and a sentiment +as ancient and profound as the sea itself--human regret for transitory +human glory. The great warship, glimmering in her Mediterranean +fighting-paint, moving like a queen to execution; the pert and ignoble +tug, itself an emblem of the new order, eager, pushing, ugly, and +impatient of the slow loveliness it supersedes; the sunset hour, closing +man's labour; the fading river-reach--you may call these things obvious, +but all art's greatest effects are obvious when once genius has discovered +them. I should know well enough by this time what is coming when I draw +near that picture, and yet my heart never fails to leap with the old wild +wonder. There are usually one or two men standing before it--I observe +that it affects women less--and I glance at them furtively to see how +_they_ take it. If ever I surprise one with tears in his eyes, I believe +we shall shake hands. And why not? For the moment we are not strangers, +but men subdued by the wonder and sadness of our common destiny: "we feel +that we are greater than we know." We are two Englishmen, in one moment +realising the glories of our blood and state. We are alone together, +gazing upon a new Pacific, 'silent, upon a peak in Darien.' + +For--and here lies his subtlety--in the very flush of amazement the +painter flatters you by whispering that for _you_ has his full meaning +been reserved. The _Temeraire_ goes to her doom unattended, twilit, +obscure, with no pause in the dingy bustle of the river. You alone have +eyes for the passing of greatness, and a heart to feel it. + + "There's a far bell ringing," + +But you alone hear it tolling to evensong, to the close of day, the end of +deeds. + +So, as we near the beach where she is to lie, a sense of proud +exclusiveness mingles with our high regret. Astern the jettymen and +stevedores are wrangling over their latest job; trains are shunting, +cranes working, trucks discharging their cargoes amid clouds of dust. +We and we only assist at the passing of a goddess. Euergetes rests on his +oars, the tow-rope slackens, she glides into the deep shadow of the shore, +and with a soft grating noise--ah, the eloquence of it!--takes ground. +Silently we carry her chain out and noose it about a monster elm; silently +we slip the legs under her channels, lift and make fast her stern +moorings, lash the tiller for the last time, tie the coverings over +cabintop and well; anxiously, with closed lips, praetermitting no due +rite. An hour, perhaps, passes, and November darkness has settled on the +river ere we push off our boat, in a last farewell committing her--our +treasure 'locked up, not lost'--to a winter over which Jove shall reign +genially. + + "Et fratres Helenae, lucida sidera." + +As we thread our dim way homeward among the riding-lights flickering on +the black water, the last pale vision of her alone and lightless follows +and reminds me of the dull winter ahead, the short days, the long nights. +She is haunting me yet as I land on the wet slip strewn with dead leaves +to the tide's edge. She follows me up the hill, and even to my library +door. I throw it open, and lo! a bright fire burning, and, smiling over +against the blaze of it, cheerful, companionable, my books have been +awaiting me. + + +[1] The discarded opening stanza ran:-- + + "Though you should build a bark of dead men's bones, + And rear a phantom gibbet for a mast, + Stitch shrouds together for a sail, with groans + To fill it out blood-stained and aghast; + Although your rudder be a dragon's tail + Long-sever'd, yet still hard with agony, + Your cordage large uprootings from the skull + Of bald Medusa, certes you would fail + To find the Melancholy--whether she + Dreameth in any isle of Lethe dull." + + + +NOVEMBER. + + +Will the reader forgive, this month, a somewhat more serious gossip? + +In my childhood I used to spend long holidays with my grandparents in +Devonshire, and afterwards lived with them for a while when the shades of +the prison-house began to close and I attended my first 'real' school as a +day-boy. I liked those earlier visits best, for they were holidays, and I +had great times in the hayfields and apple orchards, and rode a horse, and +used in winter-time to go shooting with my grandfather and carry the +powder-flask and shot-flask for his gun--an old muzzle-loader. Though +stern in his manner, he was (as I grew to learn) extraordinarily, even +extravagantly, kind; and my grandmother lived for me, her eldest +grandchild. Years afterwards I gathered that in the circle of her +acquaintance she passed for a satirical, slightly imperious, lady: and I +do seem to remember that she suffered fools with a private reserve of +mirth. But she loved her own with a thoroughness which extended--good +housewife that she was--down to the last small office. + +In short, here were two of the best and most affectionate grandparents in +the world, who did what they knew to make a child happy all the week. But +in religion they were strict evangelicals, and on Sunday they took me to +public worship and acquainted me with Hell. From my eighth to my twelfth +year I lived on pretty close terms with Hell, and would wake up in the +night and lie awake with the horror of it upon me. Oddly enough, I had no +very vivid fear for myself--or if vivid it was but occasional and rare. +Little pietistic humbug that I was, I fancied myself among the elect: but +I had a desperate assurance that both my parents were damned, and I loved +them too well to find the conviction bearable. To this day I wonder what +kept me from tackling my father on the state of his soul. The result +would have been extremely salutary for me: for he had an easy sense of +humour, a depth of conviction of his own which he united with limitless +tolerance, and a very warm affection for his mother-in-law. Let it +suffice that I did not: but for two or three years at least my childhood +was tormented with visions of Hell derived from the pulpit and mixed up +with two terrible visions derived from my reading--the ghost of an evil +old woman in red-heeled slippers from Sir Walter Scott's story, _The +Tapestried Room_, and a jumble of devils from a chapter of Samuel Warren's +_Diary of a Late Physician_. I had happened on these horrors among the +dull contents of my grandfather's book-case. + +For three or four years these companions--the vision of Hell particularly +and my parents in it--murdered my childish sleep. Then, for no reason +that I can give any account of, it all faded, and boy or man I have never +been troubled at all by Hell or the fear of it. + +The strangest part of the whole affair is that no priest, from first to +last, has ever spoken to me in private of any life but this present one, +or indeed about religion at all. I suppose there must be some instinct in +the sacerdotal mind which warns it off certain cases as hopeless from the +first . . . and yet I have always been eager to discuss serious things +with the serious. + +There has been no great loss, though--apart from the missing of +sociableness--if one may judge the arguments that satisfy my clerical +friends from the analogies they use in the pulpit. The subject of a +future life is one, to be sure, which can hardly be discussed without +resort to analogy. But there are good and bad analogies, and of all bad +ones that which grates worst upon the nerves of a man who will have clear +thinking (to whatever it lead him) is the common one of the seed and the +flower. + + "The flowers that we behold each year + In chequer'd meads their heads to rear, + New rising from the tomb; + The eglantines and honey daisies, + And all those pretty smiling faces + That still in age grow young-- + Even those do cry + That though men die, + Yet life from death may come," + +Wrote John Hagthorpe in verses which generations of British schoolboys +have turned into Latin alcaics; and how often have we not 'sat under' this +argument in church at Easter or when the preacher was improving a Harvest +Festival? Examine it, and you see at once that the argument is not _in +pari materia_; that all the true correspondence between man and the +flower-seed begins and ends in this world. As the seed becomes a plant, +blossoms and leaves the seeds of other flowers, so of seed man is +begotten, flourishes and dies, leaving his seed behind him--all in this +world. The 'seed' argument makes an illicit jump from one world to +another after all its analogies have been met and satisfied on this side +of the grave. If flowers went to heaven and blossomed there (which is +possible indeed, but is not contended) it might be cogent. As things are, +one might as validly reason from the man to prove that flowers go to +heaven, as from the flower to prove that man goes thither. St. Paul (as +I do not forget) uses the similitude of the seed: but his argument is a +totally different one. St. Paul bids us not be troubled in what form the +dead shall be raised; for as we sow "not the body that shall be, but bare +grain, it may chance of wheat or of some other grain," so God will raise +the dead in what form it pleases Him: in other words, he tells us that +since bare grain may turn into such wonderful and wonderfully different +things as wheat, barley, oats, rye, in this world, we need not marvel that +bare human bodies planted here should be raised in wonderful form +hereafter. Objections may be urged against this illustration: I am only +concerned to point out that it illustrates an argument entirely different +from the common pulpit one, which (I suspect) we should have to endure far +less frequently were it our custom to burn our dead, and did not interment +dig a trap for facile rhetoric. + +Further, St. Paul's particular warning, if it do not consciously contain, +at least suggests, a general warning against interpreting the future life +in terms of this one, whereas its delights and pains can have little or +nothing in common with ours. We try to imagine them by expanding or +exaggerating and perpetuating ours--or some of them; but the attempt is +demonstrably foolish, and leads straight to its own defeat. It comes of +man's incapacity to form a conception of Eternity, or at any rate to grasp +and hold it long enough to reason about it; by reason of which incapacity +he falls back upon the easier, misleading conception of 'Everlasting +Life.' In Eternity time is not: a man dies into it to-day and awakes +(say) yesterday, for in Eternity yesterday and to-day and to-morrow are +one, and ten thousand years is as one day. This vacuum of time you may +call 'Everlasting Life,' but it clearly differs from what men ordinarily +and almost inevitably understand by 'Everlasting Life,' which to them is +an endless prolongation of time. Therefore, when they imagine heaven as +consisting of an endless prolongation and exaggeration or rarefication of +such pleasures as we know, they invite the retort, "And pray what would +become of any one of our known pleasures, or even of our conceivable +pleasures, if it were made everlasting?" As Jowett asked, with his usual +dry sagacity, in his Introduction to the _Phaedo_-- + + "What is the pain that does not become deadened after a thousand + years? or what is the nature of that pleasure or happiness which + never wearies by monotony? Earthly pleasures and pains are short in + proportion as they are keen, of any others which are both intense and + lasting we have no experience and can form no idea. . . . To beings + constituted as we are the monotony of singing psalms would be as + great an affliction as the pains of hell, and might even be + pleasantly interrupted by them." + +This is trenchant enough, and yet we perceive that the critic is setting +up his rest upon the very fallacy he attacks--the fallacy of using +'Eternity' and 'Everlasting Life' as convertible terms. +He neatly enough reduces to absurdity the prolongation, through endless +time, of pleasures which delight us because they are transitory: he does +not see, or for the moment forgets, that Eternity is not a prolongation of +time at all, but an absolute negation of it. + +There seems to be no end to the confusion of men's thought on this +subject. Take, for example, this extract from our late Queen's private +journal (1883):-- + + "After luncheon saw the great poet Tennyson in dearest Albert's room + for nearly an hour; and most interesting it was. He is grown very + old, his eyesight much impaired. But he was very kind. Asked him to + sit down. He talked of many friends he had lost, and what it would + be if he did not feel and know that there was another world where + there would be no partings: and then he spoke with horror of the + unbelievers and philosophers who would make you believe that there + was no other world, no immortality, who tried to explain all away in + a miserable manner. We agreed that, were such a thing possible, God, + who is Love, would be far more cruel than any human being." + +It was, no doubt, a touching and memorable interview--these two, aged and +great, meeting at a point of life when grandeur and genius alike feel +themselves to be lonely, daily more lonely, and exchanging beliefs upon +that unseen world where neither grandeur nor genius can plead more than +that they have used their gifts for good. And yet was not Tennyson +yielding to the old temptation to interpret the future life in terms of +this one? Speculation will not carry us far upon this road; yet, so far +as we can, let us carry clear thinking with us. Cruelty implies the +infliction of pain: and there can be no pain without feeling. What +cruelty, then, can be inflicted on the dead, if they have done with +feeling? Or what on the living, if they live in a happy delusion and pass +into nothingness without discovering the cheat? Let us hold most firmly +that there has been no cheat; but let us also be reasonable and admit +that, if cheat there be, it cannot also be cruel, since everything that +would make it a cheat would also blot out completely all chance of +discovery, and therefore all pain of discovering. + + +This is a question on which, beyond pleading that what little we say ought +to be (but seldom is) the result of clear thinking, I propose to say +little, not only because here is not the place for metaphysics, but +because--to quote Jowett again--"considering the 'feebleness of the human +faculties and the uncertainty of the subject,' we are inclined to believe +that the fewer our words the better. At the approach of death there is +not much said: good men are too honest to go out of the world professing +more than they know. There is perhaps no important subject about which, +at any time, even religious people speak so little to one another." + +I would add that, in my opinion, many men fall into this reticence because +as they grow older the question seems to settle itself without argument, +and they cease by degrees to worry themselves about it. It dies in +sensible men almost insensibly with the death of egoism. At twenty we are +all furious egoists; at forty or thereabouts--and especially if we have +children, as at forty every man ought--our centre of gravity has +completely shifted. We care a great deal about what happens to the next +generation, we care something about our work, but about ourselves and what +becomes of us in the end I really think we care very little. By this +time, if we have taken account of ourselves, ourselves are by no means so +splendidly interesting as they used to be, but subjects rather of humorous +and charitable comprehension. + +Of all the opening passages in Plato--master of beautiful openings--I like +best that of the _Laws_. The scene is Crete; the season, midsummer; and +on the long dusty road between Cnosus and the cave and temple of Zeus the +three persons of the dialogue--strangers to one another, but bound on a +common pilgrimage--join company and fall into converse together. One is +an Athenian, one a Cretan, the third a Lacedaemonian, and all are elderly. +Characteristically, the invitation to talk comes from the Athenian. + + "It will pass the time pleasantly," he suggests; "for I am told that + the distance from Cnosus to the cave and temple of Zeus is + considerable, and doubtless there are shady places under the lofty + trees which will protect us from the scorching sun. Being no longer + young, we may often stop to rest beneath them, and get over the whole + journey without difficulty, beguiling the time by conversation." + + "Yes, Stranger," answers Cleinias the Cretan, "and if we proceed + onward we shall come to groves of cypresses, which are of rare height + and beauty, and there are green meadows in which we may repose and + converse." + + "Very good." + + "Very good indeed; and still better when we see them. Let us move on + cheerily." + +So, now walking, anon pausing in the shade to rest, the three strangers +beguile their journey, which (as the Athenian was made, by one of Plato's +cunning touches, to foresee) is a long one; and the dialogue, moving with +their deliberate progress, extends to a length which no doubt in the +course of some 2,300 years has frightened away many thousands of general +readers. Yet its slow amplitude, when you come to think of it, is +appropriate; for these elderly men are in no hurry, although they have +plenty to talk about, especially on the subjects of youth and religion. +"They have," says Jowett, "the feelings of old age about youth, about the +state, about human things in general. Nothing in life seems to be of much +importance to them: they are spectators rather than actors, and men in +general appear to the Athenian speaker to be the playthings of the gods +and of circumstances. Still they have a fatherly care of the young, and +are deeply impressed by sentiments of religion. . . ." + + "Human affairs," says the Athenian, "are hardly worth considering in + earnest, and yet we must be in earnest about them--a sad necessity + constrains us. . . . And so I say that about serious matters a man + should be serious, and about a matter which is not serious he should + not be serious; and that God is the natural and worthy object of our + most serious and blessed endeavours. For man, as I said before, is + made to be the plaything of God, and this, truly considered, is the + best of him; wherefore also every man and woman should walk seriously + and pass life in the noblest of pastimes, and be of another mind from + what they are at present." + +But on the subject of youth, too, our Athenian is anxiously, albeit +calmly, serious: and especially on the right education of youth, +"for," says he, "many a victory has been and will be suicidal to the +victors; but education is never suicidal." By education he explains +himself to mean-- + + "That education in virtue from youth upwards which makes a man eagerly + pursue the ideal perfection of citizenship, and teaches him how + rightly to rule and how to obey. This is the only education which, + upon our view, deserves the name; and that other sort of training + which aims at the acquisition of wealth or bodily strength, or mere + cleverness apart from intelligence and justice is mean and illiberal, + and is not worthy to be called education at all." + +Plato wrote this dialogue when over seventy, an age which for many years +(if I live) I shall be able to contemplate as respectable. Yet, though +speaking at a guess, I say pretty confidently that the talk of these three +imaginary interlocutors of his upon youth, and the feeling that colours +it, convey more of the truth about old age than does Cicero's admired +treatise on that subject or any of its descendants. For these treatises +start with the false postulate that age is concerned about itself, whereas +it is the mark of age to be indifferent about itself, and this mark of +indifference deepens with the years. Nor did Cicero once in his _De +Senectute_ get hold of so fine or so true a thought as Plato's Athenian +lets fall almost casually--that a man should honour an aged parent as he +would the image of a God treasured up and dwelling in his house. + +The outlook of Plato's three elderly men, in fact, differs little, if at +all, from Mr Meredith's as you may see for yourself by turning back to the +September chapter and reading the part from "Not long ago an interviewer +called on Mr. Meredith," through to the excerpt from 'Lucifer in +Starlight'. Speaking as a parent, I say that this outlook is--I won't say +the right one, though this too I believe--the outlook a man _naturally_ +takes as he grows older: naturally, because it is natural for a man to +have children, and he who has none may find alleviations, but must miss +the course of nature. As I write there comes back to me the cry of my old +schoolmaster, T. E. Brown, protesting from the grave-- + + "But when I think if we must part + And all this personal dream be fled-- + O, then my heart! O, then my useless heart! + Would God that thou wert dead-- + A clod insensible to joys or ills-- + A stone remote in some bleak gully of the hills!" + +I hear the note of anguish: but the appeal itself passes me by. 'All this +personal dream' must flee: it is better that it should flee; nay, much of +our present bliss rests upon its transitoriness. But we can continue in +the children. + +I think that perhaps the worst of having no children of their own is that +it makes, or tends to make, men and women indifferent to children in +general. I know, to be sure, that thousands of childless men and women +reach out (as it were) wistfully, almost passionately towards the young. +Still, I know numbers who care nothing for children, regard them as +nuisances, and yet regard themselves as patriots--though of a state which +presumably is to disappear in a few years, and with their acquiescence. I +own that a patriotism which sets up no hope upon its country's continuous +renewal and improvement, or even upon its survival beyond the next few +years, seems to me as melancholy as it is sterile. + +Some of these good folk, for example, play the piano more sedulously than +that instrument, in my opinion, deserves; yet are mightily indignant, in +talk with me, at what they call the wickedness of teaching multitudes of +poor children to play upon pianos provided by the rates. As a historical +fact, very few poor children play or have ever played on pianos provided +by the rates. But I prefer, passing this correction over, to point out to +my indignant friends that the upper and middle classes in England are +ceasing to breed, and that therefore, unless the Anglo-Saxon race is to +lose one of its most cherished accomplishments--unless we are content to +live and see our national music ultimately confined to the jews' harp and +penny whistle--we must endow the children of the poor with pianos--or +perhaps as 'labour certificates' abbreviate the years at our disposal for +instruction, with pianolas, and so realise the American sculptor's grand +allegorical conception of 'Freedom presenting a Pianola to Fisheries and +the Fine Arts.' + + +To drop irony--and indeed I would expel it, if I could, once and for all +from these pages--I like recreation as much as most men, and have grown to +find it in the dull but deeply absorbing business of sitting on Education +Committees. Some fifteen years ago, in the first story in my first book +of short stories, I confessed to being haunted by a dreadful sound: 'the +footfall of a multitude more terrible than an army with banners, the +ceaseless pelting feet of children--of Whittingtons turning and turning +again.' Well, I still hear that footfall: but it has become less terrible +to me, though not one whit less insistent: and it began to grow less +terrible from the hour I picked up and read a certain little book, _The +Invisible Playmate_, to the author of which (Mr. William Canton) I desire +here to tender my thanks. In a little chapter of that little book Mr. +Canton tells of an imaginary poem written by an imaginary Arm. +(Arminius?), Altegans, an elderly German cobbler of 'the village of +Wieheisstes, in the pleasant crag-and-fir region of Schlaraffenland.' Its +name is the 'Erster Schulgang,' and I will own, and gratefully, that few +real poems by real 'classics' have so sung themselves into my ears, or so +shamed the dulness out of drudgery, as have the passages which I here set +down for the mere pleasure of transcribing them:-- + + + + "The poem opens with a wonderful vision of children; delightful as it + is unexpected; as romantic in presentment as it is commonplace in + fact. All over the world--and all under it, too, when their time + comes--the children are trooping to school. The great globe swings + round out of the dark into the sun; there is always morning + somewhere; and for ever in this shifting region of the morning-light + the good Altegans sees the little ones afoot--shining companies and + groups, couples, and bright solitary figures; for they all seem to + have a soft heavenly light about them! + + "He sees them in country lanes and rustic villages; on lonely + moorlands, where narrow, brown foot-tracks thread the expanse of + green waste, and occasionally a hawk hovers overhead, or the mountain + ash hangs its scarlet berries above the huge fallen stones set up by + the Druids in the old days; he sees them on the hill-sides, in the + woods, on the stepping-stones that cross the brook in the glen, along + the sea-cliffs and on the wet ribbed sands; trespassing on the + railway lines, making short cuts through the corn, sitting in + ferry-boats: he sees them in the crowded streets of smoky cities, in + small rocky islands, in places far inland where the sea is known only + as a strange tradition. + + "The morning-side of the planet is alive with them; one hears their + pattering footsteps everywhere. And as the vast continents sweep + 'eastering out of the high shadow which reaches beyond the moon,' and + as new nations with _their_ cities and villages, their fields, woods, + mountains, and sea-shores, rise up into the morning-side, lo! Fresh + troops, and still fresh troops, and yet again fresh troops of 'these + small school-going children of the dawn.' . . . + + "What are weather and season to this incessant panorama of childhood? + The pigmy people trudge through the snow on moor and hill-side; wade + down flooded roads; are not to be daunted by wind or rain, frost or + the white smother of 'millers and bakers at fisticuffs.' Most + beautiful of all, he sees them travelling schoolward by that late + moonlight which now and again in the winter months precedes the tardy + dawn." + +My birthday falls in November month. Here, behind this Cornish window, we +are careful in our keeping of birthdays; we observe them solemnly, +stringent in our cheerful ritual;--and this has been my birthday sermon! + + + +DECEMBER. + + +Hard by the edge of the sand-hills, and close beside the high road on the +last rise before it dips to the coast, stands a turfed embankment +surrounded by a shallow fosse. This is none of our ancient camps +('castles' we call them in Cornwall), as you perceive upon stepping within +the enclosure, which rises in a complete circle save for two entrances cut +through the bank and facing one another. You are standing in a perfectly +level area a hundred and thirty feet in diameter; the surrounding rampart +rises to a height of eight or nine feet, narrowing towards the top, where +it is seven feet wide; and around its inner side you may trace seven or +eight rows of seats cut in the turf, but now almost obliterated by the +grass. + +This Round (as we call it) was once an open-air theatre or planguary +(_plain-an-guare_, place of the play). It has possibly a still older +history, and may have been used by the old Cornish for their councils and +rustic sports; but we know that it was used as a theatre, perhaps as early +as the fourteenth century, certainly as late as the late sixteenth: and, +what is more, we have preserved for us some of the plays performed in it. + +They are sacred or miracle plays, of course. If you draw a line from +entrance to entrance, then at right angles to it there runs from the +circumference towards the centre of the area a straight shallow trench, +terminating in a spoon-shaped pit. The trench is now a mere depression +not more than a foot deep, the pit three feet: but doubtless time has +levelled them up, and there is every reason to suppose that the pit served +to represent Hell (or, in the drama of The Resurrection, the Grave), and +the trench allowed the performers, after being thrust down into perdition, +to regain the green-room unobserved--either actually unobserved, the +trench being covered, or by a polite fiction, the audience pretending not +to see. My private belief is that, the stage being erected above and +along the trench, they were actually hidden while they made their exit. +Where the trench meets the rampart a semi-circular hollow, about ten feet +in diameter, makes a breach in the rows of seats. Here, no doubt, stood +the green-room. + +The first notice of the performance of these plays occurs in Carew's +_Survey of Cornwall_, published in 1602:-- + + "Pastimes to delight the mind, the Cornishmen have guary miracles and + three-men's songs: and for exercise of the body hunting, hawking, + shooting, wrestling, hurling, and such other games. + + "The guary miracle, in English a miracle play, is a kind of Interlude + compiled in Cornish out of some scripture history with that grossness + which accompanied the Romans' _vetus comedia_. For representing it + they raise an earthen amphitheatre in some open field, having the + diameter of this inclosed plain some forty or fifty foot. + The country people flock from all sides, many miles off, to hear and + see it; for they have therein devils and devices to delight as well + the eye as the ear; the players con not their parts without book, but + are prompted by one called the Ordinary, who followeth at their back + with the book in his hand and telleth them softly what they must + pronounce aloud." + + +Our Round, you observe, greatly exceeds the dimensions given by Carew. +But there were several in the west: one for instance, traceable fifty +years ago, at the northern end of the town of Redruth, which still keeps +the name of Planguary; and another magnificent one, of stone, near the +church-town of St. Just by the Land's End. Carew may have seen only the +smaller specimens. + +As for the plays--well, they are by no means masterpieces of literature, +yet they reveal here and there perceptions of beauty such as go with +sincerity even though it be artless. Beautiful for instance is the idea, +if primitive the writing, of a scene in one, _Origo Mundi_, where Adam, +bowed with years, sends his son Seth to the gate of Paradise to beg +his release from the weariness of living (I quote from Norris's +translation):-- + + "O dear God, I am weary, + Gladly would I see once + The time to depart. + Strong are the roots of the briars, + That my arms are broken + Tearing up many of them. + + "Seth my son I will send + To the gate of Paradise forthwith, + To the Cherub, the guardian. + Ask him if there will be for me + Oil of mercy at the last + From the Father, the God of Grace." + +Seth answers that he does not know the road to Paradise. "Follow," says +Adam-- + + "Follow the prints of my feet, burnt; + No grass or flower in the world grows + In that same road where I went-- + I and thy Mother surely also-- + Thou wilt see the tokens." + +Fine too is the story, in the _Passio Domini Nostri_, of the blind soldier +Longius, who is led forward and given a lance, to pierce Christ's body on +the Cross. He thrusts and the holy blood heals him of his blindness. +Local colour is sparingly imported. One of the executioners, as he bores +the Cross, says boastfully:-- + + "I will bore a hole for the one hand, + There is not a fellow west of Hayle + Who can bore better." + +--And in the _Resurrectio_ Pilate rewards the gaoler for his trustiness +with the Cornish manors of 'Fekenal, Carvenow and Merthyn,' and promises +the soldiers by the Sepulchre 'the plain of Dansotha and Barrow Heath.' +A simplicity scarcely less refreshing is exhibited in _The Life of St. +Meriasec_ (a play recently recovered) by a scholar whom a pompous +pedagogue is showing off. He says:-- + + "God help A, B, and C! + The end of the song is D: + No more is known to me," + +But promises to learn more after dinner. + + +Enthusiasts beg us to make the experiment of 'reviving' these old plays in +their old surroundings. But here I pause, while admitting the temptation. +One would like to give life again, if only for a day, to the picture which +Mr. Norris conjures up:-- + + "The bare granite plain of St. Just, in view of Cape Cornwall + and of the transparent sea which beats against that magnificent + headland. . . . The mighty gathering of people from many miles around + hardly showing like a crowd in that extended region, where nothing + ever grows to limit the view on any side, with their booths and + tents, absolutely necessary where so many people had to remain three + days on the spot, would give a character to the assembly probably + more like what we hear of the so-called religious revivals in America + than of anything witnessed in more sober Europe." + +But alas! I foresee the terrible unreality which would infect the whole +business. Very pretty, no doubt, and suggestive would be the picture of +the audience arrayed around the turf benches-- + + "In gradibus sedit populus de cespite factis--" + +But one does not want an audience to be acting; and this audience would be +making-believe even more heroically than the actors--that is, if it took +the trouble to be in earnest at all. For the success of the experiment +would depend on our reconstructing the whole scene--the ring of entranced +spectators as well as the primitive show; and the country-people would +probably, and not entirely without reason, regard the business as +'a stupid old May game.' The only spectators properly impressed would be +a handful of visitors and solemn antiquarians. I can see those visitors. +If it has ever been your lot to witness the performance of a 'literary' +play in London and cast an eye over the audience it attracts, you too will +know them and their stigmata--their ineffable attire, their strange +hirsuteness, their air of combining instruction with amusement, their soft +felt hats indented along the crown. No! We may, perhaps, produce new +religious dramas in these ancient Rounds: decidedly we cannot revive the +old ones. + + +While I ponder these things, standing in the deserted Round, there comes +to me--across the sky where the plovers wheel and flash in the wintry +sunshine--the sound of men's voices carolling at an unseen farm. They are +singing _The First Nowell_; but the fourth Nowell--the fourth of the +refrain--is the _clou_ of that most common, most excellent carol, and +gloriously the tenors and basses rise to it. No, we cannot revive the old +Miracle Plays: but here in the Christmas Carols we have something as +artlessly beautiful which we can still preserve, for with them we have not +to revive, but merely to preserve, the conditions. + + +In a preface to a little book of carols chosen (and with good judgment) +some years ago by the Rev. H. R. Bramley, of Magdalen College, Oxford, and +well edited in the matter of music by Sir John Stainer, I read that-- + + "The time-honoured and delightful custom of thus celebrating the + Birthday of the Holy Child seems, with some change of form, to be + steadily and rapidly gaining ground. Instead of the itinerant + ballad-singer, or the little bands of wandering children, the + practice of singing carols in Divine Service, or by a full choir at + some fixed meeting, is becoming prevalent." + +Since Mr. Bramley wrote these words the practice has grown more prevalent, +and the shepherds of Bethlehem are in process of becoming thoroughly +sophisticated and self-conscious. For that is what it means. You may +(as harassed bishops will admit) do a number of irrelevant things in +church, but you cannot sing the best carols there. You cannot toll in +your congregation, seat your organist at the organ, array your full choir +in surplices, and tune up to sing, for example-- + + "Rise up, rise up, brother Dives, + And come along with me; + There's a place in Hell prepared for you + To sit on the serpent's knee." + +Or this-- + + "In a manger laid and wrapped I was-- + So very poor, this was my chance-- + Between an ox and a silly poor ass, + To call my true love to the dance." + +Or this-- + + "Joseph did whistle and Mary did sing, + And all the bells on earth did ring + On Christmas Day in the morning." + +These are verses from carols, and from excellent carols: but I protest +that with 'choirs and places where they sing' they will be found +incongruous. Indeed, Mr. Bramley admits it. Of his collection "some," he +says, "from their legendary, festive or otherwise less serious character, +are unfit for use within the church." + +Now since, as we know, these old carols were written to be sung in the +open air, or in the halls and kitchens of private houses, I prefer to put +Mr. Bramley's proposition conversely, and say that the church is an +unsuitable place for carol singing. If the clergy persist in so confining +it, they will no doubt in process of time evolve a number of new +compositions which differ from ordinary hymns sufficiently to be called +carols, but from which the peculiar charm of the carol has evaporated. +This charm (let me add) by no means consists in mere primitiveness or mere +archaism. Genuine carols (if we could only get rid of affectation and be +honest authors in our own century without straining to age ourselves back +into the fifteenth) might be written to-day as appropriately as ever. +'Joseph did whistle,' &c., was no less unsuited at the date of its +composition to performance by a full choir in a chancel than it is to-day. +But whatever the precise nature of the charm may be, you can prove by a +very simple experiment that such a performance tends to impair it. +Assemble a number of carollers about your doorstep or within your hall, +and listen to their rendering of 'The first good joy,' or 'The angel +Gabriel;' then take them off to church and let them sing these same +ditties to an organ accompaniment. You will find that, strive against it +as they may, the tune drags slower and slower; the poem has become a +spiritless jingle, at once dismal and trivial. Take the poor thing out +into the fresh air again and revive it with a fife and drum; stay it with +flagons and comfort it with apples, for it is sick of improper feeding. + +No, no: such a carol as 'God rest you, merry gentlemen,' has a note which +neither is suited by, nor can be suited to, what people call 'the sacred +edifice': while 'Joseph was an old man,' 'I saw three ships' and 'The +first good joy' are plainly impossible. Associate them with organ and +surpliced choir, and you are mixing up things that differ. Omit them, at +the same time banning the house-to-house caroller, and you tyrannically +limit men's devotional impulses. I am told that the clergy frown upon +house-to-house carolling, because they believe it encourages drunkenness. +Why then, let them take the business in hand and see that too much drink +is neither taken nor offered. This ought not to be very difficult. +But, as with the old plays, so with carol-singing, it is easier and more +consonant with the Puritan temper to abolish a practice than to elevate it +and clear away abuses: and the half-instructed mind is taught with fatal +facility to condemn use and abuse in a lump, to believe carol-singing a +wile of the Evil One because Bill once went around carol-singing and came +home drunk. + +In parishes where a more tolerant spirit prevails I am glad to note that +the old custom, and even a taste for the finer ditties, seem to be +reviving. Certainly the carollers visit us in greater numbers and sing +with more evidence of careful practice than they did eight or ten years +ago: and friends in various parts of England have a like story to tell. +In this corner the rigour of winter does not usually begin before January, +and it is no unusual thing to be able to sit out of doors in sunshine for +an hour or so in the afternoon of Christmas Day. The vessels in sight fly +their flags and carry bunches of holly at their topmast-heads: and I +confess the day is made cheerfuller for us if they are answered by the +voices of carollers on the waterside, or if, walking inland, I hear the +note of the clarionet in some 'town-place' or meet a singing-party +tramping between farm and farm. + + +That the fresh bloom of the carol was evanescent and all too easily +destroyed I always knew; but never realised its extreme fugacity until, +some five years ago, it fell to me to prepare an anthology, which, under +the title of _The Oxford Book of English Verse_, has since achieved some +popularity. I believed that previous English anthologists had unjustly, +even unaccountably, neglected our English carols, and promised myself to +redress the balance. I hunted through many collections, and brought +together a score or so of pieces which, considered merely as carols, were +gems of the first water. But no sooner did I set them among our finer +lyrics than, to my dismay, their colours vanished; the juxtaposition +became an opposition which killed them, and all but half a dozen had to be +withdrawn. There are few gems more beautiful than the amethyst: but an +amethyst will not live in the company of rubies. A few held their own-- +the exquisite 'I sing of a Maiden' for instance-- + + "I sing of a Maiden + That is makeles;[1] + King of all kings + To her son she ches.[2] + + "He came al so still + There his mother was, + As dew in April + That falleth on the grass. + + "He came al so still + To his mother's bour, + As dew in April + That falleth on the flour. + + "He came al so still + There his mother lay + As dew in April + That falleth on the spray. + + "Mother and maiden + Was never none but she; + Well may such a lady + Goddes mother be." + + [1] Without a mate. + [2] Chose. + +Or 'Lestenyt, lordings,' or 'Of one that is so fair and bright;' and my +favourite, 'The Seven Virgins,' set among the ballads lost none of its +lovely candour. But on the whole, and sorely against my will, it had to +be allowed that our most typical carols will not bear an ordeal through +which many of the rudest ballads pass safely enough. So it will be found, +I suspect, with the carols of other nations. I take a typical English +one, exhumed not long ago by Professor Flugel from a sixteenth century MS. +at Balliol College, Oxford, and pounced upon as a gem by two such +excellent judges of poetry as Mr. Alfred W. Pollard and Mr. F. Sidgwick:-- + + "_Can I not sing but Hoy! + The jolly shepherd made so much joy!_ + The shepherd upon a hill he sat, + He had on him his tabard[1] and his hat, + His tar-box, his pipe and his flagat;[2] + And his name was called jolly, jolly Wat, + For he was a good herd's-boy, + Ut hoy! + For in his pipe he made so much joy." + + "The shepherd upon a hill was laid + His dog to his girdle was tayd, + He had not slept but a little braid + But _Gloria in excelsis_ was to him said + Ut hoy! + For in his pipe he made so much joy. + + "The shepherd on a hill he stood, + Round about him his sheep they yode,[3] + He put his hand under his hood, + He saw a star as red as blood. + Ut hoy! + For in his pipe he made so much joy." + +The shepherd of course follows the star, and it guides him to the inn and +the Holy Family, whom he worships:-- + + "'Now farewell, mine own herdsman Wat!' + 'Yea, 'fore God, Lady, even so I hat:[4] + Lull well Jesu in thy lap, + And farewell Joseph, with thy round cap!' + Ut hoy! + For in his pipe he made so much joy." + + [1] Short coat. + [2] Flagon. + [3] Went. + [4] Am hight, called. + +Set beside this the following Burgundian carol (of which, by the way, you +will find a charming translation in Lady Lindsay's _A Christmas Posy_):-- + + "Giullo, pran ton tamborin; + Toi, pran tai fleute, Robin. + Au son de ces instruman-- + Turelurelu, patapatapan-- + Au son de ces instruman + Je diron Noel gaiman. + + "C'eto lai mode autrefoi + De loue le Roi de Roi; + Au son de ces instruman-- + Turelurelu, patapatapan-- + Au son de ces instruman + Ai nos an fau faire autan. + + "Ce jor le Diale at ai cu, + Randons an graice ai Jesu; + Au son de ces instruman-- + Turelurelu, patapatapar-- + Au son de ces instruman + Fezon lai nique ai Satan. + + "L'homme et Dei son pu d'aicor + Que lai fleute et le tambor. + Au son de ces instruman-- + Turelurelu, patapatapan-- + Au son de ces instruman + Chanton, danson, santons-an!" + +To set either of these delightful ditties alongside of the richly-jewelled +lyrics of Keats or of Swinburne, of Victor Hugo or of Gautier would be to +sin against congruity, even as to sing them in church would be to sin +against congruity. + + +There was one carol, however, which I was fain to set alongside of 'The +Seven Virgins,' and omitted only through a scruple in tampering with two +or three stanzas, necessary to the sense, but in all discoverable versions +so barbarously uncouth as to be quite inadmissible. And yet 'The Holy +Well' is one of the loveliest carols in the language, and I cannot give up +hope of including it some day: for the peccant verses as they stand are +quite evidently corrupt, and if their originals could be found I have no +doubt that the result would be flawless beauty. Can any of my readers +help to restore them? + +'The Holy Well,' according to Mr. Bramley, is traditional in Derbyshire. +'Joshua Sylvester,' in _A Garland of Christmas Carols_, published in 1861, +took his version from an eighteenth-century broadsheet printed at +Gravesend, and in broadsheet form it seems to have been fairly common. +I choose the version given by Mr. A. H. Bullen in his _Carols and Poems_, +published by Nimmo in 1886:-- + + "As it fell out one May morning, + And upon one bright holiday, + Sweet Jesus asked of His dear mother + If He might go to play. + + "To play, to play, sweet Jesus shall go, + And to play pray get you gone; + And let me hear of no complaint + At night when you come home. + + "Sweet Jesus went down to yonder town, + As far as the Holy Well, + And there did see as fine children, + As any tongue can tell. + + "He said, God bless you every one, + And your bodies Christ save and see: + Little children shall I play with you, + And you shall play with Me?" + +So far we have plain sailing; but now, with the children's answer, comes +the trouble:-- + + "But they made answer to Him, No: + They were lords' and ladies sons; + And He, the meanest of them all, + Was but a maiden's child, born in an ox's stall. + + "Sweet Jesus turn'd Him around, + And He neither laughed nor smiled, + But the tears came trickling from His eyes + Like water from the skies." + +A glance, as I contend, shows these lines to be corrupt: they were not +written, that is to say, in the above form, which violates metre and +rhyme-arrangement, and is both uncouth and redundant. The carol now picks +up its pace again and proceeds-- + + "Sweet Jesus turned Him round about, + To His mother's dear home went He, + And said, I have been in yonder town + As far as you can see." + +Some versions give 'As after you can see.' Jesus repeats the story +precisely as it has been told, with His request to the children and their +rude answer. Whereupon Mary says:-- + + "Though You are but a maiden's child, + Born in an ox's stall, + Though art the Christ, the King of Heaven, + And the Saviour of them all. + + "Sweet Jesus, go down to yonder town + As far as the Holy Well, + And take away those sinful souls + And dip them deep in Hell. + + "Nay, nay, sweet Jesus said, + Nay, nay, that may not be; + There are too many sinful souls + Crying out for the help of Me." + +On this exquisite close the carol might well end, as Mr. Bullen with his +usual fine judgment makes it end. But the old copies give an additional +stanza, and a very silly one:-- + + "O then spoke the angel Gabriel, + Upon one good St. Stephen, + Although you're but a maiden's child, + You are the King of Heaven." + +'One good St. Stephen' is obviously an ignorant misprint for 'one good set +steven,' _i.e._ 'appointed time,' and so it appears in Mr. Bramley's book, +and in Mr. W. H. Husk's _Songs of the Nativity_. But the stanza is +foolish, and may be dismissed. To amend the text of the children's answer +is less legitimate. Yet one feels sorely tempted; and I cannot help +suggesting that the original ran something like this:-- + + "But they made answer to Him, No: + They were lords and ladies all; + And He was but a maiden's child, + Born in an ox's stall. + + "Sweet Jesus turned Him round about, + And He neither laughed nor smiled, + But the tears came trickling from His eyes + To be but a maiden's child. . . ." + +I plead for this suggestion: (1) that it adds nothing to the text and +changes but one word; (2) that it removes nothing but the weak and +unrhyming 'Like water from the skies'; and (3) that it leads directly to +Mary's answer:-- + + "Though you are but a maiden's child, + Born in an ox's stall," &c. + +But it were better to hunt out the original than to accept any emendation; +and I hope you will agree that the original of this little poem, so +childlike and delicately true, is worth hunting for. "The carol," says +Mr. Husk, "has a widely-spread popularity. On a broadside copy printed at +Gravesend,"--presumably the one from which 'Joshua Sylvester' took his +version--"there is placed immediately under the title a woodcut purporting +to be a representation of the site of the Holy Well, Palestine; but the +admiration excited thereby for the excellent good taste of the printer is +too soon alas! dispelled, for between the second and third stanzas we see +another woodcut representing a feather-clad-and-crowned negro seated on a +barrel, smoking--a veritable ornament of a tobacconists' paper." + + +One of the finest carols written of late years is Miss Louise Imogen +Guiney's _Tryste Noel_. It is deliberately archaic, and (for reasons +hinted at above) I take deliberate archaism to be about the worst fault a +modern carol-writer can commit. Also it lacks the fine simplicity of +Christina Rossetti's _In the bleak midwinter_. I ought to dislike it, +too, for its sophisticated close. Yet its curious rhythm and curious +words haunt me in spite of all prejudice:-- + + "The Ox he openeth wide the Doore + And from the Snowe he calls her inne; + And he hath seen her smile therefore, + Our Ladye without sinne. + Now soone from Sleepe + A Starre shall leap, + And soone arrive both King and Hinde: + _Amen, Amen_; + But O the Place cou'd I but finde! + + "The Ox hath husht his Voyce and bent + Trewe eye of Pity ore the Mow; + And on his lovelie Neck, forspent, + The Blessed lays her Browe. + Around her feet + Full Warme and Sweete + His bowerie Breath doth meeklie dwell; + _Amen, Amen_; + But sore am I with vaine Travel! + + "The Ox is Host in Juda's stall, + And Host of more than onely one, + For close she gathereth withal + Our Lorde, her little Sonne. + Glad Hinde and King + Their Gyfte may bring, + But wou'd to-night my Teares were there; + _Amen, Amen_; + Between her Bosom and His hayre!" + + +The days are short. I return from this Christmas ramble and find it high +time to light the lamp and pull the curtains over my Cornish Window. + + "The days are sad--it is the Holy tide: + The Winter morn is short, the Night is long; + So let the lifeless Hours be glorified + With deathless thoughts and echo'd in sweet song: + And through the sunset of this purple cup + They will resume the roses of their prime, + And the old Dead will hear us and wake up, + Pass with dim smiles and make our hearts sublime!" + +Friends dead and friends afar--I remember you at this season, here with +the log on the hearth, the holly around the picture frames and the wine at +my elbow. One glass in especial to you, my old friend in the far north!-- + + +CHRISTMAS EVE + + + "Friend, old friend in the manse by the fireside sitting, + Hour by hour while the grey ash drips from the log. + You with a book on your knee, your wife with her knitting, + Silent both, and between you, silent, the dog-- + + "Silent here in the south sit I, and, leaning, + One sits watching the fire, with chin upon hand, + Gazes deep in its heart--but ah! its meaning + Rather I read in the shadows and understand. + + "Dear, kind, she is; and daily dearer, kinder, + Love shuts the door on the lamp and our two selves: + Not my stirring awakened the flame that behind her + Lit up a name in the leathern dusk of the shelves. + + "Veterans are my books, with tarnished gilding: + Yet there is one gives back to the winter grate + Gold of a sunset flooding a college building, + Gold of an hour I waited--as now I wait-- + + "For a light step on the stair, a girl's low laughter, + Rustle of silks, shy knuckles tapping the oak, + Dinner and mirth upsetting my rooms, and, after, + Music, waltz upon waltz, till the June day broke. + + "Where is her laughter now? Old tarnished covers-- + You that reflect her with fresh young face unchanged-- + Tell that we met, that we parted, not as lovers: + Time, chance, brought us together, and these estranged. + + "Loyal we were to the mood of the moment granted, + Bruised not its bloom, but danced on the wave of its joy; + Passion, wisdom, fell back like a wall enchanted + Ringing a floor for us both--Heaven for the boy! + + "Where is she now? Regretted not, though departed, + Blessings attend and follow her all her days! + --Look to your hound: he dreams of the hares he started, + Whines, and awakes, and stretches his limbs to the blaze. + + "Far old friend in the manse, by the grey ash peeling + Flake by flake from the heat in the Yule log's core, + Look past the woman you love--On wall and ceiling + Climbs not a trellis of roses--and ghosts--o' yore? + + "Thoughts, thoughts! Whistle them back like hounds returning-- + Mark how her needles pause at a sound upstairs. + Time for bed, and to leave the log's heart burning! + Give ye good-night, but first thank God in your prayers!" + + + + + + + + +End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of From a Cornish Window, by +Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch + +*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK FROM A CORNISH WINDOW *** + +***** This file should be named 24946.txt or 24946.zip ***** +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: + http://www.gutenberg.org/2/4/9/4/24946/ + +Produced by Lionel Sear + +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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